View Details

When we constantly prioritize others' expectations over our needs, we become mentally and emotionally exhausted, leaving little room to focus on what truly matters to us.

In this episode of Pity Party Over we explore how embracing authenticity and purpose can lead to both personal and professional freedom, even in the face of fear and uncertainty.

Our guest today is Selena Blackmore, an intuitive life and transformation coach who helps individuals reconnect with their life purpose. Selena spent nearly 20 years in the corporate world, constantly seeking new challenges. However, she ultimately felt unfulfilled by the persistent politics and lack of connection to her values, realizing her calling lay elsewhere.

Having a personal conversation about meaning, freedom, and legacy is crucial, whether we decide to be independent professionals or continue in the corporate world. Being true to ourselves is more than just a career move—it’s a lifelong path of growth that helps us stay aligned with who we truly are.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: My first question for you is actually something that I see in a lot of people's eyes when I talk to them, you know, to professionals. At some point, you decided to become an independent professional. So how was the transition for you? What inspired you to make the leap? Because that's something a lot of people would love to do, but somehow never bring themselves to the point of doing it.

Selena Blackmore: Because I spent almost 20 years in corporate and a great company, and I moved around a lot in that space.

So I had, I call it a luxury of having a very big company where even within that company, I could almost sort of redefine myself. So I would purposely, every two to three years, would go out and look for something different, something new, something I hadn't done before. I have, I would call probably a fairly I don't have low attention spans the right way, but I get bored quite quickly. So I get someone that I like learning and I like doing new things.

So I felt like if I was in a job for two, three years, and I kind of I feel like I'm there now, I wouldn't kind of stay with it and be like, OK, let's just, you know, let's just enjoy the ride. I'd be like, no, I need to go and push myself out somewhere else. And it wasn't really like a conscious decision, I'm now going to set up my own company. I always knew since, you know, very early on that at some point I wanted to be independent, self-employed, and go into that direction. But I'd always thought it would be later in life when my children were older, etc.

And it was just things that happened. So my position basically was there was a reorg. My position didn't exist anymore. And I spent three years doing different things in the company. And again, I had a luxury. This was a very it's a very good company, right? So I was allowed to go and try out different things. Again, new areas. And I just felt the same things were coming out that just they weren't aligning with me. So it was just the same things that this thing is still bugging me. You know, it's still the politics, or it's still this, or it's still that.

And there was just a moment when I was like, you know, why not just go for it? And when I decided to make the move, I didn't have a big plan. It wasn't like I had a detailed business plan. I hadn't got it all figured out. It was very much a hard decision of this is try. What's the worst that can happen? I guess I kind of went into it thinking, you know, worst case scenario, if it doesn't work out, I can just go get a job again. And I just knew I didn't want to stay in that company. So I just thought, well, let's go. Let's go try.

And I have to admit that I am a bit of a risk taker, so I am someone that probably does take risks in life. I think I also just had a sense of trust. It will work itself out. Or even if it doesn't, that's also okay. So I kind of went in feeling kind of open to however it turns out.

Stephen Matini: Back at the time, did you sense that there was something missing from your corporate life that you needed to find that somewhere else?

Selena Blackmore: Absolutely. I think someone said beautifully, becoming independent is like the biggest journey of personal growth disguised as work or disguised as a job. And I think that's really true. I think what I was missing in my corporate world was the connection to me. So I was very lucky towards the end of that time. I was working with leadership development, so I was getting more closer to the work, I think, that was more attuned to me naturally.

But I think I was just missing where I could really feel my values connecting. So, you know, my purpose in life is to serve others and support others. And I was kind of missing that I didn't really feel I was being able to do that. Or it was it felt superficial. It didn't feel real. And I think what I was missing sometimes was, even though the purpose we were working towards was was a great purpose, a fantastic purpose, I felt people were losing sight of that.

So there was a lot of, you know, people got lost in the politics and wanting and looking good and all that stuff that goes on in these big companies and kind of lost sight of the purpose of why are we here? And I think I just got to a point and said, no, I want to I really want to work with people and companies and businesses that are really aligned with their purpose and still have that clearly, clearly in front of them, because it just matches more with my my values as well.

Stephen: You pointed out two things that sometimes don't go hand in hand, which is you have the politics, the organizational politics and the ability of people to live their values and purpose. In your opinion, if you had stayed, hypothetically, is there something that could have been done in order to create a more authentic, driven purpose environment? Or this is just a dream that is impossible in organizations?

Selena Blackmore: So for me personally, absolutely. I think where I am now, and this is actually also the kind of work that I'm now engaging in, that I think that when you are, you can be aligned with your purpose and kind of living your truth, it matters where you are, but you can do that in different environments. And I think at the time, I wasn't a space where I knew how to do that, or maybe I didn't, you know, have the right people around me there to kind of help me find how to do that.

But I think, absolutely, I think finding your truth or finding your purpose may change where you're working, or it may shift, you know, exactly what you're doing, but it also may not. Because I think a lot of it's around really, when you feel that sense of being comfortable with what you do, and it's really like, you know, this is really me. This is why I wake up every morning, and I feel super excited about being me and going out there and doing work and helping others, whatever my purpose is, just that energy in itself when you're bringing it into the space you're going in, whatever that work looks like, or that job or that career, I think you can absolutely be in your purpose.

From my experience with working with a lot of people and also my space of coaching, I think people feel, as you said, this is often a conflict. And I think it can be brought together. Obviously, you can only own you, right? So I think you can decide how much work you're going to put in into yourself and how you want to show up. You're going to have less control on what's going on outside. So I think you also have to be okay with you're not going to be able to maybe, you know, you can't change the other people. You're not going to necessarily change the organization.

But I'm of course a big believer in like, you know, the ripple effect. So if you start showing up differently, if you start maybe bringing different energy into meetings or how you connect with people or how you lead, that will have a ripple effect on others as well.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever seen the level of authenticity in your corporate experiences in someone that openness? Have you ever witnessed it?

Selena Blackmore: Yes, I have. After a couple people there was so there was one person I was working in in leadership development. He was heading that group. It was so different to anything else I'd experienced in that organization. And I had moved a lot. And the organization had also transitioned a lot since when I started, also in terms of how, you know, people were being treated and how people, the expectation of how people should show up. But he just said what he thought and shared his truth.

And what I specifically really respected, that he didn't care whether it was the CEO of the company, or it could have been the cleaning lady. So the way he showed up and shared his truth, he had no, he wasn't he was anti-political. So there was no like, Oh, you can't say that to that person. He was like, Well, I mean, why not? Why is that person worth more than this person? And he really lived that. He really lived that. It's hard to be like that. I think it's not easy.

So I think, again, as a person to really show up like that, yeah, it takes a lot of inner strength and inner work. And I think also the awareness that, you know, you're not necessarily going to be liked by everyone. And I think it's letting go of the sense of, you know, this is going to be challenging for some people and being OK with that. And again, he wasn't he was quite open about I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to create change. I'm here to ask the difficult questions and to kind of, you know, put the elephant on the table and kind of be like, what are we talking about? And I really admire that. He's still one of my big inspirations in that company.

Stephen Matini: What you just said, it must be probably the main reason why I am an independent professional, because of the luxury, the beauty of being able to create a space with people in which you can be yourself. In all these years, working with different so many people, thousands of people, from CEOs, managers, you name it, I haven't seen a single time, a moment in which people with me in that some sort of sacred space didn't feel comfortable to be themselves.

And I love that because it's a space of possibilities in which people can really think. And fun enough, sometimes in that space, I have people that normally within the organization may have some difficulty of being transparent, but then when you create that bubble, people can be that. So I really wish that there was some easier way for everyone because people really suffer tremendously as a result of politics.

One thing that I often investigate with people as you do is their sense of purpose. So it seems to be a gigantic question, like, you know, the meaning of life. How would you make it simpler for people? What would it be a first step to get a sense of who the heck you are? What is your purpose?

Selena Blackmore: I'm actually going to share something that I just an experience I had yesterday. So I had a beautiful experience yesterday, where I was with a group of women, and it was kind of a mixed sort of art manifestation, sort of vision purpose workshop.

So basically, you had you had a beautiful dinner, and then you kind of did a painting that represented just what you said, kind of what is your purpose? What's your goal for the year or your purpose? The lady that was running it, she the way she got us to introduce ourselves, which I found very profound, is she said, I want you to answer the question, Who are you? Sounds like a simple question. But then she said, but I don't want you to use your name.

I don't want you to say, you know, how old you are, you know, how many kids do you have? Are you married? What is your job? What are your hobbies? Nothing that defines you kind of that we associate, we associate we create these associations, right? Well, I'm, you know, I'm single with three kids, I'm married with two, or, you know, I do this job. So leave that all away. And who are you as a person? Who are you? So who is who is Stephen? Who is Selena?

And it was such a profound question and really made me sit back and I think I was like, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me to basically describe myself like that. And it's a very simple question. And I think starting with simplicity to really start thinking about who am I? Who am I as a person without all the external stuff going on is a fantastic way to really start doing exactly what you said, to really start checking into ... who am I?

And then I think leading on to that is something also like, how do I want to show up for myself? I think again, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, particularly within kind of the coaching space, a lot of people, you know, want to focus up like, how do I show up as a partner? How do I show up as a parent? How do I show up as work, you know, to my family, to my friends? And these are all great questions, right? I think these are all good things to be thinking about. But I think a lot of us don't start with how do I want to show up for myself?

And really kind of consciously kind of tapping into thinking about who am I? And then how do I want to show up for me? Because would you start starting from there, that's going to then automatically or the other spaces where you're going to show up, it's going to be much easier. That's going to be more in flow, because you're going to know who you are, what your essence is, you know what your purpose is. And then automatically, that will start flowing and also how you show up.

It's actually a really hard question to answer, but it can be as simple as asking a question. And then, you know, you might not know. You might be like, actually, I have no idea who I am. And that's great, right? That's also good. Then, you know, but it started that process, you know, in your head and your heart. So you might then, you know, on that run or in the shower or drawing a paint, whatever you do to maybe connect in with yourself, you may then be thinking about that and then have an aha moment to be like, Oh, maybe it's not. I'm also a big fan of journaling. I don't know if you journal, Stephen?

Stephen: I do.

Selena Blackmore: Oh, that's fantastic. I love journaling. I've made it really my morning, my morning ritual. And I think journaling is also a great way, right? So even just writing things down that come up to you can help you sort of really think about these kind of questions. Who am I? How do I want to show up? Even asking yourself that question every morning and writing it down. And again, no judgment. There's no right or wrong. It's just what feels right to you. And then maybe things come up that you never expected or never thought about.

And that's the exciting part of getting to know yourself, right, and kind of transforming. And I mean, I'm 43 now. I'm turning 44 this year, and I feel like I'm only really starting to get to know who the real me is. And I spent a long part of my life thinking or pretending to be something maybe wasn't quite me. And now I'm like, oh, no, actually, this is actually what I think I really am. And I think it's a lifelong journey.

I think until we our last breath, I think it's the journey of getting to know yourself is one of the best investments I think you can do in terms of relationships that I think will have huge impact on all the other relationships you have in your life.

Stephen Matini: When you made this commitment of being really authentic with yourself and decided to go, you know, to be independent professionals, what was the reaction of people around you where they are supported, where they are critical? Did you get crap?

Selena Blackmore: So there was a mix. And I should maybe add that when I made the choice to go independent, that the timing was really off, right? I was quite freshly divorced. I had I have three children, a single parent, and the divorce was financially not good for me. So I was kind of kind of financially starting against the timing really wasn't good. It wasn't like, this is a smart financial, smart decision to kind of go out there and kind of put your family into risk.

So there were some people that were basically like, are you sure? I think I didn't get I didn't get crap from anyone. I think no one was anywhere to my face. I put it that way. I don't know what they said behind closed doors. There probably were quite a few stuff like, Oh my God, what is she doing? So I did have people that were just you could tell like, are you sure? Again, the company I left, it's a well known company. I've been there a long time. The pay is very good. You know, I have really good paid jobs.

So I was losing leaving, in theory, something very secure to go to something completely not secure and quite random. And there was kind of no plan to that. So there are definitely people that were just like, what are you doing?

People closest to me, and one of my oldest friends we've known since like 13, she was probably I always say she's my biggest cheerleader. So she was definitely like, Oh my God, this is fantastic. You've got this. This is so right. And during all my time now, and I think as you know, any any person who's taken the leap to be independent, you know, it's not all fairy lights and sunshine, right? It's a bit of a rollercoaster.

So you're going to have good times, you're going to have lots of good times. And she's a fantastic cheerleader. So there's been times when I've been like, oh, I'm not doing this anymore. This is too hard. And she's like, no, you've got this and hang in there. And I think having cheerleaders in your life is super important. You need to have those people. You don't need to have like a whole like a whole cheerleading team, but just having one or two is super critical.

And Germany was interesting. So a lot of people were just kind of said, oh, you're very brave. So it's kind of like you're a little bit crazy, or you're very brave, or you're kind of both. But I was interested. A lot of people were actually quite positive in terms of like a bit of a sense of, as you mentioned before, like, oh, wow, I'd love to do that. Like, that's almost a little bit, I'd love to do that, but I don't feel safe enough to do that.

Or people often share their ideas like what they'd like to do. But yeah, but, you know, the kids are small, or I'd be nervous about, you know, how it would work. So it was more positive than negative. Again, to my faith.

What I've also learned is particularly when you're working on new ideas and they're not quite formed yet, to be a little bit careful with who you share them with as well. I think that's something I've learned, you know, sharing with your cheerleaders, right? Because they're going to be like, yeah, absolutely, you know, go for it. This sounds amazing, or it sounds great, but maybe adjust, they'll be honest with you.

But be careful, you don't share with too many, because I think people can also pull you down energetically or also be kind of like, Oh, are you sure? And, you know, and yeah, if it's not going well, maybe just look for another job or, you know, do this. And that's not necessarily what you're needing to hear. So I've learned to be more careful with who I share certain things with. And yeah, definitely get make sure you have a couple of cheerleaders in there because we all need them and do it yourself as well, right? So I always then try and be a cheerleader for those around me too.

Because I personally think anyone can set up their own business or become an entrepreneur or do their own thing. And interesting, if you look at it generationally, I think there are more and more younger people that are actually doing this, right? So I think it's the younger generations coming through seem to just have more of this sense of trust or like, you know, I'm going to try it and see what happens. And I think, yeah, maybe people more in my or our generation are still like quite risk adverse. But yeah, I mean, I think anyone can. I think you have the vision and you have the motivation and your hearts in it. I mean, why not?

I think that's when we start going out, distracting ourselves, right? We start going out, finding external things to try and feel because it gives you that feeling of there's always something missing. And I think I mean, I did that, right? There's that sense of something missing, and then you'll distract yourself with working too much or, you know, doing excessive, like people that, you know, do excessive sport or whatever it is you do, you know, or, you know, change relationships a lot.

You'll find your search for external ways of trying to fill that gap, because it's not a nice feeling, right? And at some point, you might realize that nothing's going to fill that gap, right? Because that gap has to be filled by you and you looking inwards and kind of connecting.

When you lose a lot in a short space of time, it makes you realize, you know, everything is just so in the moment, right? What we have now could disappear very, very soon. I mean, I lost my dad when I was 25, so I lost him quite young.

And then I had a period when I kind of, you know, separated with my husband, worked myself into a burnout, got divorced. And then I actually also lost my mom when I was five months pregnant with my daughter. And she was similarly she was my rock. Like, she was my she was my everything. I mean, my mom was literally like my best friend. She was in and out of my house all my time. You know, she was helping my kids. And I lost like this, this like rock in my life. While I was five months pregnant, she never got to meet my daughters. I have two boys and a girl. She never got to meet my daughter.

And, you know, there's a point when you're like on your knees, you're just like, this is I can't, you know, and you can take it because I also believe that life puts obstacles in front of you that you can deal with. But and there are opportunities for growth. But at the moment, it's really hard. But when you get through that, when you grow through that, I do believe it takes away a lot of that sense of being scared of maybe smaller things, because when you've kind of lost everything that defines you, and I remember when I was in the burnout, and I felt like I failed on my marriage, I failed at my job, everything that I felt defined me as a person, and you're left with nothing.

You're like stripped bare. It's very humbling. It's a humbling experience, right, where you really need to think about, okay, well, what am I then? I think that was really the first one of the first nudges when I had to start thinking about, well, who am I? You know, if I'm not, you know, this family unit that I wanted to be, I'm not the successful corporate person that I thought I was, and that kind of taking that step back or being forced to take that step back and reevaluate who am I is humbling. But it does, as you said, help you to maybe take more high risk decisions later on, because you're like, well, I've lost it all.

So as you said, what's the worst that can happen? And I think, you know, I'm the most grateful every day for my health, because I think health is just the utmost thing we can have. And for the health of my children and my loved ones, and everything else is just cherry on the top, right? I mean, if we're healthy, if we can wake up every day and we're healthy, we can move our bodies, then everything else is, it's the sprinkles and the fairy dust that adds to our lives.

Stephen Matini: And even now, when I think about what is the worst possible thing that it can possibly happen to me, whereas before, it was a lot of fear. And now I think, oh, wow, that would be really, really hard, but I'm going to live it. I'm going to experience it no matter what that is, you know, because that's really, that really is what makes me alive. So I think for me, it was a lot of trying to avoid, you know, that pain. And it's something you cannot avoid because inevitably life brings you that. So ...

Selena Blackmore: yeah, and then it's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that because it just makes me think of when you said we're trying to avoid pain. And it's also a lot of it's what we have in our heads, right?

So we create this, we create this. I'm going to say fake reality. And I know because I used to do this all the time. I mean, when I was a child, I was this huge worry. I'd worry about anything and everything that could ever happen. I had quite high anxiety as a child. And we create these like stories in our head about everything that's going to happen. And we tend to default to the negative, right? So, you know, you get an email from your boss that just said, oh, can we meet? You know, can we meet in half an hour? And you don't have a meeting plan. And automatically, I had to go, have I done something wrong? Why do they want to see me?

Well, you know, oh my God, have I not done something? And you go to all the things instead of like, you know, my manager wants to check in with me. And I'm really looking forward to it. So I feel we default very quickly to the negative and create these stories about, you know, all these terrible things that can happen, I still catch myself doing this. And then after you're like, Oh, okay, you know, it wasn't. And I personally say, I find it's actually really hard work to consciously like stop yourself from doing that, to really work in, you know, being in the present and be like, No, I'm here now, because the future is not is not reality, right?

Because it hasn't happened. It's just in our heads of what we've created. This avoidance of pain or, you know, being being left, you know, the sense of lack of something. Again, it's not real. It's just what we are telling ourselves with this story we're creating in our head. And I think we're finding ways of whether it's, you know, through mindfulness, meditation, or whatever, journaling, lots of different ways of really helping yourself to be more in the present. I'm a big believer in breath work. So you know, kind of like breathing.

If you're feeling, as you said, you said beautifully, you learn to feel more in your body. Where am I feeling anxiety? Is it my chest, my heart, my stomach, and breathe into that? And that can that can have huge shifts. I mean, just it can be simple things. I think people sometimes think, Oh, I need to meditate every day for half an hour, and I don't have time for that. You don't, you don't. I don't have time to meditate every day for half an hour. But it can be just literally sitting and breathing for like a minute, 30 seconds, breathing into the ocean and then letting that go and then being like, OK, now I'm ready.

And I'm going to go on. And as he said, I'm going to go forth into it. And I think releasing that sense of all that worry in your head, finding spaces where you can connect to you, I think is such a pivotal practice in embracing, you know, who you are. And as you said, going through the emotions, because they're all there for a reason. I mean, fear is a good thing, right? We have fear for a reason. I mean, fear, we have fear millions of years ago. We need to have fear to survive, right? We need to when we had to run away from the Sabertooth tigers and, you know, whatever else is trying to eat us, basically.

So I've had to do a lot of work with embracing my fear and basically saying to my fear, thank you for being there. You've kept me safe in situations that could have been dangerous for me. You've kept me safe and I could have, you know, done stupid things or hurt myself. But there are going to be times when I just don't need you. So again, it's I think the sense of and I love how you describe it, letting all the emotions be a part of you, because as soon as you reject something, the way the universe usually works, it's going to throw it back in your face, right?

I mean, it's like, even you drive, I don't want to have fear or I don't want to feel pain. It's like, yeah, okay, we know you don't, but you're going to get it. And then usually what happens is that you're going to attract more of it until you decide to have a look at it. So learning to love all your emotions goes back to what we discussed is, you know, who you are and showing up as yourself and loving yourself, right? I think falling in love with yourself more, which is, I think, again, something we're not used to doing.

It's really hard for us to love ourselves, truly. And something, this is my lifelong mission. I think I will be doing until the end is really working on, you know, loving myself and loving me.

Stephen Matini: You know, if you can be of any consolation, because you are still so young, bear in mind that when you pass 50, that feeling becomes even deeper. Yeah.

Selena Blackmore: Oh, so I'm excited now. So now I can look forward to that. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: Yeah, like, you know, when I when I turned 40, I thought, oh boy, I thought I knew something at 30 now, you know, and it was really in 40s, I think a wonderful. But now, you know, my 50s, it's almost like you tear apart another layer, another layer, another layer, like everything, anything you're saying, it becomes even much more so, you know, so you'll see.

Selena Blackmore: I'm excited now. Thank you. You've helped me look forward to me turning 50. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because if I think back when I turn 30, you kind of think, oh, I've got to all fit it out now, right? And you're just like, no, you don't. But it's funny how you go through those stages of thinking like, you know, you've got you have this image in your life, image of how you want your life to be, and you set it up that way. And then, yeah, you realize that it's maybe not. And that's good. I think it's good. It's part of your part of the learning curve, right, of experience yourself in different stages.

Stephen Matini: It does. And for me, being free is such an important thing. Being free means a lot of stuff. It means exactly what you said, like, have a sense of who I am, enjoy my life. And as time goes by, I do see the freedom becoming more and more and more. So I think it's a beauty probably of aging. Certain things, unfortunately, you just do not know when you're younger. But as you age, you have that. It's difficult for all of us to age, but the understanding and the, I don't know, awareness that you have, it becomes so much richer for sure. As a result of all this transformation, how do you define success these days?

Selena Blackmore: Very differently to probably actually even five years ago or a couple of years ago, even actually no, even since to when I started my business, it's changed, evolved a lot. I think for me, success now is being able to really live my truth.

So do follow my purpose, be able to live that, be able to do that every day, and kind of make that also how I earn my money. So kind of, you know, make that into also how I attract abundance into my life. And also, for me, success is, and you touched on it. I think having a having a clearer sense of what's really important to me in life, that makes sense.

So I think when I was younger, I was probably I haven't been super driven by money. Money's not been super motivated for me, but I think I was much I was used to be more driven by kind of position and role. And I definitely have, you know, I was quite driven about where I wanted to go career wise. And I think now it's one of my I say my biggest luxury I have now is time, like time has become so important to me. You know, time I have with my children, time I have with my friends, time I have with me.

It's like I spent a long time of my life where I put myself really far back behind everyone else. And I feel now I'm really starting to change that balance. There needs to be a balance, right? So just time is a huge definition of success for me. And as you said, you know, the sense of freedom. So I feel it's a huge luxury that I can have time for me. I'm not in this kind of nine to five space where I have to be somewhere and take part in seven hours of meetings a day.

But I really can, you know, choose the people I want to work with, choose the spaces I want to work with, work in, and just be authentic. Yeah, be authentic to me, live my truth, be authentic to me. And in that also could follow my purpose to serve, to serve others. And time, yeah, time is a huge definition of success for me now, because it's a huge luxury. When you're in the hamster wheel of work, you underestimate it because you're just kind of in it.

And once you step out, and I think that was a big thing also, when I have my burnout, is once you're out of it, all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, wow, oh, there's something else. This is also kind of cool. I think it's something that I still see, particularly from a lot of my friends and social circle there, a lot of them are both working parents and with children and, you know, jobs that take quite a lot out of them. And there's always this constant sense of stress and rush and this and that.

And I feel really privileged that I've been able to step back out of that and just give myself more space, give my family more space, give those around me more space. Because again, it goes back to that, how do I want to show up? And if I want to show up as being true and present for people, and if I'm constantly stressed and constantly running from here and there and there, you know, I'm not going to show up with the best version of me.

Stephen Matini: When people, our listeners are going to listen to this episode, if there's someone that feels not quite authentically herself, you know, feels a sense of misalignment. Where would you say they should pay attention to? Where should they start in order to create the better alignment?

Selena Blackmore: I think it's a very individual journey. And I think that's what I find so kind of exciting about working with people is that people are very different stages or very different spaces. And I think it's also very important, as you know, with the coach, you know, you need to really pick them up where they're at, right? There's no point going out there and telling, "Okay, you need to do all this big stuff?" And they're just not there yet.

I mean, as I said, you can start with simple things. If someone's already started asking themselves the question, or they've already noticed, you know, something doesn't feel right, and they've already started asking themselves the question, what is it? You know, what we talked about earlier, who am I? How do I want to show up? They've already kind of planted that seed. I don't, do you know, do you know Gabby Bernstein?

Stephen Matini: No.

She's written several books and a lot of work around manifestation, and she talks about the power of planting a seed. And I love this analogy. So it's almost the second you kind of start putting that out there, planting that seed in you, and again, as you mentioned, not just from in your head, but also in your heart, in your body, in your emotions, that's starting to create momentum. And I think it's like starting, if you spark that seed and start to create that momentum of energy, you're already doing it.

And that's why I think a lot of people underestimate you're already starting to do the work. People often feel like they need to fill in a form, or they need to do something, or they need to like, you know, go to a workshop or do X, Y, Z to start the process. But the process starts from when you've actually started recognizing, I need to change something, or something doesn't feel right, or, you know, every time this happens, I feel this thing, or I'm getting sick all the time when I do this, for example, that's already putting momentum into the energy of your inner journey, right, to recognize, what do I need to do?

And then I think to take it from there, it can be a variety of things, right? It can be array of beautiful, wonderful coaches, therapists, workshops. I'm a great believer in also when you sow the seed, kind of putting that energy out there and asking for what needs to come to me to come to me. So almost rather than worrying about, okay, but what coach should I take? And what will be the right therapy? Because again, we go back into that head of, what if I don't find the right person?

And I don't know what I need, but just say, you know, I want someone to help me with this, or I would like some guidance, and then let that go. And I swear, because it's happened to me so many times, it will come to you, right? You'll either Google the right person, or you'll bump into a friend, and they'll be like, Oh, you know, I know someone, you know, Stephen’s a great coach, you know, you should get in touch with him. Or, you know, if you think about even how we got connected, right? I mean, that was through someone we both know, someone who I worked with, you know, about over four years ago, I haven't, you know, seen for a long time.

So there are constant nudges out there. So it's a sense of just letting that go and seeing what comes to you and being open, and then the right people will come to you. It's important to be open. That's why I go back to that. If you're too much in your head about worrying about the right coach, the right therapist, the right, what you should be doing, it will block it. But yeah, I think it's the work started from when you first recognize that there's something to be done. So you're already doing it.

Be compassionate with yourself, right? I mean, again, give yourself a pat in the back that you're even exploring this, because there are so many people out there that just aren't. And again, there's no judgment, but just aren't doing this yet. And the fact that you're even thinking or exploring what else is there, you know, who you are, why something doesn't feel aligned, that's already amazing. They're already doing that's already amazing. So be compassionate with yourself and be kind and say, Hey, wow, you know, I'm already doing something, because we're hard on ourselves. I try and be compassionate with so many people. And I had a coach once say to me, like, you don't leave any compassion for yourself. Where's your compassion part in that in that? And I think it's, yeah, we need to be a little bit give ourselves a bit more self love.

Stephen Matini: In addition to what you said, I agree with you 100% in terms of where to start, one thing that I've learned over the years is to seek the help of people that have been there, that have done that, that have a lot of experience. Yeah, I think I owe a lot to amazing mentors and coaches and professionals that provided that. I call it the craftsmanship, you know, the experiences. They really helped me taking so many shortcuts in many, many different ways, rather than having to experience every single possible thing myself. And so for that, because you have been through that, I think people should talk to you because you know how it feels, you know, you know how it feels. You know how difficult it is. So people should get in touch with you.

Selena Blackmore: They’re more than welcome to. They're more than welcome to. But I agree. I think authenticity of the people you speak to is very important. And it also probably depends a little bit on if there's a certain area in your life you really want to work on, right? It could be whether it's, you know, more with parenting, you know, relationship with children, relationship with partners, work yourself. But again, that's what I think I was I meant before.

I think if you put it out there, you'll attract those people that will have that experience or have that space that will help you. And I think it's also the experience, but also inspirational. As I mentioned, this great art and manifestation workshop we did, I was able to be part of it was just inspiring. It's just a lot of inspiration of talking to people, as you said, that being through the same. And there's a sense of automatic connection and that sense of presence that it disconnects you as well.

And I think it helps you to kind of grow from that. So absolutely. I think we should there's so much knowledge and love and learning from people around us, and we don't tap into enough. I think there's a lot more out there and we don't tap into enough. It's a huge space where we can get better in as a community in the world is tapping more into the people around us. Because I think there's a lot more out there that we realize.

Stephen Matini: Selena, I've learned a lot today. Thank you for sharing with me your authenticity. Thank you very much.

Selena Blackmore: Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. It's been great.

View Details

Dr. Fateme Banishoeib is a visionary in organizational development. She blends analytical prowess with poetic sensitivity to craft innovative work cultures through storytelling and creative methodologies.

Dr. Banishoeib underscores the transformative power of cultivating empathy, care, and creativity within workplace environments. She highlights how facilitating open discussions enables teams to tap into diverse perspectives and insights, leading to more innovative solutions and inclusive decision-making processes.

When leaders shift from focusing solely on metrics to considering employees' emotional and psychological needs, workplace satisfaction, resilience, and engagement improve.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Like me, you have two different cultures essentially that have inspired your life. And then both of us have moved around quite a bit. So when people ask you, where's home, what do you say?

Fateme Banishoeib: I don't actually have an answer to that. And I have to tell you something. I have to confess a secret, which is not that of a secret.

One of the reason why I have traveled so much I lived everywhere in the world is actually because I don't know where home is. I've come to the conclusion that home is a feeling is not a place. And when I find myself into that feeling or when I can recreate that feeling, then I know that I'm at home.

I've been confused most of my life about where home is. I was interviewed. There is a video in which I actually talk about home and where home is, and on top of my bed actually have a, a beautiful painting of the world. And Maya Angelou said what she said something like, freedom is being at home everywhere. It is true. And it comes with a price. So I don't know where home is. Home is wherever my cat is.

Stephen Matini: So in terms of your professional choices, you know, growing up kind of understanding where I should go with my professional career, how much these two backgrounds that you have have influenced the way you think?

Fateme Banishoeib: Work or career wise is a similar journey. I've embraced the same journey as I embrace like traveling and looking for, for home everywhere till I made home for myself. The same happened for my career.

I think in our first conversation I mentioned to you that I was born a highly artistic child, but of course art is not a job or is considered a frivolous hobby. So my parents were, every time I would say, I want to be a poet, I want to be a designer, they were like, no, no, no, no . As soon as I became a little bit, you know, older that I couldn't understand, they were like no, no, no, no, that's not really a job. What do you really want to do to earn a living? And another thing I would say is I want to be a crazy scientist.

And I literally use those words, crazy scientist. So actually they convinced me that art is not a job and in some way they are right in the sense that to be an artist is a way of being. And this is what I do currently now, and I can talk about that a little bit more.

So I became a scientist and I became a scientist really for the deep love have for science and understanding how we work as a human being. And also for the love of curing people that I've always been passionate about curing people since I was a little child. I mean, there are memories and stories in the family of me. Every time I would hear someone saying, oh, I haven't headache or whatever, I cut my finger. I would just run and I would make up something and I would create something to cure them.

And I've said that. And I've also written about, in my first book in the Whisper, I literally wrote this word like I became a scientist to cure people and wrote poetry to save my life. And this has happened to me literally what saved my life as being really rediscovering poetry in my life.

Once I have become aware of that artist within me again that was just there maybe dormant and and sleep as I was, you know, busy with my corporate career, I actually start seeing the world with very different highs.

And I started wanting to be all I am and not just the scientist or just the artist actually I get equally upset or equally triggered when someone refers to me only as the scientist or you know, the executive, the mentor or the artist. I really want to be all of them because I am and all of them.

And I've spent the past years in my life trying to bring harmony and an equilibrium between all of these facets. And that's how I redesigned my career. That's when I founded Renew Business.

And when I decided that there was place for all of I am, I didn't need to, you know, take a break from my corporate job to paint or I didn't need to whatever. To me, there is no switch. We can only be all of who we are. And that has changed not only what I do, but also how I perceive life by that, how I can support or help others.

For example, there are occasions in which someone calls for my help for very specific or technical tasks. However, I do not forget that I'm an artist. I do not forget there is border within me. I do not forget that sensitivity. I do not forget that way of seeing things.

And one of the remark that people always make is like, do you see those things? How do you come? And to me it's surprising because it is like why isn't the same for you? And after all, I actually really think that the quality of what we do, whatever it is, that what we do depends on the quality of who we are. I'm trying to be everything I am.

Stephen Matini: A lot of people can distinctively perceive it. There's more sides to themselves. They have multiple interests, multiple talent. And somehow so many people feel compelled that I have to choose, you know, whichever route. And that creates a lot of stress to people because it always feels, as you said, what about all the other parts of myself? When did you realize that your, who comprised the scientist and the artist?

Fateme Banishoeib: Well, I've always known what I did not know and took me longer. Also because society and the su and education don't help us understand that we can have different interests and we, if we want, we can pursue all of them or some of them. I mean, we live in a society and an education that really pushes us to specialize in something. And there are people who are very happy with doing that. They only have a passion or something.

So it's a, so-called like growing vertically or in a, or specializing, going deep into something. And there are people like me who can go deep in different sectors, in different areas, in different backgrounds. What I actually like to think is that we can act as a bridge between domains that apparently look like so separate and so different very often actually make this example which helps people understand especially when they ask me like, but what the chemist and the poet have in common.

And I always say them, well, the seeking the, this love for seeking truth. When I was a chemist in the lab and now when I write poems, that's what I seek. And there is a peculiar, maybe a little bit pot poetic metaphor that is brilliant alchemy is combining the elements that could be material elements, molecules, atoms or experience feelings and making something that didn't exist before. And in that I only act as a bridge. So I've always known, I just had to unlearn what society, people or conditioning had told me that it was not possible and create it, make it possible for me. But I've always known

Stephen Matini: Was there an event or something that happened in the past that this somehow pushed you to realize that meaning you have always known, but then a moment you made the decision to fully embrace this, who it was, was a result of something to happen.

Fateme Banishoeib: My book, the Whisper knows exactly what I will be saying right now because I actually wrote it in the book. It was few years back out of the blue. I decided while I was still in my corporate job and I wasn't even thinking about writing or anything artistic at that moment, I decided out of the blue I wanted to go to a writing retreat.

And that was a particularly challenging moment in my life. It was very tough. I'd moved to a new country. I didn't have any network. And there were several events in my life that actually had tested me quite a lot, really out of this desire of taking a break and just do not think about how crazy and chaotic my life was. I booked myself into a writing retreat. It was not too far from where I was, just out of the blue was a synchronicity.

One of those synchronicity, even though, you know, Karl says, and even Julia Cameron said, the synchronicity do not exist. Coincidence do not exist. So I booked myself into that. And I remember this was very distinctive at the opening of the retreat, the facilitator asked us, write something nobody knows about you.

And this became after the opening line of my book without thinking, I just came out of me without any talks or consciousness about it. And I wrote, I run a manufacturing plant and I hate it. But I had not realized that at that specific moment I wrote it. But it was like, okay, still foreign to me as a concept.

And then the retreat facilitator asked us, can you please read out loud what you have written? I remember the face of everyone when I read what I had written and my realization at that moment of the shock, not only me or everyone because I had to read it out loud.

And in the meantime we were sitting in circle. I saw the shock in everyone's face. Well, I think they were more shocked by the fact that I wasn't the writer in that moment. They learned what was my job. I mean, we had no time to, you know, to introduce one another. That line became an unstoppable flow of poem. So actually I've written 200 pages of poems in one go. It came out as a stream, as a flow. And it took me a while to process and understand what came out of me. But that was the distinctive moment in which things were somehow put in motion. Of course, it took me a few years first to understand what I had written second to decide what I was going to do after I came into that awareness and then create a word, create a space for me to contain that multitudes.

Stephen Matini: And now you bring the poet, you bring the crazy scientist, you bring the healer, you bring it to organizations. And so when you work with organizations, how do they react to your approach?

Fateme Banishoeib: Okay, first of all, I have to say that when I'm called in, people know exactly what to expect. So there is this openness. I wouldn't be able to do my job in the way I do it if there was resistance. Of course people are like curious, they still want to experiments and then try. But when they call me and say, can you come and I help us or or me they're open to try something that maybe they haven't tried before. What I notice all the time is that there is deep desire of finding a space where someone or a team or is truly listened.

There is this deep desire and I understand why. I mean we don't listen to others because we are too busy checking our phone, answering 20 mail or in the meantime talking, I'm talking especially specifically in corporate environments. We are always in the middle of something.

Even when we are having a one-on-one with someone that is the phone ringing, the, the the sound, the notification of email comes. So we are not really listening. We are missing clues. And there is this deep desire from everyone, every single one to be listened. So first of all, I create the condition, first of all for me to listen.

Without me listening to everything, I wouldn't be able to propose anything. But then for the organization to listen to itself or themself, because that's really missing. There is another element that is always missing, expressing being free and being safe to express what's going on inside.

I mean, and I say this very often, neuroscience tells us specifically that first we feel, then we think and only afterwards we act and we completely up and neglect the feeling aspect. In best case scenario, we notice what we are feeling and we dismiss it and we push it and we repress it.

Most of the time we don't even have a word to express what we are feeling. So there is actually a thinking and an action or a decision making that is happening completely in the blind without knowing what we are feeling. And when we don't know what we are feeling and we don't have a way to express it, forget about it, knowing what everyone else's feelings.

So it's literally impossible. It's literally impossible to think clearly and act effectively. First of all, there is no such a thing as act effectively. But anyway, that, that's my personal opinion. So it's like trying to keep an equilibrium on two legs rather than, so we have a three-legged stool and we are trying to sit and trying to keep, you know, the equilibrium without using one one of the legs. And then of course then we blame the overthinking, the action taken without knowing the background.

Yes, but the, what we don't know is not data. We are over flooded by data. What we don't know is the feeling. And even when we know we don't have a way to express it, most of the time we go into shaming or oppressing or denying judging in a series of things. So that's the the second element I always bring.

So is the listening, then the space to express, then it becomes clearer. And so I asked again as a bridge, as I said before, for people to walk that bridge and go in the direction they really want to go or an organization in direction, they really, they really want to go. But people will say in a more informed way, I would say in a more aligned way because it's about aligning. How do we align if we are blindsided by something? So this is what happens and it can happen in different contexts, in different modalities, but this is more or less what happens in, you know, in a generic way.

Stephen Matini: What is it about feelings and emotions that when we finally let them be or at least listening to them, somehow everything becomes clear. Why does it work that way?

Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know why, but I have a feeling there is this thing, and I mentioned this word, there is truth coming in. Once we realize and we are free to express it or we even find a way to express, and when I say express, I don't say necessarily using words, but most of the time because it's not linear, it's not logic, it doesn't involve the logic side of the brain very often is an image, a sensation, a sound and something.

So we find a way to use art and is not really used in the terms of exploiting. But really to tap into art, to be able to see, okay, what's the that, what's the fabric? What's the extension of whatever I'm feeling or whatever we are feeling, what's our, what are the boundaries? So once we have clarity what we are feeling, we find the courage, we really find the courage to look in the eyes.

So we know for example, why tension is Avis. We cannot deny it anymore. And once we know it's very easy to, or maybe not easy, but simpler to talk about it, I've seen over and over again that's even in the worst conflict I had to deal with that when people had found the safety of expressing whatever they were feeling without any judgment and without anyone saying, no, you shouldn't feel that way or you should feel this way or that way is an expression.

And when it is an artistic expression, no one can say, no , you can't feel well I feel this way. It's this color, it's this fabric is this shape. No one can say no, it's whatever I'm feeling. Then there is also more space to understand how others are feeling. And that puts us into a dialogue.

This is my experience over time. That this possibility to look truth in the eyes and know the truth of why we are in a certain situation or why we are thinking in a certain way or why we are acting in a certain way opens us up to a dialogue. And when we can enter into that space of dialogue, things look very different.

Stephen Matini: So feeling is speaking the truth and art is what allows me to speak the truth.

Fateme Banishoeib: In a way, yes. But it's more than that. It's not just the ability to express whatever is going on, but it's also an opportunity to make sense of why that is also an opportunity to create with that raw material. 'cause When we can create then we are indeed in a creative mode rather than in a complaining mode.

We are already creating without being told or be creative now with that raw material. So it's more than just speaking the truth is creating with it is making meaning, making sense and then transform it.

Stephen Matini: So as of today, when you think of the word creativity, when you think of the word art artistry, what is your definition of that?

Fateme Banishoeib: So to me, creativity and artistry are two different things. Creativity is really the act of creating words, whatever I have. So I create with what I have, I create with the emotions I create with the glass I create and is innate to all of us. We all have, it is actually being said. And biology say that that is distinctive characteristic of us as a species is creativity.

So it's not something that we can associate only to creative professionals or artists. Art to me is the opposite. So creativity is from the inside out with the input or what is I create something I could, art is a little bit different to me is more of if you want also spiritual journey is entering into dialogue with that. And too often we associate art to a specific artwork. So to a specific outcome, I think differently. It's regardless, and this is actually what I'm devoted to, that's why I do the job that I do, is trying to evoke the artist within everyone. It doesn't depend if you write poems, if you paint or at all, it's a way of being and caring of being in that way is a sensitivity, is a capacity to look at the world and enter, participate in the dialogue with the world, with others. So as such is a very inclusive place.

Stephen Matini: As you work with organizations using your approach, what have you observed over the years? Me personally, I think that everyone perceives that we are going through some sort of change of paradigm that we, we used to do business that is totally focused on performance, you know, in terms of numbers, results that doesn't no longer fit the purpose.

And also we have new generations that that really, really sensitive to specific themes as, you know, work-life balance and diversity and such and such, which were introduced by previous generations, but somehow for them is super important. So yeah. The question to you is what have you observed over the years working with organizations?

Fateme Banishoeib: First of all, and I can speak also for myself or what I've seen in myself, and this is similar, so it's not different. I think that what gets laid up, what gets awake is similar because at the end of the day we are all similar and organization is also composed by people. So we shouldn't ever forget that. So what happens is that our empathy gets expanded for different reasons when we pay attention, because to practice art, we need to pay attention.

And as we pay attention, we start caring and care is the first thing that actually gets So through empathy, we expand caring, and when we care, things change. I think it was Peter Senge who said that the last space for innovation is care or the ultimate space of innovation is care. And I wrote, I think he said this in the forties or something like that.

And it was absolutely right. When we care, everything that we do comes from a different place. So when we think about the reason for innovation, do we know, do we want to innovate for what, what reason? Because we care about whatever a, a problem, a solution or someone and a met needs or something.

So care I think is the shift that enables other things to happen. And as a result people measure KPIs. I personally don't, but people who measure KPIs see when we care the metrics, you know, companies are really focused on engagement. Engagement also rises when we care, details don't become a burden. And when we care also we become more courageous.

And courage allows us to practice other, you know, skills and virtues because we do have the courage to practice integrity or any of the other values that accompanies. So I think that the really the key element what shifts is care.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the opposite of care

Fateme Banishoeib: Entitlement?

Stephen Matini: I love that. Do you feel optimistic overall considered, you know, in this crazy world that is filled with this so much apparent negativity, everything you share with me, it feels really hopeful. So you optimistic?

Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know what to answer in the sense that of course I have hopes for the world to become a better place for really organizations and workplaces to really care about the wellbeing of the people they work for them also their customer. I really do. And at the same time I also know that the current system is actually serving its purpose, its job. The system as it has been designed is doing its job.

So I, there are a lot of people thinking and talking about a para game shift. I also believe that is about time and I see at least counting the number of interactions that I have and the type of talks and chats I have with other people. So I know that there is really so many of us wanting this shift and this paradigm at the same time. And that's why I can't say I'm optimistic or not optimistic.

I know that whatever old is there, whatever old system or process there won't go that easily because it's designed this way. And we would also do the same if we were set to go. We wouldn't just say, okay, thank you, goodbye. We would resist that.

So I think that before we really see a complete shift, I think tension will arise and which is normal is physiological and it is up to us not to fall backwards when that happens, but creating these spaces for dialogue and participation so that we can together come out of that whatever tension and whatever conflict is in a constructive way and not in a destructive way

Stephen Matini: This evening when I go to sleep and also move forward with my life. Out of all the insights you shared with me, is there any concept that I should pay attention to? In particular?

Fateme Banishoeib: There is something I always repeat to myself. So I don't know if you would consider in in pondering onto that, that, and I share this with you earlier, that the quality of what we do depends on the quality of who we are and the quality of our being. So maybe it's about time we all focus more on the being than on the doing. I probably doing is what got us into this situation. So maybe it's about time to shift our focus on on to the being.

Stephen Matini: One thing that I tell myself, I don't know if it's connected to this, probably it is like anybody else, I have a busy life and it goes way too fast. And I try to remind myself why I do what I do, you know, about everything because everything can become so transactional can become so doing it. Just another thing to reach. And when you do that, you know, have the time to appreciate anything.

So I really try to, even if it's super fast, is to stay in the moment as much as I can and to enjoy it as much as I can. And it's something that often becomes normal because I've done it for a while, but very often, particularly when I'm tired and stressed out, I have to make the conscious effort of remembering this is , you know, that's all is and so enjoy it because that's the the whole point. So I try.

Fateme Banishoeib: I think that, and of course this is easy for us to say in this moment when we are upset or triggered is less so if we remember that everyone is facing a struggle or a challenge and that maybe we have been at that point in time and how it was the only thing maybe we wanted in that moment was someone listening to us. Maybe things change, but I'm the first one to snap when I'm super upset at something or when I get triggered. So don't take me as an angel. I'm actually quite the opposite . But this capacity of remembering that everyone is facing a struggle, I don't know anyone who is not facing this

Stephen Matini: Well. I just wanna say thank you to the crazy scientist, A thank you to the poet for giving me a moment of relief today. Thank you so much for sharing these amazing insights.

View Details

Prof. Carolyn Goerner is a leadership and development expert and negotiation guru at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.

Prof. Goerner suggests approaching conversations with a sense of curiosity. By being genuinely interested in people’s needs and perspectives rather than solely focusing on our agenda, we can create a more collaborative and less adversarial environment.

Prof. Goerner emphasizes that authentic leadership requires ongoing learning and empathy, especially in understanding others' perspectives and needs. This empathy extends into negotiations, where it's crucial to balance our needs with those of others to maintain long-term, positive relationships.

In a fast-paced world often dominated by transactions, Prof. Goerner advocates for authenticity. Simple gestures like offering sincere compliments or asking thoughtful questions can transform interactions from empty exchanges into meaningful connections.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So Miss Caroline, welcome to Pity Party Over!

Carolyn Goerner: That’s delightful to be here, Stephen. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: It’s my joy. I've been waiting for months for this moment. I'm very, very happy. So listen, the first question that I have is the following and it comes straight from your LinkedIn profile. The first thing that I read is, “Leaders are learners.” So, which is pretty fabulous. It's very short to the point, but I would like to know why you chose that.

Carolyn Goerner: Well, honestly, there's a couple of reasons. The first is that leadership, I don't think, is something that you wake up and you say, I've mastered it. It instead is something that we try to get a little bit better at every day.

And so for me, the idea that I don't need any more leadership insight, I don't need any more leadership training, that's just silly. We all do. Nobody ever reaches the point where they're done, right?

And then second, I think there's also this point about, if I'm really going to be a good leader, I've got to figure out my context and I've got to figure out my followers.

And so I've also got a learning curve around developing empathy for people, making sure that I'm really seeing things from multiple perspectives. And that's a really big piece of it too. So I think people absolutely need to continue to learn about leadership, but then they also need to learn about the people in the context.

Stephen Matini: And how did you get into the whole world of negotiation, power, personal influence?

Carolyn Goerner: It's interesting. John Lennon said life is what happens when you're making other plans. And that sort of is how my career trajectory went. I actually did my undergraduate degrees in philosophy and religion and went through college on a debate scholarship.

So was just not really thinking about professionally what I might do. And I kind of stumbled my way into consulting. And then when I burned out on that, decided I was going to go to graduate school. And my parents are professors of communication. So I went to get my master's degree in rhetoric and communication.

So all of that persuasion, influential language really was something I was interested in. But what I very quickly realized is that I am so glad there are people who do that study, but I didn't, it wasn't me.

So I did my PhD in Management and Human Resources, and this is really the intersection of all of that coming together. It's my fascination with how we use language and how language affects people, also coupled with really interesting studies in organizational dynamics and organizational politics and how all that plays together.

Stephen Matini: Was it an advantage or disadvantage to have two parents who focused on communication growing up?

Carolyn Goerner: I think it was definitely an advantage, but I'm blessed to still have my parents living. And my goodness, they are two of my very favorite people. I think it was not the kind of thing where we always sat and scrutinized everybody, but instead there was a lot of very healthy, okay, you need to tell me about that. So I suppose it was a little bit like having parents who are psychologists being very conscious of having good, healthy conversations.

Stephen Matini: Because your parents have been such an ... they are an important figure in your life. If they were here with us and I said to them, hey, what is the secret of communication? What would they say in your opinion?

Carolyn Goerner: Empathy. That's what they have taught me. And that's absolutely what I've seen them do with other folks. It's not about me and it's not about whether or not I'm right. It's about whether or not I'm connecting with the other person.

And so true communication really comes down to figuring out what the other party is all about and how I can then be a part of the conversation with them in ways that they can understand.

One of my favorite local leaders was a gentleman who was representative in Congress for my state for a long time. And he made a comment when he was talking to one of my classes that leaders are supposed to make everyone else in the room comfortable. And I thought, well, do you have to agree with them? That seems a little pandering and silly.

And he said, no, my job is not to agree, but I need to make a space where it's comfortable for them to express what they're thinking, and it's comfortable for us to disagree without someone getting defensive.

And that just really stayed with me. And it's very consistent with my parents' advice as well, that in order to make good communication happen, you kind of need to get out of your own way.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever worked with a client, could be, you know, one-on-one with a team that somehow you noticed they really did not have that at all. They seem not to have that ability, that social awareness.

Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Where I see it a lot is when folks are coming from a technical background and they are making a proposal and they have worked so hard on the data. They have run their numbers 74 times. They have absolutely convinced themselves that this is the way to go.

And so they get in front of the decision maker and all they do is discuss all of the reasons why they, the presenter, are convinced. They haven't taken into account anything that the other person might need to hear or how they might need to make the decision. Instead, they're just all in on convincing people that they're right. And that's the thing I see the most often. And I grind when you ask the question because it's actually very typical.

I'm lucky enough to work with people who are really smart and really know what they're doing. And the issue is not that they can't justify or find data to justify what they're asking for. It's just the way in which they go about asking that gets them into trouble.

Stephen Matini: The thing is a lot of people, particularly around the whole notion of conflict, confrontation, negotiation, they really have a lot of issues, you know, including myself. Like I've learned it to be comfortable, but I used to feel, oh my God, awful about it. Particularly when I was younger, like I would get this block in my throat. I couldn't even speak. So a lot of people, People have all kinds of things like, you know, fear rejections. Also, there are, you know, cultural factors, social factors that come into place. What would you say that is the first thing, the first step to make peace with this so that negotiation is not so scary? What would you do?

Carolyn Goerner: My first piece of advice is get curious. Start figuring out what it is that the other person is asking, where they might be coming from.

There's this interesting thing that psychologists call the spotlight effect. And basically what it means is that if I'm feeling uncomfortable, I feel like there's a spotlight shining on me. And it's almost paralyzing, right? I can't move. I'm just hyper-focused on myself. And I feel like everybody else is hyper-focused on me too. And it's really paralyzing. And it's funny that you say the neck thing. My neck actually gets red when that happens.

So I totally feel where you're coming from because you'll see the color just kind of start to move up into my face.

And so the way around that is to do something that two folks who study negotiations, Yuri and Fisher, who wrote the book, Getting to Yes they call it going to the balcony. And it's the idea that I am somehow going to step back emotionally from the conversation and watch it and watch it unfold and see what I can learn from everything that's going on.

And so it's trying to develop a genuine curiosity about where the other person is coming from. And the interesting thing about that is that the minute that I turn my attention on someone else, that spotlight effect starts to minimize.

So I always tell people, like for example, if you hate networking, go find someone who looks more uncomfortable than you are and be with them. Because the idea that you're focusing on someone else besides yourself can really help lessen that tension.

Stephen Matini: Is this the basis of what you say is empathetic negotiation?

Carolyn Goerner: Absolutely, yes. The whole notion of empathetic negotiation is I need to come in and not just be focused on what I want, but I also need to make sure that the deal allows the other person to walk away feeling good. And that may sound counterintuitive, but you know the times where we're just worried about price and we're never going to see each other again, that happens.

You know haggling on the street, it happens when you're maybe buying a car or a moped or something. But it's not necessarily the way that most of our negotiations happen. Usually we'll make a deal and then we have to implement it together.

And so the key is, can I understand what this deal means to you as well as to me so that when we're doing the implementation, there's no surprises. And you're not suddenly having buyers or sellers remorse and trying to sabotage the deal or we haven't thought of something.

There's still a bridge for us to get back together and figure it out. And so the point of the empathic negotiation piece is that we're really not talking about a negotiation or a conflict resolution as a one-time thing. We're talking about it in the context of a larger relationship. And the focus is really on maintaining the larger and longer relationship.

Stephen Matini: What do you do when you get the sense that the other part, your counterpart, doesn't care?

Carolyn Goerner: That's the perfect question because that's the downside. And there are a couple of things that you hopefully will have the opportunity to do. The first is just to kind of, for lack of a better phrase, call it out. So you seem really focused on the outcome here and you know not to really care what that means to me. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Why is this so important to you?

And sometimes just the direct question will be enough for people to say, oh, it's often the case that someone can be perceived as really being aggressive and really coming in to fight for something. And the reality is they're just scared. You know, they're just reacting defensively or they're coming across in a way that is not what they intend. So that question can call that out if it happens.

It can also be the case that especially if you've put yourself in a situation where you're asking questions, you're really trying, and the other person isn't reciprocating, you can very honestly say, you know, I'm trying to do something here that's going to work for both of us.

And if that's not something that you're interested in, maybe we shouldn't be talking. And it's not the threat to walk away, but it's legitimately, man, no. You know I just don't want to do business with this person. And so that's where having alternatives become so important. Making sure that when I go into a conversation, I've thought about what I'll do if this doesn't work out.

So if I go into this conversation with this person, what happens if it doesn't work? And knowing what that alternative is for me is a real source of power because it tells me, all right, if I can't get something better than my walkaway alternative, well, I don't have to be here, right?

The other question, and this one's harder. This is especially hard for entrepreneurs or people who are just kind of starting out their business, is asking yourself, is this going to be a client that I want to keep long term? And of course, generally the first answer is, well, yes, I need the money.

But when we really start to think about it, is this the kind of person that you want to be making money with? And so it's kind of the opportunity cost question. What am I giving up by working with this person? Maybe the perfect client is still out there and I can wait for them. Now, again, that's the best possible world. And the real world is more pragmatic than that. I need to keep the lights on and pay the bills.

But the idea is to really look at the other person in a longer-term perspective. And so, you know it's much like they say when you're dating, for example, can I see myself trapped in an airport with this person? You know. That's going to happen, trust me. And so it's that kind of thought, right? How am I going to feel a year from now when the phone rings and I look down and that's who's on my screen? How am I going to feel?

And so that, you know again, that's a tough question. And so oftentimes people will say, if I've paced with someone who's really being aggressive, I am actually going to respond in a way in kind. I'm not going to offer them as much. If we do make a deal, I'm going to make sure it's pretty limited and it has parameters around it. Or maybe I make a deal, but it's only for a period of time and we give ourselves time to get to know each other and then we renegotiate. So there's other strategies, but fundamentally it comes down to if I view this as a relationship, is this somebody that I really want to be with?

Stephen Matini: Based on what you said, I'm thinking out loud. Could it be that when people feel whether it's real or not, that they don't have an alternative, that's also when the negotiation gets really, really difficult?

Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Oh, yes, right on the money. Because if I've got nothing but what's going on with this conversation right here, oh, exactly what you said.

Then I feel like I've either got to do one or two things. I got to fight really, really hard, or I just have to give in and give you whatever you need. But if you're my only alternative, I have not got good options.

Stephen Matini: So do you believe that people always have an option, an alternative option?

Carolyn Goerner: No, I wish they did. There are some things where we don't, and that's when we just have to really get into a mindset that says, I want you to win, but I want me to win too, and we're going to have to get collaborative and creative, which is really hard to do.

It's scary to assert your interests and say, "No, I need this too," when you don't have an alternative. On the other hand, in the long term, if all I do is keep giving in and giving in and giving in, that's just a recipe for feeling bitter. That's a recipe for long-term, ooh, I hate this, right? And so, yeah...

I think that looking for options is always a good idea, but it's not the case that we have them. Is that kind of where you were coming from with that question that maybe we don't?

Stephen Matini: Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, as you were talking, millions of things flying in my head. And like one of the things that I hear very often when I do this kind of work with clients, because yeah, very often the notion of boundaries come up in all the time because it's a conflict, because a negotiation, whatever there might be. And one thing they say is, oh, you know, for you, it's easier because you're an independent professional, you have options to which I say, I understand where you're coming from. And it's true.

You know, I've worked really hard to have a, a diversified portfolio, but keep in mind that I have no security whatsoever, as you are saying, but the answer that I often provide to them is this one. If I really feel that I'm stuck with the client, that I have no option for me, that is no longer a negotiation, but it falls under me having the right expectation.

Meaning for a certain time being, you know, I have to stay here. It's pointless to fight it. It's pointless to get all worked up about it because I lose energy. So I'm going to stay here as, as aware as possible. In the meantime, I'm going to seek options that somehow I'm representative. And it does the trick for me because it saves a lot of energy.

Carolyn Goerner: Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. So you're right. Not only does it save you from just kind of complaining about it in your mind all the time or to other people, right? But it also just puts it in perspective. A hundred percent. That makes all the sense. I love that. I will be stealing that, but I'll tell people it came from you.

Stephen Matini: Yeah, because people complain, complain. Listen, are you going to stay here in this workplace with this boss and that? Well, then what is the point? You know, and then sometimes they vent to me. You can vent at me as much as you want. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. So I think a better question is how can you stay here as long as you have to stay here in the best possible way? And then maybe to have some sort of you know, awareness, calling, whatever, so that you can find the right situation for you. But I understand it's very difficult.

You know, I'm thinking of four different types of scenarios, which is like super, super hard, which is when I have to deal with my boss, a difficult negotiation with my boss, or it could be with my teammates, or it could be with the client or a loved one. So these four, you know, so boss teammates, client and loved one. In your experience, which one is the hardest?

Carolyn Goerner: Oh, a loved one, of course. Because you, you, I don't have an option, right? In my mind, there is no option to the person that is my, my, my husband, my partner. And I'm lucky because he's amazing. But there is no option for him, right? So, yeah, so obviously that's when you have to just get really creative because that's just not the way it works for me. You know, and so I get it.

I think people will often tell you that the negotiation with the boss would be next. And that's where I really would push folks to say, you got to do your homework first, right?

And so what is the value that you bring to the relationship with your boss? In other words, how do you make her look good? How do you help him achieve his goals? How do you make them, at the end of the day, look better?

And at that point, you know, it's kind of sitting back and reflecting on why your work is important to them. And so if I recognize, well, part of the reason that my work is, you know, that I'm important to my boss is that they use me as a sounding board to come bounce ideas off of, right? Pretty common.

Well, I need to know that if I'm going to go in and ask for more time working remote, and I need to have thought about, look, this is how they need and view me. And so I need to go in with a solution that says, I will stay on a teams channel with you, or I will do whatever it takes. But my job, first of all, is to understand why I might get pushed back and what it is about what my boss wants that could make that tough.

And so that's the homework that we've really got to do before then. With teammates, it tends to kind of be a lot of reciprocity. I'll do this for you, you do this for me, just kind of working back and forth. But the same with teammates and with clients, the one power that people often underestimate the most that they have is likability. And so, I mean, think about for a second. Think about the last three times you did a favor for someone. So somebody asked you to do a favor and you did a favor for them.

Stephen Matini: Yeah.

Carolyn Goerner: I'm going to bet that two of those three were just because you liked the person.

Stephen Matini: Yes.

Carolyn Goerner: And that's not uncommon. I mean, yeah, we do things for people we like. And so the key to those is making sure that I'm not only talking to you when I need something, but that we've really worked on a relationship and we've worked to find things in common and that I've shown a real interest in you and I really do want to know what you do and what you're about.

And if that is the context with teammates and with clients and with your boss too, I think to an extent, then we've got a very different kind of conversation. In context, we get each other.

And so I realize how busy we all are. And believe me, I have to remind myself of this all the time, but that five minutes that I spend after a team's meeting or in the hallway or in a coffee shop, just actually having a conversation with how's your kids? How's your dogs? What'd you think of the last sporting event? That stuff matters. That stuff really matters because that makes it easier for us to then have a tougher conversation.

Stephen Matini: I agree. In my head, I am aware of the principle of reciprocity. I'm aware of the impact of what I do for people. I think for me, mostly I do because I know that there have been key people in my life. And it is because of their generosity that I've been able to have the opportunities that I have.

And I know how difficult it is. And I really, I owe them everything. So I try to do the same. The biggest recent experience has been really the podcast. And I've been so grateful to everyone who has given me help and decided to do this. It's just amazing. And all it does, it gives a sense of yeah, gratitude and you want to work harder. You want to work better. You want somehow to reciprocate. So I agree with you. It's a wonderful cycle. Absolutely, 100%.

Carolyn Goerner: It's almost that paying it forward type of feeling. But all of the research that talks about the importance of gratitude and what a difference it makes in the way we view the world. Oh, exactly what you just said. That's, that's a big piece of it as well.

Stephen Matini: Everything these days, though, seems to have become so transactional, to a point that we oftentimes because we're busy or whatever that is, people forget about, hey, I'm a human being, you’re a human being. At the end of all, none of this will matter other than really this moment that we shared together.

What would you say that is the first step towards creating relationships that are more genuine and less transactional in a world that's super busy?

Carolyn Goerner: Let me think about how to phrase this for a second. Do you remember the last time that someone said, "Hey, how are you?" or "How you doing?" And you were just like, "Fine." And it was like the question never got asked, which is very transactional, right? We do that all the time.

So last night, my husband and I were out for dinner, and the server came up and said, "So hi, how you doing?" And was not expecting an answer. And when I just made eye contact and said, "We're good tonight. How are you?" She was almost startled.

I think it's just taking being the person who reminds everybody, no, you know, this doesn't have to be transactional. This doesn't have to be that, right? It can be something where we have a little more of a connection than just saying, you know, asking questions that we don't really need the answer to. And she stopped and went, I'm good. You know, it was just kind of funny.

I have a colleague who, whenever you see him, it'll never be just, "Hi, how are you?" But he asks a question like, "Caroline, what are you working on that you're really interested in?" Or, "What's the coolest thing that happened to you today?" And it's always a genuine interest asking that question. Now, does it take an extra 30 seconds to have the conversation? Absolutely, but it's worth that 30 seconds to get the feeling of the connection.

The other thing that I make it a real practice to do is to give compliments to other people, particularly to other women, even when I don't know them. And so if we're just, you know, I see someone coming in for dinner at a table near me, and as I walk by the table, I'll just stop and say, "You look amazing. That dress is perfect." So a random compliment from a stranger.

And I think the more that we just remind people that we're people and that I see you in a positive way, COVID didn't help this whole perception that we've got to stay safe. We've got to stay in our cocoon. We have to protect ourselves, right? And I think the more we model, let's just be open and let's just be vulnerable to one another, the more people kind of relax and go, Oh, that's right. I remember that. We used to do that, didn't we?

Stephen Matini: In the world of humans!

Carolyn Goerner: Exactly. And so it's just that sense of modeling it. And will it sometimes get misinterpreted or thrown back in 2% of the time? Sure. But for me, the 98% is worth it.

Stephen Matini: Do you think the issue is what you said? Is it around vulnerability and the difficulty that some people have in being vulnerable? Maybe?

Carolyn Goerner: Exactly Oh, of course. Yes. Absolutely. Actually, let me just kind of back up on that a little bit, because this is one of my thought questions. What does vulnerability mean to you? So when you're vulnerable, what does that mean?

Stephen Matini: That I dare to be myself?

Carolyn Goerner: That is such a great explanation. Because first of all, I dare. So I'm going to step outside my comfort zone. And I'm going to basically be transparent, right? I'm going to peel off the layer of the onion and sort of let you see.

And so I'm taking a risk that says, all right. And it's almost like you preface everything in your head with, "They're going to think this is weird, but." And the irony is that we all have that same thought, right?

We all go, "Oh, they're going to think this is weird, but, you know, and off we go." And so, as a colleague of mine says, "Revel in the absurd, just embrace the weird." And it becomes a mindset where again, you just kind of say, "I'm going to try." I'm not going to lie, there are times when it gets smacked back in my face hard.

But most of the time, and a vast majority, like more than 90% of the time, it's met with, "Oh, I can be vulnerable too." And you can actually even see people's shoulders relax. And, you know, it's like, oh, oh, okay, this is cool. And it's nice.

Stephen Matini: In this regard, have you, and not just about this, about the way, let's say you negotiate, you deal with this whole world of confrontation. Have you changed over the years? Have you always been this way?

Carolyn Goerner: Oh, completely changed. Yeah, you've changed. Completely changed over the years. And I'm not sure what, well, it's been an evolution of a lot of different things. First was getting comfortable with, we all have a sense of imposter syndrome and getting comfortable with mine was a big part of that.

It also has just kind of come down to, I've tried enough, I've dared enough, and I know that most of the time it's going to end up well, and I know I'm strong enough to handle the times that don't. And so that's just a little, you know, self-awareness and knowledge and confidence really comes from practice. And so that's what, but a big part of that is. But I think genuinely, maybe it's getting older. Maybe it's the white hair. I don't know.

Stephen Matini: I have one last question for you. What keeps your mind busy these days? Is there any thought, any insight somehow that keeps your mind wandering these days?

Carolyn Goerner: What a great question. And interestingly, it really is around the gender, the gender differences issue. There is a lot of, well, there are books about negotiation called Women Don't Ask.

And so for a long time, we had this belief that women just didn't negotiate and that that was part of what explained the wage gap between men and women. And it was almost as if that was a slam on women, right? They're not asking.

And newer research has said, first of all, anybody who's trained is more likely to negotiate. So that takes the gender difference down a bit. And so as long as someone's received training in negotiation, regardless of gender, they're more likely to ask, which is why I love what I teach.

But, there's a big difference in the perception still. If people hold traditional stereotypes, then women are going to be perceived differently when they ask than are men. And so that's, I think, where my brain is trying to do, to play at that intersection of if the person that I'm talking to is coming to me and seeing me through the lens of really traditional gender stereotypes, how do I work with that and make it so that we can have a conversation without them automatically having a negative reaction because that stereotype violation?

So that's the thing that kind of keeps me thinking in the car, is just trying to figure out how those traditional stereotypes that still exist play with the advice that I want to give people about how to move forward and succeed with any gender.

Stephen Matini: Carolyn, I'm really happy that I got to spend this time with you.

Carolyn: Oh, this was fabulous. Stephen, thank you so much.

View Details

Prof. Emily Balcetis at New York University is an award-winning social psychologist and author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. In the book, she highlights how the perception of our goals conditions our motivation and ultimate success.

Prof. Balcetis views motivation as the difference between where we are and where we want to be, warning that limiting stereotypes or narrow definitions of success impact our motivation and ability to reach goals.

When addressing the challenge of sustaining motivation, Prof. Balcetis suggests balancing short-term and long-term perspectives, allowing for incremental progress while maintaining a vision for the overall objective.

During our conversation, Prof. Balcetis also points out the interplay between perception and leadership and how expanding mental representations of leadership can inspire more people to see themselves as capable leaders.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

Please check Prof. Emily Balcetis book, Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So listen, as I was thinking of you, there's a bunch of words such as, you know, perception and misperception, perceptual illusions, perceptual habits. How did you end up in this world?

Emily Balcetis: Well, there's lots of ways I could answer that. But to be honest, I really like magicians. I love going to magic shows. So there's that. I think I was already probably predisposed. But honestly, it was because when I was in graduate school, I went to study with a fabulous, fantastic, wonderful mentor.

But after the first year, I really wanted to go spend the summer in Europe. And I was a graduate student. I didn't have any money. So I needed to figure out how to afford it. So I was looking for like, well, what academic conferences are happening in Europe? And there weren't any in my field, but there was one that was in vision science. And I was like, well, I better do a quick study on something that has to do with vision so that I can get the data, put together a poster, submit to this conference, and then get my graduate school to offset the cost by $500 of this trip.

And then I did all of that and then told my advisor, oh, by the way, I like did all this stuff, I'm going to go to Europe for two months. And that's not how grad school really works. But he's lovely and said, like, okay, fine, but like maybe we should start working on these projects together. And so that's what sort of became the intersection, honestly, of my interest in social psychology, motivation science, which I had gone to graduate school to study. And how did you end up roping in visual experience? To be honest, it was to afford a trip to Europe when I was really poor.

Stephen Matini: When you work in organizations and you start talking about motivation, it is such a huge broad field. How do you make things simple for them to understand?

Emily Balcetis: To be honest, I really do think that the concept of motivation is quite simple. The definitions that are foundational definitions, they vary, but they do have a commonality, which is that they're quite simple. One definition is just motivation is a discrepancy between where you are and where you want to be.

And that's a driving force, just to close that gap. That's motivation from one perspective. Another perspective that I find myself in my work relying on more often is a multiplicative function. So motivation can be like motivation equals value times expectancy. Value, what is it that you want times? Do you think that it's possible to get it? So there can be stuff that you really, really want, like, oh, I really wish that I was a billionaire.

So like, what's my motivation to become a billionaire? None, right? Because you multiply anything by zero and the answer is zero. So you can have like the things that you care most about. But if you have no feeling of self-efficacy, no means to accomplish it, no belief that you can get there, it doesn't matter how much you want it. Because in some sense, you know that you can't achieve it and some motivation stays low. So the concept of motivation, I don't think is that challenging. What to do about it, how to harness it, how to sustain it, that's where the challenge comes in. But just knowing what it is in the first place, from my perspective, isn't the difficulty.

Stephen Matini: Has your own motivation changed over the years as you got deeper into the subject that you researched, you work with people? Is it different today compared to the way it was?

Emily Balcetis: Yes. I mean, everything about life is different over those, like my life is just so different, right? When I started this work, like I was saying that first summer after graduate school, you know I was 24 years old, whatever I was, like early 20s and now I am much older and married with two kids.

So yeah, everything about motivation has changed. But in what way? I mean, I guess what I value has shifted. And so again, if motivation is value times expectancy, what is it that is the value, that's shifted. And I don't think it's like that unusual of a story, looking for balance, wanting to, you know, find a fuller life than just how you get your salary in the door.

Stephen Matini: Do you find it more easily to stay motivated now than it used to be?

Emily Balcetis: I feel lucky in that I've always been fortunate to be able to do the stuff that I really love. When I was an undergraduate, I went to study music. I have a degree in music performance, and I was fortunate to get to be able to go and be a musician to really develop that. At the same time, I was studying research in psychology. And so then when life events happened and pushed music sort of out the door for me as a career path, I still play.

In fact, just this morning, I was at my two-year-old daughter's preschool playing baby shark and row, row, row your boat and wheels on the bus on my flute for them all. That was a highlight of my morning so far before this. And yeah, but so I got to do music and I love music. And then when I couldn't really become a professional musician, then I was loving psychology and the psychology research. And then I just get to keep doing that here. So I get it how privileged I am to say that I've always gotten to do what I love.

Now it's not to say that like, oh, every day is wonderful. And like, no, it has its challenges too, but at the heart of it, the motivation for me isn't the problem because I've always been in a place where I have the resources and freedom to do the stuff that I love. And I really love writing. That's a big part of my job. And I really love writing. So a lot of people say that they struggle with, how do you go from a blank page to writing a book or to writing a scientific article? It can just be overwhelming to see that blank page. But I've never experienced that.

A lot of the students that I work with do. So I've been able to figure out how do you help people? How do you advise people through that? But the motivation has stayed high. Again, the challenge for me, and I think the challenge for a lot of people is what do you do with that motivation? How do you keep it high? How do you balance the fact that you have multiple goals that you might be highly motivated towards, but resources like time are limited? How do you manage that? How do you sustain the motivation when there isn't an outlet for it? 'Cause you just can't get to the things that you really are motivated to do.So that's where I feel like I personally reflect and struggle the most.

Stephen Matini If I ask the same question to myself, and I don't know if this is part of motivation probably, but I noticed that when I was younger, I've always had entrepreneurial ideas. There was this humongous gap between what I wanted and sometimes I really felt super, super far. Sometimes I would get excited. And then today's, I guess the approach has changed because I focus for the most part of today.

Today with you. We record the episode and I try to do my best. And I know that probably in six months, in a year time, you know, if I continue doing this, it's going to be better. And I just simply focus on today. And somehow I find that motivating. It kind of calms me down and let me keep going. What I'm saying is something has to do with motivation based on your studies. What is it?

Emily Balcetis: Well, there's a lot to unpack with what you were saying. So that phrase of like, just focus on today, just get through today, that comes up so often. People are starting out in the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

That's like one of the slogans and the guiding values and principles and philosophies that can help them too, because it just feels so overwhelming to thinking about having to stick with the change for the rest of your life. And if you let your mind go there, then this goal feels impossible. So sometimes people use that phrase of like, I'm just going to focus on today because the alternative just makes it feel so overwhelming that it puts it into a definitional category of what is the goal that is in the perceived impossible.

And that's when you just see efficacy, perceived efficacy, the belief that I can do this just drop. And so again, then you're multiplying against zero and motivation goes away. Other people say that, like focusing on today because they want to live in the moment and they find value and focusing on a singularity rather than trying to multitask. And there's value in that too. That is a valuable strategy. It's a mindfulness technique. And if people go through the effort of thinking about what are the benefits of multitasking, multitasking is not always bad.

We can talk about that if that's of interest. Multitasking is not always good either. It's about knowing what multitasking can do and being intentional about when you use it. And so if people focus on today and what's happening today is a strategy to manage the negative consequences of multitasking, then it can be really effective. But there can be some cost to this focusing on today as well. And some of those costs can be that it can be challenging to make sacrifices today that need to happen in order to achieve a long-term goal.

So if you think about in the realm of health, for example, what are you eating and how much are you exercising? If we think about today, I want to focus on today. I want to have today be a really good day. You might choose different foods to eat than if you're thinking about, okay, in six months' time, this is where I want to be with my health. That could require making harder choices, making sacrifices today for the long-term payoff. So that can be a downside is that people may have a more challenging time connecting today's choices with the future's outcomes, which might need to happen to change behaviors.

The other thing, the last thing I'll say about this is that with my research team, we did study. What is the effectiveness? What's the impact of focusing on today versus taking what we were calling sort of a wider bracket, thinking about time in a wider bracket? So what we did was have people think about what's something that's really important, a goal that you care about. You're not going to accomplish it today. You're not going to accomplish it this week. Probably not even this month. It's a longer-term goal. What is that? For one week, they woke up.

Each day, they thought about, what can I do today? They took that narrow focus on the day. What can I do today to make progress on that goal? They thought about the concrete actions that would help them make progress. At the end of the day, they reported how much time did they spend working on something for that goal? They did that every day for seven days. We counted up how much time did they spend. A different week, they took that wider bracket. They woke up on Sunday. They thought about the goal that really mattered to them. On Sunday, they made a list of bunches of things that they could accomplish.

What are concrete tasks that would help advance the goal and bunches of them? And then thought about the next week and thought about, well, which one of these concrete actions can I put in on Monday? Schedule that another on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and Friday. So they scheduled out by six days. Still at the end of every day, they reported how much time did you spend working on this goal? And what we found is that doing that was helpful. Regardless of whether they took that day by day or the wider bracket, the week-by-week approach, they spent time working on their goal.

But when they took a wider look at their calendar and planned out their week in advance, they spent two and a half more hours in the week working on goal relevant tasks than when they thought day by day and planned day by day. Strategy was effective for increasing the amount of time anybody spent on goal relevant activities for 66% of people. Two out of every three people found this to be a beneficial strategy for improving on how they spent their time.

So lots to say about like, should you focus on the day? Should you take a wider frame? It's a strategy. It's a tool. And just like a hammer's great, but a hammer won't always work. You need to know what is the job here? What's the challenge? And is the hammer the right tool? So thinking about that, like, should I be narrowly focused on the day? Should I take a more expansive look at time? Just remember, both of those are tools. And if the tool isn't working for you right now, then try a different tool.

Stephen Matini: Oh, wow. That's really interesting. You know, narrow and wide. Yeah, I do feel that way about a lot of stuff. Probably the latest project that require a lot of motivation is this very podcast. You know, in April will be two years that I've been doing in my podcast. And I never really worried about what is gonna happen with the podcast. Is it gonna work? People are gonna love it. I truly, genuinely loved every single interview working with colleagues, being out with you. But then, you know, it's a lot of work, particularly for a podcast when you have to publish every single week.

And so as of late, maybe because I'm sick, I started thinking, dude, what are you doing? I mean, are you going somewhere with this? You know, is this worth it? Because it so far has been enjoyable. But once again, it's not something you can do five minutes a day. So with that said, should I go wider? Should, should I go narrower?

Emily Balcetis: I think this is a time for introspection and thinking about what your goal really is. Probably when you started, it was just, can I do this thing? And can I connect with people? And you answer that, yes, you can do this thing.

Yes, you are connecting with people. So that goal has been met. And so now it's time just to think about, well, what's the goal now? What is the goal? And it's about resetting. So, you know, I talk about being our own mental accountant and your accountant doesn't go in with you and look at your books and just say, oh, let's just keep rolling. Hey, look, things are moving up. Things are moving down. Here you go. Here's a description of your finances. They take stockable. What is it that you're working towards? And are you on track to what you're working towards?

And at least the ones I work with, they want you to check in at least once a year to talk about what those goals are. And are you on track for meeting those goals? So we do that with accountants. Why not we do that for ourselves and our own personal goals as well? At least once a year, take stock of what are the goals that I'm working towards and what's my progress like? And so maybe that's where you're at right now with this podcast is what's the next goal as it relates to this work?

Stephen Matini: When you feel the way that I do, if you ever feel the way that I do, so that you need to take the time for yourself to understand, is there anything specific that you do to regroup?

Emily Balcetis: I mean, I literally just went through this myself. As I was working with the coach that I work with, and we were just thinking about how are you spending your time? And is this how you want to spend your time? Everybody needs more time.

So let's take inventory of how you spend it. And so there was something that I, you know, similar to you, I've been working on a project for years and it's just, you know, the return on investment right now just feels like, I don't know. It's not there for me. Do I feel like, oh, I failed at that? Well, I'm personally struggling. Does it mean that I failed on meeting it if the return on investment hasn't continued to be high? No, I don't think so. I think I have done what's possible with this project.

And now it's time to think about, well, why was I doing that project? So I'm not like, how can I keep iterating on this? But why was I doing it in the first place? When you ask why, why, why, why? You help yourself figure out what your value systems are. Why was I doing this thing? Why was I doing this for the years that I was doing it? Why doesn't it feel gratifying anymore? Why, why, why? And then you get up to, because this is the kind of work I want to be doing and this is no longer the vehicle for it.

Okay, great. So no, I haven't failed at my goal. It's that I extinguished that trail, ran its course. And now I need to find another trail. And that was really beneficial for me because it made the idea of quitting something, which I plan to do in the near future easier. 'Cause it's not like quitting my goal. It's about finding a different trail to get me further along towards where I really want to be.

Stephen Matini: You know, one thing that I was curious is your work is so focused around perception. And I love this is wonderful. And another focus of your interest is leadership and specifically leadership styles. So I was wondering, how does perception and leadership styles combine, if you don't mind sharing with me some thoughts?

Emily Balcetis: Oh, of course. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think they are quite intertwined because leaders have to want it. They have to want to be leaders. But how do they get there? How do they want to be leaders? Well, how do people want to be leaders? How do they come to thinking like, I can do this? Again, thinking that they can, thinking we can do something isn't an integral part of what motivation is.

If you don't think you can, motivation is zero. So what leads some people to think I can do this and I value it. I want to do this? Lots of reasons. But one of them that we've discovered, especially as we work with adults, but also with children, is when I just pose the question, think about what a leader looks like. What's the image that comes to your mind? If you were to see a profile, what's the image that comes to your mind? And you don't have to answer, actually, but like listeners can do that for themselves.

What we find often is that it's somebody who's older, it's somebody who's male, and it's somebody who's white. And so that represents a lot of the population, but it doesn't represent all of the population. And what we find is that that is the majority view in people's minds, even people that don't identify with being older, with being white or with being male. And that mental image of like, well, what does a leader look like if it's discrepant from their own view of themselves because it is, because the demographics are different?

Or when we start thinking about what are the values? What does it take to be a leader? What are the qualities of a leader? We think agentic, loud, controlling, assertive. And those are traits that also don't align with a lot of people's own self-definitions of what they think their strengths are, or even maybe what they want to be. So when they think about the visuals of what a leader looks like, or they think about the personal qualities of what a leader looks like, if there's not a lot of alignment, then that reduces motivation.

This doesn't seem like a place for me. It doesn't seem like something that I could succeed in and or and/or a place that I want to succeed in. But we know both of those things aren't true, that there are lots of effective leaders who are older white men, but there are effective leaders who don't fit any of those demographic profiles. There are leaders who are agentic, assertive, who are domineering in that they can come in and control a room. But there are leaders that are quite effective that don't do that. Leadership can look in many different ways.

It's just that we have this stereotype. We have pretty constrained mental representation about what a leader looks like and how a leader acts that could suppress people's motivation to try to join that space and do well in that space. So with the work we do, we try to expand that mental representation so that the image that comes to people's mind is more inclusive. It's broader. The set of visuals, the set of traits and qualities is more expansive. So there's room for more people of different varieties of people to see themselves in that space.

Stephen Matini: The mental representation that people have of a leader, whatever leader you have in mind, does that depend on the figures, the important figures that you've met in your life?

Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. So the role models that we see or the way that we see the space filled out is not representative of all populations. What we see on TV also, you know, people who are portraying or who we see on social media who are portraying leadership, even if they aren't actually holding power. That's also not representative of the population. And so that can contribute to that narrow mental representation, that narrow definition of what constitutes a leader.

But you can sever that. You can break that connection through role models and through who is it that you see, even if it's just one or two people that you connect strongly with, that's enough, that anecdotal experience of seeing a different type of leader is enough to help expand that mental representation as well, which is why role models are so important. The work that we've done in schools in particular shows us that the diversity of the teacher demographics within a school really matters for shaping kids' beliefs about kids' mental representations.

Literally when we give kids a box of crayons and a piece of paper and we say like draw what a leader looks like to you, we see those drawings are extremely different among black teenagers specifically when they're in schools where there is a lot of white teachers and it's really different when they're in schools where there's far more non-white teachers. So when they see variety and the leadership within their own school, the drawings that they make with those boxes of crayons show a more diverse understanding or more diverse belief about who can and should be a leader.

Stephen Matini: You have worked with a lot of different people. You work with athletes. You work with artists. If I may ask, is there anyone that somehow, for whatever the reason has a special place in your heart?

Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. Kids, I mean, yeah, it's probably you're just catching me at this point in my life where it's the kids that I get to work with. And I have a seven-year-old and a two-year-old. So they're just magical creatures, my children, but children in general. You just get to see their brain growing and moving and shaping in real time.

It only takes one emotional experience to have an impact on their brain for the rest of their life. I don't know, maybe that's selfish, but just like all the power that you have, right? If you can just, if you can find a way to give them these experiences, it can really be transformative. But yeah, I've learned incredible things from some of the amazing people that I've gotten to work with. I got to work with the developer of one of the apps on the Apple Store that's been like the number one app for a long time.

It's hit number one, you know, like every day it changes what's number one, but it's had its place, the top, the most downloaded app on the Apple Store. It's called “One Second Every Day.” And this is an incredible app. What it is, you know, it's an app that encourages you, if you want to use it this way, to take a video of something every day. And it's a one-second video. And then this is what I'm doing this year. I've had the app forever. I've worked with this guy for many years.

But just like I saw a family doing this, which is for their New Year's Eve, they played their one second everyday video to just reflect on what was this year like? 365 days, one second each day. And I don't know, I just want that. I want that for our family too, to have this moment of reflection about what was this year for us. So that's sort of my New Year's resolution is to make sure that I do this one second every day.

So when he talks about it, when the app developer talks about it, I asked him, like, what were some of those one-second clips that were most meaningful for you? And one that he shares is like, there's one, there's a one-second clip of a brick wall. And I was like, what? I've got a one-second clip of our wedding. I've got a one-second clip of an anniversary or like the first time I got to meet my daughter or my son, right? And it's like the brick wall.

And he was like, yeah, that brick wall means so much to me because the moment that my sister-in-law was admitted to the hospital and we found out that her intestines were strangling themselves and she was on the brink of dying, that's the first thing that I saw after we got this news that she might die so unexpectedly, so oddly. She didn't die. But he said like that wall, when I see that one second clip of that wall, it just reminds me of this transformative moment that I had where all of his hustle and what he needed to do for his life and for his career, for developing this app.

And it just felt like it doesn't matter, right? My family matters more than anything else to me. And so that brick wall is a reminder of that for him. And that is surprising in some sense. I mean, it's not surprising when you hear that, it's like, oh my God, how awful. And I totally understand how that could center and ground him to have that visual reminder. But also in some sense, like remembering bad stuff. Who wants to remember bad stuff?

When you think about when you said something really embarrassing, when you hurt somebody's feelings, when you really messed up at work, if you got fired or all of our big, big mistakes, who wants to go back there in their mind? Nobody. Nobody wants to relive the worst days of their life. So it doesn't come as like intuition that like, yeah, let's capture the awful stuff in our life and let's reflect on it on New Year's Eve, and that'll be a good thing. But it actually can be.

It can help us make better decisions, like it did for Caesar, the developer of this app, that, you know, remembering what restaurant gave you food poisoning, yeah, you should probably remember that. Remembering when you had a choice point, you chose this way, it didn't go as well, or you regretted that choice. Great, you should remember that so that you can make a different choice in the future. And that also makes sense. But our intuition probably says like, no, I don't want to remember. I don't want to take pictures. I don't want to post on social media. I don't want to put the negative stuff out there.

And I'm not saying we should. I'm not saying tell people about how awful today was. Show them about, you know, show them your bet. I mean, whatever. How you manage social media is like outside of my sphere of expertise. But it is within my sphere of expertise to say like there are big benefits from having a more inclusive memory than what our memory wants to do. If you can remember the times when you did feel icky, when you made the wrong choice, that can help you make better choices in the future.

Stephen Matini: Out of anything we said, is there anything that, in your opinion, those who will listen to us in the future should pay attention to?

Emily Balcetis: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that can be challenging is feeling like if you've been working hard at something, you're not making the progress that you want, sunk costs is a thing of just continuing to invest in something that might not be working out.

It could be a relationship, it's not working out, or it could be a project, or it could be like working for a promotion within a company that isn't giving you the opportunity to grow. And it can feel really hard to let go of these things that aren't bringing you joy, bringing you the value, and helping you manage and satisfy your goals. And why don't people leave? Why don't people relieve the relationships that they shouldn't be in or the jobs that aren't satisfying? Because it can feel like a failure. There's lots of other reasons.

People need jobs. They have responsibilities to others that doesn't allow them to just leave a job that isn't gratifying. I get that. But still, the idea is true that why do people hold on to a course of action that isn't paying off? Because we have such a stigma about failure. Because failing at something is, we try to avoid that at all costs. But leaving a relationship, leaving a job, giving up on a goal, changing a course doesn't have to be failure. It can be an important learning opportunity.

Yeah, it's risky. And it's sometimes really challenging or maybe even impossible to take big risks. But if we think about quitting something as not quitting and not as failure, but as a pivot point for reflection, what did I learn? What am I going to take from this? The next thing is a chance to start new, start fresh. How beautiful is that?

I would love it if I had a chance to just start some parts of my life over, but with all of the knowledge and expertise that I have now, God, that would be amazing if I could, you know, have a blank slate to reset, but being as informed as I am. And that's what it can do.

So rather than it being a failure, a goal failure, or a quitting, which are stigmatizing words that we don't want to apply to ourselves, going through the work of mentally reframing as like a beautiful opportunity for rebirth, I think can help people make some of those tricky decisions to learn from them and to, you know, maybe find more happiness than what the current pursuits are offering.

Stephen Matini: Emily, thank you so much for sharing this time with me. I've learned a lot and I think your work is beautiful. Please continue to spread the inspiration because your work is really important.

Emily Balcetis: Thank you for this conversation, for the opportunity. Thank you so much.

View Details

Paulinho Muzaliwa is a social entrepreneur passionate about regenerative agriculture, and founder of the Unidos Social Innovation Center in Uganda, Africa.

As a refugee facing personal setbacks and challenges, Paulinho’s dream is to transform refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can access clean water, abundant food, and quality education.

He believes that change and progress come from within the community and demonstrates how refugees can become change-makers by leveraging their unique experiences and skills to develop innovative solutions.

In our conversation Paulinho emphasizes the importance of moving beyond reliance on humanitarian aid by fostering local leadership and sustainable practices.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#SocialEntrepreneurship #RegenerativeCulture #SustainableDevelopment #Permaculture #Sustainability #SocialImpact #RefugeeStories #Uganda #Africa #HumanitarianAid #WorldFoodProgram #UNHCR #ChangeMakers #Podcast #NewPodcastEpisode #PodcastInterview #PaulinhoMuzaliwa #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, I want to ask you just to get to know you a little bit. Growing up, were there any specific person, people, events that somehow have impacted who you are today?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really. I grew up in a memory, which is a little bit modest, not so much poor and not so much rich. My dream was to be a pilot.

Once I was not being able to go to university, so I chose to being an accountant. I met in secondary school. I done business and demonstrative administration. After finish up, it was quite hard to push and walk him. And all my dream really disappeared. So I gave up to all my dream. Being a refugee is kind of starting a new life.

Stephen Matini: Going through challenges, life in general, how do you keep your spirit positive? How do you keep the hope?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: How I keep the or stay positive is understand that all my life have been challenging. And in order to be successful or in order to have a decent life, I need to be satisfied of what I have and cherish, also connect to myself. And the most of it is if things are not good right now, as long as I work hard, so I expect something positive will come no matter the time that we spend on these things.

So I try to be optimistic because the worst part of my life is what I have done. I just want to be more positive so that I cherish all the moments that I'm having right now.

Stephen Matini: And this is something that you also share with entrepreneurs. You know, to be an entrepreneur, you must have a vision. You must constantly fight self-doubts, challenges, insecurities and problems. How did you get to social entrepreneurship? What attracted you to this?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, exactly. So I think there is so many facts that has motivated me to jump into this based on the challenges that are accounted in being a refugee. The first one was language barrier, which has been most affected young people here in refugee settlements to get access to employment.

Four percentage of refugee are unemployed. And this due to language barrier, lack of experience, rigid education. So all this prevents people to get access. Job markets is quite also low in Uganda. So we have been able to at least, while learning entrepreneurship, instead of relying on the system, better creates our own system, better creates our own opportunities as refugees.

So mostly from, especially from the country that I am. So the system, especially the education system, make us slaves of the system. You may be almost 100 people who are learning business and administration. And you are going to alert that the company in the city. So you are going to fund at only two companies.

So if you are not really a non-person or your parent is not a non person, so you never get a job. So this has been the fact that has motivated me a lot to, okay, let's create our own opportunities instead of relying on the system. And then we jump into this and then I get an opportunity to learn entrepreneurship at idea for Africa and path through different centers here in refugee settlement to foster my experience. And then this is where I start found Unidos Social Innovation Center.

Stephen Matini: How it is to live in a refugee community?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: It's quite hard. Psychologically, it's really hard to let it go. The life that you had in your home country and start a new one here in refugee settlements. And this is something that's traumatized most of people and not able to let it go and start a new page. But economically, they're living in refugee settlements, especially where I am in Nakivale Valley refugee settlements, Uganda.

As I've been saying, 44% of refugee are employed. So most of people are running small businesses to generate income and which is not really profitable enough to sustain their lives. So people are struggling currently due to humanitarian aid which I keep on decreasing every day.

In 2018, when I reached here, so we used to get food from the World Food Program, but currently there is no food. So they fast in when reaching COVID, they transition from getting food to get money. And then this money is keep on decreasing. And currently they give $3, which is roughly a that can buy a two liter of oil, cooking oil as they provide this as a monthly rationed food. So can someone sustain with $3 a week or month? Quite hard.

In term of education. So we have one secondary school and some private primary schools, which is not really provide the quality education. So for some parents who have at least some money, they take their children to go to learn out of refugee settlements.

I think this is how life looks like in refugee settlements. So people have been relying so much on humanitarian aid, and when this has keep on decreasing, so life becomes keep on being harder. And the food on the market keep on increasing the price. And we are going to realize that life is becoming quite hard in refugee settlements.

And some people decided maybe to go back to their countries and maybe starting hustling, no matter the insecurity that they are passing through there.

Stephen Matini: When I read your LinkedIn profile, I really loved what I read. It says, I dream about transforming refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can have access to clean water, abandoned food, and quality education. Would you mind explaining what regenerated culture is?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, sure. I think regenerative culture, I define it in two ways. So first of all, is to have access to abundance food, being able to grow food in an environment friendly way while taking care of the soil, but also growing organic and abundant food. And of course, why food? Food is currently the first need for refugees since the humanitarian aid, as I've been saying, keep on decreasing. So we need to make sure that we sustain ourselves in growing food instead of keep on relying on humanitarian agencies.

Access to clean water. I've seen people spending a week without having birth. I've seen people, young girls get raped while looking for water. And I've seen people not being able to cook. You may have a portion of food, but you don't have water to cook with it.

I've seen people struggling with typhoid and malaria just because of not having access to clean water. I've seen also people when I say about education. So education is not about only learning, but being able to co-create something which will impact as at least two people from what you have been learning.

Education is not about only learning, but it's to boost someone providing him resources that will enable these people to shift from the life that you reach or you have meet them. And when you will go and come back, you say, oh, there is a quiet difference. This person is no longer depending on someone. This is what I summarize about regenerative. Regenerative is to shift from humanitarian dependency and be able to sustain your life no matter the place where you are.

Stephen Matini: You say that in the refugee camp, there's a tremendous problem with unemployment as a result of a lack of skills. So in your experience, what are the most important skills that refugees should have?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think vocational skills are the best things that I can shift or can help them to not only learn, but also starting co-creating something that will not only impact their life, but also impact the community as a whole. When I say vocational trainings, I see about handmade skills, for example, making soap.

For example, teach people how to grow their own food. Teach people how he can make a dough or carpentry, for example, because when he will be able to do all with these skills, so he can generate money. For example, make soap making. So we empower women in terms of making and they're generating a lot of men to not only sustain their families, but also make saving for future needs.

Stephen Matini: One thing also that I believe I've read it in your profile, I think, one thing that you said is this one. You talk about that you believe in horizontal leadership and decentralization. And before, you pointed out several times that you cannot rely on the system. You know, we have to move it from dependency to be more independent. So why do you believe that it's important to have an approach to leadership that is more flat and decentralized?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Everyone needs to have the opportunity to lead. Everyone has the opportunity to feel like, yes, I'm responsible on something that can impact the whole community. And everyone could have, we always look on inclusion and not, for example, when we go in the field, so we're not trying to think on behalf of people that are surrounding us, but let them own.

I mean, a project, for example, that we are bringing to them, being feeling, being part of that project or being part of that solution that will change their lives. Instead of being just beneficiaries, for example, just because we believe in everyone's uniqueness.

So I may have this approach, but when I involve someone else and give the responsibility to lead, it can innovate something greater than what I've been thinking and contribute to a positive impact of our community.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that everyone could be a good leader?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really, but everyone can learn to be a good leader. The opportunity to provide this space is there. It's a transformation process, and it's always take time to become one. And this passion is what most of people are lacking with. And reason why is not a good leader, but everyone needs time to become one if he's really open to learn.

Stephen Matini: Would you mind telling me a little bit more about your project at Unidos projects, how that happened? Where did you get the first spark for that idea?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think what we need to start just as an English club. Most of us came from countries which English is not a first language. And reaching in Uganda, you must speak English so that at least you have, if you go to the market, you know what you need to buy. We start as an English club. And then after an English club, so we start sharing stories which can get us connected.

So Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlement is a host of almost five community, different communities, Congolese, Burundians, Somalian, Ethiopians, South Sudanese. So in order to be connected, we need to learn from each other, background and belief, culture so that we cohabit, so that we speak, we really know about, we practice well, the nonviolence communication.

And this was a way to get it together when learning together. So sharing story, sharing what is your culture, what's your belief? And so this help us. Oh, so if I do this to, for example, for Stephen, so he will get angry. If I do this, he will be happy. This has been really a great approach.

So when I finished to learn about entrepreneurship, so I added about some session about entrepreneurs, so how we can turn a problem into solution, how we can create our own opportunities, how we can start seeing a problem as an opportunity for us to bring a solution that will not only will benefit us as a group, but the entire community.

So this is where we have started Unidos. And then in COVID, we had a challenge in terms of accessing food. So this is where the World Food Program decided, okay, so we are running out of funds and then we are going to start diminish the food ration for refugee. And remember that in that day, there was lockdown.

So most of people didn't go to their field to collect food. So it was quite terrible moment. We get a mini grant of $200. And the one who gave us, he told us to buy a toolkit that will help us to prevent ourselves from COVID. And I told him, so, OK, buy toolkits. It's quite fine.

But hunger will kill people here before the COVID. So and they say, OK, do whatever you want. Once I decided with my team, so we bought some maize, flour, sugar, soap and distribute to the most vulnerable people in the refugee settlement.

And after this process, we have a lot that most of people start coming to the center, and it was quite a dilemma. So the money that's being sent to us was finished. But then people came and requests for food. And we sit together and say, OK, instead of providing food, how not to start teaching people how to grow their own food.

Because if in case that we get another extra are found and we buy food and distribute to these people, we are making them beggars. But if we're teaching them skills on how to grow food, we will make them being sustainable for their families, for the community, and for themselves as well.

In the group, we didn't know about there is no one who was experienced about agriculture, honestly. And so how are we going to do this? We are not experienced. Let's start looking for someone who can teach us first and then after teaching us so we can spread the message. So I was connected to Morag Gamble.

She's a permacultureist and has a lot of experience in regenerative agriculture and she won out. She's really an inspiration. So she trained me and I was also connected to a community, which is called Warm Data.

I was connected to introduced the Permaculture Design Course in Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlements in 2021. I trained the first courts and it gives a great outcomes seeing how people have started growing in a regenerative way.

They are gardens and produce enough food on a small space because in refugee settlements, there is no big space. This has motivated me again to train in other cohorts and keep this sustaining until now. But from this, we have also generated more projects.

We started focusing on solid regeneration because we realized that no matter the different approaches that we have implemented, so the soul was not healthy enough to grow more food. So most of people or most of refugee have been using chemicals to grow their own food.

Of course, at the first time, the first time you get food, but at the second one, so the production keep on decreasing. And most of people have reported this to us. We get challenged in terms of growing food. We do this and this and this, but it is not really sustaining. We sit with the community and say, so what shall we do so that we come up with a innovative solution?

So we then started, okay, let's try about applying organic fertilizer instead of chemicals. And the organic fertilizer that we opt on, we started producing organic fertilizer through the vemi compost. This is a process of collecting food waste from different markets around the community.

And then we decompose it with the help of worms and to get organic fertilizer. So this organic fertilizer help us to, when applying in the soil, it's regenerate the soil and balance the pH and add more microorganisms in the soil to make the crop being more resistant in term of climate change, especially along droughts and give you nutritious and organic food in return.

So we tried this and we have already built two vermicompost sites alongside with a community regenerative demonstration sites where we demonstrate the effect of this organic fertilizer. This will be will play as an inspiration for most of the community to see how regenerative this can transform the way that we have been compared to the way that we have been applying chemicals. This was our first project.

So another project was mushroom growing. So we have realized that mushroom is a nutritious and a regenerative food that can play a great role in a refugee settlement in terms of providing food in a short period of time, not only providing food, but also it gives it another way that could help women to generate income or selling the mushroom and generate income that can respond on the basics needs.

So we have also several projects in terms of soap making, so just organic soap. All this is just to empower women to be financially self-dependent in refugee settlements because women and children are the most vulnerable people in refugee tournament.

We come up with all these incentives to help them being sustainable and to contribute also on the change that they want to see in the refugee settlement.

Stephen Matini: You know what's interesting? The fact that the word sustainability, I believe, for a lot of people is something that evokes something that I do now to make sure that the future will be better.

So sustainability for a lot of people has this dimension of let's create something that has the ability to endure. And the way that you are living and breathing sustainability through your business is actually something that addresses an emergency in the present moment by creating the conditions also for the future, but it really provides a solution in the present.

And I love the fact that you mentioned several times the importance of networks and communities, working with different people that bring different experiences using each other's background and what we know together we can create solutions that nurture the soil and creates the background in which life can actually prosper. I really love that. On your website, one thing that I read, which I love is this one.

You wrote, "Our goal is to transform these young refugees into change makers who will drive the community and make sure that everyone will be heard when it comes to creating a better tomorrow for all of us." So for you, who is a change maker? What are some of the attributes of someone who becomes a change maker?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: A change maker for me is someone who, when people see problem, it's take an opportunity to come up with a solution that will transform this problem of how people have been seeing it as an impact driving. I've been thinking that, so if at least we get our 100 changemaker in refugee settlements coming with a diversity of innovation that will impact people.

I think we now need to depend on humanitarian aid or beg people to support us if we have really this commitment to reach that level of how I'm envisioning it.

Stephen Matini: You use a lot of interesting words, you know, including begging. And then you mentioned several times being independent. But anything you say is about taking responsibilities, is about not feeling that I need to beg someone to help me. I'm going to create my own opportunities, which is incredible. It's so remarkable.

Paulinho Muzaliwa: In reality, the fact that you are a refugee, you are directly or indirectly a victim of so many things. So you're going to realize that the time that we have been getting food, of course, it was not real enough or the time that we get this $3. And you need to spend all the day under the sun on a line to make sure that you get this portion of food.

And if you don't, you'll not get. Another thing is this dependency. Being dependent is quite really something terrible because everyone can treat you the way they want, just because you are dependent, dependent on them.

Being dependent is being out of control of your own life, because all the decision will be made, maybe for your benefit, but without your concern. And this can affect you positively or negatively. And people, they don't mind how you will feel about this. They will just, oh, it's a help and they will be excited about the help.

But will this be the first things that you need before? We have seen so many ridiculous scenarios of local organization. And I think this has been the things also that has opened eyes for refugee in starting their own incentives. So local organization always came in the refugee campus.

Okay, we come up with clauses and yet they didn't ask you is something that you need, but someone gave you a soap, yet you didn't eat in your home and then take your pictures and go and report. So this is what we have done. So we discovered this. We have all the fact that, okay, so these people get incredible amount of money.

Just they say, okay, we want to advocate for refugee, but the reality which is happening in the field is quite different from the concepts, not that they submit. So this has motivated us. And we are going to allow that so most of sustainable incentives are coming from and within the community, the refugee communities, just because we understand the struggle that we are passing through.

We understand the problem in deep of the community. And we come together with a solution that will benefit everyone. Not think on behalf of a group. Just because you see myself having so much bear or air on my head and say, oh, this place needs a salon. Maybe it's not something that I need.

So for this big organization, like for example, World Food Program to work directly with refugee service. But I think these people also understand that we can also trust refugees in making decisions on their lives.

So last year, we have a partner with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and in term of trained people in regenerative agriculture and ecological aspects. And this, we have made a great progress through this partnership. I believe that there are also so many incentives that are now supported by UN Syria from within refugee settlements.

Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, we talked about many different things. And hopefully a lot of people are going to hear through this important conversation because you do live and breathe sustainability. You show how applicable this is and how important it is to have a sustainable mindset. So I want to ask you, for those who are going to listen to us, to this episode, what would you say that is an important point they should focus on on our conversation?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Normally, I would say on a perspective of refugees settlement and how people are seeing refugees.

There's so many incredible people, incentives, and courageous community here in refugee settlement, doing things which are really exceptional, worth to be supported or worth to be charmed. And unfortunately, this work is not seen anywhere.

And I would recommend people, if they really want to support amazing calls, it is in refugee where they should more focus, because these people are really doing things in a way that it's matter because the challenges or problem that they're explaining to or pitching in different audience of people.

So these people are being victim of this problem directly. And then when I talk about hunger, I know what mean hunger. I know that most of people, they advocate about, okay, we advocate about hunger, but have you felt before this feeling of just saying to your children that we today, my children, so we I didn't been lucky to get food for you.

So you should go to sleep and see what tomorrow will look like. As a parent, you sleep and figure out, spend all the nights figure out what the possibilities that I need to do so that these people or these children eat tomorrow. And this is how change makers, entrepreneurs from within the refuge when they talk about the problem that they are advocating for.

And for us, as Unidos, we are more specially focusing on soil regeneration with the goal of prevent hunger crisis in refugee settlements in time of growing ambient food and organic, empower women to be self-reliant through different entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to experience or being part of the change that they want to see and feel being empowered or having a word in terms of contributing on the economy of not only the refugee community, but also of the country that hosts us as a refugee.

Stephen Matini: Paulino, I think you are a phenomenal entrepreneur. You're a great leader. You're a fantastic change maker. And I believe your message is going to resonate and to be a shiny example for a lot of people, because everything and anything you said is something that is so relevant these days and is so needed. So thank you so much for your efforts. Thank you. And thank you for giving me your time. I've learned a lot today.

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Thank you as well for providing this space, it’s really meant a lot for us in terms of representing our community.

View Details

How can we make our common road lead to a world of hope and joy? Our guest today is Gunnar George, author of the book Aha... Wow! Yes, and leadership development expert.

Gunnar George believes that the most effective leaders are those who are compassionate, inspirational, and have a vision that promotes hope, joy, and sustainability. He challenges the notion of transactional communication in business and personal interactions, advocating instead for authentic and emotionally engaging exchanges.

By developing others and maintaining a vision that encompasses societal and global impacts, compassionate leaders can play a significant role in creating a better world.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #TransformationalLeadership #GlobalImpact #Sustainability #CompassionateLeadership #BusinessTransformation #AuthorInterview #NewBookRelease #PodcastEpisode

...

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: The first question that I have for you, being someone who wrote a book, is how is the whole experience of writing a book? How your idea for “Aha... Wow! Yes.” came by?

Gunnar George: Oh, the whole experience. It's a long experience, actually. It started many years ago. I thought I wanted to write a book. And I also worked in a company that had a different way of leading. We were consultants working with strategy and big transformations.

And we had a different way of leading change that most of the traditional consulting companies had in those days. So we said to ourselves that we need to write this down sometime. And I had that in the back of my mind for many years. And then I've worked a lot with leadership development programs lately.

And one of the things that I realized is that the more you share, the more you get and sharing is sort of the sharing of knowledge and experiences and views and so on. It's really what that is the core of leadership development.

I met so many fantastic people and been part of extraordinary things in meetings with companies and transformations in big companies and so on. So I thought I need to share myself what I've experienced and what I've noticed and observed. But I didn't want to share it sort of to give advice, more to sort of to share my observations and my reflections on that.

But it is a fantastic experience to see it grow and to see it take form. And then also, another thing is that the people you have around you and the people you meet, as soon as you start to talk about it a little bit, people want to contribute.

And I have a friend who likes Paulo Coelho and he often quotes him and says that you have to be careful what you dream of because universe will conspire to make it happen. And that is sort of joked a little bit about it sometimes. But when you write a book, you see that almost like this is true because people come from suddenly from nowhere and say, I can help you or I can do that.

So it's an amazing experience in that way.

Stephen Matini:When you thought about writing a book, what was your initial biggest wish for the book?

Gunnar George: I wrote it in English, in a simple kind of easy to read English. So I wanted to reach out to as many as possible in the world, not only to English native speaking countries. That was one of the thoughts I had.

And then one of my wishes also that people start to think more about, “Aha... Wow! Yes,” which is the title of the book. That is sort of if we need more emotions in business, we need more emotions in society and positive emotions. And often when we structure things or do strategy work or communication work, whatever, we use why, what how as a structure that is sort of, you check that you have covered, why, what, how?

And my thing thought with it, my wish with this was that “Aha... Wow! Yes,” would be the new why, what, how. So that is also a wish that I had. So I have in the book, I had sort of this “Aha... Wow! Yes,”, circular that I spoke about many times in the book.

Stephen Matini: One thing that struck me when you and I met, you were talking about the importance of contributing to create a world of hope and joy, which, you know, these days, it seems to be so important to do, considering all that is happening, all the negativity. How do you keep that hope and joy within yourself?

Gunnar George: I try to find it in the people I meet. I see sort of the positive things and heard an interview with the previous foreign minister of Sweden the other day. And he said that he had hope for, he saw hope in the world because we haven't done the transformation with women. Women has sort of, that is still a big transformation for the world.

And he saw a lot of hope in that sort of, because it is a man's world. And this transformation is to make it a balanced world with both men and women is, he saw a lot of hope in that. And I agree totally with that. And I see that type of messages and people who think like that, that just brings me hope.

And also the young generation. Every time I talk to them, I get amazed a little bit because I think back when we were young, were we that clever and that did we see so much? Did we see the world with that clear? Do we have this engagement or not when we were young?

Stephen Matini: And to keep that youthful approach to things, I believe is really important. You know, like I believe for you, one of the key points is learning. And learning for me is one of the components that probably keep me positive, but keep me wanting to keep going. Absolutely. You said a few times the word transformation, which seems to be such an important word to you. What does transformation mean to you?

Gunnar George: For me, transformation. A lot of people talk about change and transformation and it's sort of, and everybody have their different definitions about it. I see transformation as a bigger type of change than just improvements.

So transformation for me is a radical change. And you often start from the future and look back. What type of future do we want? And then you look back and say, what do we need to make happen in order for this division to happen, so say. And transformation is also more, it covers both the mindset and the system and the culture of a company or a society. So it's a very thorough change. That is the way I see it.

And I think you mentioned learning and learning, I see, is the big way to get there, learning and seeing different perspectives. And I have in my book, I have one of the longest chapters about learning, actually, how to learn faster, faster than the speed of change.

Stephen Matini: A lot of people say around learning, oh, I don't have time. I'm busy. I don't have time. I don't have time. So how can you keep what they say? A growth mindset, you know, a learning mindset, despite the fact that so many of us are super busy. How do you carve that time in your opinion?

Gunnar George: Yeah, that's the biggest challenge, I guess. I think we need to add the inspiration part to the learning. We need to talk much more about inspiration. And if we are inspired and curious, we will learn much more. And we will create the time. You can see yourself. You have a lot of mails and messages coming all over.

And then suddenly one of them, you can spend quite a long time on that. And then you can also say, why do you do that? And I think it has to do with you get inspired or you get, this is something that attracts you. And suddenly you create time. You don't have time, but maybe you spend half an hour or something, you didn't think that you were going to spend half an hour. And there was something that triggered that. And then to learn for half an hour just because it's really interesting.

We have a limited amount of time during the day. So I think also we need to set aside learning as part of our work. So we have you answer a lot of emails. That does a chunk in your daily work. But you also need to put in maybe one hour or two hours a day just for learning. I mean, if you take a writer, for example, many writers, they read a lot.

And so they have before lunch, they read or after lunch they write or vice versa. And that is about learning and getting new inspiration, new perspectives on things. In business, we have forgotten to take this time to learn. So we need to book it in our agendas, I think. I have a lot of examples and stuff in the book that how to speed it up.

Stephen Matini: You said what we find inspirational, and I have to say during the day, a few things are inspirational, but a lot of stuff is boring. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Emails are God ... such a boring thing. You know, emails, I started writing less and less email. And I'm definitely using more and more of chats because they're faster. But the emails, God is still. I mean, emails have been around for what, 25 years? And still, people complain, oh, I get put in CC and so much stuff. Hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. And you think, yeah, but I mean, what does it do anyway? You know For sure, it's not inspirational.

Gunnar George: But you can ask yourself, what is that really gets your attention? What type of headlines is it? What type of pictures is it that you sort of stop for a moment and give it a chance?

Stephen Matini: I have to say that a lot of stuff that I see in business, I find it very transactional. You're trying to get something out of me. And I think that all of us can spot that in a second. And what I'm thriving and what I try to seek is something that feels more simple, simpler and more authentic. Because when everything becomes transactional, then the energy doesn't flow, you know?

Gunnar George: So that is also why I have this “Aha ... Wow! Yes.” When you see a title or something, you see a picture and they say, aha, I didn't realize that. Or you say, wow, that was new or something.

Or yes, I would like to try that. Then those type of emotional expressions are also, you see it everywhere, this aha, wow, yes. These are the things that we're focusing on.

Stephen Matini: So it is an emotional book. It's supposed to evoke emotions.

Gunnar George: Yes, I put in a lot of stories in it and a lot of quotes and stuff like that. Because many books on leadership and change and transformation, they are written in a very transactional way, in a sort of square mechanistic engineering type of books. I don't believe that you can explain leadership to leaders. You cannot, but many do.

Many think that if you explain a model or something, then people will say, okay, and then they will sort of get it. But I think you need to go the whole circle. Aah, that is the learning and wow is the inspiration. And yes, it's sort of the action. So you have to go do all the whole circle in either way.

Stephen Matini: In your book, there are three, I guess, ingredients that are so talked about these days. One is the notion of sustainability, which means a lot of different things for people. Another one is technology, new technology, and how technology is speeding things up. And the other one is this whole global political discourse, that is becoming apparently dark and dark and darker. And so these three components seem to be as part of this transformation. So from your perspective, what would you say that is a healthy, positive approach to the three of them?

Gunnar George: The way I see it is that the more you learn about it, the more you understand. So you sort of feel that you are not maybe on top of it, but you feel that you are following what's happening.

So that is one way. And the next thing is that I think you need some sort of vision as inspiration. If you don't have a positive future vision, then you will just do a lot of problem solving and you will run around and feeling stressed and so on. But if you have a vision, then that will sort of color the things that you do.

I heard one person once talked about visions as memories of the future. And the reasoning was that memories that forms the way we sort of select information and the way we think our memories. If you have a vision, then you have sort of that is part, then that is your memories. You start to see new things just because you have this vision. If you have a vision to go to the moon or to Mars, for example, nowadays, suddenly you start to see all things that can help that. If you have a vision about the sustainable future, then you pick up all the things that are positive and that can add to that vision.

You also see the barriers, of course. But yeah, I think you need to see these positive things to be able to cope with all the stress in a society today. Because I think it's sustainability, new technology and geopolitics. These are the three major forces. It's like a perfect storm now with three storms just enforcing each other. And they are connected, of course.

Stephen Matini: How do you build a vision when you don't have a vision?

Gunnar George: It is to paint a picture of what kind of future you want to see. If it is in business, for example, if you take that, then most companies, they are not used to painting visions that are sort of something else than their own company. Because in today's world, it's so much focused on the shareholder value, for example, and there's a lot of companies looking at their valuation because they want to become unicorns and so many visions is about we are going to be the leader in the world or the leader in our industry.

But the real vision is they go, they leave their own company and look at the customer or the society. What is the future customer experience? What is the future society we want to live in? Who are the future leaders? That type of vision is something more than yourself.

Most companies start with the wrong question. They start with, what do we want to be in five years from now? And then they start talking about their own company and market shares or whatever, profitability. Instead of talking, what kind of customer experience do we want to see? What type of society do we want to see in the future? So I think when you have bigger visions like that, then you need to go outside of yourself, connected to the purpose of the company or the organization.

If you look at yourself as an individual, if you can do the same there, you can come up with a wonderful vision, which is not only about yourself, it is about your network or the whole world, if you want to have a really, really big vision. And in the book, I try to connect the three levels. It's the individual level, the organizational level, and the world, the global level. And most books are about one of these levels.

But I try to connect them all because now if you take sustainability, for example, you actually can do a lot as a responsible person as an individual, but it also can make even more as a company. And it's all connected to what's happening in the world. So all this, you have to cover all three today in many of the big challenges we have. It's not enough just to look at the individual or to look at the team or the organization. You have to go all the way. It is a time for big visions, I think, that we live in right now.

Stephen Matini: You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about vision and whether or not I've had the vision in my life, but everything you are saying, that sort of vision that goes beyond myself, I think it's something that I have developed only in recent years. And a lot of that, I think it has to be with age, and the understanding that I will not be here forever. So the question to you is, do you think would you have written this book earlier?

Gunnar George: Maybe not, because I think you have a point there. There are many young people with strong visions, but it's also when you get older, you have a broader perspective and you have more experience. Since part of the book is a big reason for the book is sharing experiences and observations is I needed to collect a lot, of course, before you can do it. But I think it's an interesting question you have. But there are young people with a very fantastic visions, of course, that I think is amazing when you see them.

Stephen Matini: In your life, were there any experiences, any people that somehow, you know, looking in hindsight, were responsible for the way you think today?

Gunnar George: Well, there are many, actually, maybe a thousand. But actually, in my book, I wrote down, I did an exercise. I was doing a presentation at the conference. And after the presentation, two persons from China came up to me and they thanked me a lot for, and they said that they had learned a lot. And I didn't realize it. I said, I said, yes, thank you, thank you. But then they said, we learned a lot. And then I said, one more time, we learned a lot. I thought about what was so, why did they say that?

But then I realized that that is one of the best things you can say to someone, especially in Asia. So then I thought about it. Who has I learned a lot from? Who could I say that to? So when I wrote the book in the beginning of the book, the introduction, I wrote down the people I learned a lot from. And then I was thinking, when I've done that, I put them in the right order. And then I realized that that was a very interesting thing to do.

But I also developed it into an exercise because if you do that, then you can start to think, who did I put on a list and who did I not put on a list? And why did I not put them there? Because the list cannot be too long. And then you can ask yourself, who could I have put there that I didn't put there? And why did I not take that opportunity to learn from that person more? I've developed maybe 10 questions.

I think it was that was that you can connect to this list that really says a lot about how you think and how you can start to learn faster and learn more. If I should pick one or two persons from that list, I learned a lot from this guy that I told you about earlier. He was an Irish guy, was an expert on cross-cultural communication. Sean Gaffney was his name.

And I learned a lot from him. And that thing I said, I love people. That summarizes a lot of his view on things. I learned a lot from Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer that I had the opportunity to talk to. And his view of life, I take him as an example a couple of times in the book, also things that he said and one thing that he shared was that he had traveled around the world as an explorer, looking at digging out this ancient pyramids, whatever.

And then when we talked to a group of people, he told us that I have learned what is a good society or not. There's an easy measure of that, he said, and everybody was curious. And then he said, you can just count the number of smiles on the streets. That is my, from all the travels are done all over the world. If you count the smiles you see on the street, that is the best indication for how good a society is. And I thought that was a really strong message in that.

But I learned a lot more from him also. And then I learned a lot from my wife that I'm very thankful for having met. And there are many others also that I work together with. And you learn every day when you work with the curious people. And if you work in situations that are really stretched, so really challenging situations. So I learned a lot. I can go on forever, talk about people.

Stephen Matini: And sometimes you learn from people that they teach you stuff unintentionally. It may not necessarily be someone that you know super well. It could be someone that you met very briefly, but somehow the person says something that you really need at the moment.

Gunnar George: Yeah, exactly. Small things. I learned a lot from one of my sons. When he was about five years old, he was, every time the doorbell rang, he was just running as crazy to get first to the door because he wanted to stand there and shake hands and see who it was on the other side of the door.

And it was so curious. His eyes were just glowing when it was a new person coming, ringing on the door. When I saw that, I thought, what a fantastic curiosity. That is something I need to develop even more also myself. So you learn all the time from all kinds of sources, of course.

Stephen Matini: You know, you've been working in leadership development for such a long time. If you had a leader in front of you, and if you had to share with such a leader a very important point that you think should know, what would you say that is? What I seem to say the most now is people always look at you and they seek a consistency. So you may ask people whatever you want, but they don't see that behavior in you, they're not going to follow you. So be mindful that people always look at you. They always seek for consistency.

Gunnar George: For me, if I say something to you, it's to take initiatives and develop your people. It's not about yourself. It's about your people. If you as a leader can develop really good leaders, that is the ultimate sign of good leadership. And I think one of the key questions in the book that I've written is about sort of what type of leaders? How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? I think that is one of the core questions we need to ask ourselves now. How do we get leaders who care for the whole world?

If you as a leader can develop that, that would be fantastic. And there are many more things to say, of course, in that. But I try to think a lot in the book about what, you know, this famous quote from Einstein. So if I had one hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would just spend 55 minutes on finding the right question. Then I had five minutes to find the answer. So I was thinking about that quote.

I said, "What is the right question in a book about leadership?" So I thought a lot about it. And then what I came up with is that the question is, how do you develop, how do we ensure leaders that we have leaders that care for the whole world? That is the key question for me when we go forward now. That is part also of a vision, of course, if we can have that. Because what we see now is the opposite in many cases.

Stephen Matini: Is this also the reason why you name your consultancy Compassion?

Gunnar George: Yeah, it is. Because I think that is one of the keys to the future. It was actually my wife who suggested the name for the company. She has done a lot of yoga, and that is a key element in yoga. And when the yogis talk about the future, they talk a lot about the compassion.

And also compassion as a word is sort of passion, it's passion for communication, which I work with. And it's also compass is part of compassion. And I work a lot with strategy visions and values. So that is sort of the compass. So it's a lot of things that come together in that name, compassion.

Stephen Matini: So it's more passion and a vision, basically.

Gunnar George: Yeah. There are so many different definitions on compassion. I did one myself in the book. I will just look it up and see if I say the right thing. So the way I usually define is to listen with your heart and do good.

Stephen Matini: We talked about different things, a lot of different things. For those who are going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would like for them to pay attention to?

Gunnar George: What we talked about with the compassion, I think, is the key. That is the last chapter in my book is called compassion as the cornerstone. And so we talked about compassion. And I think that is the key for the future. And if we can determine how we interact, how we communicate, and how we lead. It comes down a lot to that single word, actually.

So I think if they find out more about compassion and they try to behave more compassionate and see the effect that it has on your surrounding and the boomerang effect that you get back. Like when you inspire people, you get so much inspiration back yourself.

Stephen Matini: From your perspective, compassion starts with the relationship with me. Does it start with people?

Gunnar George: What it starts with, I think it starts with yourself that you want to see the positive, that you're curious, want to see the positive, like what I said, to listen with your heart and your good. And so you listen a lot. And then in all your meetings, you're trying to find these positive things and create this positive feeling in the relationship. I think that is the core of that.

Stephen Matini: This listen with the heart and do good. I’m going to write it down. Thank you so much for sharing this moment with me. I learned a lot of important things. Thank you.

Gunnar George: Thank you. This has been fantastic to talk to you. You are very good at talking to people, you know.

Stephen Matini: You too, you too.

View Details

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe serves as the Vice President of the PlungeSmile Foundation, which provides education, health, nutrition, and infrastructure programs to support rural communities in Nigeria, Africa.

PlungeSmile exemplifies how corporations can forge impactful partnerships to tackle pressing societal challenges. Our conversation explores how authentic corporate social responsibility drives sustained business success and why it should be central to every company's mission.

Corporations elevate their brand reputation through these collaborations and showcase a solid dedication to social causes. Additionally, these alliances offer valuable insights into pressing societal issues, empowering companies to gather data for refining future product development or service enhancements.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#AndyEberechukwuAkukwe #PlungeSmile #RelianceInfosystems #CorporateSocialResponsibility #Sustainability #SocialImpact #Leadership #CommunityDevelopment #PityPartyOver #Alygn #Stephen Matini

...

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: What I love about your background is the fact that you are a business person, you are an entrepreneur, but at the same time, you also have a tremendous sensitivity for sustainability and sustainable development. So how did this come about? You know, how did you join these two things?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Okay, splendid. Plunge Smile is a foundation established by the group managing director of Reliance Info Systems, Olayemi Popoola, who I happen to be a member of his team.

And then over the years, he's personalized to help to assist people, develop even on a career level as well. He took this out to the public to salvage the problem that we have in the Nigerian society, which was mainly centered on education.

Marrying his passion was not a thing of difficulty for him. And then getting members of like mind onto the team was not much of a hard work as well.

I love social impact. I love to see people smile. So joining the team of Plunge Smile and see that it's all about making this social impact is our dreams actually or fully attained, gives me that confidence to move with the team. So it's a seamless flow because it's a mixture of career and passion.

Stephen Matini: I’ve had the pleasure of talking to other business people in Africa. And one thing that all of you have in common is your sensitivity towards corporate social responsibility. And CSR is a huge topic in the Western world. But then oftentimes the need for profits, you know, to make money seems to get ahead. Why do you think in Africa this theme seems to be so important to a lot of people?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: The African society is built for interdependence. When you talk of the traditional family system, we majorly operate an extended family system here unlike what you have in Europe.

So here, when you are concerned with your spouse and your children, you still need to think about your uncles, your aunts, their families, your in-laws and all whatnot. These actually traditionally make up for the unique African family system. Corporate social responsibility is a huge thing here in that in a local community, you would always find people who are not as privileged as others.

You would always find people who actually need a helping hand. So it's such a big one because we call it giving back, right? It's such a big one that many business founders and of course giants in different fields, including sports, where actually people who depended on others to survive, people who depended on others to rise. So some survived on the streets, some survived through certain tissue-free schemes, scholarships and all that.

So the first thing anyone wants to do when they succeed is to think of how to give back to the society. And so that's why CSR is a big thing for us here, tying it to our traditional family system.

Stephen Matini: When did you hear about CSR for the first time? Do you remember?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. That was when I had my first corporate job in the early 2000s. I joined Diageo at the time. It was a big thing. And of course, for many other corporates all over the world, CSR is high because you want to give back to your host community. You want to give back to those that actually form your mass markets.

Stephen Matini: In the Western world, oftentimes a big debate is about, should I manage my business for shareholders? Should I manage my business for stakeholders? Oftentimes, CEOs, they really focus on short-term returns rather than long-term investments. In your opinion, how can we find balance between making sure that a business is profitable, but having a long-term goal?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: So business deals with numbers, right? It all comes to approach. So there has to be the quick approach of making money, carrying out your research, finding out what it is that the market needs, curating products or services that the market needs, curating your routes to market, positioning your brand, activating all your strategies and tactics in the marketplace to be at the winning edge.

All of these, of course, make sure that revenue, profits, and of course, growth structures almost immediately attained. But then again, likening these to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals ), which talks about sustainability, you don't just want to build for today. The shareholders primarily wait for, say, half a year, end of the year to take some shares, those who would sell off, those who will liquidate and all that, they do that.

But of course, the stakeholders are beautiful tomorrow because many of these employees would want to work for decades, for perennial years. So they want to see that the business succeeds. So it's just an approach knowing that, okay, we need to get the numbers. And then we have to develop a culture, a sustainability culture building on the long term, where we are not just looking at numbers, we are looking at goodwill in the market. And you can't all but attend this with marketing, selling campaigns.

This is where CSR comes, because when the people are on your side, you have good will with them, then in fact, your stay in that market is almost all even guaranteed.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that this approach can be applied to any industry, to any company?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Definitely, yes. So it depends on what the vision is, what the mission is. Of course, the vision is that big picture, and then the mission are those tiny pieces that actually lead us to the big picture.

How we are going to achieve or how any organization would achieve this would be fundamentally assembling the right team. And so this is where HR professionals come to play. For instance, in Reliance Group here, we've got a robust HR professionals or HR team made up of professionals who actually bring a whole lot of experienced wealth into their field. So what that would mean is you have to make sure that the team are of like mind with you.

So if I am the CEO, I am the founder and I have these long-term goals, I need to make sure that I get the right people by my side. Of course, over the years, there will be churn, right? There will be staff churn and all that. But those who share the same vision with you will remain. And then you build something with them, you know, progressively and make sure that they are rewarded and that they keep staying with you.

Stephen Matini: So Andy, me personally, I agree with you 100%. So everything you say resonates very deeply with me and what is dear to me. But let's say hypothetically, I were someone who said, Andy, that's beautiful, but that's not applicable. That's not realistic because you have to make sure that your company runs and to make your shareholders happy. So I don't think what you're saying is possible. How would you respond to the type of criticism?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Irrespective of the size of the corporate, that's why you have Plunge Smile. That's why we are here. So there are B2B partnerships that you can enter into with NGOs, Punge Smile referentially here. While you're doing your business, you could make financial contributions. You could have employee volunteering. You could do pro bono services.

You could actually do some skill-based volunteering where you identify certain people who bring certain skills to play, for instance, you identify people who could actually help these schoolchildren with, say, coding and then free coding services or free coding aptitude is actually a provision to them. There could be cause marketing or advocacy and public influence where you use your marketing campaigns, you highlight social mis-norms, crime for advocating actually for social reforms, for policy reforms and all that.

You could actually partner with Plunge Smile in the area of supply chain integration. So let's assume that yes, you want to deliver on education or you want to deliver on free school feeding or you want to deliver on certain piece of your corporate social responsibility. So we have the leg, we have the guys on the field, we have all the mercenaries and tools. So when we integrate our supply chain, we get to deliver this.

Then of course, impact investing is that tranche where, for instance, you are trying to say cure a water challenge in a society. And at the same time, that company actually sells water. So while solving for water problem, you are still positioning your brand as maybe the supreme or superior brand over others.

So these are more even research and data sharing as well. So how do people actually gain insights into what could be called real time societal problems that they could solve for?

That's when they actually partner with NGOs, when they partner with serious NGOs like Plunge Smile, get on the field, see what these schoolchildren are going through, see what community residents are going through, and then of course, begin to solve them. And they have rich data to form whatever product or whatever service that they want to create in the future. It's a win-win.

You can't just say, I'm here to do business and I want to look out a corporate social responsibility. And that's why we are seeing here at Plunge Smile. As an individual, you can go about your daily activities where we help you run this other aspect of your corporate social responsibility.

We have dashboards that gives you real time visibility into your donations, your resources, where they are going, how they be used, what impact they've made. And of course, you can celebrate your success, even on your website, on your page, and all that. So I see it as a collaborative effort where you just get to identify who you're going to collaborate with, then focus more on your business while we focus more on your social impact.

Stephen Matini: I love that. It's such a systemic collaborative view of the world and what the world could be, you know, in the future. Of all possible directions, what attracted you to Plunge Smile, why you decided to join this initiative?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: At a time that age, I presented my school in a quiz competition. I got to state level. In fact, I was in certain quiz competitions even at national level. So I found out firsthand that certain people would actually want to fly, but they don't have means to fly. Certain children were deprived of the rights to education because of poverty, of low appreciation of the impact of education by their parents or any other factor. It could be peer pressure, it could be violence in the community, whatever it is.

So collectively seeing that the world could actually be a better place, even especially the less privileged children get access to college education, have the right funding, have the right tools. And Plunge Smile is already playing in this space over the years. Why not? So you could see that the marriage is something that came seamlessly and effortlessly.

Stephen Matini: Where do you hope a Plunge Smile to be let's say 10 years from now, what do you see?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Before I answer that question, I want to give it a two-leg approach. So Plunge Smile actually have a flagship initiative called Educa. And this Educa was better as a result of our years of interventions in educational sector of Nigeria.

And our plan is actually to scale this across to Africa. So Educa gets to see that children who don't have school fees to pay are being funded. Children whose school buildings are dilapidated. These buildings could be repaired. Children who stay out of school because of hunger, they could be fed in school. And then most importantly, many children who stay out of school because they don't have uniforms.

They don't have the screen. They don't have bags. They don't have shoes. Neither do they have the full skill kits, right? So they stay out of school. And what we found in interventions is we saw it at 5% response increments in the attendance of schoolchildren when you kick them up. And that's why the scent of education is kid up a child. So we have “Kit Up A Child” program.

So Kit Up A Child program actually highlights making sure that the child goes back to school and stays in school, having the full kits, which are the uniforms, the bags, the shoes or sandals, as the case may be. And then of course, there are different ways by which any organization or individual can actually key into the program of London, which is educated. So you could donate, you could volunteer your skills, you could sponsor a child with an amount, you could sponsor 50 children, you could sponsor 100 children.

So those details we could actually share with you, it depends on the school, depends on the popularity of what you want to do. And then you could partner with us on a long term, you know, a while ago we talked about partnership and the different trends of partnership. Partnership goes to see that these solutions are scaled. And of course, there's a long-term retention in our schemes. So we actually have people that we work with along these trenches. So educate proper, what's the workings of educator?

So in Educa, we build, we have rather interactive maps, we have dashboards, all the APIs, and of course, the user-friendly experience that anyone would have on the app. So here you explore the map, you choose a school, you select a project. I've mentioned a whole lot of projects. You select a project, then of course, you donate towards this project. You track the progress through the dashboard, you have real-time tracking of the project. And then, of course, you celebrate success. You celebrate impact made.

We help you do this on social media. We collaborate with you. There are badges. There are so many other things that we've come up with to actually help you touch like this, because we are not doing this in our name. So we are doing this in the name of the corporates, but because we have the experience, we have the wherewithal, we know what the problems are. And we have over 112,000 public primary schools in Nigeria already in the system. So we could actually help you navigate. It could be your alma mater, it could be any school that you know that actually has a problem.

And with this, your go-to social impact is made easy and you achieve your dreams. So where I see Plunge Smile in the next few years is scaling across, you know, out of Nigeria, you know, scaling across Africa, because the plan to actually do this is already in place. And I see 2024 being that year, where all of these will begin to unfold. And so that's why we actually need collaborators, we need individuals, we need corporates and all.

We have, of course, Plunge Smile is riding on the back of a technological giant, which is Reliance Ecosystems Group. So all the tech driven solutions, all the tech enablements, all the functionalities that will actually help you have visibility into your project and actually make sure you know there is accountability there. So on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, depending on how we agree or however you want to do it, we could actually have some reviews. We could actually have some performance reviews. We could actually celebrate your donations, whatever resources you would see them live. And if there are leftovers, of course, they will be reimbursed.

Stephen Matini: Has education always been central in your life?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. A man informed will make informed decisions, while a man uninformed will make deformed decisions. So he could think that he's smart. He could think that, oh, I've met the market women. I've met the market people. I know the pain points. But he doesn't know what we call research.

He doesn't know what we call inferential analysis, right? So if he cannot actually do that, then his decisions will always be deformed. So education is central to anyone's life. And that is why through the Educa Initiative of Plunge Smile, we are drumming on education. We are asking individuals, we're asking corporates, come join us in what we've done over the years. We have a whole lot of achievements.

We've donated thousands of textbooks and notebooks. We have school teachers in some committees that we hired. And under bureau, we have buildings renovated. We have several schools where children don't bother about what to eat. They just come to school. There's always a free school feeding. Even in a unit like this, a Plunge Smile still goes out to communities, you know, share some staples, some foods, materials, and even some drugs to make sure that, you know, residents are safe, they are healthy, and of course, they are welfare.

So over the years, and of course talking about technology, we have an ICT center where children actually just come. There are laptops, there are gadgets, they just come to up their skills in computer proficiency. There are several programs for them to do across fields. They get to see the outer world. They get to understand Internet, cloud computing, coding, graphics design, data analysis, at least at that basic level. And all of these will form their mindsets to say, you know what?

I have to continue this. I have to get to the top. It's just beyond what I'm taught in English mathematics and some other general science subjects. So yes, it's central to everyone and it's central to me.

Stephen Matini: You know, these days, a lot of people feel scared and afraid what the future might hold. You know, we listen to the news and it's just this constant polarization, bickering, fighting and wars and such and such. So a lot of people feel not that optimistic about the future. How do you stay positive? You have so much strength. There's so much energy. How do you keep your energy up?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Man, who is a tripartite being, spiritual and body, has to always draw strength from God. Personally, I'm a believer of Jesus Christ. That is my key strength and how I draw energy fundamentally. Then I draw energy, of course, from happenings around.

The problems of others get to inspire me and get to make me know that I need to find solutions to their problems. 'Cause I told you I grew up seeing people with diverse problems. I had some of my challenges myself. So problem in the African society is an ending. And then keeping your head above the waters, navigating through those challenges and getting to the top, you just need to be focused because it's only through being focused that you can help others.

So one from God and then two, being inspired by helping people get out of their problems.

Stephen Matini: What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who are interested in pursuing your similar route, a route that is filled with sustainable development?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: All right. So according to a UN, we have 17 SDGs. Three may be very much pronounced, which has to do with health and well-being, quality education, and of course, industry innovation and infrastructure. First and foremost, across the 17 divides or 17 goals, any venture need to tie their vision to the actualization of some of these goals, because trying to achieve all of these goals may be a tall order for any corporate, right? Because it's a very broad space.

So when you need to identify your key strengths, marry that with what you would want to solve in the society business wise, then of course, you have the social impact that actually inspires you from seeing people with similar problems. It could be people with nutrition problems, it could be people with shelter problems, it could be people with water problems. And then maybe you are working on any of these or a sinister solution area.

So that inspires you to even go out there to get solutions to their problems. So this could be viewed in the form of impact investing, which I said a while ago, which is where you're actually making this impact. There'll be financial returns. But in addition to financial returns, of course, there is this corporate or social impact made at the corporate level. So my advice would be, when you research, you find out what the problems are, you know what your key strengths are, you position yourself to take advantage of your key strengths and then bring the solution to the social space.

Then of course, you need partners. And being that one smile is that foundation that has been on the ground, that has actually worked in these key areas. You need to partner with an organization like Plunge Smile. So that is very, very important because you actually need a helping hand. You need one to actually serve as a compass to help you have a soft landing and then make sure that your resources or the resources you're deploying are well utilized. So this is the advice I'll give them.

Stephen Matini: Growing up, was there any person or any event that somehow contributed to help you realize who you wanted to be?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. Okay. So growing up, I've had challenges, right? My upbringing was settled with certain challenges.

I needed certain things and they were not readily available. And then I had to be determined as the first of four children, just calling it straight. So I lost my parents at an early age. I needed to make sure that, of course, my younger ones would actually get to where I was. So at the time, still in secondary school, there were certain luxury that were available to others that were not available to me.

And I knew one thing that the only way for me to access this luxury was actually to study. So I was a bookworm. So the only thing I knew was how to study. I never really kept friends. You wouldn't believe that the first time in my life that I played PS, that's PlayStation was actually years after marriage when I bought it for my children. So many of my mates would play those games, would indulge in so many activities, even in primary school and secondary school.

But hey, I didn't have that luxury. I just knew that the only thing that would actually get me above the waters was to study and then believing in my God. So I did this and that has been my main state.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like our listeners of our episode to focus on in particular?

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: I want to speak across life, without any industry, without any solution area in mind. So fundamentally, you need to be socially aware of who you are. You need to understand that as a man, we are not just elevated animals, we are created to solve problems.

So you need to start out early enough to find out the problems that exist and those problems that resonate with your inbuilt capacity. Now, the capacity may not be well enough. You could have 20% of what you need to solve those problems. So the one lies on you to make sure that you build for the 80% capacity while trying out solutions. So what do I mean? I can't say I want to take care of 100 households if I didn't have the resources to do that.

But I could actually start with a household while taking up courses, learning how people do it, building my business, to have the full capacity where I could even achieve beyond the 100 households.

Then two, you need to be tenacious. You need to be consistent in whatever it is that you do. Because there will always be storms, there will always be criticisms.

Even in this social impact, even as London actually delivers the social impact to communities, you see here a few people doubting, suspecting, why are they doing it? Is there anything in need for them? Is there anything hidden? They are not telling us stuff like that, right? But you need to be considered what you do and find a way to navigate through those criticisms and those challenges, because they will always be there and they should not put you down.

Then of course, finally, you need to have your eye on the ball. What is the ball as a corporate want to make X revenue? Y profits and employees get to Z countries, make T social impact. This should form your daily watch, right? So every day you get to review how close am I to achieving these call-out points? How close am I to getting to my destination?

And then whatever it is that you need to adjust, you adjust. Not forgetting that you have to study some people that have gone ahead of you. They are always models, so get to find out how they did it, how they built their businesses, how they built their social impact, how they actually built their nonprofits for a long term, how they actually delivered and they were trusted. Just as we do the Plunge Smile, we built a trust system where I'll call it a trust foundation, where as you join us as a partner, as you come in, everything is clear to you.

So we need to make sure that this is maintained because this is what actually gives everyone confidence at the end of the day. So even in an organization, your employees, your co-C level staff need to have visibility into what you do, ideas will just come up. And then, of course, achieving your dreams will be a walk in the park.

Stephen Matini Well, Andy, I feel energized after listening to you. So thank you so much for your vision, for your leadership, for your energy, for all the things that I've learned today. Because oftentimes I talk about corporate social responsibility, but you are the embodiment of concepts that sometimes are just, you know, very academic. You really live and breathe this. So thank you so much.

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Stephen. You have a lovely day.

View Details

Chris Marshall is a futurist, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Playfulness Institute. Futurism is not about predicting the future, but it involves looking beneath surface-level events to identify trends that drive seismic changes.

Chris's journey as a futurist highlights the importance of curiosity. In his experience, being multi-passionate and embracing diverse interests is advantageous in a world of rapid change and disruption. A curious mindset fosters resilience and creativity, allowing entrepreneurs to adapt more effectively to uncertain environments.

Our conversation revolves around adapting to change and embracing a multi-dimensional perspective in navigating disruptive environments. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Check Chris Marshall’s Decoding Change: Understanding what the heck is going on, and why we should be optimistic about our future, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#Futurism, #BehavioralScience, #ChrisMarshall, #PlayfulnessInstitute, #AdaptingToChange, #MultiDimensionalPerspective, #DisruptiveEnvironments, #Curiosity, #Entrepreneurship, #Resilience, #Creativity, #Innovation, #FutureTrends, #RapidChange, #DiverseInterests, #CuriousMindset, #Adaptability, #SeismicChanges, #MultiPassionate, #PodcastEpisode #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: My first question for you, which probably would serve a lot of people listening to this episode, is who is a futurist?

Chris Marhsall: So what's a futurist? A futurist basically, it's not sci-fi. It's not predicting the future even, because that's what a lot of people do think it's about. It's kind of we have a crystal ball somehow and go, oh, well, this is going to happen at this date and this time.

The way I approach it is I look at the big drivers, the big trends and megatrends, which are just kind of bringing about seismic change, but often under the surface. So I guess for me, the definition I like to use is that a futurist looks below the surface level events and look to what is happening beneath the surface, which might not be being picked up by mass media and things like that.

And really, when we start to understand that, we start to see that everything is always in flux. Everything's always changing. You know, this isn't new thinking. In fact, Eastern philosophies have talked about this kind of natural law of impermanence for millennia.

Being a futurist, the way I try to look at it is, well, what's the current trend? What's currently powering society? If we're looking at kind of societal philosophy or we're looking at business technology, what's the current trend?

What's the one which is potentially coming in because that's the one that's then maybe going to take over? And then we can build out scenarios around that crossover. And you can also go further out and go, well, actually, what's right at the fringes, what's being developed right at the fringes today? And this has less probability, has less certainty around it.

It makes you aware of what's happening, what might change the world, what might move this market or this group of people or this business or organization. It's a far more scenario-based way of looking at things rather than the typical, let's go back to business and the business plan, which typically has one scenario, and it's normally very, very positive, and I'm going to get 1% of this market share. And hey, Presto, it's an amazing business.

Futures thinking really just tries to bring in the different scenarios and then paint kind of, well, what are the pros and cons? What are the things we need to be aware of in each of those?

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I was also wondering when you realized in your life this passion of yours, because for me happened really, really early on, and I could express it as a passion for patterns. You know I could see patterns in everything. How did you find out this attitude of yours?

Chris Marshall: So I lived in North Wales. I still live in North Wales. Obviously, a few hundred years ago, 1,000 years ago now, the Romans came and kind of conquered Britain. And Welsh roads, they weave in and out. They have a corner every about 30 centimeters. The joke is that there used to be sheep paths. And the Roman roads in contrast are pinned straight. Now, whether this is true or not, my parents told me that this would kind of save travel time and it would stop bandits lurking around a corner and all these kind of things.

And for me, I was always interested in these big shifts that we had these kind of, I'm going to call them scars on the landscape from eras gone by that no longer exist, but they're still visible to us. And so I was fascinated by these big moments of change, kind of pivotal moments or paradigm shifts. That kind of like lay dormant in me for decades.

Obviously, just curious. And I think that's probably the key is I'm a highly curious person. And that sent me down an awful lot of rabbit holes of, you know, kind of if I list the titles of things that I've done. I'm a master distiller. I'm a psychotherapist. I'm a performance coach, a behavioral scientist, a futurist, an investment manager.

What's happened in the last few years is really, I think it was when I was researching for the book "Decoding Change," I realized that all of this life experience, this kind of life of being a multi-passioned person, this highly curious person, actually, they do have crossovers.

They have transferable skills and transferable insights. So for me, it was really just a life of being highly curious and often getting stuck into things which fascinated me, which I found interesting. Some people would just call them distractions from what I was meant to be focusing on. But essentially, over that time, I just found all these different avenues. And then eventually it all came together.

This is maybe going back only maybe seven, eight years into this field that, okay, if we actually add all these together in this kind of beautiful Venn diagram almost, then right at the center is the overlap between all of these things. So that's for me, and I constantly draw on all of those different experiences and skills I've built.

Stephen Matini: Basically, based on what you're saying, you need to have so many different tools to navigate in a way that makes sense. I don't think you were unfocused. You were building your resilience, probably.

Chris Marshall: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, most of my work now not only draws on all those different skills, but helps people promote it in their own lives. And this isn't to say that if you are a highly focused person with one focus, one job, one project, that that's bad. You know, the world needs both types.

But what we've done, I think, in the modern world is promote this kind of idea that we go through school and we continually specialize until we come out with this hyper-focused specialization in this niche area. And that's all we do and all we look at. But as you'll know from your teaching in your own life and seeing this in businesses, when we kind of look for creative solutions, they tend to come from spillovers. So I think Einstein described it as creativity being combinational play.

So this idea of knocking two molecules together which have never met before. And you don't get that very easily when it's just one molecule. It's got nothing to bounce off. So you can get it in a committee, you can get it in a team, you can get it in an organization, but you can also get it in individuals.

And the world we've promoted, I mean, if you even think about how you promote yourself individually, if you're a multi-passion person, the question I hate the most is, what do you do?

I struggle to answer that one because it's like, well, what's your interest? And I'll tell you what's relevant. But the way we've promoted the world, these kind of 30 second, 60-second elevator pitches that we're all told to have, they don't allow for multi-passion people to kind of promote themselves and thrive. In fact, all too often, they're hit back with these ideas of, "You're not focused," or, "You're a jack of all trades," which is kind of this derogatory term for you're not really a master of anything.

But in a world of disruption and change, I actually believe having that multi-passioned mindset, that highly curious one, is a distinct advantage. We haven't had to have it in the last 250 years, and we can dig into why, but we're moving to an era of radical social change, radical disruption.

And if you can't see things from different perspectives, not only do those situations become stress-inducing, anxiety-provoking, you're engulfed in that situation, but you haven't got the skill set and experience to see it from different perspectives. So actually, the multi-passion mindset is extraordinarily important as we move into a disruption, disruptive era, which I believe we are.

Stephen Matini: And I think probably of all people, what you're saying is something that may resonate very deeply with entrepreneurs. They have to wear so many different hats. And sometimes your budget is just nothing, and you have to make the best out of nothing. Is that maybe the reason that you enjoy working with entrepreneurs?

Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's creatives in general. So I've kind of founded two different companies around, not specifically entrepreneurs, but multi-passioned people, curious people, creatives, whatever label people want to kind of give themselves.

And the first was a company called the PPM method or “pause play move” method. It's a decision-making framework that allows people to pause more, be more playful, and we can dig into why those two things are kind of highly relevant.

But yeah, it teaches people to deal with this constant bombardment of wearing multiple hats, being pulled in different directions. And if you look at kind of stress levels, burnout rates, then entrepreneurs are normally pretty high on the top of the table. So there's a downside to being multi-passionate as well. And that's why also as a psychotherapist, I set up a company called The Refuel Clinic.

So it's a small psychotherapy practice specifically for multi-passioned and creative people, because we experience different sets of burnout and stress and anxiety because we're constantly flicking between tasks, we're constantly wearing different hats, we're constantly being pulled in different directions. We're normally behind because we're not that well organized. And so firefighting as we go. But yeah, absolutely.

I find it an incredible group of people to work amongst and with because it's my tribe of other people who are creative and insightful and innovative in their nature.

Stephen Matini: You know what I just realized? You said past play a move. I did not realize this, but the tagline of my podcast, you know pity party over is a pause, learn and move on. You know So maybe I'm a little bit of Chris, but I love yours more, I have to say. I love the word “play.” Why you picked that word of all possible words?

Chris Marshall: This was kind of, again, some research into what makes us resilient. At the time, one of the avenues I'd kind of dive down, I'd set up a micro distillery in the UK. This was 2014. The reason being was essentially, I was working in an investment management space. I wanted to do something a little bit more creative. There is quite a lot of creativity within investment management, but I wanted something more tangible.

And I was starting to notice this trend of people wanting things which were authentic, that they were artisan, that they were small batch, you know all these kind of things. I nearly opened a brewery and then I found out I was gluten intolerant, so I can't drink beer. And I thought, well, that's not the best company really to own, is it? So I set up a distillery because they start in similar ways. And I've always loved chemistry. And it's really just a big boy's chemistry set with a nice ending. You get to drink the product.

And at the same time, I was obviously still head of investment strategy, a fund manager. I was doing research into behavioral science, particularly around resiliency. And this is where it becomes a little bit embarrassing, because while I was doing academic research on resiliency and mental toughness, I actually burnt out.

And the irony for those who don't really understand those concepts is that those mindsets, states, personality types, however you want to construct them, they are meant to protect you from the very thing I was experiencing.

I realized kind of lying on my back in hospital for three days, you know I did a pretty good job of burnout because you know that's if you're driven and you're committed, that's what you do.

And I'd come from a world of professional sport as a young child. So I raced on the British ski team up until about age 17, 18. Within there, we talk about mental toughness a lot, but the construct of mental toughness and resiliency within elite sport is very different to within a business and an organization.

But the mistake we've done is we've just transported it from elite sport and gone, this is what entrepreneurs need to do. But with an elite sport or any sport, you tend to have both short timeframes of when you're competing. So you might be mentally tough for a day and then you can chill out or let's extend this. You might have to show resiliency for a season and then you have an off-season. Being an entrepreneur, you don't get that. Often you don't even get that while you sleep. I was kind of looking at this and going, "Okay, I think we've actually got things wrong here.

There's a lot that we can take from the mental toughness research and resiliency research into entrepreneurship and organization psychology and things like that. There's a missing piece. And the missing piece is within organizations. And as an entrepreneur, it's constant. It becomes chronic rather than these more acute periods where we have to be mentally strong. So I was then looking for what's the missing piece. And for me, I stumbled across research on adult playfulness.

And adult playfulness is so under-researched, so underrepresented. I mean, it's overlooked. When you kind of tell somebody as an adult to be playful, particularly if they're in a professional setting, they tend to kind of look at you as if you've lost your head a little bit. You can see what they're thinking. They're thinking, yeah, kids play. I'm a professional. I make the joke that as kids, we're second nature and we're very playful and creative.

And then when we become an adult, somewhere along the lines, who knows quite what happens, but there's a defining moment when we go, okay, well, I'm going to be a professional and that means I need to be stressed and serious. When we actually look at playfulness, what it brings us is incredible. I mean, the benefits of cognition, of thought, of creativity, of curiosity, of collaboration, we can keep going and adding on all these things that happen when we're playful.

And I'd actually go further and say, if we even draw on lessons from the animal kingdom, playfulness is not only an adaptive response. So if we meet a situation where we're failing or it's not going our way, play is a way of exploring new options without being too hung up on the outcome. It's actually when we consider it, it's, I believe, the optimal state of being human.

When we're playful, we can think with like this swiftness and clarity. We can collaborate with others. We're not rigid. We're not closed-minded. We're open-minded. We're happy to kind of be adaptable and flexible. And so the challenge for us all is how do we cultivate playfulness?

And that was really what led me to both the poorest play move and the play part as a middle pillar in the PPM method. It was stumbling across this research and it was really just trying to find out what was lacking. Why was I burning out?

Why was I lying in hospital when I was a researcher on mental toughness and resiliency? I mean, it was ridiculous. And it was finding that missing part because if you take the mental toughness or hardiness construct, you have commitment challenge as kind of these two big pillars.

But really, as an entrepreneur, if you're very high in those kind of if you're self-challenged, high commitment, then essentially what you do is you just bury yourself in the ground eventually.

You need something to break that and to actually make it more fluid and fun and be prepared to ports. So for me, you know again, how I typically describe this is we have to go back to kind of our stress response. And when we start looking at stress, we start understanding stress isn't just about a situation we find ourselves in. Stress is the total load, if you like, on our body from our behaviors, what we consume, the environment we're in, you know all of these different things.

And our stress response is incredible. So when we meet a situation that we detect as threat, we're not detecting safety and comfort anymore. If we go back far enough, it would have been a lion at the cave door. It would have been an angry tribesman from the tribe in the next valley across. What happens is our body goes through this incredible shift to prepare us for what might be imminent physical danger.

Now, what's happening in our modern society is the email that comes in with the angry tone, the message that goes, "Where's this report?" Or, "That report you sent was rubbish," or whatever it might be. It's also triggering our stress response. And our body is reacting the same way as it would have when we were cave-dwelling Neolithic men, but we don't require the same physical change. We don't need for our cortisol to spike and cut off our prefrontal cortex or limit access to it.

We don't need our heart rate to increase and digestion to actually kind of take a pause so that we're physically ready to tackle a line. But that's still what's happening. And the issue in our modern society is it's happening so frequently that this stress response, which is amazing if it only goes on and off very quickly, is we're keeping that stress buzzer jammed on.

The link with playfulness is built into this whole stress response is when we see stress increase, and I want you to think about stress not as either on or off, but as a scale. So level five might be that you're actually past fight flight at level five. You're completely depressed, immobilized. It's freeze response, an animal playing dead, essentially, that we can link this with things like depression. That's a highly stressed state, but low energy.

At four, this is where you're ready just to punch anybody. 'Cause it's just like, they've got in your way and they've just said something, which is really annoying. You hopefully don't act out on that, but within you, you are ready to fight or run away.

And so I want you to think about it as a scale, 'cause most people don't live at level one, which is joy and calm. They live probably at like level two and a half, sometimes three, and they're easily spiked to level four. So you see this in road rage because they're detecting all these threats and they're easily just moving up that stress scale, but harder to actually move back down to level one. And again, kind of bringing this back to playfulness.

When you're in the higher stages, you can't be playful, because being at the highest stages, your body is now hyper-focused on the threat. It's hyper-focused on the outcome. It's hyper-focused on understanding everything about that single situation and it becomes completely engrossed in it. Engulfed is probably a better word. This is where emotions can completely consume us.

Playfulness happens at the lower stress levels. Stress levels one, maybe just as we come into level two. As soon as you go two and a half, three, you can't access it. And it's got evolutionary properties. If a lion was coming at you at the cave, the last thing you want to be is playful.

You don't want to be curious. You don't want to be wondering, oh, well, I wonder what it had for breakfast, or I wonder what shampoo it uses in its mane. You want to just be either kind of preparing for this run of your life or tackling it if you're protecting other people. Those are the choices and your body completely prepares you for that.

So playfulness has to do with stress. Now, as I said, the issue in our modern society, we can look at data on this from stress and anxiety and burnout and everything else. Since the '80s, something has been going fundamentally wrong in society. The rising level of stress, the rising level of anxiety shows that collectively, we are no longer coping with the environment that we're in for whatever reason. And actually there's a whole myriad of reasons and sometimes it's very individual.

But on aggregate, the collective is no longer coping as well. And I believe that we just need a new way to actually navigate highly disruptive environments. Since the '80s, the world's been disruptive. And I think from this point on, it's going to become even more disruptive. If we're not coping already, then we need something drastically new in the way that we think, the way that we compose ourselves, the way that we deal with our stress response, the way that we actually come to behaviors and relationships and everything else so that we can manage ourselves so much better.

But nothing is being presented. That was the whole reason why I developed this PPM method, because I could see there was something. Even me who understood all this stuff, I was still falling foul of the environment I was in.

So playfulness, yeah, has so much to do with stress levels. And unfortunately, the environment we're in and the ways that we've been taught to think and behave and calm ourselves, coping strategies, they aren't good enough anymore. They aren't strong enough.

Stephen Matini: I think that what happens probably to everyone, but for sure to entrepreneurs and definitely to small entrepreneurs is that you are ambitious. You want to achieve things, you have all kinds of different stuff, and it's very easy to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And our environment is loaded with information. It's going way too fast. In the meantime, as you know, way better than I do, our brain has not evolved as rapidly. And so we are in overload.

You pointed out these many, many important things, playfulness. You pointed out the importance of being aware that we are in this particular moment in time of great, great, great change. And then you talked about the fact that there are so many stimuli that we are constantly in this state of alertness.

And to me, you are a positive person. And I would say most people these days feel very scared. So the question to you is, why are you positive despite everything?

Chris Mashall: I am a positive person. You know I have my own doubts. I think that's the important thing is when you're looking out to the future, there is a lot of fear and anxiety. And I think we need to bring this back. Let's join this up to the conversation we've just had, because what you're doing with your body in your kind of exercise regime is what we need to also do cognitively. We need to shift how we're cognitively looking after ourselves. The physical body can help cognition, absolutely, but also the way that we think helps cognition.

And coming back to this environment of increasing stress. Now, one of the key things that your brain and my brain hates and everybody else listening to this podcast, we all have different windows of tolerance, we can cope with, some people can cope with a lot, some people can cope with a little bit. But the fundamental thing that our brains hate is uncertainty. In fact, our brains will do almost anything, even lie to ourselves, to create certainty because uncertainty is the biggest threat to this organism.

And if we really think about what the brain's job is, it's not to perform amazing kind of calculations to put rockets into space. It's to keep this organism alive. That's fundamentally what it's there for. We've used it for other things and it's amazing. But fundamentally, it's to keep us alive. And it can't do that job if it doesn't understand what the environment is, if there's a lot of uncertainty around it.

So when we have disruptive change, we have tons of uncertainty. We have tons of different scenarios and everything else. And as that stress level increases, because that's essentially one of the roles of that stress response is to give our body energy, our brain energy, to go find more information, to solve this problem of uncertainty, to find, well, what is the outcome? Because I need to know the outcome. Even if it's terrible, we'd rather have an outcome which is terribly bad in our head than sit with no outcome at all.

Now, also what happens with the stress response, and I promise I will come back to optimism. What happens with the stress response is as we become more stressed, we become more pessimistic. And that's quite obvious why, because we're detecting threat. We're not looking for optimism. We're looking for things which are going to hurt us. That's what the stress response is. It's an energized, mobilized state of finding the things which are dangerous.

So if we add together all of these things, higher disruption, higher levels of stress, higher levels of uncertainty, is it really too surprising that we see rising levels of anxiety and fear about the future? Absolutely not. Add in that, we really do have some hurdles to overcome. I completely agree with that. But we've got this additional layer of fear on top. And that additional layer, I believe, is psychological. And you can actually trace this back to other time periods through history where it's been radical change.

And actually, there's been an equal fear within society. I mean, let's take the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites, the group of bandit-like people who were reasonably in their own head, kind of burning down factories because it was taking away their livelihoods. And whenever we kind of have these massive moments, that there's always this additional fear and anxiety. So we have that.

Yes, we have hurdles to overcome, but I think the biggest lesson I learned from writing “Decoding Change” was in the research, one of the things that stood out, and perhaps even the prominent thing which stood out is us humans, when we're at our best, when we learn to pause and play, actually, when we're at our best, we are the most incredible, creative, innovative creatures to have ever walked this earth. We are adaptable, we are flexible, we are collaborative, we're cooperative.

When we're not at our best, we're rigid, closed-minded. And so my optimism comes from seeing through history how humans as a species have walked out of situations that we should never have walked out of. And if you bring that forward, and there is a kind of a hope that, you know, some of the, me and a very, very small part of this, helping people basically find their best decision making to reduce their stress, to unblock emotional blockages and everything else, that hopefully, collectively, if we can get towards our best, our optimal state, that we can embrace those human qualities.

And what happens when we do that is just stunning. We can't even forecast what might be. I mean, again, come back to the Industrial Revolution. All the Luddites could see was that their industry was being taken away. Let's fast forward this to AI. Countless careers and jobs are on the line. If AI manages to do half of what it is supposed to be able to do, we're looking at that from, oh my word, 50% of the world's going to be unemployed. And if there wasn't any progress or innovation or creativity, absolutely.

But what happens is we are innovative. Whole new industries pop up. I mean, just look at some of the industries which have kind of gone by the wayside. There used to be people with a long stick who used to come, they were called tapper uppers, used to walk along the streets to wake people up in the morning because there weren't clocks, there weren't alarm clocks. And it was a big career. You could have that as a lifelong career. And there are countless other careers and industries like that.

Every wave of technological progress, every paradigm shift in cultural philosophy or natural environment absolutely changes the status quo. But as we said right at the start of this podcast, there is no such thing as the status quo. It's always constantly in flux. And what we're trying to do when we're stressed is go, we want to keep this piece of ground we're standing on exactly the same. We can't do it anyway, even if we wanted to.

That's where my optimism comes from, is seeing what humans can be and do when they're at their best. It's not a naive optimism. I completely agree we have lots of things to sort out. The shifting natural environment will certainly be one of the biggest things, which makes many, many changes to how humans live and where we live and how we migrate. Technology will change the industrial and career landscape, no doubt about it. We also have the shift in cultural philosophy, which is stunning at the moment.

Normally, if you look at kind of tribes and communities, elders pass down their wisdom to the younger generations. What we're actually seeing for the first time in human history, as far as I can see anyway, is that the younger generation is influencing the older generation just as much as the older generation is influencing the younger. And we have this kind of collective wisdom of different perspectives. And it's bringing friction. Absolutely. It's bringing friction at the moment because it's different.

But if we can embrace collective wisdom, then all of a sudden we start to bring in so many different perspectives. And this is where the diversity piece, you know diversity and inclusion piece is so important. It's not about box ticking at a company. It's about making your organization or your team the most collaborative and creative and innovative group of people you possibly can. You can't do that if you select just from one type or group of person.

Stephen Matini: By listening to you, your insights, your energy, my stress level is going down. You do have this soothing feeling that, okay, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. I'm not as weird as I thought I was. If we could have in this moment, you and I talking, if we could invite a couple of people from the past, a couple of great minds from the past, who would you invite? Who would you like to have here with us?

Chris Marshall: I think I'd have to go with the physicist, Richard Feynman, to start. That's probably a controversial one because he was fundamental behind the hydrogen bomb. But where Feynman for me gets things right is in this idea, what we should be looking at from learning is how everything is connected. And when you start to actually see things clearly, you start to see how things move together and how you can transfer skills from one to another.

And it's a far more kind of nothing is thrown out in his way of thinking. Everything is kind of brought in as a kind of, oh, well, let's kind of it was actually a very playful way of thinking that, oh, well, okay, that's new to me. How does that fit with the current model rather than I have to be very defensive and throw it out because it doesn't conform to my understanding right now?

Stephen Matini: Well, you know there's a lot of people that I really admire, and it saddens me to think that I would never meet them. They're no longer here. But one person that I've always been so curious because it's so veneered would be Leonardo, you know Da Vinci.

Talking about someone who could multitask! But it would be amazing to hear his point of view. It's like, hey, look at all this. What do you think? He was such a disruptor for your time. That would be one that I would love to.

Chris Marshall: I had like three in my head. One would be definitely Sir Ernest Shackleton. So actually in the TEDx Talk, which I know you've watched, he kind of features as my kind of the person I've put up there as having this playful attitude in the most ridiculous of situations.

And for those who don't know his story, Sir Ernest Shackleton was the captain of the Endurance. He set out on a mission to basically cross Antarctica, thousands miles of pack ice. I mean, we're going back to like wooden boats here. It's a ridiculous feat, thousands miles of sailing through pack ice. And they were one day's landing away from their kind of intended landing and disaster struck and the temperatures dropped and the ship became pinned in the ice.

And what people don't realize is not only was there the world's most incredible rescue mission, 800 miles in a small lifeboat that isn't designed to go ocean going travel. But they spent 10 months on the ice before this. It's incredible. And he embodied this idea of playfulness, even in that situation. In fact, when he was talking about how he selected his crew, there's this incredible quote from him that talks about withstanding the agonies of thirst with laughter and song.

Now, he used the word optimism. And in the TEDx talk, I argued that if he was living in our modern day, that would have been playfulness. Withstanding agonies of thirst with laughter and song, that's not optimism. That's not you looking going, "Oh, isn't it a nice day?" That's completely framing and reframing a situation, which is terrible, which is life-threatening in its literal sense.

Stephen Matini: Have you seen any video of Mikaela Schiffrin?

Chris Marshall: Yes.

Stephen Matini: She has a series on YouTube, “Moving Along,” I love her and I love her attitude. I love how hardworking she is, and at the same time, humble and always curious. You know What a phenomenal athlete.

Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And interestingly, I saw reading a piece the other week on her, because obviously I kind of keep up to date with the World Cup Circuit. And she said she found inspiration from Taylor Swift's playbook.

And I found this really interesting because if you look at Taylor Swift's playbook, whatever your view of her music and her as a person doesn't really matter, is she's been able to consistently generate music, which resonates with the zeitgeist of the time and just get this incredible following. You know, I would put her up there in the likes of kind of other artists who've managed to do this over multi-decade careers like Elton John.

And Schiffrin kind of was citing this, just saying how not only Taylor Swift has been this inspiration and her albums always seem to get her through whatever emotional crisis is unfolding in her life, but also just this constant adaptability and flexibility. And that's really what we're talking about.

If you want to remain relevant in a changing environment, you can't just go, okay, well, I'm charting a course from A to B and I'm going in a straight line. It's got to constantly have this awareness of what's going on and adaptability and flexibility.

But we don't often talk about this or even teach it. And so yeah, I kind of bringing it back to what we were talking about. Absolutely incredible career that Schiffrin's had. But I just found it fascinating how she was finding inspiration from another artist. They're very similar ages. I think they're both about 33. And so kind of going through these life-changing moments almost together in a virtual way, almost, but also just this whole adaptability and flexibility piece that Taylor Swift has shown.

Stephen Matini: Now, because of the podcast, I interview a lot of colleagues, but I would say that I get most of my inspirations from completely different industries, not necessarily my industry. Like I watch a lot of interviews and Taylor, you know Taylor Swift, I'm not a Swiftie in a sense that I don't listen to her music, but I watch a lot of interviews of her. I love her as a director. I love how incredibly kind and eloquent and precise she is, how gracious she is.

I get inspired by all kinds of stuff, and kind of what we said before. You must have that cross-pollination. I was sharing this yesterday with the guest. You know I did another episode that the idea of doing this podcast with a lot of colleagues of mine came because for years and years and years, I watched a lot of makeup videos.

How incredibly cool the fact that all these kids, they do collaborations. So technically they are competitors, but they do all these collaborations. They review each other's products. The intention is to make this industry better. It's like, I wonder if this can be done in my own industry. And now that I've been doing this podcast for two years, I love it. It just gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure to work with my colleagues, you know to learn from them, to build something together.

Chris Marshall: Yeah. And that's one of the incredible things. So within Decoding Change, I was obviously looking at these big driving forces. And I stumbled across what I call information revolutions. And I think this is kind of really nice for the point that you're making there. So information revolutions are, they don't happen very often. So technological revolutions happen every about 50 to 60 years.

That's been quite consistent since the start of the Industrial Revolution. So the last one was the semiconductor in 1971. Hey, Presto, we're talking about AI and machine learning and robotics, 53 years on. But information revolutions happen at far longer cycles. So the first one that I'm going to cite is the kind of Guttenberg press, that all of a sudden knowledge was able to be shared not person to person, but freely shared by transporting a book.

And if we combine that with a transport mechanism of the great age of exploration, all of a sudden we had the printed press sailing around the world because we had Columbus and Diaz and Vasco Gamma, all kind of going on.

What happened is there was this massive change in cultural philosophy with that. I mean, it wasn't all positive. There was some pretty dark periods, but it was the ability as you bring more voices to the table, as you bring more philosophies to the table, you get this incredible kind of incubator of creativity.

Same thing happened when we got to, we could cite a few things, but I'm gonna use the telephone, partly because we just overlook the telephone. None of us even use the telephone anymore. I mean, if you think before the telephone, before they laid those cables into continentally, transatlanticly, before that, we were essentially relying on ships with letters. Steam ships kind of made it far more consistent the crossing from sailing ships, but still you're talking several days to get a letter to the states.

And okay, there were a few quicker mechanisms, but for the general public, that was the only way. Then all of a sudden, the telephone comes along. And not only is there a richness in the information, I can hear your voice and the tone of it and the sentiment of what you're saying, but it's instant. And you can reply to me instantly, not three weeks later. I mean, it's bonkers when you really think about it. We're at this next age, the Internet started this next information revolution and AI accelerates it.

And all of this stuff, I mean, even the way we're recording this podcast, you're sat in a completely different location in the world. Yeah, I'm speaking to you as if you're sat on the other side of the table. And the richness of data, we've not just got voice, we've got visual. And what happens with all of this is we get more voices around the table as long as we embrace it. And that's come back to why we need to learn to pause and play, is because we become open-minded and more collaborative.

But when we learn those skills, we can accelerate businesses, we can accelerate organizations, we can accelerate teams and everything else because we bring so many more views and technology enables that.

Information revolutions are fascinating. This is one of the reasons why I say we're at such a disruptive point in time. It's not just about AI, it's not just about natural environment. We're in the midst of so many different trends and mega trends.

Stephen Matini: Well, Chris, I have learned so much in this hour with you. I truly believe you are really special. And I don't mean it to flatter you, you know, just pointlessly, but I think I really, truly believe you are very special. Everything you say resonates beautifully. And I love the way that I feel now. I really feel calmer. You're very, very special. Thank you so much for this time together.

Chris Marshall: Oh, well, thank you so much for that compliment. And thank you for having me on and rabbiting on about my stories and research.

View Details

In the evolving post-COVID word, the leadership paradigm is changing to keep up with the evolving requirements of the new generations and a fast changing technology.

In Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s lastest book, Leadership for Current Times, empathy emerges as a crucial trait for effective leadership, which requires a genuine willingness to understand and connect with others’ perspectives.

Dr. Goldvarg also underscores the practical benefits of strategic thinking and foresight in leadership. By developing skills in anticipating future trends and challenges, leaders can make informed decisions and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Please check Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s Liderazgo Para Los Tiempos Actuales: Nuevos Paradigmas Y Habilidades De Coaching, soon available in English. Use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#AdaptingtoChange, #Alygn, #BusinessPodcast, #ChangeManagement, #CoachingSkills, #COVID-19, #DamianGoldvarg, #Emotional Intelligence, #Empathy, #HybridWork, #Leadership, #LeadershipDevelopment, #LeadershipPodcast, #LeadershipTrends, #MentalHealth, #OrganizationalPsychology, #PityPartyOver, #PodcastInterview, #Post-COVID, #StephenMatini, #TeamCollaboration, #Work-LifeBalance

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: As a collective society, we've been talking about COVID and all the ramifications of COVID. And I think we are definitely realizing that the post COVID is probably just as harsh as the actual pandemic. There are a lot, a lot of different ramifications. And you decided to write a book about it. So I was wondering how the idea came about.

Damian Goldvarg: Well, I started working in a book on leadership. So I have been training leaders for more than 30 years. And I wanted to write one on coaching skills for leaders.

So I wrote already eight books, was author of books on coaching skills for coaches, mentor coaching, supervision in English and Spanish, nd this time, I wanted to write a book on coaching skills that I could use in my trainings; When I train coaching skills, I can use that book as a manual, but also my colleagues who benefit from it.

I thought they can use that also with their clients when they are coaching leaders because they had all exercises and activities. So I thought I would be sharing that.

I started writing the book and then COVID hit. And then I kept working with the book. And then I was thinking, well, things are changing now. So I think what about working on how COVID is affecting the work and the leadership?

I started looking at working in a hybrid environment, working virtually, talking about the mental health sequels from that, how people are affecting the level of stress that they had during COVID and after COVID. I think that there were a lot of emotional experiences that leaders needed to deal with and being overwhelmed by their own experiences, but experiences of their teams.

The idea with this book was to answer, okay, how leadership is changing and what leaders need to pay attention to. And I think that the leaders need to be more focused on these formative relationships and also developing coaching skills, being more coaches.

Some are already doing that. The ones that are not doing that needs to look at it because you know they're going to get behind in terms of their requirements for the new generations.

And then it's interestingly because when I was getting ready to send the book to the publisher, I sent the book to a few people to give me feedback. And several of them from medium don't have the word COVID or post-COVID in the title of the book, because people are tired of it, are burned out. They don't want to hear anything about it too cold.

So I said, OK, so let's go for the third name, Because first at the beginning, we have a leadership coaching skill for leaders. The second title was post COVID leadership. And now the final title is in Spanish, and the book is totally translated, and I am working on the edition of that.

It's called “Leadership in Current Times,” What is required right now, what is right now in this moment, what is required for leaders. I decided to take from the name post-COVID because out of the reaction of people were telling me, "That's it." I said, "Okay." But it's interesting, Stephen, because I hear from some people that they like it to be reminded that it's post-COVID, et cetera. But you know what? I had COVID for a second time last month. So it's not gone. It's still around.

I have a friend of mine that I was talking to him yesterday. He has been very sick, even though he had vaccines. And he was one of the most careful persons that I have ever met around COVID and finally took for him too once. And there is a lot of more cases now in LA County where I live.

Stephen Matini: So when you introduce these concepts to your own clients, usually, how do they react?

Damian Goldvarg: It makes sense to them. I work globally, and because I am originally from Argentina, I work in Spanish a lot. And the Latino cultures tends to be compared to the American culture or the European cultures, a little bit more authoritative in terms of having more distance, power distance between leaders and their reports.

It's more like, and also have a tradition from Italy, Spain, the father figure, and this parental, and the resistance, and the disrespect to the authority. It's a different kind of relationship. And many times, these leaders are not very collaborative in their approach. They feel responsible.

They feel responsible when they want to take care of things, and they may not engage as much as the colleagues, as peers. There is this distance in hierarchies that we see that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So sometimes that for leaders who feel that it's their responsibility that they need to make their decisions, they don't engage and include people in decision-making. They have, I think, the hardest time to listen to these ideas. And sometimes it's really, really in their system. So it's not easy to change the mindset. So I try not to force anything.

As a coach, part of my job is to challenge mindsets and being patient because different people need different time to look at things from different angles. And at the end of the day, everybody has the right to look at reality the way that they want. I have an invitation and the metaphor that I use is the glasses.

I said, okay, you know, your sunglasses are blue, you see everything blue, are you willing to take your sunglasses for a minute and put one that are green and see if you're willing to look differently with different color things. And sometimes people are willing and sometimes they are not, but it's their decision.

Stephen Matini: What usually does the trick, meaning those who actually shift, you know, or somehow they start wearing a different pair of sunglasses, you know, tinted differently, what helps them making the shift?

Damian Goldvarg: Sometimes if everything is going very well and they're being very successful, and they do not have any reason to think, why aren't we going to change? We're very successful. We have done things like that.

If people have a challenge and suddenly they have not been as successful, they are not selling as much and there are a lot of complaints or there is conflict crisis. Then when people are realizing, okay, we are not going to keep being successful with past practices. So we need to look new ways of doing things. So they've been forced by the market or the circumstances, you know, because of economy and the changes.

There are some jobs because of AI. Some jobs are being redundant. And I'm telling my colleagues and they don't like to listen to it. But they said, you know, eventually in the future, I also will replace some of the work of some cultures. And so you need to be prepared. You cannot be saying, no, I don't want to listen about it. I don't want to say.

No, it's like, okay, we are supposed to be open to what's happening in the world, and we need to have a dubious responsibility. Being on top of technology advances, trends. So I do believe that we can also show the trends to the leaders, and they may choose not to pay attention.

Stephen Matini: In your opinion, if someone is not that empathetic, can the person actually transition and to become more empathic, which is one of the key features of the post-COVID leadership?

Damian Goldvarg: Definitely. I do believe it's possible, but the person needs to be willing to go there. Like, for example, what I do in my work with my clients is I start with the 360, where people receive feedback from the boss or other people in the organization, peers, and deliver reports, sometimes also customers, other third parties.

So I collected data and I shared with them the perceptions that people have about them. And sometimes the perception may be that they are not empathic enough, that they are not showing that they're understanding. And sometimes leaders say, okay, I want to work on that. So they make a commitment, intentionally, decide to do it. And sometimes everybody feels like they are not being empathic and it's too bad, their problem.

They can still not be empathic, but still they care in their heart. They do care about people, not that they do not care, but it's difficult for them to put themselves in the shoes of other people, but they may not, they don't have the ability to even realize that they are doing that. And when you point it out, and when you share that with them, not everybody is willing to accept it and integrate it and work on it. It's also different levels of maturity.

At the end of the day, I don't think any of them, in my experience, mean bad. I don't think, if not, they are bad people. If not, they are bad. Is that some people may or may not have been able to develop over life these skills? So they may have good intentions.

And I do believe also what in my experience is based on generational issues, the older, the more difficulties they have to adapt to the new trends and the new tendencies and being willing to listen because they have a lot of experience and they have been successful and they know what they've done, they know what they know.

When I train coaches, you know part of my job is to train coaches and supervisors and team coaches, I use a model where I tell them that there are things that we know that we know, things we know that we don't know, but there are things that we don't know that we don't know.

I got a PhD in Organizational Psychology, so I know a lot about organizations because that's my area of expertise. I don't know, for example, Chinese. If I want, I can go and learn. There are things that may be very difficult for me to learn, but I still can put effort. But then there are areas in our life that we do not know that we don't know. So in this area, when I ask, what do you think is there?

What do you think is there, Stephen, in the area that you don't know that you don't know? You're going to answer the question. In the area that you don't know that you don't know, the way that you may answer is nothing yet, because there is not something there that you don't know that you don't know.

But because there is nothing there is a lot of opportunities there. But the first element is to ask yourself, what I may not know that I don't know. So how do I get there with my clients in coaching? It's like, okay, what do you think is going on? And they answer to you. And then I ask, what else? And they answered.

And then what else? And then the client said, I don't know. And I said, okay, take your time. And what else? So suddenly, something that is not in that awareness, they start going and exploring and going deeper.

And I use a metaphor of the iceberg, whatever people coaching to explore that are underlying beliefs, emotion. So you start going deeper and deeper and to say, OK, what else? And what else? And then you can start making new connections. So that is one of the ways to be aware that there are things that you don't know that you don't know that you want to discover.

But usually the paradigm that we live, we don't do that. In our paradigm, usually we have things we know and things we don't know. We don't even realize that there are things we don't know that we don't know.

And that worked really well for my father, who for many years, he knew everything. And I was able to convince him to go for coaching training. And I follow him and my mother, both of them are psychologists. So I follow them to become a psychologist like them. And then I convinced them that they followed me to become coaches. And it did change the way that my father communicated.

In my perspective, this is what I see, what is very difficult to say things are like this, like many people say, OK, things are like this, because it's for them like this, but they don't realize that it's their perspective. And there are other perspectives that can be valid. You may not agree with them, but there are other possibilities, and there are other perspectives on our perspective, and it's just ours.

So that's really changed and transformed the relationships. So why I'm going to that, why I give you this answer, because we are going back to your question, really, how do you work with people who don't want to or are willing or open to go to the empathy?

So with this model, you can invite them to see what they are not seeing. So maybe what they're not seeing is how much pain they may be causing to people because they are not being empathetic. They may not be aware of that.

Stephen Matini: As you were talking, another thing that came to mind is the notion that the importance of having people, it could be a coach, it could be sometimes a psychotherapist, people that help you making the transition.

Somehow I have this distinctive perception that the whole area of mental well-being is not just a nice thing to say or something you should give to employees. It really is a thing. You know, it should not be underestimated. If it's not dealt correctly, it can have disastrous consequences.

And I think that everyone is slowly realizing how difficult this moment is. You know, it's super difficult on youngsters. It's difficult on everyone. Sometimes you find out about what you don't know through the help of someone who can gently guiding you there.

Damian Goldvarg: Yeah, that's a reason why it's so important to have somebody to work in your life, a therapist, a coach, the professional who can help you to see what you're not seeing and to support you in your endeavors. So I believe that we may have good partners or friends who can also be supportive on that, but it's not the same because they also have their own agendas.

But when you work with a professional therapist or coach or mentor that helped you to, I would say, develop that well-being and also to have clarity in terms of your goals. It provides support too. I believe at the end of the day is to have a life that you enjoy, that you love your life. And what do you need to do to really love your life? I do work with two supervisors. So I use supervision as my work.

And I also have a mastermind group. So in this mastermind group is a group of colleagues that we meet and we support each other with our goals and activities. And I have friends and I have my partner, but I also look for spaces just to look at the work.

And when you spend the time dealing with your therapist or with a coach, looking at your work, looking at your life, and that allows you to stop, analyze things, and make some decisions that you may not do if you keep going on and on and on and on without stopping and reflecting.

So I do believe that this is part of when I train coaches to talk about how we live our life in a mechanistic way, like work in the morning, special tea, have breakfast, have a routine. And then at the end of the day, you brush your teeth again. I say, oh, I can't believe it. It went so fast.

And then the weekend comes and you say, okay, it's Monday again. How is that possible? You remember when the weekend? And then the holidays come and say, oh my God, it's Christmas, unbelievable.

So you leave your lesson in the way that we live with so much going on and so many routines, we may sometimes lose track of breathing, spending time in the here and now, enjoying the present, looking at our dissociating ourselves. And this is what I do in supervision when I train supervisors in coaching is you separate yourself and you look at the work you're doing as a coach in supervision.

And I use that idea in life in coaching too and in our work, in different places where it's super vision, you disassociate yourself, you look at yourself. And what do you see? Are you enjoying what you are seeing? Do you think it's what you want? But there is a mismatch and not alignment between what you want for your life and how you are living your life. And that's, as you know, one of the key elements in coaching is people coming to coaching because they are not happy with their lives.

There is no alignment between their values, what is important to them and how they are working or where they are working. So these are areas and opportunities. And I do believe that to have a better world, just being a little bit more idealistic, having a better world for everybody, to the extent that we have more level of satisfaction. Satisfaction means you are meeting your needs and your needs are not only we can go with the hierarchy of Maslow categories of what I will need.

But after you have your basics covered, full room, job to pay everything that you need after you cover your basic needs, them belonging, self-realization, the opportunity to grow and learn and maximize your potential and have dreams. And so I do believe that it's important that we also stop and spend time looking at that.

Stephen Matini: In terms of needs, relationships really take center stage in this moment. You were referring the importance of really nurturing the relationship that you have with yourself. And this is something that I see a lot of people acknowledging the importance of coming together in a world that seems to have become so transactional, you know, mechanistic, as you said, instead of to find out how it is important to be human with other humans.

When people, I don't know if it ever happened to you, but people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, the relationship with myself is important, but I don't have time. You know, it's so difficult to have all these things to do. How do you respond to them?

Damian Goldvarg: I tell people that we do have choices. So we choose. I was talking to my friend yesterday and he has COVID and he was pretty sick, even though he had the vaccines and everything. And I was telling him, "Okay, as a friend, just take care of yourself. Just focus on your healing, focus on yourself."

And he said, "No, I cannot do that because I have so much work that if I don't do the work that I need to do, it's going to pile up. And then when I get to do the work, I'm going to be so stressed out that I would rather don't let that to happen." And I didn't argue with him. As I let go, that was his mindset. He was more worried about not having too much work later. That was more important to him than taking full care of his health.

So at the end, that was his choice. But I was thinking when I got COVID, I stopped everything. I just let everything go. It's just time for me. It's time for healing. Time to get better. So then later, when I am better, I will take care of everything that needs to be taken care of. So this is what I wanted to tell him, but I don't think he was interested. So we also need to listen and be prepared. I cannot impose my idea on him. He was telling me that, and he's very convinced about that.

So that was not my time to challenge him. And he had told me in the past that he really didn't want to be challenged. So, you know, you know the kind of client would say, okay, challenge me. I want to see what I am not seeing. He has taught me in the path that he would rather, when he makes decisions, he doesn't want to be challenged. So okay, I let go.

But I do believe that sometimes, again, we don't know what we don't know. So the way that I see it, what you're not seeing is that he needs to take care of himself first, be completely healthy. And then when he's healthy, he do whatever he needs to do.

And he's late with some of his work in not the end of the world. What I like to do is ask my clients, if you look at the situation from five years from now, how will you see it? Because it will give perspective, like fulfilling yourself, looking yourself in the future. Sometimes we realize that what is so important now, if we're looking from here in five years, it will not be as important. It's like I used to have a partner who never, ever went absent to his job. He was always going to work. He was a teacher.

So he didn't want to let his students down. So no matter what, he would go to work every day, and he was very, very committed. And sometimes I would tell him, "Okay, you're too tired. You're not feeling great. Just take care of yourself, you know, calling sick today. They will find another replacement for you."

And he was not willing to do it. And then one day, when they had to make cuts in the district, because he was newer compared to other teachers, even though he was much more committed, doing much better work, he will let go.

And all of his work and all of his commitment, all of that, they didn't care about it. So I was saying, you know, look at that. You know, you work harder. You were a much better teacher than other people, and you still want to let go. Now you look everything, the whole thing at the distance. Will you still do what you did? And now that is a personal decision.

Some people may tell you, yes, I was still the same because these are my values. Some people may tell you, you know what? I didn't realize at the end of the day, they didn't care much about if I would have known that they would let me go as soon as I may not live my life there.

Have you seen that before? And you see that particularly working, people working in big companies where they really work really, really hard. And one day, they say, okay, goodbye. That's a generational issue too. Before people work in company for many years, nowadays, the average job is two, three years, but it's also different loyalty that companies have with employees and employee companies to work rights.

Stephen Matini: It's interesting when you talk about as coaches, we can challenge people, you can provide an observations, you can gently invite them. But then how people react is completely personal. And I still haven't figured out why some people seem to make that leap super quickly, some people never do that.

But I do know that all I can do is just to be the right distance from them, to be there, and then you always have to give them the space to maneuver and to decide what to do.

You have been working in leadership for such a long time. So over the years, you probably may have seen some shifts on paradigm, the way, you know, leadership is. And now, even with your book, you're talking about what is the type of leadership that is needed at this time.

It is impossible to predict the future. But if you had to kind of sense what leadership it will be five years from now, even further ahead, what do you see?

Damian Goldvarg: Well, my, I would say, prediction is that there is going to be much more technology in place. So I think that leaders will need to learn how to integrate technology, AI to their work more and more. It's necessary right now, and more and more in the future.

Some of the functions and some of the work will be done by artificial intelligence. And I believe that leader would need to integrate that and collaborate, be more collaborative. I think organizations are going to be much more horizontal in the future.

I believe that you already see an organization that are lowering all of these hierarchies and all of these flat organizations. So I see flat organizations where leaders are more like here, working as collaborators, where authority would change the authority. That for one part.

Also the networking, the collaboration with networking integrating networks of people working in different parts of the world at different levels. So learning how to integrate different groups of people, colleagues. So in all of this, as you are saying, one of the key elements is relationships, this building relationship, this empathy. If you cannot collaborate as a leader, you will be in trouble.

Stephen Matini: It would be really hard to survive in the long run.

Damian Goldvarg: Yeah, and also inspiration. Always leaders are going to be role models. So it's what kind of role model are you being? So it's what you are doing and how you've been, where you're coming from.

And I do believe that people really appreciate leaders who care about other people, who really genuinely care. And we're talking here that many times people are seeing, and this is a little bit more philosophical and sounds harsh, but some people see other people as objects and objects.

I mean, okay, you are here to do your work, so I can do my work so I can be successful. And we know in leadership, an effective leader is a leader that gets people who are working for them being effective.

So to the extent that the people under the leader are effective, the leader is effective. So the effectiveness of the leader depends on the effectiveness of his or her team.

You have an element where the leader is a role model and wants to inspiration and want to inspire people to want to do their best. That has been always like that. And I will continue to be that way. We want leaders who inspire us, who treat us people and not as objects.

We're talking about objects is easily looking at the reports as people who are going to accomplish for his or her success, or as they see in the reports as human beings, we need the flexibility to walk to work and deal with different needs.

At the same time, aligning the overall vision of the company with the vision of the team and his own vision of their own vision.

Stephen Matini: A huge, a huge element that is going to, it is changing everything. It's really the new generations that just simply think differently. I mean, you really have no choice. In a matter of five years, ten years that the workplace would be heavily dominated by Gen Z. And it's just that different way, you know, that they operate and exactly the way you describe it.

Out of everything we talked about, is there anything that you would say that would be important for our listeners to focus on as a starting point to start thinking about this new leadership?

Damian Goldvarg: Well, there is a field of study that is called foresight, foresight in the studies of the future. And when I worked with leaders in organizations for many years, and I did assessment centers. Assessment Center is where you assess a leader and see what are the strength and development needs. So I work for a company, a big company that they send me all over the world to do this assessment center.

So part of my job was to evaluate what were the strength and weaknesses of the leaders and then coach them, reach the strength, and overcome any obstacles that may be the way development meets. And there were two areas where most leaders worldwide were weak.

One was coaching and the other one was foresight or strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is about not just paying attention to the present and here and now, but looking at the future. It's what you're asking me, okay, what do you need to pay attention to the future? Okay, that is a skill.

And the strategic thinking is also looking at the future. So looking at the future and developing their people were two areas where leaders were not effective worldwide in all different industries. So because of that, I was very interested in that. And that's the reason why I started doing more trainings on coaching skills, meeting that need.

But the other area is foresight for the study of the future, paying attention to trends, paying attention to what's coming, and working not only for what you have in front of you right now, but looking at the future.

Success today, not success in the future. So understanding that and being prepared for that and looking at trends. And yes, you were right. We cannot predict the future, but we can pay attention to what's coming so we can be better prepared.

So I went and I took two certifications in foresight in two different places that leaders in the marketing, training foresight practitioners. So I went to receive foresight training because I wanted to build the skills and the muscles to do that kind of work with the leader that was working.

So I do believe that in the foresight, looking at places where you can look at trends, for example, one particular resource can be the Wall Street Journal. Every Friday, a section called Just About the Future is everything about the future. I don't remember the name exactly right now.

Also, you always help us to meet Harvard Business Review, looking at trends, just looking what their sense of we need to be proactive in paying attention to what's coming and we can go to different places. These are two key places where I look at.

Also I receive emails. This is for free. McKinsey reports, singular university, they report that they send also a weekly newsletter from them. So it's about looking for places where we can learn about trends and paying attention to that in the world.

Stephen Matini: Damien, thank you so much for spending time with me. I have a lot to think about.

Damian Goldvarg:Thank you for inviting me. I hope that this conversation inspires people to learn about these topics. And if they want to reach, if you want to follow up on the conversation, I don't know if you can share also my email.

If people have any questions or comments, I have also YouTube, like 400 videos on coaching and Spanish and English, what is free, and it's a resource. And the books also, you can find them in Amazon.

People may be interested in the books on Coaching for the Spanish speakers, bilingual people who are listening, the book on “Leadership in Currect Times” is coming up in Spanish next month. And the English one, I am working on it. I'm still looking for a publisher for that. So I am working on that.

Stephen Matini: Well, then I wish for your book to do super well and to inspire a lot of people.

Damian Goldvarg: Thank you very much.

View Details

This episode of Pity Party Over revolves around the importance of intentional leadership and its impact on team dynamics, especially in the context of diverse generational workforces.

Kathryn Landis, Executive and Team Coach and Professor of C-Suite Leadership at New York University, emphasizes the need for leaders to understand and address the unique needs and values of different generations, particularly Gen Z. She highlights the importance of aligning these needs with organizational goals while creating a culture of psychological safety and transparency.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to navigate generational differences and understand the significance of transparency and purpose-driven work for engaging Gen Z employees.

How do you leverage a multi-generational workplace? Share your story!

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#KathrynLandis #Stephen Matini #PityPartyOver #Alygn #WorkplaceCulture #GenerationalDifferences #GenZ #EmployeeEngagement #PsychologicalSafety #LeadershipDevelopment #PurposeDrivenWork #IntentionalLeadership

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini - I'm curious to ask you, how did you get to human development?

Kathryn Landis: You know, I was first exposed to this thing called coaching, when I was in business school. I went to Northwestern University in Chicago and I took a class around personal leadership and coaching, and I really enjoyed it, but I was already on this track to go into marketing. And fast forward 10, 15 years, I had a boss at a large Fortune 500 company that was not supportive of the company's parental leave policy.

And so when I had my son, this leader made my life miserable. I thought to myself, and I thought back to that class, had this leader had coaching, had this leader had support, I'm sure she didn't want to show up the way that she was showing up.

I got into this because I don't want anyone to ever have the same experience that I had. I want to help leaders get to the next level of greatness. And I want them to empower and inspire their teams and become the best versions of themselves and work in life.

Stephen Matini: Do you have a favorite client? Like, do you prefer to work with teams? Do you prefer to coach people one-on-one?

Kathryn Landis: I think where I'm at my best is when I'm coaching the leader one-on-one and their team. So we're doing both. So with the leader, helping that person think about, you know, how do they want to show up as a leader? How do they want to create followership? How do they want to communicate their vision?

And then with the team, helping them to really operate most effectively and make agreements amongst each other and really think about how they want to create those working norms to be the best team they can be.

Because everyone has to go to work. Everyone's been on bad teams. Think about the worst team ever been on. I mean, I'm getting like negative feelings right now just thinking about that. It could be at work, it could be at school, you know, it could be your softball league versus the best team you've been on.

Wow, being a part of that best team really just changes your outlook, changes how you show up, what you're able to accomplish. And so if I can really help the leader as long with their team, that's where I think really making major progress and really able to make a major impact.

Stephen Matini: So I have a theory about teams, and it's not based on any theory. I believe that the team leader is vital, you're like the orchestra director, you set the tone. However, the team and the chemistry within the team seems to have a life on its own. Sometimes you are lucky, you get teams that for whatever the reason, things flow. It's fun. And sometimes no matter how hard you try, the team seems to really feel heavy. So the question to you is, is it always possible to turn things around in a team?

Kathryn Landis: I would say it's always possible, but you also have to think about, do you have the right people on the team? Do you have people that have the right skill sets? And are they able to work together?

So you can have diverse perspectives, but they can't work together, then it's not useful. Is their work interdependent in a way that motivates them to collaborate effectively? And is there a compelling purpose for the team? Do people know why the team exists, what their priorities are, and what the impact is to the customer or to the organization.

I find that a lot of teams that are dysfunctional, there's not a compelling purpose for the team. People don't know why the team exists. There's maybe not the right people on the bus, or their work is not interdependent. There's just a group of people that are reporting to the same leader. So you really need those essential conditions in order to have an effective team.

Stephen Matini: You know, “the right people on the bus” should be the title of this episode.

Kathryn Landis: Yeah, something like that.

Stephen Matini: As if it happened to you that often team members say, we do not know where we are going. Why do you think that happens? How can it be?

Kathryn Landis: I haven't observed that as much. Maybe it's by virtue of my work. But for sure, an organization would have a more engaged and motivated workforce that they had a vision for the organization of where they want to be in three to five years, if it was motivational, if it was inspiring.

And then that trickles down to what each team or department does. And then from each team or department, it trickles down to each individual. Why are you showing up to work? You know What's the contribution? It doesn't matter if you're in the accounting department or in sales, you're all driving towards this goal that hopefully is something that ladders up to something bigger than oneself. It has purpose.

Because even if you think, hey, I'm working in an accounting firm, you're still helping a customer. Maybe you're helping small business owners making better decisions. So how can you take that mission and make it compelling and purposeful for your employees?

So they're not just showing up for a paycheck, they're showing up to really change lives.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever seen within an organization that has a specific culture that may necessarily foster transparency or full trust, have you ever noticed the existence of what I call islands of happiness? I mean, somehow there's one team that seems to work more efficiently than others.

Kathryn Landis: Well, a lot of your happiness, as much research would suggest, is based on your immediate boss. So if your immediate boss is able to create those conditions for what Amy Edmondson would call psychological safety, if they're able to motivate and inspire other team members, yes, there can absolutely be islands of happiness.

But I think that at a more senior level, whoever is looking after the organization, that certainly is areas for concern. So is there someone who's being mindful of the discrepancy or the variance between the teams?

Stephen Matini: You have been working with a lot of teams and different leaders. As of today, teams are very diverse, you know, often comprise different generations. Based on what you have observed, what would you say they are the main competencies that a good leader should have to lead the team effectively?

Kathryn Landis: So I think that we're in a unique time where you can have five generations at work. And I'm in a unique position where a lot of my clients are baby boomers or Gen X, as we call it in the US, or Gen Z or younger millennials. And there are very different expectations in terms of how one should show up in the workplace and that makes them work in life.

A lot of it having to do with their own life experiences. And, you know, the Gen X and boomers do not understand the Gen Z and the younger millennials and vice versa. I see it with my students. I also teach at NYU. So a lot of my master's students are Gen Z. And it's very different.

I had a student say to me, I just want to find a job where I can be there for six months and really contribute. You know As myself being an older millennial thinking, six months, after six months, you just know where the bathroom is. You haven't made a contribution. You're just training on boarding, but that's the longevity that folks are looking for.

I think making ... one is creating shared values for that department or team, creating agreements of working norms and how you're all going to show up and communicate at work is so important.

When I say agreements, a lot of people live in the land of expectations, meaning they want someone else to do something. Maybe they tell them what they want them to do, but people inherently wrestle with and they rebuff expectations. But if you can get an agreement with them, so you're both bought in, you ask them, how can I help you to meet this agreement? They're exponentially more likely to do it.

So I think for leaders, what agreements can you make with your team members so that you're all aligned on the critical elements that will support a productive workforce?

Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly, the difference between expectations and agreements is that agreements are negotiated expectations?

Kathryn Landis: Expectations are one way. It says expectation is, Stephen, I want you to show up at 9:00 a.m. of this podcast. And agreement would be, Stephen, I'd like you to show up at 9:00 a.m. this podcast because this is when it'll be most effectively recorded. How can I help you do that? What's going to keep you from doing that? Nothing. I'm going to be here. Okay. Can we have an agreement that that's what we're going to be doing? Yes, perfect.

Now that's like a very simple example, but it's two way conversation and getting someone to say yes, and also as a leader, asking them what help they need from you in order to accomplish it.

Stephen Matini: So it's more collaborative.

Kathryn Landis: 100% versus just having an expectation in your mind that you either don't communicate or you communicate, but then don't ask the other person what they need from you in order to achieve it.

Stephen Matini: One of the things that I like to use in order to understand different generations is to see all these people, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z as humans that have the same needs. The human brain doesn't evolve as rapidly as our technology, but they come to life facing a different political scenario, different economy, different social situation, and such and such, and so they have to respond to a specific situation.

In your opinion, and this is just in your observation, do you think it's harder for a Gen Z to deal with life than it was, let's say, for me, that I'm Generation Y?

Kathryn Landis: I don't know if I can say harder or less hard, but I will say that research states that Gen Z is as a cohort in a mental health crisis. There's lots of research that indicates that Gen Z is overall depressed, that Gen Z, you know, went through very formative years in a pandemic and are very isolated, the first true digitally native cohorts and haven't had that in-person interaction that a lot of the other generations grew up with and were accustomed to.

So I think harder is difficult to define and to measure, but certainly as it relates to mental health, Gen Z is very much struggling. And that puts the leaders in a difficult position where they're being asked to play multiple roles outside of, you know, strictly that of the supervisor.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that could be the kindest gesture that you could provide to Gen Z?

Kathryn Landis: I don't know about kindest gesture, but I wrote a co-wrote a Harvard Business Review article about helping Gen Z find their place at work. And what we do know is that Gen Z really cares about transparency. This is a generation that has always had information at the fingertips. So to the extent that you can be transparent and explain to them rationale and reasons why, it's very useful.

Also, expecting them to even be open with some formerly taboo topics, such as, you know, salary and compensation, they're talking about it. Transparency is really critically important to them. Perhaps that's the most, the kindest thing, but I also would say vital thing is transparency.

Stephen Matini: Very often in organizations, it's not possible to have the level of transparency. Like from my perspective, it seems that a lot of people struggle a lot with organizational politics, which is this invisible thing happening all the time, you know, understanding who's who, who has power, what you can say, what you cannot say. How do you see Gen Z fitting into this web of politics?

Kathryn Landis: I think Gen Z is really struggling to figure that out. And I think it's amplified by the fact that a lot of them, a lot of folks are remote working or hybrid working.

So you're not getting that, quote unquote, water cooler talk that you would if you're in the office, and you're not getting the mentorship of some of the more seasoned colleagues that you might overhear if you're just, you know, walking by. It's more difficult for Gen Z to find out.

What I've seen organizations do do that ineffective is maybe have like an ERG (Employee Resource Group) for Gen Z so that they group folks can get together and talk about issues that are important to them or topics that are important to them, pairing them up with a mentor that can help them navigate the organization, for example, and bringing folks together in a way that's meaningful.

There's lots of talk about how folks don't want to go back to work. Well, they don't want to go back to work and do the same job that they can do at home. You have to think about what is the purpose of bringing people in the office? How can you make it more intentional? And how can you create relationships, collaboration, moments for interaction that can't be done virtually or online?

Stephen Matini One of the things that my clients struggle the most right now is to be ready in five years from now, 10 years from now, to a demographics within their companies that would be completely different. And one thing they realize is, how can I keep these people? How do I attract the Gen Z? How are they going to be here?

So for anyone who has that issue, you've already pointed out a lot of wonderful things, including on mentoring and such and such. What would you say that are some of the things companies should be really aware of and to be proactive so that they can really create an environment that is ready for Gen Z in the future?

Kathryn Landis: Well, first and foremost, accepting the fact that employer loyalty has changed. Most Gen Z, I was reading some research this past week that upwards of 70% of Gen Z are already thinking about their next job and planning to move the next two years. So accepting the fact that there is not that loyalty and that you have to earn that retention every day. It's a different mindset than that feeling that you're going to be with an employer for five years because that's what you're supposed to be on your resume.

Also, majority of Gen Z want to be their own boss. They want to be entrepreneurs. 90% of Gen Z has either their own business or they have a side hustle or a side gig. So thinking about ways that you can align incentives, understanding what their career goals and aspirations are and how you can keep them engaged and doing it in a very intentional way will be very important.

Stephen Matini: I saw an interview with Jodie Foster, the actress. She's promoting a new, what is it? TV show now? I can't remember the name, anyhow. And at some point, she was joking with the host that she said, Oh, my God, working with Gen Z is so hard. You tell them to show up at nine and they show up at 10. Do you think this is a fair statement?

Kathryn Landis: I think that is based on different people's perspective. And I can't speak for Jodie Foster, but for many people, it's table stakes to say, if your boss tells you to come in at nine, you come in at nine.

For Gen Z, you have had different life experiences than someone of, I'm not sure the age of Jodie Foster, but you know someone else who's grown up in the workforce where you just did what your boss told you to do and it was more an authoritarian style, you know it can be quite shocking. But I would say, you know, to that Gen Z employee, this is why we need to be here in nine. Can we make an agreement about this so that we can achieve X, Y, Z?

And it might seem like you're going out of your way or maybe even a little bit ridiculous, but it'll go a long way to getting that buy-in and creating a more fruitful relationship.

Stephen Matini: So one of the things that I read about you and your experience with Gen Z, you said it that it seems to me that Gen Z are a generation that is a purpose-driven. Would you mind explaining more this concept? Because it seems to me to be very central.

Kathryn Landis: What I mean by purpose-driven is that they want their work to have meaning, to make an impact. You know, they've had a huge impact on politics in the U.S., huge socioeconomic issues. I think Black Lives Matter, you know, gun control. And, you know, they are becoming accustomed to having their voice heard as this up and coming cohort and actually looking to work for and buy from companies that put their money where their mouths at.

Are you actually sustainable? Do you actually promote diversity and inclusion? Are you living the values that you put on your website? And so they're voting with their feet. And I think that that is quite admirable, but also puts maybe some of the other generations under the microscope to really do a lot of the things that they said they would like to do or would do. You know, a fun fact that early 2024, Gen Z is going to eclipse baby boomers in the workplace.

They're only here to stay. So for all those employers out there that are thinking, oh my goodness, how am I going to manage this? You got to start trying. And you know I'm happy to share more information around that. I have a talk around age diversity at work, a talk around how to lead Gen Z is kind of teasers into helping managers and leaders think about how they can most effectively support Gen Z, but also, you know, the more mature workers in there who in their workforce who might be facing ageism or feeling like there might be left out as well. So you have this dichotomy of both ends of the spectrum.

Stephen Matini: Something happened to me recently. I started a program with the company and it was about making everyone more sensitive about age differences, ageism. You know, that was really the topic. And then as we started working with the managers, basically they put together cross-functional teams, you know, and I would facilitate the conversation. But it came out, it came out, well, it doesn't seem to us that it seems to be such a big issue here.

You know, we don't think so, although we understand the importance of preparing and to have a culture that is welcoming that type of generation. But anyhow, reasoning with them, what it came out is this one, that every single time they're able to be more functional in terms of organizational synergy, when that is really strong, that's when they're able to really leverage the strengths of every single generation. Whereas when there's no cross-functional synergy, all these generations, all groups, they become separate. They have difficulty communicating. Have you ever observed something like this in your projects?

Kathryn Landis: Well, I think that there's no cross-functional synergy, as you put it. There's a lot of problems, and it's not just age-related. So things just aren't going well and kind of goes back to my worst team scenario. So when things are going well, maybe the tip of the, you only see the tip of the iceberg, but you don't notice what's going on underneath, right? But you know once you know maybe the company's not going so well, all that stuff that was underneath the water is there. And that's when, you know, the truth comes out about what's really been happening.

Stephen Matini: You work with people and you help them out. How do you preserve your energy?

Kathryn Landis: So actually, I get energized by working with people. I really enjoy helping and supporting people because that's what I feel like is my purpose. You know, that being said, I have to do my own self-care.

For me, that means eating real food, because I have a tendency to get off on and let myself go with, you know, protein bars and protein shakes, which is not good, you know, drinking water and exercising. So I think all those things, if I can be physically healthy, you know, really impacts my mental health so that I can show up to my fullest for my clients.

Stephen Matini: So we talked about a bunch of stuff, you know, a lot of different angles and ideas. Out of everything we said, is there anything in particular that you would say our listeners should be pay attention to?

Kathryn Landis: The first thing that comes to mind is intentionality. So getting clear on how you want to show up as a leader, how you want people to perceive you, and then doing self-reflection to say, am I behaving? Am I showing up in the way that I intend? And I'd also encourage you to solicit feedback.

So do you have what's called a personal board of directors in your personal life, in your colleagues at work that you could get feedback to find out how you are showing up? And then asking for suggestions or advice about how you could improve to become that leader that you envision yourself to be.

Stephen Matini: If someone asked you, what is intentionality to you? How would you define it?

Kathryn Landis: For me, it's being self-aware, you know, being really focused on your behavior, on your mindset, on the way that you are engaging in the world, particularly when you're stressed, right, and all things go by the wayside. That's the moment of truth.

Stephen Matini: And going back to we're talking about Gen Z, as a leader, how can it be intentional about my Gen Z employees?

Kathryn Landis: Yeah, I think it starts from the moment that you're in the interview, you know, to really share what the values are of your team and of the organization, and ensuring that there is, you know, a good fit there, that there are shared values and alignment.

It's important during their onboarding process that Gen Z is connected with the right people and the right tools and resources to feel like they're getting the support that they need, and they're making the agreements that will foster a productive relationship. The more you can do upfront to invest in that relationship, you're paving the way and it will benefit tremendously later on.

Stephen Matini: So maybe to those listeners of this episode who are Gen Z, what would you like to tell them?

Kathryn Landis: Keep it up. Be curious. You know, absolutely. Listen. Know that you can learn from all different people. You can learn what you want, how you want to show up and how you don't want to show up.

And, you know, look for opportunities to find mentors and sponsors. And if you're not sure what that is, Google it. And I am excited for you and your career and what life has in store for you.

Stephen Matini: Oh, thank you, Catherine. I think people are going to feel really good about this. Thank you so much.

Kathryn Landis: Thank you, Stephen. Take good care.

View Details

My guest today is Frederic Neus, Founder of JK7 Consulting. Frederic is known for simplifying financial management for his clients so they can confidently focus on growing their businesses.

In our conversation, we explore the crucial role of financial management in fostering cross-functional synergy. For Frederic Neus, cross-functional synergy starts with the CEO's clear strategic vision, with goals cascading down through different functions to foster collaboration among departments.

Many professionals, even those with business backgrounds, need more financial literacy. For Frederic, this is a significant gap in our educational system, leaving many entrepreneurs and CEOs guessing the real story behind numbers.

For this reason, Frederic advocates the critical need for entrepreneurs to proactively seek professional financial assistance to navigate complexities and ensure the long-term sustainability of their ventures.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

How do you unveil "the story" behind your company's financials to make strategic decisions? Share your story!

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#fredericneus #CFO #financials #JK7Consutling #simplifyingnumbers #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I was thinking about a conversation, and the one thing that was really curious is; after working for so many years as a CFO, what have you learned to be a successful approach as a CFO to interface correctly with all the other functions within an organization?

Frederic Neus: You need this ability to interconnect with the people and to really interest in what the other are doing. As a finance person that is always seen as the serious guy and a number, a cruncher, if you don't go to them and get interest in what they do, you are not going to make happen. That's the best way to return and to make them understand, that you will share with as information as numbers, or to open their eyes in order to grow the company at the end.

Stephen Matini: You shared with me last time that you tend to be very people-oriented and also you have a certain commercial understanding of a business. Would you say that these two components helped you communicate with other functions better?

Frederic Neus: Yes. There is a difference between a good CFO and a great CFO. A good CFO will be the one that's very technical. He knows his number and he's doing the right business sense and all the technical.

To me, the great CFO is the one that has a good understanding of all technical part, but the greatest is a leader with a commercial approach, business understanding people-oriented approach. These two are what is making the difference between a good and a great CFO, that's for sure.

From my part, what has made me different in terms of people has always been an increase in the performance of the company because you make people work better in a nice atmosphere.

You were speaking before but was collaboration with the other department, that is a key, because if are not business-oriented or people-oriented, you will not get the others participating in all this, which the company overall suffer.

And also being people-oriented helps the company overall to have a better people retention, of course in the company and not only in the financial department, but overall.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes there's a cultural element within organizations that impacts what it's called the organizational synergy, meaning the ability of all the functions to talk and to work together. Somehow some companies seem to give priority to some function.

So to give you an example, lots of companies are commercially driven. So the sales function is seen as “The King” of the company, those are the ones who bring the money.

So in your opinion, when you work in a company in which cross-functional synergy doesn't happen, what would you say that could be a first step that anyone could take to go more in that direction?

Frederic Neus: It’s a difficult question. I would say. I don't think there is recipe for that. To me it starts from the strategy. If you have a great CEO, we have clearly defining our goals, our strategic goals, and that there is a cascade of these goals between the different functions of the companies, that clearly defining those goals by the pillars of the company and without forgetting the interconnection between these pillars. All depends on each other's for sure.

It all start from the strategy and then you state the objectives and this allows you to have this interdependence between the different pillars, functions of the company as you say. But yeah, obviously I agree with you, “The Kings” are always commercial.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think people become so tribal with their function and somehow struggle with interconnectedness?

Frederic Neus: This is a lack of and alignment from the start. Again, you don't that CEO which has that vision and the team spirit of connecting everybody, you have big chance for non-success.

If you don't manage as a CEO or as a management team to play as a team, you will keep the silos in the company and everybody will sit there in his silo and do whatever he thinks is good for him, which means that is not good for the company.

You have some entrepreneurs, so the CEOs of the company, they are doing it on purpose. You know? They are keep the people separate. In order for him to have got this link with control with everybody, he is sure that everybody had passed by him, which at the end of the day to me show a lack of confidence in himself rather than anything else.

Stephen Matini: I love when you said that you have to be able to tell the story through the numbers. Do you think it's because you experienced both working as a CFO within a company and now as an external consultant providing SCFO services to companies. Would you say that it's easier as an outsider or an insider to tell this story through numbers?

Frederic Neus: There is no black and white. As an inside for sure you already know the company because you have this time of you go to good companies or big companies. You've got this onboarding where you go through knowing everything, starting your job, well most of the time saying that it's everywhere, but you have more time. And from that perspective, I think it's easy.

So what we do now as an external, we've got onboarding process, which at the end of the day it's rather technical because you need to get the data, you need to ask questions and everything. But the main purpose of this onboarding process is really to get feel and to ask right question in order to understand what's going on in their company in order to provide them good value as quick as possible.

You've got to understand very well the company and the business they are in order to provide the right support and the right value as a CFO, being internal or external, at the end of the day, it's the same. But then if one is easier than the others, I would say that being internal is easier, but we are trying to be as effective as an internal by having this perfect onboarding process.

Stephen Matini: How did you choose this slogan, “Making the Invisible Visible” for JK7 Consulting, which is so simple but so great?

Frederic Neus: We were in a session in order to get to the right sentence for our vision and mission, we came up with different possibilities and two of us more or less arrived with the same thing.

We're trying to bring to our customers that understanding of what is happening in their company, because 95%of the time, they don't know half of what's going on in their company. They don't know all the interesting element that is in their numbers because they don't know how to get there. And so this is our first job. Let's create the right visibility and the right understanding of what is going on.

And it's not easy, but with simplicity. Because I mean I already told you about that, but if you, yeah, I'm a great CFO and I'm the best, and then you come up with ratios of liquidity, assets, whatever. I mean your customer which doesn't understand already his number, if you come with that, they will understand even less. If you don't speak their language, you're going to lose them even more. So we create visibility to the past, and then we are going to create another set of visibility, but to the future, a more strategic one.

In this scenario, 1, 2, 3, this is what is going to happen with your company if you do that, this is from a number perspective, this is what will happen. This is a nice element because it allows that CEO that we were talking before to start to realize the impact that he can make by doing that that that in this company.

And the first element to that, the first consequence to that, is an intangible element, which is the peace of mind. I will never stop mentioning that the peace of mind of the entrepreneur, the boss of the company, this has no price and we cannot forget that.

So these are things that are very key in our job and therefore making the invisible visible is to meet the differentiation of what we do.

Stephen Matini: A lot of people, well, you would assume people that do business, they must have gone to business school or study business. And yet I'm always amazed to see how little people understand of numbers. And I'm one of those people, I'm definitely by no stretch of the imagination, someone who's just so savvy, but somehow I guess because I've always worked for the most part as a small entrepreneur, I need to make sense of this entire world.

So the question for you is this one, why would you say that a lot of people that come from business backgrounds, somehow they seem to have such a hard time with numbers and to navigate through this complexity of numbers?

Frederic Neus: Finance is complex. It is complex, it's a difficult subject, but if you look at the economy in general, there are people that are making masters and for five years to understand that, then you can expect that these guys, they understand what they do and what they talk about.

So yes, economy is complex tax regulations. I mean you go all over the world. I mean it's different everywhere. You understand nothing about that, even the tax guys, they understand nothing about that to be honest. And you've got the financial jargon.

You go to big companies for example, and you go to listen to a financial presentation and you are not a financial guy, you would understand 20% of it because most of the words that they are saying in there doesn't exist even in any dictionary. So to me, this is something I always say to my kids as well, the education, the financial education.

You go to school, they don't teach about finance, whatever type of finance, even personal finance or how to manage your money properly, nobody speaks about it at school. On top of that, there is indeed, as you said in the business in general, there is a lack of financial background. The basics of the financials for the entrepreneurs, they are not there.

But I can tell you that most of the CEOs of these small entities, of that big company, they were not, I would say at ease with financials neither. This is a fact also in the big companies, OK?

There is also something which is bad is that a lot of these guys, they don't realize the importance of it. So they don't get the point that numbers are there and needs to be, we need to do something with it. But until the time that you will not have somebody that will explain that properly with your word, you will not realize.

Stephen Matini: So let's say hypothetically you are with the leadership team, and you do realize that the people working with you have a little understanding of numbers and they have in front of them in financial statement with millions of different numbers. Where do you bring the attention to? I mean, is there any specific figure on a financial statement that somehow you tend to emphasize first, to simplify the matter?

Frederic Neus: We always try to demystify the financial, because at the end of the day, we are the guys, as the CFO ,or a financial team. We are the guys that need to absorb the complexity, which I was telling you before. Well, it looks simple, but it's not.

We need to absorb the complexity of the numbers and tell a story to the guy that is in front of you, whomever it is, that he will understand from his own point of view with his own filter in order for him to understand. So it is quite difficult. It's complex because one is different than another and it takes time, but the quicker you get there, the better it is for the company.

And this is not black or white because it can be different from the company to another depending on the industry they are in. But most of the time we have a five or six element that we are trying to speak is always about revenue for sure, because it's an important element. It's not the most important. I want to be clear on that.

You have the gross margin, which is really, I take an example. If you are selling goods, so you've got your revenue, so how much your customer is paying for that, and the cost of it, what you are paying to your supplier to buy these goods, if you are distributing these goods. One minus the other is the gross margin. So it's really the business, what it costs you for that business.

The percentage that go with it, so gross margin as a percentage of the revenue, this is always a relationship that you're trying to do. Then you've got the net profit, which is important because below between that net profit and between the gross margin, there are a lot of elements like the remuneration, you know, whatever costs you've got in there.

And then cash, cash is important. So we are tracking cash obviously, and mainly in SMEs is even more important. And then we've got the working capital aspect. So we keep it as important because that's the balance sheet element and you're tracking the day-to-day of the company. When you look at working capital.

Stephen Matini: As you said, it's about telling a story. So in any story, an element that is super, super important is the conflict. And so in the story of an entrepreneur, based on numbers, who would you say usually is the villain of your story?

Frederic Neus: We are trying to avoid any bad guy I would say, because at the end of the day, the story that we are telling to our audience. If the numbers are good, there will be no bad guy. I would say if the numbers are bad, there will be different bad guys all the time.

So at the end of the day, we are always trying to share the story in the more positive approach as we can, because otherwise we are already perceived as the bad guys, us as financials, because we are always pointing the finger to something bad that doesn't work. You have to always approach it in a positive way and explain to your counterpart with bringing solution on the plate, and do you agree with this solution? What elements you can bring on the table that will help us to find more solutions? You always need to position yourself as a coach, basically.

Stephen Matini: As an entrepreneur, what would you say are the signs that would make me understand that I need someone like Frederic to come in and to help me out, so I need a professional financial management assistance?

Frederic Neus: Whatever the size of the company you have, you need financial assistance from the start. I have the feeling that we are at pivotal points where more and more people are getting to entrepreneurs rather than employees. And to me, we are at a point where the SMEs will need to last longer than the human generation. To make it clear, we'll need to build companies which will last for longer.

Because now when you look at the bankruptcy rates, it's crazy. I mean, it's increasing year on year and you had a lower peak at Covid because I mean the States stopped putting bankruptcies. So this is an element which for us, it's our vision, this will happen.

What we are playing in this is that we want to play a role in that by doing what? By bringing the clarity, which I told you, and creating that strategic visibility to the entrepreneurs in order for them to play along the game with a sustainable growth. And of course with the peace of mind, which we cannot forget, I told you before.

When you look at that, generally speaking, you've got two to three different type. The first time is the company which are reading in trouble. When you are sick, you feel bad and you go to the doctor, most of the time it's already late because you didn't anticipate and do something about that. So we have this type of persons, which are already in a very bad situation, sometimes close to bankruptcy.

You've got the other one, which is also in a bad situation, but already not that bad. And then he needs to start thinking about that because he sees really signals that he's entering into a turbulence.

And then the third one is the one that are growing. I mean the one that has this company and it's booming. And then it start to see, am I doing the right thing? Am I going into the right direction and everything?

So most of the time we've got these three scenarios, but I need to tell you that the first one is the one that is coming. The question that they have most of the time is simple. I have profit, but I don't have cash. So how come what's going on? I don't see my family. I'm working like hell and I am going nowhere. We are in June and I don't even have the numbers from the last year. I want to do an investment, but can I do it? I don't know. I would like to hire people, but can I afford it? I mean, I'm doing everything. I'm doing my invoice, I'm doing this, I'm everywhere. I need to meet my clients. So that's really the situation where the people are in a complete mess to not to say something else.

And then I have a rapid growth, a big expansion, and I'm not in control of the thing anymore. So this is a point where you need to realize that you need to be backed up with somebody that has the right knowledge to put to implement the thing.

You enter into complex financials transactions. You are thinking of raising capital, for example, because you need to get either loan or you need to have a new owner on board, or ... I mean these are signs also, or you do a mergers for example. These are signs that you need somebody that is going to support you in this. I mean, I was saying sometimes you've got numbers, but you're not sure they're right. And this is always something that happen.

You've got big debts and you don't know how to manage them. So there you come back to the cashflow. Where am I going with my cashflow? What's going on to happen? You have your costs which are not under control, so you are spending to hell and you don't know where and you don't know why, and you are not negotiating properly with your suppliers or you are in doubt about that.

Business valuation needs for example. I mean, this is also another element which is important. I mean, people are always looking at today, okay, what is my profit? So also you need to understand that your company has a value. And more organized your company will be, more you build a system that is working alone, without you no dependence on yourself, more the value of your company will be obviously.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is maybe one thing that you would like our listeners to focus on based on everything we said?

Frederic Neus: The point is that you cannot do it alone, it's impossible. I mean, you are the pilot of a company, but any plane, there is a copilot. You need to be challenged by somebody. You need to be supported by somebody, and this can be done with a person that is going to help you, to bring you all this experience and to be this day-to-day challenger.

And most of the time, finance is the topic that is not under control. I have my accountant, but the accountant is doing the accounting most of the time on an external basis, and they do a great job these guys, you need to be honest.

But what we bring to the companies is not accounting, we are really giving them strategic advice on the day-to-day of the companies in order for them to grow, and to gain that peace of mind. So what I would say is that the people cannot do it alone, and they need to be challenged on a daily basis and to have an eye opener in order for them to have this peace of mind and that grow mindset.

Stephen Matini: So you help them write their story.

Frederic Neus: Yeah. Bringing clarity to their day-to-day and to what they do, et cetera. I mean, that is not that difficult, even though it is if you want to do it properly and with the right point and to put your finger where it's really painful for you to understand. But again, the story you will explain, it's key.

Most of them what they do now, they receive a financial statement from their external accountant, which has been done on a yearly basis. We do that, but on a monthly basis because there needs to be that recurrence of the numbers because that's the only way that they need to be. It would be in their head. So the recurrence is very important, it's very key.

They will start to fix their objective by looking forward rather than backwards. So when we do our monthly calls with our clients or our monthly meeting with our clients, we spend, I would say, fifteen minutes to the past, and I would say one hour and a half to the future because that's what you need to talk about. I mean, what am I going to do now that I know what happened in order for that to not happen anymore or for that to happen? So you have to shift your mindset to the future and to the solution rather than the past.

Stephen Matini: It's all about having someone who has experience to support you, and I love the fact that your approach is positive, is about simplifying, is about looking forward. So I love it. Thank you, Frederick, for everything you taught me today. Thank you.

Frederic Neus: You’re welcome. Thank you.

View Details

Paolo Gallo, author of, The Seven Games of Leadership and The Compass and the Radar, brings a wealth of experience from his leadership positions at the International Finance Corporation, The World Bank, and The World Economic Forum.

Paolo stresses the significance of aligning our decisions with our genuine passions and skills. He also underscores the importance of clarity in discerning our priorities and recommends embracing confusion as a regular aspect of self-discovery.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Please check Paolo Gallo’s books The Seven Games of Leadership and The Compass and the Radar, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

How do you navigate life transitions while maintaining a sense of direction and purpose? Share your story!

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#paologallo #thesevengamesofleadership #careerdevelopment #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Have you always had clarity about the trajectory, what you wanted to do? How did it work for you? Because for a lot of people, they find out who they are and what they want to be later on in life. Even myself, I take all kinds of detours and turns and I learned about myself as I went, but your career seems to be so very clear, very almost like if you knew where you were going, at least that's the impression that I got.

Paolo Gallo: I believe I had, but not because I'm particularly clever, but because I had clarity in what I wanted to do in my life since my early twenties and without tending to many things. But I started to study economics mainly by default because they said, oh, law, I think it's too boring, medicine, I faint if I see a drop of blood engineering. No freaking way. I don't understand mathematics.

So I chose economics mainly by default. So it wasn't really totally convinced choice when I started university, but as I was studying this subject, all of a sudden things start to make a lot of sense.

You study economics, finance, strategy, marketing, accounting, human resources and law and sociology, and all of a sudden I start to see a puzzle that fit together quite well. And then in the third year, I studied human resources and organizational behavior and bingo, I said that's exactly what I wanted to do.

And I haven't changed my mind since then because I've always been passionate about developing people and organizations. And you may see that the last 30 years, that's pretty much what I've been doing in different contexts, in different organizations. But I have this clarity of thoughts and clarity of feelings about what would be my trajectory since my early twenties.

And now that I'm in just turned 60 recently, I like to think that I've been doing what I loved for the last 35 years and I've not regretted.

Stephen Matini: Amongst many different experiences, and that you work in human resources really a super high level, you work for the World Economic Forum, for the World Bank. What is your fondest memory of the time, something that you may have accomplished that somehow is really dear to your heart?

Paolo Gallo: Listen, more than accomplishment, perhaps, there is a story that I also quoted in some of my speeches now because I start working for the World Bank. And yeah, I was happy, but I wasn't a hundred percent yet into the role. And a few months into the role, my boss asked me to go to Africa and been to Ghana and then to Senegal.

Our first trip to Africa, I remember the driver said to me, listen, I'll take you to a village where I come from. And so we went to this village and then he showed me, said many years ago in this village we didn't have a well, and my mother used to walk seven kilometers each way just to get two buckets of water. And it was polluted water and it was a dangerous journey because it's full of a wild beast.

And then the UN War bank came the build this well and for extra stuff and the life of our village changed. So it took me to see his mother. Of course, they I speak the local language and she couldn't speak English, look at each other and the mother hug me. And I have to say that's the moment which I realized why I joined World Bank, why I was doing what I was doing. So more than an accomplishment, I like to think that the moment in which I realized the purpose of that organization was exactly there.

So it didn't come rationally, it didn't come, cognitively came from my guts and my heart, and I found it was a very important moment in my career to build this sense of purpose that perhaps I didn't have so strongly when I was working for Citibank.

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I'm thinking of the word success, which means the different things to different people. For you, success is connected to purpose?

Paolo Gallo: Yes. My first book, I start with a story. The name of the book is called The Compass and the Radar. And I kept on telling the story to myself and also to people that listened to me, including now because my father once, when I was at the beginning of my school, literally I was six years old, he told me, Paolo, please remember every day you go to school if you learn something new, if you helped all the people and if you love what you're doing.

And that's the reason why I call the compass of success because to me, my own compass has been quite clear my own mind to see do I learn something new every day? Did I help somebody or at least did I do something helpful and do I still love what I do?

If you have clarity about these three questions, then the rest, I don't want to say it's marginal, but it's not so essential because I think the motivation comes when you are linked with a purpose that is probably bigger than you when you love doing what you're doing, so you are able to deal with some of the difficult moments that you are having in whatever journey you're taking in your life and the helping others are dominion a condescending way, but in terms of building relationship of trust with individuals, that is going to last forever.

So relationship cannot be only transactional, which I refer to you only because I need you to be based on trust. So you have the clarity about the learning, the helping and the loving. I think you have a clear definition of success.

Stephen Matini: Everything you say sounds so wonderful to me and these are also values that inspire my own career. In your career, have you always met people that welcome this way of thinking or were you some sort of a weird ball?

Paolo Gallo: I wish I could tell you absolutely yes, and in which case I would be on delusional or on the drugs. So once I told my daughter, everybody loves 007 movies because there is a villain in the movie. Now without a villain, you must think that the movie is quite boring. So you meet villains in your journey, you meet people that are, let's be English more than Italian, not particularly pleasant or helpful.

And this is a moment where you have to verify the solidity of your values. You confront yourself with what I'm prepared to do. Oh, you're not prepared to do in a given situations. So the answer to your question absolutely no, but I think that overall, if you look at my 30 plus years experience, the number of good guys are overwhelmed, the number of bad guys, some of the big guys are really bad.

There are one or two in particular that were absolutely awful as human beings, but these people pushed me to confront my values and to stand on my feet and once it cost me my job because it was fired by one of them. But what I consider at that time shameful, I now realize that it's actually probably my biggest achievement inside professional life.

Stephen Matini: The concept of staying true to oneself is really central to your thinking, to your approach to life. What is the difference between a compass and a radar?

Paolo Gallo: The compass is remembering what you stand for. No, it is a value and I'm referring to, it is the definition of success, which is not about visibility or fame or money or power, but it's about meaning. It is about helping and it's about learning.

And the radar is the capacity to open the window to see what's happening outside. Because one of the features that I realized in my own life, I met a lot of phenomenal people, incredibly good in doing what they were doing, but for some reason they lacked the intellectual curiosity to go one step further, to stand the effect of whatever technology that is an impact in their job or demographic or whatever.

So the radar is the capacity to maintain this intellectual curiosity to keep on learning and also in psychology called contextual intelligence, the capacity connect the dots and to know how a given topic will have an impact in whatever activity you perform in your role or sector or position that you have in a company.

So I think that if you have a clarity about compass and intellectual curiosity about the radar and you keep it open all the time, you may end up in a good place if you're exclusively focused in doing very well what you've been doing, you become a prisoner of what I call the better game.

In my second book about The Seven Games of Leadership, the better game is great, you improving, doing what you're doing, but there is a moment where perhaps it becomes a trap it because if you keep on doing well what you've been doing, maybe you'll miss that something else that is happening.

The example they provide is VE were produced in the best type machine in the world and then one day they that nobody was buying them anymore, but they didn't focus in developing computers and the thought were to business literally in 36 months after 60 years of a successful journey.

The same happened with individuals. So I always encourage people to say, listen, you may be credibly good in doing what you're doing, but please try to anticipate what is coming next because if you are non reactive move, then you may end up in a difficult spot.

Stephen Matini: Would you say that someone can balance the inner dialogue with all the stimuli that comes from the outside? How do you think that you can find the balance?

Paolo Gallo: In my second book, the first chapter is called “What the Fact Moments” because there are a lot of events that derail our attention to and our focus, and sadly we had a lot of these moments in the last few years from Covid to the world in Ukraine, and what's happening right now in Gaza, is a continuous derailed of our tension and our focus. Not to say that what's happening is not important, but to say that most of the time we spend time in focusing on something that is not relevant or we cannot change.

Okay, or a very limited the first time is to say, are you focused in what really matters to you? And focus doesn't mean obsess and you ignore everything, but being aware of what's happening around you doesn't mean that you are not focusing on what you should be doing. That's one element.

The second element is I ask also my clients in coaching and conferences, two very simple questions. One is from 0 to 10, how proud are you of what you've achieved? And most of the time people say nine, eight, they look with pride with what they have achieved and rightly so.

And then ask another question, which is from 0 to 10, how proud are you of what you've become? It really is a powerful question. And when I ask this question, usually people immediately stop and they visualize the delta, the difference between the effort that they put in achievement and the unfocused of becoming.

And sometimes ago, I will not tell the name of the person obviously, but I'm coaching several CEOs, people that are running huge organizations, thousands of people, billions of revenues, and one of them probably the most powerful that I'm coaching, and you remain silent for a few seconds and they started to cry and I didn't expect this reaction and I said, what's happening?

And I said, yeah, listen, my salary, my compensation, you know that I'm on newspaper every other day, but what you don't know that I have three failed marriages and three of my four kids that don’t want to talk to me anymore and therefore I failed completely as a human being, as a father, as a husband, even if you see the image of a very powerful rich individual.

I don't want to have a psychological analysis of the individual, but it's really to be mindful that it's like the two muscles that you have in both arms. You have to develop the achievement side, you have to get stuff done, you have to apply the knowledge in so concrete, but you also have to grow as an individual.

And that's the focus of my book, The Seven Games of Leadership. They tried to explain the seven phases of personal development that are a prerequisite to become a credible leader in whatever organization, contest, community, operating.

One question that ask people, and funny enough, I mean it's not funny because it's a bit of a sad example. He came up today on a Italian newspaper. There is a former soccer coach called Ericsson that used to be the coach over the English national team and also some Italian teams here. And they said, oh, I have cancer. I have one year to leave. So I asked question, to myself and other people, if you are given one year to leave, would you still continue doing what you're doing?

If the answer is yes, that is great. And if the answer is absolutely not, I would leave it tomorrow morning. Then my question is, do you need to have cancer to reflect about this question? And here, of course it's not because I wish people anything bad, but it's simply to say, okay, can you think that if what you're doing right now makes sense to you as an individual?

I'm trying to push people with my coaching session and with my speeches and with my book to think about essential questions, not about when can I get my next other increase or maybe next promotion.

Stephen Matini: One of the question that I ask myself that allows me to understand whether or not I am aligned with myself is would I want to be somewhere else in this moment? Quite frankly, I'm very happy to be here. This is exactly where I am. I'm enjoying myself, I'm doing exactly what I want and I know that this is time well spent. Sometimes I don't have the kind of luxury we all have to work and do things that we don't enjoy as much. But knowing the difference, knowing when I feel that way and when I don't feel that way, I think it makes a huge difference, particularly moving forward and making choices. They are as much as possible, they resonate with me.

Paolo Gallo: This is actually a very good point, and just to provide another practical example, yesterday I just opened the May because I wanted to read. I was contacted by one head and to say, dear Mr. Gallo, I hope you're doing well. Please let me know when I can call you because I have a very interesting role that I'm sure you may be interested in considering.

Can you give me your phone number, I’ll call you ideally by the end of the week. And I said, thank you, Mary, but I'm really not interested in any role because I'm too much fun in doing what I'm doing right now. And she said, okay, thanks for letting me know.

I didn't want to sound arrogant, but just the idea that all a sudden I have to go back to nine to five, it's never been nine to five, it's been nine to eight maybe with a boss and maybe if I'm lucky, I can take a week off at Christmas and maybe two weeks in August. That's not the life that I've for me.

So I think it's important from time to time to take stock of what you're doing and also to understand in my book, there's a concept which is called congruence. If you're congruent with who you are, if you are in the right place, and as you said, if you feel like you want to be there, it's the same with people, and I work with your wife, with your husband, with your kids, if you'd rather be somewhere else, then you're in the wrong place.

If you're so happy, maybe to have a soup with your wife and you prefer soup with your wife and then maybe being alone in the Maldive, then you are in a good marriage. Sometimes time is important to have a taken stock and to reflect rather than just being moved by actions and getting stuff done.

Stephen Matini: In hindsight, everything is so much clearer, in general, but if you could do it all over again, I mean your professional career, and if you could have known back at the time one of the insights of your book, The Compass and the Radar, which one would you use?

Paolo Gallo: I tend to trust people. And in few occasions, I have given trust to the wrong people, and this is a mistake that I've done more than once in my life by falling in love with people, situations and professional of course, and then being deeply disappointed at the end of the journey.

But at the same time I feel like, okay, should I become paranoid and distrust everybody? I prefer to be disappointed 10% of the time that never be disappointed, but never to enjoy any conversations. So that's perhaps one on one point.

The second one is probably I got worried too much about situations and people and perhaps now that I'm different age, I could have taken more likely situation that were maybe difficult, but not necessarily life-threatening or dramatic.

But when I was in that moment, the entire world was evolving, relating to these quota problems I was trying to solve inside of human resources. So in retrospect, perhaps I should have not slept, lose a lot of sleep over our performance management process or our pension system or the recruitment of somebody that I did in the past.

Stephen Matini: Are you still an adjunct professor? Are you still teaching or you don't?

Paolo Gallo: Yeah, I do. I do is part of my activity and I think that what I do is that in terms of coaching, writing or magazine or books, giving speeches or seminar or workshop and teaching is part of the same debate because everything feeds everything else. So when you give a speech, you have to get prepared. When you get prepared, you have to study. When you study, you become a better professor. When you become a professor, you get better feedback when you get better feedback.

So I think everything is correlated. So I like to think that whatever I do is part of a cohesive puzzle that makes sense to me and that's what matters to me.

Stephen Matini: How old are your students on average? Which age group do you teach to?

Paolo Gallo: I do executive education. So I used to do undergraduates, I now do executive education, executive education, it really depends, but probably people between late thirties to early fifties. So people between, I dunno, let's say 12, 15, 20 years experience, they want to go to the next phase, they want to go deeper in certain topics and I kind of enjoy because these people already had a significant portion of their professional life behind their back and saw the very deep and meaningful conversation about problem.

I've learned all the time by talking to them, next time actually be on Tuesday when I will be talking to 270 people in Milan and I have two hours, but I always say two people I want to have half of the time for questions. Anytime I give a speech, I say, I don't mind if you give me three hours. I'm not going to talk for three hours. That's a long one. But I want to have a list time of half of the time are located for my contribution for questions because question is a way to reflect and to also understand if whatever you said has an impact on the people that are listening.

Stephen Matini: What is the question that you hear more frequently from your audience about career, career alignment and such?

Paolo Gallo: Well, listen, several of won, but if I go back to the book that's been just released, The Seven Games of Leadership, it has been released in October and I've done so far about 22 or 23 presentations now this book and quite lot of people, they were quite well prepared and already read the book.

And what I love is when somebody believes that what is written is being meaningful to him or to her, not because they fell in love with the line with a quote or with the lyrics, but because bingo, that's exactly where I am right now.

To give us specific example in The Seven Games (of Leadership), that is what I believe is the most difficult game of all, which is a crisis game. And the crisis game is a moment that usually occurs in your mid forties, but it could be a little bit earlier, a little bit later where you scratch your head and you're thinking, do I want to do the next 20 years of my life the way I did the last 20?

So in soccer terms, do I want to play the second half the way I played first? Usually the answer is no, I don't. I want to do something different, but I still have not figured it out what it is.

So what really gives me joy is when people read the book or maybe listen one of my speeches or read one of my articles and come back to me, say what was written is exactly the way I feel and therefore there is a validation not about the validity of my book, but the validity of the instruments that offer to the readers. And this is a moment where I feel that whatever I'm doing makes sense not only to me but also to other people.

Stephen Matini: Do you remember the time when you got the first spark about this book, The Seven Games of Leadership?

Paolo Gallo: Yes. I mean, of course. I shared the story at the beginning of the book where I always asked my daughter, she's now 18, what have you learned in your school.

Two years ago over Christmas holidays? She said, daddy, but you've been asking me this question for many, many years now it's my turn. What have you learned. And I said, shit, that's a powerful question.

So I asked a little bit of time to reflect, and then I told her the story and she said, daddy, I love your story. Why don't you write a book about it? And that's why I wrote this book. What I told her is to say, listen, I met thousands of people in my life now in my professional life, in interviews, seminars, workshops, coaching webinars or whatever, and that's been wonderful.

But what I realized that I did not meet a thousand of people. I had the same conversation a thousand of times because certain topics, certain challenges comes regardless of any of the variable, okay?

So you can be a banker in Switzerland, you can be agriculture specialist in Washington, DCO, you can be an engineer or consultant in whatever company. There are issues that comes up regardless of the job that you're doing.

And as reflecting about the conversation, the topics, I realized that were seven clusters of issues that came up. And I noticed that there was a sequence in these conversations, and rather than call them phases, which is a kind of a Jung definition, I call them “games,” because every game implies the understanding of the rules and the capacity to go from one to the other because you cannot get stuck in one game from all the entire life. So I was triggered by a conversation with my daughter and then the rest followed up based on my reflection and some hard work to come up with that book.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the biggest difference in terms of leadership, what we need today from a leader, compared to what the need for leadership used to be, I don't know, 20 years ago?

Paolo Gallo: When I proposed my book to Bloomsbury, they asked a very good question and the question was, Paolo, do we need another book about leadership? And the answer is no, probably not, because there are thousand of them every year, millions.

If you write leadership on Google, you have a 15 million century and definition, the stories are so different. So should I add another one to the very crowded and intense topic? But I also realize as I've been working and studying leadership for many years, and I think I've worked with a lot of leaders and them, you have three school of thoughts when it comes to leadership.

One school of thoughts is tell you what the leader should be doing. And so it is a focus on the deliverables, and this books are very technical. They focus on KPIs and business models and this kind of stuff.

The second school of thought is to say, actually this is what the leader should be. And so you described some ideal behavior, probably more meaningful to me than the former one, but at times is a bit aspirational. And at times also they indicate stuff that very difficult to reconcile and quote an article, let’s say a leader should be somebody with 30 years of eyes on, but being able to get a profit every quarter, which is kind of difficult to being able to reconcile.

The third school of thoughts that I saw is you take a leader and you describe what he or she has been doing, and they say, just do what Steve Jobs has been doing and you'll be fine. That's very interesting to read, but the contest is completely different, your brain is completely different and it's very difficult to say you can be the new Michael Jordan, if I'm telling you about the life of Michael Jordan. I mean it's difficult to get there.

But what we realize that there are very little, if nothing, except in other disciplines like psychology or other discipline, they said, how do you grow as a leader? What I mean by as you grow as a leader is not how you become from manager to director to director to vice president to vice president to managing director. Now it's how you grow as an individual, which is a prerequisite for you to be a leader. And I haven't found a lot on that topic. So I wanted to fill this gap by saying, listen, if you want to have a to do list, it's not my book.

If you want to be list, maybe there's some element of it, but it's not there. If you want to see the autobiography of the story of a very famous individual, there are plenty up there. I'm trying to help you out in understanding what could be or would be your journey for you to understand where you are and for you to reflect and perhaps to continue your journey with your own thinking legs and critical thinking. That's the overall purpose of this book.

Stephen Matini: Is it connected to what we said at the very beginning of our conversation, the meaning and the importance of knowing your purpose?

Paolo Gallo: Yeah, I mean that to me is very important because I'm a very simple guy. I mean in a very humble and genuine way. When I say simple, it means stupid. It means I've clarity about what is essential.

And to me, I always ask myself, when a nice people, when are you at your best and which activity when you perform, you lose track of the time, when you are in the zone, and you see with kids, kids when they play, they even forgot to eat and they even forgot to go to the toilet because they're so focused in the device, doesn't matter. And it's a beautiful things to watch because they're so into the game, they don't care about everything that is around them. Okay, why? Because they're freaking focused.

And let's go back to the beginning of this conversation. So then when you ask the question about when are you at your best, I realize that I'm going to be best when I have a total autonomy of my time. And two, when am I helping organization teams of people to grow.

So I realized that if I were to do an activity where I can do this with autonomy, then I will be at my best. And why not your best? You produce wonderful results, and when you produce wonderful results, people come to you and you don't have to worry about money. But if you start by thinking, oh, I want to make a list of 10,000 per month, and you start to devise a way of tricking people, it just doesn't work.

I'm pushing people to think, when are you at your best? When you lose track of time, when you find the energy to do it? And equally, what are the sort of activity just thinking about makes you sick, tired, disgusted, bored, annoyed or disengaged?

Because focus on the stuff that gives you energy and then you probably have a direction of your personal and professional life.

Stephen Matini: I really do believe that if we focus a hundred percent on our truest talent, what makes us happy, that's usually where you find all the solutions. It's just that for myself, that happened later on in life. If I'd known that at twenty, probably I would've made different types of decisions I think.

Paolo Gallo: The day before yesterday spent one hour with the daughter of very d friend of ours that is struggling on that decision, and I realized that was a huge amount of anxiety and pressure related to her decision about her professional life.

What I found helpful is to remove elements that pollute in your decision making because they're not essential in your final decision. Let me give you an example. This is a person that has brilliant, severe, she's speak three languages. She worked for six or seven years. She's now in her early thirties and she doesn't know what to do next.

And one question is maybe another MBA or maybe completely change sector. So there were a lot of stuff, and she has an element about logistic, about should I be stay in England or go to another place? One element about what's about my boyfriend, we love each other and I don't want to be distanced. One element about finance to say, well, some of the MBA are very expensive and I can't really afford or maybe ask for more money to my family. Some element about should I been able to do maybe work? And B, at the same time, there was a lot of stuff that is very difficult to reconcile.

So I'm asking people to say, remove what is not essential. I'm not saying the money is not essential, but you should not get married with somebody because maybe he has available by the sea. No, you should be married with the person because you love it. No, if there is also available by the sea, even better, but should not be the decision that drives your final outcome.

So when something creates anxiety, usually is because there are too much stuff to handle at the same time and you have to remove stuff from, it's like when you put things in order in your bedroom on your dining, no, you have to remove stuff and then all of a sudden you have clarity when you focus on something that is very meaningful.

And one it exercise that I ask people to do is exercise or visualization. So close your eyes and you open your eyes and you have a day in front of you, which day do you want to have? And if the answer is, I hate thinking about going to university, then issue is not the money. You don't want to go there. But if the answer is Jesus, I mean I really would love to learn more about artificial intelligence and I dunno anything and I'm fascinated by this topic, et cetera, then you have an indication that perhaps this is a good avenue.

So in decision making, most of the time we feel blocked because the decision is, I'm going to say a funny word, is constipated by too many staff, the blocking the fluidity of your thinking. So remove stuff that are important to consider but not essential on the first place. And then step by step, you can end up having a much better decision making if you have a methodology that allows you to drive a decision in a meaningful way.

Stephen Matini: So as of today, what is your definition of clarity? How would you define what clarity is?

Paolo Gallo: Perhaps by understanding what is not essential? And what I mean by this is I just been to a restaurant with a friend and you go through the list, they say, no, no, no, no, and then you realize what you like.

To me, it's also clarity about what you're not good at. It's clarity about what you're not interested in doing, in the capacity, as I wrote in my book also to let go certain things that are perhaps not relevant anymore. Let me provide an example because again, I always love giving examples.

When I was a in human resources at the EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction Development, I set up a group for the head of human resources of international organizations. And so in 2004, I organized the first meeting of head of human resources and there was a success and there were about 60 of them coming from all over the globe, head of human resources for international organization like ... , the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nation, the NATO, et cetera, et cetera, WTO, WHO and ILO, and this kind organization.

Great. And the second year I was the keynote speaker. I was at the board and for about 16 or 17 years, I've been participating as a founder with another guy called Pierre of that group. Then I left, stopped being head of human resources in 2018.

And on LinkedIn I saw that these former colleagues of mine were organizing a meeting and I wasn't invited. And part of me was very disappointed and very hurt by the fact that, look, I've been the founder, I created this group and now they don't even acknowledge that I created and I don't even invite me. So I was upset for a good couple of weeks. Then one day I thought, but I'm going to say Palo, you have decided to do something else in life. You have decided to be an independent thinker, to be a writer or a professor, author, et cetera, et cetera.

You have removed your T-shirt with head of your resources, why you even care? And so this clarity of what is not essential helps to be focused on what it is. But if you don't have that clarity, you may regret that, oh my God, I'm not part of the group, but part of the group was part of our role that I decided not to have anymore. And therefore, clarity about what is not essential usually helps in understanding what you're to focus on.

Stephen Matini: Do you ever get confused or fuzzy about what to do next? Or are you always clear?

Paolo Gallo: I’m clear after the confusion. What I mean by this is, and I'll give you maybe another example, mindful that you are close to the end of this conversation now. When I stopped being an HR director and I became an independent consultant, coach, also a professor, whatever you want to say, I use this analogy, which is I felt that I opened an ice cream shop with 50 flavors because I was able to do many things following 30 years of experience and studies and MBAs and blah, blah.

I made available a lot of services to a lot of people, but then ended up doing coaching with one person, the revision of a performance management process to another organization, developing a leadership development for another one, doing a workshop for somebody else and teaching the university. There was a lot of stuff going on.

So it was a bit of a confusing moment for me. But then at the end I said, okay, if I were to have an ice cream shop and now summer is over and I closing the ice cream shop, what did I learn by looking at the clients that came to my shop? And I realized that most of the clients wanted to have three or four flavors. I mean, nobody want to have a banana ice cream, but everybody want to have a chocolate ice cream. So what does it mean to me? It mean that clarity about what the clients wants to have first point.

The second one is interested in developing the best chocolate ice cream in the world. If the answer do it and dismantle and stop producing banana cream in, the answer is no. Maybe you suggest somebody else for the chocolate ice cream, but you produce something that is still relevant for the client.

So what I'm trying to say is confusion is part of the creativity process, but you need to have a methodology for you to say, what did I learn by listening, by working and by being in different debates with different people. And then you can have clarity about what did I learn at the end of the season? So what did I learn by listening these people?

And if 80% of the clients asking three things, then preparing 47 dishes makes no sense. I think it's much better to prepare four dishes and do it brilliantly well. And that's pretty much part of the learning process that I've learned when I became an independent consultant by say, I don't want to have a menu with a 75 items. I want to do four things, but incredibly well.

And if somebody called me to say, Paolo, can you do a performance management or bonus system? I know how to do it, but I'm not interested in do it, and I have people that can do better than me. And so I call this guy, I need to sell this and call our, call this company. They can do better what I can do, but from the average plus. But these people will do a super job.

But if you want to have a super job, please ask me these three things and I'll deliver it to you. So confusion is a necessary part of the creative process provided that you have a process perhaps to provide clarity at the end of this confusion,

Stephen Matini: This conversation is a delight Paolo, I really love it. Thank you so much for your time. We cover so many different things. Is there anything that you deem our listeners of this episode I should focus on? Of all points that we touched?

Paolo Gallo: Well, first of all, Stephen, the pleasure is mine because always great to have a meaningful rich conversation in a psychologically safe space, and you've been able to provide this. I'm very grateful for your kindness and also your intellectually stimulating questions, so I'm grateful to you.

The second question is, I think that from time to time, I always say to people, we are human beings, we're not human doings. And from time to time is helpful, and perhaps the beginning of the year is a good moment to do this for a second pose and reflect about where you are in your journey. And it's not about I'm a manager making 3000, I want to be a director making 5000. That's not really what I need.

It's to say, where are you in your journey as a human being? Have you not only achieved also become? Have you invested in improving yourself as an individual, not only in terms of making more money or having more power?

And so I know it sounds a bit of a commercial, but reading The Seven Books (of Leadership) could be perhaps a moment of reflection that can help the reader to understand where he or she is and to understand how to continually progress in your journey as an individual. So I don't want to, sounds like please buy my book because frankly I make one euro per copy. So I don't care because you don't write the book to make money.

But I think I wrote the book for the sake of supporting people in their professional development and perhaps reading my book could be a way, not the only way, but a way to achieve that character

Stephen Matini: And probably Bloomsbury said yes to “another leadership book” because they sense that it's not just a leadership book based on how you describe it. So I'm going to get it. I'm going to read it. I'm going to get inspired.

Paolo Gallo: Thanks so much, Stephen. It's been such a pleasure and I hope I will. Professional path will cross again and grazie and thank you so much for your time.

View Details

Our guest today is Dr. Marcia Reynolds, one of the most influential figures in the coaching world. She has contributed to the industry through groundbreaking books Breakthrough Coaching and Coach the Person, Not the Problem.

How do you make time for learning and growth with a jam-packed schedule? When we stop learning, challenges feel like giant puzzles. To succeed in the many facets of life, Dr. Reynolds encourages us to make learning a core value. Lifelong learning is not about seeking perfection but the journey of a lifetime.

Dr. Marcia Reynolds suggests “wandering” as the mindset of curiosity where we ask questions, challenge assumptions, and remain open to learning from others. Despite years of experience or expertise, it’s vital to maintain a humble attitude and acknowledge that mastery is an ongoing journey that unlocks endless potential.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or your favorite pocast platform.

Please check Dr. Marcia Reynolds' groundbreaking books Breakthrough Coaching and Coach the Person, Not the Problem and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

How have you carved time for learning in your busy schedule? Leave your comments, thank you!

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen or send him a message on LinkedIn.

#MarciaReynolds #Covisioning #Coaching #Curiosity #GrowthMindset #Learning #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Have you always been this way? Has it gotten easier to be a learner as you mature? Are you more of a wanderer today compared to the way it used to be? I mean, how does this work?

Marcia Reynolds: Those are kind of two separate questions and as you ask the question about learning, it's almost like for different purposes at different times in my life. But I do have a value for learning and I don't know if that's an inherent value or inherited value you because it was, you know, a very important part of my culture that we get educated and we learn things and we question, which I really love that I was taught very young to question not just accept always.

I can remember that wanting to just hunger to learn more about this. If I hear something I wanna know more. I don't wanna just take it at face value. But the look of learning, you know, has changed over the years. I mean younger, you know, is pursuing lots of degrees and I think if I was independently wealthy, I would continue to do that.

I was blessed with liking school, not all the teachers, but, liking to be there and have access to things that I wouldn't normally have for myself for learning now, you know, it's very focused because I really want to, I'm so focused on coaching and understanding how coaching works so we can do it better and better that the learning is down a lane, but it's still there. I'm still like hungry to learn, but just for different purposes.

I think though the, the important thing is that it is a true value, not just something I have to do, I need to do. I like it. So to really commit to learning, even if you don't quite like researching, what is it that would be most fascinating to you that you'd just like to know a little bit more? You know? So go down a path like I've now narrowed my path. It's not learning in general, but learning for purpose.

Stephen Matini: When people, sometimes that happens to me. When people tell you, I don't have time to learn, I'm so busy, what would you tell them?

Marcia Reynolds: Well, first I would ask them, so what does learning mean to you? You know, because obviously you have a picture in your head of what learning is, is maybe like sitting somewhere and reading books and maybe you don't have time for that or going to school. But if learning is just going places and listening, like last night I went to just an hour class, you know, that I wouldn't normally do. I usually would sit and watch TV.

But I went to this and it was fascinating. It was an area that I would not even have normally thought about, but it sounded interesting. Last week I attended a discussion group. It was a dinner meetup discussion group, and we ate and, and talked about certain topics and I got to meet people. So you can combine learning with networking, even in a meeting at work to sit there and to question what has led them to believe that help me to understand and maybe ask to meet with them later.

Could you tell me what were the things that led for you to believe that that decision was most correct? I'm just really interested in your perspective. So being interested in a perspective is even learning. So what is it that would be useful for you to know a little bit more about and you know, how could you then engage people in a way that you could learn without, you know, having to go somewhere to get it?

Stephen Matini: Have you noticed over the years a change in the way people approach learning?

Marcia Reynolds: Well, as you were saying that it, it sounds to me there's a connection with, I think I don't have time, so whatever it is you give me make sure that I can use it right away. Although I'm not so sure that's new. Being that I was, you know, used to run training departments and my second master's is an instructional design, it was always how can you make this applicable?

That's nice if they enjoy just sitting and listening to you talk. But if it doesn't change what they do is there an ROI? But I know that over the years, like even yesterday, coaching.com is changing their summits and she says, we decided we need to do it more workshop. You know, where people are engaged and they're doing things and they know then how to use it when they leave. I think there's more of a demand to interact.

We've always known that was important to learning, but I think there's more of a demand for interaction so I can apply it now. So it's just an evolution. I don't see it as a change. Even my book that's coming out in a few weeks, it's kind of like the next version of coach the person, but there's far more resource tools and exercises and you know, it's an interactive guide. It's something that you work with. That's how people get the concepts of what I'm trying to teach, you know?

So even I went that way with writing the book to make sure that there was more things that they could actually engage in and do mostly with others, but even with themselves. And there's questions all through it. Not just to ask when you're coaching, but to ask yourself, am I willing to give up being the expert in this situation in order to engage and coach people in a different way no matter what. Whether it's, you know, being a leader or part of a family, I think the who are you is really important. So I do see engaging people's minds and their doing as becoming more and more forefront in how we teach.

Stephen Matini: Because you've been around coaching for such a long time and you're still so deeply passionate about it. What is coaching to you today compared to, I don't know, maybe five, 10 or 15 years ago?

Marcia Reynolds: I signed up for a coaching school in 1995. And so I've been learning and coaching for quite some time. In working with coaching.com or taking my foundational breakthrough coaching program and making it self-study, I had to sit and watch 32 coaching demos that I did since 2020. It was torture.

But what was fascinating to me to see even my evolution from 2020 to now, so, you know, and I've been coaching over two decades that I'm still, you know, learning and growing and that I went from coaching 40 minutes to now I 15 minutes and we're like, breakthrough and done, you know?

But I found that the real shift was when I really stepped into that being that I'm totally curious about this person's way of seeing and the questions that come from me is, is my being of being with them as a thinking partner of fully stepping into that and not being the expert and not being the person who needs to lead them in any direction, but really, really, really, I'm gonna help you think.

And so every reflection and question I use comes out of this interaction. We have to explore their thinking and as they explore their thinking, it expands. You know? And the more that I believed in that and, and was just that, you know, just blended into that being the more profound the coaching was, you know, it went deeper faster and it created insights that changed their minds and how they were gonna do things in a much quicker, memorable, sustainable way.

You know? And so I think as in anything we learn, you know, the foundational skills you have to do that. And then we're much more deliberate and conscious, consciously aware of what we're doing. And as we get better at it, it starts to sink in and we don't have to think about it. And to the point where I can finally create a collective space with this person, that what shows up in between us in our conversation is what's incredible to both of us.

It takes belief, it takes trust, and it takes practice. And I fortunately have been around long enough that I've been able to really get that into my bones. But I in the process, continue to learn what that means. You know, what exactly is am I doing? I'm not sure, but let me see if I can parse it out so I can then write about it and share it with other coaches so they get it, you know, in service of what, it's been a an incredible journey and I'm, I can't wait to see three years from now how different I'm coaching than even now.

Stephen Matini: When you look back to your career as a coach, is there one specific contribution or client or something that you are super, super proud of?

Marcia Reynolds: There's always this one woman that comes to mind that she was tough. You know, she was resistant. She'd get angry with me, but I just stayed in in that what I did was just ask her a question. And I knew that the question I was asking, I wasn't leading, but I knew it would challenge, but I had the courage to ask it anyway.

She needed to explore this, you know, if we were gonna go any deeper, this was a block. It was interesting because the day we started, she was like, and she worked for a global pharmaceutical and I'm like, so what is it that that you really want to that create from our relationship? She goes, I need to change positions. I should be CEO of this company and they don't get it. And then she was like, I think I need to leave because they don't understand me.

And I just said, we've got six months here. Could you gimme that that we could explore this? 'cause I would really like you to, to absolutely choose where you're going based on your needs instead of leaving behind what you don't like. And she did and we explored what, who she was as a leader and what was really possible and what she wanted to create.

And after that she ended up running a medical clinic and then ended up being the head of health and human services for one of our states here. And the next time I saw her, she had her limo pick me up at the airport. So I would say that that was a great, great thing 'cause she would've just leaped to some other job. You know, this comes back way back to when you mentioned about wandering. You know, you can wander with intention to the next challenge or you wander because you can't stand what's going on right now.

But you know, when you first asked me the question I'm like, wow, there's so many, you know, like the woman that was a general manager that they were divesting her division, she wanted to be CEO of, of the new company and she ended up getting the position. They hadn't weren't looking at her that way when we started. So there's been quite a few shifts. Many of them been women I've, you know, coached men into seeing themselves as the leader that's going to really create a difference, you know, which is different than what they thought they were going to be. I've done a lot of that too. So there's a lot of moments I'm proud of, you know, but there have been some profound accomplishments, I, promotions, accomplishments, being that people have done, even the ones that have decided that it was time to move on. I coached a bank president for eight years that now runs a stitchery shop and she's happy as can be.

So I think that's why I'm so passionate about coaching is that there's all these ways that we affect people's lives without telling them what to do. You know, or giving them our best advice that they discover, created, have the courage to go there is just always so delightful to observe, you know? And to have the privilege to be a part of that process is just amazing.

Stephen Matini: Delightful and privilege are beautiful words to describe that feeling. Do you still, probably not, but do you still ever get anxious about, okay, I have to be present, but I need to perform? Or at this point you just are?

Marcia Reynolds: For the most part, I don't think when I'm coaching, so it's not really there, you know, when I'm working with coaches, doing demos, teaching, and even when I'm hired by companies, it seems to be not a problem anymore. I don't question it sometimes when I've had individuals hire me, you know, and there seems to be an expectation. I just had a request just this week and the person he described is like incredible.

And, and I really thought, am I gonna be able to just let go of being in awe of this person and challenging when the challenge needs to happen? Am I gonna be able to do that? And I'm glad I'm asking the question because if I don't feel I can do that, then I can't coach the person. But it is interesting when it does , it's like, okay, so what about this intimidates me that normally, you know, anything else wouldn't, but it still comes up

Stephen Matini: What's mastery to you? Because we love to learn, learn. So do you ever reach mastery or it's just this thing that you try to achieve and never get?

Marcia Reynolds: Well, you know, it's interesting in, I think it was 1999, the ICF pulled together who they thought were the hundred top thought leaders in coaching at the time, but it was, so it was quite a while ago. And we met in Vancouver and they broke into tables. And my table had that got that question, is there a destination? What is mastery to coaching? And what we all agreed to was that it's not a destination. You're always on a path of mastery. It's not a path to mastery. One of the people, Richard Heckler, is a multiple black belt Aikido. And I took Aikido for five years and we talked about, you know, in martial arts you never are the master. It's always a path of mastery. There's always more to embed and to develop and to be that. Maybe there are a few masters, but even they will tell you that they're still learning.

And so I think that when you look at that concept, that's the same with coaching. If you feel you've made it, I mean, it's like the, the whole thing. There's no such thing as a comfort zone. You're either moving forward or you fall backwards. So, you know, I think that's the same thing and that I get a lot of comments from experienced coaches on my demos and LinkedIn and you know, that attend my classes and they say, wow, I had forgotten.

You know, I got to a a a bit of complacency thinking, okay, I am a great coach now. And then watching you going, oh my , there's so much more. And people always say to me, I mean, they may call me a master. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm on the path too. And I have the, the great honor to teach it, which keeps me learning and growing as I have to learn more.

Like I said, I, I'm doing this mastery program, it's gotta be different. When I first did this, a man who's become a friend of mine, his name is Alan Briskin, and he wrote a book in 1990 called The Stirring of the Soul in the Workplace. And that was pretty out there for 1990. And I remember I was running a training department for semiconductor company and I remember finding that book and like, oh my, that's what happens often in the corporate world, is the soul gets degraded or lost.

I followed his work and then when I first published with my publisher, we had a retreat and there he was because he worked with my publisher and we've become friends. He's written a number of books on collective wisdom. It was at the beginning of the pandemic. I hired him. I said, Alan, I really wanna bring collective wisdom to coaching, so I wanna hire you.

And he says, well, I'm not gonna consult with you. We're gonna have 90 minute dialogues. And what comes out of the dialogue is going to be whatever it is you learn. Exactly. You know, it's like coaching. Yeah. You know, I'm not gonna tell you what to do, so let's just have this conversation and see what emerges. It was fascinating. We did this like twice a week for three months. I mean, I so look forward to it of what came out of it.

And he said too, how much he learned. 'cause He didn't know that much about coaching and everything that we'd talk about. I'd say, okay, so let me put this in a coaching context. He was just so fascinated about that. So I didn't go to a coach, guru master, I went to someone else who I saw had mastery in something that we could use in coaching. There's so much of that that exists, you know, I mean even like there's that one coaching school that uses a lot of Buddhist thought. You know, there's so much more in disciplines and modalities that we can take from and integrate to deepen the impact we have in coaching. Obviously I'm fascinated by, you know, okay, so what's next? There's never an end point. I think we'd get bored if there was.

Stephen Matini: At the beginning you said that being a learner and a wonderer, those are two different separate questions. So who is the wonderer then?

Marcia Reynolds: So when I was getting my doctorate and it came time to do my dissertation, you know, I went in to learn the whole neuroscience of learning and leading. But everything I wanted to do, I thought, I'll never finish this in, in this lifetime, you know, and I understand why a lot of people are a, b, D that never finished their dissertations, you know?

And I was sitting and listening to this man speak and he was talking about the difference of men and women in the workplace. And he was so wrong. You know, as he described women, I'm like, that's not me and that's not the women I coach. I you don't have a clue. Then I went out and I started researching and you know, they were defining women and their challenges all the same. We don't speak up, we don't lean in, blah blah.

Which is, you know, some women don't, but a lot of them do way too much. So I chose to research smart, strong women in the workplace. And what I found with the hundred women in my research study, the most common thing was that they wandered, they'd go into a job and within a couple years, you know, they were excited.

A couple years they were bored, not enough challenges, not enough places to move unless it was a huge global company and they could maybe do some lateral moves, weren't that interested in climbing a ladder. They were interested in movement and learning and growth and that it had to be significant, it had to be meaningful. And I was talking to a man that works with archetypes and he said, oh, they're wanders, you know? And I'm like, oh my, I'm a wander. I did the same thing.

I would go only stay with a company five years, you know, went from this to this to this jumped industries. I didn't care. If I had no idea what, what the company did, I'd figure it out, you know? And then I wrote the book Wander Woman, based on my research and from the book, a lot of people came to me and even, you know, a lot of the younger generation of men saying we do that too, you know, like maybe our fathers would stay with with organizations for a very long time. So there wasn't a stereotype that it was just women. But I think women still do it more when I'm finding my coaching, that they're more willing to leave and trust that they'll find something that they're not going to like, not have anything. And so wandering, it isn't just a learning and and wandering in my mind being me, it's actual physical wandering, you know, the whole been there, done that, what's next for me to learn and to grow.

Yeah, learning has something to do with it. But again, because learning is a little bit more, you know, mental, where the wandering is physical. It's so funny because when I talk to people and in my mind I'm like, oh, you're a wanderer. And I remember him making the distinction. There are settlers that will go in and create amazing things and then stay, you know, like some of your major CEOs and then they stay, they settle.

So there are settlers instead of wanderers. And not that they settle, you know, but that they settle in to what they have created and they wanna stay with that. More wanderers is like, I go there, I create great things and now it's time for me to move on. I did until I found coaching. But even with coaching, I couldn't sit and just coach all day, like some people do.

I do a lot of training. For many years I did a, before the pandemic, I did a lot of speaking at conferences, writing and there's many times where I'm just sitting and writing. So there's a lot of wandering to what I do within this business that I've created. So it keeps me going and I'm creating new programs this year, you know, and it's like, okay, so you said you're in your fifties, I'm 68, you know, it's like, well is there gonna be a time I slow down? And I keep thinking, yeah, I think there will be, but I don't know when , you know, because it's still so fascinating. There's so much to learn.

Stephen Matini: Do you prefer coaching over other tools or you like them all? You like training just as much as coaching, just as much as writing, speaking, or do you have a preference?

Marcia Reynolds: I do like writing. For many, many years I was a writer, teacher when I first came into coaching, when people would ask me, it was very difficult for me to say I'm a coach. I do like coaching, but I think I like writing and teaching. Writing to me is sharing. It's not like just sitting down and writing a fiction book. It's what I see is needed.

When I teach, let me write about it. To me, they kind of go together. I do not like sitting and doing all my teaching by Zoom. So the pandemic like killed some of that. Oh yeah. I love to teach, well not 3, 4, 5 hours by Zoom, you know, at some point that's gonna be done with either, you know, I do it live 'cause I prefer to do it live. I'm fine with tr People are like, oh, you can stay home now.

It's like, no, I don't wanna stay home . I wanna be out in the world with people. So I prefer, you know, live training, writing and live training. But then I'm always doing a coaching demo in every program that I do pretty much. And so I guess you'd still say I coach, you know, when I teach, so it kind of blends together, you know, a lot of times when I speak and they're like, so tell us something that people wouldn't know about you.

Well, most people wouldn't know this, actually, I think the last 10 years of my corporate life was, I wrote Fiction, you know, I've got like three books up on a shelf, maybe one day I'll pull 'em out and fix 'em up, update 'em in a little bit. That was the way I dealt with my stress level of, of working and primarily male tech companies where I was often the only woman in the room and I'm not a big person. I had to be loud and annoying and all of that , you know, so I get it. It was like such a a, a nice escape to write the fiction.

Stephen Matini: You think it's possible for an executive, let's say CEO, to be a learner and a wonderer? Because those people to me, I work with, a lot of them are big loners oftentimes, you know, very much misunderstood. Oftentimes they cannot share a lot of stuff, a lot of pressure, and they have to produce results. So is it possible for them to really have a learning and, and a wonder, a mindset.

Marcia Reynolds: Under mindset? Well, you know, it's interesting 'cause a lot of it was over the pandemic. I was coaching a number of executives in this company and the CEO I wasn't coaching him, but every now and then he reached out to me and said, you know, I've just been reading this book and I it could we just talk about it?

You know, and he was all over the place and what he would read and you know, but you're right, he didn't have anyone to talk about it. But what often would happen was his exploration then would create a little bit of conflict of values with what had to be done in, in the company. And so part of it was having to resolve that I cannot live by the values that seem to be developing and coming through me and work with these people. So again, it comes back to the concept of what is learning.

In my last company, one of the reasons I, I attribute my success to is to this champion I had when I started. We had a program together, he was like the head of quality and he quickly moved into being a director and then in our time together a vp and now he's like the senior vp and you know, he to the CEO and a huge company, we would argue a lot.

But in the service of learning what he loved, to really dig deep into what it was I was teaching. I remember this one other VP said to me, I think I wanna support what you're talking about, but honestly I have no idea what you mean. This other guy would like, I'm not sure what you mean, like, can we like explore this? And so it was like two different ways of looking at it.

I don't know what that means. So I'm not gonna spend time with it or I dunno what that means, you know, help me understand, you know. So it's a different thing that I even think when le leaders really get into a coaching approach with people that what they're doing is an active learning process. See, I see coaching as a learning technology. I do not see it as productivity, problem solving therapy. I don't see it. I see it as a learning technology, you know, and that was what my research has been since the late eighties is on learning the creative insights that we spark.

It's a middle band process. It changes perspective and creates sustainable change. And in learning, that's what we're looking for is how do we create sustainable change? That's what companies want. But it comes a a a lot out of curiosity just to start there for a leader to turn to someone and say, you know, that's interesting that you're saying that you don't think that this has a long-term sustainability.

So tell me what sustainability means to you. That's a coaching approach to get the person starting to think about what they just said. But it also gives the leader a chance to look at maybe there's a different way this person is seeing this than I do. So we kind of learn together. So just asking, what do you mean by that helps us both to learn in that moment that we can possibly expand our perspective or at least understand what's going on in a different way. You know?

And then getting into, so what are the things that you considered that led you to believe this, you know, would be a second question, which again makes them think about it. You know, maybe they haven't considered everything. And also for you to see as a leader, what are some things maybe I didn't see, you know? So again, we learned together just by those two questions, what do you mean by that? What did you consider to bring you to this point, to this belief, to this decision? Powerful stuff in just two questions.

Stephen Matini: So you say coaching, it's a learning technology for sustainable change. So of all the possible words that you could have chosen, why did you choose technology and sustainability and sustainable?

Marcia Reynolds: Well, again, remember that I come out of 11 years of working in the tech world. So it's part of my language. So as a technology, I like it better than a methodology. 'cause The word method then is very limiting. Where I think a technology is really an overall process and that I see it as a part of learning. And that the technology of learning sustainability is because that's the word, you know, again, in in especially in the tech world, they're looking for sustainable change. Sustainable change, what creates sustainable change. And in learning, that's what we're looking for. You know, people can come into my class and at the end give me all the happy faces and say, oh this was so fabulous, I love this. They try a new communication technique or something and it feels awkward. They go back to old behavior. So what's going to jump over that block that it feels weird.

I'm not going to do it, you know, because I'm the leader and I should be perfect or whatever that is. And so I find that coaching bypasses that and gives them a little bit even more courage and confidence to stick with what they've learned until it becomes a part of who they are. In that sense, it creates a sustainable change. 'cause I'm working with who you are, not just what you do, which is what creates the change. Now I'm not talking about skill-based learning, you know? 'cause That's a different thing. I, I see you do it, I try it and then I do it myself. That's, you know, a standard. See, do try, do whatever. Talking about like leadership and personal growth,

Stephen Matini: You published several books and now in a few weeks a new book is gonna come out. Do you feel as excited as other times? Is it different this time? How do you feel?

Marcia Reynolds: It's different in the sense that coach the person is such a huge success. My previous books have done well and they still sell, but coach the person was off the charts. One of my is now one of my publishers bestsellers, you know, and so I, it there's both the, okay, so most of the people that bought that, it's gonna buy the next one. So it should do well. But there's also, what if they don't like it as much as this one ?

So there's always the comparison. What if it's not as good as, and I've never met an author that didn't go through the process of while they're writing the book thinking who's gonna read this? Or you know, they're gonna judge this is not good. Or they're gonna see this as it's just replicated what I said before, you know, and all the negative things that people can say about it. You spend a year of your Saturdays sitting in front of a computer creating something and you're like, is it really worth it? You know?

Which is just normal process that I think authors always go through. So I'm sitting here now like a few weeks away from the book launch and going, what if it flops not likely to based on the success of Coach the Person. But there's always that question and you know what, so what if it did? The people who will benefit from it will find it.

Stephen Matini: What is your biggest hope for this book? Meaning let's say I get your book, I read it. What would you hope for me to get out of the book? What is your hope, your biggest wish?

Marcia Reynolds: Well, you know, I think that's what coach the person taught me was that even to this day, every day I get people from around the world connecting with me on LinkedIn saying, I found your book. Oh my God, thank you. I really, really understand coaching now and I've gotten so much better because of your book.

And then you know, all the other things that you put out there. I want the same thing that, oh wow, you know, I was really getting it and now I have an even deeper understanding of what it is I'm trying to create and how to do it. I want them to just feel more confident and believe in the coaching process that if we stay in coaching, you know, really being their thinking partner and not revert to, you know, 'cause I always get the question, but what if they really, you know, need me to tell them?

What is it that led you to believe that? Most of the time I find people do have the answers inside of them. They're just afraid to apply what they know. That's what we're doing. If somebody had absolutely no, no experience or idea of what something is, then probably they need a little bit more guidance. But even that, I've had like people who were brand new leaders and said, but I've never been a leader before.

And I always say, yeah, but have you worked for leaders? Yeah, well what did you like about them? Or what did you hate about some of these leaders? Boom. We get into the conversation. I don't have to tell them what a good leader does. You know, they know, they come from the, I've never done this before. I don't know how, but they do have perspective.

You know, can I pull that out first before I assume that they need my brilliant advice, changing their mind, really shift the connections and the neurons is what we're aiming for and telling them, pacifies the brain, you know, we coaching activates the brain. Can I activate their brain? That's what I'm aiming for.

Stephen Matini: You know, after an hour of listening to you, now I know why. I have heard about you so many times. You are a goddess. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation and for, for giving me your time because I've learned a lot and even probably more important, I feel peaceful that it is something really valuable when you have the privilege of talking to someone still so young and so curious, but with this amazing experience that you have. And so thank you so much.

Marcia Reynolds: Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you. This was really enjoyable for me as well.

View Details

Our guest is Prof. Peter Hawkins, a well-known figure recognized for his work in systemic coaching and developing coaching cultures in organizations.

Professor Hawkins presents beauty as a transformative force, urging individuals and organizations to align with their core values for a sustainable and harmonious future.

Beauty is found in authentic, vulnerable moments and genuine connections between people, emerging through acts of kindness, compassion, and service.

Advocating for a move away from transactional leadership, Professor Hawkins calls for a model that recognizes each person's inherent beauty, fostering belonging and mutual respect.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Contact Prof. Peter Hawkins

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#PeterHawkins #BeautyinLeadershipandCoaching #SystemicCoaching #Purpose #Beauty #SustainableFuture #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You are such a prolific author, how did you end up writing so many books?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I started off by writing chapters for books where people said that, well, I write a chapter on this one, the other. And then since then, each of the books that, that I've written is because a real need for a new approach.

So my first book, which was around supervision, was because, you know, I'd become a supervisor and discovered there was no real guidance for supervisors and that every supervisor did something different. Thought, well, you know, we need something that kind of puts this together.

And then, you know, when I got on to writing about, uh, coaching and systemic team coaching and leadership, it's always because I got to the edge and can't find what I want to learn next. So end up writing it, and by writing I discover what I know, but also I discover what I don't yet know. Writing is a just a lovely practice, as always, discovering. And, and I suppose I've always been an integrationist, wanted to work across disciplines. And so by writing I'm, I'm able to kind of integrate stuff that has come from very different traditions.

Stephen Matini: And it's interesting because you are such a big, big, big name in coaching, but your books are infused with, um, so many different ingredients. So they're not just your typical coaching book. And then, um, I remember last time when we talked about your latest book, which I think is, is still has to come out, right? The beauty in leadership and coaching, the way you explain it to me, it seems to be the last discovery in your journey and somehow it puts together all the ingredients that you have found along the way.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, it kind of tries to set coaching, leadership, organizational development in, in a larger context, where in that larger context is both on the one hand about evolution and about epistemology, and it's another level about spirituality and ecology.

Basically, in that book, I am very much looking at the great challenges that we face as a civilization and saying at root, they are all interconnected and at root, they are all symptoms of the fact that we haven't been able to evolve human consciousness at the speed of which we have changed the earth. So beauty, I am using as energetic force as a guide to help us on the return journey from how we've shrunken our, our consciousness, our way of engaging with the world, from participatory consciousness to collective consciousness.

And then the white European world, we, we, in American world, we've, we treated further into from the embodied consciousness to brain consciousness. And then we've retreated even further into left hemisphere. And I'm seeing beauty as a force that awakens us to that which is beyond us, that which comes knocking our door and takes us by surprise. And so the notion of following beauty is awakening, if you like the taking us out of our left hemisphere into our whole brain and add our brain into our, our hearts and our guts and our embodied knowing and back into relationship.

Stephen Matini: One thing that I often see particularly business people doing, they tend to focus on business. You know, they're just business. And instead of most of my motivation, most of my creativity, I get it from stepping out the whole realm of, uh, business. And my background is in humanities. So for me, humanities, literature, theater, music, steel, is a huge, huge source of inspiration. And I believe that you and I share some people that are really dear to our hearts. You talked to me about William Blake, you talked about Dante, uh, Rumi. Why are these people so important to you?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: First of all, I'm fascinated by you saying about business or busyness. What is business? I'm just interested, what what do we mean by business or what do we mean by organizations? An organization exists because there is a purpose or something that needs doing that requires collaboration. And that collaboration requires organizing. Actually we could say that business is a mode of responding to what's needed and necessary, but it's become an end in itself.

So the purpose of the organization is to feed the organization so it can feed the organization so it can feed the shareholders so it can, so there's something wrong with business. We've all got business to do, but the business should never be an end in itself, which is why I also in my books around teams say we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. The goal is not to be a, a successful organization or a high performing team.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Those are a means to an end. And the end is to create beneficial value for all the people your work serves. So trying to get us away from means to purpose is important. And we don't create our purpose. We discover it. And I think that people, you mentioned Dante Mena Ian, Rumi ha real, William Blake Ridge, Shakespeare, , let's bring in some of the great, uh, w Wang Wei, the Great Tang Chinese per they go to Essence, they go to the heart of purpose, and they go beyond the restrictive separating individualism of the modernist western world. They reconnect us. Nna Jin Rumi says, why in the plenitude of God's universe have you chosen to fall asleep in such a small dark prison? And beauty is, if you like, what are the keys to unlock the prison?

Stephen Matini: Do you find it hard, easy possible when you work with um, clients, let them enter beauty.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I put it the way around that my job isn't to let them into beauty. My job is to discover the beauty and what they are in them and what they're doing to uncover the beauty. This is there rather than believe that I know where I need to take them.

Stephen Matini: It is true when the organization tap into the purpose, the soul, the beauty, that's when magic happens. But in my personal experience, it's not always possible, you know, to unveil it with clients. So when you experience that resistance to change, whichever you want to call it, what do you do?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: If a client says to me, uh, but what matters is the bottom line, I would say, so Steven, what is the bottom line? Tell me about the bottom line. If they say, well, it's the, the amount of profit we make at the bottom of the page, I'd say, and, and what is the purpose of that profit? So we can reinvest and what's the purpose of re well so we can make more? They've stopped. At a full bottom, my job is just to Dr. Open the windows to what is beneath that bottom

Stephen Matini: With this latest book, what do you hope that readers will take away?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I just received an amazing email this morning from a beautiful black woman in, in in America who just talked about how just reading the first chapter, 'cause I'd used it as a handout on the program, had let her whole body shaking and just brought up so much for her and inspired her to write a poem that she sent me. And honestly, it, it brought me to tears. I just thought if more people have that reaction, it just opened up so much for her in terms of what was buried within her that needed to surface.

And if I can help people just open a window to a, to, to a wider perspective, I can help them see beyond our own imprisonment and break out some of the constriction. 'cause if it helps them, then they can help others. If it helps the coaching profession move from being expensive, personal development for the already highly privileged. And it's not about self-improvement, but it's about what is the world knocking on our door asking us to step up to. It can move us from a, a individualistic self-orientation to a service orientation. And not just service of humanity, but service of the more than human world than, than I feel I will have achieved a small part of my business, of the work I'm being asked to do.

Stephen Matini: You will have to stay on this planet forever because , there's a terrible need.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: All, all our job to do is to do what is responsibility of our generation then to pass the torch on. But you know, the reality is that my generation is passing on a much more depleted and challenged world than we inherited. And that weighs quite large. And I wasn't say on my shoulders, it weighs large in front of me.

What is our responsibility in terms of at least doing what we can, what little we can to help the generations that come after us face the bigger challenges that come after us? You know, I spend a lot of time saying to leaders, you know, what are your major jobs as leaders? I I was in South Africa in a very big gathering of MBA alumni from across Southern Africa. And I started my talk 'cause I'd followed a very inspirational South African politician. I just stood up and I said, please stand up.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: All those of you in the audience who are responsible for developing the next generation of leaders across Southern Africa. Of the 400, probably about 50 stood up. They were the HR folk. And I said, I don't think you understood my question. Please stand up if you are responsible for, for supporting the next generation of leadership across Southern Africa. I had to ask it three times.

And eventually everyone stood up, look around the room. These are the people who are gonna help you and you are gonna help them develop the next generation. So please turn to the person next to you and ask them what do they most need to learn this evening to step up to that responsibility. The phrase I often come back to, and I'm also a lover of Michelangelo and the beauty he liberates. Yes. Although as Warren Bennis points out, we have to remember that the Sistine Chapel was not just done by Michelangelo.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: He had a team of 30 people. So he was a great team leader. He was a, a great orchestrator of, of others. It wasn't the work of one genius and he was part of an extraordinary time in community of artists in in Florence. And the line that I often come back to and use with individuals and teams and organizations and communities is what can you uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs? They don't try and be anyone else because all other places are taken.

What is it that can only be done by you? Because nobody occupies the place in the wider interconnected universe that you occupy. There'll never be a another. Stephen, that's one the just things that got me so excited writing this book in the whole billions of years of creation that we know about. That's only what we know about. There's never been a repetition. No, no organism has ever been created the same as a previous one. And when we have children, every child is a surprise. It's not 50% of the father and 50% of the mother is a, it's a unique never having been created being, it's never existed in the whole history of creation. Isn't that a miracle?

Stephen Matini: It's an impossible statistical weird thing that happened somehow.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: The the line that came to me when I was writing the book is that creation is in love with becoming. So I said that, it goes back to your question about why do I write books? I don't write books to tell people what I know. I write books to take myself to my learning edge and to discover between me and what I'm writing about, what is trying to struggle into consciousness at my best. I don't write them.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever felt in your entire life as you were trying to discover something could have been the brand of a book or whichever something you want to achieve. Have you ever felt, God, what if I don't get there? You know, kinda self-doubt. So maybe you didn't feel that the beauty within yourself or somehow at some point you felt, God, I'm lost. I don't know if you ever felt it that way, but if you did, how did you overcome it.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: At the end of writing this book? I thought, but I haven't got to what's needed. And then I remind myself that if I stayed with that, I'd never put the book out. I've had my book on leadership team coaching and my book on supervision going to fifth editions, fourth editions.

And, and I end up apologizing for what I've written in the earlier editions. You know, because at some point we have to say, well, it's not enough, but is it good enough? Because who said all, all the way to heaven is heaven. And at some level we just have to, to stop trying to be perfect and put out share where we've got to, uh, in the hope that will help other people on the path behind us, but also people alongside us to go further on the path. A lot of our doubts are just ego contortions.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, they just take us back into, am I good enough? Or all the internal chat. And I think somewhere to do what we need to do, we just have to say that doesn't really, all that doesn't really matter. Yeah, we, we have to have doubts because that's what leads us into furthering inquiry. And I think certainty is more dangerous than doubt, but doubt can be a interruption when it starts to catches an internal hesitancy and self-doubt. And rather than to say, well actually I need to get on and do what is showing up in front of me is necessary to do

Stephen Matini: For me. Probably the one thing that I guess I've learned only later on in my life is the fact that simply because the process is sometimes is not pleasant or doesn't feel pleasant, does not mean it's wrong. Whereas before, you know, when I was much younger, I was all, oh, I should not be feeling this way. You know, if I were really, really good at this, I should not be going down this route. And now I really believe it is a process. And in the process there's space for everything. There's space for moments in which I feel great for, for great, great doubts for sure.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You see, I think the thing that helps me in the moments of doubt weigh down, depressed, is at that moment you can either go into grumble or into gratitude. And if you can, and I can't, I didn't say I can, but if I, I can hold to the path of treating everything that happens, absolutely everything that happens, however awful as a generous lesson from life, I may not like it. I may feel burdened by it, I may feel inadequate to respond. But if it's a generous lesson from life, then it is a gift as well as a burden.

Stephen Matini: I do gratitude it, but I also do a lot or feeding myself.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think it's a deep trust, not my trust in life. Constantly becoming my trust in that is greater than the trust in my own emotional reactiveness. So I always believe life knows better than I do. I think this shouldn't have happened to me, but that's not I gonna achieve anything. Life's decided. That's the next thing I have to deal with. And it's a generous lesson. So the choice I have is do I see it as a generous lesson and learn from it or I do. I see it as some awful thing I'm a victim of. But, but I do have a choice saver.

Stephen Matini: Last time when we talked, I asked you what is the opposite of beauty for you? You remember what you said?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think I probably said, well, at one level it's ugliness.

Stephen Matini: Yes. You said, um, it's solipsistic narcissism, you know, dualism you talked about, but ugliness, I think it wraps it up better.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Um, well, well solipsistic narcissism is, is ugly because it fragments us and divides us from that which we are a part of. You know, the the image that came to me just then was, um, Philip Pullman's novels where everybody has an animal Damon that is part of them. And, and they do these experiments to, to s children from their animal being self. It's alongside them, which is what we've all done in the modernist western world. Solipsism is ugly because it is, it's a severing of that which lives in connection and great poetry that we talked about is if you like, sewing us back into connection, it's opening the windows to, to a world beyond.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes it does feel that this ugliness is getting more and more and more. And sometimes I do wonder is this because of the fact that we are so hyper connected? Is so we are constantly exposed to a lot of negative type of information. How do you feel about it? I mean, you know, o over the years being someone who has experienced it so much, do you see this ugliness more prevalent today, more dangerous today than it used to be? Or just simply has always been there?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I feel in myself that it is growing the openness that we're talking about, but we need to balance it with, we live in a world where actually a, a smaller percentage of people are dying from wars and murder than ever probably in human history. Number may be greater, but percentages more. And there are ways in which we have become more, more moral.

But at the same time, I think over the last 500 years, the modernist revolution of science, secularism, individualism, colonization, capitalists, the trying to control the world around us and the human search for control has created enormous ugliness at the moral level and a world which we have greater mental distress and mentally honest than than ever. And yet we are richer, more affluent, more educated, more educated in knowing about the world and far, far less educated in being in and connected within the world.

Stephen Matini: If a young person, let's say someone, a young professionals, you know, 19, 20, 21. So let's say if someone around that age that is kind of trying to figure it out where to go, um, asked you what practical steps can I take, you know, to somehow handle this ugliness, you know, because it is so depressing. What would you say that are steps, you know, some first steps that, that the person can take?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I have people around that age come as wolfers worldwide opportunities on our organic farms and they come and stay with us. And, um, I would say go out and wander through the garden. They wander through the woodlands and just be open to whatever speaks to you. Just listen to the more than human world. Let it be your teacher.

Don't try and just master everything. I'd ask 'em about who inspires them and what inspires them. I might ask them. And what do you really love in your life to try and reconnect them to source and away from knowing about? I jokingly say I have wolfers come and stay with us because they fill in the gap between my children and my grandchildren. My children are all in their forties and my grandchildren are between nine and 15. So I just love talking to young people in their twenties. Mind you, I love talking to two year olds, but, uh, or listening to two year olds,

Stephen Matini: I am so grateful that I was born in a moment that did not have all these connectivity, didn't have the internet, you know, so it was very much analog. Not because I don't like it, I use it plenty, but I'm glad that I have the perspective. And so I use it a lot. But then there are always moments, usually it towards, at the end of the day, like it, let's say I'm done with computer phone, I mean bye, you know, and for me it's quite easy because I've always done it, but younger people don't have that. I mean, they, they can do exactly what you said, but they grew up in a world in which everything is filtered through technology and that lack of perspective, it must be a little bit difficult sometimes to overcome.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, like right now, can we find a, a heart connection even with the, the screen between us? We have to be able to, to hold the imaginal in the digitalized world.

Stephen Matini: I agree. It's mostly for me at least, making the effort to drop anything and to really be present with that person and listen, you know, to really to to sense it, to find it, you know? Instead, if I get sidetracked by whatever it might be, you know, I need to get there. I need to reach the goal, I need to do that one. Even now talking to you, I can always make the choice. I'm either, I wanna be feeling grateful of being here with you to enjoy this or be somewhere else, you know? But if I do that, I know that I feel exactly the way you're describing it.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I was looking at, um, the work that Steve March is doing with Athia coaching because I really like the way he talks about the difference between self-improvement and self unfoldment. You know, with young people, we can ask them, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Which is such an unhelpful question.

Stephen Matini: I still don't know.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: But it is playing to like the words you used earlier. Ambition is unfoldment, is, you know, what, what in you is struggling to come into flowering? Where do you see life asking you to become more than you currently are? These are so much ritual ways of engaging, then goal centered.

What do you want to achieve? You know, if I ask my grandchildren when they're nine or 10, if they're boys, they'll say, I wanna, I wanna play in the premiership as a footballer. If they're girls, they'll say, I want to be a pop singer. We can guarantee that uh, 990,000 of a million or whatever will, will be disappointed. , how can we get back to the love of playing? And if you do end up playing professionally or you know, that's fine, but actually the love is for the craft.

Stephen Matini: So it's about discovering and as you are discovering, enjoying the process.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: It's more than that, isn't it? It's about loving the work. It's about loving not just the person you are coaching, but loving all the, all the people that their work serves, their community and the world beyond them. And loving what shows up through all of that, which is beyond the people. It's, that's why I go to beauty. It's about loving what shines through the team, the organization, the which is what, what, what, what's beyond the top level?

Stephen Matini: It just, the beauty is a word that I don't think I've ever heard in the world of, uh, how you say busyness, usually. But it's a beautiful world. I mean, I cannot think of a better word to express what you're saying.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: In one part of the book, I quote Samuel Taylor Ridge's, perm of the Ancient Mariner. And this perhaps ties up a number of things we've talked about because the ugliness of narcissistic solipsism, you know, the ancient mariner, you know, he shoots the albatross. He destroys this beautiful bird that hangs around his neck and one by one all, all the other sailors die of, of plague.

And they, they look at him that his shooting of the bird has caused it. And he is left totally alone and cursed and weighed down in this solipsistic narcissistic world. And then he sees the sea snakes under the boat. He talks about all, all alone from the wide seas. And then he sees the sea snakes and there's this lovely line where he says about their colors and their, the light on them. And, and I blessed them unawares. He didn't choose to see their beauty.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Their beauty suddenly breaks through his aloneness and his, and in that moment, the arbitrages falls from his neck. At that moment, he is kind of released from this small dark prison that he's fallen asleep in. And it's that, can we see beyond our self concern, can we see beyond the bottom line, can we see beyond the goal, the ambition? To what, what does it serve? And, and you may know in another of my books, i I I get very taken by the ful storyful or sur ful who goes to search for the holy grail.

And when he first sees it, this magnificent grail procession, um, he wakes up in the morning in a empty field. 'cause he hasn't asked the question. Years, years later, after much journey, he comes back and he asked the question he has to ask in order to be able to stay there, which is who and what does the grail serve? You see, he's learned to see that the beauty is not in the object. One other story about my oldest son, when he was about seven or eight said, daddy, why, why aren't we born knowing everything? Because then we wouldn't have to go to school. . And I said, but Adam, if you knew everything, why would you bother to get bomb?

Stephen Matini: What did he say?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think he just looked at me slightly old , he didn't quite know how to respond. So, you know, he went back to school, which is what we all have to do, isn't it? Is it, is it beautiful that we get it wrong? You know, on my courses, I get people to even compete on who has the most quality failures, right? That we can all learn from what a gift that we fail over and over again because our failure takes us to our learning edge. Mea shall Rumi says, leadership is a poison. Unless we have the antidote in our hearts, success is a poison unless we have the antidote. Aren't aren't you blessed to have failed many times?

Stephen Matini: I didn't get it completely wrong. I would say that you are a very precious reminder. So I'm going to listen to this a lot of times . So maybe the, the right word is not success, but, um, it is a good success. What would it be? The definition for you?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, a, a good success is one that I I recognize doesn't belong to me. One, one of my blogs, I talk about why we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. And I tell an imaginary story of Zoom in 2021, the top team all celebrating. 'cause they've had their biggest growth in in customers, their biggest growth in revenue and their biggest growth in bottom line in inverted commas. What they think is the bottom line and that they're all drinking champagne and saying hump, we've done well. And, and one of the team members says, but we should do a special call out for the, the team member that's contributed the most. I said, well, who are you talking about? And she says, not only did they contribute the most, but they only joined us last year. I said, well, who are you talking about? She said, isn't it obvious Coronavirus, she is the one who's made the biggest contribution to our success. And I just tell that story on success has always co-created. So good success is to know that my Sufi teacher used to say, make sure that when you die, your candle wax has all been burnt up. And that's how you give light to the world. That's good success when you die, having given yourself away.

Stephen Matini: That's a beautiful thing, what you just said.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I've been blessed with extraordinary teachers. Do any of us say anything that's original or do we find ways of framing eternal truth just in new forms?

Stephen Matini: There's one question that, uh, came up to mind a bunch of times, but I haven't asked you of all the possible tools, routes that you could have taken, why coaching?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: That's what came knocking on my door. But another way of answering that would be to say, well, you know, I started in a love for literature, which turned into a love of drama, which turned to a love for theater, which turned into a love for what was happening in the whole creative unfoldment of a more in the process and the production. And that took me to mental health and becoming a psychotherapist. And then I started to realize that many mental health organizations were more, uh, disturbed than the people they were treating.

And that took me into a love for how do you heal organizations? And that's taken me into how do we together heal humanity and how do we heal the split between the human and the more than human world? So there's an unfoldment there. And, and, and I suppose my real interest is, is I don't think that either coaching, as we know it, executive coaching or consultancy are fit for the 21st century.

And, and I'm just having been privileged to be involved in leadership development, consultancy, coaching, leading. I'm constantly looking for the what is needed beyond those. You see coaching because I was more interested in not people just sort of themselves out, but helping people make a bigger difference to the world beyond them. That took me from psychotherapy to coaching, to team coaching, to systemic team coaching, to providing partnership to organizations as they try and transform the difference they can make in the world. But it's all one.

Stephen Matini: Well, I have one last question, which is, we have talked about wonderful things. For anyone who's going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would suggest them to focus on.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Focus on? Well, if there's, as a lot of your audience, uh, in one of my favorite countries, Italy, I am coming to Milan in May, so please do put the de dates, um, on the information about the podcast, I'm running a three day experiential training in systemic team coaching through renewal associates. And I hope some people may be, um, encouraged to at least go and dip into my new book when it's out in the autumn. Beauty and leadership and coaching. I suppose the other encouragement is beyond both of those would be to say, you know, remember we have one shared holy book, which is all around us, which is the more than human world and beyond. You know, what I teach or any of my teachers teach, the more than human world is, is trying to teach us all the time, but we're not very good at listening or paying attention. Please take some time and go and walk to the hills around lakes, through the woods, but walk in a way of humility to and, and let them teach you and see how beauty will surprise you.

Stephen Matini: Maestro Hawkins, thank you so much for this wonderful time, which I will always cherish. Thank you so much.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Thank you Stephen. And it is the questionnaire that opens the door to what needs to flow.

View Details

Financial advisors, attorneys, doctors, and fiscal consultants are essential professionals who help us navigate an ocean of information to make sound decisions. How do you choose a good one when the language they speak is a nebulous lingo few people fully understand?

Riccardo Grabbio is a seasoned financial consultant known for his pragmatic approach and extensive experience as Chief Financial Officer. In this episode, Riccardo helps clarify some common financial lingo so you can build trustworthy and clear communication with your financial advisor or find the perfect one you understand.

Listen to how to keep financial strategies simple on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#RiccardoGrabbio ##WealthBuilding #Investing #Savings #FinancialEducation #MoneyManagement #FinancialWellness #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So I represent your typical moron who doesn't know anything about finance. And let's say that I'm seeking for a financial advisor, where should I start?

Riccardo Grabbio: When we take a look at finance actually is not something very small, very narrow, something. There are thousands of aspects that we need to take a look at. So first question to me is asking yourself, what do I need? Because when you talk at about finance, it might be have your own personal budget, for instance, because your expenses are not under control.

Can be or maybe can be having a finance advisor because my company must improve, must improve for whatever reason because the balance between revenues are and cost are not enough or simply because I'm not managing well enough, my working capital for instance, or maybe because my cash flow is not coming, even though I'm making revenues, I, I do not understand why this is the second one.

Or maybe it can be for instance because I have a lot of cash, but I'm not capable of leverage that cash well enough to make my company grow better or how it should, or maybe simply because I have a personal heritage that I want to have a battery yield.

Riccardo Grabbio: And at the moment I don't have this is let me say very typical situation that Italian families has. For instance, just to give an idea because you need to know that the GDP of Italy is not satisfactory, is not a country that is growing a lot for several reasons. We are not efficient enough. Our industries are weak, must improve, we have tax issues and all those stuff.

But you need to know that Italian families are rather rich and what they have, they have a lot of cash because of generation and so on. And they have a lot of properties. And the big issues that I have seen, for instance in Italy is that what the Americans say is asset rich and income board, to me a financial advisor, this is the first rule of financial advisor, try to change this status because when you are asset rich and income board means that you are not efficient or better, you can't manage your asset.

And in this specific situation, for instance, the financial advisor can create tremendous value to, to a family for instance, try to think very rich family that has a good family office and exactly the same very rich family without the family office handling the money for them, the result would be completely different.

Stephen Matini: Based on everything you said so far, it seems to me that you, I think you mentioned like probably several things, they're important, but three are really important. One is that you don't need to have a big assets in order to start to be more financially savvy. That's one. Then you mentioned several times the importance of cashflow and the other one you emphasized the importance of time because from a financial investment standpoint, time is crucial more than the actual percentage you get paid in the moment.

Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, exactly. I can tell you talking about the time, which is the most important of one. There are several studies that I have read over the years from JP Morgan, but also from some other sources like banger and so on. And what they say is that in a period of at least 20 years in a bunch of 100% investors in the stock market, there was not one that lose one penny over or the 20 years.

It means that if you invest, if you buy and hold for 20 years, you're not going to lose money. If instead you try to, what, what we technically say, time the market. So you buy and sell, you buy and sell, then things get tricky. I can tell you one thing, I dunno if you have ever heard about Peter Lynch, I think in seven years in which he managed the found Magellan, he doubled the s and p 500 each and every year.

Riccardo Grabbio: So try to think a, a result what we are still talking now about his performance and the funny thing is that 90% of the investors that invest in his fund, they lose money over the year. And you can ask me how it can be possible that in 20 years a fund had a performance huge and the investors lose the money because they were not buying and holding, they were buying and then selling, buying and selling try to keep the best moment in which you to enter and to exit from the fund and doing that 90% of those, they lose the best return of the market. So buying a whole is a good advice.

Stephen Matini: So I I wanna ask you to define some key terms, you know that maybe could be useful for the people who are going to listen to the episode. How would you explain assets in the simplest way?

Riccardo Grabbio: An asset is something that brings you money in your pocket and on the other side you have liabilities. That is something that takes out money from your pocket. Why is tell you that? Because for instance, try to think to have a new big car, an expensive new car. Actually from the accounting standpoint, this is an asset. Then you, you, you d it in your, in your balance sheet, this is an asset then you will depreciate in 10 years and so on. This is technically an asset, but to me this is not financially an asset. Why not? Because it's not bringing you value any kind, it's not bringing you money in your pocket, it's draining money from your pocket. So keeping it in very simple. For our listeners, asset is something when you buy something that will bring you further money in your pocket than you are buying an asset.

Riccardo Grabbio: If it doesn't, then it's not an asset. Then we have some asset that intrinsically they produce something, they produce a value. Let me give you an an an example. A stock index or a single stock for instance, you have a company, you have an organization. Those people, they are all working together with a common purpose, which is to create earnings and so on. So it doesn't matter the price in the short term, in the long run it'll increase in value. Why? Because those companies are making earnings, they're paying dividends and so on. So there will be a good result in the, in in the future. But then there are some other asset that those, they have a value fine, but they don't produce anything. Let me give you an example. If we talk about precious metals, I dunno, gold for instance and so on in this one here is just a simple piece of metal, right?

Riccardo Grabbio: It has big value. Yes it does. The market is valuing is up and low value, it does a function in investment portfolio but is not producing anything. I mean, so in this case we are a bit more speculating. The price can go up or down. We don't know in the future can be be a function in the portfolio, but it's not creating anything. But this is another different kind of asset. Another kind of asset are bonds for instance. The returns typically is low, but you lend money to someone, to a government, to a private company, to a corporation, whatever, and they pay you the interest in in your return. This is another asset. It bring you money in your, in your pocket. Then there are also real estate. You can buy flats for, for instance you can buy apartments and so on. Rent it and as a return you have the pay that the people are paying to you. This is another, another example. For instance, those are assets.

Stephen Matini: How would you explain? Same question in super simple terms, P&L?

Riccardo Grabbio: Very simple difference between revenues and cost difference between what you from your business or from in your private light and the cost that you have to bear to stay alive or if you're talking about a company that you need to pay to keep your company alive. Difference between revenues and cost. And what I'm surprised that several organizations, several entrepreneurs and also private people, sometimes they do not understand why they are not making earnings and they don't arrive to a very simple conclusion. Either you increase your revenues or you reduce your cost or you do them both. And again, I go back to the first concept and and statement that we said keep it simple. You can have a p and l, okay, which is long one kilometer for ista with 1000, 2000 different lines detailed and so on. But in the end, if you take a look at things from 1000 kilometers from from the moon, if you take a look at things from the moon, from a very high distance, in the end you will see two things. You will see revenues and costs. Either you increase revenues or you reduce cost. I know it's very simple, looks trivial, but trust me that nine out of 10 of dozen per they look at the tree but they don't look at the wood because if you take a look at from things from the from the moon, this is what you will see. And you either you are just one or you are just the other.

Stephen Matini: How would you define super simple cashflow?

Riccardo Grabbio: Cashflow is the difference from the money that you have in the first day of the year and the money that you have in the last day of the year. The difference between the two is the cash that you have generated and beware because the cash that you have generated is not perfectly linked with the earning that you made in that years because it might happen that in the year you made good earnings but you didn't generate good cash flow because you didn't manage while you are working capital on the things that we said before can happen or the other way around might happen that in one year for instance you have a good cash flow but your earnings are not satisfactory enough. It might happen for instance because in one year you dismiss a big asset or something and so on and you find a lot of cash in your bank account, yes, looks good. But then if you take a look at p and l, which is your business, you see it's not profitable enough. So beware, we have just defined what cash flow is, but it's not one-to-one with your earnings with your business.

Stephen Matini: If I said, and this is just how I personally define it, which is very trivial. Cashflow is the money that I need to run my business. It is essentially what is in my banking account after I pay all my expenses, after paying all, all taxes, what is left in my banking account? Would this be a good definition of cashflow?

Riccardo Grabbio: No, it is not the money that you need to run your business. This is something that we definitely call the short term debt. This is your financial position. Keep it very simple. Even here if you are a class, your balance sheet Steven, you need to know that your business must be financed simply. It is a bit more tricky, but very simply can be financed only in two ways, either with the equity which the owner puts in in his company or borrowing money from the banks, meaning from the financial institution. There are several other ways, but keeping simple, those two things. So on the right side of your balance sheet, you only have those two things, your financial debts and your equity, nothing else now. So those are the ways in which you support your business, but this is not the cash flow. The cash flow is the difference in your cash from one moment and in another one, let me give you an example. If the beginning of 2024, first day you have 10 K in your bank account and at the end of the year you have 20 k, your cash flow of the year is 10 k, which is the difference between the end and the beginning. This is what you generated, this is the cash flow, okay? While instead your financial position, what you need to let me say keeping your business alive is something that is your short-term debt is your position that you have in your balance sheet.

Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you one thing. What'd you think? Would you say the cashflow is the star?

Riccardo Grabbio: It is and I have a specific example that I bring that is a company for which i, I do consulting also now, and they came to me because they could not understand why the cashflow was not coming. And I will tell you more if you take a look at this p and l for instance, right? The revenues last cost is, is very profitable. I mean they are making a lot of earnings, margin are very high volumes are growing, but the cashflow is not coming and they did not understand why actually the, the reply was rather simple, okay? And the cashflow is not simply coming from the p and l revenues less cost, but then there is the balance sheet, there is the working capital. Let me give you a very simple example. If you do a lot of earning each and every year, but then you can't collect money from your customers simply because you did not a good credit management and, and you sold a lot of stuff, a lot of items, your products or whatever to a customer that actually is in, in trouble is financially weak and is not capable of paying you, I know for one year or even more, then you have a problem of cash.

This is an example or another example can be if you have a very good p and l but you inventory is growing and growing, the terms of your items that are in your stock are staying there and they don't go to the customer, then you need to finance those stuff that you have and also in this case you are absorbing cash and this, this is the second one or the third one can be for instance because your p and l is very good but you pay your vendors very quickly too quickly, okay? Compared on the timing in which you collect cash and you keep your items in in stock. Also in that, in that case you have issues of cash and then there might be also some other reason for instance investment. Try to think at investments they don't hit your p and l but you can do big huge investment that turn out to be in the future not good enough.

They don't have a good payback, they don't have a good return. And also in that case you have a problem of cash. This is another thing then this is the last thing that we call when your balance sheet is not robust enough. If you have working capital right of 10 and you have your short term debt which is 12, so you have an issue of two because it means that in a short term you have to pay 12 to someone to the banks or investors, but your cash that will come will be only 10 and you will be short of cash. So your balance sheet must boost enough. So there might might be several reasons, but the tricky thing for a non-finance people is try to link and bridge the earnings, right, the result of your p and l to the cash and make them to understand that from your earning to the cash flow that you generate, there are several, a lot of stuff that you need to make otherwise you can be very profitable but not generating cash.

Stephen Matini: And it's important not to keep your money under the mattress by actually invest them.

Riccardo Grabbio: Exactly. This is the second one now is a bit different because actually the interest rate are rather high. They are more than 4% are recording now in December, 2023. So they are rather high. And I would say that in this situation might be sensible also to pay someone that you have to do so if you have cash if you have liquidity you can pay something. But try to think for instance till two years ago when interest rates were zero and the market was returning six or 7%, I'm talking about stocks for instance. In that case it would've make sense to borrow a lot of money because you borrow for free and the money who you have is returning 7%. So on depends from the market situation for sure. It's not so wise to keep your money under your mattress.

Stephen Matini: You know, to me as you talk, I understand what you're saying because I've been doing this for little bit. Once again, I'm not super financially savvy but I made a lot of mistakes in the past. So inevitably I learned but not, not knowing who's going to listen to this episode. That could be some people they may feel unfamiliar with this whole territory. If they had to choose a financial advisor, what would you say they are three features they should look for in a financial advisor?

Riccardo Grabbio: To me, first thing a financial advisor must have a good track record. Let me say that the market is something that, I mean we have been studying that for 120 years and what we have seen that nobody has still completely understood it. There are always new situation and so on. So to me the more the financial advisor is experience, the more he has spend time on the market, the more he is trustworthy. I mean it is not the only rule but you need to know the market very well. So a long time and in the market with a good track record is one feature that you need to take a look at. Then there is a second feature that of course is very important is having a good feeling with that person seems not fundamental but it is because that person will help you on very sensitive topics. It'll help you on things that are rather dear to you in the and because they are talking about your finances and so on. And so if you don't have a good feeling, if you don't have a full trustworthy of that person, I think is not the the person good enough for you.

Stephen Matini: You know, the rule that I gave myself when I was trying to select the right one was if I cannot understand what he or she says, then it's not the right person for me. Truly. I mean you can be the most incredible person and I'm not questioning your, you know, education, your experience, but I'm the client and I need to understand.

Riccardo Grabbio: I will. I will tell you one thing. Over the past 15 years I have seen a lot of portfolio and there is a feature that all the beginners investor that then will have some troubles for sure, which is mathematically they try to seek things very complicated and one rule that the investors and beginners investors they need to take a look at or better to search in a financial advisor to keep things simple, what they have seen in life that the more the investors are beginners and the more they look for complicated stuff, this is a big mistake but it's very natural. For instance, if you happen to have an investor that has either know a big quantity of cash to be invested, but he doesn't know anything about that and you talk to him about very complex fund, fund of fund robot advisors or structured product derivatives and some other things, very technical and very complex product with leverage and so on, they immediately fall in love about that because they think that that we all exotic products, new products with artificial intelligence and so on, they completely fall in love them thinking that will be very cutting edge and that will beat the market.

You know what will happen in that case that you will create a mass, you will create a portfolio with huge costs and the result will be for sure far below the market.

Stephen Matini: Again, I understand what you're saying, but I feel my head getting dizzy a little bit like because also, you know, money is something that is so connected to our survival. I mean it's not just status or I can buy this, I can buy that, but it's connected to so many things such as, you know, when people say money does not give you happiness and always say that's the biggest someone has ever said, because you know when my money's fine, I'm so glad I can think of all the things that I love in a way that's more peaceful. You know?

Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, the said that you just mentioned can be truth or not, I dunno, but there is one thing to tell you when a family and a person goes under financial stress, in that case you need to talk to them about that saying, because financial stress I think is one of the worst situation ever. And I can tell you one thing be because of that you need to have also a good financial planner because what he will help you to do is not only to deal with the markets properly, but also to manage the psychological impacts that you have from the up and downs of the market. If you are very expert, you know how the market works and so on, you don't have the impacts. But if you are a beginner, if you don't trust the situation or if you don't trust the financial advisor when the market is down 30% because from time to time it happens, then you start to have some bad feelings maybe not to sleep at night and so on. So the financial advisor for this situation is fundamental

Stephen Matini: And that to me goes back to what you were saying about the relationship. You know, particularly these days of artificial intelligence, everything being automatic and such and such, that is such a key relationship to have in a life that is so uncertain. You know, you read the news and millions of different things, so it's very easy, you know, in this situation to fall for trends and the stupid things that you hear everywhere. But a good financial advisor, that relationship in my opinion informs you and really helps you to stay grounded.

Riccardo Grabbio: I agree with you. You must stay the course. The Americans say, and this is a really valuable advice. You need to stay the course and stay the course being not being trapped into the new fashion stuff, new fashion things, the new hot stock that might come on the market and so on because they, they were not going to help you, they'll harm you.

Stephen Matini: How do you feel about anything that has to do with ESG investing, anything pertaining sustainability?

Riccardo Grabbio: First point is the tactical situation about that. I have some portfolios that I'm managing where the, the clients is asking me to invest in those specific companies. We, which has a good status for being very ethical, being very keen on environment and so on because they are interesting in that. And I think that from that standpoint, it makes you feel better because you feel that you are doing something good for the environment and so on. Then we need to see what is the reality under those companies because we don't know 100% because when we buy an ESG for instance, found, we don't know if all the companies that there are inside, those are all the features that they should have because sometimes working in the companies, I have seen that sometimes, okay, they are ESG, fine, they have white certificates and so on, but then let me say energy must have been used better was not managed well enough.

So there were some inefficiencies from the environmental standpoints. So I would say that okay, this is a good thing to do good for the environment, which I'm very keen on as well. But we don't know exactly if all those are the best choices that we could have made. We don't know, we hope, but we don't know. This is the first thing. Then we don't need to forget that when we invest we are looking at returns. The first reason of course why we invest is having a return. And what I can tell you that I have compared the s and p 500 with the SGN funds for 10 years and so on. And what I have seen that in the long run, the returns that I have is very, very close so far we don't know in the future, but so far is is more or less the same. So from the pure yield standpoint, right, the return in that case, I would say that there is not much difference in that. What drives the difference in the return in the long run is the asset allocation.

Stephen Matini: What have you learned about yourself throughout this whole thing, working with people in different situations?

Riccardo Grabbio: Well it, it's difficult to answer for different reasons. The first one is we need to take a look at if we are taking a look at finance from the company standpoints or from the financial advisor standpoints, which is very different. And the second one is because you need to know the finance has been changing so much over the years. I remember Steven when, when I started working in finance, the value added for the organization and for, for the people who was perceived and basically also what the companies were asking to the finance people were things completely different from the things that there are now. So over the year things have changed and as a result also the finance people, people that work in finance must change and see things in different ways because the market is asking to go to the finance people different stuff.

In the past it was much more mathematically the mathemat result they were asking about preciseness they were asking about and so on. But as the time goes by, as the artificial intelligence goes by, the technologies is growing and so on. What I see that now what the partner, the CEO, the stakeholder are asking to the finance community is being a tremendous business partner, not being extremely technical and so on. So what they want is having a support that translate their view, okay in finance language or better to translate the finance language to them so that they can understand what they can do and they cannot do. And of course help supporting them in having the right strategy in getting their result doesn't matter if you are looking about a private person or if we're looking about a corporation from that standpoint is exactly the same.

What they are asking now today is to support them to understand what are their goals, their needs and so on and to set kind of strategy in order to get their targets. This is what they want. Now, just to make it an example, and this is a bit sad also to me to say that nowadays people for instance that do finance me say rather low level. So for instance, booking invoices, booking transaction, general ledger journals and so on, those are profiles that are not interesting for the market anymore because there are the emerging markets where there are people doing that for an extremely low cost or there is with a new tech iTech and so on, there are computer that are doing those transaction automatically themselves. Those were profiles very helpful in the past or better indispensable, but today it's not like that. Today they are not needed any, any almost needed anymore. So it has changed a lot. So if you want to work nowadays in this field, you need to be a good financial strategist and you need to support and give direction to investors, to entrepreneurs and so on.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the right posture that a good finance person should have to enter this job?

Riccardo Grabbio: Well I would say more than possible, I would say the, the right mindset in finance, you do need to have a good mindset. This is key from a several standpoint and I believe that if you want to be a good finance person, finance manager, finance advisor or whatever, you need to have good background. This is a commodity. Without that you cannot go ahead, but you need to have also a good mindset because having the good mindset meaning is to trust what is your view? To stay steady, to stay the course, to stay consistent with with your choices, not to change the strategies, being methodical and not to lose the focus on your goals. Straighten your way because you know what happens in finance? Finance is like the seasons that we have in the year, right? We have summer, winter, spring, autumn and so on, and things change and like things change in the day and in the season, in the years they change exactly in the same way also in finance because no matter what after winter, spring will come and in finance it's exactly the same after resection. Sooner or later you don't know exactly when the new grow will come. And that's why he said you need to have the right mindset, trust your knowledge and staying the course and not changing strategies and so on. Because if you try instead to change strategies because of the season you are in and you don't know when the decision will will change, you run the risk to take an umbrella and after two minutes to have the sun shining and your your umbrella, you don't need it anymore.

Stephen Matini: Riccardo, out of anything we have covered so far, what would you say that is something that those who will listen to this episode that should pay close attention to?

Riccardo Grabbio: If we are talking, for instance, to private investors, they need to keep things simple, try to understand what they are doing because as you said before, for instance, if you are not understanding what you are investing in, this is not a good investment or better, they should be very careful. So if they don't understand what they are investing in, no matter what, they don't have to invest.

Stephen Matini: I've heard that a famous investor does that. Warren Buffett, you know, he only invest in things he understands, you know, and if he doesn't, he doesn't.

Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, wow you are mentioning is, is not a new kid on the block. I think that the S&P 500 for 50 years in a row about either, I don't know, 10 or 8 points per year. Average per year. So yeah, an outstanding result. And what it does is something like, like you said before, what it does, he, he stays in his circle of competence. He does not diversify a lot. So he stay focused on a bunch of share that he knows very well and he stay on those for a long time. What his strategies is by and old forever it is an extreme strategy his but the reward is very remarkable given the facts.

Stephen Matini: Riccardo, thank you for keep it simple. I've learned a lot today. Thank you.

View Details

Historian Suzanne Harman Munson discusses her book Jefferson's Godfather: The Man Behind the Man, revealing the significance of servant leadership exemplified by George Wythe, a lesser-known Founding Father.

Throughout the conversation, Suzanne offers valuable insights essential for navigating contemporary challenges, emphasizing the importance of individual impact, critical thinking, kindness, and humility.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party over and discover how servant leadership and humility can transform lives on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#SuzanneHarmanMunson #JeffersonsGodfather #GeorgeWythe #ServantLeadership #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You essentially got into writing and history after you retired? Did I get that right?

Suzanne Munson: That's correct. Uh, I didn't have time to write books when I was working. And, um, I had a lot of responsibilities at home as well, raising children and so on. After my husband died and after I retired, I went on kind of a journey in a lot of different directions, and I've written books in different genres.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think you chose writing and you chose history of all possible directions?

Suzanne Munson: Well, my parents loved history, particularly my father. He would go to bed reading history. Well, he was interested in the Civil War, and he would read detailed accounts of the battles, which not my cup of tea by any means, but we always told stories of our ancestors who came to this country and why they came. So I've always been interested in history, but I, I majored in English, which was very helpful to me as the writer.

Stephen Matini: Writer. And your family goes back generations?

Suzanne Munson: Yes. They go back to the earliest days of the United States.

Stephen Matini: As far as the Founding Fathers, one of your interests is the Founding Fathers. Did you investigate, did you study them all or specific ones, because you focus specifically on Jefferson, but did you have any interest in one of the other ones?

Suzanne Munson: Well, yes, I have. I'm reading, um, pretty big book about, um, Benjamin Franklin now who really deserves more credit for helping us win the Revolutionary War. I really like following John Adams and Abigail Adams. But the two Founding Fathers that I focus on in my writing are Thomas Jefferson and his wonderful mentor George with, who is called the forgotten founding father, because hardly anybody knows anything about him today.

And I uncovered him and some reading and I said, why don't we know more about this man who was very instrumental in the early success of this country? And his story needs to be told in the 21st century. And I wanted to tell it, but I couldn't because I was working.

But as soon as I decided to, uh, to leave the office world, I said light bulb went off. And I said, well, I can finally do this book. But it took about five years to write that book because for some reason I couldn't focus at home. So I would go away to various retreats, writers retreats, spiritual retreats for 48 hours at a time or a week at a time, and really focus intensely on it.

Stephen Matini: The process of writing. It's a spiritual experience, and you spend so much time within yourself. What have you learned about yourself when you started digging into this, this whole world or writing?

Suzanne Munson: I sort of think of myself as a light giver. You know, the things that I'm learning, I like to share with other people, the integrity of this founding father. I think that we need greater integrity in our government. I've given more than three dozen lectures and online interviews about integrity and government that are need for, for that. Now.

Also, after my husband died 10 years ago, I, uh, went on a spiritual journey to find out where he went and what he was doing, if that was knowable, and where we all go and what we do after we leave our physical form. So that was a separate journey. So I was really on two journeys. I was on a traditional journey, uh, with the traditional history, and then I was on a metaphysical journey trying to learn more about the afterlife. So two parallel journeys. And I've written books in both of those genres.

Stephen Matini: Was it clear from the very beginning what you were looking for, or were you just aimed by curiosity and openness?

Suzanne Munson: Well, with the first book that I wrote, which is called Jefferson's Godfather, uh, that was the biography of George with, it was very clear that I wanted to tell his story, that I felt his story was needed today in the 21st century. Now, my latest book, which is called of Loss and love, a Journey of the Heart that took 10 years to write the book has a happy ending. I did actually do the modern thing. I went online at the encouragement of friends and found my current husband. So it's a memoir of, of my three years between my husband's death and my marriage.

Stephen Matini: What is the solace that you received from history?

Suzanne Munson: Well, I'm very much inspired by what our Founding Fathers did to create the United States of America. Uh, they were very brave men. They were inspired. I believe what they did was unheard of in the history of the world. Now, we had a Roman Republic, briefly. We had a Greek democracy briefly. They went away fairly quickly.

And so what these individuals wanted to do was totally revolutionary, not just on the battlefield, but in the battlefield of ideas. And that was to give power to the people and to create a democratic republic for the first time ever in history, that people were free from kings and queens and popes and aristocracy.

Well, the hope was that we would have a meritocracy, that only the best people would rise to be leaders, and that the people would choose those leaders, choose them periodically, and if they weren't satisfactory, bo vote them out of office without killing them throughout the history of mankind, you had to kill somebody to get rid of him if he was in power.

And so the peaceful transition of power was very, very strong ideal of these Founding Fathers. That's why they would've been appalled at what happened on January 6th. That would've been their worst nightmare. So this is a time when we need to visit the ideals of these Founding Fathers.

And what happened in America in the late 18th century, what we came up with a government by the people of the people, for the people and our constitution that spread all across the world. Our constitution was, um, adopted by many, many, many countries after that took a while.

And democracy is still an ideal, a worldwide ideal. It's not in place in, uh, most countries, uh, to the extent that we'd like to have it in place, but it's still an ideal. People still are searching for freedom. They want their freedom.

Stephen Matini: I believe that democracy is a huge responsibility for all of us. Some of the worst nightmares in history, were democratically elected. If the Founding Founders came back today, what would you say they would say about democracy and what is the right approach for all of us in terms of, you know, living this responsibility?

Suzanne Munson: This is outlined in my book called The metaphysical Thomas Jefferson, what Thomas Jefferson might say today about our government, our higher education, our news, media, religion, the use of military foreign policy, all those institutions. And I believe what he would say is that we as a people have become apathetic.

We've allowed our freedoms to be taken away gradually, like the frog in the kettle of water as it heats up what is said in that book, the metaphysical Thomas Jefferson. What he might say if he were observing us today, is that he would crave most of all critical thinking. He didn't use these terms, but TikTok, Facebook, all those social media things where we're totally absorbed by ourselves and our little circle of friends and what they think of us, and we're not paying much attention to what our government officials are doing. Jefferson, above all wanted an educated popula populace and wanted, um, universal education for everyone, rich and poor.

That was a revolutionary concept at the time. Only the, um, wealthy, they were educated. And so he would want critical thinking. Uh, he would want us to demand integrity of our, uh, leaders. He would want the leaders in Washington to form circles of integrity. Not all representatives in Washington are corrupt or deal in self-dealing, but enough of them are. But some of them really are striving to be good public servants. And we have one here in Virginia, Abigail Berger, who is admired for being a true public servant.

And so there are some like her who were fairly new to the game and haven't gotten corrupted and haven't really started feathering their nests with all the large s that's available. So I think he would want leaders in government to form circles of integrity so that there's a mass of individuals and not just a handful who want the best for the people and not just for themselves or for special interests for the powerful.

So some of this is going on. I, I think sometimes things have to get so bad that, uh, you know, people will say enough of this, which we've hit the bottom here, and we, we need to do things differently. We need better leaders. And so the hope is that more people of integrity will offer themselves for a public office. It's not easy. It's a dirty business.

There's a lot of dirt thrown around, and it would be nice if that weren't necessary, weren't considered necessary. We do need more leaders with integrity, interest for the public rather than pure self-interest and ego ego's gone wild right now in, in some quarters in Washington. And what's right for the people is secondary. Another thing that he would be very concerned about is freedom of the press. Of course, that's in our first amendment, and we do have more freedom of the press than most countries have, but our press is declining.

Uh, our newspapers don't have the staffs that they did 10 years ago to do investigative reporting and TV stations. And they've all kind of acquiesced to these feel-good stories or covering murders and accidents and things like that. And there's not enough coverage of what's going on in our government. And you could make that interesting. It doesn't have to be dull, but the decline of investigative reporting would be of great concern to our Founding Fathers, because you can't have a government without clarification, without people knowing what's really going on behind the scenes. Because if we don't know those things, it's an open door to corruption.

And here in my town, we need to analyze just at the local level, who's getting the contracts for the, you know, multimillion dollar deals here. Are they cronies? Was there open bidding for these big dollar items? Those things need to be open, and they're being hidden, not just here, but all over. So cronyism will run rampant if you don't expose it. That's just one, one aspect of government, not to speak of just out and out corruption.

Stephen Matini: In your experience, in your studies, researching and writing about the Founding Founders, you mentioned the word integrity many times. And to me, when I think about the moment in history was one of those exceptional time, like, you know, Florence doing Renaissance somehow for whatever the reason, there were this huge concentration of amazing people why that happened. Who knows? But it's really bizarre to think about it. Why do you think integrity seemed to be such a distinctive feature of these, these amazing people who laid the foundation for us? And today we struggle with integrity.

Suzanne Munson: In my book, Jefferson's Godfather, which is a biography of his mentor George, with, I make the case that about the power of one, the ability of just one individual for, uh, great, good or a great evil. And in his case, he had a lot to do with the early success of this country because he trained not only Thomas Jefferson, but Chief Justice John Marshall, the revered statesman, Henry Clay and 200 other future leaders in government, and also in the court system to very important agencies for the success of a country.

And so he had an enormous influence. And because he had such great integrity himself, uh, he was a role model for the servant leader. He influenced either directly or indirectly, all five of our first five presidents. He was a friend of each of them, or a role model for each of them. And that was the first, oh, three decades of this country, very consequential, three decades.

I think that their sense of integrity, he was a big part of that because he had so much of it himself. I attribute a lot of that to George West's Quaker background. Most of his contemporaries were of the Anglican faith, and they were very arrogant. People in Virginia, particularly Virginians at that time, were known to be arrogant. The aristocracy, uh, because they fashioned themselves, uh, after the House of Lords in, uh, England, large landowners, and they did not oppose slavery. They accepted that as a way of life. He was outta step with his contemporaries. He was ardently opposed to slavery.

And I attribute that to one of his Quaker ancestors who came to this country a hundred years before and preached about the evils of slavery and taught that the Bible did make references to this stealing being one, stealing another person's life. So I, I think he had a big influence.

A lot of his students never freed their slaves, but he made them feel very guilty about it. And then he just was a very honest person. Contemporary of his said. Well, he was the only honest lawyer I ever knew. He made a good living. But he could have made much bigger living if he had accepted liars and cheats as clients. But he would never defend a, uh, a liar and a cheat. Everyone had to have a good case if he were to accept it and be more or less on the right, or if they weren't on the right, be repentant for their sins.

So the Founding Fathers had a wonderful opportunity to change history for the better. George Beth being one of the revered leaders at the time, his legacy has been lost to time, but he was enormously influential at, in his day, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Constitution leader in the Continental Congress, speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia. Those were the early days when everything was new and fresh and we were reinventing the, our world.

Hundreds of years later, we have what we have in Washington because big money has been allowed in as a mighty power in our government, and it's very easy to feather one's nest. So there's really more temptations now, I think, uh, than there were at the beginning of the country. Eventually corruption did and self-dealing did creep in, and partisanship did emerge fairly early. George with was not part of that, but it emerged very much so during Jefferson's time.

Stephen Matini: When you say servant leadership, so servant leadership is something that we hear a lot these days. It's also the many leadership programs that had their name. What would it be? Your own definition of servant leadership?

Suzanne Munson: Putting the public's interest before your own, or at least having a balance, just not being totally self-interested and not letting your ego run wild as we see right now in Washington. Now in writing this book, uh, my first book called Jefferson's Godfather, the Man Behind the Man, I can come up with at least seven leadership qualities that George with this founding father had and that he shared as a role model, as a servant leader for others.

Number one, a strong ethical foundation, the only honest lawyer I ever knew.

Number two, mentorship, the ability to mentor generously. He influenced the futures of approximately 200 future state and national leaders.

Number three, advisorship, if that's a word, uh, couldn't come up with a better word, but George with advised those in higher authority. He was a role model for the colonial governors of Virginia who needed advice about how to interact with this unruly group over here.

He did influence the first five American Founding Fathers, either directly or indirectly.

Number four, scholarship and preparation. George West did not have much of a formal education. He learned Greek and Latin at the knee of his mother, and then I think the money ran out and he couldn't go to college. And then when he was a legal apprentice to his uncle, he didn't learn much. And so he found that he, if he were to succeed in life, he would have to teach himself. And he became a self-taught scholar preparation. He never went into court unprepared, and he was an excellent lawyer, and he served those in the highest circles in Virginia.

Number five, and this should be probably number one, along with ethics, is, um, emotional intelligence, people skills. Now we know about iq, but EQ is equally important. George With's IQ was probably not as high as Jefferson's.

George with was very smart, but he also had to work hard. Um, he studied and he was prepared. So he had an IQ that was sufficient for leadership, but he also had the eq, the emotional quotient. He was a friend to those in the highest circles as well as to the low born. He freed his slaves as soon as he was legally able to do so. He was a friend of children. They said a a surly dog would wag his tail when George with walked by. Uh, so he had had those both skills. Um, EQ and IQ.

Number six, humanitarian values. Unlike his contemporaries, he reviled slavery. Uh, and, and he was a humanitarian in many other ways. He and the one of the colonial governors started the first hospital for the mentally ill in Williamsburg. It was the first in North America, number seven, although that really shouldn't be seven, but humility.

And he was modest in dress and speech reflecting his Quaker background. The best leaders like I can think of, Mahatma Gandhi is the major figure here. Uh, they were very wise people, but they were very humble in their wisdom. So a case in point with taught Chief Justice, John Marshall, who was one of the most consequential chief justices in American history.

And so when Marshall became Chief Justice, he walked in to meet his, his group in a plain black robe. Well, they were astonished because they had adorned themselves in Irman and red velvet because they wanted to be like the justices in England. He set the example, and I think he got the idea of the plain black robe, the robe of a servant from George with who dressed very modestly.

And I think in some of his role roles as clerk of the house delegates, uh, he probably wore the plain black robe. And so that changed, you know, the whole demeanor of the United States Supreme Court. It gave them a more humble approach to their job. So the only deviation from that that we've seen recently is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who added a little lace collar to her robe. But that can be forgiven. So, uh, those are, there's seven of the qualities that I found in doing research for George with, for the book Jefferson's Godfather,

Stephen Matini: As you were talking then, you said it, the word that kept coming to my head was, um, humble humbleness.

Suzanne Munson: Yes, we all need to learn humility. And it's not the same thing as being humiliated. I've learned that one myself. So we all must try to be servants or helpful to our fellow man in one way or another. That requires a little bit of humility in trying to let go of our ego so much.

Stephen Matini: One thing that helps me tremendously to keep my attitude, uh, humble, hopefully, is the awareness that I will not be here forever. What would you say that could be a first step for someone to learn a more humble perspective?

Suzanne Munson: Sometimes you have to be brought low by adversity or a great tragedy, or just realizing that you have too much ego, you need to knock it down a peg or two. I can't say when, when I started thinking about that, seriously, it was probably, probably after my husband died. I had time to think about myself.

Also, I think we need to realize that our later years can be time for enormous growth. I said when I reached 70, that my seventies were gonna be the best decade of my life, that I was gonna solid fly in my seventies, but I didn't know what I was gonna do, had no idea. Just let things flow. So a certain degree of humility is important there. I ask for guidance. I get little nudges, I think from the other side about nice things to do or good things to do.

I always answer my nudge, nudges, otherwise I'd feel kind of bad about something, you know, even if it's just to call somebody or answer a call from an irritating person or take an irritating person to the doctor, you know, that's pushed my limits a little bit. I try to do a lot of volunteer work. I think that's extremely important in living a fulfilling life.

And so I work with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. I do a lot of work with them, and I teach classes that they have in their recovery program. I teach a class on love and forgiveness. Forgiveness is very important. I teach a la a class on emotional intelligence, and they are hungry for this because in their addiction they become stunned as individuals. If you start drinking and drugging when you're 19, you have arrested development. So a lot of these people are just discovering themselves in sobriety.

So that is, uh, very rewarding for me to try to help these people. And I enter the classroom, uh, with a degree of humbleness, of humility and, uh, try to relate to them on their level. I've had my issues as well, and so I relate to them. But, uh, meaningful volunteer work, even if you're just working in a soup kitchen, you know, labeling soup out, it's better than sitting home watching TV all day.

And a lot of people who retire just go out to the golf course or play bridge. And nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with playing games. We should amuse ourselves. We should have a good time. But you have to balance that with giving to others. And that also includes giving financially if you're able to do so. There's a lot of want in this world. There's refugees all over the world who are literally starving right now.

And so we must give generously if we can afford to, to do that to doctors without Borders and all of the good agencies that are trying to help the helpless. So all of that is part of, you know, living more humbly, trying to get out of your ego, trying to think of other people. And that's really part of the secret to to being happy.

Stephen Matini: Our society seems to emphasize so much a specific moment in time in your, your twenties when you're super young, it is a shame because life is so much more bigger. And what you said as you age, you, you get a different understanding about everything, a different appreciation about everything that you cannot possibly have. You know, when you are, when you're younger. There's something I wanna ask you that you mentioned before when you were talking about leadership and has to do with the notion of freedom. Because the word freedom is super important. And today, freedom. The word freedom is everywhere. Freedom of speech or freedom, this and that. And people get really confused about what freedom it really is. Some people feel it's a license to do or, or say whatever they want. And for me, it's not at all freedom. If anything is accountability, freedom is responsibility. What is your definition of freedom and what is the, the responsibility of, of people if they really want to be free?

Suzanne Munson: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of hate speech. Certain forms of hate speech are being punished. I mean, media, people are being fired if they do that, but other people are getting by with it on social media and so on. So we need not just a revolution of integrity, but a revolution of kindness, I guess is, is a word I'm thinking of.

We need to be kinder to one another. We need to watch that hateful speech, that judgmental speech. Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should say it. So I think that's one freedom that we, we need to really think about what is harmful speech, harmful writing, harmful speaking? Do we really need to say those things? Do we really need to think those things? Can't we teach ourselves to be more thoughtful, more kind, more considerate? So I'm hoping that we'll have better role models in the future and that a lot of this hate speech will, will go away.

It's very unhealthy and it's caused a lot of us to turn off the news. Not just because of the hate speech, but because it just seems that all the worst kinds of behavior are presented in the news. And what is our local news? Murders, robberies, car wrecks, whatever. After a while, it gets painful. I listened to the news just enough to be well-informed. I used to listen to it morning, noon, and night. 'cause I wanted to be super well informed. But I can't do that anymore. I don't listen to it until evening. And then a small dose of it just to be informed.

Stephen Matini: I feel the same way, , I am informed, but I notice that the more time I spend reading that negative molasses, it doesn't really add any value to my life. So I want to know, of course, what's happening, but I'm more preoccupied about spending my time with you than feeling upset, you know, well, what is the point? You know? But Susan, we talked about so many things and all of them are so important. But out of all the things that we said, is there anything that you deem really important impressions for our listeners to focus on?

Suzanne Munson: Well, this is what Thomas Jefferson would want. And George, with these two Founding Fathers, they would want more critical thinking. We need to watch our head time, what I call head time. And I wrote a reflection about that.

We are what we think, literally, we are what we think. And if we're dwelling in negativity all the time, it's like a, well, particularly if we have a resentment against somebody or several people, that's a boomerang. It comes back to bite us. Try to think positively, try to live positively, live healthy, think healthy, but also be critical thinkers.

Now, I'm very irritated with a lot of my friends who listen to one particular TV channel that tends to slant things and present only one side of an argument that is just wrong. You need to sort through all of the trash and all of the good ideas, and we need to read better books. Get back to reading books or pick better tv. There's, there's some very good things you can look at on tv. Be a critical thinker and try to live. Kindly learn forgiveness

Stephen Matini: And kindness shall be. Susan, thank you so much for spending time with me. I've learned a lot of stuff. I have something to think about this weekend and many days to come. Thank you.

Suzanne Munson: I've enjoyed it. Stephen.

View Details

Dr. Petros Oratis, a leadership and organization development consultant, team facilitator, and executive coach, believes modern organizational success hinges on embracing lateral leadership and fostering collaboration across hierarchical boundaries.

Lateral leadership refers to a leadership style that emphasizes collaboration, teamwork, and the ability to lead without relying on a formal position of authority.

Dr. Oratis advocates for leaders to address these interdependencies by creating spaces for dialogue and understanding, particularly in environments where power dynamics and competition may exist.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#petrosoratis #lateraldialogues #lateralleadership #pitypartyover #alygn #stephenmatini #podcast #leadershipdevelopment #teamwork

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I'm really happy to be here with you, we share the same passion and so I have a lot of questions for you, which are questions that I try to answer myself. I got into organizational development, you know, later on in my life. Previously I had a career in marketing, which I thought it was my thing. And then at some point out of pure coincidence I learned that I loved to work on organizational functions and to help people to perform better. How did it happen to you? Is this something that you have always known, but how did you get into this?

Petros Oratis: Yeah, that's a very good question on reconnecting with origins and the course of life. I think because I studied in Greece and our system there is quite specific as to how you end up in university. But I think maybe also globally at that age you might not really know what to study.

So I studied economics as an undergraduate, not necessarily by choice, but because I wanted to end up in organizations sort of in management.

On one hand, when studying economics is very interesting because you learned from very early on in life about systems and about interdependencies and the complexity of the world, which I think it's very helpful as a mindset to be grown from early on.

But it's also quite of a positive is science. So it has some sort of predictability in a way. Or you learn very quickly this idea of predictability and control and with knowledge and with models, if you apply them properly, you know you will get good results.

But human behavior is extremely complex and even if you get it a little bit in courses around psychology, organizational psychology, still, there is this idea that if we study it and we can predict it, we would know what to do about it.

And then of course you probably know from your practice and our profession, that's not how it works with large systems, with human behavior, even with us personally we might think in certain ways. So I started developing this curiosity of could I study human behavior more and differently from conventional studies?

I wanted to seek something else and that's how I ended up studying differently organizations. So systemically, I mean the discipline is called system psychodynamics, but the idea is that you also take the more unconscious processes that operate within us and in working relations and then in bigger systems.

Still the goal and the principle behind it is how can we understand human behavior so that we can actually address it differently but not, not from also I would say almost god-like thinking that if I were to control it fully, then that's how it would work.

Stephen Matini: And eventually you learned that there's something that escapes analysis, you know, that you cannot quite frame. I think there's a huge element of craftsmanship in any job. Early on you started to become really interested in the whole notion of flat structures, bottom up, top down and then it even your own podcast, you know, it's the whole notion of lateral leadership is such a central component. How did you get there? Why? Why is this specific angle so important to you?

Petros Oratis: I would say both the hard data, the intuition are, are what working jointly. So you can't, you can't split either or right? And I think that's what you exactly said. And the same thing I would apply to this idea of this very organic one could say type of leadership that you need to discover your role and you need to work through how you are going to lead with others. But at the same time that happens in a explicit structure.

This tension, I think it's something that I discovered throughout practice that it is relevant for all of us and it becomes part of leadership. I think the interest on studying that more was when I started my doctorate I didn't know what I would research and I didn't know that would be the topic.

I knew that I wanted to study something related to collaboration on that high level. And one of the early findings that was guiding me is this idea that when you get sort of senior leaders that are part of a team even together, they would actually do many very meaningful work together. But to get them actually in a room usually would be very tough, very difficult.

And then to take them properly in a room, not just physically but really committed so, and to commit to their interdependency, that was also very difficult. So peeling a little bit the onion around that. So what is it that we understand logically that we need to collaborate, we do want to collaborate, but there is something also that is quite scary that in pulls us away, especially when we grow in hierarchy was the first starting point of that, which made me then understand this is not just about collegial relationships.

The group of executives that are part of a team, they are also independent leaders that are trying to lead their own stuff. And that's what becomes quite challenging when you want to approach teamwork is those two roles that they conflict with each other and they require a little bit more understanding

Stephen Matini: Based on your studies. There's a cultural component that has a huge weight. So it really depends on the culture, it depends where with the organization is located. But as human beings, do we tend and naturally to favor top down organizations, is that just how we operate?

Petros Oratis: Our relation to hierarchy is something that is part of our human nature and I think it very much starts from the idea that we are brought into this world in absolute dependency on parent and caretakers on adults who we can only survive at these sort of early steps of our life actually based on those figures that they will take care of us very practically but also emotionally even to make sense.

So that's part of our psyche that cannot go away. This idea that we sort of move from complete dependency into autonomy as we are building our own strength and our own self-reliance, we become less dependent on those individuals and that sort of continuum that I'm sort of painting here also continues in careers.

So very early life we may have that mentality. We need to learn from our superiors, we need to depend on their judgment, we need to be guided by them and sort of we develop in careers so that we can actually become more autonomous and more powerful perhaps. And then we'll become more autonomous. And maybe this idea or what we tell ourselves is that then we should lead others and so forth.

And while this is of course the nature of life, we are forgetting the lateral dimension of all of this may not come to mind so clearly because we do all of that with other peers, whether that's our siblings or our classmates or later on in in groups, our education, also the career development is giving us enough stimulation to be able to collaborate with others.

But we forget completely that this collaboration and maybe this competition will at some point entail also dependency, again. I said early life will depend on parents and that's what we think dependency is about or we depend on bosses but we are actually depending on each other because we are part of systems.

When the structure is clear that interdependency is no issue. I come to you when I need to come to you, you come to me when you need to and so forth and we will find each other. But as this clarity goes more and more away, it also means that it's very difficult to basically understand what these interdependencies are and then later on we have to negotiate on those ourselves.

From this idea that we were developing our own strength in order to become autonomous and not to rely on authority figures now comes into a conflict that as we become autonomous we are actually depending on others who may not be so, you know, in a different level than we are or they may not actually even care about us as maybe our bosses cared about us doing a good job, if you see what I mean.

They felt responsibility maybe over whether that's a good or a bad boss, but they felt some responsibility over us performing or delivering good work to them. Now we are dependent on others and others depend on us that maybe, you know, it's more on an adult to adult level and they don't have responsibility of our wellbeing.

So a different access or a different value needs to come to play that can guide us about how do we negotiate, how do we learn to care for each other or how do we take responsibility of the total outcome.

This doesn't answer your question on culture predisposition because you know some cultures are very hierarchical in that sense and some others are very egalitarian. But regardless of those nuances, I think it's also helpful to understand that from a psyche point of view, we already have that programming in our lives. Maybe more than other species even who have a very short period of being dependent then they're spend the rest of their lives being autonomous.

Stephen Matini: The answer that I've given myself so far, of the reason why so many organizations are so much top down probably is around the notion of power. Human beings seem to lose their mind around power and around money. What, what do you think of power as a factor? Does it play any weight?

Petros Oratis: Absolutely, it's was central to my research. Maybe it's helpful to distinguish what we mean by power and what do we mean by authority, right?

So when we talk about formal authority, we're talking about the right that I have to exercise decision or to make decisions over others, and that right has been given to me also because I also hold ultimate responsibility. So authority often is a dirty word, especially nowadays and we can even talk about that.

The idea that a leader will exercise authority is a little bit of a turnoff, it's a bit of a, this is not a good leader, it's a very traditional old fashioned type of leader. But we also need to understand that there is a part of authority which is absolutely required and needed.

Some roles have a even legal responsibility over something and we are decreasing the idea of your basically ability to, or your right to make decisions, at least in current discourse about leadership we're saying you should not be just doing it in a authoritarian way, but with that sometimes we are almost implying you should not do it at all, which is not helpful. So there, there is something about how do we exercise authority.

But there are also very good reasons why authorities completely going down because complexity one person doesn't have the answer, they need to involve a lot of people. There are a lot of interdependencies, there are different organizational models and so forth.

So there is a very good reason why authorities not being exercised directly. So, but if you, if you decrease authority, how do roles begin to differentiate, right? And that's where power comes.

The idea of power I think is more related to what do I have in terms of resources, internal or external whether that's skills or that can be binding to someone else similarly to authority, right?

So whereas authority is very explicit and it comes with a role and it's power is more related to the person related to their skills and how they're using those skills resources to bind others to do something.

And that is positive and it's negative. So usually we are saying well we don't wanna be vulnerable, we don't want to be again in this early stages where we were depending on others. So we have to increase our power and that may also get into the negative connotations of we are power hungry so if only I would be at the top of the world, I don't care about titles unless they give me power or that's where we start getting, we might, some of us might get actually power hungry in that sense.

But in my research that was not so much. So what is so fascinating in this topic is that we believe it's about egocentric type of leaders that are driven to accumulate power and money and so forth.

I'm sure that there is a percentage of those leaders out there and that's a big driver for leadership. But the way I have experienced in my practice, in my research, the power dynamics that get at play is not simply because people are power hungry, is because the lack of clarity and the lack of formal authority enters a dynamic that even though you don't want it to be and you deny it and you try to avoid it to be competitive or being about a power struggle, it automatically becomes a such.

So that's also a lot of in misinterpretation about the other occurs.

And the two interacting leaders is suddenly become opponents that they need to engage in a power fight even though that's not explicitly mentioned and that's not what they talk about. The felt experience of the dynamic is as such. So then I become more guarded in opening up and I perceive the other perhaps as being power hungry or on a mission to get me or to sort of dominate me, but actually that may not be their agenda.

Stephen Matini: When did the notional lateral leadership begin? How far back does it go in terms of studies?

Petros Oratis: So lateral leadership has existed for, i I would say as long as organizations have existed, but it has been taken different forms and we mean different things based on sort of the contemporary reality that that we are part of. So there is a field of studies that that actually are focused completely on leaderless groups, actually leaderless movements. And that's not what I necessarily focus on because I focus on that dimension within hierarchal systems, which majority of our systems are.

There is a big trend that started that that related to self authorized or self-manage groups that are leaderless and there you need to see how leadership gets exercised beyond roles or people it's exchanged.

So in my field it also started very early on because the group dynamics as they were being studied psychoanalytically that started in Second World War and already there there were studies by a famous psych named Bion who are actually, and others I should say, but they studied also groups from this idea that authority and leadership are shared and you need to understand how they get sort of fluctuated within groups.

In the mid two thousands, the notion of lateral leadership and lateral collaboration begin to take more traction in being studied also in my discipline, because a lot of changes in organizational structures were pushing that dimension. So what was before maybe a multidisciplinary or cross-functional collaboration where it needed to be studied there it became more relevant for also top leadership for executive level leadership to be studied, because of this idea that even if you have a vertical accountability, you still need to operate on an enterprise level.

And a lot of what we are designing on paper, a lot of organizational design also approaches would amplify this idea that as a leader you absolutely need to learn to collaborate laterally. And that doesn't mean just on people on your level, on your equals, it means simply being on a lateral level with multiple leaders or role holders of different parts of the organization where momentarily you don't have formal authority over and you either have to lead or you have to follow them. So it's not so clear.

Stephen Matini: Who would you consider to be a great example of lateral leadership these days?

Petros Oratis: I don't want to go into a situation where I call out the particular individual. I could describe some of the characteristics that I found out from my research even though it's all helpful to find role models. So sometimes, you know, I am more in, in this idea that we need to acknowledge the challenges that come from a in our human nature or certain type of behaviors and understand them as opposed to say, you know, underdeveloped leaders or very inspiring leaders.

Stephen Matini: I have a a brilliant example and I'm being very humble. I think a good example would be you and I. Who are we? We are competitors. I mean feasibly I may provide some of your services to the same clients, you know on a technical level, you and I competitor, but we are here working together.

I love the fact that we can create something together that makes sense. Something that hopefully is going to provide a lot of opportunities and wonderful things to you and to me, you know, rather than competing with other agencies, can we all come together and really support each other and to provide to clients is something that is the cumulative combination of our experiences. So maybe I'm completely off with this, but I think that in some small way I try to be a non-authoritative type of leader.

Petros Oratis: What you say resonates a lot and of course I recognize the principles of of what you're saying. My challenge maybe to this and the view of the world in general is that we reflect on this behavior, our value or our ability to engage with that. What we might be forgetting the context.

So what you and I have done in our roles is that we sought out an independent practice, right in that sense and in our interaction. Now we might have competitiveness or elements where we might, we could look at them in a competitive or a reserved way. Yes. But we are coming in a collaboration together out of very autonomous roles and we can actually, protect is not the right word, but our independence will not be heavily impacted in our collaboration.

That doesn't discount any of what you describe around values or the fact that somebody else could approach something in a very competitive way. Like so it doesn't discount our personal values around that. But the difference, I think we need to remember what may shift the dynamic is either the actual interdependency or the idea of interdependency.

So for example, if I forget what you just said and I go on LinkedIn, everyone is a competitor and everyone is a potential client and therefore I might get into a mode that I'm suffocating myself and I need to, you know, I need to become very assertive and very authoritative and so forth.

Now organizations completely expose you to that experience all the time. Even if your values are as such, you will never forget that you have to compete. There are limited resources. When you started the question one individual leader came to mind who was actually driven a lot by impact, was inspired to actually take on big roles but without becoming competitive or not being driven by ego or by money and so forth.

But of course was also struggling with that. So, and I think that a role model doesn't necessarily mean they don't struggle with exercising that leadership, but in one of the cases that was brought in, there was basically a funding for a research that was given to someone else in another department that he thought should actually had come to him because he was advocating for that role.

So, and in that moment was sharing this was starting doubting shouldn't I be more competitive? Shouldn't I be more hierarchical? Why did it went somewhere else? Am I not playing the game right and so forth. And then whilst talking I didn't do much in that interaction, I was just listening. But whilst talking to it, he was saying well maybe this other person, their role was most suited to get the grant done in my case. So he started contextualizing what was happening so that he could step out of this power dynamic that was already imposed.

Because it brings up a lot of good questions like who am I? If I'm bypassed in my organization, who am I? Am I, if I'm too collaborative, does it mean that I will be seen for my individual contribution, could maybe later on somebody else speak of my work but they get the credits. All of those aspects that are far in an organization that are far more, I would say even suffocating or impactful than being independent.

So starting my research, I was thinking, you know, you have people who are more inclined to be power hungry or they're driven by hierarchy and there are others who are more based on purpose and so forth, but I cannot really say that I can draw the lines so clearly and I am more of an optimist in that sense in a full spectrum where sometimes they're triggered to be in a certain way and sometimes they're triggered to be seen differently.

Stephen Matini: It seems that we're going through a massive shift and whether leaders want it or not, you have to start collaborating. You will not be able to survive in such a super complex and fast environment in which we are in. It is virtually impossible.

Petros Oratis: I think that younger generations but also the contemporary state is all about purpose and vision more so than you know, the promise of career development, what is a good purpose of an organization that also is shifting quite a lot in a positive way.

But that I think also creates maybe a challenge for different generations of leaders, including also the new generation of leaders, right? So not just older generations I think for all is this idea of combining the two different styles. It's very difficult if you think about that.

I have experienced even, you know, moments where roles that are more supportive that are from more junior staff as part of a, for example executive team. Sometimes they find it very difficult also to say, oh hold on, this is not actually for me to decide or I need to accept that somebody else ultimately decides. Not everything is about consensus.

There are moments that we are lateral and it has to be that way that's enriching the process. And then there are moments actually that we are quite hierarchical. We're quite vertical because some others have those, you know, you are the owner at the end of the day you carry the risks of your business and so forth and it could not be seen as that risk then has to be shared laterally if you, if you see what I mean. Even if you could do that

Stephen Matini: In your job, in my job it is such an important thing to have the strength and to be optimistic. So when you work with the client and you provide your point of view, which is beautiful and they are skeptical in, they say, seriously, I understand all of this but I don't see how we can apply here, we have shareholders, we have to produce money, produce results. What is the first step you take in order for them to start getting into this whole lateral type of thinking?

Petros Oratis: I think actually that the work with a client is never of the same format as we do now that we analyze something in such a cognitive way. I need to clarify that I'm not advocating for a certain organizational model whether that should be hierarchical or not, right? So, so I would never go in an organization or work with a leader by already holding in mind what the right answer is.

All I'm trying to do in that work with a leader is to understand how the lateral dimension, which is always there even in the army, so, so even in a very hierarchical structure and the actual organizational structure with its rules, how they interact for them and for their team. But that's also not necessarily the my beginning and my stop of of this work. So it's just a very informative dimension, what is at the back of the mind and if it requires and it helps the leader to explore that further, we work specifically on that.

If not some of those principles will be offering some guiding questions so that we can resolve some of the tensions that they're experiencing with different awareness. So I would never advocate for them to become less authoritative or to let go of control immediately.

I would try to understand what are the drivers behind a certain type of behavior, whether that style is supportive of the role and what are the limitations and work with that. That's why I would be very reluctant, for example, to put people in a spectrum of hierarchical versus lateral because these are also contextual.

What we often do also is to understand how is my personal predisposition on authority and hierarchy and what is also of more fluid leadership. So what are my predisposition and what are also some of my unconscious relationship models that I carry with me in those roles.

So do I experience an thought figure as by default someone who is there to get me or to maybe restrict my autonomy or have I learned to effectively challenge those figures playfully maybe or am I rebellious Again, they can be very resourceful, those models that we all carry, but they could also have limitations. So how far am I conscious of how I'm basically using them? And the same is when I interact with others on a more lateral level.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the one aspect of your job that makes you the happiest?

Petros Oratis: The highlight of this work and what actually is a fuel for doing more of it is when when you have seen that when you work with individuals or with teams, they have actually accomplished an understanding and insights that inspires change, which before was completely out of reach to them.

Not because they don't have the skills or because I am might be more intellectual as such, but because the space was not there. So it was through the work, there was space created to experience insights about own behavior and about understanding the system we operate in that before was completely out of reach and that really gives me a high after, after doing such work.

I'm not saying that it always has sustainable change if you do it one off and then you that it has, but those moments can never be forgotten either. So even when sometimes the team or an individual defaults into previous behavior, that moment is not forgotten.

So it's a, it's a touch point of saying, hold on a second, why am I back into a certain type of behavior? And sometimes, you know, you cannot change a system alone or even can change fully a system. Like you learn how to tweak a little bit or change somewhat of a balance. But I think this is what absolutely gives me a high.

Maybe to seek some sort of understanding of different perspectives. That's something also that I was missing in my early life also because of divorce of parents. So I could see that one household had a different storyline, the other household had, they were not fighting necessarily the storylines, but I could see the differences and I, I always was in this experience, but why do I get to be in between and not be able to share the experience of being in between?

And that's a little bit what you do often with consulting and coaching is that you are coming across very different storylines, sometimes competitive storylines and we you're trying to actually engage into some sort of dialogue.

Also what I've learned is that sometimes my drive to see a certain type of harmony or a certain type of understanding or collaborative moving forward may not be what's needed or what's helpful to others or it may not be as painful to them as I maybe once experienced that.

So I think by doing a lot of that work also that desire goes a little bit down in me. The more and more I do this work I process a little bit those experiences that I thought, you know, maybe also they should be better now then I'm thinking okay, maybe they were not so bad in the end.

Stephen Matini: Petros we talked about so many different things and I still have so many questions, but I wanna ask you, is there anything that you deem to be really, really important that our listeners, the listeners of this episode that should pay attention to?

Petros Oratis: Maybe I already referred to it a little bit, but I think one of my biggest insights is when coming across competitive or power dynamics that are challenging to experience emotionally, I think it is also very important to find a space to process them and not to draw judgments right away to perceive that an organization is not maybe healthy or safe because of those dynamics. It's an unfair thing to be stated.

There is no way for organizations to find their equilibrium without a lot of those power dynamics that are at play. When we are in situations that are completely harmonious and everyone is very friendly, we will quickly find out that those dynamics are under the table, which can make it even harder than in highly, let's just say competitive environments where competition is what you see is what you get.

So in other words, it's something that we need to learn to play with a little bit more without it being so daunting, without also thinking that it's for the ones who are highly political and they are on a power trick. That's also not what I'm actually advocating,

But it's to say we need to come more comfortable with negotiating authorities all the time with each other to wrestle a little bit with our dynamics, especially in highly interdependent roles, and not to judge others when they are on that mode, but to find ways to make that dialogue a little bit richer and that process a little bit richer.

Stephen Matini: Petros I've learned a ton of things today. I really appreciate the time you gave me and your kindness. Thank you. Thank you very much.

View Details

Eric Girard, author of the book Lead Like A Pro: The Essential Guide for New Managers, assists professionals in transitioning from high-performing individual contributors to effective people managers.

Eric discusses the psychological aspects of this transition, providing insights into managing change and setting realistic expectations.

This conversation is a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and triumphs that managers face in their evolution to effective leadership.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast

Sign up for Live Session to learn management skills

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#ericgirard #leadlikeapro #managementdevelopment #podcast #pitypartyover #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini : How did you get to this point? You know, because you take care, such a specific thing, which is helping manager transitioning people transition into manager role. So is this something that you have always thought? Have you always had an interest? How did it happen?

Eric Girard: I got into learning and development in my teens. It starts way back in the Boy Scouts. I was a boy scout for years and years and I used to teach kids how to swim and paddle a canoe and row a boat, anything in, on or under the water. And I loved it when a kid would get something like get a skill, like how to make a canoe do what they wanted. And they would go, whoa. And I thought, Hey, I like teaching. Then I went to college and discovered learning and development and joined the Association for Talent Development. Back then it was the American Society for Training and Development, joined a student chapter and got my first job out of college teaching people how to use their computers. And that was okay, but it was, it felt like I was on a hamster wheel. I felt like I was just running, running, running, running, running.

So I went and got my master's degree in intercultural training and wound up traveling around. I taught English in Japan. I lived in Australia for a couple years and then when I came back from Australia, I thought, okay, it's time to really find my passion. And I wound up working for a cross-cultural consulting firm. And then I got recruited to come to Silicon Valley. So that started my 20 year sojourn in Silicon Valley. And I went from teaching new hires about the company, new hire orientation into employee development, and then eventually management development. And then I thought, aha, these are my people. This, I like this. So helping managers understand their new role, helping them move from being great employees, great individual contributors, and moving to being a great people manager and learning all those skills and there's a whole list of them was really rewarding to me. So that's where I, I wound up settling, was in the area of management development and I love it and I've decided to make it my life's work now that I'm out of Silicon Valley and I've got my own practice, that's what I do. I love helping new managers make that shift.

Stephen Matini: Because of your cross-cultural experience, is there something that you have noticed that is consistent in managers all over the world?

Eric Girard: You know, managers are people, actually, this is a funny thing that came up in a class I was teaching. So I'm in Iowa teaching a class for, at the headquarters of one of my biggest clients. It's the second day of a three-day class. And this one manager who had been pretty active throughout, they raised their hand and said, I just wanna say something. All managers need therapy. That was a big thing to say. And they say, yeah, all managers need therapy because if you don't take care of your own stuff, then you're not gonna be any good to your team. This person was making the case that it's really important to take care of your own stuff, the stuff that's going on in your head so that you can be fully present and fully there for your team. And I thought that was really good.

It was a bold statement to make, but you know, we were in a room where we could speak freely. And it makes perfect sense to me that just as people, we all carry a certain amount of baggage into the workplace. And I think it's important to deal with that. And when you're in a leadership position, whether you're a first line manager or whether you're a CXO, when you're in a leadership position, you need to be self-aware and you need to take care of the things that may hinder you from doing the best job possible when it comes to leading other people. I think that's a universal that I would mention

Stephen Matini: When I deal with managers, I deal with people very, very often that never ever took any sort of managerial development plan at all. So essentially finally they get to it when it's too late. So how do you address that issue with clients?

Eric Girard: Well, I would never say it's too late. My first suggestion is that there's always time to learn something new. There's always time to improve your ability to lead teams. And so I often will lead classes that are really meant for new managers. The content is fundamental, and yet people will still come to class, you know, Hey, I've been a manager for 10 years and I've never received any training and I'm really grateful to be here. So I don't see it as a problem. I see it as a, as a cost for celebration because you know, this person finally is gonna fill in the gaps. They've probably figured it out. If they've been a manager for 10 years, and I see this a lot, people have been managing for 3, 5, 10 years or more. And this might be their first or second ever management class. Hey, let's fill in the gaps and let's maybe course correct where you can be a little more effective and bring a little more empathy to your role. It, I would say it's never too late

Stephen Matini: Usually. Do you follow a specific learning path with new managers or you let them take the lead? How? Where do you start with them?

Eric Girard: Well, in my book I started with empathy. So the first chapter and the longest chapter is about empathy. And that as a human leading of the humans, you need to be empathetic and you need to be able to walk a mile in other people's shoes. Not to the point where you become a therapist or a counselor, but just being able to listen really, really well and attend to what the other person is saying. So, so I lead with that and then we start with making the transition. Okay, you were a great engineer, you were a great financial analyst, you were a great fill in the blank. Now you're leading a team of those people. Let's make the mental psychological transition to a leadership role. And then from there, you know, and the order of these things will vary a little bit once we've made the transition. Then we'll talk a little bit about goal setting, we'll talk about delegation coaching feedback, how to manage change, how to build trust. And these things all happen in slightly different orders. But when I wrote like a pro, I really thought through, okay, if I could write a perfect course, how would it be organized? That's what the table of contents of that book is all about is okay, you know, first empathy, then make the transition, and then all these other things kind of in increasing levels of difficulty and importance.

Stephen Matini: You know, I've never written a book, but I wonder because you went through that experience, what have you learned about yourself in the process of writing a book about something you love?

Eric Girard: This wasn't really clear to me until I got into the book. For six months I sat down and for an hour a day for six months, I wrote the book. You know, I just gave myself an hour every morning when I was freshest and I would, I would hammer out a page or a chapter or a paragraph, whatever I could get done in an hour. And that was fun. Recording the audio book, going into the studio and recording the audio book. That was fun. The editing the endless back and forth, not fun. I'm very much a big ideas guy, you know. So I will come up with a big idea. I will put together the framework and put together the skeleton, and then I'll ask somebody else to come in and, and do the detailed work. And I find that that's how I run my business as well, is I will have the big ideas and then I will say, Diana, Sandra Bill, could you please make this pretty? Because that's not my forte.

Stephen Matini: So you are a leader, maybe more than a manager.

Eric Girard: You know, in a micro business you have to do everything. So I can't completely just throw things over the fence, but I know where my strengths are and I play to my strengths and I ask other people to use their strengths. And I'm really open about it, you know, I have a horrible memory. I'm not good with detail, and the people on my team are. And so that's what I asked them to bring. And it works really well

Stephen Matini: As a manager. But in your case, as an entrepreneur, how do you choose good team members? That's a skill.

Eric Girard: It's a skill. There's a fair amount of luck involved in it as well. So I got lucky because two of the people that are on my team, I've known for years, and I know their skills. So for example, when I started Gerard Training Solutions, I thought, Hey, I can do it all. I can design, develop, deliver the courses, I can do the branded slide decks, I can do the books, I can run the website, I can do all the things because I'm very smart and can do all these things, right? And I immediately made such a mess of the website that I called my friend Sandra and said, can you please fix the website? And she came in and within a couple of days, I had a website and it was beautiful. So I'm like, okay, you're in. But I had known Sandra, let's see, I met her in 2011 and I brought her on in 20 20, 20 21.

So I had known her for about 10 years by that point. There was a combination of knowing her very well and then also knowing her skills. So knowing her as a person, knowing her skills, then I realized that marketing is very important for a small business. And through an association with somebody else, I met Diana. Diana is Colombian, she actually works in Bogota and she's a great social media manager. And so she was a referral and I tried her out and gave her a couple of assignments and they got, they were really good. So I gave her more and gave her more until pretty soon I'm like, would you like a role on the team? Then I decided that I wanted to start getting out in bigger outlets, getting my name out into bigger outlets. I wanted to publish in well-known magazines in my field, TD Magazine, training magazine, training industry.

And I knew that journalism is not my forte, but my oldest friend from high school, bill, I met Bill in 1986, and there's a whole story about how we met, but I've known Bill most of my life, like almost 40 years, and he is an outstanding author and editor and public affairs guru. And so I asked him if he'd be willing to, to write with me on these projects. And he said, yeah, absolutely. So having these people in my sphere of influence already and just having those skills and then being referred to pipe to people. So I always, I always trust referrals over cold outreach. And I really appreciate the fact that Diana came through a referral and then I gave her small assignments and then worked up and it's worked out beautifully.

Stephen Matini: One of the things that I hear quite often from managers, because managers work hours and hours and hours, you know, next to people like you with your team, is you inevitably not with everyone, with some people you become friends. So how do you manage, how do you balance boundaries? And the delicate relationship between a, this is a friendship, but you know, this is also a professional relationship.

Eric Girard: Yeah, that's really dicey. And I actually had a professional relationship blow up because the lines got blurred a little bit and it didn't go well, it didn't end well. So that was a huge learning for me. But with Bill, Sandra, and Diana, you know, we're all friends, like, we're all friends, we're all friendly, but when we're working, we're working. Like, for example, with Bill, we practically got our own language. You know, we've known each other for almost 40 years, and we've got inside jokes, we've got silly things we say to each other, stuff that would just, you know, not be appropriate in a work context that doesn't come out when we're working, when we're working. I am Bill's client and so there's a client boss relationship going on there. And as soon as the work is done, then that switch gets turned off and the friend switch gets turned on.

It's a really important distinction to make because getting too friendly or too comfortable when I'm asking him to perform an important task could lead to poor results, could lead to hurt feelings. So we're pretty professional with each other when we're working. And then when we're done working, then we can talk about our families and we can talk about, you know, that one time that silly thing happened. And we can talk about that when the work is done for a manager in a corporate setting. 'cause You know, obviously I don't work in a corporate setting anymore, but, but in a corporate setting, I would say what's really important is setting goals and setting boundaries. This is what I expect of you professionally. Here are your smart goals, this is what I need you to get done, and if it gets done or if you knock outta the park, no problems. If you start to have performance issues, then there's a path we need to take. And I have to take it as a representative of the corporation. And you know, I, I still love you, you're still my friend, but you know, we need to make sure that that goals get achieved. So I think that that's the, the number one thing when you're managing a friend in the workplace is have boundaries, have goals.

Stephen Matini: It sounds really difficult to me, really, and also, you know, boundaries. I have to say, in my experience, listening to a lot of people must be the one thing that drives people crazy. People either not being able to express their thoughts, feeling that, what is it gonna happen to me if I say what I have to say? And then not saying it, they end up being a pressure cooker. And striking the balance is such a difficult thing. Is this a topic that you ever talk with your clients? How does set boundaries.

Eric Girard: You know, on, on occasion I'll talk about, you know, setting boundaries and I will usually default to goal setting, which I've discussed, and a SWOT analysis and just being kind of clinical when it comes to assessing your team and what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? You know, I would definitely talk with folks who are experts in workplace culture, talk with your HR folks and you know, talk about, hey, I wanna set a culture of excellence, of openness on my team of trust. I love Patrick Lencioni's, work on the five Dysfunctions of a team. So I would really focus on really building that baseline of trust so that people can say what's on their mind and not be afraid of it blowing up. There's resources out there for folks, I would definitely refer folks to Patrick Lencioni, definitely refer folks to setting goals and boundaries and being open about those, having frequent conversations about those. And then doing a SWOT analysis where you sort of stand back and say, okay, how are we in the four areas of swot? And you know, are there things that we need to fix or adjust in order to get the most outta the team? If

Stephen Matini: A team exist in a culture that is not a SpeakUp culture, it's not a transparent culture, communication, struggles moving, is it still possible for the team to become something of a happy island in which communication flows.

Eric Girard: Happens? All the time happened to me when I was working my first gig in Silicon Valley, actually, the, the company I worked at the longest, I was there for seven years, almost eight years because the culture was so good in our little island, we, our learning and development team was great at talking about issues, talking about things that were not working or were working. We supported each other. This is the team I was part of when I was diagnosed with cancer. And they rallied, they showed up, they brought food, they took me to my appointments, they were magnificent human beings. And that was inside of a company that maybe didn't have the greatest culture all around. But that team had a fantastic culture and I was very loyal for years to that team.

Stephen Matini: See, this is usually a difficult conversation that I had with managers. Like, to give an example, last week I was with three different groups of managers and all of them were constantly pointing out responsibilities that upper management has. And so we talked about different issues and they said, well, you know, we are here discussing these issues, but the people who could actually do something about it, it's them. How do you handle that rightful concern at the, the same time reminding people, yes, but you also have responsibilities in the matter. How do you explain that?

Eric Girard: If you've got a culture where people are pointing fingers, that's a little more fundamental, that's a bigger problem than just something you're gonna solve in a meeting. Building a culture of agency and self-advocacy and getting people to say, okay, the system we work in, the company we work for is not perfect. What can I do right now to move things forward? That actually brings me into the change management content that I teach. When we think about control and areas over which you have no control areas over which you have full control and areas over which you have some influence. And a lot of us will beat our heads against the wall, against things over which we have no control. I can't control how the CXOs, how the c-suite acts. I'm gonna have no influence over the c-suite unless you happen to have an extremely good relationship.

But most of us are gonna have no control over how the c-suite acts. What I can control fully is my own attitude, my own inner talk, my own self-talk, and the places where I can have influence is with my team. Maybe you can't control the weather, you can't control the stock price, you can't control the c-suite, forget about it. You can fully control your own attitude and your own self-talk, manage that. Just invest enough energy to keep that rolling forward. But those areas where you can influence, where you can influence your team, maybe you've got the ear of your team leader or your friends with somebody else on the team, that's where you can influence and that's where you should focus your energy. So that's how I would handle that question is by saying, listen, don't waste your energy. You know, don't beat your head against the wall trying to influence the c-suite. You're, you're probably not gonna do it. Focus on your own attitude and the attitude of your team members and build a culture inside your team that you want to be part of and move forward with that.

Stephen Matini: Working with a lot of managers, what would you say that is? The one complaint that you hear the most from managers? The one thing that drives them crazy.

Eric Girard: Most managers I talk to are, are just extremely time poor. There're just isn't enough time in the day because when you're an individual contributor, you're focused on your tasks, you've got your list, you know, you've got your project plans and you're responsible for that, and you get that done as a manager, you have to focus on getting results through other people. And so not only do you usually have tasks that you're responsible for, but you also have to get the team to focus on what they're responsible for. And so the, the two things that I really help managers do is first off, delegate, how can you learn how to be an excellent delegator and empower your team members to run with something and get it done and then let you know how it went. There's a fantastic article I bring up all the time, it's by HBR, the Harvard Business Review, and the title is called Who's Got the Monkey.

And it was an article that was written in 1974 and then republished in 1999. So it's got some real staying power and it talks about six different levels, degrees of freedom that you can have as an individual contributor that you can have with an, an agreement with your, your manager, everything from sitting, sitting on your hands and waiting to be told what to do all the way up to just handle it and don't even bother telling the boss. And then there's levels in between. So I would encourage any manager new or not to read that article. It's free on the HBR website and, and have a discussion with your team about how many degrees of freedom, how much freedom can your individual team members have per task. Learning how to delegate is number one, learning how to manage your time is number two, and everybody's gonna have a slightly different method of managing their time.

I use the Covey four quadrants, the urgency and importance matrix, which for history buffs folks might be interested. It actually comes from Eisenhower, president Eisenhower, learning how to manage your time and prioritize and then, you know, getting yourself some sort of a system that you will use. So I've got a system that works great for me, I wouldn't expect anybody else to use it because it's very peculiar to me, but the best system for you is the one that you will use. So whether it's using Asana or whether it's using your calendar or whether you batch things in email, find that system and stick to it and iterate it as you need to so that you can get the most important things done every day. And there's still white space on your calendar to have impromptu meetings with your team members and you get your job done as well. The individual contributor tasks that you have as a first line manager. So it's a delicate balance, but it can be done.

Stephen Matini: How would you respond to a manager who says, I understand that my job entails managing people, but I have all these tasks and that I need to take care of and I don't have time, you know, for people, I don't have time for meetings, I don't have time to build relationship with people.

Eric Girard: People. Yeah. That to me takes a shift in mindset because we're all busy, we are all absolutely busy, there's no denying that. And you have to honor the long hours that managers are putting in and you can't afford not to invest in your team. If you don't invest in your team, how are you gonna be able to properly delegate to them if you don't know their skills, if you don't know their strengths, if you don't know their weaknesses, if you don't know these people, how can you delegate work off to them to get stuff off your plate so that you have more time? So I would say that's crucial. You have to change your mindset. You have to get to know your team, you have to have one-on-ones, I would say weekly for an hour, biweekly for 45 minutes, pick something, but do it regularly and treat it as sacred time.

Don't mess with it rescheduling because something urgent came up in the business. Totally okay, but never just cancel with no reason. But have those regular meetings to get to know your team members and let them get to know you so that you can give them more and more responsibility. Because people are motivated, not so much by money, but Dan Pink in his book Drive talks about people being motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And you can help people develop autonomy, mastery, and purpose by getting to know them first and find out what they want to be autonomous about, what they wanna master and what drives them from a purpose standpoint. And then you can tailor their workload so that they can take on more and more and you have more time to actually breathe.

Stephen Matini: You know, some people seem to be really more on the task side, just the way they are as people, the way they think their personality. They seem to have this ability of thinking in terms of tasks more than people. And I love when you said that you open your book dedicating a lot of space to empathy. So can you teach to someone who's not particularly empathetic how to boost their people skills?

Eric Girard: Oh yeah, I talk about that in that chapter. You know, the whole idea of, you know, this is all nice Eric, but I'm not particularly empathetic. That's not my jam. I'm a task oriented person. That's okay. You can learn, you can learn to be empathetic, you can learn to listen. So I would re absolutely recommend Daniel Goldman's book Emotional Intelligence, do a little reading and read about emotional intelligence and how to build that. That's fantastic. Look for opportunities in your day-to-day life to do something a little different. So for example, talk with somebody who's got a different point of view than you on on anything. You know, you may not want to jump right into politics, for example, but you know, just, you know, a different point of view on how a work process should be done or how to get a particular thing done, listening to different points of view and trying to understand why that person thinks the way they think.

The whole point here that I make in the empathy chapter is trying to walk a mile in other, per other people's shoes. But doing that gradually, don't throw yourself in the deep end. I'm to the point now where I'm ready to do something kind of big for me. I think I'm a fairly empathetic person, but around where I live, there are a number of unhoused people, a lot of homeless people, and I carry in my car bags full of supplies for them. And so if I see somebody on the corner with a sign rather than giving them money, I'll give them this bag that has a little bit of food, has phone numbers for resources in it, might have a little clothes in it, just useful things that will help somebody, you know, be a little more comfortable rather than just handing over a $5 bill.

But I've never actually sat down and talked with somebody who is homeless and had a meal with them. So I'm actually gonna look for an opportunity to go to, you know, a place and have a meal with, with somebody who's unhoused and talk with them. There's a fantastic food pantry not far from where I live, and they, they offer all kinds of services as well. So I'm, I'm gonna start talking with Fish Line more and more to see about, hey, how, how else can I get involved? What else can I do besides just handing out these, these packets? That's gonna be, for me, a big step toward building more empathy toward people who are unhoused. And, you know, I'm not suggesting that listeners have to do that right away, but just take a small step toward could I have a conversation with somebody who has a different point of view than me? Could I go someplace that I wouldn't normally go? Can I go to a meeting that I wouldn't normally go to?

Stephen Matini: Eric, empathy is a wonderful thing, you know, energetically takes so much effort to empathize with someone. Do you ever get tired and how do you protect your energy by assisting so many people as you do?

Eric Girard: I wanna be careful. I'm not Mother Teresa, so I'm, I'm not, you know, out doing marvelous things all the time, but I'm just, I'm just trying little by little to do a little bit more and yeah, it's draining. It's, it's very, it's very exhausting. So I'm an extrovert. I love being around people, so I get recharged by being around people. I love doing this, for example, this is fun to me, but I also have time at home with my kids in front of the fire reading a book, just relaxing. If I want to totally relax and unplug, I'll read a book in front of our fire with, with the kids, or I'll go mountain biking or scuba diving or something like that and go get some me time to recharge a little bit.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think that you got so interested in managers rather than executives, white managers of all possible professionals?

Eric Girard: Well, there's a story to that. When I started in the Silicon Valley, I noticed, you know, the company that I was with was growing very fast. I was noticing that people were being promoted very quickly. One day they were an individual contributor. The next day they're leading the team and they made an absolute mess of it. They, they didn't receive training, they didn't receive guidance, they just said, okay, now you're leading the team, good luck. And it didn't go well. So being on the receiving end of that, I didn't like that very much. So, you know, that planted the seed. Then it was my turn, I got promoted. I didn't receive enough training right off the bat and I knew made a mess of it. I didn't follow any of my own advice, I just made a hash of it. So I walked away from that experience going, okay, never again.

Stephen Matini: What did you do? What did you mess up?

Eric Girard: I micromanaged. I didn't delegate. I gave very, very nitpicky feedback. Like it's embarrassing. I cr it was cringey, the sort of things that I did. Once I went through that, I thought, okay, never again. Never again. And so fast forward when we decided to move outta Silicon Valley up to the Seattle area, I thought, you know what, I'm gonna start my own company and that's gonna be my focus is helping new managers making that, make that transition.

Stephen Matini: Have you noticed any differences between female and male managers and the issues that have to deal with if two people, same age, same level professionally, one is a woman and the other one is a man. Have you noticed through your experience any differences in terms of issues they deal with, how they progress throughout their managerial development or they're not any difference at all?

Eric Girard: I haven't really seen any differences. I've worked with and around a lot of very strong female managers who, who did an excellent job and I've also worked for some who completely invested up just like their male counterparts.

Stephen Matini: The one thing that I've noticed, I've noticed, not in terms of capacity, obviously same thing, but in terms of feeling legitimate, feeling that they own a position. Sometimes I've noticed that a female managers, they seem to work at twice as hard as their male counterparts and there's a cultural component to it, at least here in Italy it's really, really, really strong. But you never notice something like that in the us.

Eric Girard: Not that I can think of now. It may exist. It's just not something I, I paid much attention to.

Stephen Matini: So in your job that you help people transition into a managerial position, do you ever help them managers transition towards a leadership position? So moving up higher.

Eric Girard: My focus is primarily helping folks make that first transition. If you think of the leadership pipeline, that first transition into first line manager positions, a lot of what I would recommend to folks who are looking at, you know, making that next transition is, I would say read the Leadership pipeline. Fantastic book there. And then I would encourage everybody, everybody to read the first 90 days fantastic book to help folks make transitions, whether it's from individual contributor into management or from management into more senior leadership, maybe from a senior manager into a director position or director to vp. Those are a couple of really valuable books I'd suggest.

Stephen Matini: I would suggest for them to read your chapter on empathy. That to me is the first thing to understand what it means to be a leader. How do we explain to people the difference in simple terms between being a leader and being a manager? Because a lot of people get confused. It's, they're two things.

Eric Girard: It's kind of a fun puzzle that, because I think in order to be a good manager, you also have to be a good leader. But there are a lot of good leaders who are not managers who don't have any leadership position at all. And so, you know, the qualities of leadership in terms of being able to get people rallied around a vision to help folks see this is where we're going, I will get us there or we will get there together. Those are qualities that, that a manager needs to have and a leader needs to have. And I think that there are in some instances where you've got folks who have the manager title, but who are not leaders. And I think that, that that's where you, you wind up with problems. So, you know, a good leader is somebody who can build trust. A good leader is somebody who can create a culture of inclusivity and making it okay to speak about issues openly, who can do conflict who focuses on results. Those are all elements of leadership that, you know, a person may have whether or not they have the title of manager. Does that make sense?

Stephen Matini: It does, it does. You know, one thing that I started thinking recently, and there's no really logic to what I'm saying, just in my pure observation, sometimes I think, boy, it is so hard to be a manager. I mean, these people really, they're in between, they have this bizarre position. They have to listen to the people on top of them and they have to manage the one below. And so sometimes I think it seems to me that maybe being a manager is so much harder compared to people that have a, a higher opposition. What do you think?

Eric Girard: I'm not sure if it's any harder than a position above it. A lot of folks, what I've seen is it's, it's they're kind of taken aback or they're shocked, you know, because I was a great engineer and all I had to do was, was crank out my code and, and I was fine to go from there to, oh wait a minute, I have to do that and I have to lead people and I have to manage processes and you know, I have to make sure that all the TPS reports are right and I have to make sure that everybody's happy and engaged. That sometimes is a bit shocking. What happens typically is once somebody's been through that transition, and then as they move up the ranks from manager to senior, manager to director and so on, is that they just get more used to it and they get more skilled at managing their time. So they're not completely stressed all the time.

Stephen Matini: When people start working with you on their managerial skills, how long would you say that it takes them to transition and to feel comfortable being a manager?

Eric Girard: Well, it's not instant, that's for sure. You know, it, it's not something that you come to my class and then, you're a manager and it's all, it's all better. It's a psychological transition. There's a difference between change. So the title changed. Okay, so you know, I walk into your office and I am a senior specialist and I walk out of your office and I'm a manager. The thing is, the change, the psychological process that we go through, that's the transition. And that could take weeks or months, it goes faster if you've got people to talk to. It goes faster if you know what to expect. But you have to allow people to go through their own change curve. So Elizabeth Kubler Ross came up with, with a change curve that was based on her grief curve. And I use a simplified version of it where you've got denial, resistance, exploration, and commitment.

And it's okay to go through all four steps. It's okay to resist for a little while. The fact that your old job has ended and now you've got a new job, that's okay, but you can't get stuck there. And so having somebody to talk to, whether it's your employee assistance program, whether it's your HR manager, whether it's another trusted manager, having somebody to talk to, to move on toward exploration, and you start to see what's in it for me and what will I get from this onto commitment. And okay, you know, now I'm a manager, I've left the old job behind, I've got my new job and I'm ready to go. And that could take days, weeks, months, it's gonna be different for everybody.

Stephen Matini: And it's also really hard because sometimes when I work with clients, they want everything now. And in the past we used to say, well you need to have at least a year to feel comfortable in a new position, let alone to become a manager. But now everybody wants everything now, you know, sometimes I'm asked, we want you to do a coaching intervention with this person. How many coaching sessions do I have? Five say, what do you want me to do in five sessions? The timeframe, you know, is becoming smaller and smaller, which I don't think is fair to people. Exactly for the reason you said it. There's a curve. Every single person is different. It takes patience and we don't react the same way. You know? What are the first sign in terms of changing the mindset that you notice in someone that finally start getting what being a manager is?

Eric Girard: You know, again, if I go back to the change curve and then think back to some of the things that people say and do in denial, you hear a lot of people say, well this isn't gonna affect me, nothing's gonna change. There's a sign that somebody's in denial. Resistance might be, I don't want this. I didn't sign up for this. This is not what I expected. Those are some of the things that you can hear people say when they move out of resistance into exploration. The sorts of things that they're saying include things like, well, I could see the benefit of fill in the blank. This could be good in these ways. And so this is where a good coach could help this person sort of move themselves along the change curve more quickly. So I think a coach who's skilled at asking great questions and who also understands change and grief, could coach somebody along the change curve and help have that happen fairly quickly, happen over a series of weeks rather than months.

Stephen Matini: What's gonna be next for you in your professional projects?

Eric Girard: Well, after the book, I decided that the perfect accompaniment to that would be a course to support the book. So I'm going about to launch a course that'll be called Lead Like a Pro. It'll be a four week course, it'll be two and a half hours once a week, so not four solid weeks, but it'll be four days over four weeks. And we will go deep into each of the chapters and the lead like a pro book with tons of activities, tons of opportunity to apply what you learned. And by the time new managers go through that course, they'll have the tools they need to be a great manager.

Stephen Matini: For anyone listening to episodes, we talked about so many different things, you know, so many different aspects of of being a manager, what would you say it is the one thing they should pay close attention to out of all we said, you

Eric Girard: Know, I would come back to my sort of the thing I led with, which is empathy. Especially in, you know, here we are, we're recording this in November, 2023, take a look at the headlines in the New York Times. I mean, things are a little crazy in the world. So I would say bringing that human element, bringing that ability to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes and to listen really well is critical. And I think that that's the thing that's gonna differentiate whether you or a bot is managing your team in the next three years.

Stephen Matini: As you were talking, you know, throughout this time together you have empathy, but you also have lightness and a sense of humor, which I think helps a lot. So that's what I take your lightness. But thank you so much for sharing all these wonderful insights. I loved it.

Eric Girard: Yeah, thank you very much. It was my pleasure.

View Details

Kali Patrick is a Sleep, Health, & Well-Being Coach whose book Mastering Your Sleep Puzzle helps busy people who struggle with sleep due to stress and overactive minds.

Kali highlights the importance of letting go, creating personal space, and making positive lifestyle changes for better sleep.

Our interview revolves around understanding and addressing individualized sleep challenges through a comprehensive, mindful, and personalized approach.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#KaliPatrick #SleepCoach #MasteringYourSleepPuzzle #Well-Being #LettingGo #Burnout #Work-LifeBalance #Podcast #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini #LeadershipDevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So I think maybe as a first question that I should ask you to an expert in sleep is, how did you sleep last night?

Kali Patrick: I was doing mixed and you know, a lot of people think that because I'm a sleep coach, that I get something like whatever perfect sleep would be that that happens every night. It's almost like if you were a, a nutrition person, people think that you never eat anything that's not healthy.

As a woman of a certain age, I wake up hot and then cold and then hot and then cold. So some nights are better than others. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Stephen Matini: When did you start getting interested in sleep? I know you mentioned last time also that, you know, as it happened to so many of us as somehow a trouble or something that upset us becomes the inspiration for a job. How did it start for you?

Kali Patrick: Well, my big problems are rooted back in childhood. I think they really started bothering me and becoming an issue in, in college I was under a lot of stress. I was studying for a degree that did not match what I was truly, naturally good at and wanted to do.

So I had a lot of stress around making sure I got good grades and making sure I kept my financial support, et cetera. And I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I started this with grinding of the teeth with bro them. So had a lot of pain in my mouth and was going to dentist.

They finally gave me the guards for my feet. So that took away some of the pain. But I was still tired. I was still very stressed and struggling and that went on and I graduated and everything was fine and I got a job and then the stress became the job, which, which was in high tech.

And I was developing websites back when they were new. So I'm on my way, I something to do in fact that, that I enjoyed, which was helpful. But it was still a very stressful environment. Things were always changing. As you might know, things are never static. You always, always behind, always busy.

And so I was having trouble sleeping then and again. I knew it was because of the stress. So I explored things like yoga and meditation and I would take a class here and there and try, okay, I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna stop my mind and I'm gonna do all the things. And that didn't work. And finally I'd say it was probably 15 years later, I did a sleep study. 'cause I thought, well maybe there's something wrong. And going to a doctor and, and telling them, Hey, I'm having trouble sleeping. I don't know what else to do.

They had me sleep in the room with the wires attached to my head. And I thought, how in the world am I gonna sleep in a cold, sterile environment with people behind a, a mirror watching me and monitoring me? And turns out I fell asleep. And he said, I woke up in the morning and they said, well, there's nothing wrong with you. You slept great. Here's a prescription.

And in hindsight, I really questioned why I got a prescription if there was nothing wrong. I was happy. I was great. Okay, nothing's wrong with me. I have a prescription, I'll take this medication and I'll sleep. I must be taking it for about a week. And that was it because I noticed that I was groggy when I woke up, more so than had I not slept. And I didn't remember my dream. I was a, a pretty vivid dreamer at that time and I was interested in my dream.

And when I woke up after taking medication, I couldn't remember them anymore. And I said, well, so I'm gonna wake up broadly. At least I want the benefit of remembering my dream. So I stopped doing that and went to all the natural things, right? The valerian and the melatonin, the teeth, anything that was sort of more natural that I could try. And none of that worked.

I eventually thought from burnout in 2010 with my job, I had risen up through the ranks manager, et cetera, all the fun that comes with that as a sort of new job in a tech environment. So I left everything. I just said, I can't do this anymore. I had the benefit of being able to do that. So I went into a yoga teacher training program just saying, I don't wanna teach yoga. I just want to do something completely different and do something that's going to be good for me and I know that this is going to be good for me.

And so I did a really intensive teacher training and it was life changing. It was just one of those moments where, wow, my life could be different, I could be different. So I came back from that saying, I do wanna teach yoga. I do wanna be that person who's less stressed and has that calm be yoga voice and just as relaxed. And that created a lot of turmoil in my existing life because the two things didn't fit at all.

So there was a lot of, of shedding of my career, my relationship, and it was a very difficult time actually. But what came out of that was this practice that I now have where I am helping people learn how to sleep better, how to do it without all of that stuff that clearly, well, it didn't work for me. That doesn't mean it doesn't work for other people, but most of the people I coach have been in that situation, right where they have tried all the things, I've done, all the stuff I've seen my doctor, nothing's wrong, but I'm not sleeping.

And so it's really a pleasure to be able to work with people and to help them find their way through that and do it in a way that works for them, right? Just because I did it in a certain way, you know, you mentioned I'm a sleep expert. I don't call myself a sleep expert.

I call myself a sleep coach because I don't initially have all the answers. What we do in a coaching situation is we work together and we navigate it together and we figure out, well, what's going to work best for each person? And that could be completely different than how I did it, but it's that learning how to reconnect to your own natural ability to sleep and see all these other things as distraction, as more stressors, as more to do and to really peel the things away that are preventing sleep versus trying to do things to make sleep happen.

Stephen Matini: Where do you start when you want to be more aware?

Kali Patrick: I do usually have people do an assessment. So let's lay out all the problems. Let's just get it all on the table. What are the issues people are having? A lot of my clients suffer from multiple sleep concerns. The main bucket being trouble falling asleep initially when you go to bed, trouble staying asleep throughout the night.

Some people wake up too early and some people have all of those problems and still others sometimes feel that the sleep at night is interrupted in some way, or not quality sleep because in the daytime they feel, well, I get tired right in the afternoon, for example. I get tired, I don't have the energy that I want. So we lay all that out. Generally speaking, people have an idea of what might be contributing positively or negatively to their space. What's something you do, for example, that you know you sleep better when you do it?

You know, a lot of people will say, well I wanna go for a walk. I know when I exercise or when I go for a walk in the daylight, I sleep better that night. Okay, great. So then that's one in the column of this helps. Okay, what's one thing you're doing that is probably not the best thing for your sleep? And out of 10 people say using technology, I'm on my phone, I'm on my iPad, I'm watching television, I'm, you know, too late in the evening before bed. That's the number one answer.

We do that, we go back and forth. We look at what are the contributors, what are the things that are influencing sleep? And the other thing that I think is really important is to step back from all that and say, well what do we want six months from now, a year from now?

What do you want your life to be like? And people usually start out by saying, well, I'd like to sleep better. I'd like to have more energy. Great. Let's imagine that you have that now. What do you want? What will you do with all that energy that you have as a result of sleeping better? What will you do with all the extra time and money and effort that you're putting into trying to solve this problem? Where will that go? That becomes the motivating factor.

So I've had people say all sorts of wonderful things and people wanna start a business. People want to create art or music. People want to be better in their relationship. There's no right or wrong answer there, but what is the vision for somebody who tweaks better and is more energetic? And that is a real important part of the process because we have to keep that in mind when we make choices and all those little choices that make or break someone's sleep on a daily basis, on a nightly basis.

Stephen Matini: If I understood correctly, it seems that sleep is the manifestation or something else. It is something that gets affected when other parts of our life do not quite align or work the way they do. While you were talking, obviously I'm not a sleep expert, probably my expertise, I would say lies more in the, in the communication realm.

And for me, communication is always the indicator, depending how that is or things flowing or flowing and such and such. So oftentimes when people want to work on communication, they feel that, okay, let's address communication, miscommunication in reality, the problem usually is always elsewhere.

Sure, you know, there's certain technicalities you want to learn about communication, but once all the other stuff is taken care of, then usually communication flows. And as they were talking, you know, it seems to me it might be a similar dynamic.

Kali Patrick: Absolutely. And and a lot of it, like I I mentioned is, is removing barriers. So clearing the path. And yes, once people start to make different choices, and particularly around rest and recovery, sleep happen. You don't create sleep, you don't make sleep happen. It does happen when you get out of the way of it and a different mindset, it's different view into the problem and therefore a different solution.

Stephen Matini: One thing you said last time when you and I talked that really got stuck in my head is sleeping, is learning to let go. And I think it's beautiful because falling asleep it is, you know, letting it go. But it's such a simple thing, but it seems to be so hard sometimes to do. Would you mind explaining more this concept?

Kali Patrick: I often say sleep is about letting go or sleep is a surrender as a way to contrast with how we typically look at sleep and how we look at solving sleep struggle, right? Which is to try to control the problem, to put practices in place. Not to say that having a great bedtime routine isn't a wonderful thing, but when we start to get rigid about it, right, okay, I have to do this and I have to do this and I have to do this.

Or we get stressed and anxious about it, okay, I'm not sleeping, so let me run through all the things I could possibly do to help myself, right? Which I see a lot of people doing as well, right? So that's all in service of how do I make sleep happen? How do I control my sleep? How do I fix this problem?

Which I work with fixers, I work with managers, I work with project managers, program managers, people who are used to looking at a problem saying, okay, I can fix this. How do I do that? What are my options? And that works great in a lot of situations and we get praised for our ability to do that in a lot of different situations.

But when it, where it comes to sleep, that actually usually backfires. So what we need to do, as you said, is to say, okay, what do I need to let go of? How do I let myself surrender to this? And that is not easy. It is a simple idea. It makes sense to most people, but it's not necessarily easy. And in part that's because of the training that we've had, right? Again, the training we've had to say, okay, here's a problem.

What are my options? How do I solve it? And to some extent we do bring that to the sleep struggle, but it is less about doing and more about undoing. So in terms of really looking to surrender and let go, I think the best way to practice that, and it is a practice, doesn't just, we don't just suddenly be able to let go, right?

We have to practice that is by having moments during the day where we can practice rest and practice receiving and practice recovery, which most people don't do. And even if they do try to do that, a lot of times we're so conditioned to be doing and moving and productive that sitting down, for example, for 15 minutes without some sort of stimulation, just sitting and being with ourselves and you know, yeah, letting the mind do its thing. It's going to think, it's going to be busy, but can we try to be built and give that space for the mind to kind of process and the heart and the emotion.

Certainly we're consuming a lot of things during the day, right? We're consuming information, we're consuming other people's energy and we might have difficult conversations, et cetera. So we need to sort of process that and we give ourselves these small rest breaks during the day. It might not be sort of the then meditation experience, but those things can wash through our brains and wash through our body.

During the daytime, people usually complain that, Hey, I'm up at three in the morning and I'm thinking about what happened during the day and I'm worrying about this and I'm worrying about that. Oh, that's because that's when you're finally quiet. That's when you're finally still, we need to practice that during the daytime, like make an appointment with ourselves to say, okay, I'm gonna just sit and say, okay, what's happened so far today? Let me process that. Let me see what do I think? What do I feel about that? And then get up and move on. But that does require some change to how the daytime is.

Stephen Matini: Are you deliberate with the quiet moments during the day minute? Do you plan them somehow or you let them happen organically? Spontaneously?

Kali Patrick: Personally or for my client?

Stephen Matini: Both.

Kali Patrick: Personally I plan for them, for me in particular, the morning is a sacred time. I have a good two to three hours from the time that I get up to the time that I start, you know, my day where I'm quote unquote working on something, right? Where I, and it's not that I'm sitting here quiet, right?

I have things that I'm doing, but I have a process. I'm maybe sitting down reading something that I wanna read. I drink coffee. Yes, I do have, I enjoy my hot cup of coffee in a cold morning, right? So I take that time to kind of ease into my day. And I do also have an appointment with myself around three in the afternoon because I know that's when I tend to get a little bit of low energy, which many people do. And so that's a great time also to take care of yourself and to have that appointment with yourself.

My clients sometimes do that as well where, where they know, oh, well, you know, lunchtime I have a break, I can sit with my food, et cetera. Or if they have children or depending on their schedule, they need to figure out where, when that works best for them. I find that most people, unless they're highly exceptional and have a really flexible schedule, most people do benefit from having some sort of routine and rhythm to it. So it's a consistent, every day at this time, I do this. And the body and the mind start to expect that it becomes part of the training of the rhythm of the day, which also does all contribute to having a better night. So, but it's, it's completely up to what works for each person.

Stephen Matini: As I was going through your website and learning as much as possible so I could be well-informed. I read one thing that I, I thought I'm gonna ask her, which is revenge bedtime procrastination is, I wanna ask you, I used to have such a busy schedule, you know, go, go, go, go, go out of the, I don't know, guilt or whatever the hell it was.

And then in the evening I would procrastinate going to bed because it was like, screw it. Now I need some time for myself. I need to carve with some times that I can actually exist and live. Is this an example of revenge, bedtime procrastination?

Kali Patrick: 100%. Exactly. It's that not having time for yourself during the daytime, that pushes me further away because, oh, you know, maybe the house is quiet or you finally feel as though you've done all the things you need to do that day. It's a scheduling problem to some extent, right? If there are too many things that are not for me happening during my day, too much of me giving myself to other people.

We talk a lot about boundaries and coaching because oftentimes people struggle with saying no at work, saying no to family friends, to asking for help, for receiving help, for taking that time without feeling guilty. And that that is really important, you know, and we know from, I mean from the work side, the to-do list is endless. It never goes away. And I mean, it's the same in personal life really. Everything's a project, right?

You can't go do anything quickly. I'm finding that, you know, I put something on my list of something to do personally, and I think it's gonna take 15 minutes and I'm on, you know, I'm on in traffic, I'm on the phone, whatever, for an hour. Everything takes longer than we think.

And we don't, we don't necessarily budget for that. And we don't necessarily give ourselves those moments of quiet, like I mentioned. So of course we're gonna create, that's, that's basically moving that moment of rest and quiet and time for you taking it away from your sleep time. And that's a choice. Is that time to yourself more important than the quality of your suite? It might be, but at some point the what you're taking away from your suite is going to catch up with you and then you'll make a difference with it.

Stephen Matini: And it, and it's also so cultural particularly, yeah, I would say for the western world, you know, which is so focused on doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. And the notion that if you carve some space for yourself, it's not that you're being unproductive, you're just recouping your energy so you can be even more efficient.

You know, that's something that is definitely not part of the mindset of, of a lot of people. And so when we talk about work-life balance and all these programs within organizations for work-life balance, is that just a big lie ? Because I mean, we're getting this whole thing so wrong. I mean, what is a healthy way to really approach work-life balance, you know, from an organizational standpoint?

Kali Patrick: Well, the thing that IHP and I'm often a provider for company. I come in and I do webinars. I talk about sleep, I talk about meditation, I do meditation classes, I teach yoga. These are benefits that a lot of companies give to try to help people with their mental health and their physical health and have some balance. What I see unfortunately is that many people don't take advantage of those programs.

And the main thing that I see as to why is there's that permission. There's not an environment of safety that says, well, you're gonna take this hour and for yourself and go to a yoga class. We're gonna offer it to you, but we're going to make you feel really bad if you go take it because it's work to do. So for me, it comes down to that permission and that security, right? That it's an acceptable choice to say, yes, I'm gonna take advantage of that.

And it doesn't have to be a company provided yoga class, it could be a, Hey, I'm gonna go out for my run in the afternoon because I want some daylight before the sun goes away and I know it's going to help me sleep better. But if it feels bad or like the person's going to get punished for taking that time, then they're not gonna take that time. And that's the, the shingle biggest thing I think is the problem.

And it has been a problem for many years, is that people don't feel comfortable doing it. I have done some consulting work in the past couple years just to kind of stay connected to the culture. I did a consulting job probably several years ago now, but I had to be in an all day meeting with the, the customers and my boss. And I said, great.

It was, it was in Boston. I said, I'll be there at nine o'clock. So I show up at, he said, no problem. I show up at nine o'clock. They've been there since seven. Okay, fine. I'm here at nine, fully participatory, well rested. We get it to about 12 o'clock noon. I'm thinking, my stomach's growling, I'm ready for a break, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, et cetera. No one's making any movement to leave. I can feel my blood sugar going down, right? So I said, excuse me, I'm going to get up and take a break now. And I got up and I left the room and I was the only one who did this. And it took so much courage, it really was hard. And I know everything I know about burning out and, and not doing this and having that experience and having recovered from that experience, I knew I had to do it.

I mean, it, it was so difficult to do that. I thought, you know, on all the things in the minds, right? Oh my gosh, what are they gonna think of me? That I left on top of that I was the only female in the room at the time. There's that, there's a little bit of that concern going on.

But it took a half an hour lunch, I just left, I ate my lunch, I, I drank some water, I went to the restroom, walked around a little bit, came back, they're all still there, right? And they brought some things in, you know, some bad coffee, some pizza, whatever. And you know, people ate and continued the meeting. So three o'clock in the afternoon, now we're still all trapped in this room. No oxygen, excuse me, I'm just gonna step out for a moment. I get up, I walk around, get some water, et cetera, et cetera, come back in.

It got a little easier that second time because I had done it already by five o'clock the meeting was over, the client left, my boss looks at me and he says, oh my God, I need a scotch. I am wiped. I am like so drained. Well of course you've been here since seven, you haven't left the room, you haven't moved around, you haven't really eaten anything.

Well you haven't had a drink of anything hydrating, right? And I actually kind of sat there for a moment. I thought, I'm okay, I feel okay. And that's because I made different choices. But it's really hard when you're the only one doing this. And in another situation, what I did might've inspired others to say, Hey, yeah, let's take a break.

And sometimes that does happen, but I, I like this example. 'cause It, it was a bit extreme where no one else left the room . I think it's a good illustration of how it does require courage. We are in many cases working against the culture, which is largely unhealthy.

Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you something about your book, you know, mastering your sleep puzzle. When I got familiar with your background, it's kind of interesting your approach because if I got it right, you almost like, I rejected everything that people usually do around sleep, but you're going really to the most interesting, smart way to do it.

You know, which is a way to approach it that, that I find it more, let's say more strategic. Let all the stuff that gets in the way away so that it, the sleeper can happen naturally. So if I had to ask you what makes your book, you know, different compared to similar books, I mean, what would you say?

Kali Patrick: Well, I'm not sure there is a similar book, the book that I read about sleep are the more sleep science books. And certainly those are interesting for somebody who has a sleep struggle, although I don't, I'm not sure that it's absolutely necessary. I do see a lot of people reading the, the very deep sleep science and, and, and details about insomnia and that just creates more anxiety around the fact that they're not sleeping.

So my book is really a marriage of the coaching process, the health and wellbeing coaching process with a lot of concepts from yoga and meditation, but more of the philosophy around energy and how stimulation is a root cause of many people sleep struggles these days and how to reduce the stimulation through various practices. So the 12 weeks is really a step by step. How do I do this for myself without being a plan, if that makes sense, right?

It's not a 12 week plan. I don't say, okay, here's what you do exactly in week one, you must do X, Y, and Z. It's not prescriptive, it's here are the things that I want you to think about and you put your own plan in place.

So I think it has the potential to, to help a lot more people because it is not something that's rigid and formulaic, but it does follow a style a, a again, a a method that I have seen work in many stressed out, particularly busy people.

You have this problem of being overstimulated and, and not necessarily having a sleep disorder, a medical problem, but having disorder sleep through behaviors and patterns and, and training of life.

Stephen Matini: Before we we're talking about electronics, you know, we all know some people more than others that it would be great to give ourselves some space and time without any sort of digital stuff because that interferes with our sleep. In terms of diet, what to eat in the evening, like I understand your approach is so much more holistic and comprehensive, but is it, is anything like really practical that people could be right away mindful of what to eat or not to eat in the evening based on your experience?

Kali Patrick: Well there is a whole chapter in the book about eating. It is certainly related just to stress is related to sleep, so is eating, so was exercise, so was light, so was so many different things, which is part of why I called the book Mastering Your Sleep Puzzle, right? 'cause There's so many small components of things that influence our sleep, again, positively or negatively.

So being aware of that and knowing that is part of the solution and most people have that sense of, of what's going on for themselves. But caffeine is something that lasts in your system for a lot longer than, you know, people think sugar is often a problem for people, especially as they age In the evening, for example, I used to be able to eat to drink coffee with dinner or to have a chocolate cake for dessert, whatever. But now not so much where you learn to adapt.

We learn to pay attention and see the connection and then to where the gap and say, okay, so now when I have my chocolate cake, it's at lunch because I want my chocolate cake, right? and I want my sleep. So I make an adjustment. Then I have everything that I want if I have a light dinner because I often eat more for lunch than I do for dinner.

Sometimes I don't eat enough and then I find that, well I'm hungry before bed. You don't wanna go to bed hungry because a stomach growling is going to keep you awake. You're not gonna be able to relax. So then I eat a little something just enough to take away that feeling of hunger. I think I do say in the book, what's interesting about food and sleep I think is that you probably have experienced that when you're hungry, when you're ready to eat, you feel a little tired, right?

The energy goes down because the fuel is gone. So it's almost like you wanna time the bedtime with that feeling of the energy going down. And digestion of course is an active process. So the, the more that is in the stomach to be digestive, the more active and stimulated your system's going to be.

So there is that balance. And again, for every person, we don't wanna be going to bed and having blood sugar crashes or wake up at two in the morning when blood sugar often does funny things too. So again, it's learning what works for your system and then making those, those changes to adapt. And it will change throughout a person's life for sure.

Stephen Matini: And sometimes it gets so tough because of the, also the culture. Like, you know, I live in Italy and Italians for the most part eat around 8:00 PM and I think they have lunch probably 1:00 PM Of course it changes from person to person, but roughly, but what happens, a lot of people enjoy to go, you know, to dinner like at nine o'clock, at nine 30. And it's something that I love the social component, but I just cannot do it. I mean, that means that if I do that, either I don't eat a thing or if I eat, then I'm gonna be super, you know, harshly punished, you know, doing my sleep.

So, and, and it's difficult sometimes with some people, you know, explaining that, that you're not trying to be finicky or difficult. It just really, you know, I cannot afford and not to sleep because then tomorrow is a million different things that I need to do, you know, for sure. We talked about different things from different angles about sleep and so much more. Is there anything in particular that you think would be helpful for the people listening to this episode to focus on as a starting point?

Kali Patrick: What I see a lot and hear a lot from people is all the things that haven't worked. I think we, we started off with this, right? I've tried this, I've done that, I've done this. But yet many people are still doing those things. And again, this is an example of where if you're not sure if it's working for you and especially if it's creating stress, then drop it. I see people who have 12 step bedtime routine too much and they're still not sleeping 'cause they're seeing me, right? They're coming for a consultation.

So why do it? It's not helping you let it go, start fresh, right? When you wake up in the middle of the night, people go through that file drawer of, well I can breathe like this or I can do this meditation, or I could do this visitation, or I can count sleep or I can do this, or I can get up and have a da da da da da.

And then you can hear the busyness, the stress coming in the mind, right? So there's all these options. Choose one thing when I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm going to do this and then do that thing for a month. At least don't worry about whatever other options you see. You go on, you go on social media, you find, oh there's this new technique, right?

There's a new app, there's a new this, there's a new net, forget it, you're doing your thing. There's so many things that can work, but it's like digging a bunch of shallow wells. You're never gonna hit water. You have to focus in on something that sounds like it's going to be enjoyable. That sounds like you think it's going to help, that maybe you feel in your gut, you know, it's going to help me, right? Just focus in on that and let all the other stuff drop away for a time and see what happens.

Because again, for a lot of people, there's this increased focus on getting better sleep, which on the one hand is great. Yes, we need to pay attention to this area that we've perhaps neglected for a time, but there can be a hyper focus on it that does more harm than good.

Again, this whole conversation really has been about how do we narrow the focus? How do we create some space for ourselves and let what's not helping and what's not the focus drop away? I think that's really the theme of what we've been saying in so many different way.

Stephen Matini: I love it because it seems to me a positive strength approach essentially. Like rather than seeking some solution, you know, there's already a bunch of stuff that if you just pay attention to it, you can tap into it and just to get the whole sleep pattern perfecting a better.

Kali Patrick: Yes. And many people need help with that, right? Because we are so conditioned. I mean that's, that's how I'd partner with people. I help them shift their focus and sometimes shift their mindset or shift how they're thinking about making healthy choices, right?

How do I talk to my partner about sleeping separately? How do I tell my friends, I'm not trying to be antisocial. How do I know what's the best thing we can, we can talk about that and we can figure that out together and then approach the method with some curiosity. Well, what happened when I tried that? Right?

Let's pay attention and let's really see what worked, what didn't? How do we do more of what does work? How do we rely on what you already know? And your strengths And your abilities and what you have been able to accomplish? There are so many people sometimes who say, well I haven't had an experience of good night's sleep in a really long time.

And then we have a conversation and I find out, well, a week ago, yeah, I had a great night's sleep. Okay, well, so you're capable. Your body and your mind are capable of doing that. You've had that experience. It might not be a week ago, it might be two weeks ago or or three months ago, but you've done it.

So it's possible people lose that hope sometimes when they're struggling that it's even possible for them to do it again. So we really reconnect with the positive and start to shift the mindset around what can I do and what is working and how do I just do more of that?

Stephen Matini: Well, Kali, this evening, I think inevitably I will think about you for sure and all the wonderful things that you shared with me. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I've learned a lot.

Kali Patrick: Oh great. Thank you. It's been my pleasure speaking with you.

View Details

Neil Lawrence is a well-being and transformational coach who reminds us about the importance of self-acceptance and authenticity to find purpose in life.

Neil shares how mindfulness has helped him navigate neurodivergence as well as chronic conditions that have profoundly impacted his life, like Fibromyalgia and PSTD.

Neil emphasizes the idea that everyone is good enough as they are, countering societal pressures that often lead to a sense of inadequacy, which heavily affects minority groups like neurodivergent individuals and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Sessions combining coaching, content, and advisory to boost leadership and management skills.

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#NeilLawrence #Mindfulness #compassion #LifeCoachLondon #podcast #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini #LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementDevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Have you always known what you want to do professionally?

Neil Lawrence: No, I coach creatives. I'm a writer myself. I coach execs, I coach leaders. I do lots of career coaching. I coach kids. And honestly, that idea of having the career and the career plan, it's so antithetical to me. I'm kind of careful where I say it, but I do honestly believe that's not the way it goes.

I became intentional about the work I did when I became a coach, everything before it. And even then, it was still like, I don't really know what was getting myself into before then.

Third generation immigrant. My community was, this is the generation that has to make it to middle class. I'm sure you know about the UK and just how class obsessed and hierarchically obsessed they are. So, you know, I went to university that wasn't approved of by my community 'cause it wasn't one of the ones. But essentially I kind of fell into everything I did until I became a coach and intentionally became a writer.

Stephen Matini: What you just described is what happens, I think to most people. Very few people know from the very beginning what they wanted to do. And you said at some point you made more intentional choices. Do you think it, is it possible to make intentional choices early on on our lives or it just that we have to go through a bunch of stuff before we actually understand?

Neil Lawrence: That's a good question. I think our society has got everything the wrong way around. I think there are systemic reasons for that and in the UK I think there's political reasons for that.

We are a nation obsessed with success, passion being driven, having the career, having the title. And actually I kind of find myself asking what for, I think work is important. I probably am a workaholic, but in my mind I don't think it's that important. It doesn't define who I am. It's something that I spend a lot of my life doing.

I think those people know what they want to do at an early age and are quite driven. I'm passionate about it. I'm not judgmental about that. I'm more on alert for the fact that everybody feels like they have to.

And so many people feel they're failing because of it. And particularly since Covid and the pandemic hit and people are even more desperately trying to support the system that now has so many holes and gaps in it that it's unsustainable.

I'm seeing as a coach, I'm seeing a lot of really worn out, unhappy, confused people. So three or four things got me too intentional. One facing up to the fact that I was disabled.

Two, realizing that I was living with PTSD as well as fibromyalgia and like I've just, it's interesting you're saying about not sleeping.

So I've literally just come up my whole weekend's been decimated by PTSD this weekend. It's just like I didn't exist for about 36 hours and you know, it's a big something and then I've told this story a billion times, but basically me and my husband were, we're on a very narrow and congested motorway about five years ago and it was dangerous driving conditions and I, we shouldn't be here.

So still being here when I shouldn't be here also is quite a good motivate. So I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, by the way, as a way of finding out who you are.

But I think all those things coalesced and I'm being bullied within the education sector and, and the values of working within that for 25 years and realizing just how misaligned they were.

As I came to the conclusion that, you know, in UK education's really about two things. It's about hierarchy and it's about institutionalized bullying. All of that coalesced and drew me towards coaching the course I did with a company called Catalyst one Four. I'm still super supervised by them now. Demi one four who's the the founder and the kind of person who's my supervisor as well. They had a big mindfulness element to it that was really important to me as well.

So, you know, I dunno if this long answer is giving you kind of what you want, but certainly my experience of waking up day to day means that now whatever's on, even if I'm stressed, it's like it is, it feels like purpose and it feels like I'm doing what I should be doing.

Stephen Matini: So basically we are sold a big lie.

Neil Lawrence: Yes. What we're told is we need to work so many hours, we need to have a micromanaged plan. We need to keep improving and keep adding to our skillset and we are not good enough. That's kind of, and we'll never be good enough. So we have to keep going.

What I see from the people I coach and as as was saying, it's you know, sort of really broad spectrum of people is when they realize they don't have to work this hard, they are more than their job title. If they don't do this course and get this next qualification and people don't congratulate them on social media, they still might be working really well. Trying to be really careful say. That, oh, I haven't done my post this morning either. That's when I see the difference of people going, oh my, my motto is do less, plan less be less.

Stephen Matini: But I love it connected to what you're saying. For me, what helps me is reminding myself, why am I doing this? You know, am I doing it because I am enjoying myself and obviously, you know, work is, work is not vacation, but what is the, the reason why I'm doing it? Because that really changes everything. It changes how you are in a situation. It changes how you work, it changes how you feel about stuff. If it's all about getting there, the results, how is it gonna land on people? It may spoil the whole journey, not completely. Definitely it did it for me.

Neil Lawrence: I do wonder whether lots of us are on a journey or just constantly looking at destinations. Either those that have gone already that stick with us or those that we're heading to. I do wonder about that. And obviously that's the mindfulness bit, which is also nicely packaged these days as a kind of CBT tick box, which is not at all where I'm at with it or how I practice it and work with people that I coach either.

But focusing on the now is the important thing. Set the intention. Obviously we plan, but we leave enough in the hands of trust that we will know when to make the gut decision. The right people will come to us if we're open to it. It always sounds a bit vague and wooly doesn't it, when people who, when people say this stuff or, or it's easily, you know, certain phrase I hate soft skills is an insult.

Likewise, you know, when people talk about mindfulness being quite wooly and it's about clearing your mind so you have the clarity to make the decisions you need to as and when they happen rather than trying to look ahead and put everything in place before you get there. You missing on the journey there.

Stephen Matini: How did you get into mindfulness? Do you remember the first time that got into your life?

Neil Lawrence: In the days when I was still muck schooling, I worked with this wonderful counselor and we were running a couple of groups for young men at the point where I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

That's when I started meditating and used this app, which was a very basic, this is how you know, the three steps, three basic mindfulness techniques. And then from there I started to practice it and I kind of got it. But then I came across two teachers, two American teachers, one called Tara Brack and the second one called Jack Kornfield with a cape.

They're really down to earth, they're really funny, they're really compassionate and they are very switched on in terms of systems and what's happening in the world around and, and they don't shy away from any of that. And my jaw kind of dropped open, suddenly there was a kind of spiritual link to the work I was doing and that's when as I continued to practice, a light switched on.

I can remember the very moment, you know, Jack Hall Phil's written a book called After the Ecstasy of the Laundry. It's something like that, which is about his experience of kind of becoming a Budd monk and then coming back to America and just kind of the day-to-day going, oh, and I have this half term off where I was really connecting and really starting to feel compassion for other people and doors were opening and I went back to work and got these like 25 emails all about admin and systems and process that completely obfuscated working with young people or connecting with them or making a difference.

And I really felt this disconnection. It was like, how the hell am I supposed to do this? So I realized I'd also have to find a wave surviving day-to-day systems that didn't really reach into making compassionate connections and being able to make a difference in that way. So from that moment onwards, things change.

Stephen Matini: One of the ways that I have introduced mindfulness in the corporate world, which by the way for many, many, many years in depends on the situation, but it has always been welcomed really warmly to my surprise. But when people ask me more information and a bizarre way that I have to introduce it so they understand it is, it's basically implementing the lean process to your mind so that you think less and you focus on what matters. Okay, okay. Yeah. So you're gonna be more efficient.

Run your mind. I like that. I've, well my, my experience of business-wise right across the board, the place where it's happened most has been kind of post 360 audit. It's exactly that. I think when you're coaching and especially with something like something that's an emotionally charged as a 360 or or any kind of review of performance that people are really open to what's gonna make this feel less like I an imposter And mindfulness is a really powerful way of introducing that. So yeah, I've shifted lots of, lots of copies of radical compassion particularly and radical acceptance.

Stephen Matini: What does compassion mean to you?

Neil Lawrence: I'm a change maker just in case it's not clear already. I've always been motivated by advocacy in terms of the work I do. So it's always been important to me to kind of have that sensibility.

When lockdown happened, it was an interesting experience for me watching the way the rest of the world reacted to not being able to leave the house and the way that people completely still ignored disabled people that can't go out. And I suddenly realized if I didn't gain some compassion quick that I was just gonna hate the universe.

So I literally introduced compassion meditation, meta meditation, much more loving kindness. Meditation is much more part of my day to day and and again, intentionally wanted to build all that soft care. And by the time toilet roll gators I like to call it happened in the UK and you know, people were just like literally fighting to get stuff off the shelves.

I just, I thought it was a really interesting image anyway, that people have to buy something to feel in control of a situation where uncertainty is slapping them across the face. I just felt this huge sadness that it's deep pain and sadness and I can't manage it all the time and that's okay 'cause that's why we practice meditation. We don't surpass it. But that's what impassion means to me. That ability

Stephen Matini: For different reasons. So many people these days seem to go through a mess up out of sadness, anger. These past few years have been really difficult for many, many, many different reasons. How do you switch from feeling sad and angry to feeling compassionate? Do you use mindfulness? Is it anything else that you do specifically?

Neil Lawrence: It is mindfulness because that retrains the brain. And also I've studied psych psychodynamic psychotherapy. You've either got someone in front of you, you take the toilet roll gate as an example. You've either got someone in front of you who's really angry and selfish and doesn't care about anyone else and look at these people.

So you either get that or you can see that someone is desperate and that desperation is leading them to literally lash out. And if people's defensiveness is because they feel they're gonna be attacked. And I do believe that's what it is, there's a lot of fight, flight, freeze response.

And if you can see that, keep yourself safe because you're in the line of fire of somebody else who's not coping. That's not necessarily safe place to be emotionally or physically sometimes. But at the same time to recognize what you are seeing, that actually that violence or language or the selfishness isn't selfishness. It's desperation.

We seem to be obsessed with becoming self-aware and lots of the self-help stuff is about self-awareness, but none of it is about how we heal afterwards. So I think we've got loads of people that are becoming more self-aware and are really quite thin skinned as a result because they don't have the tools they need to actually look after themselves because that's not the wellbeing marketplace is it.

Stephen Matini: It's interesting when you talked about before about the notion of labels, I think I've read it on your website, when you talk about your values, like one of your, your values that you cherish is being real and you wrote, we are far more than a labels. Labels should not be boxes. We should know who we are beneath. It feels like an oxymoron such as we are trying to be inclusive, we want to recognize diversity of thinking, of political diversity and such and such. But rather than feeling more inclusive, it's almost like we are fragmenting, you know, we are separating even further and further. So what would you say that is a healthy approach to labels if you should use, if you should use them at all?

Neil Lawrence: Thank you for the way you framed that question. 'cause We are on serious dangerous ground with even approaching this as, you know, because people's stories and the history of people's stories who've not been treated with respect or worse have been treated with aggression and violence and exclusion. Whatever community is, they matter.

All those stories matter. And the right that people have to expect better from that of course is paramount. But I think where we've got to is it's your fault and what are you gonna do about it? As a way of talking about previous experience, again, the, so mindfulness would say that we can become overdependent on the label.

All these things that actually describe who I am, they are things that I do or they are parts of my physical or emotional landscape. I think it's about holding onto it lightly and we should reach out to others with that and the strength in numbers.

So leaning into, you know, I'm not com I've, I've always found I'm never comfortable in the, the label community that I've been part that that I go to. Because yes, we need to be talking and yes, other people should know what our experiences is, but I just kind of have this feeling that really truly connecting with someone and deeply listening to them. If someone else is doing that, then your experience is being shared.

That's the way to do it. And what's been lost is the idea of community at the moment and people joining together. I'm sure it suits the system for us to be this divided, you know, certainly suits the uk you know, while we're all bickering then life can go on as normal elsewhere.

But actually we need to be joining together and listening to each other's experiences. At some point we have to stop the idea of hierarchy. And I feel like that's a dangerous thing to say. I'm just waiting for the kickback whenever I say that.

Stephen Matini: If we all listen to each other's experiences, what would you say that people would be able to hear to be the same in common?

Neil Lawrence: I'm practicing it as a kind of think about it now. So I'm, I'm aware that I'm slowing my body down, that I am slowing my thought process down and opening up even across a zoom link to you Stephen. 'cause I do that.

And allowing space for what you are saying to emotionally connect with me rather than just this, be a podcast interview if you like. There's something about that because what's needed will come from the conversation again, if we just trust that the other person is not the enemy, if the other person is the solution, then being able to think together and recognize there might be differences of opinion. But if we stop this thing of entitlement, which has become a noose around on x, I think it will be helpful. I mean, yes there are basic human rights that all of us should be have equal access to, but also there are very serious differences of experience.

Like my, so thinking about disability, my, I hate the word normal, but let's just use it for sake of argument. My normal wouldn't be someone else's for me. Yesterday we took the dog out for a walk, which we haven't done for a couple of weeks 'cause he's developed arthritis.

And during that walk my legs went, fibro wise again as a result of the PTSD episode that I'd had the day before the, the fibromyalgia kind of intensified. I was literally staggering around looking probably like I'd had about 10 points of, of Guinness or something and kind of laughing about that. And I said, and I said to my partner, I can't believe I've got used to this.

This is like, I was thinking about people that maybe hide when they're in that situation, but just the freedom to stagger and to nurture myself when I got back home 'cause I was in pain. So there's something about being able to relate to each other's experiences I keep writing on, on LinkedIn at the moment.

I've noticed when I'm doing these posts, don't call me brave, don't feel sorry for me. I'm not asking for that. I'm not asking for you. I'm just sharing. It's like this is not a judge, it's not a valued judgment to be had about this. Can you connect with where I'm at without feeling the need to do anything or judge.

Stephen Matini: The one thought we can call it compassion that I have Oftentimes that put things in perspective is when I become mindful of the fact that all of us bear this humongous question mark, which is the journey of life. You know, we bear this thing of eventually one day we are gonna die. That's a huge thing to go through life, you know, so many question marks and as you said the beauty of life, but also the, the tremendous challenges of life that inevitably sooner or later all of us are going to face. You know? And when I look around and I feel lonely and I look at people that I don't know thinking, oh wow, they really share my same destiny. Eventually at some point they're gonna run through the same thoughts. And I feel so compassionate. I feel, oh my God, I, I wonder how they're going to feel. I wonder how they're going to react. I wonder if they're going to feel as lonely as I do. That thought for me really does the trick every single time that I get angry or, or something. You know what? Underneath this is our common destiny, our shared journey. And it really is the same and really put me in a different perspective. It somehow helps me calming down it to be more understanding of people.

Neil Lawrence: I love that Steve. It makes me realize it's, so, there was that moment wasn't there at the beginning of lockdown where it looked like people were gonna reach for a kinder life afterwards.

And looking at it from a mindfulness perspective or a Buddhist perspective, we have this moment where we could no longer pretend we could micromanage life and being faced with, you know, they, one is that life is uncertain and two, that it's finite. We're faced with this real understanding of both of those things.

The fact that people have rushed back into to try and recreate the life there was before. When we don't have the resources we have before even, and it was too much then makes me feel really, really sad. There was a moment where if we could bear the uncertainty and bear that realization that we're all gonna die and live with that fruitfully, that life could actually become different.

But it seems like we can't, what mind, again, not mindfulness has been able to do is make me realize that home is me. And that's true for all of us. You know? So being at home is being at home with me at that point. I wanna open the door and let other people in and need and want to have a really rich number of connections of friends and work colleagues.

So I think, I think there's something about that. It's a struggle, but the idea that I don't matter, I'd find that really, really reassuring. That doesn't mean I can't make a difference, that I don't have great connections, but you know, I'm here I live, I'll die. I said don't need to need a legacy. I don't need to have this amazing trajectory that has done X, y, and z. I just need to be able to be here.

I'm lucky enough to still be here after surviving that car crash. So every day's a blessing, every minute's a blessing. If I can reach into it and see it and nothing else matters, acceptance then actually opens the brain up to being able to think about what we can really do.

So what, when I was growing up, my first crush, remember it so clearly was Michael J. Fox, she'll also tell you how old I'm and him kind of disappearing off the screen in the late eighties, early nineties. But reemerging in his spin city, which was the sitcom he came back to do is is written by Bill Lawrence. I love Bill Lawrence. He did Scrubs, he's done Ted Lasso recently shrinking. And Michael J. Fox is so funny in that, so, so funny. And then finding out when he, you know, spoke about Parkinson's for the first time and now I realize as a middle aged guy, God he was young, he was really, really young.

And that recent incredible documentary, you know, that's shown on Apple plus that he did about his his journey. I find that so inspirational. Here's, here's the guy that for the first I, I remember it, I went to see back to the future, I remember being in the cinema, I just couldn't take my eyes off the screen and then crying on the bus on the way back going, oh my God, I like guys even wrote a jokey country in Western song in the sixth form about him.

There's this deep, this kind of connection that I kind of feel just, just kind of watching. Not in a stalky one, but I find his whole journey and the fact that, you know, his marriage has survived all of that and his kids love him so much. It just, I find to me about that inspirational even down to his mobility.

'Cause You know, he drops a lot. He falls a lot and dyspraxia is quite a big part of what I've got. But you know, very clumsy. If my chronic fatigue is really high, yeah, I can trip over things. And I was in the middle of teaching and I fell asleep while I was talking maybe, maybe so bored, but boring myself, but actually felt my eyes going. It's like, oh my god, this is serious. And I'm being told I couldn't take a cup of coffee into an invigoration once as well.

And I was like, and you don't understand I need this coffee. They were like, no, it's against the rules. And I said, okay, but I'm warning you I'll probably fall asleep. And probably did. I think there's something about that acceptance piece which doesn't yeah. Which doesn't mean being passive and certainly not in terms of advocacy around disability or whatever positive world we can find that hasn't got a dis in it around it. My mobility.

Stephen Matini: I'm curious about something that I read when I did some, a bit of research about you, the notion of finishing, which is, you know, people struggling with completing task. Does this fit in any way, shape and form with what we are talking about?

Neil Lawrence: Yeah, I think so. You know, the idea of niching I found really difficult when I started in business and, and set my own company. Because I do work across the board and I work on a wide range of different kind of issues from very personal ones to, you know, very, very career focused ones and everything in between.

And it felt like a good fit, particularly after working with someone who's living with A DHD who specifically had that issue around how to either not get too hyper-focused or then how to give the brain the nugget it needed to keep going to get something done.

So I kind of put it in there. But we now live in a world where people are petrified of finishing anything. Everything, you know, things feel so daunting and overwhelming partly 'cause I think the number of things that we're expected to do on any given day is, is is far too much.

And the number of interactions and the, and the avenues for interacting again is far too much. We've definitely gone for quantity over quality of communication. I think the pandemic has really not the stuffing out of everyone in terms of the idea of getting stuff done. It's started off as a kind of recognition for me as a neurodivergent as well. My dyscalculia means that sometimes I lack focus, sometimes I forget what I'm talking about.

Sometimes I find it hard to put things in a logical sequence and definitely organization in terms of time, date, where I need to be. All of that have to input that into my brain. 'cause The bit that where wires should be isn't there. And I'd, I'd done it. And I remember being surprised about 10 years ago when both my husband and one of my closest friends said, you are the most organized person I know, but because my brain is chaos, I don't see it that way, but actually it's true.

And then I thought, well actually I'm probably a good person to be kind of helping people with this stuff. So it started from a neurodivergent perspective, but now it feels like it's a, it's a global problem that there's far too much and people feel under prepared for doing it.

So for me it's about confidence, about giving people the confidence but then crucially for them to work out that they have the skills there all along. If someone had been there and it had been a safe enough environment for the, for them to be able to dig in. It's not that I don't give tools, obviously I do, but only if someone else hasn't got what they need. And most people do most of the time. So reintroduce the idea that we can do stuff and actually we can say no and we can rebuild the world, our world so that it's manageable.

Stephen Matini: If I had to use a label for you, if I have to, I would say that you are exquisitely British in the way you self-deprecate yourself, your sense of humor. Yeah. That, that's, that's probably the only one that I would use.

Neil Lawrence: That's interesting. And I've been, I've been told that before as well. And maybe there is a bit of me putting myself down before someone else does. I think more these days it's, it's the opposite. I kind of, it's not that I think I'm important, we've already covered that.

But I do think that when it comes to white elephants, I'm really good at spotting them. And my life path has given me skills and care enough to be able to really help an enormous number of people, an enormous number of contexts, which yet is bad marketing copy, but is great in terms of what I actually do. So even when I am putting myself down, I kind of, I, I don't feel that, I feel like I'm able to have enormous impact and I'm wanna do much more of it too. You know, this is still year three, year four of my journey with this.

So I feel really positive about that. I don't have a filter for that stuff and I don't understand why other people would. So, you know, I will say things like, I had a really bad experience with PTSD this weekend and now I've got the fibro repercussions. I probably say that two or three times today. And I see people get nervous, particularly if I'm working, I'm working for them. Like bosses gonna go, especially in the wellbeing industry. It's like we're all supposed to show we're shiny and I have nothing wrong with this.

What is the point of that? You know? Oh yeah. But if, you know, if you with PTSD, people won't trust. You're like, well I'm surviving it. So for me it's just the logical thing and I want to bring those white elephants out. That's important to me. 'cause Those are the things that oppress me when people don't talk about them.

Some people can't talk about them, I don't think. It's not like, I think everybody has to, and I've had that particularly in the L-G-B-T-Q community. Like you have to come out. No, I don't. I can choose where and when I do it, thank you. But I do think just being able to be honest and open with the stuff that's important to me or just feels like it's not talked about is I find, I find that helpful.

Stephen Matini: Neil, I have one last question, which I always love to, to ask. We, we talked about so many different things and all these things are interconnected among all these things. Is there anything in particular that you think there are listeners should be pay attention to as a biggest takeaway from the conversation from your point of view?

Neil Lawrence: I think I would go to the, to my two little photos that I use on LinkedIn a lot. So one, do less plan, less be less. And the second one connected to that is that you are good enough. I'm good enough. And so are you, let's just start from that and then see what happens.

Stephen Matini: That's beautiful. Thank you Neil. This is wonderful. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation. Thank you.

View Details

David D'Arcangelo is the President of Arc Angel Communications, a Limited Liability Company that is a Disability Owned Business Enterprise.

Legally blind from a young age, David is a passionate leader, advocate, and policy maker for people with disabilities and underserved populations.

During our conversation, David emphasizes the power of positivity, love, and constructive discourse in addressing societal challenges and building bridges between differing perspectives.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a Training Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

#DavidDArcangelo #diversity #positivity #blindness #ArcAngelCommunications #podcast #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini #LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementDevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: As we are approaching the end of the year, usually for me it's a, it's a moment of self-introspection. I tend to calm down a little bit, and just revisit all that I've done during the year. I also think about, all right, what I want the next year to be. So, I don't know if you gave any thought to 2024, but do you have any special wish for the year to come?

David D’Arcangelo: Peace. I'm a bridge builder and so to me it's just bringing people together. You know, it's kind of ironical. Oftentimes people who advocate for change the most are the most adverse to it. The worst fear of a planner is that the plan actually goes into action.

So I'm all about action. I'm all about getting things done and getting results and improving the human condition. So, and sometimes when you do that, you get to change things and not everybody likes that.

People say they like it, that they like the change, but then when you go ahead and change it, maybe they don't like it as much. So to me it's about building those bridges and just staying positive, you know, that we can't control a lot. One thing we can control is our attitude. So I choose to be positive.

Stephen Matini: What do you think people resent the most about change?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know if they resent it. I think it's, people like to build archetypal metaphors in their head of what something is or isn't or is going to be or could be. And when that doesn't happen accordingly or exactly how they envisioned it, that creates conflict and that conflict is unsettling and everything else.

So I try not to do that. I try not to have those prejudices really, and who knows what the next moment will bring, you know, it's like you gotta live for the moment.

Stephen Matini: So it's about having the right expectations.

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, well, having no expectations really. Well, that can be challenging. It can, because I mean, you need to be pragmatic and plan for your dinner and plan for the seasons changing and plan for short and medium and long term things.

So to me, it's the blend of being pragmatic, but also really not expecting much because nothing is guaranteed. All that's guaranteed is now this moment further than that. It's just everything's up for grabs.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes it is discrepancy between what we want, our goals, our wishes, and the way things are. And I think it's a fine balance between finding contentment in the present moment while at the same time thriving for something else. How do you personally strike this balance?

David D’Arcangelo: Sometimes better than others! Because You do get caught up in trying to think about the future or reflecting on the past.

Future performance is usually an indication of past performance, but we're here on the now, so it's taking some measure of where we've been and that experience and being able to reflect on it.

Particularly if you've made mistakes, you know, we're all, nobody's perfect and whatever failures we've had, I think it's trying to learn from those so that when you do them again, you're better, right?

So having that past experience, trying to apply it towards future behaviors in the now and having that balance, like you said, is to me that's really one of the keys and one of the, if you can find that secret sauce in life, I think that's close to it.

Stephen Matini: You mentioned already your mission, which is to improve the human condition, and actually it's one of those traits that you share with a lot of guests of this podcast, people that have made service the very center of their life.

How did this mission enter your life? I mean, is it something that's always been there? Is it the result of something that happened in your life?

David D’Arcangelo: It's always been there. I didn't always know it was there. It really comes down to fundamental bedrock convictions. And that is, you know, do you believe in God or not? I'm not very religious, but I'm very faithful.

Anything that I have, yeah, it's from me, but I'm only the vessel for it. Any of the good things that happen, I really can't take credit for any of the bad things that happen, that's from me, that's on me. So I start with myself, what can I do to be better? What can I do to be more positive? What mistakes did I make that I want to change for the future so I don't make them again?

And to me about improving the human condition, you can do a one person at a time, or you can try to be involved with policies that impact many. And I've done both, and I try to do both. And whether it's the one person or whether it's the many, I just try to stay positive and constructive and move things forward from that.

But make no mistake about it, particularly in the realm that I've been in, which is disabilities. The disability itself can be very challenging. Those challenges are manifested in many ways. And it's a scale. We are all in various states of ability. And that ability manifests itself in so many different ways. And for some people there is great suffering on one end of that spectrum.

And on the other end there's no suffering at all. And there's complete enlightenment and most people are somewhere on that spectrum. And just because you are on one place at one point in time doesn't mean you're not gonna be on another, it's a sliding scale, right? We're all in various states of ability.

Stephen Matini: Has disability ever defined who you are?

David D’Arcangelo: The best way I can answer that is, it's not my full definition, but it's part of my definition, right? You know, but who would I be if I didn't have this disability to encounter?

I Because particularly I find with people with less apparent disabilities, which by the way I think is a very significant amount of persons with disabilities have non apparent disabilities, meaning when you encounter them, you would not necessarily know that they have a disability or not.

And I'm probably one of those people, most people like, well, what do you mean you're legally blind? You can see, yes, I can see. And so can the large majority of people with blindness, most people who are blind have some usable vision.

Now that's toward one end of that spectrum. I'm, you know, I'm probably barely legally blind, if you wanna put it that way. I'm 2200 with my glasses on, but that is still legally blind. And so oftentimes the greatest discrimination I face is from other people with blindness. It's a both a compliment and an insult at the same time.

It's a compliment basically saying, well, you don't present as blind. And so all of the things that I've done to ameliorate my blindness, people don't recognize that or don't see that, and that's kind of the insult of it, right? The good side is, wow, look how high functioning this person is. The bad side is, well, wait a minute, what do you mean you're blind?

So you know, you take the good with the bad and it's about education and giving people an understanding of our human condition that we are all in various states of ability, whether it's any of the prevalence, types of disability, hearing, seeing, cognition, mobility, you know, all of the different types of disability.

Stephen Matini: Would you say that the biggest challenges that you have faced in your life in terms of disability, did they come from within, or was something that came from the outside?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, the great stoic philosopher Epictetus said that one of the keys to life is to break things down into one of two categories. Internal things that you can't control and external things that you can control.

I try to not spend resources and effort and time on things that are outside of my control. So I try to focus on things that are within my control. Now, within disability, I was born as a person with a disability. I was born with a rare eye disease. And so that's out of my control. You have to play the hand, you're dealt.

Other challenges have happened, some of which were within my control, some of the mistakes that I made, or choices that I made, and then others that I didn't and I was just involved with, for one reason or the other, life happens to you. It's a mix of both.

And to me it's how do you face that adversity? How do you embrace that adversity? To me, I start with me, what did I need to do better? What should I have done better? It's about my self responsibility. Because if you're gonna get the good things from self-reliance, you need to be prepared to take the more challenging things as well, because nobody's perfect.

Again, when you're presented with something, whether it be good or bad, you then have choices. What are you going to do with it? To me, if you choose to be positive and you choose to use it for a positive, good, well that's the way to go.That's the path to go. And that's the path that I've tried to go down.

Stephen Matini: It’s so easy sometimes to feel like a victim of circumstances and situations. How have you been able to shy away from that? You seem to me you've been really, really accountable for your own life.

David D’Arcangelo: Well, I don't think it's shy away. I think it's embracing. There's no time. There's no time to procrastinate, there's no time. But the present why we have is now. So you've gotta deal with it. Now whether you like to or not.

And just a couple of other maxims that I've developed and and really learned over time is that there's a saying that I've developed and that is the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. You've gotta hang in there. Nothing good comes as a result of some whim or trying something once. No.

Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever, one of the best athletes, one of the most influential people of the 20th century, didn't make his high school basketball team. He got caught, but he knew he had talent and he knew to develop those talents. He had to work, and he had to persevere and have adversity.

And now here's the other thing with adversity and perseverance is what adversity is for. You may be different for somebody else, somebody else might not consider that adversity. Likewise, what somebody considers adversity and it's viewed as adversity may not be considered as adversity as others and vice versa. So you know, we're all in various states of ability.

To me, one of the keys is you've gotta persevere because everybody loves sunny days. Can you stand the rain when it starts raining and storming? And what are you gonna do during those times? So that's what I really think is just staying positive, because that's what you can control. Ultimately, we become what we think about, right?

So if the things you focus on all day long, if those are positive things and you have goals and plans and, and you take actions to accomplish those, you will accomplish them. It's not maybe you will accomplish them. It's a law of nature that that will happen. So to me, if you stay positive and you have righteous goals, then you will achieve them.

Stephen Matini: If you have a somewhat bad day or a day in which that perseverance, that faith seems not to shine as strong as others. Is there anything that you do that brings you back into alignment?

David D’Arcangelo: Again, it's coming to terms ahead of time that, not if, Stephen, but when, because we all will encounter those days. It is part of life. Life is challenging.

Being a human is challenging. Like think about where we are right now. And if you were to be able to have a baby and not instruct that baby what to do and just leave that baby with no, how long would that baby last?

All reliant upon each other. We are at this place in time, because everybody has decided to share knowledge, share information, and you know, that's how that then spurs technology and and so on and so on and so on. So we are all in this together.

And every human that has ever been born is unique and there will never be another person like that person. There never has been. There never will be. Now there's qualities of it and we're all within, you know, a certain variation of it. But we are all completely unique individuals. And so each human condition, each state of consciousness that everybody's experienced is completely unique and different.

So again, it's not, if it's when you encounter challenges, how are you going to choose to handle them? You know? And what is your guidestone, what is your north star? To me it's God. And it starts with that positivity, that love.

You know, I have a belief that love, not the kind you see on a Hallmark card, or you see in some romance movie, yeah, it's that, but it's so much more than that. I really believe it's, you know, if you were to put it on the periodic table, it's more prevalent than hydrogen. It literally is the force that binds everything in the universe together.

And I think science is finding that out. I think, you know, with superposition and quantum entanglement and things like that, to me that proves God. They called the Higgs boson on the God particle. You know, to me it proves God proves love, because love is more powerful than anything else. And that's where it all starts.

Now you can choose to embrace that and be positive and endeavor to be all of the things that in the hierarchy of love come off that beauty and truth and all of the things that are subordinate to love.

Stephen Matini: You know, that binding force that brings us all together these days, it seems to be quite challenged by the fact that everything is so extreme. You and I talked about this last time, everything is so polarized, black and white. So how do you bring these two dimensions so opposite, you know, together so that we can all be more loving? Where would you start?

David D’Arcangelo: You have the choice. You control your thoughts, your mind. Never let love, never let positivity get more than one or two steps away. Anybody who's listening to this right now, I want you to, if you are experiencing challenges of any kind, and that is a scale, okay?

That is a scale of despair all the way from one very intense suffering side, all the way up to complete joy in the highest right? That is, all of those emotions are a scale. Well, anytime you find yourself falling on the, the low part of that scale in any way, whether it's mild, whether it's severe, you need to purposely think of positive things and good things and love.

Now, whatever that is for you, whether it's being on a beach, whether that's hearing your mother's voice or your child's voice, or petting your dog or whatever the case may be, that's where you need to bring yourself. And you should never really get more than a couple of steps away from that.

Stephen Matini: How do you bring this attitude into your own negotiations? You've been part of policy making and I mean, I cannot think of a setting more divisive, and divided as it is right now. How have you been able to bring this wonderful energy that you have, so that the conversation keeps going?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, it's difficult to explain, but ironically, the more I get attacked or the more negativity I get, the more positive I get. To tell you the truth. It makes me want to redouble my efforts towards bringing that.

Again, when negative things happen, and I'll take the blame. I don't want anybody else to take the blame, but when positive things happen, it's less about me and it's more about, even though I might've been the impetus for it or whatever else, it's more about the team. It's more about, you know, all of the people that took part in all of those good things.

Because public policy, and particularly the implementation of public policy can be very complex because what you're trying to do is you're trying to take the wishes of either a legislative body or you know, some other regulatory or executive function, and you're trying to translate that into policies for many.

And these programs aren't put together to serve one or two people. They're put together to serve thousands or, or you know, tens of thousands or millions of people. And with so many different use case scenarios that can be very challenging and complex to solve for.

I have a podcast of my own “Save as ABILITY.” And on that, we've been talking about things like these programs and the, you know, the disability laws that have been put in place over time. Those are all well intentioned. That is your government trying to put programs together to help people, to help improve the human condition, to reduce suffering.

But invariably what happens is bureaucracy gets involved or time goes by and these programs get outdated and, and what was relevant at one time may not be relevant now. And so you've gotta change that as you're changing that people who've relied on that are like, wait a minute, what are you doing? You're changing that and that's gonna, you know, so that is the complexity.

Albert Einstein said, politics is more difficult than physics. And sometimes I agree with it, although I did get, I, I'm proud to say I passed with a D plus in physics and it's a bachelor of science at Suffolk University. Well, it's very difficult learning math when you can't see the board and you can't see. So that's in my own defense, Stephen.

Stephen Matini: Would you say that it's harder, easier, the same, being part of policy making today that it used to be?

David D’Arcangelo: I first got involved with policymaking as an aide in the state senate and working in the governor's office 20, 25 years ago, somewhere around there on how you wanna look at it.

So I do recognize that back then there seemed to be much more COMETY, and not comedy, but comeTy, you know, agreeance among discourse, that the discourse was a little bit at a higher level and people could agree to disagree. And there's less of that now. Now part of that is a good thing, but much of that is also a negative thing. And I'll explain that.

So the part that's a good thing is now everybody has the devices, right? Everybody has the phone and access to computer and everything else. So what used to be kind of behind closed doors or mystified or confusing, now everybody has at the touch of a couple of fingers and in a couple of minutes people could talk like experts on these subjects. That's a good thing, getting the information out there and, and people taking part.

However, the challenge is the system over hundreds of years has evolved into one of sausage making. And I think people understand the analogy to there. Everybody loves the taste of a sausage, but you don't want to see how it's made a lot of the time. And so all of that sausage making gets put on display for everybody on social media through the mainstream media.

I mean, to me, we have three major problems right now in society. The first one being the media, number one major problem we face. The second one being the decentralization of responsibility. There's a much less self-reliance now, and that to me is a major problem. And then the third is this two big to fail attitude.

Now if you go out there, that's, those three that I just mentioned are probably not on anybody's list. So I'm maybe, you know, a few years ahead of the curve here, but I'm telling you, those are the three biggest problems right now.

Government and all of that other stuff is way down on the list. But the manner with which we get information right now is the number one challenge facing the world and individuals in the world today.

Because the information, much of the information being put out by the mainstream media is, there's really no other way to say it, but it's not fully honest. And the way the system has evolved is the, the mainstream media provides what I call infotainment, where it's information passed off as legitimate news, and it's really not.

It's really entertainment. It's information that becomes entertainment. And to me that is a much different thing of what it was and what it should be. I really believe that all, and I'm using air quotes journalists right now, they should shut, have to pass a test. They should have to meet much more rigorous standards, particularly for being objective and unbiased.

And then there's gotta be a way that that government can intervene to incentivize it so that it's not driven fully by ... bias, you know, because right now information is bought and paid for, and news on a drug, or news on a story comes through the lens of some big corporation trying to, you know, influence the narrative.

That's a major, major problem because what it does is it prevents the full truth from coming out and it prevents people from being able to form an objective opinion on their own. Or it inhibits, I shouldn't say prevents, it inhibits significantly. And so, you know, that to me is the major problem encountering society today.

Stephen Matini: There's a lot of confusion around the notion of freedom of speech, and I think people use that very lightly sometimes. I can say whatever I want, whenever I want, it doesn't matter, there are not consequences, but there are always consequences based on what we say. Our words have an impact on people, ideas have an impact on people. How would you explain to someone in a way that is super simple, what freedom of speech really is?

David D’Arcangelo: People have a choice, they can believe in God or not. Now, I don't pass judgment on people who don't, but you need to come to that conclusion on your own. And if you believe in God and you believe in love and love is the highest thing, if that is the case, then you cannot believe in secrets.

There's a very significant part of our society that believes secrets are okay. I don't believe that. I am not one of those people. Because of that, I am a free speech absolutist. Now, are there very parsed out specific scenarios that you can draw to be able to say, okay, not all information should be available to everyone all the time. Yes. I'm not saying give the nuclear codes to everybody, okay?

However, when it comes to information that is not life threatening or you know, is not like to that extent, then it should be shared and it should be free. That's what our society is based on. More freedom is better, less freedom is worse. It's that simple.

So I, I just don't believe that there should be secrets. I believe that, you know, there was an axiom that had developed, but maybe was true at one point in time where a person is smart people are not. I don't think that's true anymore for the developed world, particularly for, for anybody that has these devices, that is not a true statement because access to information now is higher than it's ever been.

And so it's up to the individual to have that responsibility. I'm a big self-responsibility, self-reliance person. So that's what I think it's the responsibility of each person to make up their own mind on what they choose to believe.

Stephen Matini: At the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned the word peace. What would you say could be the most accountable thing that all of us could do on a personal level to contribute to move towards peace?

David D’Arcangelo: Today is a day of reflection for me. December 7th Pearl Harbor Day. Think of all the lives that were lost, and really why did we fight that war? Why did America, why did the allies fight that war? It was to bring peace. It was to bring freedom. It was to make sure that people weren't oppressed.

Peace is one word, one concept, but it is really so dynamic and comprised of so many other things under peace, there is truth, there is honesty, there is justice.

In order to have peace, you need truth, you need honesty, you need justice. So if you want peace, when you need to be honest, you need to seek the truth, pursue justice, that's when we will have peace.

By the way, here's the other thing. In terms of human existence, we are at a very peaceful time. Yes, there's terrible conflicts going on and I don't want to dismiss what, what's happening in Israel and Africa and other conflicts around the world. Those are, those are terrible and devastating, and I wanna work to fix those.

However, in the grand scheme of world existence, we've never been more prosperous. There's never been more people, there's never been more access to clean water, to quality food and housing and shelter and the level of living and the poverty levels and everything else, all of that has increased and increased significantly from just the past 50 years, a hundred years, keep going back.

So we've gotta keep that in context to, you know, like if you go back to the middle ages or you go back even further, the devastation and the, the complete, you know, horror that used to occur.

You know, so we are in these prosperous times and unfortunately sometimes all of that prosperity, all of the goodness that goes on, all of the wonderful things that to me, I only, that's what I see the most of on a day-to-day basis. But that tries to get out weighted by this corrupt media that is pushing these narratives.

If it bleeds, it leads as a, as a, you know, axiom on the news, right? And there's just so many good things going on that far outweigh the bad things in the grand scheme of planet earth.

Stephen Matini: So it seems to me, based on everything you said, that love, honesty, and positivity are key ingredients.

David D’Arcangelo: 100%, yes. Let's start with love, because all good things are derived from love. Love is the highest thing. It's being proved by science. Love is a real thing. It is a tangible power.

Everything else that is good. Justice, truth, honesty, beauty, all of those things come from love. In a hierarchy, love is the highest thing. That to me is where you start. And don't let yourself get more than one or two steps away from that.

Stephen Matini: David, I'm so grateful for the love that you shared with me in this conversation. Thank you so much.

David D’Arcangelo: Oh, thank you. Well, those differences can bring us together. Diversity is a good thing, including different viewpoints is tremendous. Think how boring life would be if everything was the same for everybody.

I believe in discourse for solving problems, but way you make things better is by disagreement. And then guess what though, the other side of that, just disagreement alone doesn't get you there. You disagree and then you compromise. And right now the disagreement is weighing down the scale more than the compromise.

When I try to add compromise, when I try to build those bridges every day, and so, you know, a lot of what I'm saying here might be controversial or cutting edge or whatever, but I'm sorry, I'm sticking with God. I'm sticking with positivity.

And you know, even when I get attacked, that makes me want to be even more positive. So I would encourage everybody, if you need that, contact me so I can help you find it. It's there for you though. It's your choice to be positive. That's what I'm doing.

Thank you, Stephen. I wish you well.

View Details

Simona Orsingher is an Italian executive who has developed a successful career in both Operations and Business Development, two functions that can sometimes clash within organizations.

While Operations emphasizes efficiency, cost control, and stability, Business Development focuses on growth, innovation, and revenue generation.

Finding common ground between these two functions entails developing shared goals and effective cross-functional communication, especially when dealing with short-term versus medium-term strategies.

As a professional whose career has combined both Operations and Business Development functions, Simona highlights the significance of being true to oneself, maintaining transparency, and finding a balance between rationality and emotions in professional relationships.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Alygn is Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#simonaorsingher #operations #businessdevelopment #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Simona, would you mind sharing with our listeners where you grew up?

Simona Orsingher: Until the age of 18th I lived with my parents on the lake of Cuomo. The other side of the lake were the one for Alessandro Manzoni. And then I moved to Ireland for a couple of years. I lived in Dublin and then Londonderry, which is where I basically learned to speak English.

Once back, I moved to Milan for 15 years, more or less because I then found a new job. I moved first to Torino and then to Moderna for four years. And now I am back on the lake of Cuomo, but in Cuomo at the moment since 2020. So right before the pandemic. Yeah, that's my background.

So I come from the province, but then I immediately felt the need of moving into the world, meeting new people, experimenting new things, and seeing new cultures as well because the dimension of the lake was a little bit too tight for me. And even though I still have some connections in France over there, I feel like I'm a citizen in the world, not exactly a citizen of the lake.

Stephen Matini: So when people ask you where home is, you know, what do you say?

Simona Orsingher: I don't have a home, I don't have any roots. That's something that's, that really impressed me sometimes because normally you have like left the heart in your hometown; I didn’t. Probably, among all the places where I've lived, the one that I consider my home is Moderna for some reason. Because I felt so well there. I was so comfortable and I felt loved and welcomed. So if I have the chance to go back, I would run to go back to Moderna.

Stephen Matini: And when did you find out what you wanted to pursue professionally? Is this something that evolved over time? How did that happen?

Simona Orsingher: Well, it started when I had my first work experience in Milan. I used to work for some months on international company. And there I recognized that that was what I wanted to pursue. Meaning work with foreigners, speaking in English, going more and more into corporate details and understand how that type of work in general in a corporate environment would've worked and if it fit to me.

And then from there I said, and I realized, yeah, that's what I want to do. And that's what I pursued from that time going forward. So I've always stayed within corporate environments, international environments. So working like in EMEA roles or international roles rather than working just for Italy for example.

Stephen Matini: Because your professional background is really interesting. You combine two different routes. You combine the business development part and the operation part. And sometimes in companies, these two functions may not necessarily things see things, you know, eye to eye. Sometimes people get really tribal and very defensive about what they do. So how did it happen with you? How come you pursued both?

Simona Orsingher: It was like a smooth swift if I may say from operation to business development. I've always worked in functions which were in the middle, if I may say, because I started as commercial operations specialist and then move to a commercial operation manager role, ending now in a business full business development role, a global business development role.

And this happened because I think that of course you have to be in a place that encourages the teamwork between the two functions. So when we speak about supply and demand or demand and supply process, well this is something which is now very common in corporate environments. But when I started it was not that much.

So as you said, both of the functions are very defensive. So normally business development is the one who rushes rushes. We have two invoices, invoices, invoices and operation is saying, no, we can't do this, we can't do that. So like it's the Mr. No-No.

But in the end, when you work together, you understand that they can't leave without each other and they have to find a common way of understanding things. And this is where I started. So moving from operation to business development happened throughout like 15 years. So it was not something out of the blue.

I've understood working within commercial operation that I had a commercial acumen myself that I was able to discuss and negotiate with customers, even if I was formally working within operation.

And in my previous role, I realized that it was not just my impression, but it was my manager's impression, it was customer's impression. And sometimes they have specifically asked me to do, you know, negotiation and to speak about business.

So I like the fact that I had my commercial operation background when speaking to customers. So I already had in the back of my mind what could have been done and what could not have been done. So I was not over promising things to customers. I was sharing, let me say, a common success ahead because I knew where I could have been comfortable with them. So that was probably the key part of the success, which I've already used in my current role, which is the thing that ultimately led me to gain this new position as global business development manager.

Stephen Matini: It is interesting because oftentimes I describe to clients, and I mean it most of the time as some sort of joke that companies only want two things. They want to make money and they want to save money. So the making money component would be, you know, the business development part and the saving money would be the operation part. For anyone who works in a company that somehow struggle in finding a balance between these two functions, what would you say that could be a first step?

Simona Orsingher: To speak, to organize meeting and to go through each other figures and targets. Because sometimes, and if this is done on purpose, targets are done irrespectively of each function and they are done to create a sort of internal competition.

I don't agree with this way of doing because no one is going to benefit out of it. Because if commercial operation wins, then business development will lose something and vice versa. So there should be a common understanding, a common basis and common targets.

The commercial operation targets should compliment business development target and vice versa. That will be the first step to me. So meet, have a discussion on the direction we have to take together and not separately. And it's key that all the people are on board with that.

So there should be a sort of servant leadership from commercial operation and from business development because yes, it's true. Salespeople are the one who basically brings the money in, they bring the money, but they don't bring the profit. The profit is made out of what commercial operation is doing because then the cost sustained to run the operation is going to deduct from the revenue that is coming from business development. So there needs to be really a common path to follow together.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes the main problem is the fact that the leadership, the culture of the organization is very, very sales driven and sometimes can give the impression to people they are in business development, in sales, that they are the most important function, you know, and then all the other functions feel, you know, a bit resentful. So from the, from the point of view of the leadership team, what could they do in order to create a culture that is more cross-functional?

Simona Orsingher: So nowadays the quality, diversity, inclusion, it's like the flag of each company and the first, very first step they have to do towards equality, diversity, inclusion is write this. So you can't expect in a company where salespeople are considered like rocket stars and all the others are just, you know, white collar doing the job that the white collar are happy. So they have to treat both in the same way.

For example, long-term incentives or short-term incentives shouldn't be that different between business development and commercial operation or any other function in the company. In some companies there are even retreats for business development people or salespeople in general. While there's nothing for the rest of the employees, well that's not fair.

So the first step would be to treat people equally in this sense, in the way you approach them, in the way you explain thing, in the way you share your targets, the strategy and the vision. Everybody has to be on board and business development, they need to understand. And to do that, this has to start from the leadership team. So the senior VP in a company, they should start treating the salespeople the way they treat the other ones and vice versa.

Otherwise it's a sort of lead by example. You can't expect white colors and let me say non-sales people to be so happy because they're the first one to be treated not equally compared to the business developers.

Stephen Matini: And also it seems to me that, that discrepancy, that big gap becomes even wider when leadership has a very short term strategy. They have to create results right away better than thinking longevity, you know, a sustainable future in which you really have to plan everything accordingly.

Simona Orsingher: Yeah, playing a little bit ahead, let me say, I mean medium-term strategy, not that short-term strategy because of course if it's so short, well everything has to be in a rush. And then of course you want to see numbers, numbers, numbers straight away.

Stephen Matini: You said that one competency that is very, very important to do your job is the ability to build relationships. And to me you represent the perfect balance of someone who's incredibly great at organizing, numbers, but yet at the same time it has the empathy, it has the emotional intelligence to understand people. Is it possible to be really well-balanced to have both or what?

Simona Orsingher: It is possible? I think there needs to be a component which is a given. Either you have it or you don't. But some people they have it, definitely. But then you have to develop it and you have to work on it.

So a good step for me was to step back from my professional role and try always to be in the people I'm speaking to shoes, to me that's the empathy. So in the end, I'm speaking to a human being. You are a colleague, you are my manager, you are my peer, but you are a human being.

So I don't know what happened to you like one hour before we're having this conversation. Maybe you had a very bad news, maybe you're not in a good shape today. I don't know. So I always tend to be very delicate when speaking to people, even if I'm decisive and even if I always say what I need to say, I don't like to take short track or hide behind things. I think I'm transparent. And I think that transparency is something very important when it comes to business.

But on the other end, I never under evaluate the fact that we are human beings. We have emotions. Even if I believe that in professional relationship there should be always this right balance between emotion and the rational emotion are there so you don't have to a hundred percent hide item.

This is what helped me, I think. So I never took things too seriously and this is another thing in the end, it's just work. So today I'm doing this, maybe tomorrow someone will decide that I'm not useful anymore and this is the risk that I'm taking and everybody should take that. So it is just work. We are employees and this is a part of being employees. And once you do take this as a fact, I think you can work differently. But if you are expecting to be in the same role forever, if you are expecting your employer to treat you always in a very good way, well that's really the road to pain.

Stephen Matini: I agree with you. I think that bonding with people and developing relationships ultimately helps everyone overcoming any change, any difficulty. One thing that I see a lot in my job is executives, managers dealing with employees they are somehow reluctant to change for whatever the reason, you know. Sometimes people display hostility, the inability to move on. If that has ever happened to you, what would you say that is the first step to help an employee that seems to go through a difficult time and be unwilling to change?

Simona Orsingher: Well the first thing for me would be to speak to these people and understand why. And if I'm able to understand why, and if these people are telling me why, then we can decide together how to find a different path. So how to make the situation turning in their favor.

Sometimes it's possible because there is this common willingness to change things. Some other times it's not possible. So people are just reluctant to change, they're tired, they don't want to invest anymore energy or time in anything. Well at that point, if you can, you should move those people to some other roles.

If you can’t, and in the majority of cases you can’t, well you just use, even if it's not the right word to say, but in the end that's what you're doing, use them for what they're good to do. I'm very pragmatic, so I try, I give my best, but then if it doesn't work, okay, well I try to get the best out of it. That's my strategy.

In the end. I mean, we're not in school. I'm not your support teacher, okay? I'm your colleague. You are an adult. I am an adult. You always have the choice to make you're free. If you don't like a situation anymore, well just go find something else. But if you decide to stay here, well then you stay here at my condition.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think so many people seem to believe they do not have a choice?

Simona Orsingher: It's comfortable. They know they have a choice, but they don't want to choose because choose to move from something, even if this something is not good for you, but it's something that you know. So deciding to choose and move to something that you don't know ... for someone, it's unbearable. They can't do that.

I don't blame those people. I mean, we don't always have the same approach to life. But again, if you don't want to choose, well then you accept the fact that you are here at someone else condition, and you stop complaining, otherwise you leave.

I mean, things are always simpler than what we see, always simpler than what we see. So you have the opportunity to go, you are free. We're living in a country and we're living in a part of the world where you have freedom and you can really choose what you want to do. And you have the chances.

Maybe not that many chances as there might be in other countries, in Europe or in the us I don't know, in Australia, wherever. I know Italy as a place to work is not probably the best in the world. Okay, because we have a very Italian culture here, but you still can choose.

Stephen Matini: You went through a lot of professional challenges in the past. Have you ever felt that you didn't have a choice?

Simona Orsingher: I never felt that. I felt I had choices, which I didn't like because I was expecting more for me. But I never felt, I never had the choice. No, never. Because at a certain point of time I could have decided, for example, to start my own career as a freelance. That was a choice, which at that time I didn't want to do. But I never felt I had no choice.

Stephen Matini: So, I give you a scenario. Sometimes it does happen that leadership has a difficult time communicating their vision, their strategy, and to reach everyone throughout the whole company. And somehow the people, even like factory employees that don't feel included, they feel voiceless. They feel they don't have a choice. They don't matter. In order to create something that feels more synergetic in which everything flows beautifully, what would you say that they could do in order to engage everyone, including the people at the bottom, so to speak, that feel voiceless?

Simona Orsingher: Well, first of all, let me say that I don't think that they are voiceless. Maybe they feel voiceless, but they're not voiceless. We have in Italy, and I'm speaking about the experiences that I had and also my current experience, I think probably the most unionized together with France companies. So unions are very present and these people, they all have a voice.

So they're not voiceless, they feel voiceless probably because they don't speak the same language and probably because they're more focused on things which are not relevant to the one who should hear their voices.

I would suggest to speak up and continue to speak up, but not only through the unions, I would suggest and to speak up themselves, to ask these people to have a meeting, to ask their managers to organize sessions all together where they can even confront each other, but at least let their voice to be heard in a more genuine way.

Because when you have a mediator, which in this case is the union, I feel and I saw it, that sometimes the message is changed. That's probably the reason why. Then they don't feel really heard, but they have their voice. And I think that a direct channel is always the best thing. This has always worked for me.

So I have never used the unions or any other mediator. I did it by myself. And I did it truly, I did it fully because I didn't want anybody else to jeopardize the content of my message. I wanted to be, you know, true to myself first.

Stephen Matini: And from the point of view, let's say of the CEO, of the executive, you know, leadership team, what could they do in order to have a first step towards the people that may feel voiceless?

Simona Orsingher: Well, they should step down from their throne probably, 'cause some of them are really like a character somewhere in the air. So some of the senior managers are seen like this. So not even humans, but they are.

And in the end the people at the bottom, they don't even realize that the one at risk, it's not them, but it's the one on the throne. So they should probably start to communicate to these people in a more direct way.

Of course, they cannot meet one by one, but they can have exchanges with some representatives, but not the unions again, some representatives amongst the, these people at the bottom. It comes to communication, it comes to speaking.

Stephen Matini: For anyone who's interested in a career like yours that combines operations and business development. What is the advice you would give them?

Simona Orsingher: Is to be curious and ask. Ask questions. Ask to meet people. Ask to introduce yourself. Ask to go out and visit a customer. Ask to speak with colleagues from the manufacturing. So you have a 360 view of what is going on, how things are working. So you need to know bits and pieces of everything because when you are in front of a customer, you represent your company. So you can't allow yourself to say to a customer, well, I don't know. Well, you should know. And if you don't really know, genuinely don't know, you are very professional and you say, well, let me check this out because I'm not sure and I don't want to provide you with the wrong information. That should be the right approach. And always let your voice to be heard. So speak up if there is something that is not letting you feel uncomfortable when say it to your manager, speak.

Because if you don't do it, nobody will ask your opinion. Nobody, you have to sponsor yourself because there won't be anybody who will help you. And you have to count on yourself only. That's what I have learned.

I had good managers, I had great managers, I must say, and I've learned from some of these people. But in the end, they gave me the, the tools, but it was me using those tools. It was not them. And this is the approach that I'm expecting from people working with me. So I don't have to, you know, spoon feed them at 40 years old. No, but still I see this adult people who need to be spoon fed.

Stephen Matini: Simona, in your experience, what you just described, the importance of really courage, speaking up, developing relationship. Have you ever noticed gender to play any role in this dynamic?

Simona Orsingher: Yes. Well, first of all, you have to be aware that if you speak up, there might be consequences. Because if you are always transparent as I am, sometimes you say things that the people you are speaking to might not like. And if this person happens to be someone higher in your organigram, it might cost you something and it cost it to me. I'm okay with that because I want to remain true to myself.

Going back to your question, there is a difference because normally when a male colleague approached a meeting, a discussion, speaking up and even raises, raising the tone of his voice or the volume of his voice, that was accepted somehow because it's expected. Because it's a way to show your power, to show your confidence.

When it's a woman doing that, still for what I've seen, it's perceived as oh, Jesus, she's having like a crisis. She's nervous today. It's not the right day for her. Well, it was not even the right day for him, but it was not noticed.

So it's not because maybe I'm raising the tone of my voice, which normally I don't. Okay, but let me say, I'm changing the way I speak. So if I am nervous or or if I am upset, you will notice it, okay? Because I'm not, as I'm speaking right now, I would be different, but it's because I'm saying something that I really care about. It's exactly the same for a male colleague. But there is still this difference, definitely.

Stephen Matini: And yet so many women when they get at this point, they feel that they have to mimic their male counterparts in order to have a voice. So the question would be, what is the right voice for a woman?

Simona Orsingher: The right voice for woman is being calm and say the things supported by facts and data. I mean, expecting the other people, well, even not to listen to you, but that's how it's going.

And definitely not mimic your male colleagues because I don't want to be like my male colleagues. I am not them. I'm completely different. I have my own personality and I don't like to raise my voice if I want you to hear my opinion. I want to stay calm and normally I do. So that's how women should behave because if you mimic one male colleague, well in the end you will always be remembered by a copy of someone and not something new.

Stephen Matini: And what you just described probably could become a point of reference also for male executives.

Simona Orsingher: Yes, it should be. So if you think about the personal assistants, and let me say the executive assistants. 95%, even more of the cases are women, and 95% of senior managers are men and men, so these senior managers are relying on women to do their job.

The relationship they're having with other peers, with customers, maybe with the board. so, with, you know, VIP people. And some of the cases, these relationships are led by the executive assistants because she's the one who has to manage tension, manage missed appointments, manage a change of schedule.

So dealing with some people who are maybe upset because the CEO changed his mind at the last minute, and she is the one who is managing this set situation or difficult situation with customers or peers or whoever is going to meet the CEO. But nobody's thinking about it, I think.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever heard the saying behind a great man is always a great woman?

Simona Orsingher: Yes.

Stephen Matini: Okay, let's update it. Let's upgrade it. What would you say?

Simona Orsingher: A great woman can only manage a great man. So I would of course place the woman on the spotlight and not the man, because in the end, even if she's in the backstage, she's the one doing the job.

Stephen Matini: Well, maybe I'm thinking could be behind a great person, there's a great person.

Simona Orsingher: Yes, we are speaking about people, we're not speaking about women or men, but as a woman, well, I must say that we're still far behind in Italy. So this topic is very sensitive to me.

Stephen Matini: I'm not a woman and I will never understand fully what it means, but when I hear what you said, it really makes me boil inside. It feels so unfair. It really feels incredibly unfair.

Simona Orsingher: I don't even remember in how many meetings I was and I was the only woman in there and I felt like really invisible and men even took the liberty of speaking like if I was not even there. And it was perfectly normal to them.

And the sad thing is that for some women is normal this way, but it's not. So if we really want to move on on this, we have to break this. And women first, they need to have the courage and to be brave enough to speak up even in this situations like saying in a meeting like this, hello, I'm still here with you. Can you please stop?

Stephen Matini: Well, first of all, I think any organization should have a Simona and I truly mean it. I have not worked with all my podcast guests, but you and I, we had that opportunity and I really truly believe that everyone should have someone that tells you as it is, you know, with kindness the way you do, because it's just wonderful. So we talked about bunch of stuff. If you had to point out one that you believe our listeners should pay attention to, out of our conversation, what would that be?

Simona Orsingher: To be true to yourself? Always. It's you. It's good the way you are. It's not your problem if everything around you is not as you were expecting. In the end, even if you are going through challenges, difficulties, redundancies, promotions, whatever, it's just you.

And you have to stay strong because inside yourself, that's what I keep on repeating to myself every day, I have a value, okay, never mind what I do, what I'm doing now and what people think, I know that I am worth. So that's the thing that I would like to, to say to people.

And just today, I saw a post on LinkedIn, I follow the Female Quotient, which is an organization sponsoring of course females around the world. And there was Simone Biles, the gymnast, the us and gymnast. And she did something which is extraordinary last week because she did like a jump, which normally is done by men.

And so she was asked, so you are the first Michael Phelps of or Usain Bolt of, and she said, no, I'm the first Simone Biles doing this. And that was something that impressed me because that's exactly the sense of what I've said. It's you, it's just you.

So you have to stay true to yourself because especially in corporate environments, almost everything is fake, because we are all on a big stage. All of us, we're all singing our song. Sometimes you have, you are in the top 10, some other times you are at the bottom of the chart, but everyone more or less get the chance to sing the song. So everybody has to, you know, show up and try to do its best. But in the end, you have to really take care of yourself because nobody else will do it. Nobody else.

Stephen Matini: Simona, you are a jewel. Thank you so much for sharing all of these insights. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Simona Orsingher: Thanks to you Stephen.

View Details

Chantal Souaid is the creator of “The Weekly Resolution® Planner,” a time management tool that allows consistent progress without the cumbersome weight of perfectionism.

Chantal's schedule is very tight as a business entrepreneur and a mom of young twins. She believes that any goal and dream is achievable with consistency and the awareness that the most crucial step is to enjoy the journey as it unfolds.

For Chantal, staying in the moment holds greater significance than chasing perfection, firmly asserting that consistency sustains momentum while motivation initiates the trip.

Chantal Souaid is a three-month BARKAT Entrepreneur program graduate, an application-based 100% scholarship offering for Middle Eastern and African female entrepreneurs, and part of The Goddess Solution by Puneet Sachdev.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

#ChantalSouaid #TheWeeklyPlanner #TimeManagement #Lebanon #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn #LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementDevelopment #OrganizationalDevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Was there any person or any event in your past that somehow have impacted your professional choices?

Chantal Souaid: So I'll tell you about three things and I combined them all and I called them the tipping point in my life. And these things were: one, I delivered twins prematurely, which I wasn't expecting.

Two, living in Lebanon, we had the political economical financial crisis.

And three, the project that I was running, they just told us that they are closing from Lebanon to go to another country.

So when this happened and all these three happened at the same time, I said, you know what Chantal, maybe this can be your wake up call for you to do what you've always loved, which was train coach and help people live better lives.

Stephen Matini: Were you able to jump on the new idea right away or was it hard? I mean, did you have to take time to process everything?

Chantal Souaid: So let me tell you, I've had the blog since 2008. I used to and still like to write too much.

But it took me time to see how I will present myself to the world as an entrepreneur. Because for me, I've been employed an international development project for a very long time.

So what I did, I said, you know what? I was very good at putting New Year's resolutions, and these New Year's resolutions weren't working obviously because I had twins, things were going a bit different and I was a productivity trainer at the time and people used to joke with me and say, you're a productivity trainer, wait until you have kids.

The year was starting, it was 2020 and I didn't put in years resolution. And I was thinking, you know what? I don't want to put in years resolution. And at the time, my only goal every single day was just to take a bus for a mom with twins, breastfeeding them, taking a bath was the best thing ever.

So then I thought, okay, I'll make a like a weekly challenge. And I said, okay, if I try to do this and then if I do it every single week, then people would like support me with the follow through.

At the time I didn't call it “the weekly resolution”, so I said, I'll call 2020 weekly challenge. So I decided to film myself announcing the challenge and just posting it on my social media.

And I started it. My husband was very generous in filming me at the start and I said, I'll do it for the full year. I didn't have any plan. I didn't know what every week the challenge would be, but I said, if I announce it to people then I'll have to do it because I'm someone who really cares about what I say, what I said to myself.

Then every single week I started putting a video out and saying, this week this is what we're going to do. So the examples were very simple, like this week say thank you more or look at someone and say how grateful you are for what they did. So it started very simple.

Then Covid hit Lebanon and then the challenge was already going on. So people were more engaged. I had more people joining in. Somehow, sometime around April I decided, you know what? Everybody is joining in. It's very interesting.

And I said like, okay, if I go and tell people I want to help you achieve your dreams, the first thing they will tell me, okay, And then when did you achieve your dream and why am I going to listen to you? So I decided to achieve one of my very, very, very early dreams, which was creating a planner and the planner at the time I decided to call it the “Weekly Resolution Planner”.

I have a copy here with me, it’s the second version of the planner. And I thought, okay, this planner would be the crown on top of this year. It would help the year finish at the happy note. And this was it.

I did the first version of the planner then the year after another version. And that's like how the story unfolded of me opening up and then being able to start my coaching business, coaching and training and selling my planner and then just moving from a full-time employee into an entrepreneur.

Stephen Matini: The whole time management arena is not necessarily the focus of what I do as a coach and as a trainer. But you know, I do focus on soft skills. So time management comes up all the time. And the one thing that I've noticed over the years is that when you touch time management, you touch a really soft spot for people.

And very often people come up with the millions of different reasons why they cannot do what they want. So, in your opinion, what is it that some people somehow, like yourself, you keep going, and other people, they simply settle for something that is not necessarily representative of what they want?

Chantal Souaid: I'll tell you like two ideas about that. As I was doing every single week, my husband would come and tell me, Chantal, you don't have a plan until the end of the year. How can you keep on going? This is like every week you're just deciding on what you want and every week you're just reading more and then deciding what it's better if you had a plan. And then I told him if I had a good plan that I'm not implementing consistently, that's not something good.

On the other hand, if I had a regular plan and even maybe a bad plan that I was implementing consistently, this is way much better.

So what I had was a regular plan, which is to post every single week a challenge, but I was doing it consistently. And then I remember an interesting quote that I like that says something along the lines that motivation gets you started, consistency keeps you going.

And at the time my image, my self image as a professional was very important. And that's why when we are talking about goal setting, you always ask who will you tell about your goal? So I announced it to the world.

Now I'm someone, the world for me isn't like 1 million followers. The world for me was my family and friends and my close connections. But even if I said to these people that I'm going to do this for me as a value honoring my, my word is something very important. So this got me going.

If on the other hand I said, you know what, I will film every week a video and once the videos are all 20, then I'll announce it. Me knowing myself, I wouldn't have done it.

So going back to my husband, he used to tell me that if it were up to me, I would put the plan, I would film the videos, at least half of them, then I would go for it.

So this works for him, but for me, I know that if I put myself out there, if I tell the people and then every single week there's nothing that will stop me and I can do it, this is what would help me and this is how I move through it.

And this is how I usually notice that this is the only way that I can get motivated because I have to put it out there and then once it's out there I will not block out unless I change my mind and nothing like this has ever happened. So each person needs to know.

Stephen Matini: And what if someone is not consistent? Is there anything else that people could do? Let's say I'm not someone that consistent, but I have good intentions. Is it still possible in your opinion, to get your dreams, you know, out of your drawer if you're not consistent?

Chantal Souaid: A lot of people are not consistent and this is a very big problem and people come to me all the time about it. Being consistent doesn't start. If you're consistent, you wouldn't take any help.

The problem is how to start on the path. If your why isn't very strong, And if people don't feel that like really they want to achieve this dream, they will never achieve it. Yes, Lewis says, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And this is true.

So the problem is that the majority of people don't know where they're going or don't know what their goal or what their dream. Thus they can't consistently implement anything.

If they know what their dream is, And if they are adamant about doing it, then consistency can start simply by faking it in the start. But setting like a a small plan on how it'll go and then I can tell you how the weekly resolution can help them achieve it consistently every single week.

Stephen Matini: Have you always had clear what you wanted, or is it something that you learned along the way?

Chantal Souaid: A lot of times there were a lot of things that were very clear for me and other times things were not as clear and I didn't know where I was going, especially when I was starting my business and having the kids and me being, trying to get used to being a working mom and being a mom in general.

So a lot of these things weren't as easy. But what I learned along the way, and this is a a long learning process, was to just trust myself and trust the process and trust the universe.

So for example, there are some things that I know that are part of my values. What I'd like to do, for example, for me, ever since I was very young, I knew that my mission on this Earth or what I would love to be doing was to help people and help myself lead a better life.

So of some moments it was the big picture umbrella. But then somehow I'm learning to embrace the meaning of the moment. Every single moment that I'm going through, for me to discover myself better, to discover myself as a mom, as a business owner in this country.

So these pieces of the puzzles, I'm just putting them in the dots, and I learned something very interesting. If something is very hard and if I'm trying and trying and trying to work at it and it's not working and maybe I should like stop what I'm doing, either look into another direction or just think outside the box because somehow this is the universe telling me this is not the road you should be taking.

Stephen Matini: A lot of what you're saying is something that me personally I learned later on in my life. One example could be even this very podcast, if I had to do, let's say 20 years ago, I think I would've been so obsessed about doing it right. I would've probably waited longer to start it. I would've been incredibly critical paranoid about anything that I did.

It's about being in the present moment. And so I do hope you know this podcast and many, many other endeavors will do well, but I'm more focused on now, enjoying the process, doing my best, knowing that the next episode very likely I will do better. Very likely when I look back, you know, six months ago, I would say, oh wow, that was kind of cute what I did, I would never do that. So it really is a process in which you have a sense of where to go. But as I always say, you have to get your hands dirty.

Chantal Souaid: And so you're saying this is something very important because somehow a lot of people who are very professional, who are very accomplished, who value accomplishment as a value in their lives feel as you said, that we need to do things in the perfect way.

But then little by little, as we grow older and more mature, we realize that perfection sometimes isn't in the minute details. It isn't like in the way for example, my hair is done today. It's in me being present now as I'm being with you. If someone comes and gives us this recipe when we're still young, somehow we wouldn't really own it.

And you can go and tell someone who is very young to do this and they will say like, well this is a crappy person, what is he saying? But on the other hand, when we live it, when we feel it, it gets something that's so internal. This way we can actually live it and understand it. And you're very right.

Stephen Matini: Well also you are a mom, you have twins and I can barely take care of myself. So for me, like all of you moms are truly superhero. And I'm not trying to just to be nice, but realistically is so much work.

So to any woman that maybe has kids and maybe would like to not just to being a mom, there's nothing wrong about just wanting to be a mom, but maybe they also want to be a professional. Maybe they want to be an entrepreneur as you are. What is your suggestion as a first step to get it all?

Chantal Souaid: Okay, so here I can tell you about the own three life balance concept. So as I was doing the weekly resolution planner, I had to create a concept for life balance because for me at the time, my life wasn't balanced. I had the twins, I was working from home, either I had the challenge and I was trying to live this life balance to to see how all this works out for me. And it wasn't as easy.

But then all of a sudden I realized that the day that I woke up at five and I did my morning routine before the kids woke up and before my work started, I was much happier. I was giving better and somehow the kids were nicer and the kids were calmer and everything was much better.

So I kept testing it and then I realized, that in life and in my life and the life of every person, mom, not mom, every person, when I am better, when I'm giving myself oxygen, then I can help and give back.

And I always like the example of when we are in, in an airplane and the flight attendant gives the safety instructions and then she or he says, in case of oxygen drop, put your own oxygen mask before assisting others. So I'm giving them a favor when, when I'm taking care of myself.

Then we have three other important pillars. One is environment. The environment can be my home, my surroundings, my family. If someone has a dorm room, it can be their dorm room and if someone has a big mansion, it can be their mansion and we have a relationship, it can be love and social. Then we have fulfillment. So in fulfillment we have money, we have a career, we have hobbies and fun and we have learning and growth.

If I'm giving every single day, and this is what the planner does, if I draw my vision board, and I say this is what I'm doing to myself, this is what I'm doing for my environment, my relationships and my fulfillment. And then we put a beautiful vision for all of it. Then every single month I'll ask myself, okay, what am I going to do this month for myself? What am I going to do for my environment, for my relationships and for my fulfillment? Then we ask the same question every week, then every day

Stephen Matini: If someone somehow cannot find time for herself, right? Like I just can’t. What would it be a first step they can do in order to carve some time for themselves and overcome the sense of guilt?

Chantal Souaid: So hopefully I would know this person, I think I would shake them, I would tell them, God forbid if you were to die now what would happen?

And then they would stop and then they would say like everything would fall apart. And then I would say, okay. And then after it falls apart, and then after like nobody eats and after nobody does this task and after like a while, like someone else will be able to do it, someone else would be assigned to do it.

The problem with all of us is that we have a lot of expectations. We keep looking at Instagram, we keep looking at Facebook, at all the social media and we compare our lives to others and we want to do stuff like others. So we want to get this very big salary.

This person when asked them if you die, and then what would your life amount to, I'm sure that this take them to the core for them to remember that everybody can do their job.

And this is something that I learned it the very hard way. I kept wanting to be working to be doing stuff, but then I realized one day anybody can do anything related to my job, but no one would fulfill my role as the mother of my kids, Eva and Christopher.

And the moment I realized this, it like lifted a very big heavy burden on my back. And every single person have has like a very private story about their lives and they know that they can say stop, and they don’t need all the money, they don't need all these things and they can calm down.

So to this person, if they cannot carve time for themselves, to take care of themselves, then then one day they would collapse and go to the hospital and then somebody would have to replace them in a not nice way. Because if I were to offer the world, I better offer the world the best of me, not what's left of me. And if the person is not taking care of themselves, they will be offering what's left of them.

Stephen Matini: I agree a hundred percent. And it may sound as such a final thought, but the one thing that I always repeat myself is, and I'm really highly mindful, the more time goes by is, my time here has a deadline. So hopefully, you know, it will happen far in the future. But realistically I know as a fact that will not be here. I will not be here forever.

Stephen Matini: And the most important thing of all is not to waste my life. You know, I think it's an important reminder, it's a gentle reminder. I call it that I will not be here forever. I may worry about this, I may get cranky about that, but you won't be here forever. It somehow puts everything the right perspective.

Chantal Souaid: I try to enjoy what I do without even obsessing excessively. Is it gonna work? It's not gonna work. Is is this gonna happen? Will I get there? Well, hopefully I will. But now all that matters is truly how I spend my time. Have you always been this way or is it something that as you mentioned, became heightened as a result of you becoming a mom?

So no, I haven't been always this way. I think motherhood has had the, its its biggest lessons on me. So when I was at work, I was very adamant, I was very strict, I wanted things to be perfect. I didn't have any time to waste what stuff. I was hardworking as you were saying.

And then I was doing everything to be perfect. I was working with an international development organization and from an organization to the other project to the other, we had donors, we had beneficiaries, we had stakeholders. Customer service was like a hundred percent. An email wouldn't go without an automatic like spelling check. But then as I became a mom, I started realizing that life cannot be this way.

I do admire whoever can keep life this way and still be a parent. But somehow my priorities have shifted. I realized that before having kids, my main focus in life was to prove myself to be a very good professional. When I became a mom, I realized my accomplishments don't define me. So the title, I was a Middle East and North Africa Director, which was very sexy and very interesting and very big.

And I thought to myself like what? I'll be now a trainer, a coach. Like it was like so small for me and I said, I'll be a mom, just a mom. It was very like, don't get me wrong, but somehow it was like very small for me.

Then I realized I don't have to be any of this. I can just be myself. I like I am me. So this change helped me and it took a long time. It didn't come easily. And when I realized this, then I knew that this was my ego speaking. My accomplishments don't define me. My title doesn't define me because one day I can have a very big title and the other day if I don't, then I'm in my less. No, I'm not less, I'm much better because I'm myself and this wasn't the case at all and I grew into becoming this person and they say like the kids teach a lot, like having kids. And I, every single day I still learn. And it's an ongoing process and I think if we stop learning, we stop growing. And then what's the youth?

Stephen Matini: You are part of the Barkat project, which is a a phenomenal initiative. How did you come across the project? Because I talked to Puneet Sadchev, who started the project. I thought how incredible the fact that he's supporting entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and Africa. How did you learn about the project?

Chantal Souaid: So I am part of a group called Lebanese League for Women in Business. Among this group, they send a lot of announcements, but somehow when I saw this email and I read about it, the name was Shakti Barkat, and I was thinking like, wow, I like the name, I read about it. And it was something very interesting and I felt that yes, we women, entrepreneurs need to support each other.

And as a coach, I know the impact of coaching. And at the time I was feeling that as a mompreneur always. And I was finally thinking about it yesterday, like a mompreneur, the way I define it, as an entrepreneur mother whose priority is her kids.

So going back to you and I thought that, okay, this is this thing that I needed. I wanted my business somehow to be a priority. I wanted to be thinking about my business with other people. And somehow we are all in this boat together.

My struggles are struggles of someone else. Even if someone isn't married and doesn't have kids, but somehow they have maybe have an another type of a baby or another type of something that they're taking care of. It can be a family member, it can be a side project.

So I felt what a beautiful and empowering thing for me to be part of such a program to learn from a professional like Puneet and also to be learning and sharing me among all the other ladies that are part of this program.

So for me, I know that we started in June, we have until September, and these are the months where I will be focusing on my business.

We put a deadline, we put the, like our intentions for the program, both professional and personal, and then somehow this framework, this like very nice framework and me knowing that I'll be meeting with these people one week as one week know knowing that if I had a problem, I will be following through with it.

This alone, as simple as it can be, other than what's happening during the coaching session was very important for me. I set goals, I set intentions, I write my gratitude, but somehow my business isn't always the top priority.

And for me, putting my business as number one during these four months has been phenomenal.

I've never been coached for my business. I've been part of different types of trainings but never been coached. Puneet is so good in how he coaches is us. So he might be giving a hotspot for someone and putting someone on the hot seat and you'd think that like he's just coaching these people.

And then somehow as the session goes, he would've coached all of us and we'd all come out after this question with this specific person with like list of things that we need to be working on.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for sharing all this with me. And my wish for you is to be around for as long as possible, so that yo can help as many people as possible because you're really fabulous.

Chantal Souaid: Thank you. Thank you Stephen. And thank you for opening up this opportunity for people to listen to you, for people to come over with you. You cannot imagine how sometimes just listening to a podcast of yours can change the life of people.

View Details

Dr. Claudia Gross is a German consultant and trainer who lives in Cairo, Egypt, and has a soulful humanist approach to business.

Our conversation revolves around the transformative potential of language in fostering positive connections, understanding, and personal growth. Inspired by approaches such as Nonviolent Communication and Positive Psychology, Dr. Gross emphasizes the concept that words create worlds.

Dr. Gross is the author of the first Speak Green book, Words Create Worlds: Cultivating a Conscious, Life-Affirming Language. The idea is to move away from "red language," which is divisive and instead embrace "green language," which promotes harmony and positive communication.

By speaking green, we can move beyond binary thinking, embrace a variety of viewpoints with greater ease, and cultivate empathy through language.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen

#claudiagross #speakgreen #language #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini:Claudia. You are in Egypt. So how's life in Egypt?

Claudia Gross: Life in Egypt is also very different to what I was used to and I think about Germany, you know, like, so a totally different planet if you wanna say that. And I love it because it's so interesting and inspiring.

Being here, living in a totally different culture, being emerged and surrounded by it. Here there are so many opportunities to contribute. This is what I also love.

For me, Egypt's like a huge catalyst of my own development. Everything I currently am, who I am and what I do is based on this fertile soil of the desert country. So for me, living in Egypt has been a very fertile, inspiring and reconnecting experience, reconnecting myself to my roots.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that you would have become the same type of person if you never moved to Egypt?

Claudia Gross: I can't imagine. Just the other day I actually thought that I'm very grateful for this kind of destiny or force in the road that brought me here. I have been here since 18 and a half years. So if this period was a human being, it would be a teenager with a driving license.

And when I think about, for example, the power of language that I'm so passionate about, I see this here in in Egypt, an action every day. Even if you just say good morning, good morning in Arabic would be something like wishing you a morning full of light or full of honey, or full of yes. mean if you're responding to this, you would actually aim for saying something that is even sweeter or brighter. And I, I see this a lot.

There's also some things, some words we would not say, things we wouldn't say simply because that's part of the culture, and because we think that it brings bad luck. So being immersed into this kind of environment where the power of words can be felt and seen every day in every conversation definitely contributed to who I'm currently.

Stephen Matini: How have you discovered along the way, the power of language, the power or words, how did you get interested in words as much as you do today?

Claudia Gross: The initial moment that I can recall that changed everything was when I was sitting in the traffic jam in Egypt and like a particularly long one, really dramatic. And I was surrounded by signs telling me what not to do. So I got like, don't be late, don't miss this appointment. And signs on the streets saying, don't whatever cross here, don't turn here.

And I was like, Hey, listen, you know, I mean like, could you please stop talking in red language to me, if not helpful? What I would love to know is like, what can I now do? Where can I turn? Where could I go? And I mean, I could not just leave my car behind the walk. So this is what happened.

And when I then arrived at the place where I was having dinner with a friend at this time, I was like telling her this experience and suddenly it's like sketching down a couple of red words and green words and this is what happened. This is where it started.

And then retroactively, I realized that since I can think when I was highlighting texts and textbooks or when, when studying something, especially in English, I was always starting to highlight something when the not part was over and when it was focusing on what to do, suddenly I understood that I had it in me for a while, but it just woke up in this particular traffic jam.

Stephen Matini: Is this what you refer to as a speak green?

Claudia Gross: Yes. For me, speak green. Why have I chosen this? It's because really an opposition to red language in, in comparison to how people talk a lot. When you think about Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of non-violent communication, you would call it hyena language and giraffe language.

For me, what was like closer to my heart where these two languages and also like traffic signs, like read for, hey, wait a moment stand still pause, reflect, is this really how I wanna say it? And then coming up with the green alternative and to go for that. So also this complementary of these colors was important for me in that moment.

Stephen Matini: Claudia, I wanna ask you, I understand perfectly the concept. I was wondering, would you mind to provide an example of a sentence that uses red words and how to turn it into green words?

Claudia Gross: Oh yeah, certainly. The classic example is that for centuries we are focusing on “no war.” I've been in a Picasso museum where he was also referring to manifestations and demonstrations in the street, and they were all having this posters of no war, no war.

When I seen this in the black and white movie, I thought, like, so long we're going for in war, when actually what we really in the bottom of our hearts are desiring is peace.

So for me, no war is written in red and peace is written in green language. And that's also an example for moving beyond these negation and looking at what do we really want. Because our minds as we now move from neuroscience, cannot see something that is negated. It first has to evoke it like war or war and they're like, ah, no, no, that's not what I'm, that's too difficult. We better focus on what we wish for.

Stephen Matini: You told me about this last time when we met, you talked about the difference between a “yes” and “yes, but.” But would you mind explaining the difference between these two approaches?

Claudia Gross: Yes, certainly. For me it was one of these discoveries of higher communication, because the experience of “yes, but” something that we all share on a day-to-day basis that someone seems to agree yes and, but then feels like a slap into our face or a close door. We experienced this, but for a very long time I just thought like, well that's the way we say it. This is how we talk.

Until I was introduced in a workshop to the option of “yes, and”. And I goosebumps when I think about it because it's like, what this is adding a new idea. This is not pretending as if you're first agreeing and then contradicting.

And later then I learned that in improv theater they have a rule on stage that they will not say no or yes, but they will always say “and” so that the game or the the show continue.

Stephen Matini: In your experience working across different cultures, do you find it easier or simpler, this specific attention towards in one culture versus another or it doesn't matter?

Claudia Gross: I think it matters and I think that all cultures are, all languages have different preferences. So I'm already like a bit concerned when we're trying to translate my book because some things I think they're not translatable from English to any other language, be it German or French or Arabic, you know, they where, where I have an idea of what I'm talking about some in the different languages and this what I, that people around them and their examples might be very cultural specific. So some things might not be that we cannot generalize them or things that I could say in German, they actually do not work in another language or a word play that works in English. We can't translate it.

So we would rather put it in brackets or like adding whatever footnote to explain it. But in general, I think this sensitivity or the awareness for the power of language is available in all languages that are using prayer, that are using holy words that are not saying special words because they could bring bad luck.

So I think actually it would be, would be present all around the world. And I'm for example, not saying worldwide because I learned from Buckminster Fuller that this would be pretending that it is a flat earth and I believe it's globe. That's why I'm also speaking about around the world or globally, but not about something worldwide.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever heard, I'm sure you did, about the Sapir-Whorf theory or communication?

Claudia Gross: Yes.

Stephen Matini: I remember when I studied it the first time was the notion, you know, based on these colors that essentially the language that we speak, you know, color and tint anything the way we view the world. And I thought it was an incredible theory. The theory has been discussed, has been disproved in many different times. But still what's interesting when I try to learn a new language and I see the same text, I see the grammar. I always have the feeling that I'm putting on sunglasses, a language, the specific structure, really deeply condition how I relate to people.

Stephen Matini: Words these days seem to be weaponized. Even the whole controversy about freedom of speech. Oftentimes we see endless amount of examples of cancel culture because this person used the wrong word, maybe words that were said years prior in a completely different context. To me it looks like a big gigantic mess of polarized ideas. From your perspective, what could it be a first super small step that all of us as a global community could take in the right direction to build bridges through the use of words?

Claudia Gross: Open your ears, have elephant ears, and open your hearts so that you have a giraffe heart and then have a conversation.

And I also see this a lot what you're describing, that people are losing also friends or family members over discussions over one particular word. And that's a real pity because what we want to be cultivating our conversations, especially with those who are thinking and acting in a way that is totally different to ours.

So instead of like emptying my friends list of those who think differently than I do and are not agreeing to how I see the world, it's actually super important to reach out to them and to have the conversations and to widen our horizon, widen our perspective, and be more in this careers mode of like, wow, isn't that interesting?

And I believe for me, like when I, when I'm listening to all of these developments, I'm also very much inspired by the integral model by Ken Wilber. So I see this evolutionary development of human beings and I can, based on their language also see and hear where they're coming from.

And therefore I think it's also very important for us that yes, we are all the same and different. Yeah. So we have different backgrounds, different understanding of what's different connotations, so better and a peaceful environment of coexistence and curiosity, then losing those that would be perfect alley for us towards change in this world.

Stephen Matini: Two concepts, they're really important to you in terms of some of the positive impact of using a specific type of language. A green language has to do with you call it like a pluralism and gender positivity. These two components seem to be really important to you. Would you mind telling me more about these two?

Claudia Gross: When I think about pluralism, just very basically I am thinking really in plurals, very often people only give me one option and I'm interested in getting more. I wanna have a choice. And so therefore I believe it's really important to move beyond the binary, which then means like it's not zeroes or one, it's not yes or no. It's not only tea and coffee. And I believe this is important to express this also in language.

When I'm facilitating coaching, I give people at least three choices or more only with the intention of moving beyond the binary. And for me, when I then I think about gender, it's something similar. I mean, I, I'm German, I grew up with a language that actually has, that has three articles. I also take this one as one of the reasons why for me, pluralism and a variety is a lot easier to grasp, to understand, to connect to than for others. And having said this, being able to express ourselves in more than only one language also helps because depending on the language I speak, I'm a different person.

Stephen Matini: Freedom of speech is such an important thing. And when people tell me what to say and not to say I feel that I get silenced. How would you respond to this type of criticism.

Claudia Gross: There were already situations where people ask me exactly about these points, you know, where they were like, are you now trying to police us? And I thought like, well, it's so far away from my personality to police anyone in anything.

And for me, this is also where I then thought about and I thought what I really do is highlighting language that is not anymore in harmony with our consciousness and offering alternatives.

And when I started this, green was just like the language that came up and red as well. There were also moments where then thought like, oh goodness, you know, now you're creating polarities and it looks like green is good and red is bad. And that's also how I mean it, but I do not mean it like with this erect index finger teacher, teacher telling us, you know, how to speak now, that's not my intention. My intention is not to program anyone with my language. I'm, I'm not trained in NLP, even. So my, my origins of this whole initiative really come from a totally different direction.

And therefore what I do is I offer for everyone who's really stuck in my perspective, like someone who's, who's like extremely fluent in red language.

Very often these people cannot imagine green language because no one in their surroundings speaks green language. So what I actually do is, in my perspective, I am increasing the horizon. I'm doubling the space of, of vocabulary and life ultimately, and I'm making offerings and they can choose them, yes or no, totally up to them. And it's possible that what I offer this today, next year I might offer you something else because I have my language also has evolved.

And the way I see it currently is really like a yin and y sign. So as if it was a red young that needs a green yin as yeah to be complete, to also add different energy to that. And only when these two are coming together you have the circle, then you can strive for oneness.

But as long as you are like in this kind of whatever ocean of red language, moving on and understanding what else is possible is too far away. So this is what I'm now currently answering and I, I've seen it in so many people when they realize how they could not even see it.

Just the other day, we are now preparing a conference in a panel, in an event in the UK and one of the aspects of this whole event is about strengthening business and the outdoor. So I was listening to the conversation, I was like, oh, that's interesting outdoor, say this again, out-door and in-door. You don't even mention the, which is really interesting. So it's defined by the door, look at it in front of your door or inside of your door. But I mean this does not necessarily need to be nature at all.

So these little things, you know, and then, oh yeah, interesting. So one word can be so powerful and its could be then reframed, reformulated in something that is more life giving. Here we’re, the journey continues.

Stephen Matini: Yeah. Because a door is something that separates, kinda the example you gave before, no war and peace, you know, outdoors and nature. Absolutely. I'm thinking that maybe this oneness that we so much all want, peace actually it is not oneness, but it's fragmented in infinite variations.

Claudia Gross: Every country you travel through with every culture, even in your country you visit, there's so much variation. They do things differently. And being aware of that is being rich.

And I believe that's also something that is related to speak because what we do is we're increasing the circles around us. It's not only about myself and my family and my neighbors and my working place, which is already a couple of circles, but the moment I'm able to embrace more people and at a certain point reach like be it my country, be it the region we are in, be it like the rules low, suddenly it's a totally different perspective.

And this means also that if I'm then whatever, separating and segregating the waste in my house, I don't do this for myself anymore. I do not do this for the garbage man anymore, or the garbage person, or whatever is a better word here, they are called ‘zabaleen’, you would do it for the planet for the seventh generation of grandchildren.

So I believe what happens with these experiences in different countries, realizing exactly as you said, opposite, 180 degrees different from we were used to. In Germany, we would not marry our cousins here in Egypt, people do that. It's the extreme opposite and it's for the respective cultures, it's the way people are living.

And I believe being able to hold the seemingly opposite in our mind at the same time. And at the beginning it's only two and then after a while it's even more because then you see how they, they're done in different cultures.

I believe like we're really growing new connections on our brain group, becoming more compassionate for others. And it's a lot easier then to support others in seeing it, having these conversations and those who can't travel, who don't travel, who do not, don't ever have the chance make these experiences, but by sharing our stories, they come close to them. Really they do this.

I mean, I'm vegetarian and I'm drinking everything, tea and coffee without sugar even this is already a pattern disruptor. Really? Does it have taste? Can you do that? But that's, no one does this, you know? I'm like, well, I mean at least I do it and I can assure you, you know, it's better than four spoons of sugar in your tea. And I think it's first about the past pattern structure and then integrating it all into ourselves and being aware of there might be no single truth.

Stephen Matini: I keep thinking as you are describing such important concept, it's a big exercise in empathy, understanding that the world is not you and it works differently than you. And you can still enjoy anything that is not you if you make an effort to get out of your shoes and know for a while basically.

Claudia Gross: And you see the word empathy just crossed my path yesterday when we spoke about equality and equity where I've seen a title and I, sorry, that I don't recall in which workshop this was, but there they also spoke about diversity and equality and inclusion and belonging. And they didn't say equality or equity, they said empathy.

And I thought like, how cool is this? Because it's not anymore about people with each other, it's about having empathy with each other, really meeting human to human. And I think this is also another evolutionary step in language on our behaviors that at a certain point it's not anymore about doing things because it has to be equal. We'll do them because we have like hundred percent empathy with other people.

And equality at the end of the day is also not the goal, we're striving for justice and for fairness, which means that it can be unequal, but it's just, and it's fair. So you know, I mean these concepts, they're really sometimes mind blowing, but I can see them on a spectrum of evolutionary development of humankind and human beings themselves. Like being more and more able to embrace this kind of complexity.

Stephen Matini: I have a funky question. I love languages, you know, and I wish I had all the time in the world to learn every single language. They're just wonderful. But you know how difficult it is, you know, it takes time. Do you think that if we had one true common language, all of us spoke the same language while retaining all the other languages, but if all of us, you know, terrestrians spoke at least in one same language, do you think would be easier?

Claudia Gross: While listening to your question, I thought about Esperanto they trying to to create an artificial language that we all could speak. I love that you added that all the other languages would continue because I would, this would be my major concern that we give up this world that we have when we are speaking exactly the same language.

We're under the illusion that the others understand us because then they're fluent in our language, especially with mother tongue and we, when you're traveling, we feel like an immediate connection to those that are speaking our language. But on the other hand, this can also be a huge illusion.

When I'm speaking with people, what we do now on this English bridge, which is not my mother tongue, I would make more effort to make sure that I am really understood or I would also ask more questions, especially in very personal relationships.

So therefore I believe not speaking the same language could increase our understanding because it supports us also in understanding ourselves and the other and the space between us. And very often I feel very understood by people who are not speaking my mother tongue and absolutely not understood by people who speak German.

Stephen Matini: I love when you say illusion, it really is an illusion. Is there anything out of anything we said that you think that our listeners, the people that will listen to this episode, will be important to pay attention to based on your experience of the power of words?

Claudia Gross: Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, I think what we all need to be aware of now more than ever, independent of words, but I think it's really important to highlight this, is that we are experiencing a change of era. So one era is ending and the other one is beginning and they're overlapping.

So we’re currently in a phase where both developments are overlapping. Yes, we’re hospicing the old and they’re midwifing the new, both at the same time. This means that we have a huge marketplace and spectrum variety for what we are also experiencing now regarding language is I do not think that there's the right language, and I wouldn't go for right and wrong. When I think about red and green, for me it's really about what is limiting and destructing or inhibiting life and what is giving life and supporting whatever self-development and so on.

So this is how I would see it, and therefore I would always only make offerings. That's one of the rare situations where the word always actually work. Because normally I'm saying don't say always, don't say never. So I'm contradicting myself. But what I wanna say is that it's about offerings, it's about adding a perspective and also inviting others.

See this as well. When I'm working, when people speak in a lot of negative language where I'm like, okay, how would we reframe that? You know, how does that sound without the not? That's an invitation and they can draw this path. And if they're absolutely not able to lose, I can see if I can assist them. And if it still doesn't work, we can see how we then continue with each other. You know, what is needed. I would never, ever impose it on them.

And this is the thing that I would like people to take with them, you know, like experiment with it, be inspired by it. See how powerful it is, and it's also not just the, the word itself, it's also the vibration it brings in. Yeah.

For the book I had recorded word showers, like hundred red words and hundred green words. And just listening, just recording the red words was unpleasant, you know, while the green words had a totally different aura and frequency.

So therefore be curious, be aware of your own language. Do not believe everything you think. Be an author for your own lives, co-author our future. So that's the spirit which everyone to approach this field of language and contribute to it. If there are words that are not in harmony anymore with how you see it or would love to say it, come up with a greener alternative.

Stephen Matini: Claudia this was fantastic. Thank you so much for these important insights, for spending time with me. Thank you.

Claudia Gross: With utmost pleasure.

View Details

Today, we delve into the world of courage and what it truly means to stand up for what you believe. Our guest is Dr. Cindy Pury, Professor of Psychology at Clemson University and an expert in the psychology of courage.

The episode explores the interplay among fear, bravery, and honesty, revealing why courage doesn't conform to a single, standardized model.

Our conversation explores bravery, honesty, and the nuanced nature of courageous actions, emphasizing individual uniqueness.

Dr. Pury warns against using courage for harmful ends and shares leadership insights for fostering a supportive environment.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen

#cynthiapury #courage #psychology #clemsonuniversity #stephenmatini #podcast #pitypartyover #alygn #leadership #management

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When did you decide what you wanted to pursue professionally?

Cindy Pury: So I drifted into college without having any clear idea what I wanted to do. I had a major in public relations, I didn't love it, but I couldn't think of anything else.

And I got to college and the very first day of class, John Kihlstrom, who was our intro teacher, talked about hypnotism. And I was like, oh! And then we started talking about emotions and I was like, oh! And the whole thing was so interesting that I decided to double major in psychology.

And I clearly remember one day my junior year of college, I believe I was sitting in a windowsill studying in one of the big campus landmark buildings. And I had two exams to study for a psychology exam and a journalism exam. And I remember looking, choosing the psychology book and thinking, boy, I wish any of my journalism classes were as interesting as this.

In graduate school I studied emotional theory and emotional disorders, particularly anxiety disorders. And around the same time the director of our honors college asked me to do an honors seminar about fear and horror. And I thought, great. Okay, sure.

And so I put together all these things and I went at the end, by the time I got done looking at my class reading list and stuff, I thought, wow, that's really depressing. We need to end on a more positive note.

So some kind of irrational fear that you have, what do you do about that? Those are anxiety disorders. We have a whole big bunch of treatments for those. So let's read about the most well supported version of that at the time. So I had a section on CBT.

Then what can you do about some kind of thing that you have a fear of that is rational to be afraid of? Well you can reduce whatever the risk is in that situation and really there's not much else you can do to reduce your risk. Well you can behave courageously. And I thought there's like no research on this at all. And I started conducting research on courage and I haven't really gone back.

During my pre-doctoral internship I worked at a veteran's hospital with a bunch of people who had combat related PTSD and I was struck by how they talked about things that sounded very courageous but they weren't calling them that.

And also how some of the things that they were really continually distressed about seemed to be kind of a function of what Jonathan Shea, the year after I finished my internship, coined the term moral injury.

It seemed to be kind of a combination of moral injury and almost like a failure of courage that was bothering them. And so I've been interested in this for a really long time and it turned out to be a really natural fit and I found I was just super interested in it. And so I've stuck with that.

Stephen Matini: Simply put, what is the link between fear and courage?

Cindy Pury: The link between fear and courage is actually a little bit more complicated than just saying that fear is standing up to courage, 'cause a lot of people say “courage is standing up to fear,” but also they'll say, you were fearless and courageous. And it's like, but those don't fit.

So what we've done is we've taken a step back, me and my colleagues, we've taken a step back from the fear and think about the risk part instead as being central to courage. And this I think eliminates an awful lot of the problem. It doesn't have to be actual risk, it can be perceived risk.

One of the things we know for sure about people who are highly fearful, either dispositionally or just in the moment, is that whatever it is feels much riskier than perhaps it really is. So that happens when folks are afraid of things that aren't really that much of a risk. It still feels very risky. It can feel risky in a really unusual kind of way.

So one of my participants in a courage study wrote about something she did that was courageous, that was smushing, a spider that was in her house. She thought it was courageous that she worried about how if she hadn't done anything, he would come back and get her. And it's like I knew that she knew like most people with specific phobias, she probably knew that spiders aren't smart enough to do that, but it felt that way.

Finally, it helps explain situations where someone describes something they did they that they call courageous. And they'll either say that they didn't feel that much fear in the moment because they were very focused on doing whatever they were trying to do.

Or sometimes they described fear, but their fear has more to do with the fear of whatever bad outcome they're trying to prevent typically for someone else who they love or otherwise care about.

So if a a small child who you love wanders into the street, you're going to be much more afraid of something bad happening to that small child most likely than yourself.

Stephen Matini: Is there any difference between bravery and courage?

Cindy Pury: The difference between bravery and courage, if your listeners are familiar with the VIA or the Values and Action System, is that the VIA’s bravery component is standing up to fear or difficulty in a particular way. And so it has a lot to do with that emotion and it doesn't have to do with how you aim it.

So I would argue that it would be possible for someone to have an isolated strength of bravery but use it in a completely inappropriate way.

So, if you imagine two people who are equally afraid running into a house fire; cool, they're equally burned and equally likely to die, they're in the burn unit, they're in adjoining beds.

The person in bed A ran into the burning house to save a baby, that person is likely to be hailed as courageous and publicly hailed as courageous by other people. The person in bed B ran into the burning house to make a really cool TikTok video. People aren't likely to say that person's courageous.

Stephen Matini: What is as of now after many years of research, your own definition of courage?

Cindy Pury: My own definition of courage at this point is that it involves taking a worthwhile risk. So it's got to be taking, it's gotta be a voluntary sort of thing. It's a chosen action. It's not something that just happens to you, it's something that you choose to do. And I suppose I could extend it to choosing to take a worthwhile risk.

It's also something that is risky to you. It also is worthwhile. So it is something that is proportional to the risk that's involved. Risking your life to save the life of another is definitely courageous. Risking your life to pursue some incredibly personally valuable goal can be courageous if you the observer or you the rater shares that value of that goal.

Risking your life for a very trivial thing in a way that need not have happened that way does not feel that way.

A few years ago there was someone who literally did run back into a house fire to get her season baseball tickets, which could have easily been replaced and in fact the baseball team said, we're replacing your tickets but just know we would've replaced these anyways. So that doesn't seem terribly courageous.

I've taken that a step further and I've looked at people who've won the Carnegie Hero medal, which in the United States is a big civilian award for bravery and for the Carnegie Hero medal.

I looked at one year's worth of it, and in that one year most people who won, saved the life of another person, and they themselves were alive.

Some people won dying while saving the life of another person.

Other people won dying and the person they tried to save died, nobody won, when the person they tried to save died, but they lived. There's this sort of hindsight bias that that was worth it.

We have other data on that too where we just made up stories and the stories changed. So like you move to another country for the perfect relationship or the perfect job and A) it works out and 10 years later you're still married or B) after about a year you see that you're really not compatible and you split up, that second person is not likely to see themselves as courageous.

Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly, there seems to be cultural and contextual differences that it impact what people perceive as courageous.

Cindy Pury: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And they'll vary based on both cultural values and individual values and they'll vary based on both cultural threats and individual threats.

And so, if you are in a culture where being perceived as showing any sign of fear is like a terrible thing for you and you're willing to get up and speak in public, that may be more courageous than if, if you're like, oh, okay. Sometimes people are afraid and they go on and it's cool.

Or if you are raised in a culture where showing any sign of sadness as a man is perceived as negative and you're crying in public and you're a man, that's gonna be much a much bigger risk in some cultures than in others. Likewise, the values of course change from culture to culture.

They also change individually. Charlie Starkey, Laura Olson and I just published some data looking at how courageous Americans rated two women who did sort of different things.

A few summers back, Kaitlyn Jenner publicly came out as transgender, and Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same gender couples.

Not surprisingly the extent to which you agree that marriage should be between one man and one woman and people should adhere traditional gender norms point you in completely opposite directions in rating if that woman was courageous or not.

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, there are different scenarios they play in my head particularly about what's considered to be socially courageous. And I'm thinking about organizations or the example of Kaitlyn Jenner. Some of them they say, I'm openly gay but at work, I'm not because you know, that's not the place where I could do that. So from your perspective, should I be more courageous, or what?

Cindy Pury: It would depend on so many different things about how the person sees their job. I'm gonna make up a super extreme example here.

So if the person's spouse, who they love, is unable to work for some reason, and they are providing all of the means of financial support for their family, and they go out to work every day in a homophobic environment, and put on their mask to get money so that they and their partner can live a decent life, that could almost be seen as courageous.

Doing exactly the opposite. For them, jobs aren't plentiful and they would never find anything that would support them in that way. It might be courageous for them to stay closeted.

Similarly, in an organization that specifically goes out of its way to say we are a proudly WOKE organization and we welcome all of our LGBTQIA+ employees and in fact here's our gay employee association and people in the gay employee association actually have kind of a leg up, then that risk is just obviously a lot lower.

Likewise, if you are seeing yourself as strongly committed to advancing the rights of other people by being an example yourself, which I think from what I have read arguably is a large part of the reason why we have so much more acceptance in society today, which I personally really welcome, is because people have been willing to step out and say I'm gay, I'm still the same person that you knew before and I'm still just as competent as I was before and and all these other things and here is my life and I am willing to be an example, that could also be part of it.

Stephen Matini: So it seems to me that courage oftentimes ignites when someone is willing to go against the grain.

Cindy Pury: Yeah, certainly in terms of any sort of a social thing, that definitely would seem to be the case. And social risks are huge. We're very social creatures and our social risks feel every bit as real as physical risks and do every bit as much of the same sort of jazzing up your autonomic nervous system and feeling really awful and feeling a sense of dread. We definitely feel that way about social things also.

Personal courage I think is a real big thing and when you know the person's full story, sometimes their actions make a lot more sense.

I mentioned I worked at this VA hospital. I had a patient who before I was even studying courage, his goal during treatment was to wrap a Christmas present for his child. That doesn't sound like very much but his whole backstory was that the worst thing that had ever happened to him was over Christmas time.

Every December it reliably resulted in terrible flashbacks for him and he avoided every reminder of Christmas whatsoever to avoid being reminded of this very terrible incident in his life.

So he came in and he wrapped a Christmas present and he wrapped it in a session with me and while he was wrapping it like he was crying and his hands were shaking and he was sweating and we had to have a bucket nearby 'cause he thought he was gonna throw up, but he did it, at the end he's like, I'm sorry, I'm such a mess, something, something about being weak.

Well, before I started studying this, like almost a decade before, I said that was really brave, because I knew what he was going through, in order to do it.

Stephen Matini: If someone is not that courageous, or let's say wants to be a little bit more courageous, where do you draw the line between, what I'm thinking of doing is courageous or just being stupid?

Cindy Pury: That is such a good question. It is a fine line between brave and stupid.

The place where I saw that drawn most clearly was a story about this family out, I think in California or they were at least driving in California. They were driving along one of the twisty roads by the coast and the little kid threw a teddy bear out of the window and it fell down a cliff.

And so they stop the car, one of the parents gets out of the car and goes down the cliff to try to get the teddy bear. That parent gets stuck. The second parent then, leaving the child alone in the car, goes down the cliff to try to rescue the other parent and also to try to rescue the bear. They're both stuck and then rescue had to come out and helicopter got them and the family went on their way.

Had it been the case that the first parent had rescued the teddy bear, this would just have turned into a story about how much mommy and daddy loved you.

It's always going to come down to someone's personal values and their personal values are funneled through their societal values, but the risk also matters a lot. So is this a risk that you are taking just for you, or are you taking this risk for other people?

So, the second parent who got out of the car leaving the child alone should have thought it's not that smart to leave a child in the car by themselves, because this was a kid that was young enough to have a teddy bear and a tantrum, that also matters.

I had an interesting conversation once with a student who was a police officer and he said that for him confronting someone who may be unhinged with a weapon is a lot less dangerous than it is for me. And I'd say I'd have to agree with him.

So the question is, is it less courageous for him to do that than it would be for me? In a way, yes, but also he signed up for this career that required that sort of training and that sort of regular confrontation.

But definitely people are inspired by reading about what other people have done and seeing what other people have done and being told the stories of what other people have done. And a motivating sort of thing is when you see someone, especially someone who's similar to yourself or believing in a similar cause or ideally both of those things, if you are reflecting on something they did that was courageous, much like your friend, you're more likely to be inspired to go, I can do this too.

Stephen Matini: Just that based on anything we talked, courage is not a clean cut.

Cindy Pury: Absolutely not. It's wickedly hard to measure because either you end up with scales that simply ask you how courageous you are and how much you stand up to fear and you don't let fear or risks stand in your way, or you end up with scales that have what in psychology we call double barrelled items, where you have to be willing to do this for that, that requires two sorts of things instead to be in alignment rather than just one, and so it's not as clean. So it has turned out to be a difficult thing to measure.

I don't think we're likely to find that there are people who are uniformly brave and people who are uniformly cowardly. I don't think we're going to find that. I think everyone has their own individual constellations of things that they think are really worthwhile to do. Some people are very career-focused and they will do all sorts of things for their career, for their organization, which are different things obviously.

And other people are not. Some people are very focused on personal advancement and they're willing to do things that are growing and enriching and feed their curiosity and their need to know other people aren't.

Some people really see the value in some particular kind of artistic or other personal expression. Other people don't see it as being as important to them. Likewise people feel differently about different kinds of risks that are out there.

The distribution of things that people are afraid of is not kind of random and people have different amounts of risks for different things. So for me, I do public speaking all the time. I routinely teach classes of 300 or so people. If you told me I was gonna give a speech to 300 people tomorrow, I'd be like, sure, that's fine. So it depends on the individual and the situation.

Stephen Matini: Is there any correlation between courage and honesty? Because we're talking about values ...

Cindy Pury: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people describe courageous actions as being very high on integrity, which is a component of honesty. And certainly you may need to be courageous in order to be honest about something. And the coward, the less courageous action in a situation may be to cover it up or to lie about something.

It's somewhat contextual but for most people, most of the time honesty is probably the thing that they would feel prouder of, and would be better for society if we were honest. And so, in those cases, definitely. And in studies that we've done our typical study, we ask people to describe a time they acted courageously and we get a wide variety of responses.

Some of those responses definitely involve honesty. So another response that we got commonly were people who went and got needed treatment and needed to be honest. One of the steps in that is being honest with yourself and with other people. Especially if it happened when they were younger that they needed to go get treatment for their eating disorder or whatever it was.

Stephen Matini: If I said to you anyone who's willing to fight for what he or she believes in, is courageous, would this be a fair statement?

Cindy Pury: Yeah, I think so. Would I wanna give them the accolade of courage? Would I be happy to see that they won an award for valor? No, not necessarily, depending on what they were fighting for, 'cause Sometimes people fight for things that I think are terrible, and in that case I'm not going to be calling them courageous.

I can guarantee you though that every instance that I've found of someone being called courageous in the public press, or in the semi-public weirdo space that the Internet inhabits, if they're being called courageous, the person who's calling them courageous agrees with the goal of what they're trying to pursue and agrees in some way that they are taking a risk.

Stephen Matini: You said it at the beginning of this conversation that ,your interest for courage began because you did not want just to focus on fear, you wanna focus on something that this seemed to be more positive. After all these years of your research, of your experience, what would you say that is the main reason why you are still passionate about courage?

Cindy Pury: I think it's still interesting and I find the stories very uplifting for the most part. And also I've been motivated to write any number of book chapters by a warning that I wanna give people, which is that courage can be used for very bad things. Many people who have done just atrocious things believe that they're acting courageously and they talk using the same language that people use when they talk about courage.

Silk is a famous researcher who studies terrorism and in interviews with incarcerated terrorists and the police officers who stop them, both describe their actions in very similar ways, that fit the definition of courage.

I was struck by this when the Virginia Tech shooting happened. I still remember very clearly I was on an overnight sleepover field trip with my middle daughter and I just had caught little glimpses of it like on my phone.

And I waited until she was in the bathroom taking a shower to like actually watch any of it. And he issued this creepy manifesto that was on a videotape and I was struck by listening to it how he sounded like a crazy evil version of my participants.

My participants at that time were almost all, were all college students, so they were all about his age and the way he described what he was doing, which was killing other people, sounded very much like the way my college student participants described taking an action that they thought was courageous.

And so I also feel very compelled to always put that message in there that, just because you think something's courageous doesn't mean it's not a bad thing. Just because you feel courageous doing it, doesn't always mean it's a good idea. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's stupid. I would say there's kind of the two bands, there's almost like two labels.

One of them is like stupid courage, where it's like I'm gonna run into this burning building to get a zillion TikTok followers, or I'm going to quit my job just to stick it to the man and now I'm unemployed and have no career.

Or I'm going to be brutally honest with this person who I dearly love. I'm just gonna be honest all the time with them. And that might not help our relationship actually and I might end up losing it. That sort of courage, I put it a different bin, than the things that are objectively meant to do bad.

Stephen Matini: So we can say, the end does not justify the means.

Cindy Pury: No. And if the end doesn't justify the means, then that is not a thing that we should say is courageous. But again, with the warning you might feel like you're courageous and then it turns out maybe you really weren't. It's a whole big picture. We need wisdom in order to properly evaluate these things.

Stephen Matini: We talked about different things, so many different components of courage. If there’s anything that you believe that our listeners should focus on based on anything we said, what would that be?

Cindy Pury: One of the biggest takeaways that I've gotten from doing research on courage is appreciating how unique everyone is, and recognizing the unique ways in which everyone has been courageous. I would argue everyone has been courageous.

Everyone has taken a risk that they think is worthwhile. That risk varies from person to person and what they think is worthwhile varies from person to person.

One of the things that happened I think during Covid is that we saw risks that people never considered on their job suddenly being present on their job, and the extent to which people were willing to engage in those risks for their job, which had changed, changed.

And ordinarily there's a lot of self-selection. People who are afraid of public pushback don't typically go into roles where there's not a lot of public pushback. They're not necessarily going to sign up to work for a politician.

But a lot of healthcare workers found themselves in that situation, and a lot of educators found themselves in that situation. A lot of school board members are still finding themselves in that situation where school board in the United States at least used to be a very non-controversial kind of a thing.

When Covid happened, suddenly almost everyone's job involved that, and that was a negotiation, and I think what I saw personally, and what I saw professionally was a mismatch, in how much people wanted you to pursue the goals of the organization, and what they thought your risk tolerance should be for something, and what the individual employee's risk tolerance for that was, or sense of riskiness about that was.

And that sense of riskiness depended on two things. Broadly speaking, it depended on their actual risk level. So you might be immunocompromised and you haven't told anybody that, or you might live with someone who is medically fragile and you haven't told anybody that.

And also just how much people have their own perception of what they're comfortable with. Those are somewhat separable things, but I think a lot of the misunderstandings that I saw in organizations at the time were due to that change.

So I guess from like a leadership perspective, being aware of what others in your organization, what the people you are leading find risky and find valuable, that may differ, and their picture of what that is, may be different than yours.

My other tiny little bit of leadership advice is don't be the reason why someone else needs to be courageous. If you are so intimidating that your employees need to work up courage to come and talk to you, that's problematic. But we all know that those leaders are out there.

Stephen Matini: And maybe it's their way of believing that they're being courageous in some sort of tough or strong, you know?

Cindy Pury: Absolutely. And I have definitely seen this. That's really not such a great strategy. Let them save their being courageous for other sorts of things that are more valuable to the company rather than just having to come to you.

Stephen Matini: Cindy, you taught me so much today. Thank you so much.

Cindy Pury: No problem, Stephen. This was super interesting.

View Details

Leadership consultant Katie Anderson believes fostering a continuous learning culture within a leadership framework can lead to better outcomes and engagement.

In today’s episode, we will discuss with Katie the challenges of shifting from a command-and-control to a learning approach, the role of purpose in leadership, and the impact of adopting a growth mindset.

A culture of learning involves reconnecting with a sense of purpose, asking more open-ended questions, and creating a psychologically safe environment where mistakes are learning opportunities.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform:

Spotify - http://tinyurl.com/48dvdaks

Apple Podcasts - http://tinyurl.com/z9ncxck4

Google Podcasts - http://tinyurl.com/yrr95sud

Amazon Music - http://tinyurl.com/4wc9h4vy

Podbean - http://tinyurl.com/bdehsasn

Listen to Katie Anderson’s podcast Chain of Learning

Get Katie Anderson’s book Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#katieanderson #chainoflearning #kbjanderson #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment

View Details

Yvonne Mose and Jeremiah Mabiria are two entrepreneurs passionate about sustainability, working towards environmental solutions, and creating positive change to protect the planet and foster developmental opportunities in Africa.

Yvonne and Jeremiah founded MOMA Renewable Energy (former SBIKE), a company that produces bioethanol cooking fuel from food waste to address energy and environmental issues in Kenya. Their business aims to reach rural Kenyan households and contribute to reforestation efforts.

Yvonne and Jeremiah represent the rising potential of African startups and the need for support in achieving a more sustainable and interconnected world.

Yvonne Mose is a three-month BARKAT Entrepreneur program graduate, an application-based 100% scholarship offering for Middle Eastern and African female entrepreneurs, and part of The Goddess Solution by Puneet Sachdev.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#yvonnemose #jeremiahmabiria #MOMAReneaableEnergy #SBIKE #entrepreneurship #africa #kenya #sustainability #stephenmatini #podcast #pitypartyover #alygn #leadership #management

...

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You, Jeremiah, you grew up in the US. And you Yvonne, you grew up in Kenya. But Jeremiah, you are also Kenyan descendant, correct?

Jeremiah Mabiria: Yes, we're actually from the same region, from the same community. It's just that I had to ate and relearn the language and do a lot of that when I came home. He just migrated when I was six years old.

Stephen Matini: Jeremiah, how was growing up in the States? You know, having parents from a different country?

Jeremiah Mabiria: It was interesting. It was interesting to be different. I came from a place here where I was like everyone else. We were very young, me and my brother, we were very quick to assimilate and become American. We kind of had to relearn being Kenyan I would say more so than learning to be American. It was natural.

Stephen Matini: When people ask you where do you feel home is, what do you answer?

Jeremiah Mabiria: Minnesota's home, that's where I grew up. But here Kisii (Kenya), is also home. There's a connection that I feel when I'm here. My easy answer would be that I have many homes. I'm lucky enough to have lived in many places and have many help.

Stephen Matini: Yvonne, how was for you instead to grow up in Kenya?

Yvonne Mose: For me growing up in Kenya is I think everything that I know, all that I know about life and it was really good growing around my people, my culture, my parents come from a very low income background.

That's why I got the motivation about who I am and what I want to work on. I think it has really formed the kind of person that I am right now. So yeah, but growing is really interesting. It has 47 tribes I believe. I didn't miss out on anything culturally.

Stephen Matini: How long ago both of you met?

Yvonne Mose: Yeah, about two years.

Stephen Matini: When you met, could you sense cultural differences between the two of you?

Yvonne Mose: For me, yes because Jeremiah talks different. He is very American in his ways, but it was a good surprise

Stephen Matini: Somehow. Both of you have developed over your life an interest, a passion for sustainability. How has that happened? Were there any specific people, any specific event in your past that has somehow made you sensitive to the sustainable agenda?

Yvonne Mose: For me, growing up in a poor background, especially in the rural areas in Kisii, I saw how it was hard for my family and even my neighbors to get access to clean cooking fields.

So for me that kinda shaped who I was because I saw how, how much time it took from me going out to play with my friends or even going to school to study. Growing up, that gave me an idea what I wanted to do. So I was very environmental focused and that's even what I pursued in my university for my degree.

And then getting to meet Jeremiah and through him getting to meet his dad who somehow convinced me that employment is not the way that I will want to go and if I wanted to make more impact I should start something by myself. Like create a startup, create a business that will make more impact in the community. And that's what made me who I am today.

Jeremiah Mabiria: For me, sustainability something that it came maybe from the education system. I remember the campaigns and we had the blue dumpster for the plastics and the green ones. It was taught in school but I think as I got older it became a lifestyle. That's when through the education system learning that the planet's coming to an end and we keep buying iPhones and new cars and we don't think about what the cost of that is.

If there's gonna be change, then I would have to be part of that. I have to be one piece in creating that change. Meeting with like-minded people along the way through groups at school and and college and campus groups. And that's what really sparked my interest.

We have the advantage of not having messed a lot of things up is in the West. It happened a long time ago. Here we have a chance to stop it from happening. We have a chance to create industries while thinking about what these industries do to the environment and mitigating some of the ill effects that they have. So that's what really drove me, especially when I came home to make sure that I was in sustainable energy.

Stephen Matini: Oftentimes the whole notion of sustainability and capitalism and growth, you know financial success, are seen as opposite. What is your view about it?

Yvonne Mose: I think when you think about impact, most people think about charity work and I think that's not what it is.

Google is a tech company that has so much impact on people without being a charity organization per se. So for me, when I think about impact, I think about the basic needs for the communities like housing, clean energy, water, health services.

Those are services that you can start and you can make sure that they are accessible to the low income households or or even to the low income communities. And at the end of the day, for as much as your organization is also get making profit, you are also thinking about the community at large impact and profits go hand in hand.

Stephen Matini: Do you foresee to be easier, you know, moving forward, having this company in Kenya or you think would be harder in the US?

Jeremiah Mabiria: I think it would be easier for sure. What we're doing, we're experimenting a lot, we're trying new things and what I've found is that the Kenyan government, when we have gone to ask for the regulations or to be certified, they kind of let you take the lead. We don't know what you're talking about, we've never seen this. You do it and then we will regulate you.

So it's very accommodating 'cause it's a smaller government and it's a government that is hungry for development, they're hungry for anything that moves a needle forward. So they're very willing to accept.

Whereas in the US it's a very regulation heavy system and so trying things that are outside of the box requires a lot of money because you have to do massive amounts of research, massive amounts of work to make sure you meet the regulations. Here the regulators work with you, they need you. The US the government is so large that I don't think they need any one.

Stephen Matini: Would you mind explaining the idea behind your company, SBIKE?

Yvonne Mose: Since SBIKE was born so that we can have the most social and environmental impact as we can. We currently produce boca biofuel, which is a bioethanol based cooking fuel out of food waste and food processing byproducts.

We make an environmental impact as much as we make a social impact and our product are priced solo, that it is accessible to the rural low income households who are actually our target customers.

So currently the households use charcoal and firewood to cook 'cause those are the fields that are affordable and accessible to them. And if you compare our biofuel to charcoal, which is even more efficient than firewood, one liter of biofuel burns as much as three kgs of charcoal and one liter of biofuel goes for about let's say 90 cents US dollars and one kg of charcoal goes for about a dollar.

Yvonne Mose: That also makes an impact. They get to save as they cook with our fuels. It has health benefits but only byproducts from it are water and CO2. And while we cook with the wood fields, the byproducts are so the smoke and this particulate matter which affects health.

So yes, our organization is mainly focused on the impact that we can make more than let's even profits. But we are also profitable because a little by field we produce it at about 60 cents a liter and we sell it at 90 cents, which makes our profit margin at about 50%. As much as we are making profits, we're also making so much social and environmental impacts.

Stephen Matini: How has been the reception of your consumers, your company?

Jeremiah Mabiria: Our problem currently is production. We have increased capacity twice since the first machine we fabricated and we have never been able to meet demand and this isn't an isolated area of Kisii county that we chose as our pilots area in the sub county.

We haven't even fully launched into the full county or the region, but we cannot meet the demand in just the area that we're in. And we have requests, we've had meetings with the county government where the request is how quickly can we spread it out and which is why we're we're busy fundraising to see if we can build a proper launch facility.

Stephen Matini: If someone is interested in helping you out, what could they do?

Yvonne Mose: Currently I think the thing that we need most is to scale up production. So we will need help in scaling our production, that's expanding our current facility, purchasing new production equipment and also product packaging. And even as we scale up we want to start branding and marketing.

Jeremiah Mabiria: I think it's just the fundraising in order to get the things that Yvan has mentioned, able to get us in more households and serving more people quicker than we would with the slow national growth.

Stephen Matini: For people to use ethanol, do they have to have a specific stove?

Jeremiah Mabiria: There is stoves available but for the rural low income households what we found is there's a company in Kenya that focuses on the urban areas called “cocoa networks” and they have a stove that they sell for about 15 dollars.

But in the rural markets where we serve, most people make a dollar or two a day day on average. $15 is what they need to save up to pay for school for you for one of their children. It is just too much money for them to invest in a stove.

But ethanol is combustible in any container. If you think of serving lines at buffets, they use ethanol to keep the full warm, it's just a container with fire. We have been reusing tins and we've been showing and training our agents to train the customers on how to reuse tins that are used for cooking fat and other things that they already have and to use those as the stove.

So they have a ELY ethanol stove that they get for nothing but the time that they invest in making the stove and they can just replace it whenever it rusts and it costs them nothing extra which allows them to actually buy the ethanol. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to reach them because the stoves that are manufactured are entirely too expensive.

Stephen Matini: Like a typical interview question , ideally if everything went accordingly to your plans, where would you like to be five years from now?

Yvonne Mose: So ideally we would have reached all the rural households in Kenya. That's very ambitious. Currently we're only serving the Western region of Kenya with actually a smaller part, which is the Gossi region.

So ideally in five years we would've reached the whole of Kenya, we would've had more social impact and we would have started already producing biodiesel, which is actually the product that we are currently piloting.

And we would have gotten our production up so that we could supply of bio ethanol so that we could supply industries and also the cook stove companies that make the cook stoves because currently they actually import ethanol into Kenya. There's no company that produces ethanol at a large enough skill that they can support the demand in Kenya.

Stephen Matini: Just to make sure that I understand, you said it biodiesel?

Yvonne Mose: Oh yes, biodiesel. So currently we're piloting biodiesel which is made out of bio ethanol and waste working for, from companies that make foods using cooking oil, that deep fry foods.

Let's say like oil waste from KFC or even from trigger foods or even from tropical heat, the people who make the crisps. So yes, we are currently trying to pilot biodiesel, which is also we've, we have realized it's a niche in the market in Kenya.

Stephen Matini: Do you also have other sustainable projects in your pipeline?

Yvonne Mose: Our efforts to restore the environmental degradation count as a sustainable project. It doesn't bring in any profits but we as a company actually committed to donate 1% of our proceeds to land restoration. So that means reforestation.

So we support community-based organization, women, women organizations, youth organizations and even the local county government in their efforts to replant trees in the county.

We as a country have a 10% aim for mini forest cover marked to reach. So as a country we haven't reached it but the county that we are based in, which is KC County, we are current, we we're currently at 15% forest cover and 26% tree cover. So we are trying to maintain that or even grow that

Stephen Matini: As entrepreneurs, you could have taken so many different routes and I understand how your life experiences, as often happen with a lot of entrepreneurs, have influenced your choices. But the life of an entrepreneur can be difficult. Is there anything that both of you do to pick yourself up when things do not seem to go well?

Jeremiah Mabiria: Not just Yvonne, but having a good team around you, having a good group of people who see things the way you see things and are looking towards the same goals as you do like everyone else, I have low days, I have days where I don't wanna go to the office, I don't wanna find out that the machine is broken .

But once you remind yourself of why you're doing it in the reason, it's easy to get up in the morning because the goal is much bigger than myself and whatever I want to accomplish personally, there's something much bigger that we are trying to attain in conjunction with other companies like ourselves all across, which is show that it is possible to make money while doing good I think is an important thing to highlight in

Stephen Matini: Yvonne. What, what do you do when you feel, ugh, this is so hard to bring your energy up?

Yvonne Mose: I remind myself that there's no one swooping in from out of nowhere to come and save me or to save the situation. So I just have to power through it.

And I think also having a team around me, especially the team that we're building, we don't have offices. Let's say no one is in charge of anything, particularly it's on paper, yes, but we all help each other out.

If I realize Jeremiah has a problem that he needs to solve and he needs somebody else to help him or a different I to look at it, that's what we focus on. That's what we work on.

So yes, having an A team around me that supports me and knowing that through me and through my work I'm supporting other women to come up. That's also what gets me outta bed in the morning.

Stephen Matini: Yvonne, one of the things that it's not easy is to find good people to select good people. How do you do that? How do you make sure that you find the right people for your team? Is anything that you do, anything you look for?

Yvonne Mose: For me, I think it's just gut feeling. Currently the only management team that we have are the co-founders. So we're in the management positions. The rest of our team are our, our production staff and maybe the people in our supply chain.

So when it comes to getting someone to work with us, what we go with is our gut feeling and also is before giving out a contract, we integrate someone into our organization and we work with them let's say on ... actually on a three month probation period. Seeing how it all goes, seeing how they interact with each other and how they work with each other. And then from then that's when we commit and give them our contract. You can't always get it tried all the time.

Stephen Matini: How is it to be the female CEO, in Kenya?

Yvonne Mose: Kenya as a whole is very accepting but Kenya has so many different regions, especially the Gossi region and I think we are also a patriarchal society.

Being a CEO and getting into rooms with people who don't take you at face value or people who don't take you seriously has become kind of a challenge. And I think actually that's what motivates me.

I try to like our production stuff that I've talked about, it's purely women. I try to integrate women into the workspace into my organization, putting them in positions whereby if they go to a room later on when they grow and they want to start their own startups or get into other or employment opportunities, they can actually be listened to and people will take them at face value. So as much as it's challenging, it's also a challenge to me trying to make sure that in future that doesn't happen to other women.

Stephen Matini: And also one of the challenges is the fact that both of you share a personal relationship and a professional relationship and that's not easy. Jeremiah, how do you keep these two important relationships in line?

Jeremiah Mabiria: They're very separate and they have a life of their own. We sat down and we were very intentional about how we created our work personal life balance. She's my boss when we're in the office, I take direction. That's our business relationship and I take that seriously and we have a separate relationship when we're at home and we make sure we give both those things equal time not equal time, but enough time to grow and each of them need to be nurtured in their own way.

Stephen Matini: You know, I get it a good vibe from both of you. Yvonne, you are strong but you are very kind and I love the fact that Jeremiah, you come across as some sort of guardian angel that support her. You know, it's really wonderful. So have a good vibe that this is gonna be wonderful moving forward.

Yvonne Mose: Thank you. That describes us actually.

Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you Yvonne, how did you come across the Barkat program? Because I think it's a wonderful social initiative. The founder Puneet, I also interviewed for the podcast and when he told me about the intention of the program to support female leaders, entrepreneurs, I thought, oh wow, this is incredible, you know, to support women in the Middle East and in Africa. How did you learn about the program?

Yvonne Mose: When we're talking about things that have made me who I am today, Punit and the Barkat program is a major part of it. Jeremiah and I had a discussion and I was working as a project manager and doubling with the organization, but then we realized it was time for me to focus full-time organization.

We as a team sat down and we decided I'll be better placed as the CEO. Jeremiah was going through some things online and then he saw the ban program and we realized that will be the perfect program to introduce me into the market, get me to be the best version of myself.

And we saw Puneet qualifications and credentials and it was so impressive. So yeah, we just came across it on the Internet and we decided to apply and through the program I have become stronger, I have become more confident, I have learned how to channel my energy into my work and in everything that I do and in have everyone that I interact with, especially my coworkers and my support staff and I'm really grateful to have met him.

Stephen Matini: Are you still part of the program or you completed it?

Yvonne Mose: I completed the program about two months ago but I am still part of the network. So once you have graduated from the program, you're not cast out completely. So we have a community, the Barkat community, we still interact with the ladies from my cohort.

So yeah, it's a community that keeps on growing. I was actually very lucky to be part of the first cohort. So the current cohort that's continued is the second cohort. We are community and we help each other out. He has has managed to bring women leaders from every part of Africa and made them into this group that supports each other in their daily lives.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that it could be a first step, based on your experience, for anyone to explore the entrepreneurial route? What could they do?

Yvonne Mose: For me it'll be just start. There's never going to be that perfect moment. There's never going to be enough money for you to do it.

If I was to wait until I was at the perfect position to start my company, I will have waited until I had a hundred million dollars in my account so that I could start off with a big company and make all the impact that I wanna make. So for me my, my advice would be to just start everything else will fall in place.

Do all the research that you need to do, get to know your strengths and your weaknesses and actually get people on your team. For as much as it's I dunno, people view it to be a good thing to be a solo founder, I found value in having co-founders, people who can compliment me because I realized I don't know everything. And I think that's a very important thing to know.

And also when you're talking about the energy people channeling the energy, I feel like most women feel like for them to be hard or for them to be taken seriously, they have to portray masculine energy. But if you channel who you are and you channel your energy into whatever it is that you're doing, it'll definitely be successful.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that are your strengths, which is your biggest strength? Yvonne? Which one is your biggest strength? Jeremiah?

Yvonne Mose: I'm empathetic. I tend to feel the people around me and I tend to try and make people the best versions of themselves.

Jeremiah Mabiria: I'm lucky enough to have, I can see things, I can be able to see the possibilities and not the impossibility.

So when we're talking about opening a factory in a rural village in Kisii, it's very easy for me to see how this is possible and why it would work and why this is a good thing and actually some steps to getting it to happen.

Even some of my co-founders were like, are you sure? Yeah, I would say that. Strength wise it's just being able to bring the team around, communicate to them what is possible.

Yvonne Mose: Today we were driving from Nakuru, we had a meeting in Nakuru so we're driving to Kisii and we saw a factory and Jeremiah told me all the cars in the world and all the money in the world, I don't want that. All I want is that. He sees possibilities where I don't see any. I think that's actually also what attracted me to him. He's someone who sees far and I think that's what I needed in my life.

Stephen Matini: For those listening to our episode, is there anything that would you like for people to take away from our conversation? Something that you deem to be really important for them to keep with themselves?

Yvonne Mose: Africa is coming up in the market and in Africa we have so many startups that are coming up and also youth who are driven to make the world a better place and we shouldn't be overlooked. I think we are coming up and we are going to be hard.

Jeremiah Mabiria: We have moved out of the dark ages that we were in and I see so much hope everywhere I look not just in our organization, but when we go for meetings and programs and you hear the interesting things that people are doing and the unique and innovative projects that they're starting. We just need a little bit of a push, a little bit of a help, big hand from the rest of the world. But I think we are ready. I think we are ready to finally join the rest of the world.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for your vision. Thank you so much for your empathy and I truly hope for all that you are seeing to come true because there's a desperate need for more sustainable and more balanced world. So thank you so much for spending time with me. I appreciate it.

Yvonne Mose: Thank you to you Stephen.

View Details

We engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Deb Mashek, business advisor, professor, and author of the book Collabor(h)ate: how to build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you’d rather work alone.

Deb shares her unique perspective on collaboration, highlighting its importance in various settings and debunking common misconceptions. She believes that when people collaborate and learn from diverse perspectives, they can increase their effectiveness by embracing new resources, viewpoints, and identities.

In our conversation, we explore the key ingredients of a successful relationship and dig into seeking growth through connections with others.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#debmashek #collaborhate #collaboration #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Deb, I am going to the origins, sort of speak, of your life. And one thing that I read, I think it was in your book was that three factors, which included your parents, your PhD, and your upbringing in a trailer park, have been your inspiration to learn and focus on collaboration. And I thought that was really interesting.

Deb Mashek: Yeah, absolutely. So I call those my three great teachers of collaboration. So the trailer park piece is, I grew up in a double wide trailer in North Platte, Nebraska and there's some people like, Ooh, trailer Park, that sounds horrible.

Thought it was fantastic because what we had was this play mat, which was the trailer park. So we had a chain link fence that said we couldn't go beyond it. But other than that, the kids were really left to their own devices.

So I grew up in the seventies and in the trailer park would spill out at, you know, 9:00 AM and we had to figure out together how we were going to play, what we were going to play, what the rules of our play were going to be. And if somebody violated the rules, we figured out what those consequences were. And that person who violated those rules had to figure out how to make amends and words through play.

We learned the social skills necessary to live and work to do, to be with others. So that was the, the trailer park piece.

And then both of my parents throughout my life struggled with alcoholism. So it's kind of a, a perverse sort of teacher of collaboration. But one of the things kids who grow up in, you know, within these neglectful households or households that were had a lot of addiction and whatnot is you figure out, I mean you still have needs, but the parents in that environment are not particularly well equipped to be able to provide for your needs.

And so I figured out really early on how to form connection with other adults outside of my family who were then able to provide for needs. Whether that was fair enough friction, sometimes it was food, sometimes it was clothing. It was very often things like rides to school and things like that.

But it was through relationship and through being able to connect with others that I was able to get those needs met. And those are incredibly important skills when it comes to collaborating and figuring out what, what somebody else's needs and interests are and being able to monitor those and being able to state yours in a way your needs and interest in a way that is accessible and interesting and even palatable, I guess, to other, to other people. So that was important.

And then the third one you mentioned is the PhD. So it was never assumed that I would, you know, go to college, much less graduate school. And it was just by virtue of getting to interact with a lot of really positive teachers, great cheerleaders throughout my life. And when I got to graduate school at Stony Brook University out in Long Island, New York, very first seminar I enrolled in was the Psychology of Close Relationships.

It was taught by Arthur Aaron and I was the dork in the class who I read every single paper assigned I, my hand was raised for every discussion, I had things to say, and I just absolutely fell in love with this research, you know, that that, well first of all I had no idea that there was a research area dedicated to the psychology of close relationships. So that was really cool to discover.

And then to read this research, I totally fell in love with it. Like it was just really powerful. And I realized like, oh, there is knowledge out there about how to do relationships well. And I think I hadn't grown up with a ton of models of that. So there was also this personal void that I was able to fill in some way through the academic literature. And so I kind of came at that relationship development through the side door. And those, all three of those experiences I think were critical for how I ended up studying and thinking about and helping people do collaboration.

Stephen Matini: When you say relationship, are you thinking about any kind of relationship or are thinking about a specific type of relationship, like personal relationship, professional relationships?

Deb Mashek: The research area that I was in was about romantic relationships. So when I would teach the psychology of relationships, it was about picking up, breaking up, everything in between. That's what I had been researching.

But there's also research literature on everything like parent child relationships and friendship development and workplace relationships. So any time you have that sense of us notion that there's an us involved, that is relationship, there is a research literature out there about it.

But I started in romantic relationships and then it was in my research fellowship that I started to think about jail inmates. And then when I eventually became a professor out at Harvey Mudd College in California, I started to think about or the, the students' sense of connection and relationship with their dormitories, their residence halls and their sense of connection to the campus. And it wasn't too long later.

And then I started to think about how institutions can be in relationship with other institutions and that you can start to form collaborations. And it turns out to me one of the really big fabulous insights I had, and I'm so grateful that it dawned on me, is that those theories that govern a lot of the individual diadic relationships, the people are still involved at the institutional level.

So it's not really that the institutions are collaborating, it's that the people in the institutions are collaborating and those same people have hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties and needs and desires just like we do dally. And so figuring out how to leverage those exact same theoretical models in service to these collaborations that ended up being really valuable in terms of how I could be useful to people.

Stephen Matini: As of today, based on all your experiences, all your studies, when you think of the word relationship, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Deb Mashek: That's such a good question. I'm a mom, so right away i, I go to my relationship with my child. All relationships is that sense of mutuality, that sense of coming to care for and contribute to the wellbeing of somebody else. And also expecting that to happen in, in return that there's reciprocity, mutuality, care, concern.

When people look back at the end of life and they talk about their highest highs and their lowest lows, often they end up talking about relationships. That relationships are pain, relationships are exquisite and fulfilling and loving.

Thinking about our work histories too, it's, I remember the colleagues that I loved working with. The second thing that really popped for me is the role that expectations play in terms of that there are all these scripts out there about how relationships ought to be or should be.

We're like these are the good relationships and whether it's the Hollywood manifestations of those, there's like that one really good relationship. We all know and we're trying to have our relationship look like theirs. Oh my gosh, there's so many ways we can fall short of expectations, ours and others when it comes to interpersonal relationships.

Stephen Matini: So if I had to ask you what in your opinion are the ingredients of a good relationship, what comes to mind?

Deb Mashek: The theory that I do most of my research under would land on exactly the same two. So the idea is it's called the self expansion model. And the idea is that we're all seeking to increase our efficacy in the world, meaning our ability to achieve our goals, our dreams or whatnot.

And how we do that is by seeking out and taking on as our own, our new resources, new perspectives, new identities. And that relationship is one of the ways we do that. It's called including the other and the self.

So imagine you are and I are in a relationship over time I come to see the world through your eyes, your perception of the world starts to change and enhance. Because of our relationship, I start to take on new identities. Maybe that's the identity of the us or the we or that of the couple.

So relationship is a way of becoming more energetic in the world or being able to take on the challenges. You can imagine two circles, but this is me, this is you. And as those circles become closer together, that us that shared interstitial space of the Venn diagram, that's part of who I am.

But there are parts of my circle that are not you, and parts of your circle that are not me. And that's actually, that's how the wealth of other perspectives and what can come in.

My dissertation research many, many moons ago actually looked at this idea of feeling too close in the context of a relationship. So feeling smothered by closeness. And when I asked the circle question of the people who were in my study, people were saying, I feel suffocated by the other person. I don't know who I am.

You don't wanna do anything that takes away the autonomy and individuality and identity of the other. Likewise, if they start doing that to you, you feel less than you feel minimized, you don't feel yourself. That's a really yucky place to be.

Stephen Matini: Of all possible titles for your book. You chose a funky title, which I love, you know, Collabor(h)ate. How did you come up with it?

Deb Mashek: Yeah, so Collabor(h)ate. Some people love that title and some people hate it, but I figure at least we're talking about it.

I personally love collaboration. I think it really is this incredible tool, but having also been in a heck of a lot of collaboration, some of them that have absolutely vibrated with amazing energy and good effective outcomes and whatnot, others have been absolutely miserable.

As a psychologist, I think we have to talk about the hard stuff if we have any hope of making collaboration more bearable and more productive for more people. So I put the H in the title so it's, you know, instead of collaborate, it's Collabor(h)ate, thinking it's my way of giving voice to the hard stuff that's in there and it's by giving voice that we're able to make it better.

Stephen Matini: Is there something specific that as of now is dear to you that readers should pay attention to?

Deb Mashek: Yeah, so for me there are a couple parts, but I can say them quickly and I think they'll make sense. The first one is that collaboration is essential in the workplace.

The second one is that collaboration is actually really hard to do well there are a lot of moving parts, there are a lot of ways that we get it wrong and a lot of negative consequences if we don't get it right, it's hard to do well.

And the third one is that we don't teach it. So very few of us have received any formal professional development in how to be good collaborators. So what we have learned, we've picked up by osmosis or we've learned on the job trying to watch other people who don't necessarily know what they're doing. And so we pick up their bad habits. Some of us may have gone to business school where there were a lot of group work of people think back to their own experiences in doing that group work.

Was there formal instruction and how to do it? Well, most people say no and a fortunate few say yes. We I think have this cultural misunderstanding that relationships, you're either good at them or you're bad at them.

So for instance, we don't teach people how to be good parents. We don't teach people how to be good friends, how to be good romantic partners. Sometimes we find ourselves in the therapy room and think, God, we get some of that tutelage. At least in the United States, parents often go to prenatal classes where you learn how to do labor and delivery and then once the baby pops out, suddenly it's like you, you're supposed to just know how to parent, which of course we don't.

But I think the same is true of collaboration. We're not teaching people how to do it. And so that was the, the big thrust of the book. It's like, well here, here are some really concrete strategies and things that you can and should do to make these relationships better to take the H out. So you know, to make these collaborations less painful, more productive

Stephen Matini: Based on what you said, I’ve noticed there's a lot of common misconception about collaboration. You know, a lot of things people like to give an example, collaboration is great, but in organizational setting, if you want to be collaborative most of the time you must have time.

You know, the whole notion of collaboration is for us to discuss an option that does not exist in the present moment. And very often to get to the point you need time. And so if you're under a time crunch, well then very likely someone has to make a decision.

What would you say are some of the misconception that you've heard from people about collaboration that doesn't help them out?

Deb Mashek: The one that you're talking about elevates for me. So the idea that somehow collaboration is the right tool for everything and that we should always be collaborating and it's like collaboration, let's do it.

So that's a misconception 'cause it's not the right tool for everything. There are some situations where you need to move fast, you need to move within as an established structure and hierarchy. And so you go.

The other misconception is that collaboration just means working together as though any form of working together equals collaboration. That's actually not true. So there's a whole continuum of different ways that people work together, whether it's networking where you're just exchanging information or there are ways of taking a step up where you're both exchanging information and modifying your work in some way to achieve a shared goal.

And then eventually you can get to the level where you're also sharing resources, whether that's people power or knowledge or money or equipment or space.

And then there's this other level which is collaboration where you're truly learning from the others in that group so you can become better at your job. And so the magic of what you can create together is something that none of you could have actually done on your own.

And then there are all these mistaken beliefs and I'll just kind of rattle them off about collaboration. One is that you know, if you want a ton of collaboration in in your organization, all you have to do is hire collaborative people. It's actually not true.

Another one is if you want a lot of collaboration, all you have to do is have really great tools and processes. So really good project management, really good project management tools and then you'll get great collaboration, not true.

And then the third one, and this is at the organizational level, is this one that says, you know what, if you want tons of collaboration in your organization, just declare collaboration, a core value put out on your letterhead, paint it on the side of your wall in the office. You know, it takes way more than a a little bit of spirited energy around a keyword to create the conditions for that complex behavior to really manifest.

Stephen Matini: So if a client comes to you, and says my people don't collaborate, they're not accountable and I really want them to work together, what is the first step to move in the right direction?

Deb Mashek: I come at it as a social psychologist. So I'm a researcher at heart, that's really hard to shed that armor.

My first step is assessment. So whether it's go in and talk to as many people as possible and kind of a qualitative research way to figure out what really is governing up the works. I wanna talk one-on-one with people. I don't want anybody else to be in the room because I don't want the social dynamics and the power dynamics and the coded language to get in the way of what people really need to say.

You know, when possible, I love running a quick survey and figuring out is this a people issue? Is it a relationship issue, is it a tools and systems problem or is it a culture issue?

And on the culture side it can be anything from the boss says we're supposed to be collaborating. That collaboration is absolutely not possible or it's onerous.

They say everyone's doing it, I don't see it anywhere. Or they say they want collaborative behavior, but the only thing that's rewarded around here is individual performance. Individual effort. And what gets rewarded gets repeated. And so I'll start to look at, you know, what are the incentive structures actually in place and are those at odds with collaboration? Because typically they are, you can't say you want one thing and then reward another

Stephen Matini: Has it ever happened to you to work with a group of people, let's say a team. And somehow the team worked well together and was able to figure out how to be more collaborative. But the team is an organizational environment that is not collaborative, let's say with no cross-functional synergy. Is it possible to have pockets of collaboration within an organization whose culture is not collaborative?

Deb Mashek: And just the way you described it, so there can be these pockets or these isolated moments or where you might have a particularly charismatic connector. There's like a little synergy around this one charismatic person. Or it can be there's particular leader who's created the conditions within their division or within their department for this magic to happen.

And that's all great and then everybody else wants it on that team. But of course, you know, in most organizations you need those people to be moving back and forth across teams or looking forth across division. So people will tell you, they'll describe it to you, yeah, when I'm over here this is how we work, but outside of that bubble, this is what it really looks like.

And so organizationally, if you know, if you're driving for more collaboration, you wanna look inside under the hood of that group that's working well and figure out what's really happening in there to make that possible.

Stephen Matini: There are so many project management tool, there's a plethora of stuff that people can use from Slack. I mean you name it. What, what would you say that could be a first step in order to ensure that in terms of tools you foster the information sharing.

Deb Mashek: First part here would be to not confuse a good tool with just adoption of that's gonna create collaboration. So in other words, don't put too much stock in the tool itself being the thing that's gonna fix the collaboration.

Number two, I think it's valuable to have organization-wide decision around these are the subset of tools that we're going to use. Because otherwise what can happen is every individual team within the organization starts adopting their precious tool.

What that means is that any artifacts that they create will be locked within that tool and it will constrain any individual's ability to move over to other teams because like, oh well that's not the way we do it. Or I know what you're talking about with this new tool I've never used.

The third piece of advice would be think very carefully about what you're really asking that tool to do.

So I personally love the virtual whiteboards, like a mural or a mural. I use those every single day. I keep trying to adopt things like Asana and click up and Monday and it just doesn't work with my head.

But if I were on a team that required that I would of course have to learn it. But does it make sense for me as a a small business owner to adopt all of these tools? No, it might for a large corporation.

Another piece of advice, for instance, if you're using say Slack or even Google Drive or something like that, is create some structures around how those channels or how those storage places will be used.

So create some shared vocabulary, some shared naming conventions, shared folder structures, anything like that that are, that's gonna make it possible for your future self to find the relevant information or for the person forbid you get hit by a bus, for your other collaborators to be able to find that important work that you are doing.

Stephen Matini: And what I've noticed, I've noticed that every single group that tends to go towards whatever makes sense to them. And I've noticed that the simpler the tool, the more likely is going to be adopted. When something is overly complicated or it takes an extra step, people simply don't use it.

Deb Mashek: All of us are busy. And so when a new tool comes on board, it takes real activation energy to get us to the point where we can use it. And if we really, really want people to adopt a new collaboration tool, we have to give time, you know, figure out a way to give time for people could to be able to learn it and to integrate it into their workflows and some patience with ourselves and others. 'cause It is hard.

When I was at Heterodox Academy, we adopted Salesforce and oh my God, it took people like slapping my knuckles to get me to actually document emails and whatnot because I was out of the habit and it took forever. I don't even know if I ever really truly got up to speed on it. I had the best intentions, I was the executive director, I was the one who made the decision that we were adopting this dang thing.

And I struggled. I heard just this week a a guy who teaches people how to be effective on connecting through social media. He dislikes Calendly because it makes you appear lazy and that you're not, that you're trying to automate relationship building as opposed to truly being present with that other person and saying, you know, you let me know what can work for you.

Here are some options that that email back and forth or LinkedIn back and forth is actually part of the relationship building. So I thought that was a valuable perspective too. I dunno that I wanna forego in all situations, but I was thinking, well yeah, I could, I could see that.

Stephen Matini: You said something about intellectual humility. Would you mind telling me something more?

Deb Mashek: Yeah. So intellectual humility is this idea that knowing that we can't possibly know everything, and by virtue of my mere humanity, I am limited in my knowledge, I'm limited in my perspective. I can't know everything, nor should I know everything.

And for me it opens up then this possibility that it's through relationship and through doing and being and creating alongside other people who see the world differently. That's truly how we come up with the well-rounded perspective.

So if we were on video, I would show you, you know, a coffee mug and hold it in one direction and say, what is this? And you might say, oh, it's just the shadow of it. For instance, you would say, oh, it's a rectangle. Or you might say, oh, it's a circle or something like that.

And it's only by working alongside other people who have a different vantage point on the problem that we're truly able to weave together a holistic understanding of what the problem is and thus the solution that needs to be created to solve that problem.

And so to me, intellectual humility is one of the foundational cornerstones of effective problem solving, effective collaborating. Other pieces, there are curiosity, so wondering and being sincere when you ask somebody else how do you see it?

So from whether it's from your disciplinary lens or your cultural lens or your seniority lens or the division that you're in and thus the interest that you're advocating for, what really elevates for you about this problem? What are the key variables we need to be thinking about within this solution?

And there are so many stories of ego and the bravado where, you know, people assume they have the one right answer or they strong arm their perspective into the group and it shuts other people down. It shuts possibilities down. Like it really forecloses certain considerations before they've even been considered. And I think intellectual humility is the key to doing this all differently.

Stephen Matini: How do you keep that humility? Because it seems to me that a lot of people as they age, they become more convinced of knowing. they become even more black and white, somehow, instead of humility to me is a mixture of bunch of things, including curiosity, giving yourself a chance, you know, how do you keep that humbleness?

Deb Mashek: Here's something I do again, if we were on video, I would show you that in my notebook on the front page, I always write the question, how do you see it? So for me it's a reminder to ask other people or their perspective on something, scanning the environment and finding those things that tweak your intuition that you're not sure how in the heck can this reality or can what you just saw doesn't lap on or map on, or could it map onto some preexisting notion?

So this for instance, is why I love going to magic shows as a way of triggering the intellectual humility where the thing my brain is telling me, I just saw, I know for a fact it can't truly be true, which means I'm missing something.

So reminding myself that I, I don't know at all in that situation, letting that sense of awe come up.

And the third one that I love is when I encounter someone who sees the world really differently than I do, rather than turning away and distancing, I lean in closer and say, tell me more. How did you come to think of that? Where does that belief come from?

You know, that for me has been really important in my advocacy for viewpoint diversity on college campuses. It just this idea of we've gotta, we've gotta be surrounding ourselves with people who see complex issues, whether it's policy issues, political issues, how we're gonna solve social problems.

I need to hear from as many different people as I can and not, not necessarily so I can come up with the right answer, but so that I have a, a better hope of understanding the problem in the first place.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that truly is a simple step to people that cannot be more at the opposite, to somehow advance to a different level?

The story just quickly was that I previously was a, a full professor of social psychology out at Harvey Med College. I was tenured at the top of my career. And then the 2016 election happened in the United States presidential election.

And there were a lot of people who were so surprised that Donald Trump won and they couldn't believe anybody would've voted for this person. And this I think was especially true on college campuses and we saw a lot of people shutting down and be like, oh man.

And what I saw is, okay, as an educator we're not doing what we need to be doing to help our students encounter a diverse range of perspectives. And long story short, I ended up walking away from that tenured full professorship, moving cross country as a single mom.

My kiddo was eight at the time. I moved from California to New York to help launch this organization called Heterodox Academy, which was or is still focused on advancing viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement on college campuses.

And what I learned in that work is that the two simple things are ask other people how do you see it? And two, to ask how did you get there? Why do you believe what you believe? In other words, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. What I'm only exercise there is can I see through somebody else's eyes for even a microsecond in a way that opens up my understanding of the world.

Stephen Matini: As of now, professionally, you have so many projects, so many things. What would you say is the most important endeavor for you now that takes a lot of your time and attention? Is it something you're doing now, something you're building for the future?

Deb Mashek: Yeah, so what I'm doing now is I am a collaboration consultant, which is hysterical to say at dinner parties for two reasons. One, collaboration is kind of a fuzzy word and consultant is actually a really fuzzy word also. So people are like, I still have no idea what you do.

So what I do is I work with organizational leaders to deliver high stakes collaboration across silos and stakeholders. So you know, it, it includes things where you need people from different sectors coming together or you need people from that division in that division to work together or there's something involving a lot of money or other resources or there's a huge reputational hit at stake or some really big strategic advantage to be gained if we're able to work together well.

And I love being at the ground level when those are building up. I think people tend to underestimate the importance of some of that ground setting. So I often get called in when things start to fall apart. So I do both some of the crisis management of getting a collaboration back on track though I really love being there at the ground floor to help build it and to build it well.

Stephen Matini: Does it ever happen to you as a result of your commitment, of your work, that your energy gets depleted. If if that happens to you, when you feel down, is there anything you do in order to bring yourself up?

Deb Mashek: It really does get hard. I mean if it was easy, everybody would do it. And if it was easy, everybody would do it in a sustainable positive way. But they don't because it's hard. And I think it's worthy of that hardness because, and this is one of the things I do to bring myself back up is I, I ask, so why is it worth it?

Why is what we're trying to do worth this slog worth, this incredible activation energy that we're putting into it to get this thing rolling? And for me that's very uplifting because I can see like this thing we're trying to do together could not exist unless we were doing it together. It's worth it because it's gonna solve a big problem in the world. It's going to offer a really cool innovation that's gonna bring in a heck of a lot of money for the company.

If we can figure out how to work better together, we're gonna end up with staff who are more engaged and more constructive. They're gonna stick around longer. So there's like this more morale and wellbeing argument. So whether it's timelines or bottom lines or wellbeing or innovation, this collaboration thing really matters. And that to me is very uplifting.

The other thing I do when it really, really gets challenging is I go into my hidey hole and hide out and be alone for a little bit to re-energize. So as that whole together apart thing again too, where you need the separateness in order to do together well.

People are messy, we're all messy, we're inconsistent, we're unpredictable. Things trigger us, different needs will be activated at any particular time and it might change over the day or over the week or over the month. And so there are so many moving parts. And to to care enough about not just the individuals who are involved, but also the project or program or service, whatever it is you're trying to create, to be able to track all of that movement and then optimize your engagement.

Stephen Matini: We talked about so many different things. Is there anything that would be important in your opinion for our listeners to take away from this conversation? Out of all the things we talked about?

Deb Mashek: Ask for input on how you are as a collaborator. Ask your direct reports, ask your supervisor, ask your peers, what is it like to work with me and what would be helpful if I did differently or better would make it easier for us to work together. I think that's important.

And then along those same lines is take seriously your professional development and this whole collaboration thing. So whether you're a top executive or the brand new individual contributor, chances are you haven't learned as much as you could or will need to learn ultimately in this domain that that's gonna make you just even more of a rockstar than you already are.

So it's worth it to invest in in that development. So you benefit your team benefits your organization does. And I would say society as a whole does when we can work better together.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for sharing your ideas, your hard research, your experiences. This is really, really, really great. Thank you.

Deb Mashek: My pleasure.

View Details

Michael Sjostedt is a wellness facilitator who uses art-making for self-reflection, personal growth, and team dynamics.

Our conversation explores how engaging in creative activities can help individuals and teams better understand their thought patterns, deal with perfectionism, manage stress, and enhance communication.

Michael highlights the importance of self-awareness and the value of using creative exercises to improve our approach to work and life.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

ALYGN Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#michaelsjostedt #artmaking #making #emotionalintelligence #cutloose #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: What is your first memory of Art? Of Art making?

Michael Sjostedt: My very, very first memory of art making was in the early eighties elementary school. I don't remember the exact age, but I was drawing schematics of underground homes, 'cause I watched this show Omni, it was a science show and they were doing a piece on underground homes and how much better they are. And it was so modern and so cool.

And I would take huge sheets of paper and draw like a dome. And then I would draw a line as like, here's the ground. And then I would draw the house under it. So it was basically almost like a dollhouse. If you looked at a dollhouse and opened up. It's just got all the different rooms that you can see sliced up. And so that's what I would do. And the top dome was always like my sunroom. So I always have a lounger in there with me on it. But they were ridiculous. They were fun. And that was a very early sign that I was very into design, modernism, new ways of being.

So in the early nineties, clay beads were huge. Kids would wear 'em at concerts, buy 'em at bead shops were huge in the early nineties. So a friend of mine taught me how to make them. And at first I wasn't very good. Everyone else had kind of gotten the process down and I was a little sloppy. But the process itself was still very meditative. There was a start, a middle and an end. And yet within all of that timeframe you could be very creative, you could try all kinds of different designs.

And within a few months I showed the same friends what I had made. They're like, what have you been doing? They're like, are you working 24/7 on this? I'm like kind of, I was so into the , contemplative aspect of it. It was the most satisfying thing I'd I'd ever done at that point. And from there people are like, wow, that's incredible. I wanna buy one. I'm like, oh cool.

And at the high point, I was 19, I had no business training, I just had a natural instinct for this. And it happened at a good time because it was like the start of summer school break. So I would make these beads, mass produce them for like eight to 10 hours a day, listen to music and just pump 'em out.

And then I would take a day and hit the road and go to a town that was, had bead shops or other stuff going on. And I would get accounts. So at the high point I had 14 wholesale accounts. I had custom orders. I was teaching monthly classes at an art supply store. I was vending at fairs, I was smuggling necklaces into Lollapalooza and other concerts. I would pull out my necklaces, you know, from my cargo shorts, wave 'em around.

It was such a good overall learning experience. Something you can never learn in school. One thing I really took away from that too is that if you really want to learn something, you really have to do it yourself. You just have to mess around, give yourself time, give yourself space. And if you still love it, it's gonna improve.

Stephen Matini: I think that a lot of people are so afraid is, is this gonna work? It's not gonna work. That they simply do not think that it's a process. What have you witnessed working with people and helping them, using art making?

Michael Sjostedt: What I've seen in recent workshops, I've taught, I'll provide an exercise and people will just start messing around because to them it's low stakes. We're just cutting a paper, we're having a good time and we're experimenting.

And they're like, oh my god, what is this? If the combination of elements isn't what they're used to and they start messing around and they don't like it, they literally hold their heads. They're like, oh my God, I can't do this.

And that negative self-talk could have a perfectionistic voice to it or a tone to it, but it could also just be, I don't know how to start. This is so new to me, I don't know where to begin.

And so I often have to quickly identify that. And so I ask questions, I'm like, okay, tell me what's going on, what isn't working for you? And I, I stick with what's in front of them. I don't get into their head, you know, I'm like, what are you thinking? Because that comes out by what they're saying. So you really have to listen.

You kind of have to like bring people back down 'cause they're really in their head and it, it's a good reminder. Like these low stakes workshops are such an eye into how we operate into how we think and how we talk to ourselves, our narratives.

If you could examine this reaction that people are having, you know, if they can self-examine when they're in this moment, when they're feeling this build that self-awareness muscle up, then they take it into a higher stakes environment like their job or their work.

So if you can take this self-awareness into your other parts of your life and talk yourself off a ledge, you could make your life easier. You know, it doesn't have to be this fraught, I need to quit. This is terrible kind of stuff.

So workshops like this are so helpful. And I'm not saying you have a breakthrough with every workshop or you have a meltdown or any of that stuff, but they do happen.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you say, it sounds that your workshops become some sort of a mirror in which people can see themselves. What makes you different compared to other facilitators?

Michael Sjostedt: First and foremost, the name of the workshop is called Cut Loose. And the whole concept is to come and have fun and to do something new, try something new.

The MoMA and the Mat are not gonna be calling you after the workshop, so lower your expectations. You know, it's really just an exercise to do something new and fun and to take a digital break, take a break from real life use art making as like a contemplative, meditative process. There's many ways to meditate.

When I work with the class, I give them exercises, but I let them, there's room for interpretation. Some people love that. Some people are like, wait, what are the rules? I need the rules. Working with those people are really interesting 'cause I could be that way too. I'm like, I need to know if you have an expectation, I need to, I need to know what the things are. It's interesting to work with so many different personalities and to be able to kind of accommodate the different personalities.

So what I do is after we we're done an exercise, I, I'll kind of eyeball a few students who have very interesting interpretations of the exercise and I'll show it to the class with their permission and talk about what I like about this and talk with the student about what they were thinking, how they feel about the outcome.

And to show the other students, here's another way to think about using these materials. Like I like how they use this design element. I liked how they use this face or this color and really talk about it.

So different things come up for different people, you know, other people have mentioned difficult things that they're going through. And one woman said in a, in a recent class, she goes, I'm gonna start collage journaling because she's navigating a complicated life transition right now and talk therapy is involved in in her transition.

But there was something about making without any heavy expectations of this needs to be presented in a certain way. It's really just using, making as a tool to work through whatever's going on, but also to take an active break for yourself.

Stephen Matini: I think it's wonderful and it's wonderful because I think it's quite applicable also working with organizations and teams and managers. You, you told me in the past that sometimes you do use this approach, you know, in a more work type of context. Do the same rules apply or have you noticed any other type of dynamics?

Michael Sjostedt: If you're burned out or if you're stressed or if you're under the gun or if you're dealing with difficult personalities, whether it be coworkers or clients or whatever, that combination can be very tricky. Talking about what, what you're dealing with, with whomever, you, your supervisor or a colleague or something.

Don't wait until you are telling yourself, this stinks, I quit, I hate them. If you jump right into the negative consequences a result or, or really attach yourself to the negative narratives around what you're feeling, it makes it that much harder to get out of the situation that you're in.

So really developing a practice that helps you shine a light on your negative narratives, especially if you take yourself out of the work environment and give yourself a, a creative exercise.

You know, this is where HR and wellness folks and activity directors and you know, anyone who's, who's working on morale on teams, this is a good exercise because yes, it's a, it's a chill break. You get to chill out but also things will come up and you, and you have to be ready to respond to that. And you're like, oh, that's interesting, that narrative, maybe write that down. You know? And that's something I do in my workshops too. I have people write down how they're feeling before, during, and after the workshop.

I really got to notice how I think about thinking or how your narrative is so deep and ingrained and not questioned. It's just habitual. These workshops are a speed bump. They're a pause because you're out of your element. The narrative is that much closer to the top. It's more conscious. It's not this subconscious thing. And so you're able to identify and hear it better and name it. And if you can do that, have more of these speed bumps and build up that habit and those and those exercises, your day-to-day can be a lot easier.

You really kind of have to really evaluate how you talk to yourself and what your narrative is. And if there's a certain slant of perfectionism or negative self-talk or passive aggressive or, or whatever it is that's gonna make your life that much easier. You're going to recognize the patterns and recognizing those patterns just allow you to then question or shift.

I was also thinking of how difficult feedback can be receiving feedback and receiving feedback. If you've already got a predilection of beating yourself up of perfectionism coupled with not knowing where to start, that's a deadly combo. And a blank page can be really deadly.

It's really hard to look at that and get what's in your head onto there. And that's why creative making and exercises is so helpful to tell yourself, okay, here's a blank piece of paper. I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes. I'm gonna cut up a bunch of images, I'm gonna put 'em together and just see what happens.

And then you kind of look at that experience and you're like, I did it. I got something down. And that's a starting point. You started, you didn't just sit and ruminate at a blank page. You weren't paralyzed by like all the flooding of things.

So a blank piece of paper will always be in front of you in life no matter what you're doing. Getting unstuck is tricky given all that else is going on in your life and your in your mind. So to give yourself some space, give yourself a break and go and go easy on yourself when you're starting, the experience will be that much better. You'll be able to develop that habit of going easy on yourself when you're doing something and hopefully the end result will be better than expected. You've got a different mindset, you've got a different energy that you, you put into these exercises.

And that's really what I'm starting to realize when I work with students is develop these speed bumps for yourself. Develop an awareness tool of how you talk to yourself.

You know, they're really sitting and meditating, you know, or listening to a guided of meditation or, or being by yourself is great too. Having a contemplative practice is great, exercising is great, taking a break, whatever that means is great. But a, a form of creative rest, which I like to call this ,making with a clear start, middle and end without any big expectations other than the joy of the process. And to really kind of examine before, during, and after of what's been going on, what's been the shift.

And if you don't take time to stop and question how am I talking to myself, you're not really gonna change. You're not really gonna evolve. But it really does come down to how you notice what you're saying to yourself and what you do with that information.

Stephen Matini: When you facilitate these workshops, you know, you are basically their catalyst, you know you are their Dumbledore. What would you say that a manager could learn from your experience as a facilitator of these workshops?

Michael Sjostedt: Switch up the questions that you ask, especially if you're working with someone that you're frustrated with. If what you're communicating isn't clicking, think about the questions you ask yourself. Switch that around and listen for any questions that are accusatory. Why didn't you do this? Why isn't this happening? Blah blah blah. That will shut the other person down.

Really question your own narrative around what's going on. Question the questions that you're coming up with in your head and try to take the person out of the project. If they deliver something that isn't what was to spec or on the brief or what was needed, et cetera, et cetera. Just look at the work. Don't look at the person at first.

There may be a time where you do have to look at the person and that's another story. But even that can be done in a more human way.

But look at the work and be like, tell me about the start, the middle, the finish. What were the elements? What were the components? What was going on? Interesting how we landed here, could we talk about that? It's really how you communicate about the project versus, there you go again, I told you blah, blah. You know, getting into bad parent accusatory thing.

And so how exercises like making like a workshop with your team can be helpful because it can kind of spotlight team dynamics and it can spotlight how people think.

You know, it can, because when people are at work, they're also performing.

And so these workshops can kind of make people more real. They're not performing, they're just being themselves having fun.

So questions will come up, narratives will come up, habits will come up, things will just come up as you talk about things. You get to know the person better.

Our dynamic and energy is very interesting. I wonder if we did this instead moving forward for our work projects and what could change and what could shift, you know? So it's kind of like a, it's play, but it's also role playing in a way of what an ideal state could be.

And that's gotta shift in the workplace because how you treat yourself and others makes a huge difference. You get better work out of people, you get better work outta yourself. It's the more enjoyable, the morale's higher, et cetera.

And other things will come up, you know, other things like, oh wow, your energy around this collaboration is kind of interesting. What's the point? What is everyone's bandwidth? What's everyone's mental state? Because you don't want to come in with any expectation that this is the a panacea that this is gonna fix whatever's going on. No, it's just a tool to kind of, it's a speed bump.

Stephen Matini: We talked about so many angles, so many important things. Is there any specific key takeaway, something that you deem for listeners to be really important they should pay attention to?

Michael Sjostedt: When you're embarking on a new creative endeavor, be conscious of how you talk to yourself. Write it down, say it out loud, record it because it's a very interesting view into yourself. It's something you don't do for yourself. It's habitual. And if you're stressed out, if you're burned out, if you're frustrated, how you talk to yourself is gonna affect your energy. It's gonna affect how you think about anything.

It's gonna affect how you communicate with other people. It's gonna affect how you talk to yourself or how you talk about yourself or how you think about a project. But also how making can just kind of help you get unstuck from either habits of perfectionism, habits of not knowing where to start task paralysis, how you manage a creative team or how you manage a project. There's just so many applications. So be conscious and have an intention about here's what I wanna learn about myself when I start this project.

And also be honest with how you feel during and after. And also, collage is just one of many tools. It's just one of many vehicles to do this.

You could do a group cooking class, we're gonna make a loaf of bread together. Take everyday activities. 'cause If you go into an activity already stressed out with this intention of like, this is gonna relax me, you're gonna end up with this burned and then you're like, oh, I suck. I knew it. I'm bad at this. I can't do this. I'm not creative, I, I can't, blah, blah, blah.

You gotta go easy on yourself. Realize that you're stressed out and burned out. Don't put so much weight on the exercise to kind of solve whatever it is is going on. It's a way for you to kind of just take a break and notice what's going on. Again, I don't wanna put too much heaviness onto the act of making or whatever it is you're making, cause again, that can add more stress to someone. But really going with an intention, a light intention to start with. Even of just, I just wanna mess around. I don't care what it looks like after, I just wanna have a good time. But still notice like how you're talking to yourself and what the difference is before, during, and after.

Stephen Matini: Michael, Thank you for our conversation because for me it's a speed bump today.

Michael Sjostedt: Great.

Stephen Matini: It is, thank you. I've learned a lot.

View Details

Seth Freeman is an award-winning negotiation and conflict management professor at New York University and Columbia University.

In his book, "15 Tools to Turn the Tide- A Step-by-Step Playbook for Empowered Negotiating," Seth provides practical tools to navigate conflicts effectively, guiding individuals to create value, strengthen relationships, and approach negotiations with empathy.

In the episode, Seth emphasizes "winning warmly," ensuring that negotiators can achieve their goals while considering the other party's needs. Seth believes combining strength and kindness can lead to better outcomes in conflict resolution, even when disagreements remain.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

ALYGN Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen

#sethfreeman #15toolstoturnthetide #negotiation #conflict #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

...

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When did you decide what you wanted to pursue professionally? Is that something you've always known or unfolded over your time?

Seth Freeman: Well, as I often say, I used to practice corporate law. Now I enjoy my life. I was a very unhappy corporate lawyer for six years, and through a series of life events, I found myself trying just as an experiment to teach a class to paralegals on securities regulation.

Nobody wants to learn securities regulation, so I made it a little fun and they loved it and I loved it. And that was a revelation. I said, well, all right, I'll do it again. And ditto. And then I said, well, maybe I could teach corporate law and ditto. And now I've got a stack of reviews of students who said this was really great. So I started to pursue it, and that led me to Fordham Business School and I taught there.

And along the way I became pa interested in mediation, which led me to teaching negotiation. And that led me to teach at New York University, and that led me to teach at Columbia, and that led me to teach around the world.

Stephen Matini: So what, what do you think that was missing, like at the time that you were not having fun?

Seth Freeman: Well, I think I had to unlearn some things. I think I had understood that the purpose of work is to work more, and that you can get interested in anything. And so just find whatever's enjoyable about it and find something that you're reasonably okay with and just, you know, do it and don't, you know, don't worry about trying to find your calling or anything like that. And all of that proved to be in my hands, very unhelpful. And I was chronically miserable and I felt very bad about that.

I said, there must be something wrong with me because I just find this work so boring and stressful and I'm not very good at it. So there must be something wrong with me. And what I now realize is that Albert Einstein's remark is right, you know, he said, if you ask a fish to climb a tree, it's not gonna do very well, but if you put him in the water, it'll swim brilliantly.

That was me. I was definitely doing work that I really wasn't called to do. And this idea of calling became a critical realization. What am I called to do? And that takes some real introspection. It takes some prayer, it takes some, some, some exploration. But what do you know, 30 years later I rejoice in this. The idea of retiring to me sounds awful because I just love doing this.

Stephen Matini: You know, in hindsight it's so much easier to see what happened. So if you had to do it all over again, would you say that could have been possible for you as a younger professional to find out earlier on what your direction could potentially be?

Seth Freeman: Well, I'll answer for myself and separately. For others, for myself, I'm very grateful. I did not know, because what that would've probably meant was I would've sought a PhD and I would've found myself doing some rather obscure scholarship and some rather obscure place and perhaps getting into this work to some degree.

But I wouldn't have been primarily teaching, I would've been mostly focused on scholarship, which I love as an avocation, but I would not want that to be my primary focus. And that is what it is, what it means to be a, a tenure track academic. So it was a, a real mercy for me to discover this indirectly to first get a law degree in practice and discover what I don't enjoy doing. But it turns out that printed on the back of every law degree is a stamp that says good for a second career in academia.

For others, what I would recommend is make little bets, try different things, information interview. And those ultimately proved to be very valuable for me, along with understanding what it means to have a vocation if possible. All that I think would be my advice to others.

Stephen Matini: And then you focus on an area which is not necessarily something that a lot of people love, which is conflict management, negotiation. What was about that area that spoke to you?

Seth Freeman: You know, I took a vocational test when I was a corporate lawyer just to see if somebody had any perspective for me that I had missed. And they said, you have too many interests and abilities, so there's not gonna be one subject or field that will work for you. You're gonna need to basically build a three-legged stool and try to do several different things or take on a an enormous task. And that might occupy your interests and skills better, like say world peace. That was kind of a throwaway line. But here I am 30 years later and it's a term of art that I try to avoid whenever possible.

Cuz world peace can be such a cliche. But how do we get along is such a remarkably rich and varied question. It, you can bring any field of study to bear on it. It's the richness of it, the depth of it, the practical usefulness of it.

I can walk into a kindergarten or I can walk into the United Nations and I have or anything in between and talk with them about what I'm working on, what there is to learn. And they go, yeah, this is useful, this is interesting. Let me tell you my situation.

And as a result, what I'm learning is that it opens almost every door. If you want. If you're interested in psychology, you've got this history, politics, law, economics. This subject covers all bases. So that I think is why it remains so fascinating for me.

And most importantly of all, the sheer joy of seeing people go from being afraid or on the other hand, very arrogant and finding a way to work together with others that's powerful and gentle at the same time is just delicious, to be able to see people create more peace and prosperity and harmony, I never thought I could do that and I could do it. And what a difference that makes.

Stephen Matini: You know, one thing that I've noticed speaking to different guests for the podcast is how, for so many of them, what they decided to pursue was either a response to a problem they had an issue, something that they struggled with, that somehow became their life calling. Do you think that we are better off or what in terms of how we get along as people?

Seth Freeman: Well, there's several ways to answer that. One is that one of the least well known and most astounding developments in your life and mine, is that the world is doing better than we have ever done in our lives.

In 1961, John Kennedy talked about a global alliance north and so east and west that can secure a better life for all mankind against the common enemies of man, tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Now, this is no observation about John Kennedy, it just notes that those goals seem completely unreachable and lofty.

But fast forward to today, and what we discover is that tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself, not withstanding some of the headlines we dread, are actually in better conditions than at any time in human history.

Two billion people have left extreme poverty in the last 20 years. It's unbelievable. Deaths due to disease have fallen off. Literacy rates around the world are way higher than they've ever been. Many diseases have been cured. It just goes on and on and on, and it's just not widely known.

And if you think of all of those as part of what the larger definition of peace is, then things are actually in a better place than you would've ever dreamed. And yes, there's less war and deaths due to war than there've ever been notwithstanding Ukraine, notwithstanding in the Middle East and all and and such, not to trivialize that at all, but in general, we are doing better.

Now, does that mean everything's hunky dory and that I'm out of a job? Absolutely not. Could it change tomorrow? Absolutely. And there are all kinds of interesting questions about why this is so, and you might be familiar with a book by Steven Pinker, “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” And he talks about how the violence has declined for the last 500 years. And just to the point in the Middle Ages in Europe, the murder rate in most villages with something like 70 per hundred thousand, today it's two per hundred thousand. It's unbelievable how violent our ancestors' lives were, and we're not living that way.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think there's so much emphasis on the negative? It's impossible to read the news that all that we hear is just a celebration of negativity.

Seth Freeman: You know, my grandmother used to say, if it makes you happy to be unhappy, you should only be happy. And there can be a tendency for us to court that which makes us unhappy. It may have something to do with story mastery. We feel the need to master something that's disturbing or distressing. We run to it to learn it. And so we don't have to feel the fear anymore. Whereas if something is good, we're kind of almost programmed to go, okay, I don't need to worry about that anymore. And we don't discuss it.

Now that's just one brief level of discussion. It's also the nature of news itself. Not to say anything politically, but the nature of news is something happened that was big and noteworthy and the changed things. And typically it's negative and often explosive things that answered that description.

How did we cure polio? Well, it took years. There were certain people who were key to doing it and they eradicated it around the world over the course of several years or smallpox, but there was no one moment where that happened. And so it's much harder to craft that into a news story.

And so each year I curate a list. I, I usually find it online, something called 99 Good News stories that you didn't hear about. And some of it's a little political, but some of it's really wonderful like science breakthroughs and discoveries and the decline of tyranny, poverty, disease, and war.

And you go, oh my God, why didn't I hear about any of this? Hans Rowling is a demographer from Sweden. He passed away a couple of years ago, but he had a whole thing called the greatest PowerPoint presentation of all time and even wrote a book about it. And it shows how remarkably the world has advanced in the last 20 years. But he found that most western audiences, including journalists and scholars, had no awareness of this. And often when you tested them, they would score worse than chimpanzees.

And the reason is because they're reading the news. So for example, if you read the New York Times, and then I ask you, what's the likelihood if you catch Covid that you will be hospitalized?

The average New York Times reader would say 50%. Turns out the answer is 1.5%. So here's even the New York Times, and yet readers are kind of being led to believe their problem. And I, this is not a comment on how serious or unserious Covid, this is an order of magnitude difference in understanding of what the, the risks are. And it's not specific to the New York Times, it's not specific to that issue.

There are lots of issues I can name where almost every time you have a percentage in the headline, there's some misleading quality to it. And so you have to read with great care and you wanna check the footnotes, you gotta check other voices who has the time for that? And so as a result, we wind up hearing the negative and just assuming it's true,

Stephen Matini: How do you overcome polarization? What could it be a one first, a super small step?

Seth Freeman: If you're asking on a macro level, what can I, or what can you do to change the tenor of the times that we live in, in a great nation like Italy or the United States? I don't think there's a lot, at least in the moment. Although we can certainly plant seeds and we can live a life that looking back we feel glad and and hopeful.

But on a one-to-one basis, I do think there are things one can do. And indeed, I've been teaching one vein of this to my students for the last three or four semesters. And I teach them a very simple method. It's quite counterintuitive. And then send them out and I invite them as an optional assignment to try it to have a, what I call a hot topics conversation about a political issue that they're an eight, nine or ten about.

And that someone in their life is a one, two or three about, you know, opposite sides. They care about it. So there's a lot, there's, there's something at stake. Somebody they very much disagree with, can they talk about it?

I would guess 60 to 80% of the time they come back and say, that went way better than I expected. And it went way better than my counterpart expected. We both enjoyed it. We felt closer to each other afterwards. We didn't necessarily change either's mind, but my counterpart said he was energized, he enjoyed this, he wants to do more of it. And in the process they sometimes say, I learned things. I thought there was no possible thing they could say that would make a difference. And they go, oh my gosh, I learned something. I hear that. And I go, what a delight, what a joy.

And I've seen students do this, literally the world from New York to Pakistan, to Korea, to Haiti, to China. It doesn't matter what the culture is, it doesn't matter what the issue is. They've talked about everything and they've still had these experiences. So it's kinda a test of concept. You can do this and it's not that hard to learn.

Stephen Matini: So basically what is it they did? And they made it possible was about listening? Was about not trying to convince the other person that they should change their mind?

Seth Freeman: Very good. Each of those is part of it. But it really comes down to just three little words. And just as a side note, this is my next book, not the current book or it's part of it, but the three little words that they're using are paraphrase, praise, probe. Lemme say that again. Paraphrase, praise probe.

And the idea is you get onto a hot topic and you start by just listening when the other one is finished talking about his view on the issue, you see, lemme make sure I understand that. And you say back what the other one says, so well that the other one goes exactly.

And then you praise, you actually intentionally highlight something non-obvious that you can truthfully say you learned or appreciate about what the other is saying. Does that mean you're agreeing with them? No, but almost invariably there's something, in fact probably several things that this person has shared that is worthy of praise and that takes a little discipline.

And if there's absolutely nothing, then you go back and say, say more. And eventually you discover, I don't agree with this person, but this person is really caring, really cares about children's safety here. Or this person really cares about justice or this person really cares about the free speech and these are worthy things to care about. Now their conclusion may be opposite line, but those are worthy things to praise so you can praise them.

Then you ask a question, not a prosecutor's question. Isn't it true? But a question that a child would best ask, like, can you help me understand this? Or when you use this word, what do you mean? Or Can you gimme an example? Or how would we falsify that? Or how could we test that in really simple questions? And then you just repeat the process.

Now, eventually you do share your view. By the time you do, you have built such goodwill, such trust, such validation. The other one is interested in reciprocating and you've modeled for them the very kind of conversation that you would like.

And the conversation turns out to be delicious and you can go anywhere you want with it, but it's a lot better than the arguing. And I can speak with some confidence about this cuz I went to argument school or law school and I know that's a great way to alienate people and bother them.

Stephen Matini: Anything you say is very kind and very positive. Would you say that kindness and being positive could be part of these formula on how to negotiate?

Seth Freeman: Paraphrase, praise probe gives you a tool, dare I say it, to structure intentional respect and kindness. The basic thing I teach my students is the goal here is not to change someone's mind, but to touch their heart and to be 3% more loving.

It turns out that that's often one of the best ways to change somebody's mind eventually. And a good example of this is Darryl Davis. Darryl Davis is a 50 something African-American jazz musician, rhythm and blues artist I should say living in southern Maryland. And over the course of about 10 years, he built relationships with a number of members of the Ku Klux Klan. And in one-on-one conversations with them, the way he was with them was such that they left the clan.

In fact, many left the clan. Hundreds left the clan because of the way he was talking with them and essentially doing what what I'm describing. And they would give him their clan outfits and he has a whole closet, dozens, dozens of clan outfits because they renounced their racism and apologized.

And he said, I never ever set out to get any of them to leave the clan. I just wanted to engage with them human being, the human being, and ask them, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And that gradually destroyed their misconceptions.

Stephen Matini: Seth, how do you preserve your energy? Because it's not easy what you do. So how do you stay positive? How do you stay kind, particularly when things get tough?

Seth Freeman: The truth is I'm not up against a lot of toxicity. I'm not up against a lot of animosity. I'm not putting myself onto social media in situations where people are prone to act like snipers. I'm actually in a very fortunate place and I have to speak with respect and humility about those who aren't so fortunate. But I can tell you that there are people who I've had the privilege of getting to know, who are dealing with incredible toxicity and they're succeeding.

That's hostage negotiators. I've had the privilege of getting to know the leaders of the New York Police Department hostage negotiation team, and they've come to my classes, we've had interviews, they're kind of become friends.

They'll tell you that there are specific learnable skills that make a difference. And it can be horrible to be talking to somebody who's got a gunpoint at the head of a 10 year old boy. And yet they succeed. Not always, but they succeed. And how do they cope with it?

Well, they have a team with them. Partly they have training, partly they're doing a lot of the same things that I would, I was just talking about paraphrasing, very big part of it.

And one of the things that's crucial in this work is taking a break. When you're overwhelmed, getting out of there, finding a way to detox is very important. There's an old misquote, never go to bed angry, terrible advice because what's the chance that drunk and exhausted at two in the morning? You and your significant other are gonna work it out. You know, if you're just take a break and you might do much better.

So there's no one thing that can protect one from toxicity, but that's one of the reasons having an array of treatment options is such a big deal.

Stephen Matini: What would it be in your experience the best way to approach that, when you know that you have something that could potentially change things for the better, but you are afraid of voicing them out?

Seth Freeman: In a sense you've just framed the thesis of the book or the challenge that the book seeks to speak to. Sometimes I refer to this as Godzilla. How do you negotiate with Godzilla?

So it may not be somebody who's mean, but somebody who is so powerful that it feels like I'm Bambi and he's just gonna crush me. How do I actually engage with this person in a way that's gonna be at least have a chance of being constructive and successful.

In a sense, every tool in the book is designed to help with that. I'll start with the very first one. I had a student who got a phone call from her client, biggest client of her, of her company, represented by a woman named Brenda.

And Brenda said, hi Janice, how's the project going? Oh, it's going great. We're gonna have it for you when you asked in 60 days. Yeah, that's what we're calling about. We need it in 30 days.

And she says, I really don't think that's gonna be possible. Would you please check cuz we really need it checks? No chance comes back, says, I checked, there's really no way she's not happy. Brenda's not happy. She says, all right. She hangs up. Long story short, her boss calls and says, if you don't give us this project in 30 days, you're gonna lose us. And with that, the company would die itself and the boss has no idea what to do. And Janice is with him when that call comes in and she says, tell him you'll call him back. Okay, but you're gonna have to come back in 20 minutes.

Okay, so now we've got Janice and her boss and the boss calls everyone else in and says, we've gotta do this, we've gotta get this done in 30 days. And everyone, but Janice says, we can't.

The boss says, you've got to can't got to, can't got to. They're in a classic impasse and the clock is running. Now what would you do in a situation like this? That's the very question you're asking me, Stephen, what would you say to your boss? Your boss is clearly freaked out and essentially his boss is freaked out what to do?

Well, what Janice did was to deploy the first tool of the book and it transformed the problem from an impasse to a dare I say it, a negotiation that allowed them to develop a counter offer. And the counter offer was so satisfying to the client that the client said, you guys are rock stars.

You're gonna get more business from us a lot more cuz you're fantastic. And the calls ended happily. Janice was a hero. How do you do that? Well, I couldn't do that in a crisis by myself. But what Janice used essentially was the first tool of the book. And the first tool of the book is the key to solving that kind of a problem.

Stephen Matini: When I looked at your book, how did you come up with such a great name for every single chapter? Because none of them is what you would think a book on negotiation is, you know. How did you come up with these great names?

Seth Freeman: Well, it's very, very kind of you and I'm pleased to hear you feel that way. That was not what I came up with. My editors said come up with something short, pithy and catchy. And I said all right, so, I came up with these things. Yes, he said, that’s what I want.

Stephen Matini: ”Decide with three birds in the bush;” What is that about?

Seth Freeman: That is a tool that's designed to answer the biggest, the most frequent question I get from students during interview season. And that is, professor, I've got one job offer. It's not very good. I have till Friday to get back to them. I don't expect to have another offer anytime soon, but I really don't think it's a good offer. What should I do? Do I have to take it?

And that reveals a real flaw in what we negotiation instructors teach. What we teach is that when you're in a situation like that, you should develop your BATNA and that means your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. The only problem with that, although it's good advice on its face, you do research, you get creative, you come up with something that makes you stronger, that's great, but I don't have time for that.

I've got till Friday and I've been looking and I haven't gotten, you know, maybe in a, in, you know, a month or two, but I got nothing right now. So what that implies is that you should take any darn offer if you got nothing else. Cuz the conventional wisdom is you walk away if and when your BATNA is better. But here your BATNA is zero. Does that mean you should take an offer for a dollar a year? Obviously not. But what do you do?

So the tool you're asking about is designed to help better answer that question. And in essence what it's asking is, alright, you have a bird in the hand, right? But what if it's reasonably likely that in the next two, three or four months you could very well get three birds in the bush, should you let go of that first bird?

And the answer is, well, very possibly yes. And the tool walks you through a systematic way to wisely discern what your likely near future prospects are and to discount them in a way that recognizes both logic and the human heart and the practical wisdom of somebody older, wiser, and smarter than you.

And you put those together and you come up with a good estimate of what I call your notional BATNA. You don't have it now, but in 2, 3, 4 months you may very well. And that's the logic that most business people use to make critical business decisions.

How does a game designer design a game? Very often what they have to do is assume that a microchip will be powerful enough in 18 months to do what it right now can't do. And they build toward that. Now that takes a certain burden of hand three in the bush way of thinking. And there's a lot of decision science that's designed to help you think this way too. And what I've done is adapt all that into this tool.

Stephen Matini: Do you think it's possible to negotiate anything if the other person doesn't sense some sort of humanity on your side?

Seth Freeman: Oh, it's absolutely possible. And one of the reasons why we need to know how to cope is because a highly aggressive or obnoxious or manipulative negotiation practice or conflict management practice is a high risk, high return bet.

It's very risky. It can cripple your reputation, it can alienate people, it can blow up, it can really, I don't recommend it at all. And it's tempting and that's why people do it.

So one of the most scary examples of this is Soviet style bargaining tactics. For example, in June, 1961, John Kennedy goes to meet for the first and only time with his opposite number from the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. And 90 minutes after they first met Kennedy walked out of the room shaking like this, and his, his his aide went, what, what, what?

And he gets into the car and he melts down and he later said this was the worst thing that ever happened to him. John Kennedy, a man who, who nearly died twice in the hospital, a man who was nearly killed in World War II, a man, his brother was killed, his his sister was institutionalized. This was the worst thing. Why?

Cuz Nikita Khrushchev practiced the most aggressive and severe and menacing kind of negotiating practice there is. And it harrowed Kennedy and it can work at least in some ways. So that's why you can't just assume that everyone's gonna be nice. Our goal is to be strong and kind. If you're just kind, you can wind up like Kennedy shaking and ruined. If you're just strong, you can wind up like a, a Soviet premier, you know, just all the strength and and awfulness that comes with that.

But if you know how to combine these seeming opposites, you can be hard on the problems, soft on the person. And that's one of my aspirations for the book. It's certainly not original, but my op my goal is to make that much more operational, to make much more accessible in real time when you most need it.

Stephen Matini: Is there a word to point out what you just said? The strong and the kind.

Seth Freeman: There are people who embody this quality. I'm not sure there's a single word for it, but you know, the people who I find who are most able to bring these qualities together are people like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. They had this, this remarkable capacity to do both and it seems impossible, but they literally changed the course of history, saved entire nations saved millions of people.

And so it can feel like, well I'm not Martin Luther King, I'm not Nelson Mandela. No, actually you can do what they did on a more local scale. Very much this in the same way, because these are not lofty tasks, these are very accessible tasks, but it takes just a, a little training or a little, you know, some tools to help you do it.

Stephen Matini: Is there any specific hope that you have for readers, for anyone who decides to read your book? Is there anything you would like them to take away?

Seth Freeman: Oh, I'm very ambitious for my readers. Well, as for my students, I end with this, go make me proud. And my intention is for them to do wonderful things. As I often say to my students, and as I might say to my readers, when you win the Nobel Peace Prize, remember me in your speech.

Even that is just a small ambition, truly because I want them to create more peace, prosperity, justice and success for themselves and others in every walk of life. This is something that literally an 11 year old child can, has learned to do and demonstrate remarkable maturity, wisdom, and graciousness in the process.

And I've also seen companies create literally a hundred million dollars in savings in the course of a year, and yet do it in a way that left their suppliers saying, you guys are great. We love you, we wanna work with you more. Seems impossible, right? But there's a word for those sorts of results. And the word is shalom, which is, you know, is a Hebrew word. And it doesn't just mean what we usually think it means that often is translated as peace, but it really means “wholeness” or the full flowering of human potential and the nourishing of human aspiration, harmony, understanding, prosperity, justice.

Seth Freeman: All these things are daily longings. And if you take those lofty words and put 'em aside and you listen for other words that we find in business life, in political life, everyone is longing for these things. They just have different language for it.

But my aspirations for my readers to actually be able to speak to a boss in this way, in a way that might help the day or help the company survive and thrive that can help them talk to friends more lovingly and still nudge them toward a wise and different outcome to discover hidden paths to opportunity that people think are nowhere to be seen.

Stephen Matini: Maybe based on what you said, the word wholeness could be the word that could put together the kindness and the strength. I always had this sense that when two sides are battling, it does require a much larger, holistic vision, you know, to get somewhere else. Because as long as you stay in the little confined space, nothing is gonna happen. So that's a word that somehow really resonates strongly with me.

Seth Freeman: When we're most in conflict, we're most seeing things through a pinhole and we're seeing ourselves and not seeing the other or seeing the other as an adversary and an implacable flow. It was Stalin who famously said, get rid of the person. You get rid of the problem. And so we can usually think of the other person as roadkill. And there's a lot of negotiation advice or wisdom out there that basically nurtures that view. And I wanna be careful here because it's certainly important to advocate for yourself and to claim a goodly portion of the wealth.

And the book very much talks about how to do that. It it actually gives you specific tools so that you can do what I call winning warmly. You can create a lot of wealth and claim a favorable portion of it. That's a wonderful ability too.

And isn't it fantastic that not always, but more often than you might think, we can actually care for the other well as we care for our own people really well. And that's a state of affairs that never ceases to delight me and my, those who I know who do it go, everyone is so much better off.

Stephen Matini: Do you think is it just so happened that your book came out this year? Or is there reason why this year and not two years ago, three years ago, five years ago?

Seth Freeman: The funny thing is that I started writing it as recession was starting up. And this was about three years ago and it was originally titled “Negotiating Recession.” And my agent and editor said, this is a bigger book than that. This is a perennial, this is much more to offer than just in the narrow circumstances where times are tight.

And so we expanded it. So you know, it's not just an economic tide that you wanna turn. There are all kinds of others as well. As long as they're human beings, they'll be, I'll have full employment because conflict is just part of human nature and it really is like fire.

If it's out on your rug, it can burn your house down. But if it's in your fireplace and your stove, it can heat you and, and feed you and help you live. So the question is how do you tend it?

And the tools are probably very timely because certainly people are distressed about all sorts of things right now. And the book can speak directly and immediately to that. But 5, 10, 20 years from now, I have every confidence these tools could still be very useful.

Stephen Matini: So Seth, we talked about different things and there are so many different components, important components about negotiation and conflict management. What would you say that it is the one thing that would be important for our listeners to pay attention to in order to better handle their own conflicts?

Seth Freeman: I’ll run through a few basics that I think you don't need the book by itself to learn. I think many books will tell you there's some key principles. One of course is what you're doing so well and that's listening. There's ways to do it and there are ways to really do it. Actively listening. Preparation, knowing your all, your BATNA. These are principles that you'll find in, in many, many books.

My fascination and what animates the book is not nearly giving people the principles, but doing what you got when you were in school. When you're, when you were in school, your teacher didn't just tell you the alphabet, she didn't just tell you how to read.

She covered the wall with tools, little templates, little mnemonics, little reminders, little charts, little graphs, little things that could remind you to that, that what teachers call scaffold your learning so that you have a structure, a framework that you can take with you that can make it much easier to retain and use this work.

I would say it's those principles, but also crystallized in the form of usable tools or sayings. But that said, I think just transcending any one book, I would say it's a little mind shift from the idea that we are necessarily adversaries to the idea that we actually might just be able to collaborate in ways that we are both happier with. And I'll give you one very specific example.

Consider the supply chain or purchasing agents and suppliers. I was talking with Abe Ashkenazi, who is the head of the Association for Supply Chain Managers and he said, for the last 50 years, purchasing agents have lived by the motto, I gotta get it for a dollar less.

And he said, that method simply won't work today because the supply chain is too complex, it's too fragile, witness Covid and all the upheaval that that's led to. And there are so many ways that that can cripple you, that purchasing agents and suppliers have got to learn a different way.

Well, I actually know consulting firms and my own clients who have learned to do that. They've learned this more, better, different way. And it's literally created billions and billions of dollars in value and much better relations, but it's still a secret.

So in a sense, this idea who cares about nicey nice, this is actually a competitive advantage as well as something that can make you more humane. And I leave it to my listeners and readers to decide, which is more important. But the good news is that you can have both. You can actually thrive and grow more humane in the process.

Stephen Matini: Seth, thank you so much. Conflict is such a, a big part of our lives. That's how we learned. That's how inevitably springs from relationships. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talking to me and to share some bits of, of your book and much more. So my wish for you is for this book to be still relevant 20, 30, 50 years from now.

Seth Freeman: Thank you so much, Stephen. You've been a wonderful interviewer. You've, you've made this a conversation and a delightful one. You've brought out insights that don't usually come out in these sorts of conversations, so I credit you with all that. I you know, blame me for any deficiencies and thank you so much. I've so enjoyed it.

View Details

Frank O'Halloran & Judith Asher are executive coaches and trainers with over 25 years of experience in leadership and communication.

Their podcast ‘What's Next 4 You, launching in early 2024, is a testament to their dedication to helping people perform at their best and to helping younger professionals discover their talents and calling.

Judith and Frank point out that the traditional educational system often neglects essential life skills, such as communication and relationship building, maintaining a positive mindset, cultivating gratitude, and embracing challenges with optimism.

For Judith and Frank, developing good habits that boost productivity, seeking help, learning from mentors, and embracing continuous feedback are essential for constant growth and success.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

ALYGN Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

#frankohalloran #judithasher #whatsnext4you #careerdevelopment #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I want to ask you how, when, the two of you met?

Frank O'Halloran: Judith, how did we meet? I think it was with our babies.

Judith Asher: Yeah. We met as parents, not as professionals.

Stephen Matini: And when did you start working together as professionals instead?

Frank O'Halloran: Judith's husband, George runs a University of Human Rights on the Lido and he asked if I would come and give three lectures on communicating to the master degree students. I did and Judith came along and listened to each one of the three lectures.

My client needed me to bring another trainer with me for one of the sessions that I was doing for them in a little town near Barcelona. Judith and I were taking our babies in their carriages over a bridge and she just happened to say, “Hey, how's work going?” And I said, I'm a little upset because I can't find someone to bring with me to do this training in Barcelona.

And I looked at her and I said, but you could come and do it with me. We have 30 days. You just have to do exactly what I say. And of course, Judith was a natural at this, so she did really well on her first time out. Then the rest is history. We've been working together ever since and now the babies are 20 years old.

Stephen Matini: Oh wow. So it's been a while now.

Frank O'Halloran: A long time, like 19 years we've been working together.

Stephen Matini: Oh wow. That's a long time. So, and now your last project together, it's the podcast. When is it gonna come out?

Judith Asher: The plan is to have it launched sometime in the early autumn. We are working actively on setting up a bank of interviews, getting things all lined up. So we've started actually producing it, but we're not going to have it go live for another couple of months.

Stephen Matini: So the name is “What's next for you?” Was it hard to find this name?

Judith Asher: Oh yeah. It's hard to find a good name. For us, we were first inclined to go for something that involved the word career, you know, like looking for a new career, how to find your best career. That was a big part of the idea. But then after talking to some various friends and thinking it over between the two of us, we realized that actually people don't have careers like they used to.

And just the idea of a career is this notion of like the “posto fisso,” as we would say in Italy, you know, that you find one thing and that's the thing you do and you're gonna do it forever. Just find that one job you can do and repeat for 50 years.

But now it's not about that. It's actually more what's next for you. Like what are you doing now and what could it be? And you have to be adaptable. And it clicked that it made more sense really for the point we wanted to make.

Stephen Matini: Of all possible topics that you could focus on, why did you choose as your target 18, 33-35 years old, young professionals?

Frank O'Halloran: In our training business. Judith and I work doing soft skills training, mostly communication with corporations that you would know the name of if we mentioned them. And lately we've been working with a lot of young individuals, all right, people in university and people starting their career.

And they get very attached to Judith and I and they ask us very basic questions about, you know, how do I know what careers are out there? How do I know what to say if I go to a networking event, how can I ask somebody to help me out or how do I find a mentor? And if I find one, what do I say to the mentor?

We kept getting all of these questions and to be honest, even our first idea was we should write a book for young people. Then we thought maybe a podcast would be better for them than a book. That's how we switched over to doing a podcast.

Stephen Matini: When both of you were younger, when you were in that situation of not knowing exactly where to go, did you have anyone that somehow was able, was important, someone to look up to that guided you?

Judith Asher: You know, I'll answer for myself that like you Stephen. No, not really. I would've loved it. And you don't know what you don't know, right? So I didn't know that I should even seek that out. The idea of finding a mentor or talking to people, asking what they do, speaking to my friend, you know, my friends' parents or my parents' friends, you know, like sort of just using my own little network.

Just the idea that I even had a network that wasn't the era we lived in. Just kind of feel your way forward. I did an internship when I was in graduate school and the head of the NGO I was working with, she ended up being my mentor, but I was so clueless at the time that I don't think I really even realized she was my mentor. But that's what she was doing and she helped me set me up for what was my first career, which was in the area of public health, which I worked in for many, many years.

Frank O'Halloran: I am a little fortunate because I had lots of people helping me out. I think maybe I just came across as so clueless that all these people I came in contact with said, Frank, let me give you some advice here. Or Frank, did you think about this or did you think about that?

I have been blessed my whole life with people helping me, pointing me in a direction, encouraging me, supporting me. I saved my whole life. It really started when I went to university.

I just, professors and other people I had to work during universities. It was easy. I went to school in Manhattan, in New York City, I worked uptown in an office and I must say everybody just took me under their wing. I wish that kind of thing for everyone.

Stephen Matini: For someone who's clueless, what would you say that could be the first step to take?

Frank O'Halloran: Because I was totally clueless. I grew up in a very poor, in a very poor neighborhood, in a very provincial town. So I was really clueless when I got to New York. And I think for me the thing that helped me the be the most was just to be positive. I would always ask people about what they did and show like a real positive energy towards finding out more.

Stephen Matini: Judy, how would you answer the same question that I asked, you know, to Frank?

Judith Asher: If I go back to that internship, which for me was a turning point in my life, I grew up in Montreal. I did some graduate work in Toronto and then I did an internship in New York City again. And when I got there, this was done unconsciously. I mean, I wasn't planning on doing this. This wasn't a strategy.

We had the first meeting at this NGO for women's reproductive health and rights, which was what was my interest area and what I was studying at the time. And I was in this NGO that I thought was really doing amazing work in the world. I was just so happy to be there. And at the first meeting when they had like the Monday meeting and they introduced the new intern, I said, Hey everyone, you know, I'm Judith. I just want everyone to know I don't know anybody in New York.

Judith Asher: I have no friends, I have no social life, which means I'm pretty well free all the time.

So what I wanted to say was, I'm available to help anybody who needs help with anything. Like here are the few things I'm good at. Like I'm good at editing, I can speak French and English, I can help to pour coffee. I'm, it's no problem.

I'm happy to be the person to show up on a weekend when there's a press conference. You know, get the coffee, get the sandwiches, put the chairs out and like anything really. And then after that I went and I reminded people, oh by the way, do you need help? Or I'd hear someone complaining of being overworked. And I just always continued to say that. And what happened in the end was this was the start of my whole career. I got to know everybody there.

Judith Asher: I got to know what they did. I found it really fun. I got to do a lot of things that were sort of interesting and fun that I otherwise wouldn't have done.

And then eventually the UN called one day and ask the CEO of this organization, listen, we need somebody to come to London, like ASAP, we're shorthanded for a global conference and we just need someone who's flexible, who's willing to do anything. And that's what happened.

I flew to London and that was the start of my international public health career, you know, so really it did come from that giving out of the energy. And also, and this is something Frank likes to talk about and I think he's really right about this, it was also a focus not only on, oh I'm here and I'd like to learn this and I'd like to do that and this is what I wanna suck from all of you.

You know, Frank often talks about like don't only put out in the world what you wanna get from others but what you can give. And even though I sort of had nothing to give cuz I was just very young without any experience, that energy of here, I'm willing to give anything I possibly can. It did come back to give me some good karma.

Stephen Matini: Do you think you can teach energy to people?

Judith Asher: I mean I think you can teach mindset. I think you can give a lot of guidance on what's a good mindset and what's a bad mindset. So if your mindset is everything sucks, there's no opportunities. I'm from a generation that lost two years in Covid and I'm just doomed. If you have that kind of mindset, you give off that energy.

Frank O'Halloran: Yeah, I think you can teach it. And in fact, in all of our classes that we design, we start with the mindset, all right, what's your mindset for negotiating or selling or presenting to people? And I think you can give examples to people of what would be a negative vibration or a positive vibration in certain interactions.

Judith Asher: I'll add just a little comment about all our young clients, the ones in college, the ones in their first stages of their careers, the ones in their twenties. Often when we talk about mindset, people will say after like why didn't nobody ever point this out to me? I have been thinking wrong. Like nobody taught me this. Why are they trying to teach me algebra? This is much more important.

Stephen Matini: People in the future who are going to listen to what's next for you, your podcast, we would you like them to take away?

Frank O'Halloran: We'd like them to take away a few things is one, don't despair. Things work out. And you can control that, to a certain extent by what you do, what you say. And we'd like them to walk away with their mind a little bit expanded about what's out there, what possibilities exist, and real practical examples of how people did it.

Stephen Matini: You think it's harder now for younger professionals to find their way in the world compared to the way it was before, particularly now after Covid?

Judith Asher: I mean a couple of things to say on that. One is, you know, yes, because Covid did put a kind of cork in people's development. So for two years a lot of people who were at the prime of their young lives missed out on some very important experiences. And I don't mean just like the problem with homeschooling and remote learning, I mean those kinds of relational experiences interacting with adults, with professors or you know, in internships or volunteer activities, interacting with peers.

Just so that lack of emotional development has probably set people back in terms of emotional intelligence as well. So that's something to be compensated for. I think young people would do very well to not feel stressed about checking every box as they move forward. You know, I've gotta get to university, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that. But actually to take a little more time for the kind of thing you talked about, Stephen, figuring out what brings you joy, figuring out where you show up at your best.

Judith Asher: So I think that's one point.

And the second point, and then Frank, you can add, it's kind of counterintuitive in a way. You'd think wow, you know, the world is open to me, there's a globalized workforce I can find work anywhere that's amazing. I can work in any time zone, I can go live where I want with remote work.

But as most of us know who are a little older, you know, that much choice is not necessarily a blessing, right? This is for many people, even more complicated because on the one hand I can start thinking people from all over the world can apply for every job on top of it. So there's global competition, they have other skillsets, maybe it's overwhelming the number of possibilities someone can be anything and do anything. It can be even harder than a much more simpler time where you just needed to figure out the thing that could help you make the money you wanted to make to do the things you wanted to do.

Frank O'Halloran: You know, it's like going into a store to buy a bag of potato chips and there's 50 different flavors. , you just sit there for an hour trying to figure out which one you want. That's true. Judith what you said.

I also think that Covid produced the kind of work from home environment that most companies find themselves in. I was just in this big office building in Boston and there was no one there. A friend of mine's son lives alone and in apartment in Brooklyn, he wanted to go back to the office like he wanted to work with his colleagues. So now he goes into the office and nobody's there.

Stephen Matini: The thing is the gap between what colleges teach and what people actually need in order to have a career, it seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of what else can be done in order to make the transition more seamless?

Frank O'Halloran: Stephen, I think there's a lot of things that could be done. I think some universities are really trying to do those things and put people out in work, experience programs, things like that. They set people up for internships.

The thing is that if for, for a university to do that, they have to put a lot of effort into it. It's a big job to do it well. And I know here in Venice where we live, the kids who study “Economia e Commercio” (business), they have to spend, I think it's three or four months or 150 hours working in a company.

So the school will get them an internship doing that. But if they don't take charge of it, the university gets them a job like carrying suitcases in a hotel. They have the program, they have the idea, but they don't put the effort into it. I think more effort could, could be done like that.

And also with companies could benefit more from the internships if they put more effort into really providing the interns with good work experience.

Judith Asher: You know, I, I'll add one thing in. I think those are all important ideas. I'm married to a university professor so I'm keenly aware of some of these things.

I think one of the things that could be done in a positive way is for professors or anyone teaching to take a little bit of time, it probably doesn't require that much time. I mean, I'm thinking about this as I'm saying it, but if there could be some conversation about how what we have learned in this class are transferable skills, what could you do?

Let's just have a big open conversation, a brainstorm activity even. It could be, you know, a kind of lab outside of the normal class time, but explicitly helping people pull out what they've learned, the soft skills, the hard skills, how they could transfer it. Because I think this is what really seems to Frank and I what's missing cuz even young people who have all sorts of talents and skills and abilities, they don't know that their skills and abilities.

Judith Asher: If I was the person who was the one who on my own organized the ski trip at Christmas time, you know the “Settimana Bianca,” do I know that in the work world that's called stakeholder management, you know that I'm happen to be good at that. That I, I love pulling people together, finding a, something that everybody can agree on and executing a project that's called project management.

There are a lot of things that young people are doing both in school and in their extracurricular activities that they don't understand how they can market them, but they are marketable. So I think there's like a little wedge that needs to be placed. So people like you, Stephen, who are teaching of course, maybe the more forward thinking ones can start doing that and then that can rise from above where students say, actually this really worked in this class. Could we have that in every class?

Frank O'Halloran: Well usually what happens in academia is you ha you're being taught by academics now you, you Stephen have business experience and all of that. And then you go in and you teach part-time at a university.

But most professors studied their whole life and then they taught for the rest of their life, right? So they don't have that practical experience and I guess find it challenging or maybe it doesn't even occur to them to try to help the students close that gap.

Stephen Matini: Both of you, you had a lot of experiences with underprivileged kids and communities, throughout your life. Would you say that maybe some of those experiences have been the, the inspiration to what you're doing right now?

Judith Asher: I'll say something first on that. I'd say for myself when I was doing my graduate field work, I lived in Uganda for a year and I did field work like out in the jungle on adolescent reproductive health and rights. And that was a life-changing experience for me to see how questions that are asked everywhere around the world.

And I knew how they were asked in Canada cuz that's where I came from, how they get asked and answered in different cultures and access to information and the lack thereof changes everyone's lives. So that I think has been a big part of everything I've done in both my public health career and my coaching and training career is knowing the value of information and then also knowing the value of the information one has. I'd say that, and then Frank and I, we we take part in a charity project together.

Frank O'Halloran: Student and I and a bunch of our friends put on an English pantomime, which is a musical comedy, which is based on a fairy tale. It's always good versus evil good always wins. The audience participates. There's a sing along, it's full of local jokes. It's about the lowest form of entertainment available to the public.

We put that on every other year in Venice for the babies who have to live with their mothers in prison. Because in Italy, if your mother is a criminal and you're up to seven years old, you have to go live with her because you can't separate the baby from the mother even though the mother is in prison.

So the kids have to live in prison and we have three women on our, my island here, the Giudecca island in Venice, who help these kids to have a normal life. So they take 'em to football, they take 'em to ballet lessons, they take them to school because the government system just doesn't provide that.

Frank O'Halloran: And they get better furniture, better toys, better equipment for them in the school. And we have all of our friends working to put on this show to raise money to help these women.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that is your main drive to start this podcast? Why this podcast? Why this podcast with this soul?

Frank O'Halloran: The main reason is that Judith and I have always had a big affinity for young people. Even though we're parents, we're both very good friends with our children's friends, you know, they come to us, they call us, they ask us for help with this or they talk to us about that. So I think just naturally we have an affinity for young people.

Judith Asher: Now at this point in our careers, after having worked with business leaders and companies of all sorts around the world and really having a global viewpoint on this, we would like to spread some of the information we have, some of the knowledge we have because meeting these young people, hearing how they feel, they're kind of on the sidelines and they don't know how to step into their lives and no one around them is able to help them.

And we feel, oh, like actually we have all kinds of things we can add and we can contribute. And a podcast seemed like a good venue for that. You know, I sometimes think of it as what if I could hold a cocktail party like an “aperitivo” with all the most interesting people that we've had the occasion to meet. Cuz we've heard everybody's career stories along the way.

Judith Asher: What if I could hold that huge cocktail party and invite a whole bunch of young people to just mingle and get to know them and feel in the know that's the image of our podcast to me.

I mean, being happy should be the goal, but I don't think a lot of young people are exposed to that idea. Like, what gives me energy? What do I really love doing? What does bring me a feeling of happiness and then how can I translate that? That is not the criteria most people are thinking they're supposed to apply to themselves.

So it's good to have it. And it doesn't take that much for a young person. I mean, I was young, you know, you guys were young, it's sometimes one person and just their energy, their attitude can spark something in you that you hadn't explored before. So it doesn't take that much to truly change something for somebody.

Frank O'Halloran: Well, no, I was just saying about one of our guests who was sort of stressing out about her career. She was in university and one of her mom's friends said to her, think about something you're interested in that you think you would be happy doing for two years or a year and a half and do that. And she said that took so much weight off her shoulders, it gave her a new way to think about things. I thought that was brilliant, that advice.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything specific that you do to get over your misery? You know, that's the notion of Pity Party Over.

Frank O'Halloran: One is I just read the newspaper and I find out all the horrible things that are going on in the world and these people who are suffering so much. So I just say, all right, knock it off.

And the second thing I do, I, I'm a big meditator. I've been meditating for about 18 years now and part of my meditation has to do with gratitude. And I'll tell you, it makes a huge difference. It doesn't, if you can just list 10 things you're happy about, it changes your whole outlook.

Judith Asher: I agree a hundred percent about the gratitude part. This is a very important life skill. Again, that's not really being taught anywhere unless you happen to listen to some podcasts or seek it out.

You don't hear that that is a life skill. So I'd say gratitude is one, and for me at least, exercise is another one because we talk about that getting into a state of flow, finding yourself just completely present in the moment because anxiety and worry, this is about thinking about something you'd screwed up in the past or something that you fear in the future.

And I think that exercise is like meditation. It's another way to just get outta yourself and be in the moment and then you feel better and you benefit from all those hormones and chemicals in your body on top of it. So I'd say that's probably a big one for most people.

Stephen Matini: So we talked about different important things, for younger people. We talked about the mindset, we talked about positivity, the energy, gaining practical experience and such and such. If I had to ask you, what would you say that there are the five main competencies that now younger people should focus on?

Frank O'Halloran: I would say start with the soft skills and in particular your ability to express yourself. That is something that can serve you in so many different jobs, so many different careers.

Judith Asher: Number two I'll add on are what we would call relational skills. Again, in the soft skills, rap, rapport building, feeling comfortable communicating with other people. And back to your earlier questions, Stephen, I mean post Covid and with the smartphone taking over everyone's lives and how, I mean, young people often they've lost the art of conversation.

It's been a long time that they have been exposed to that. So really learning that it's not just the art of conversation in terms of those, those skills that Frank just mentioned, but also how to build relationships, how to show up and get people to like you and bring your best self forward.

Stephen Matini: I loved when you said gratitude and happiness, which people will not think about, but those are massive skills to have, you know, connected to so many other things and so little we talk about those, but they're imperative, they're really, really, really important.

Frank O'Halloran: Yeah. And you can be grateful for a very simple thing, you know, , it doesn't have to be that you won 18 million euros in the lottery.

The other thing that I would say is to do a little reading. One interesting thing to read about is developing good habits. A habit is not something that's tough for you to do, it's something that's easy for you to do.

So if you put in a little effort, develop good habits, be a little disciplined about it, then that can get you through a lot of difficult times because you can fall back on those good habits of, you know, getting up, being focused, answering the emails when they come, you know, whatever it is that's important for your job.

Judith Asher: Now that I'm hearing us talk about it, you know, some of these things kind of go in conjunction with the others because the most popular course at Yale University is called the Science of Happiness.

It's the most popular course in the history of the entire university. It's so popular that they've done spinoffs online. The teacher, the professor who's this incredible psychologist, she teaches this for high school students now, but there's a reason people are seeking this out if they're exposed to it.

So I think that's just the first point. And my second point was thinking about how things move together. Gratitude, relationship building, happiness. I mean if you get into the habit of telling people that you appreciate something very specific about what they did for you, be that someone in your close circle or someone in your professional circle or student circle, you will see that that boomerangs back to you, right?

Judith Asher: Cuz that helps build relationships. So just being in the right mindset and then, you know, mindset leads to gratitude, leads to learning how to express that.

And that actually you should say those things out loud because they also will help you in the end. They'll help that other person and then that makes you feel happier and then you'll see doors open for you.

So that kind of cycle, again, these are to me the most crucial life skills. I'm trying to teach these to my own children and we're trying to give this off in whatever way we can in the more formal trainings that we do.

And if you, Stephen can give this to your NYU students, again, you know, once they receive it, maybe they'll realize they should get that more as well. And there can be those ripple effects.

Frank O'Halloran: Don't be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes young people think, oh, I'm supposed to know this or I'm supposed to know how to do this. But if you go up to someone and you say, Stephen, I know you've had some experience with this, could I have a coffee with you and could you explain how I should approach this one for, you're probably gonna be very happy to have that coffee. And I think that's a big lesson for kids to learn that you can ask.

Judith Asher: That has something to do also with whatever school system they've grown up in. Cuz as the three of us know, you know, some school systems are a little more authoritarian and young people are not brought up in that system to think, hey, I can approach an adult and say, I don't know something.

Actually it's exact opposite. They think they have to know everything before they can in fact approach an adult. So there is some unlearning that has to be done for some people to be able to feel comfortable even doing that.

Cuz I think, Frank, you're totally right. You know, most people will feel perfectly happy if they're asked for advice and if they don't have time, they'll tell you that I don't have time. And then the la next skill, and the last one I'll add in is learn to not take things personally.

Judith Asher: If you can learn that most things people say to you that are hurtful actually are a them thing and not a you thing. You know, that lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago, and again, that's something I'm trying to teach my kids now because it's, it is a life skill to know that you should not take things personally and even the hate you get online and all of this really, most of it has nothing to do with you.

And if it does have something to do with you, it won't hurt you and upset you. It'll inspire you to change something. So when someone tells you something useful, it should feel bad, good or good, bad rather than just bad.

Stephen Matini: Your podcast, it sounds like a place where people are going to hear a lot of things, they're not conventional. Both of you have had this big career with leaders, you know, training leaders, coaching leaders and such and such. If I had to ask you what is it one thing that you have heard more frequently from leaders, one observation that you have made working alongside so many leaders, what comes to mind?

Frank O'Halloran: For me working with them and one thing that's always impressed me is that when I show up, they want to learn something. Now I can't tell them how to run their companies, but I can help them with different areas of running the company. They have to take care of the whole thing. But when they're very interested and want to learn and realize there are things that they don't know and could learn from me, that I think is a great characteristic.

Judith Asher: I'm gonna add something completely different. I agree Frank with what you say. One thing I hear leaders say is that there is a generation gap between the, like speaking of young people, that there are always going to be generation gaps, but there truly is a generation gap with the post Covid, post smartphone online reality.

That is something that needs to be addressed, not from the top down, but in all directions. So young people themselves have to enter and get into the workforce ready to dialogue with the leaders, to find how can companies be most successful? How can we all be successful in a way that manages that generation gap?

Stephen Matini: My last question to you is for anyone who's gonna listen to this episode, is anything specific that you would like people to take away from our conversation? Something that you think it is important other than listening to your fabulous, “What's next for you” podcast?

Frank O'Halloran: You have the ability to do this and it's not as difficult as you think.

Judith Asher: It's exactly that. And do things, be productive. Do the things you love and don't worry what it's gonna add up to. If you are active with the things that activate you, that is where it will lead you to what you want.

Stephen Matini: No, I'm, I'm really excited about your podcast because it comes from seasoned professionals and a lot of the fact that you're taking really different types of routes. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Frank O'Halloran: Thank you Stephen.

Judith Asher: Thank you Stephen.

View Details

Caitlin Drago is an executive coach who uses improvisation to get people to communicate and work effectively as a team.

Caitlin highlights how the principles of improv, such as yes and..., making each other look good, and building trust, can be applied in business, team dynamics, conflict resolution, and personal interactions.

Caitlin is the founder of Inspire Improv & Coaching Inc. In her book, "Approaching Improv: Communication and Connection in Business and Beyond," Caitlin shares that the principles of improv aren't just for the stage; they have a remarkable impact on improving communication, teamwork, and conflict resolution within organizations.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to overcome long-term challenges and enhance your managerial and leadership skills.

Do you have questions about this episode? Say HI to Stephen Matini via email or LinkedIn.

This episode is brought to you by ALYGN learning and organizational consulting firm specializing in leadership and management development. Sign up for a free Live Session.

#caitlindrago #improv #communication #trust #teamwork #pitypartyover #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When did you develop your interest in acting?

Caitlin Drago: Ooh, that's a good question. The first thing that came to my mind is when I was little, I remember when my mom would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I honestly don't know if I did this out loud or just imagined it in my brain, but I would go through like a commercial for this peanut butter and jelly sandwich and like the different components of it and why it was so great. I should probably ask my parents and Zoom, this all happened in my mind or was I acting this out? So I think that's like the first time that I can pinpoint to where I started acting theater bug.

Stephen Matini: How did your parents react to your desire of pursuing acting? Were they supportive or what?

Caitlin Drago: So my parents were very supportive of my interest in theater and acting when I was in school, in elementary school and high school, I didn't do a lot of theater in school. I was more involved in the Odyssey of the Mind program.

There is a world competition, so it does exist internationally, but basically you have a small group of kids, maybe seven or eight, and you get a problem that you have to quote unquote solve and you make a skit about it and you have different parameters that you have to solve this problem with it and timeframes and budgets and all of that.

So you're making your own eight minute play and then bringing that to competition. And then in high school I did do some more theater in school and did some community theater and things like that. When I was deciding what I wanted to go to college for, my initial thought was to go for music therapy because I was really into music and also really into psychology and human behavior.

And so I thought that was a nice combination. So there was a lot of support around that. And then when I ended up auditioning for different colleges, I got accepted into a lot of the music programs.

But there was one school where they had a music theater program and a music therapy program. And so I thought, Ooh, I'll do a double major. At that particular school I, that was the one place that I didn't get accepted on the music side, but I did get accepted for acting. And so it was one of those, I'll always wonder if I don't try and see what could have been.

And there was a lot of support from my parents there. When I graduated I did a couple of contracts with some children's theaters and then I wanted to be able to, you know, go somewhere, set down some roots and California was it for me.

And I remember my mom saying, you're looking at this through Rose Cut Glasses. Glasses. She's a kindergarten teacher. So she's got those things. And there was still support, but it was just that concern for, you know, I just want my kid to be okay because I didn't have a job lined up or anything like that. I just had a couple of friends who I was getting an apartment with that was understandable. But overall there has always been a lot of support for my different endeavors.

And when I decided to leave my full-time job to start my own business, which was a similar feeling, I'm sure as a parent to your kid saying, Hey, I'm gonna move to la I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but this is what I wanna do. I knew enough about myself and enough about communication at that point where I knew what the natural reaction from a parent would be.

I was a parent at the time, I had a 10 month old and I said right at the top of the conversation, what I need from you is your support and encouragement. And I could feel my mom swallow back all of the things that I'm sure she wanted to say and instead gave me that support and encouragement, which I am ever so grateful for.

Stephen Matini: And so if your kids decided to pursue acting, would you react like your mom?

Caitlin Drago: I hope that I can react like my mom in the second iteration. I also know what it's like to be a mom , so I'm sure that there would be some of that. Yes, I want you to do what makes you happy. I also want you to understand the risk that you are taking.

Stephen Matini: In hindsight, the only route that I believe matters for all of us is the one that once you embark, you will be able to be driven and determined enough to continue despite challenges. And any, any path is challenging. I think it's much harder when you push in a direction that doesn't feel like yours. That's what I had to learn the hard way. So do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?

Caitlin Drago: I think that as I've grown older, I am an introverted extrovert. I do get a lot of energy from talking to people. And if I am working from home all day and don't talk to anyone at the end of the day, do you feel a bit drained? However, if I go out and I'm around a bunch of people or if I'm facilitating something for a full day, I absolutely need to have that recharge time. Nobody talked to me, let me just decompress and be by myself.

Stephen Matini: My surprise when I did a theater was to see how many people, how many actors are very, very shy, very introvert. The stereotype would be, oh, you must love the attention. What has been your experience working with other professionals, other actors?

Caitlin Drago: I would say the majority are probably on that extroverted side. At the same time there are introverts in there and I think part of it is because the real skill that's required of actors is being able to be present and zoning in on the person in front of you. And that's something that both the introverts and extroverts can be capable of and really thrive in.

Stephen Matini: When did you start doing improvisation?

Caitlin Drago: I probably did a workshop somewhere in high school, or you know, even growing up in the summer I went to a camp, it was called Theatrics. And so we would play different theater games and, and so I'm sure that improv was in there just wasn't labeled as such. 'cause We were kids.

Where I really got into improv more in a formal sense was when I lived in Los Angeles and I knew those basics of we say yes and we accept what's put out there and we add onto it. We stay away from no and we try to look for what can work.

When I was at an audition for an improv character at the Universal Studios theme park where we were auditioning and someone yelled out, make each other look good because on stage there were a couple of people who were, you know, just trying to vie for the spotlight 'cause we were auditioning for a job and in doing so they were kind of throwing the other person under the bus.

That idea of make each other look good really clicked because it's like, well of course we can't both be up here fighting for the spotlight. That's not gonna work. It's just gonna make everyone feel uncomfortable. But if we both agree to try to set each other up for success, try to set each other up for a laugh, then we both end up looking really awesome in the end.

And so that was reiterated when I started taking classes at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. And what was interesting was there's four levels and they're like main curriculum. And the first level is fun, you're learning yes. And you're learning how to make each other look good.

And then the second level, you start learning the structure of the Herald, which if you think about it, is kind of like the structure of a sitcom where there's three different stories and they all kind of interconnect.

So you're trying to do all of this with a team and somehow without like having a huddle to the side and figuring out what you're going to do. And that felt like a math class every time I went because there was a formula to it and it felt like your brain was going to explode by the time you left.

But for someone like me who, although I am creative, I do really enjoy having a structure and some parameters to work within, that's where I really thrive. Tell me where the box is, tell me what the rules are and then I can go,

Stephen Matini: If someone feels a super anxious about the idea of trying improvisation, what would you tell them?

Caitlin Drago: I would tell them that it's not about being funny, it's just going to happen because of the rules of improv. And hopefully if you have a great partner, they're gonna be there to support you again, it's not up to you. We're there to make each other look good.

So the more we put our focus on the other person, the less self-conscious we are about ourselves. The other thing is that they're already doing improv all day every day. No one woke up with a script this morning. I don't think, you know, I always say it's just you're sharpening a tool that you already have.

Stephen Matini: So what are the rules of improv? You already mentioned a couple of them, but if you don't mind provide an an overview.

Caitlin Drago: The two main rules are first that you always say yes. And so what that means is if somebody throws out an idea or a concept, you accept that as the idea of the moment and you build on that. So if I were to say, Hey Stephen, I love your red hat, you would say, yes, you love my red hat and I am going to wear it to the picnic this afternoon.

So that's, you know, accepting that that yes, yep, I'm wearing a red hat Now what our natural tendency is as humans is not always to say yes to, especially if it's unexpected or if it's an an idea that's uncomfortable or we're just not really sure how it's going to pan out. We say no and we reason why it's not going to work. Or maybe we don't even listen to the whole thought the other person is putting out there before we squash it.

And so within the world of improv, what that would look like is if I said, oh Stephen, I love your red hat. And you said, I'm not wearing a red hat, I'm not wearing a hat at all. And now you are uncomfortable and I'm uncomfortable. And probably the audience that is watching us is uncomfortable.

And so what improv does is it challenges us to skip over that no reflex and go to yes and at least look for what can work versus what can't work. When we translate that into how that can look in regular conversation, it doesn't have to mean that I'm going to say yes or agree to everything that yes can mean.

Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm present. Yes, I'm listening to you and I'm going to maybe reflect back or validate what you are saying and then I'm going to add on to that conversation instead of trying to push the other agenda that I came into the conversation with or the idea that I'm trying to get through.

The other big rule is that, like we mentioned, we, it's, we're always looking to make each other look good. So when I go out on stage, I'm not thinking, what's the funny thing I'm going to say? Everyone's gonna think I'm hilarious.

And the best improviser here, what we're doing is understanding the strengths of the other people on our team and looking for ways to set them up for a laugh. And so if you've seen an improv show and you see the person who's getting all the laughs, they're a good improviser, but the person who's setting them up for the laughs is the really, really great improviser and that's the kind of person that we wanna be when we're on a team.

Sometimes we think that we have to take on everything ourselves, especially if it's a leader , when there's probably people around us who have special skills and talents and passions that they would love to be able to use.

So it's about being mindful and again, understanding what the strengths are of the people who are around you and what they wanna try and what are the things that they wanna get better at, and giving them opportunities to do that and letting them step into the spotlight and being willing to play a supportive role when necessary.

Again, understanding that if we all do that we can all use our talents and our creativity and our passions and grow and learn. We do it with a little less pressure and a lot more creativity and a bit more fun.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think people so often seem to be so oppositional? You know, it's all about box and divisiveness. Why do you think that is?

Caitlin Drago: I think it's from our survival brain, especially when we are under stress, which the world is a stressful place. And so when we're in that state, especially if our brains are triggered into that fight flight fawn mode, we're built to look for the threat and to see anything, even if it is objectively neutral as a threat or as something that is scary.

And so it's a lot easier to see what's not going to work and to say, no, I'm not comfortable with this. It takes intention to skip over that, no, or acknowledge it and then you know, let it pass.

And to instead choose to look for what could work and to be curious about something rather than squashing it right off the bat. And in doing so, what's really interesting is that by being the person who you know, that if you go to them, they're going to listen to you.

Maybe they're not gonna go along with your idea, but they might ask questions about it, they might help you to find the holes they might, you know, see where what could work there. Through that you're building trust with that person and they know that they can come to you with their great ideas and also with their awful ideas.

And the bonus there is that they're likely going to come to you sooner if there's a problem and sooner like when you can actually do something about it versus being afraid of what your reaction might be. And so putting it off and putting it off until it's gone way too far and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I

Stephen Matini: Think what you do is brilliant because you're describing what any team in any organization should function. You know, when they innovate, when they try to collaborate, when they try to do whatever. What has been your experience about improvisation and using it with managers? How do people react to this amazing tool?

Caitlin Drago: Well, at first when I come in and say, Hey, we're doing improv, people aren't usually, you know, standing on their cheers and cheering. And so it requires that I first start by being really explicit about the purpose and letting everyone know what those guardrails are.

We are here to learn , we're here to connect, we're here to be better communicators. It's something they're already doing. It's not about being funny and there are rules. It's not just going to be a free for all. I'm not going to say, hey, go up there and go.

I also make it a rule that unless I'm asking someone to volunteer to help me show how a game is going to be played or how an exercise is going to work, I don't ask anyone to come up and perform on the spot. We do everything simultaneously in small groups or in pairs.

So nobody has to be worried that, oh no, when am I gonna get called on and I'm gonna have to go up without a script and do this .

Once we put that into practice, once everyone knows what to expect and knows what the rules are and what our purpose is here, then my next order of business is to get people laughing because that's going to help to bring people, you know, if they still are in that fight or flight mode where we can't take in information and everything is a threat, including me as a person in the front of the room, what laughter is going to do is it's going to help to reduce that cortisol, get people connected, activate that part of the brain that allows us to learn and try something new and actually take in new information.

And that's the wonderful, that's the other wonderful piece about improv is that that laughter doesn't end after an initial warmup exercise or whatever.

You know, it continues throughout just because of the nature of improv. Even if we are using situations that hit very close to home that are, you know, so that it's really something that's applicable, they're going to get to practice these concepts to an extreme. And because it's to an extreme, there is probably going to be some silliness in there.

They're also going to be able to decide what they wanna take away and be able to scale that back in a way that makes sense for them. But that laughter is woven throughout so it's keeping our brains open and it's allowing us to learn and connect and build trust and all of those wonderful side effects that laughter can bring to the learning space.

Stephen Matini: Well you train and you work as an actress for a long time, so you are a master in emotional intelligence, you know. Of all professions. I've always seen actors at people, they are such a a people connoisseur because you have to embody a person, you know, more than really any other profession in my opinion. So if someone seems not to be that great in terms of emotional intelligence, you know, for whatever the reason they don't have the great self-awareness or that ability to connect to people, can they still do an improv exercise successfully?

Caitlin Drago: I think so. The improv exercises are a way to gain self-awareness without having it be so pointed or feeling like they're being singled out or attacked. You know, I like using the example of the one word story 'cause it's really simple. It's really easy to envision.

So if you imagine a group of people, they're standing in a circle and they're telling a story going around the circle, each contributing one word at a time. Pretty simple, easy game. They can have fun with it, hopefully things kind of go off the rails a little bit.

Something silly happens, they laugh and at the end we can ask, what did you notice about that experience? What was interesting, what was fun? What was challenging about it? And it's a way for them to notice, oh you know what? I was kind of thinking ahead or I was not paying attention so much to the person before me 'cause I was figuring out what I wanted to put through.

It's a way for them to notice things about themselves. It's an inroad to that empathy and through that to that emotional intelligence without it being something that is so direct, you know, they get to learn through an experience and pull that out themselves.

Stephen Matini: What about using improv, let's say with a team of people that needs to improve a teamwork, let's say, and they have a huge trust issue. Can you still do improv with someone that you don't trust?

Caitlin Drago: Within the confines of a workshop? Yes, because I'm going to make sure that everyone's following the rules so we practice everything to an extreme so they can see what it's like. You know, I really hold everyone to those rules of we're here to make each other look good, we're here to say yes. And they can try that out and see what that looks like, even if it's with someone who they don't feel a lot of trust with.

And maybe through that experience of both of them having to connect with each other, having to be present with one another, and really being held to that idea that I have to listen to what you say, I have to accept it and then I have to add my own idea to what you said that gives them that training ground to maybe start to build some of that trust. I

Stephen Matini: Think everyone should do this thing seriously. I mean, I cannot think of a single person that who would not benefit from it. Have you ever used it with kids?

Caitlin Drago: Oh yeah, , I have two kids. My son asked, what do you do ? And I told, and we played one word story and he really enjoyed it. And you know, when we're in the car, like, mom, can we play one word story? And so, you know, we'll play, but just in terms of some of those practices that aren't so overt, kids come up with lots of ideas.

And especially my eight year old, he's a big ideas kid. I want to foster that creativity and that wonder and that problem solving within him. There are times where he throws out an idea and my initial reaction is absolutely not . But in that moment I have to kind of take a step back and say, okay, what about this might work? Is there a little piece of this that we could agree on and build from?

How can I challenge myself to instead of defaulting to no and making him feel like, oh well anytime I ask mom about anything, she's gonna say no. So I'm just gonna stop eventually. And that's gonna, you know, erode our own trust and our relationship. Where can I look for where the possibilities might be so that we can work together to come up with something that we can both agree upon.

Stephen Matini: Is it possible to improv on a specific issue the team is having? Let's say the team has a dynamic they they cannot quite resolve. It can even be an interpersonal conflict or whatever they might be. Can they use improv as a way to explore possibilities, alternatives, different endings?

Caitlin Drago: I think so. So I have a full program where, you know, we start with the basics of improv and then on top of that we can add on some of those skills that people might already have a basic understanding of like having difficult conversations or giving and receiving feedback and looking at how we can infuse the improv approach in there and make those conversations even more effective.

When it comes to the conflict resolution, I will ask ahead of time for what are some experiences that you've had either with other people on your team or with the people that you serve, either you know, internally or externally.

And let's play with that and see what it looks like if we are defining that mutual goal and then trying to say yes and throughout that conversation. And what is really fun about when those conflicts come up is because people are being forced to say yes and repeat back what they heard and really understand the other person's argument or perspective and then add on their own to that.

A lot of times we skip right over the finger pointing and get right to getting on the same page and trying to have a collaborative conversation to work towards a solution. So that's one answer to the question. I think the other answer to the question is, I like to play a game called worst idea.

And so sometimes when there is an interpersonal conflict or something that people are struggling with, when you ask, okay, well what do we wanna do about this? We have that pressure to come up with the best idea right away. If I say, what is the worst idea that you can come up with?

It gets them so far outside of the box, it's no, I don't want this to be the thing that you're gonna end up doing. Like tell me something that would get us kicked out of the company , you know, what is the worst thing you can think of?

And then from there the challenge is to look for like what's that little piece in there? What is that little spark of maybe an idea that might work? And how do we build on that little spark so that we can gradually work it back to something that might be something that is feasible, but we didn't have to start by coming up with something that was brilliant, we could take that pressure off. And so that's another way to use improv to find out, you know, what those other outside of the box solutions could be to something that feels extra sticky. I

Stephen Matini: Love it because it seems to me that you help people stop being boring adults and to go back to be playful and resourceful and open, which is beautiful, you know, and then somehow at some point we seem to lose it. But for the reason that you pointed out, everything gets so complicated and boring. I wanna ask you, the title of your book is Approaching Improv Communication and Connection in Business And Beyond How the Idea came about.

Caitlin Drago: So I knew that I wanted to write a book for a while. I wasn't exactly sure what, and for a long time I put pressure on myself because I know there's the other books about using improv for communication and its application and business.

And so I thought, okay, I have to come up with something completely different. I was talking to a friend about book writing and you know, shared that the reason that I was feeling stuck was that I thought that it had to be something completely new and novel and you know, I can't write the same book that someone else did and that friend gave me the permission to go for it because it was going to be from my perspective with my stories, with my insights, and specifically for the people who are drawn to me and the way that I teach and speak and relate.

Once I had that permission to, it's okay if it's in a similar vein of other things, it's still yours. I was able to kind of go and ended up really enjoying the process. I, I know that when, when people say like writing about, oh, it's such a drag and it's just, I liked it. Well

Stephen Matini: Probably because you, you were in the process, you were more about enjoying the, the process of learning how to do this rather than the final outcome and whether or not this would've been something amazing, which I think it's the best way to approach any project, you know?

Caitlin Drago: Exactly. Yeah. And I think once, once that lens was put on in terms of think about the person that this is for, who are you trying to help and having it be through that lens of, oh, is this going to be helpful or versus is this going to be brilliant?

Stephen Matini: So let's say I read your book, what do you hope for me to take away from your book?

Caitlin Drago: I hope that you can take away an understanding of those basics of improv. What does it mean to communicate and lead with that yes and mindset and this idea of making each other look good. What are the ramifications of that? How do you exactly do that? Because there's a lot of ripple effects that come from putting that into practice.

And then I want you to, like I mentioned before, to be able to take what you already know about certain communication skills, like giving and receiving feedback, having difficult conversations, communicating through change, and being able to apply the improv approach to those conversations to make them even more effective. And finally, I want you to be able to understand the cultural ramifications of this. What can this look like if it is something that is shared culture wide or you know, company-wide?

And for you to also have some of that encouragement because I know that this is not something that is easy and so I want you to have some encouragement there too. In improv we have this concept called follow the fear. And so it's that idea that, you know, if you have an idea that's a little scary, instead of letting that keep you from doing anything, you step into it anyway and you share it because you need to.

And the reason that I titled it approaching improv is because again, I know that it's not the easiest thing to do , and I wanted to make it something that can be approachable, something that anyone can pick up and take something away from and implement right away.

Stephen Matini: When we talk about improvisation, I assume that always entail to have at least two people that go back and forth, back and forth. Can improvisation be used also with the dialogue that I have with myself?

Caitlin Drago: I think the answer is yes. There's some statistic where if you have an idea or an inspiration and you don't act on it in some way within five seconds it goes.

Stephen Matini: Well, I I experience it every single day because I share with you that I'm writing a book.

Caitlin Drago: Yeah. So in that moment, if you got one of those inspirations and you used this improv approach and said like, yes to this and what, what in this can work and how can I take just a moment to try to build on that idea? What might that look like for your writing process? That can be rhetorical or you can share. It's such

Stephen Matini: A wonderful thing because interestingly enough, in the business world, we love to think in terms of processes and systems and we come up with all sorts of different rules. But life these days moves us so fast that they oftentimes all these systems and the structures are too heavy.

They simply do not react to changes super quickly. And I love what you bring, you really are the Tinkerbell of the corporate world, because everything you say is so applicable to such a wide number of scenarios, you know, from team dynamics to innovation, you name it.

But yeah, I love it. It's a simple structure and then understanding that all of us together bouncing back and forth, we can create something that you know, does not exist, did not exist before. So it's beautiful. So we talked about a lot of different things. If you have to point out to our listeners something that is really dear to you that you hope for them to take away from our improv podcast episode , what would you say?

Caitlin Drago: I think that, you know, especially if you're, if I'm thinking about something that's dear to me, underneath all of this is people connecting through listening. If we could all slow down just a little bit enough to really take in what someone else is saying, again, it doesn't have to be that you agree with everything that person is saying, it's that we look for the humanity in it.

We use our empathy to try to understand what they're saying and to look for some of that common ground, even if it's underneath what they're saying and underneath that, to be able to build connection through listening. And one way to do that is so you can't say yes to something that you didn't hear. And so throughout someone's day, if they were to, you know, go off and take a listen to this and then say, oh, okay, what's something that I can do today?

I would say to look for something that you can say yes to or say yes to a part of. Even if you don't end up doing it, your brain is now focused on the positive and looking for what can work in looking for where you can connect with somebody else. So that would be the, the more practical piece of what they could actually do. Today

Stephen Matini: I'm a huge fan and I hope your book to be a smashing success for everybody to read it. , thank you so much for sharing with me this important conversation. Thank you.

Caitlin Drago: Thank you for having me.

View Details

Delegation is one of the most critical skills for managers, as it creates time for strategic thinking while empowering others to grow.

This episode's guests are Zahra Sbeih and Nourhan Sbeih, SVA Agency's founders, providing professionals with highly skilled virtual assistants to save time, increase productivity, and focus on strategic tasks.

Zahra and Nourhan discuss the struggles when delegating tasks, such as perfectionism, control, and difficulty differentiating between short-term time investment and long-term time-saving benefits.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to overcome long-term challenges and enhance your managerial and leadership skills.

Do you have questions about this episode?

This episode is brought to you by ALYGN learning and organizational consulting firm specializing in leadership and management development. Sign up for a free Live Session.

#zahraSbeih #nourhanSbeih #delegation #virtualassistant #avaagency #beirut #lebanon #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So in terms of your interest, in general, have you had the same interest growing up or not, or were you that different?

Zahra Sbeih: Oh no. Way different.

Nourhan Sbeih: We still don't have the same interests.

Zahra Sbeih: Yeah, we have the same values and sometimes people would tell us that we like talk very similarly to each other because we spend a lot of time together. But in terms of like hobbies and like personality wise, not much similarities there.

Stephen Matini: Where did you get your work ethic from?

Nourhan Sbeih: I've always been very sensitive to consequences and my impact on other people. Taking that into consideration means I'm always kind of sensitive or aware of how my output is being perceived, how I'm making other people's life easier. I know that this is leaning more towards people pleasing, but it's served me well.

I'm setting boundaries in some places, but in terms of performance, I was always aware that I need to be putting out the best image of me, what I feel is the right thing to do.

And so when I got my first job opportunity, I was like I don't need to know what the rules are, all I know is that this output I feel is good. I wanna be perceived as 1, 2, 3. And so I just oriented myself towards that end goal of how I wanna be perceived and it's served me well so far.

Zahra Sbeih: I agree with you but I think there is like also a playing factor when it came to our dad. Our dad is also a business owner. We are amazed by his, like how hardworking he is and his work ethic towards his employees and towards his company and he's just been like a role model to us throughout our lives. I would say I got a bit of her work ethic also.

He's very disciplined and he used to say, if you expect your employees to come to the office early and you're not even that, what are you doing? He was saying you can't preach to them about punctuality or work ethic and you stay in bed till 12:00 pm. So he's always that person that's like you need to kind of match the work that you're preaching.

Stephen Matini: The same thing happened to me. I believe that I'm a combination of my mom and my dad. My father was also a small entrepreneur, you know, he used to import silk from India and from the north of Italy, so it was a distributor.

And my mom, she became eventually basically an HR Director. You know, she studied as a nurse and then she ended up managing a bunch of doctors and nurses, and both of them, the example, their work ethic, you know, how strict and kind they worked with people, you know, still resonate with me every single day. You know? When did your professional path merge into this venture that you have together?

Nourhan Sbeih:: We didn't know at any point that this was going to happen, that this is where we were going to lead a virtual assistance agency. We just knew at a very young age that we wanted to go into business together in the future. We wanted to build something on our own and somehow life ended up here in this career path.

Zahra Sbeih: Although Nourhan has studied law and I've studied economics, it's a bit different than what we currently do in our business. But yeah, funny how life is.

Nourhan Sbeih: You know, this is why we, I think the general advice is don't get too hung up on labors, but I studied a marketing degree. I have to do something with marketing, or I studied law so I have to be a lawyer or I have to do something with my law degree because that would've really shut us off from opportunities.

What helped is that we weren't expecting much when we first started. We were like, well this is a gap in the market that we can possibly adjust with our skills. Should we like try it out, we'll continue on our usual path and we'll see what happens there.

I guess the return was surprising. It, it was really needed. There was a lot of demand in the market and it took over, and keeping yourself flexible in that way to what comes up and where your passion is taking you, where your skillset suddenly that you's also important.

Stephen Matini: That's a good point that I wish more people knew about because a lot of people think in terms of roles as you said, career path rather than focusing on their talents and what resonate with them.

Like myself actually I found it out really later on in my life. You know, I made a lot of I wouldn't say safe choices but very logical choices and only later on I finally said that no, I want to capitalize on something that truly resonate in my heart.

You are an agency that focuses on helping people that really struggle with delegation. What have you learned so far about the struggles that managers go through as far as delegating?

Zahra Sbeih: There are several that come to mind. One of which could be the fact that they feel like they can do it themselves and it's takes a lot of time for them to give it to someone else and teach that person and give them the explicit instruction. They could have done it in that time.

You know, this is one of the things that we hear sometimes. Also like having the sense of like perfectionism and like control. They have a way of doing something and they wanted to, they're just so focused on that process.

So when they do delegate it to a virtual assistant and they see her or him doing it in a different way than they would, they kind of like, no do it in my ways. They're like kind of focused on that.

That's exactly it. Just to elaborate a little bit that the two major issues is they don't differentiate between the time that it took to do this task when they delegate versus how much time they're gonna save later on.

And this is something that early on I tried to explain that delegation is not about on this task right from the start you are saving time, it's a long term investment in your time. It's I'm going to spend more time now explaining my preferences, my workload, but later on I don't have to do this again. So that's the first thing.

And the second is exactly what Zahra said is that they forget that I need to give them the goal, or I need to give them the context. For effective delegation, you're bringing someone in, especially when it comes to SVH, we give them a lot of training and they're, we try to add value. We can't add value if you are also dictating the process because then I won't be able to identify gaps for or opportunities, for optimizing, for streamlining. I'll be able to do it because now I'm following a manual.

That way they're really missing out on what delegation can do for you and your business because that person has a unique perspective and they're creative in their own way and they're a third party so they're not biased to a particular process yet.

And that's why when when they're delegating, tell them don't delegate a task, delegate a responsibility, empower them, give them your goal. So tell them the end result that I want is this. See what you can do with that. And this usually yields best results, gets them to really achieve things. But that takes trust and this is why we focus a lot on building trust with our partners and with our clients.

Stephen Matini: After we record this episode, I'm going to send the audio to Jack, Jack who's my editor and he's fabulous. And we started working recently because I had been editing most episodes myself and then at some point I said, I just cannot continue doing this. I love editing, so much fun, but really it's time consuming. And then you know, I'm not an editor.

I found Jack and when we talked and Jack is gonna listen to this, he's gonna , he's gonna laugh, we discussed about how we're gonna do this and he said, well you can tell me what you want to cut, the edits to be or I can do it. And he said in a way that was so nice, he said, well I would imagine if you're trying to delegate this, you don't want to be the one that tells the editor exactly what to do.

And I said absolutely. And you know what? I don't want this to be exactly the way that I want. I want anyone who contributes to bring some flavors. It doesn't have to be my way. And I have to say the most freeing thing obviously, you know, you have to communicate well, you have to let go.

The control freak in me had to let go, but now you know, I feel fine, you know, I feel I can give it to him and it's something is off and we can discuss it quickly, but it's such a relief. And also I don't feel as lonely, you know, because sometimes the entrepreneurial path can be very lonesome.

Nourhan Sbeih: That's true because a, what we do is also psychological support that emotional support that know, you know with this scope, with your work, with your business, a lot of things come up. Make sure you know, challenges, problems.

Knowing someone is there to give you a hand is super important. There is a flip side to that because there is delegation and that's good and effective and leads to growth. But there is also something that we've also noticed as a problem, which is delegation by abdication and abdication is different from delegation.

You have the flip side of a manager who's controlling and wants to control the entire process and so he's not getting as much result, which is a manager who's telling them, there you go, I'm not gonna look again up until things start falling apart. Why? It's not because that person was not trustworthy, is not skilled or anything of that sort.

But because abdication kind of implies that the manager did not give enough context, is not empowering them, giving them enough accountability and so they're kind of doing it in a non-constructive way. They're removing themselves from the equation and that also does not end well.

So I would say these are like the top three problems that we face when it comes to delegation and that managers usually we give them a heads up like watch out for this, we're optimizing our processes internally but we want you to trust the process and these are the things that we look out for.

Stephen Matini: I love what you said. It's such a good point. It's a crucial point and I call this concept the right distance. It's like you know, you're not too close, so that you micromanage people, you're not too far and you abdicate and it's completely lack of management.

One word that we, we said a bunch of times, we talked about control, you know control, control, control. So if someone is used to do everything herself, whatever for whatever the reason, what would you say that is the first step in order to relinquish some of that control without having a panic attack?

Nourhan Sbeih: Usually what I do, what we do is we tell them no pressure. Tell me what kind of tasks usually are time consuming for you. And we do that audit and then I take one or two that we know that we do really perfectly and that are very deliverable based. So they're not like kind of a recurring task or anything of sort.

So that would be anything from particular design, a particular research data, a video edit, something of that sort. We take this deliverable that we know we do really, really well and we tell her before we start, how about we do this just so that we break this preconceived idea that no one can do it as well as I.

Particularly when it comes to like a creative task, that's where we find the most hesitation because it's so subjective. So with these tasks I like to start with them to break that barrier because I check what they used to do, just so I get a sense of their preference and then we assign a VA (Virtual Assistant), we're so blessed, we've doing amazing.

And that usually does the trick, and then later on the things that are recurring, representing them in communication, so, community management, email handling, these are also always the most stressful things to delegate.

And what we start with is, hey, how about we do a guide for you, as if this guide based on our conversations with you and what you want and previous emails that you have, lemme create a guide that has your total standardization of recurring messages, recurring emails, so that we prep templates for you.

And that also gets them more warmed up to the idea of delegating because they already approved a scenario.

This is a like don't overwhelm I guess the client or the manager by taking everything in one go and jumping into it, because then psychologically, even if the output is good, there's resistance to accepting it, we take it slow and we take deliverable base first. Things that are recurring and subjective and personal, sorry. We create some standardization, some templates, some guidelines and that also warms them up to the idea.

Stephen Matini: So basically you are a psychologists of some sort.

Nourhan Sbeih: I swear I used to say this all the time because it really does matter a lot. We're working with humans not only internally with our VAs, but we're also working with humans who are stressed out, who are overwhelmed, who are super ambitious and overachievers.

They have a lot to deal with, not just externally but internally that they're struggling with. So all these different dynamics we've had to learn over time how to navigate all of it. You know, you were talking about empathy earlier, that was the key, that was like the aha moment that we just need to understand that they're going through something and try to fit our support within these circumstances.

Stephen Matini: How do you find the two of you, the right distance between the two of you so that you don't step on each other's feet?

Zahra Sbeih: Well, when we first started we each like assigned responsibility. We knew what our strengths, key strengths are. So for me, for example, it's my people skills. I love to work in a team, I love to work with people. So naturally operations was like my scope, dealing with internally the team and all of that. That was my part.

Nourhan is like a great negotiator, she's a strategist. She comes up with ideas and plans and all of that. So she's the Managing Director. She gets us, the clients, she get comes up with ideas for the growth of the company and all of that.

We manage to like each separate our roles in a way, handle our own responsibilities and consult with each other when needed. And it has worked very smoothly since the start. It's been amazing.

Like we can't step on each other's scopes because our hands run with our own scope. We had to jump into this trust because we're sisters that was very easy. I would say if it's founders that are strangers or even if it's friends, I'd say a contract, a founder's agreement, codifying these things, putting a third like an objective accountability system will do miracles for you and it has nothing to do with your trust to your partner. But starting on that will take into consideration all scenarios that you may face in the future.

Stephen Matini: In Italy, a lot of businesses are family based and then eventually grow, grow, grow, become this big monster. And I've always wondered how people strike a balance, you know, and it must be beautiful to know that someone of your family's right there with you. But at the same time, two different level of relationship.

Zahra Sbeih: Nourhan and I have learned to separate like the personnel from the business. So when we're working, we're business partners, we're not sisters and that has helped us like along the way I would say.

Nourhan Sbeih: It wasn't instantaneous, I was over time trial and error and vocalizing our boundaries. Sometimes we're driving back home in the car and Zahra wants to me, she wants to tell me something work related. I'm like, Zahra, my school requires making a lot of big decisions. Like I'm not making a single other decision and Zahra's the same.

Sometimes I'm like discussing to her something that I'm worried about and she's like, I'm outta the office, sorry , check in with me tomorrow morning. So I think your partnership with your team also expressing boundaries and vocalizing those things and not being afraid to do so.

Stephen Matini: Has it always been easy for the two of you vocalizing your boundaries? Because that's something that I had to learn. I mean really I had to learn because I was a mess. Has it always been easy for you?

Zahra Sbeih: To be honest, no, not for me. It takes a type of personality to be able to be that confrontational and to express your boundaries.

Well Nourhan was a natural, like she's very verbal with how she's feeling with how like she communicates. Whereas I not so much, Nourhan has to get the talk out of me at times I'm not very good at it, but I was very lucky and blessed to have like such a partner and sister because she really, she helps me become better to express my boundaries more. She encourages communication, which is always helpful from a partner.

Nourhan Sbeih: Totally right. I've always been the kind of person who doesn't mind confrontation and so I've never ever had an issue with expressing boundaries because I would think whatever reaction they have I'm ready to face. But also what helps if you're on the other side of that spectrum and Zahra is one of them, she's aware of that and she expresses that that hey, I'm not very confrontational.

So we also set up systems for that, which is some recurring check-ins, I've learned and maybe this will help someone who's in a partnership with someone that's not as confrontational. I've learned that when it comes to Zahra, don't ask the big question first, break it down simpler of of cooks her outta her, shell slowly .

So I wouldn't come to Zahra and say, what's upsetting you? Did it bother you that I did this? I would say, how it's your day, how did this thing go? What happened when this person told you this? And so it's like micro questions that add up to her coming outta her shell and then she like just expresses herself. Yeah, but it started with self-awareness. You can't help someone if they're not aware like what the problem is.

Stephen Matini: The one thing I wanna ask you about the whole notion of upskilling, you know, learning within organizations, because oftentimes people get so busy with operational staff that they literally have no time for learning for themselves. Very often they say, yeah, I would love to be more strategic, I would love to be to have more time for this and that, but I, I'm the only dude here. There's nothing I can do. And I believe that one of the most incredible advantages of an agency like yours could be helping people you know. With that, would you mind explaining a little bit more?

Nourhan Sbeih: Actually this is exactly what we put the whole agency on. What happens is, and this is something that we fell into Zahra and I, which is that we have a concept for a business. We start the business and we end up doing the day-to-day tasks, right? We become the technician and our own business.

When we first started, Zahra and I, we got super sucked into this dynamic where we're doing, let's say VA, we were the first VAs in our VA agency and so we're taking on clients until we figure out that this model is working and we're doing the thoughts and we got lost in this for a year and a half.

We were stuck there because then when we were trying to expand on hiring people, we were doing both and we felt like we're too in it to accept. Again, remember when we were talking about the process versus the end result, we were stuck kind of holding onto the process and wanting people to do it.

Just as we have done why we evolved and how our evolution impacted the service that we provide. We try to explain to the entrepreneur that you, what you're contributing to your business is that innovation, that entrepreneurial spirit, your managerial skills. So you'll creating systems, organizing things and your creativity.

Now those three things actually require some space. You require some time to recharge, you require some time to reflect, you require an eagle eye view of things and you're not so in it. And so what we say, Hey, have you been doing enough of this?

What's a time audit like? Like what is your day like? And most of the time it's not. And they freak out when we tell them, hey, schedule some free time. Relax because it's important for your work because there's this culture of if you're not busy all the time, then you're not actually successful in this hustle culture.

So we tell them the VA, you as the entrepreneur and manager of your business, create a system, create an order, that's fine. Focus on that and that will allow your VA the operations of the day-to-day things without any issue. And it will run.

Let's take our business as an example. I know all businesses in the backend kind of look the same. So imagine that Zahra and I were doing the customer service as well as the marketing, that's digital marketing for our agency as well as actually handling client accounts.

When would we have time to network? Think of strategic partners if we need to expand to a new department. And all this requires, you need some space from the day to day because if I'm replying to emails all day, I'm gonna get this false sense of satisfaction that I did something in the long term. I didn't do anything for my business, it wasn't helpful, I did not serve its best interest in the long term.

Zahra Sbeih: This is the difference between like working in the business versus on the business. So in the business is the technician work, it's the day-to-day tasks that are not really contributing to the growth of the company, but whereas working on the business, you're being strategic, you're having a moment to reflect on everything and coming up with the ideas for the growth of the company.

Nourhan Sbeih: And no business can scale by the way or growth. If it relies on your presence, that means you have a job. It's a coincidence that the job, like you're your own boss but then you still have a boss don’t you? Then this is the dynamic that you want. It's probably more stable to go to find yourself a corporate job, right? That shift in our mindset after a year of struggling because it really sucks the passion outta you. That really made all the difference because then we were able to step back and create a business that runs smoothly even if we're not there.

Stephen Matini: You know, while you are talking about is something that I learned, God, after a lifetime of trying millions of different things. I'm kind of thick compared to where you are. But essentially now what I do that works incredibly well for me after trying Excel files, you name it, all kinds of fancy stuff. See this one there's a piece of paper, so it's green and red.

The red stuff is basically the operational stuff, the green stuff is the strategic stuff. And what I do, I do it the night before, literally for one minute and I take like the back of a printed sheet, you know, something that I, I don't want to throw out. So I, I take this sheet, I ripped in four different parts. So the size is this, it has to be this size, it has to contain some information but not that much.

And then a minute, you know, I write and allows me to, okay, tomorrow this is the stuff and this simple distinction red and green allows me to see there's enough strategic stuff where I'm drowning, you know, as you said into operational stuff. Honest to God it works wonders. It's not about managing my schedule, it's super simple a minute and then in my head everything is clear and the following day I go, you know?

Nourhan Sbeih: I love that, that is it. Lemme tell you something, this is it. And if you have a VA, you already did the hard part. Okay, you identified the things that potentially you can delegate later on to your team, to your VA. So yeah, good.

Our whole business is about delegation. Our way of thinking has been conditioned to be as such. So for example, when I'm planning a project, I now automatically plan it again. So I automatically, when I'm writing the project down, I don't get specific, I draw a general map and then later on I duplicate the template.

So there's a template now if I ever have to do this project again and then I get into specifics and delegate it. This takes over time training, but this is the right way to do it. And creating as a business owner systems that you can replicate.

So if your time is really precious and it's, it's especially as a business owner, if you're spending time on something, you have to make sure that you're not gonna do this again if you don't have to.

So if it's a email reply and it's something that you can standardize, save it for later. I love taking notes. If it's a project done, digitize it, replicate it as many times and you can customize later, that's fine. But still you're not starting from scratch.

If you're starting from scratch then you haven't been codifying enough, you haven't been digitizing your life enough these days. It's a waste of opportunity, it's a waste of time. Even if it's a notebook, you don't have to digitize it, but for searchability purposes, my only advice would be open your notes up, keep it digital so that one search button would just bring up whatever to do list that you had that day and maybe you forgot something or anything like that. So it helps. I use every note.

Stephen Matini: What advice would you give to anyone that has been postponing the idea of going after their dream? The dream of you know, being an independent professional, having a company, pursue whichever project, which advice would you give to that person?

Zahra Sbeih: You know, this is something that Nourhan mentioned earlier about overthinking. They should not overthink it, they should just go with it. Go for it because you are gonna like spend, I don't know, a year planning and focusing on the details and just time is running by while someone else is doing the same idea and perfecting it and growing while you're still thinking about the details.

Trial and error has served Nourhan and I along the way. We sometimes went with the flow and and figured things out as we go, but the most important part is that we started, we are trying, you know.

Nourhan Sbeih: And you're never gonna expect how it's going to be like you're never, no matter how many, how smart you're or how much you're prepared or how much advice you get, you are going to make mistakes that later on you're gonna look at and you're like, it was so obvious.

It was obvious. I shoulda done something else. And this is important because when I'm talking to younger entrepreneurs now, yes it's important to have a passion. Yes it's important that you love what you do, but it's also important to know that whether you're working on your own or you're self-employed or an employee, it's always gonna feel like work. Because it's work, it's hard work.

You're not gonna feel the same about it consistently all the time. Sometimes it's gonna bring so many challenges. You're gonna be like, why am I doing this? Why did I put myself in this position? That's fine. Even if you're following your dreams, you're gonna pass through these moments. And I wish that I knew this when I first started so that I'm not, I don't feel like maybe I'm in the wrong place.

I wasn't in the wrong place, I was just not aware that this is normal, that it doesn't feel good all the time. Especially the entrepreneurial journey. I mean the problems that we face, Zahra and I was just super unexpected way beyond what we thought we were able to handle and we handled them and it was okay.

Stephen Matini: It's a process, you know, it's a process that requires getting your hands dirty and trying stuff. I think when I was younger I was mortally afraid of making mistakes, you know, so I definitely, I overthought the whole thing now, you know, maybe because of the experience I not what the heck it is.

I try to approach it as rational as possible and then I think okay, you know, for today this is the best I can do it and maybe it's just stupidest thing as you said and one day I will look back but as of today, this is the best that I can do.

Having this bar, you know, super high, I have to get there and if I don't I'm going to be bad. Such a loser. You know? Now that, well hopefully I will get there. I have a dream, you know, I have a goal like all of us, but I'm more interested in the process and making sure that, am I really enjoying this with all the, you know, tribulations and difficulties? And then the answer is yes. Well then I continue, the answer is no. Well then you know, maybe there are some adjustments.

Nourhan Sbeih: I 1% agree with that, especially the part where you said reflect. If it's no you're not feeling the journey, although sometimes you're not gonna feel it, but if it's been consistently not being felt ,

Stephen Matini: The whole notion of gender and age and any other traits that make us different is something that really doesn't matter. For you considering the context where you grew up in everything, did any of these components matter? The fact that you're a woman, the fact that your age, the where you were born, I mean has any of these things somehow impacted the way you think, the way you are?

Zahra Sbeih: I don't think it directly affected like in a very straightforward way. The fact that we're women or our age played apart. But there were times where we kind of went through things and we had a thought, you know, if we were men, would it have been easier for us. If we were older, would it have been easier that situation? So we wonder at times. I wouldn't say it has a played a part like directly.

There was no roadblock in our way and we're very grateful for that because we live in a time where it's never gonna be a roadblock. There's always another way to make it happen. But something that wasn't very nice to go through. So when we first started we were 22, 23.

In our society it's not really that essential for women to be making something depends on every family. But we weren't raised on the idea that you have to be financially independent, and when we first started we weren't taken seriously whatsoever.

Nourhan Sbeih: I dunno what the reason is. Even from our families, we were like, okay, can we get like some advice or we want advice or anything of that. So we wouldn't even get advice because they'd say like, just go have fun. Instead of us pitching a business idea to capable women pitching a business idea, it was two little girls trying to play office.

That was kind of how we felt in the moment when we were getting this kind of input. Just go have fun, it's fine. So we wouldn't even get advice and that was a tough pill to swallow at the time. Now I think it's because our identity is in our business.

Some people might say that's not a good thing, but we felt like we built something that reflects our values, our work ethic, how we like to do things as well. It's very structured and we have to figure things out from scratch so we, it's not outdated because this is all new answers that we have to come up with, but there's a success story for every gender, for every age.

I wouldn't say that it was an issue, it's just it was a bummer. It was a bummer in some moments, especially when you go into a meeting with a client, they're like taken aback. Oh and you feel like it kind of brought the whole negotiation or the whole deal to a halt, but again, confidence focusing on your value makes you push through and it wasn't a roadblock in any way.

Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you something about the Barkat program because you're part of these fabulous program, which is a social initiative to support female entrepreneurs, you know, in Africa, in the Middle East. How did you come across the program? How did it happen?

Zahra Sbeih: We were in in a, like a WhatsApp group for women leader organization, I'm not sure. So they sent a broadcast about this coaching program called Barkat. It's focused on things that I would want to develop in myself, like leadership skills, also the networking opportunity that would come with it, getting to know other women entrepreneurs in the Lebanon.

So I thought of it as a really good opportunity to maybe apply and see if I get selected because I think they only accept six women. So I applied through the form, I got an interview, I did the interview with Puneet, who's amazing and then I got selected and I was really, really happy for the opportunity. It's going really well.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that has been the biggest contribution so far of the program to you as a female entrepreneur?

Zahra Sbeih: The support system that this program has provided, like getting us six women together in a cohort and getting to know one another, sharing our experience, it's been really enlightening. It makes you feel like you're not in this alone and people are going through the same things as you.

Even though the industries are different and the businesses are completely different, but somehow the core challenges are there for all of us and just having this support system where you could share and get advice has been incredibly helpful. I think this is the main thing that I really loved about the program.

Stephen Matini: When you need to center yourself. We were talking about that before, like you know, carve sometime for yourself. What do you do? Do you meditate? Do you pray? Do you walk in nature? What do you do? What do you need to center yourself and to replenish your energy?

Zahra Sbeih: At times of maybe stress or when I wanna just like take a step back, I would maybe go for a walk. I step away from whatever situation that is causing me any kind of negative feeling. I step away from it, I go, I leave the place, I go and think I sometimes I just listen to music. I like listening to something distracting myself. Could be a podcast, could be music, it could be whatever, an audio book that is usually my way of stepping out. Or alternatively I go to Nourhan like Nourhan, I want to rant , please, let's go have the ranting situation.

Nourhan Sbeih: Definitely us having a mini panic session helping but also like it's relevant not to a particular like crisis moment. Having hobbies is important. Definitely it has kept me sane. So I would say I go to the gym regularly that helps. Exercise is super important. When I move I feel like whatever hormone neurotransmitter, I'm not very sciencey, but whatever is happening that's causing me stress, it's really like flushed out.

I enjoy my reading session so my, I don't have a particular time slot within my day for my reading session. It's more of an intuitive thing. So sometimes I just step aside with my book and I read and that also centers me because I've tried meditation. Have you been there, Stephen? Have you tried meditating?

Stephen Matini: I tried a bunch of them. I've done a lot of mindfulness. The one that I prefer the most are the dynamic meditations. Like, you know, walking in nature, I do it also the static one, but I noticed that eh, just after a while, God I have to stay still, you know, instead nature works wonders with me.

Like even last night I was so miserable, I've been working a bunch of hours, I was tired, I was cranky as hell. Something happened at the end of the day that really upset me. You know, there's this park, you know, close to my house where I go and I go there by myself when there are not many people around and somehow that really does the trick, you know, it just thoughts stop. I start breathing correctly and then my intuition kicks back and then by the end of the walk, all right, it's not that bad.

And the reason I'm asking you is because a lot people feel like meditation or that the classic meditation does not work for them. And I'm one of those people and I really gave it a shot because it's important to kind of declutter your mind in a way.

Nourhan Sbeih: And I found that reading for example, does that. Music does that for Zahra and forcing my brain to focus on this page. And so I am centering myself. People need to also, again, forget about labels, forget about what you're supposed to do, try a bunch of different things and see what works for you.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that we haven't talked about so far that you feel would be important for our listeners to know?

Nourhan Sbeih: Two things. The first thing is when we started working and we work remotely and when you're working remotely with someone, it's way different from working with them in person when there is tone and there is body language and you're not imposing your own disposition onto their disposition.

We were like very put off by the people we're working with communication style. We were put off by their texting style. Maybe they as well felt like we're very remote from them. So we're not really human, we're someone behind the screen. It takes on a different psychology as well when you're dealing with something like that.

And I think what served us really, really well over time is to have that empathy there. That our clients are ambitious, perfectionists, stressed out, overwhelmed, overachievers. And this is a very difficult combination to have. And so sometimes they don't have to send emojis, they don't have to keep complimenting, they're trying to make things happen, they're trying to make mountains move.

Understanding that helped us a lot, especially 80% of our clients are women. And what we noticed is they don't get as much allowance when it comes to not being nice.

Although I swear when it comes to our clients, the men do not even attempt to put on emoji, say a kind word, excessive compliments. Our female clients do that and I've noticed it as a pattern.

But even when they're overwhelmed and they don't do that and the VA might be like, wait, is she being mean? Is she upset? I'm like, listen, this is like kind of societal conditioning on, you have some empathy, she's busy, she's busy, it's remote work, it's normal.

And also on the other side, we also tell our clients there is a human behind the screen that we want you to connect with because support will be different if you connect with, and that's where our whole setup is based on have direct contact, know this person, name, background, preference, whatever, but also set recurring video calls that helps.

And you have direct call access whenever you wanna hear a human to talk to. That impacts overall the dynamic between you. So focusing on people, focusing on empathy, understanding what the other person is going through and how you're meeting them, where they're at at the moment. Circumstances are different, is important.

Zahra Sbeih: I do agree with what Nourhan is saying, it kind of made me think about our relationship or the VA's relationship with the client. Usually we do build a bond with them and the VA becomes kind of like the best friend of the client. And it has happened a few times where the client is like, let's like talk on a personal level, let's keep work aside. I feel like talking to you, getting to know you. So they do build that bond and it helps because sometimes you just want to talk to a human being and it's not all work, work, work.

Stephen Matini: Now, I understand why you talked even last time when we met about empathy, why it is so important. I completely understand it; it's true. It's something that comes up a lot with my job. The misconception people have – "oh, it's not in person." You know, digital is not empathetic. I said, you know, I could not disagree more. If someone doesn't want to be here, it's not, you know, I've had plenty of people in front of me sleeping, during a training to give you an example. Yeah, I think empathy is absolutely important.

Nourhan Sbeih: When it comes to digital work, it's more crucial because you're operating so many preconceived ideas and assumptions, so many that you need to like almost, you feel like you're physically suppressing these assumptions that are coming outta nowhere or she didn't send an emoji this time.

So I feel like she's being rude, when actually the sentences don't impose any assumptions on what you're breathing. And so empathy here is more important so that you give the other person that room to be human.

The second point is, it's okay to ask for help. I need entrepreneurs and ambitious people to hear this. You are not less of a success if you're coming up with ideas and someone is executing them with you. So you're not 24 hours in a day busy doing emails and writing emails and replying to messages and doing these operational things. That doesn't mean you're not successful as an entrepreneur reading your jobs to come up with innovative ideas.

So if you're sending emails all day, doing meetings all day, how are you coming up with these ideas? Don't relate your value to how much you're getting done on your own. And do ask for help. There's no shame in it. Rallying people, empowering them, working with them alongside them is the biggest determiner of success.

I got asked this a lot, which is, what's the key characteristic of your clients that you've seen that determines how successful this client is or ends up being? And I always say that they're a team player, they expect some kind of characteristic that is outside this like super disciplined or incredibly intelligent.

It's literally just someone who works so well with a team who such a good team player and it's very collaborative, she's very collaborative and this really makes all the difference and determines how successful their business ends up being. These are the two things.

Stephen Matini: I have to say that you must have a really great dad and I have to say I don't have kids, you know, but being twice your age, if I had kids, I would love to have two daughters like you. You are awesome.

Zahra Sbeih: That means a lot.

Stephen Matini: I love this conversation we had. I think it's gonna help a ton of people. And I listen to a lot of people and I want just to say that your wisdom is really ageless, you know, it really is. You know, you said a lot of things that will make even more sense with time being someone that talks with a lot of people. I'm really, really so pleased, you know, and I've learned a lot today. Thank you so much.

Nourhan Sbeih: You're gonna make me cry.

View Details

Keith Storace, an Australian psychologist and consultant, shares his experience helping clients overcome limiting beliefs and focusing on the positive to create meaningful lives.

Keith highlights the power of the poetic principle in shaping our reality and emphasizes the importance of authentic relationships in our personal and professional lives. In therapy and leadership, Keith emphasizes the importance of understanding others, embracing their strengths, and fostering meaningful connections.

Keith maintains a Psychology and Consulting Practice at kikuIMAGINATION® working with individuals, couples, families, and groups; conducts seminars and workshops; and consults on mental health, professional development, and leadership.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to overcome long-term challenges and enhance your managerial and leadership skills.

Questions about this episode?

This episode is brought to you by ALYGN learning and organizational consulting firm specializing in leadership and management development. Sign up for a free Live Session.

#keithstorace #positivepsychology #appreciativeinquiry #beliefs #positivity #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Keith. We met at this stage of our lives, right? But as you look back, have you always been this way, the way that I see you? Compassionate, warm.

Keith Storace: I'm reluctant to say yes because it might make me sound as though I am big, noting myself in some way, maybe not in childhood. I dunno if I was as compassionate as I'm now as I was in childhood. 'cause I was too busy being a child and all the great things that come with that.

But I've always wondered about things from a compassionate perspective, and not that that's easy because I think compassion is when you remove yourself from the middle of your life and put someone else there, as temporary as that might be.

My perspective has really been shaped and molded by many wonderful people in my life. I just paid enough attention at the time. I don't know why or how, but I was paying attention to the heart of what they wanted to get across.

Stephen Matini: When did you decide the focus of your career? Did it happen early on? Later on?

Keith Storace: There are a number of things that happened, a sequence of things. It wasn't until I was in my mid to late twenties that I connected the dots and thought I need to pursue psychology.

One of the earliest memories was when I was 14, I read the book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet,, and there's one line in it where someone asks the prophet what is work? And his response, or at least the shrunken version of his response that I remember in my head was work is love made visible.

And I remember thinking at 14 when I read that line, wow, that's what I want. That's the kind of job I want. I had no idea what that looked like, but I love the line work is love made visible. And I wondered, is that possible to have a job where you can do that? What does that look like?

As I grew up, I realized, well, you can enter the religious life, you can work as a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist. You can even do it as a pastry cook. You know, it depends what you are passionate about. That was the beginning of me beginning to wonder about the kind of work I would do.

I wasn't aware of psychology at the time. I didn't know what psychology was. That didn't happen until a few years later when I was in high school. I have this wonderful teacher who asked us, or the assignment for class was we had to come up with a project that was about life. It could be anything. It could be trees, it could be whatever we wanted it to be, but it had to be about life.

And my usual approach to any project or homework was to leave till the last minute. I wasn't very good. I was too busy interested in what adolescents are interested in. So I left it and I realized on the Sunday the day before the project, the assignment was due that I hadn't done anything.

So it was close to midday on the Sunday and I rode my bicycle to the local library, which closed at midday, and I ran in, we didn't have computers back then. I went through the little index cards to try and find something.

And I remembered watching on television a few weeks earlier, a documentary by Jacques Cousteau on “pearls.” And I thought, pearls, that's life. That's about life. I'll write about Pearls. So I couldn't find what I was looking for. I went to the desk, the lady at the library desk announced that the library was closing. I was the only person left.

And I said, I need a book on pearls. And she said, oh, I think we've had one just returned. I got the book, she stamped the little card. I went to my bicycle, sat on retreat, started raining, the library closed, and I started to read this book on pearls. I thought, okay, I need to come up with something for handing in my assignment.

And the book wasn't about pearls as I thought it would be. It was about a man who was called Pearls, but he was the father of Gestalt therapy. So it wasn't a book about pearls, it was about Gestalt therapy. And I was so angry at myself. I had my own mini pity party in my head. I went home, I threw my bike against the garage wall and, and I forgot I had the book in my bag, which was just a very sort of a hessian kind of bag.

It was very soft material bag. And it started raining. And early evening I realized that I'd left the book in the bag and I ran out to get it. It was soaked. And I started crying and my mum overheard and she said, oh, you can use my hair dryer.

So I had this book opening up the book, drying every page. And as I'm drying it, I started reading it. I didn't understand most of what I read, but one thing that really came across the gestalt therapy was saying that we are parts of a whole, our behavior, how we feel isn't looked at in isolation.

So I ended up writing, I dunno how, but I ended up writing a project on people and Gestalt therapy for the assignment. I received an a triple plus, and I had the Gestalt prayer, what they call the Gestalt prayer on the front of the project.

And the teacher had written just underneath the A plus, she wrote a couple of words from the Gestalt prayer, which was, I am me and you are you. If we happen to meet and get along, that's great. If not, that's great as well. And she happened to be of the hippie era. So she really understood what I was trying to get across in my assignment.

But it did a lot for my confidence and the way that I understood community and people. And that was my first inkling that there was something that was called psychology that existed that was in the back of my head and it kept brewing.

You know, there were other incidents that brought me to that conclusion that I really needed to study psychology which I really feared because of the statistics. I was never good at math, but I quickly realized statistics is not mathematics. It's a language. Once you understand it, you can really bring some wonderful information together to make sense of the world.

Stephen Matini: And how did you get closer to positive psychology? Last time when we met, you talked about your reluctance for the word abnormal, which is something that in the industry, in the field is not longer used, you know, in many instances. Did it happen earlier on and later on af after a while that you worked?

Keith Storace: I'd heard about positive psychology, but it really came into being in my own understanding, I guess when I was studying psychology, that early stage of studying psychology where everything was labeled as abnormal, abnormal psychology.

There's a place for that in the scientific world, but we had humanistic psychology. And I didn't really come across positive psychology until I was introduced to appreciative inquiry, because that really focuses on the positive core, the difficulty I had with the term abnormal.

I remember speaking with my supervisor at the time, what happens if a client feels as though they're being labeled as abnormal? You know, they might come across the term. And she challenged me to come up with another term.

And I was sitting in the student cafeteria at university and I overheard one of the students talk about her appreciation for what she's learning. And it dawned on me at that point that appreciation psychology rather than abnormal psychology was a better fit for what i I was concerned about.

And that was way before I came across appreciative inquiry. But when I did come across appreciative inquiry, it was via the five core principles. And that's when I started to understand more about positive psychology. You know, because a lot of people ask me, well, I hear about positive psychology, but where's the therapy?

What's the therapy associated with positive psychology? And I struggled with that as well. You can look at what positive psychology offers, which is people often understand it as well. It's about feeling good and being grateful and looking at the good in things.

And a challenge isn't a problem, it's a challenge or a problem isn't a problem, it's a challenge, all of that. But how do you engage with that in therapy? And that's why the five core principles or the classic principles, that's why I think they're really powerful because that's when I started to, to use those principles in particular in leadership, I began to question whether I couldn't use those somehow in one-on-one therapy.

And that's how I, I started to develop the appreciative Dialogue therapy program with positive psychology. I came to know it because of my question around how do I use positive psychology in therapy? And the answer really came through appreciative inquiry.

Stephen Matini: So for those listeners who do not know, appreciative inquiry belongs to positive psychology. And it's a whole approach that focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses in rather than deficits. What you were mentioning, the five principles, and if I remember correctly, they are constructionist, anticipatory, poetic, simul, , and positive. Are you attached to all five of them? Or, or there's one of the five, the somehow speaks volumes to you.

Keith Storace: They're all fantastic, they're all brilliant and they're all powerful. When they're used together, they're amazing. But the one that stands out for me as a psychologist and as what I learned growing up is the poetic principle.

I often, in my early days of inquiry, I used to say to people, I even wrote this in one, in an article I wrote, what was David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, who, who developed appreciative inquiry back in the eighties, what were they thinking? How did they come up with this? This is exceptionally wonderful. I didn't learn this in psychology.

The poetic principle in particular says that what we focus on becomes our reality. In simple terms, that's, I mean, you can really extrapolate it more than that as a psychologist. More importantly, as a human, I see that at work every day. If you are thinking of something that is on your mind the whole time, if you are working on a dream, that dream is working on you, even when you're asleep, when you move, move deliberately to bring that to life in the world, it's just brilliant.

And for me, the poetic principle stands out because it's really what the Appreciative Dialogue program is about. It's bringing to life in the world. What matters most to individuals. I mean, we've seen it big time post Covid, and we're still feeling the ripple effects of post covid and especially in Melbourne where we had such a long lockdown. In total it was nine months.

But I saw clients through that time, and I always came back to the poetic principle because during Covid and post Covid, what people are talking about is, I don't want to go back to my pre covid life. I, I need to do something different. We've heard about the great resignation globally. I don't think it's about the great resignation, it's about the great personal revolution or evolution. It's really wanting to move forward with who I truly am. Again, I probably sound really passionate about the poetic principle, but that's why, you know, what we focus on becomes our reality.

Listen to anyone who's achieved what they've really wanted to achieve in their lives, and they will tell you, I can't believe I get paid for doing what I love doing for doing what defines who I am. And they quickly say, that's my purpose in life. And I say, well, yes, at the moment it's your purpose in life, but I think that's your bliss. Our purpose over time changes, but that's your bliss.

That's where you are in the moment. I mean, there are 10 principles for people who are listening. There were the emergent principles, which are valuable as well. I certainly don't want to minimize those, but it's the classic ones, the five core ones that drew me to a appreciative inquiry that shaped my behavior as a leader and certainly crafted my approach to therapy, which is all about relationship as Irvin Yalom that wonderful American therapist says that the relationship is the therapy. And that's so true. You can't fake a genuine relationship. How do you ensure that that's going to happen? Not just as a psychologist in therapy, but as a leader in leadership?

Stephen Matini: It seems so complicated for a lot of people. Business is made of a lot, a lot of different things, it's a very complex type of thing, but really it boils down to relationship with a lot of different stakeholders. You know, one thing that you said when you're talking about poetic, you said that what you focus on, essentially you manifest. And yet a lot of people have such a difficulty understanding what is important to them to get the clarity.

Even myself, I would say I've always kind of known what I like or what I did not like, but for the longest time, it was so difficult either to have the courage, maybe greater clarity about what I want to pursue, which is something that I have right now, you know, in my fifties, and I never had it before this clear. And then last time, you and I talked about limiting beliefs. Are the limiting beliefs that do not allow us to see it or, or anything else.

Keith Storace: Limiting beliefs are a good way to start because limiting beliefs are the result of how we've somehow interpreted the world around us and believe the world sees us. It may not be true. The thing about limiting beliefs or negative core beliefs is that they're there for a reason. I really try and get the client to understand the importance of what they believe their core belief is.

So we do this exercise, I've developed a, a series of cards. I used to have it as a questionnaire, but it's much more fun having a series of cards and I have words on them. And, and the client will say, look at the card and say, I am. And if it says unworthy, it's a bit like a Likert scale in the either almost always or almost never. And there are a couple in between. So eventually we filter down to seven core beliefs and then eventually filter down to one.

And I make it my task. When we do that exercise, I make it my task to make sure that I don't end up taking the card with me. So I have to somehow convince through the narrative that emerges between us. I have to think of a way of a client agreeing that they are not a hundred percent unworthy once they agree to that, and they usually do, because, you know, I mean coming to therapy first and foremost, well, if you're a hundred percent unworthy, you wouldn't have believed that you had a right to come to counseling .

But once we establish their core belief, and look, I I have to say this point, I always say this in therapy, a belief by its very nature is something that is not true. If it was true, then it would be a fact. People don't say, I fact I am unworthy.

I get them to look at the importance of the power behind the belief. We often hear how powerful a thought is, and yes it is, but I say a belief is far more powerful because quite often we dunno what we believe it's there in the background, but we dunno what it is getting at least some sense of what a client's core belief is.

Then I ask 'em three questions and again, consider the five core principles of appreciative inquiry. But the three questions are, I look at a person's energy their relationships and their sense of future. I know it's not a feta complain, but I say to people, these are the three things that make us who we are. They're the three things that make us human and deal with experiences in the way that we do. So by energy, I asked the client, and you can ask this yourself about the life you are living.

And I did this through covid during the pandemic, but in terms of core beliefs and limiting beliefs, I asked the person, does your core belief energize you or does it exhaust you? He or she will think about that. And then I ask them, does your core belief build relationships or does it isolate you?

And the third one, does your core belief reveal a welcomed future or an unwanted one? Now, usually if the first two are negative or what I call negative, which is I'm exhausted and I'm isolated, they're not gonna have a good response to the future one. Now, it is frightening for some people when they do this exercise because when someone is deeply suffering from self-doubt, they don't see a way out in many ways, and this is why a lot of my work focuses on limiting beliefs and self-doubt.

So once a person has answered those three questions, I then get them to contemplate a time when they were doing something that was good for them. And I call this the create change exercise.

So I asked 'em to think about a time in their life where they created a change that in turn created them. At that point, they don't necessarily see a connection between what's going on on for them in terms of, of self-doubt. But they do come to understand that we get there eventually.

And sometimes there's hope happens over several sessions. So it's certainly not immediate, but I'll ask 'em to create a change. Think of a time where they created a change that in turn created them. And then I asked them three questions. Who or what inspired you to make that change? What did that change look like in your mind before you even began to move toward making that change? And who is involved in helping you bring that change to life?

Everyone has a story as little or as big as, as it is. Everyone has a story. What I'm really doing is looking at how they allow themselves, how they enable themselves to be inspired, how they enable themselves to imagine, and how they enable themselves to collaborate, especially with imagination. That goes a long way to build resilience. Once we have this story, I then go to talk about what I refer to as the seven positive stimulus statements. I call them stimulus statements, because for me, that's positive psychology.

Stephen Matini: Like a mantra.

Keith Storace: Yeah, each statement becomes a mantra. And, and usually as you asked me, and so rightly so, which of the five core principles stands out for me? And, and the poetic principle, again, it stands out for me because what we focus on becomes our reality. So the seven stimulus statements is to inspire that in the client. And then we've moved into the three questions, you know about inspiration, imagination, collaboration, and then the five, the, sorry, the seven stimulus statements.

They're about belief, imagination, perseverance, success, possibility, foresight, and action. And each one says, belief says belief influences choice. Three words, simple idea, but it's true. And we discuss that by unraveling a story that the client has. And we usually go back to the story, but the create change exercise, you know, okay, you told me that you decided you wanted to have a life change or see change.

You were working as an engineer, for example, you decided you wanted to do something completely different. We look at how belief influences choice in the light of whatever story they've, they've given me with imagination. We are who we imagine ourselves to be. That again, leans into limiting beliefs and core beliefs. So self-doubt is that preoccupation, you know, having that fear of failure and self-doubt on its own won't stop you.

Self-Denial, on the other hand, will, because self-denial is an action. And I don't mean self-denial in the way that psychologists talk about denial. You know, where someone who is grieving is denying what's happened or what life's gonna be like. Now it's self-denial where you stop yourself from moving toward how you want your life to be. And that's an action. So self-doubt is a belief, and self-denial is an action. So how we imagine ourselves to be the second positive stimulus statement and which is about imagination.

If we are steeped in self-doubt, if we are steeped in the limiting beliefs, then that's how we see ourselves and we won't progress. I often use the image of someone who has a basketball and there's a basketball hoop. If the person who doesn't believe in themselves thinks, well, there's no point in me trying to get this basketball in the hoop because I'm hopeless, I'm not worthy, it's not going to work, then they'll have a half-hearted approach to getting the ball in the hoop. And of course, because of that half-hearted approach, it won't go in.

And then they'll say, you see, I was right. Perseverance there is no failure, only frustration. Now, a lot of people disagree with me about that. Oh gosh, you know, you should embrace failure because you learn from it. And I'm saying, I'm not saying not not embrace failure, but someone who's suffering from the fear of failure, then they need to reframe what failure is.

And the way I help them reframe it is to say it's not a failure, it's a frustration. I do this a lot with university students. You failed an exam, okay, that's gonna frustrate you moving forward because you have to reset it or you may need to do redo the semester. It doesn't mean you failed your intention of eventually working in this field. It just means it's frustrated the process a little bit.

You know, we talk that through and they generally understand what I'm getting at when I talk about that. Success is not limited to natural ability. You don't have to be naturally gifted to do what you want to do. If you really want to do it, then it's going to take a lot of hard work and some people will have to work harder than others. But that's the, the notion of success possibility.

You know, with positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, the positive emerges through the possible. People often think it's the other way around. We begin to see possibilities when we are in a positive state. And that's true, but where does it begin if someone is not in a positive state? So let's look at what's possible.

And we've already started looking at what's possible because we've done the create change exercise, , and then foresight, which is a little arithmetic. I give them H plus I equals F. That's from my statistics days. And I made up that little formula. Basically it's asking, or it's saying that hindsight plus insight equals foresight and people do ooh, when they hear that, when I actually write what it means on the board.

But hindsight plus insight equals foresight. If you can get that right, then you're on the way. And I, and I highlight for the client how they've already told me that because in their story, the create change story, they've given me the positive call.

The client might not think they have a positive call, but there it is. And action. Our goals are only as achievable as the actions we take toward them. So those seven stimulus statements are to stimulate the kind of conversation that the client will believe. Again, going back to belief, the client will believe what those statements are really wanting the client to grasp because the client has told me their their create change story.

When I give talks about this people, their first question usually is, but what if a person doesn't have a create change story? What if a person truly can't think back to a time where they created a change that in turn created them? And my response is, well, firstly, I've never encountered that There have been clients who have struggled and they've struggled because they try to think big. You know, what's a big change that I created in my life?

And that's not about a big change. It's a tiny, it's a tiny change. It can be big if you've got one. Sure. The reason I call it appreciative dialogue, which is really an offshoot of of appreciative inquiry, is that it's an intentional conversation with a positive direction. And that in itself gives me my answer to how is positive psychology,

Stephen Matini: How long does it take to someone to change a limiting belief?

Keith Storace: Look, it really varies. The program that I use, depending on the nature of the client situation, it can take between six and 12 weeks to, I wouldn't say completely change their beliefs. Some people are really stuck with their beliefs. So I try and get them to understand, let's not focus too much on moving on from your belief. Let's focus on moving on with your belief, which really suggests managing it and controlling it. You know, you've heard that saying, we teach what we need to learn.

For me, that's my life lesson, how to really deal with my own self-doubt. So sometimes people can't move on, sort of leave it in the background. So it's about controlling it and understanding what it actually is. It's not hard, but it does take patience. As I started out saying, the relationship is the therapy. You have to really wanna be there with this client.

You really want to be able to walk in their shoes, you know, and understand what it is like for them. Because I haven't experienced everything a client has experienced. I've got my own experience of life. So I probably make it sound simpler than it is. I, I have to say too that I do use evidence-based, I call it my therapy triangle. There are three approaches to therapy that I use that underpins everything I've talked about.

And that is existential therapy, solution focused and cognitive behavioral. I now embed those three therapies because, and it's a really strong triangle because existential, the existential approach says individuals create their own meaning. Solution focus says elements of the desired solution are usually already present in the person's life, hence the create change story.

And cognitive behavioral therapy says behavior change is the result of a change in one's thoughts and beliefs. Again, we're looking at core beliefs now for the client. I don't talk about that with the client. I don't say I'm using this triangle of therapy, but I do say to them, there are three things that, that we're gonna look at that will eventually manifest in your life in a way that you'll be able to move forward and use this whole approach in all sorts of situations in life.

Stephen Matini: It's very subjective. Also, the, as you said, you know, how long it takes. Is it, it depends. It varies. You covered a lot of really important things and thank you so much, first of all, for being so generous with this conversation. If you had to highlight one main takeaway for a listener, something that, based on anything you said that you deemed to be really, really, really important as a starting point, what would you say that is?

Keith Storace: I would love for listeners to spend a good amount of time if they can, whenever they can immersed in the things that matter most to them. Because the gratitude that emerges from that kind of experience is an affirmation of who they are. When who you are is brought to life in the world.

In this way, the people around you will not only come to know you for who you truly are, they will also in one way or another be infected by you, in a beautiful way and benefit from the good in it all. So the more you become your true self, which is what we're all meant to be, the more others will benefit from that.

And if I had to talk in leadership speak, I would say that when people are encouraged and supported to engage in work or study that resonates with their strengths, values, and what they enjoy, they in turn feel strong, valued, and motivated to produce good work. You know? And this ultimately benefits who they are and their mental health and social relationships. What matters mostly is who you are. And that's what we all want to know.

Stephen Matini: Thank you, Keith. This has been wonderful.

Keith Storace: Good conversations. Appreciate with time and this has certainly been one of them. Thank you.

View Details

Sara Truebridge EdD, is a researcher and author specializing in resilience.

Sara is the Founder of EDLINKS, an organization whose mission is to educate, support, and sustain a global community by embracing the resilience of humanity.

By recognizing the whole person, encompassing the cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our being, Sara emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to growth and development.

Sara encourages us to follow our hearts. When we align our actions with our passions and values, we unlock our true potential and contribute to the oneness of humanity.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to boost resilience and the significance of humor in difficult situations.

Spotify

Apple Podcast

Google Podcasts

Amazon Music

Podbean

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to overcome long-term challenges and enhance your managerial and leadership skills.

Do you have questions about this episode?

This episode is brought to you by ALYGN learning and organizational consulting firm specializing in leadership and management development. Sign up for a free Live Session.

#saratrubridge #resilience #edlinks #positivepsychology #appreciativeinquiry #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

...

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So Miss Sara, for those who are going to listen to this episode, would you mind sharing where you grew up?

Sara Truebridge: I grew up in upstate New York. A lot of times when you say New York, people think of New York City, but I grew up outside of Albany, the capital of New York. And so it was very suburban.

Stephen Matini: And when you and I met, you talked to me about your upbringing and also how early experiences have inspired you to dedicate your life to others. So were there any special people, any special events that somehow contributed to the way you are?

Sara Truebridge: Yeah. thank you for asking about that Stephen. It's so funny cuz people say, where did you get interested in contributing or being of service? My answer to people is I came out of the womb that way.

My mother and father, I grew up in a home that dedicated themselves to service. And so it is very cellular to me.

So my mom especially, I would come home and never know who would be in my home because very often my mother would find someone who needs a bed to sleep in at night. Sometimes it would be someone who needs food or needs a meal. So it wasn't something out of the ordinary for me. Like I said, service is ingrained. It's who I am. It's part of my being.

Stephen Matini: What was one of the, one of the biggest bombs that you dropped to your parents growing up?

Sara Truebridge: . Oh my god. Shall we start with the A’s, we’ll go through the alphabet . Oh my god. One of the later ones was when I was a young adult and I took time off of work to travel the world. I, you know, donned a backpack and traveled world. That didn't surprise anybody in my family. That was normal. That was like, oh, okay. But what did surprise, it took me a while to share this with my family is that I did a lot of hitchhiking and the hitchhiking that I did was in areas that normally women traveling alone probably don't hitchhike. And so yeah, that was a bomb. And I don't know, yeah, I waited quite a while to share that. Why worry, why have them worry?

Stephen Matini: I was a good kid. I was very obedient until I reached 18 years old and out of the blue I said, hey, I'm gay and I'm going to live with my boyfriend. That was downhill from there.

Sara Truebridge: . I love it. Did your parents accept that?

Stephen Matini: The answer is yes. And my whole life, I've never really experienced any form of discrimination, believe it or not. I mean, I've seen it around myself.

Like, to give you an example, it has been difficult with the families of former boyfriends. You know, those families were not super accepting or they were half accepting. So I've seen that, but I've always been a firm believer that the biggest probably battle that you combat is within yourself.

You have to be okay with yourself. And if you're okay with yourself, that sends a very positive message out there. And so my philosophy approach has always been, this is who I am. I did not decide to be this way. If you have a problem with this, if you wanna talk about it, we can, but it's your problem.

Because my problem so to speak, is I have to live life this way. You know? And with that in mind, that's how I have approached everyone.

Well, you know, and it's really beautiful that your parents that had to come from somewhere. And so I'm sure your parents infused you with a sense of pride and you know, strength and resilience. It's funny because I often tell this story, which is very interesting. You know, my work is in resilience, that's where my doctorate was. That's a book I wrote about blah blah blah, resilience.

I had a fascinating experience where when I first started teaching, my first teaching experience was in a high school teaching English as a second language. These were the days where there were chalkboards, they weren't whiteboards. So that kind of dates me. When I first came in to this classroom, I walked up to the chalkboard and I wrote, you know, the typical, my name, my maiden name was Brownstein.

So I wrote on the chalkboard, Ms. Brownstein, and I introduced myself, you know, and with that, a young student, the young man stood up, he was very tall. He walked into my face and spit right on my face and said, I'm not going to be taught by a Jew.

That was my day one on teaching day one, first day on the job teaching, I realized I had 28 other students in the classroom. This one student came up spit on me.

And so, you know, what I did was he goes, I'm not gonna be taught by a Jew. And first I wiped spinoff and I said, oh, I guess you're not gonna be taught by anyone. And then I calmly went over, those are the days they had intercoms and phones in the classroom. And I went over and I just called the office and I said, someone has to be escorted out of the room. But to my point of discrimination, and it comes outta nowhere, right? I mean, and then you think deeper and oh no, there's always a story, you know, somewhere. But it's how we react in the moment. Right?

Stephen Matini: How did you keep your love for teaching after that incident?

Sara Truebridge: It's interesting, I haven't thought about this in a while, but when that incident happened, it wasn't about me and it wasn't about the student who did that to me. It was about the other students in the class who witnessed that.

They were the ones who I had empathy for. Like it was all about them. And I wanted to make sure they were okay with what happened, that they didn't worry about me. You know, I'll be okay. When that incident happened, it didn't turn me away from teaching. It showed me how much I needed to be a teacher.

To me it's not about reading, writing, arithmetic. It's, are you a good person? Do you have a good heart? Is service going to be a part of who you are? That's education to me. It's funny because although I started with high school, I primarily ended up teaching the primary grades, kindergarten, first, second, you know, third. And that's where my niche was with teaching. And it's so funny because every single year at the last day of school, I'd have my little second graders sitting on the rug at my feet, right? And I'd say to them through my tears, I don't want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you reading. I don't want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you math. I want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you how to love yourself and others. That to me is the biggest part of teaching and learning.

Stephen Matini: My elementary school teacher, Ms. Lombardi, still lives in the neighborhood where I live. And when was it? Like a few years back I went to see her after many, many, many, many years. And she was exactly the way that I remembered her. She was not like a teacher “mom”. She was professional. She was very assertive. But you could sense that she was always on your side, but she was demanding. When I saw her said that, I truly have to tell you that you are very likely one of the most important people of my life because the way that I think, the way that I am has been so deeply ingrained in me by you. You know?

Sara Truebridge: Oh, I love that. You know, it's so funny you should say that because we as teachers don't always know the impact that we have on our students. What you just described, I still get from students, they track me down and they'll say, oh, you have no idea. And I won't, I won't. I'll be like, oh my gosh.

I have a student for instance, who went into teaching and I have her in kindergarten and first and second grade I looped with students where you stay with them. She had a personality, she was a pistol when she was little and then she's like, I'm a teacher now because of you. So I love that you went back and visited your teacher and that probably meant the world to her too.

Stephen Matini: It's a tough job. I think teaching. You know, I've been teaching for what now for 13 years. You know, I teach second year college students and I love teaching, but as you said it, very often you are not quite aware of the impact that you have on people.

It did happen a few times that people actually, several times the students from, you know, years before, they reached out through emails, some of them I met them in person and they shared with me how those moments together have impacted their lives. You know, and that's really the, I think the biggest gift that anyone can give you.

Sara Truebridge: In the work that I do, and in the research, it's so interesting because in many ways the research that I do, I call it “the,” "the” research, you know, because the research bears out the importance of caring relationships. The research bears out one person can make a difference in your life.

Stephen Matini: What is your definition of resilience after so many years studying it, you know, working with resilience?

Sara Truebridge: One of the things like the most simplest definition that I used to say is bouncing back from adversity. I have changed what I say now. I say bouncing forward from adversity because I want to express that it's not only bouncing back, but it's thriving, bouncing forward and thriving.

And I think with being a strength-based practitioner that I am and researcher bouncing forward is what I want people to think about the healing process, the bouncing forward. Now that's the simple definition. Then there's a very formal definition about the external strengths, the systems, the internal strengths that we have within ourselves.

So there's a very formal definition that I use, but for the simple definition I'm sticking with bouncing forward from adversity. And you know, another interesting thing in the academic world in the definition of resilience, there are academic researchers who will say that resilience is about bouncing what they say back from significant adversity.

I do not use the word significant because I have a strong belief. Everything is a matter of perspective. Who am I to say what was significant to you? You have your own life story. What's significant to you may not be significant to me. So that's where I sometimes differ from other resilience researchers.

Where I will recognize adversity being what the individual identifies as adversity. I don't say it has to be every day. It could be something that a daily stress experience you have to deal with tapping into your resilience.

I always say if you take anything away from when I talk about resilience, I want people to understand it is not a trait. Resilience is a process. It is not a trait. In other words, everyone has the capacity for resilience. It's not a matter of do you have resilience, it's a matter of what can I do to help support you to tap into your resilience cuz it's in there.

And the question is, has it been tapped? And we don't want to say that you have to tap your own resilience. There are so many systemic and environmental factors that are barriers to one's resilience. So we have to look at systemic issues as well. There's the researcher in me, right?

Stephen Matini: The one thing that somehow I don't think I've ever read much about is the notion of courage based on your infinite knowledge and wisdom way more than mine. Have you ever researched or studied the notion of courage, of being courageous?

Sara Truebridge: You know, it's so interesting that you should bring that up because you know, I just wrote something and in my book I have a section where I talk about words matter. And when we hear words, a word can elicit a feeling or a behavior and courage.

We talk about in resilience, what are some of one's inner strengths that they draw upon to support their resilience. And courage is definitely one of those inner strengths that one draws upon to support one's resilience, it helps to support it.

And also by engaging in your resilience, you develop courage. So it goes both ways. It's not only something you have that supports your resilience, but the resilience can support your courage.

I think it's really important for me to encourage others to create and sustain an environment that allows people to be courageous and to stand up for who they are. Stand up for others and express their acts of courage, words of courage.

Stephen Matini: If I understood correctly, there is an element of practicing all this, the more that I do it, the more I become resilient, the more I become courageous. So it's something that you have to actively do.

Sara Truebridge: Exactly. I love that. It's a process. And it's not even linear. You know, we all have experienced times where we can tap into our resilience easier in this time than last time when whatever. So again, it's a very dynamic process.

Stephen Matini: You said the resilience is bouncing forward and I love that. And so sometimes I look at myself, but I, I see scars, you know, I do see some scars here and there that I dragged from the past experiences and those scars, yes, they're dear to me. They're important experiences, memories. So as I look at my scars, what would it be the best attitude to look at scars?

Sara Truebridge: The scars, you know, in a resilience framework, it's like multiple scars. They can build up you. It's like calcium, you know when you have a break and it builds up and you know the break builds up stronger.

So sometimes when something happens it can strengthen one's resilience. Cause you are able to look back and say, wow, I made it through that experience. And you focus on what did you draw upon that helped you get through that experience as opposed to, oh poor me. You know, that type of thing.

Now in that same vein of talking about, as you call them scars, I don't know if I would necessarily use that as the word because, again, I identify as a strengths-based practitioner.

I recognize trauma. We all have experienced trauma.I am not discounting trauma. But what I like to focus on, part of resilience, the work in resilience is reframing. And I like to reframe words. And so instead of focusing on trauma, I encourage people to focus on healing.

Trauma is such a deficit based word. At the same time, I do not want anyone to misinterpret me in negating trauma. Yes, trauma exists. It's not putting on rose colored glasses. It's not saying, oh you'll be fine. It's saying no, you know what, that sucks. Now it's validating the trauma. But moving forward towards healing.

Stephen Matini: I have been a seeing a therapist for more than a year now. And one of the thing that I come to learn through this experience is to, I don't know if it's the right definition, normalize my trauma. Which means not to downplay them, not to label them, but still see them as part of life and to create this space to see them and to learn from them, which has been so simple but so crucial.

Sara Truebridge: I love that you're saying that because so often, and I said it before, people think resilience is oh, everything's gonna be dandy, unicorns, cotton, candy, and you know all the fun, you know things and let's be super positive.

Well no, resilience is being able to validate. Yeah, you know what? That sucked! Or validate. You know what? Yep, you have gone through a very difficult time. But you know what, you didn't kill yourself. You're alive, you're here today. What made you wake up the next day? What did you draw upon? And it is dark, it's not forgetting, it's remembering so that you remember and you engage and validate and move forward.

Stephen Matini: You have such a strong energy and you said it, I was born that way. . How do you preserve your energy, particularly when things may get extra tough? Is there anything you do?

Sara Truebridge: I know for one thing, my humor. My humor gets me through a lot. And it has come up in times where I don't even expect my humor to come out. But I know that humor comes out naturally as a way to support my resilience.

I was in a really, really, really bad car accident, a head-on collision. I was airlifted and they didn't think I was gonna make it. And I was airlifted to the hospital. And when I got to the hospital, they put me on the, you know, stainless steel table in the emergency room and all these doctors came in and huddled, the car was wrapped and I was wrecked. I was a mess. And so they have me on this stainless steel table, they start cutting my clothes, they start at the pants, you know, and they start cutting my clothes cuz I was a wreck. They start cutting my clothes and through the strength that I have, I say, “My mother would be so proud of me!” I said, “I have on good underwear.”

Stephen Matini: .

Sara Truebridge: Well the doctors, they started laughing, but they're saying to me, you've gotta stop cracking jokes. You need your energy. You have to stop cracking jokes. And so there I am close to my deathbed and I'm making jokes, you know.

Stephen Matini: I have this thing, I've always had it. When a situation becomes tough, I have to make fun of it. I don't know what it is, you know? But I have to, it's not really downplaying it, it's not that I'm trying to make it into something that it's not, but it just irreverence that I have.

You know, you hear the stories of newsrooms and hospitals and dark humor, you know that people like just what you said in order to every day deal with things. How do you deal with trauma? Day in, day out, day in, day out? Humor does have a role.

Stephen Matini: Last time where you and I met, you talked about something that I kind of resonated with me, which is the, the whole notion of the whole child. Would you mind telling me more about it?

Sara Truebridge: Here's the thing, the whole child, there's cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual. Those are the components that we all have. When we recognize all those elements, then we are recognizing the whole person. When I talk about the whole child, it's recognizing all those components in a child.

And in education people are throwing around just like they're throwing around the word resilience without really understanding it. They're throwing around the term, oh, we recognize the whole child.

However, traditionally in education, they recognize the cognitive, physical and we're getting really good with the social and emotional. But we're petrified of the spiritual because people still equate spiritual with religious. And it's not, it can be, but it's not. We all know the four year old that has awe and wonder and curiosity. We know that those should be within us always, but for some reason we lose that.

And I really say that unless we embrace the spiritual aspect of our being and we as educators incorporate that into who we are as teachers and look at that, then if we are not incorporating the spiritual component, then don't tell me you're working with the whole child.

Do not be afraid of that component. That component, if you leave it out, you're not recognizing the whole child. I do a lot of work and you know, I'm grateful that the social emotional components have become so prominent and you know, center stage in education.

A lot of times in education we talk about passion and the heart. It's touching the heart as much as the head. As a matter of fact, I often say the heart is the portal to the head. It's so interesting. So the whole child, I feel the whole child has to, you recognize the cognitive, physical, social, emotional and spiritual. You know, that's the head, the heart, the body and the social and emotional.

You know, some people will say, well, isn't social emotional enough? And I say no, because social emotional deals with the outside. It's relational. Spiritual, it's looking in and it's recognizing the unity of the globe, the unity of our being, the connections we have with each other, the connection to something greater.

Stephen Matini: As you said, the words can be divisive. You know, they have different meaning to different people. And so yes, some people may have a different interpretation of what being spiritual means.

Sara Truebridge: I really want people to recognize that when we talk about spirituality, we are not talking about religion. And again, that's not to say religion can embrace spirituality, but spirituality does not have to embrace and talk about religion.

Stephen Matini: No, it's interesting because in my job, this conversation happens, you know, all the time. I work often with people with different cultural backgrounds, I never know what word to use, you know? So I do use that word, soulfulness, spirituality, spiritual. And I try to emphasize the fact that my approach is very secular. You know, I'm not pinpointing to any specific philosophy and religion. Yeah.

Sara Truebridge: I think personally that this movement that we have seen and I was part of for social, emotional, learning, to get integrated more into education and to become more of a more, we're on the cusp of doing that with spirituality.

We are going to see, cuz it started already, that people are becoming more accepting and like you said, you know, whether it's soulful, whether it's spirituality, you know, whatever word you use, it's finding that component that is part of who we are that we cannot dismiss.

Stephen Matini: I have one last question, which is to anyone who is thinking maybe a younger person dedicating their lives to servicing other people, to be helpful to other people, either as a teacher, whichever capacity, what would it be an advice that you would give to them?

Sara Truebridge: The advice I would give is follow your heart. Listen to you. You know, I have another TED talk and in that TED talk I mention, you know, people who are older listen to them. They have wisdom. There are a lot of times people will say, oh you should do this, or oh you shouldn't do that. And I say, listen to them. They have wisdom. But at the end of the day, follow your heart. That's sometimes is the most difficult thing for anyone to do, is to take the time to listen. What is it that your heart and soul are saying to you that makes you be the whole person?

Stephen Matini: This is wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with me.

Sara Truebridge: Thank you.

View Details

Our guest today is Stephen (Shed) Shedletzky. Shed is a Speaker, Leadership Coach, and advisor. In the episode, we will discuss the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment where individuals feel comfortable speaking up, sharing their thoughts, and being vulnerable.

In his book “Speak-Up Culture: When Leaders Truly Listen, People Step Up,” Shed Shedletzky explores psychological safety, employee voice, and the benefits of fostering a culture where everyone feels safe contributing.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn the transformative power of psychological safety and its impact on productivity, creativity, and innovation.

Spotify

Apple Podcast

Google Podcasts

Amazon Music

Podbean

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen

#stephenshedletzky #shedshedletzky #speakupculture #psychologicalsafety #leadership #inclusivity #workplaceculture #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When did you decide somehow or when did you get a sense that what you're doing now is what you wanted to do? Have you been doing this for a long time?

Stephen Shedletzky: For me, it really began back in university. So I took a number of courses with a particular professor who I loved. He's a Kiwi from New Zealand by the name of Dennis Shackle. And he was a professor on leadership, on organizational behavior, on public speaking.

There was distinctively one class I took of his called “Advanced Presentation Skills” and at the end of the first class he showed a clip of Martin Luther King Jr. Giving his eye of a dream speech and he said, okay, class, your assignment for next class is to prepare a five minute talk and attempt to match Dr. King's passion. No small request.

So I was at school in a Canadian university, so there were people who spoke of their love of their favorite hockey team or of curling. There was one person who spoke of their love for mid chocolate chip ice cream.

Stephen Shedletzky: And so I knew that if I really wanted to speak with passion, there was only, there were only a few things I could speak about and one of them was overcoming my fear of public speaking.

So I grew up with a stutter, I still have a speech impediment, I married a speech pathologist, good choice more so for my kids than for me personally. I gave a five minute talk on this universal fear that you know everyone, you know, it's the good old Jerry Seinfeld joke of the number one fear in North America is public speaking and number two is death. So we'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, which makes no sense whatsoever. And so I gave this five minute talk on my experience of failing as a public speaker.

There was a moment in French class in grade two when I couldn't say the word “très," which is like the third fricking word you learn in French. And that was sort of a low point. And from there I got the help that I needed to feel more confident speaking publicly, whether it's this one-on-one, a small group or in front of a large group.

I gave that talk and that was sort of the itch for me of, ooh, I wanna do more of this because it was the first time in my life I gave a talk and it actually felt that it impacted others in a positive way. It wasn't promoting something, it wasn't about me, it was about service.

And so from that point I was hooked in terms of the speaking piece. And then I got into coaching and organizational behavior just from connecting with people who shared similar values and and beliefs and sort of figured out my career path by looking at the people that I admired and wanting to emulate them. One of them being Leanne Davey who introduced us as well.

Stephen Matini: You know, when I went to Emerson College in, in Boston, it's a communication school, I believe it's the oldest one. The first class that I took was “Advanced Professional Communication” and I decided to take it with a bunch of people, they were just unbelievable. And this professor would give us like this bandaid you would put in your arm and it would change color depending on how nervous you were.

It was a temperature sensitive type of thing and everyone had it black, you know, pitch black and terrified by this class. So it was really, really hard. And the first thing that I did it, I felt really nervous, but somehow there was a moment that I screwed up and people laughed but we're not laughing because I screwed up but they were laughing at something I said and there was something in my head that went, you know what?

This maybe is not supposed to be as hard as I thought it was, you know, anyhow. So it was the click that made the whole difference. And from the moment on I learned that I don't feel a hundred percent comfortable but I can still connect with people, you know, generally authentically speak from a place that feels real to me. And when I do that, you know, the nervousness goes down.

So when you did your speech, you know, in the moment was anything that clicked in your head somehow it was any, anything that somehow you learned?

Stephen Shedletzky: So a couple things come to mind. I mean one, I very distinctively remember that talk and where I was standing in the class and where a few students were. I had one of those, there's like the part of your brain that just does and then a part of your brain that thinks.

I sort of had one of those like outer body experiences where I was doing the thing and also reflecting on like, wow, this is fun and I think I might be effective. I attempted to like hush that cuz it was getting in the way of performing and doing and giving and serving.

The other thing that just came to mind, Stephen, from what you just shared is, I don't know the stats or the science on this, but I believe it to be true and it's from our own experience. I think that's so often we are so concerned about what others think of us, that everyone is just wasting time thinking about what other people are thinking of them.

Stephen Shedletzky: So when giving a talk or doing work or working on your craft, whatever it might be to work on focusing on service and giving rather than what are other people thinking of you.

Because everyone's busy thinking of themselves. Like a quintessential example of this is you walk into a meeting late, and you walk in and you're so mindful and you're so quiet and you're like, oh, what are people thinking of me?

But if you notice the body language of others when you walk in late, they'll often sit up straighter themselves because they're thinking about, ooh, what's this new person thinking of me? So everyone is wasting time thinking about what others are thinking of them focus on giving, focus on serving, focus on being effective for yourself and for others.

Stephen Matini: Now is it better when you have to give a speech, do you feel, or do you still feel nervous?

Stephen Shedletzky: Of course for me though, that's just data. You know, if I don't feel nervous, it means I might be lazy or don't care. And so for me, nerves or anxiousness or excitement, that active energy for me is just data for me that this matters.

I want to do as good of a job as I can. And for me, when I'm giving a a talk, I mean my rule, which I learned from a mentor, Simon Sinek, which is only talk about things that you care about and only talk about things that you know and care is more important than know.

You can say, hey, I care about this. I don't know everything but I want to give it a whirl, you know, and work with me here. And so I only wanna speak about things that I care about and I only wanna speak about things that I know at least something about.

And so the nervousness is also around there is something that I've experienced or that I know that I want to attempt to transmit and help others have a similar experience. So for me, the nerves are around being the most effective that I can be and giving what I feel that I know about and care about so that others might care about it and know about it more as well.

Stephen Matini: One thing that stood out was the fact that if I understood correctly, part of your, let's say mission is to help people feel safe. And I thought it was such a nice thing. Tell me more.

Stephen Shedletzky: One, I'm flattered and thank you. It's such a basic human need and when we feel safe we are more likely to flourish. I've reflected on experiences in my life when I've been in rooms or environments or in relationships or in a company or a culture or in a congregation or in any sort of form of community where it feels safe and where it doesn’t.

When it doesn't feel safe, we waste energy on protecting ourselves from each other, from other people. And it is such a waste. It's a waste in productivity, it's a waste in energy, it's a waste in what could be creativity and and innovation.

And then I've also reflected upon moments in relationships, one-on-one groups, communities where I do feel safe, where I have permission to potentially even say an unpopular or a hard or vulnerable thing to share or raise a concern. And it is met with curiosity and openness and a desire to learn and improve and it just feels healthier and better.

And I'm not talking about communities that are homogeneous, I'm talking about diverse communities where as many people as possible from all different walks of life are valued as human beings and are treated as if their voices do matter because they do. I prefer those environments not just for the benefits to our mental and physical wellbeing, but also from a business perspective. It just creates better results.

Stephen Matini: You mentioned about the speech impediment. Was any other event or people that somehow were really important for the way you think today?

Stephen Shedletzky: There's one individual and I write a bit about him in in the book that I have coming up this fall called “Speak Up Culture.” His name is Dr. Robert Kroll and he just passed away a couple years ago unfortunately.

So there are a couple of pivotal moments in my journey with my speech impediment three come to mind right now. So one was that French class when I couldn't say “très” in front of the class and for me that was, that was a low, I don't know what it was, but I went home that day from school and I said to my mom, we need to get help.

I first became aware that I had a starter in around grade two. It wasn't that bad. We tried some interventions, they didn't go so well and so we just kind of ignored it for four years. And then I had this moment where I'm like, hmm, this is gonna get in my way for my future.

Stephen Shedletzky: You know, I just knew that for some reason. And so I shared with my mom, we need to actually get on this, I need help. And so that summer, it was a summer of grade six, I was a 13 year old kid and I went to, I think it was a two or three week, maybe even longer sort of intensive stuttering camp with an organization that is still around today called the Speech and Stuttering Institute.

I remember I took the subway to downtown Toronto for the first time on my own, like it was a big sort of coming of age thing. And then I joined this class, I was the youngest there. There was one other young man who was 14 years old from Ottawa. And then everyone else was older. There were a couple people, one was probably in his mid twenties, couldn't land a job because he couldn't speak in an interview.

Stephen Shedletzky: There was another gentleman, his first name was George. His last name was very complicated because he was Sri Lankan. I remember in one of the classes, Dr. Kroll took him bit by bit and again, we need safety in order for this to happen cuz it was hard work.

He took him syllable by syllable to help him pronounce his own last name. It probably took 15 minutes, but it was the first time George ever said his own last name. And like his pride and joy and relief was palpable. Like it was amazing.

A few things happened in that stutters program. One was a bit of a relief and even sorta guilt or survivorship shame or guilt in the sense that I realized my stutter wasn't as bad as some others. I was thankful that I was getting early intervention. I saw how Dr. Kroll facilitated and created a really safe space for experimentation, for failure, for trying, for innovation.

Stephen Shedletzky: And then I began to mentor and serve others that one 25 year old guy who couldn't land a job even though he was well educated, it was a bit of a big brother, little brother relationship, and we would sort of trade crib notes on some things that we would both try to better manage our stutter. And it was a really special relationship. I don't remember his name. If you put in front of me in a lineup, I probably wouldn't be able to to pick him. It was, you know, that was a a really big thing.

The last thing I'll share is, so a year later, the next summer I resumed my regularly scheduled programming, if you will, and didn't go back to this stutter camp. Not that I was healed, but I had some strategies to work with as well as I had more confidence and I had an opportunity to take part in a summer camps theatrical production.

It was kind of like Saturday Night Live. There were skits and improv. It was a lot of fun. And so I had a fairly big role in this production. So much so that the staff picked me and I believe two or three other campers and performers to go down to the dining hall where the entire camp, all campers and staff, about 450 people were eating dinner.

And we created this little skit and commercial to invite them up to this mandatory evening program to watch our performance. And we made this little ditty, this little skit on the lawn outside of the dining hall. And my character had a complicated last name and I couldn't pronounce my character's last name in this skit. And the other campers and the staff member who brought us down were like, they called me “Shed” back then, they still do today.

And I was like, Shed like, what's getting into you? And I was nervous and I was stuttering. I couldn't say a complicated word. Time ran out. We had to go and do this skit and my worst nightmare happened.

I stuttered in front of 450 people, like I failed abysmally. And the thing with the stutter is kind of like a finger trap that the harder you try to force a word out, the harder it is to do it. And so I tried, I tried, I tried, I finally pushed out this word, this last name, and it was as if either nobody noticed or nobody cared.

And so it was the best thing because I took a modest reasonable test and my worst fear ever happened. And I didn't die right? I didn't die, you know, I was totally relieved after that little skit. We went up and performed that night and I performed without a hitch and had a blast and it was fantastic.

And I remember that feeling of elation and joy after the fact. It was just an amazing moment of the awful thing happening and didn't matter. So those are sort of a few pivotal moments and from then on I kind of didn't look back and I still do stutter. I still stammer over some words, but it is what it is and I embrace it.

Stephen Matini: You know, I am completely ignorant about stuttering.

Stephen Shedletzky: So this is my understanding of it. So we don't completely know there is a hereditary link, more males stutter than females typically. So I'm very proud of my heritage and I come from a long line of stutterers. My dad overcame a stutter when he was a kid, my uncle, my grandfather. I'm sure if we keep going back, you know, there is a hereditary component.

You can treat it, you can work with it. There are strategies that you can employ to make it better. Also, we know that a stutter does get worse the longer you leave it untreated. And if a child becomes aware that they have a stutter, it can impact their confidence even more. So that's what we know about it.

Stephen Matini: For me it shows up mostly when singing. I don't know what the heck it is. Your voice going out is something that I love. I love singing, I love sharing, but it also evokes this tremendous amount of fears. This story that you're telling me, have all these experiences, have somehow made their way into your book?

Stephen Shedletzky: Yes. So first, a couple things just to double click on. One, one of the hacks to beat a stutter is to sing. So one of the therapies is you sing because when you do sing miraculously, the stutter just disappears and you can actually treat the way that you speak as if you're singing. Cuz oftentimes speaking can be very melodic.

So anyway, but one of the fun things that you can do is to sing, to be the stutter. But I think Stephen, you're also speaking of the vulnerability of sharing one's self, the vulnerability of sharing your gift, or your art, or your emotions, or your feeling.

It's also the vulnerability of leadership to step up and stand for something. This definitely has come into my book, it's one of the inspirations of my book, which is, you know, I've called this book SpeakUp Culture and the two sort of main inspirations are one, growing up with a stutter.

Stephen Shedletzky: I know what it feels like to be voiceless and as well being in relationships, whether it's in work or outside of work, where there is a speak up culture and how marvelous it is and how great it is for relationships and results, as well as being in cultures where there isn't a speak up culture and how stifling it is both to health and results.

And the other thing that I think really from this conversation is infused and highlighted in the book as well, is that I am not a fan of the term fearless leader because it doesn't exist. Everyone has fear. Fear is normal, fear is biological. Fear is actually designed to keep us safe. Fear is a risk modulator. When we feel fear, it's our body saying, look out, something's going on. Whether real or perceived. Rich Diviney, who's a retired US Navy Seal wrote this book, “The Attributes,” which is a brilliant book.

Rich taught me that if you come across a fearless leader, that's the one who's gonna get you killed. So I harp against this term fearless leader. And for me it's all around how do you feel the fear? Use the fear as data and then choose how to progress, which could be lean in and keep going. It could be get out of there, it's you know, fight, flight, freeze.

But for you, when you feel that fear and you're like, no, breathe into it, I want to communicate, I want a voice, I want to sing, it's worth it. It's worth that connection. It's worth that it expression. We find something either internal or external to us that is worth that risk of fear, worth that risk of vulnerability.

Stephen Matini: Vulnerability is such an important word and somehow it's not that popular in the business world. With leaders oftentimes there's this misconception that you got to be fearless, you have to be perfect, you have to be, you know, sturdy or whatever, whatever.

So in your book, you could have taken so many directions, when leaders truly listen, people step up. But then the critical point is once my voice is out, is the leader going to listen to it? And that very often, you know, is a problem. So of all possible directions that you could take with your book, why this one?

Stephen Shedletzky: So I've been on the speaking circuit for many years working with Simon Sinek and sharing his work, start with why, infinite game, leaders eat last. And so I have been asked many times over the 15 or so years that I've been speaking, when are you gonna write your book? Because I guess keynote speakers write books. And my response was always if and when I ever come across something worth writing about.

I never wanted to write something for the purpose of being a keynote speaker. We've all, you know, seen those books that are written not cuz it's a message that really needs to be shared. It's just something to stay relevant or sell at the back of the room. And I never wanted to do one of those or do that.

So at the beginning of 2021, I decided to say yes more. I just made, you know, based on just some things that were happening in my career and my life, I just said, you know what I'm gonna say yes to more opportunities that come my way and just see what happens.

And so one such opportunity, a guy by the name of Barry Engelhardt who's become a friend, he's at a St. Louis and he's involved with the Local Society of Human Resources Management chapter there, SHRM. And he reached out to me, it must have been spring of 2021, saying, Hey, we're doing a virtual conference in the fall, do you wanna speak?

And I said, yeah, well I'll do my content even though I didn't really have content. And so that summer, so a few months later I got an email from the organizing committee saying, we're so excited for your talk. You know, please click on this link and fill out your talk title and description. And I went, oh snap. And so I remember sitting on the couch, this would've been just about two years ago, being like, what can I do and what can I talk about?

And I had already become fascinated in past years and really leaning into psychological safety. I'd listened to one of Adam Grant's podcasts on Speak Up Culture, and I'm like, I think there's something here. And sort of my introduction or my access point to the topic was the Boeing 737 Max tragedy, which is one of many, I mean we saw it again with the Titan submersible most recently time and time and time again, so many of these disasters or tragedies could have been avoided with healthier internal cultures.

Ones that actually encouraged and rewarded, made it safe and worth it for people to share their ideas, their concerns, their disagreements, and even their mistakes. And both in these two instances of the 737 Max, with Ed Pearson being the most vocal person who spoke up and eventually became a whistleblower at US Congress and in the Titan submersible, both of those whistleblowers are people who spoke up were punished and fired.

Or in the case of Pearson, he retired early cuz it was just too hard to keep going in that culture. And so that was sort of my, my access point. And the more I learned about it, the more I began to form a point of view on it.

So when I first started writing, I fully thought that I was rebranding psychological safety. For me, I'm a huge fan of Amy Edmondson and her work. I'm a huge fan of employee voice of psychological safety. For me, some of the terms were a little bit too academic and I felt as though they were putting sort of a white lab coat on a very human experience and emotion.

And so I leaned into good old Zig Ziglar's quote of, people don't buy drills that buy holes. And so I'm like, if psychological safety is the drill, a SpeakUp culture is the whole, so let's talk about what you get as a result.

Now, as I dug in and begin forming my own point of view on it and researched more and leaned into an amazing team who helped me with that, we realized that psychological safety is one piece of a SpeakUp culture.

It's not just psychological safety, it's also a perception of impact that before we speak up, we consciously or subconsciously ask two questions. Is it safe to speak up then? Is it worth it? And what's really interesting is if you have psychological safety, but it isn't worth it, like you might speak up, but that's like telling a friend who is an alcoholic, you know, you should really stop drinking. It's like, yeah, of course you might feel safe, but do you feel like it's gonna lead to any meaningful change? So there's this interesting dynamic of, obviously we want it to be both a perception of safety and a perception of impact, that it's worth it, right?

We don't want it to be that bottom left corner of the quadrant where it isn't safe and it isn't worth it. That's an unhappy marriage of both fear and apathy. I've been there, it's debilitating and it's no fun. I've seen others there, right?

That high safety, low impact is really interesting. It might speak up, but it's not gonna lead to any meaningful change either because a habit that's too hard to change bureaucracy or a systemic issue.

But the really interesting one to me is low safety, but high impact. It's really hard for me to speak up, if I speak up, it's at personal risk to my job, my reputation and my relationships. But I feel connected to stakes that are too important for me to remain silent. And that's when you get courageous leadership.

And so I learned that it isn't only about psychological safety that leads to a speak up culture. It's also about a perception of impact. And sometimes if you have a perception of impact that it's worth it to speak up, you feel that it will lead to some positive change or result. You're willing to take the risk even if it isn't safe to do so. And that to me is really fascinating and interesting. I highlight a few of these people, ed Pearson, Kimberly Young-McLear, who's a retired US Coast Guard, both of whom spoke up as courageous leaders to their own personal risk.

Stephen Matini: Like a lot of people, I had to learn to speak up a little bit more, you know, to be more assertive, to say what I had to say. For many, many years I practiced what I thought was speaking up, like being assertive, telling you no, not to this, not to that.

But only recently I'm learning what we talked about before. It's not just saying no, but also you have to make yourself vulnerable and to tell the other person what is that you want. At least let's have a, a discussion about something else.

So it's not to that, but for this to this and that, yes, I'm completely open and it's just weird combination of being, you know, sturdy to say no, but also to be vulnerable, to say, hey, but maybe we can go that way. Maybe we can create something more beautiful and more representative of both of us.

Stephen Shedletzky: It's both though a willingness to be open to the fact that you are worth it and that it matters to you. It's also connecting to the stakes of it will lead to more fulfillment, healthier, better relationships.

So there's a fun example I use in the book. So the strength of a culture is determined by the clarity of its values and then the degree to which those values are behaved. We have a little bit of a culture and maybe more than a little bit, we have an organizational culture in this home.

My wife and I are the partners. We have two subordinates, our children who are seven and four, and we have a few values that are really fundamental that make the relationship between my wife and I strong. Perfect? No, strong. And my wife and I, I described in our wedding speech that we're different where it compliments and similar, where it counts, right?

We have shared common values and beliefs, but we're different people with different strengths and perspectives. But the things that we agree upon are we are helper people, we can always help others and we can always find other helper people.

The second value and cultural pillar is we treat other people as the human beings that they are. Even if we don't like them, we still treat people with respect. That's a second one. And we're willing to prove to our kids we do that, we have to model that behavior ourselves as well.

And then third is we are allowed to talk about our emotions, especially the hardest ones. Those are our three values. Now, if I invited a guest into our home, regardless of if those values are posted on the wall or not, which they aren't, but I've put in the book. So now they're at least written somewhere.

And that guest, let's say they're a prospective client, and if that dinner goes well, I will have a new contract, more food on the table. Hooray, right?

If that guest comes into the home and disrespects treats my children and my wife as lesser than, I have a choice, do I have a meaningful and hard intervention with that guest, even though they're a prospective client in the moment or thereafter? And essentially say that behavior isn't tolerated. And if we're gonna do this, I need to see a shift in behavior.

Which by the way, if I let them walk all over my children and my wife, what does that say about these cultural values that I've put out? I'll only live them when they're convenient to me, regardless of if they're convenient to you or not. I'm putting profit ahead of my values and my people and my purpose, right?

But if I take the risk to speak up because something matters, like the health of our relationships matter, I'm proving to my subordinates and to my partner that these values aren't just nice to have as they're imperative and I'm willing to have them cost me money or cost me something valuable to have a sacrifice with them.

And then that prospective client will either walk out and we have more leftovers and they're like, you know what? You're totally right. And display some humility and they're a fit.

And so I think you know, what you're pointing to is when we display the courage to actually set boundaries, share what matters to us, try to invest in relationships, right? The definition of a toxic relationship is the more you invest in it, the worse it gets. And the only person responsible for that negative outcome is you. That's a toxic relationship.

A healthy thriving relationship is one in which both parties take responsibility for the health and maintenance of that relationship. And the more you lean in and the more you share hardships or opportunities, the more that relationship improves, which means it could evolve and change, you know what, we should shift or end this relationship or this job isn't the right job for you. Those are all can be healthy, progressive outcomes. So just a few things that come to mind there that is it worth it? And do you have enough value in yourself and value in the relationship to actually go there?

Stephen Matini: Based on where you are now in your own personal journey, what is still difficult for you in relationships?

Stephen Shedletzky: Oh my God. I mean, speaking up is never easy. It's funny, I dedicated the book to my wife and at first the dedication was to Julie who makes it easy to speak up. And then I went, no. And I changed it to, for Julie, who makes it safe and worth it to speak up because it is never easy, you know?

And to walk around in this human experience thinking that you never have to have difficult or hard conversations or conversations that take courage would be foolish. And so speaking up is not about fearlessness, it's about us creating less fear in our relationships. So, you know, I'm definitely, definitely imperfect , you know, I definitely have a gap between what I say and what I do.

I just had one yesterday, I let a partner down, I told them that I was gonna do some research and do some work on some things and have it ready for our next meeting.

And I totally didn't do it. And she said, Hey, have you done that? And I'm like, nope. And that is on me, I'm sorry. And they were like, all good, let's do it now. And we did it in the moment and now I have work assigned for me to do for our next meeting, and you sure as hell, I'm gonna do that work.

And so if I was holier than now and didn't apologize and made it their problem, what does that do? I apologized twice. I apologized in the moment and by the end of the call I said, you know what, like again, I'm really sorry I gave you my word that I would do something and I didn't do it. That's on me and I'm gonna be better.

And now I have a choice of do I actually close that say do gap and do the work that I said I'm gonna do next time. So, you know, being human is not about being perfect, which is a faux-topia and boring. Being human is about embracing our imperfections and working to improve all the time.

Stephen Matini: When I did the episode with Leanne, we were talking about something similar and essentially she said, you know, this whole relationship, this whole conflict, it's a messy business and it's supposed to be messy and you're supposed to screw up, you know, meaning it's not about perfection.

Stephen Shedletzky: And the dynamic changes, you know? So my wife and I will have, you know, a hard conversation around how to better parent our kids. And then our kids aren't static , they grow, they evolve, they change the world around us changes. So it takes constant maintenance, it's dynamic as well.

Stephen Matini: When your book is gonna come out. So let's say I buy your book, I read it. Ideally, what would you like for people to feel once they close the book?

Stephen Shedletzky: So for me, I wrote the book specifically for leaders, not necessarily by title, but by behavior. So the book is written for either a very senior leader who has the title and who has the authority, and quite frankly, the expectation to behave as leaders for leaders in the middle, and I often think we bash quote unquote managers, but managers are essential and we need them.

There's a lot of sort of conversation in the zeitgeist of like management bad, leadership good. And it's like, no, no, no, we need leaders to behave as leaders and we need managers to behave as leaders. And managers are essential. They're the only layer in an organization that has multi-directional influence. They can influence up to peer side to side and to subordinates down. And so it's also for managers who have either had great, or let's be honest, probably mostly awful experiences with leaders and who want to lead better.

And then it's also for people who may not have a role or title of leadership in the moment, they're committed to the practice of learning how to behave as a leader. And I want this book to help when people close the book, I also want them to know the truth and the fact that how they show up and how they behave has influence on others. That a SpeakUp culture isn't relevant only for lines of work where it's a life or death line of business, like aerospace, healthcare, military law enforcement, or making submarines, that if you are in a role of leadership, we know this from UKG and the National Institute of Health, that our relationship with our direct supervisor has more of an impact on our health than that of our relationship with our family doctor or our therapist if we have one. And it's at par with our relationship with our life partner.

For any leader who's like, yeah, but like I don't work in a life or death line of work you do because you have either a life feeding or a life depleting impact on the people around you. And so none of us are allowed to say, I'm a great leader. Like if I say to you, Stephen, I'm a really great leader, I invite you to run away from me. No one can claim themselves to be a great listener, a great leader, a great teammate that is bestowed upon by the group.

If others describe you as a great leader or a great listener or whatever it might be, it's because of how your behavior makes them feel. And so I want leaders by title and behavior that when they close the book at the end for them to realize, huh, how I show up, what I say, what I do really matters and I'm gonna work to be better. That's really it. And when you work to be better, the people around you are healthier and are more likely to thrive. And so are your results.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you said, I would not be surprised if your book somehow found its way with the niche, a target that you haven't even thought about. You wrote it for very specific people, but what you're talking about, you're talking about voice really, you know, and all the beautiful things we covered. So that's something that I guess all of us can relate to it for sure. We talked about a bunch of stuff, for people who are going to listen to us, what would you like for them to take away? Is anything that is dear to you that you would like for them to pay attention to?

Stephen Shedletzky: I really just admire and love the vulnerability in this conversation. You know, we showed up, there was a tech issue to start, you know, there's nervousness. It's like, it's all good. Like, I didn't care. We're here, we're here to do the thing. You know, Leanne, my dear friend, spoke so highly of you and said that, you know, you do great research and prepare great questions. So, we had a chance to meet and do a pre-meeting where we couldn't help but fill a complete 30 minutes and it's like, we should have recorded this conversation. This was, you know, and so for me, I just, I love it when people show up as they are and own it and show up with vulnerability because vulnerability is positively contagious. Vulnerability to me is, is showing up, wearing both our strengths and our weaknesses on our sleeves. And vulnerability is essential for teamwork.

For you and I, we're a team, we're trying to create what we hope will be a valuable conversation for others. This is team. It's a group of two or more people working toward a common goal or objective, goal or objective, a conversation that adds value to others. For us to be most effective, we need to be aware of what are each other's strengths, what are each other's weaknesses, because we know who should step up and who should step back in certain moments.

So yeah, I hope listeners will realize that vulnerability is actually a source of power if used appropriately. And vulnerability doesn't mean sharing all the things all the time to all people that could be oversharing or not suitable for work. Vulnerability is about context.

Stephen Matini: Shed thank you so much for doing this with me. I, I've learned a lot and I feel that it was the best time for my Friday. Thank you, thank you, thank you

Stephen Shedletzky: , my total pleasure such a joy and I look forward to this coming out and serving and helping your audience and look forward to sharing it with mine as well.

View Details

The fight for gender equality still has a long way to go, with half of the world’s population facing cultural biases sedimenting over centuries.

Our guest for this episode is Mona Makkawi, founder of Konsult, a consulting, advisory, training, and coaching firm based in Beirut, Lebanon.

Mona highlights the importance of entrepreneurial ideas greater than fear and limiting beliefs. With a persistent, stubborn, and culturally aware attitude, Mona has successfully positioned herself as a kind and strategic voice in a male-dominated consulting world.

Mona Makkawi is a three-month Barkat Entrepreneur program graduate, an application-based 100% scholarship offering for Middle Eastern and African female entrepreneurs, and part of The Goddess Solution by Puneet Sachdev.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams despite limiting beliefs and societal expectations.

Spotify

Apple Podcast

Google Podcasts

Amazon Music

Podbean

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#entrepreneurship #monamakkawi #konsult #lebanon #beirut #entrepreneurship #femaleleader #barkat #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So I'm very happy to be here with a female leader from Lebanon.

Mona Makkawi: It's my pleasure.

Stephen Matini: Mona. For the listeners, for people that do not know you, so would you mind telling me a little bit about your background, where you grew up?

Mona Makkawi: I grew up in Beirut, and I grew up during the Civil War. My parents used to move us a lot from either within Beirut or to the mountains where it's safer. This is why I had to change a lot of schools. This is why I became so good with people because I, every time I needed to meet new people and get to know them. And the downside was that I didn't hold onto my friendships a lot. But the good side was the diversity gave me this skill that I used later in my career.

Stephen Matini: To connect with people.

Mona Makkawi: Yes.

Stephen Matini: When you were young, is this the future that you envisioned for yourself? Were you thinking something else for yourself?

Mona Makkawi: I've always thought that I would be a doctor, a surgeon, but I wasn't interested in science when I, when I grew up. So I shifted. I've never imagined that I will have a, an office job, but I knew I would do something to be of service for people.

Stephen Matini: Were there any people or events in the past that made you understand it, that you wanted your life to be of service to people?

Mona Makkawi: I'm the eldest among my siblings. And you know when I was little, my mom always told me to take care of my brothers and sister. I think I used to do it well. I used to like it. So maybe this was and for what I will become later, because later I was involved in HR throughout my career for almost 20 years. So it was rooted somewhere in my past.

Stephen Matini: Were you aware about any gender discrepancies? I mean, in being a woman versus being an a men professional? Did you understand, did you sense any difference?

Mona Makkawi: To be very honest, I've never tasted it. And in my house we've been raised very equal because my mom or my dad never asked us to do anything for our brothers, such as prepare food or do anything. No, it's, it was, you do it yourself. So I grew up never having to deal with this kind of differentiation. And even when I joined the workforce or the workplace, I never felt that because I'm a woman, I've been treated or, or getting paid less. It never happened to me.

Stephen Matini: Would you say this is something that is the result of the way your family brought you up or is something that women in your country experience?

Mona Makkawi: Specifically in my house, because my dad and mom, they believe in equality. But to be fair to my country, we have our labor law that indicates that the women should be paid not less than a man. I mean, there might be certain practices here and there, but the common knowledge is you get what you deserve.

Stephen Matini: In Italy. In terms of laws, in terms of gender, yes, the law protects both genders the same. However, I would define this culture to be very masculine, in many different ways. There is space for both men and women, but still, you know, in the corporate world, somehow female professionals and then female leaders seem to have to put three times the effort of the male counterparts. How was your experience working in the corporate world?

Mona Makkawi: Going back to the subject of breaking the glass ceiling, because I hear it from my colleagues or from my friends, they've been facing so many struggles, especially when they, when they want to reach a higher position. But I've never faced this maybe because my choices were so defined and maybe because in my head I was strongly a believer that I deserve this much. So when I negotiated, let's say my packages or so, I always knew what I want and I always asked for it. So maybe this is something that influenced the way how people treated me at work.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever felt somehow hesitant about having your voice heard? And the reason I'm asking this question is because oftentimes I see people feeling a bit fearful. You know, what is it gonna happen to me if I say exactly what you think? I don't know. Have you ever felt hesitant?

Mona Makkawi: Actually, no, because I always go prepared and I always say what I want when I see an opportunity to help someone or an opportunity to, to develop people around me. So I never had this hesitation or fear towards my managers. I always prepared myself, and I always was so structured about how I ask for what I want.

Stephen Matini: How do you prepare yourself? Is there anything specific that you do to make sure that you enter the conversation structured and prepared?

Mona Makkawi: I'm a big planner. I mean, I plan conversations in my head even. So I prepare myself for all scenarios. And I start to imagine if they say this thing, I would answer it this way. If they reject in a way, I will have another argument. So I always prepare my, in my brain, all the scenarios.

Stephen Matini: This is huge deal for a lot of people because what I see with my job, I see a lot of people, as I mentioned, they're really afraid of saying what they think. They always are fearful about the potential consequences. And it's a such a tricky thing to live, because if you don't say anything, you're going to end up feeling that you are in some sort of a jail. You know, you feel like a pressure cooker, and if you say something, the question is what is it gonna happen? How am I going to be perceived?

But as a colleague pointed out, actually, this is someone that I interviewed for this podcast. Her name is Linda Hoopes, and Linda focuses on resilience. She made a comment that I love that she says, you always say no to something even when you don't say anything, even when you don't make your voice heard, you always make a choice. And when you don't say anything, you say no to all those opportunities that could have happened if you had said something.

Mona Makkawi: Sometimes our fear of being judged is what stands in the way of us asking or saying what we want to say. Yeah, I guess I trained myself not to listen to this part of the brain that's telling me you are being judged.

Stephen Matini: How did you decide to start your own business? You were in corporate and then at some point you decided to start your business. How that happened?

Mona Makkawi: The idea started in 2008. I was in a job that I hated. I was so frustrated all the time. I had a very tough manager back then I decided I should pursue a higher degree in HR to develop you know, my knowledge, my skills and all that. And I joined a program to study HR at the university. The moment I started this course, I felt that my life is changing and I have to do something about it. I've met a group of amazing people, trainers and HR people, and even my teacher who was a doctor in HR, I said to myself, I need to benefit from this God sent gift. And I started to structure my, my first business, which was Management Solutions Lebanon, an HR consultancy to provide solutions for small to medium side businesses in all HR related topics.

Mona Makkawi: And because I needed help, so I asked my colleagues and my teacher if they could help me in this endeavor. Of course, they were very, very kind. And it started just like that. I remember my first project came from someone who doesn't know me. We were in a friends dinner. He heard me talking about it, and he had a friend who needed this service, and, it happened. So it was amazing how it started.

Back in 2009, I had my own business for like couple of years. And then I went back to the corporate because I had been head hunted by, by a Canadian company to handle the Middle East, and everything related to people development. And I thought it was big opportunity for me to learn and develop my skills even further. And it took me like 12 years to, to get back to reopen my own business again. But this time I developed the concept. I recreated the name. I mean, it's now it's consult and we work on developing people through consulting, coaching, and training.

Stephen Matini: Desire, your energy, the second time that you decided to start your business was different compared to the first time?

Mona Makkawi: I've never felt that I'm the perfect employee throughout my whole career, although I've been really enjoying my time and working from all of my heart. But I always had this idea of doing things my way, you know, working for someone else. It's very different from having your own practice, and I'm sure you know that.

Stephen Matini: Yes, I do. If someone had the desire to start a home business or his own business and whoever the person is, what is a practical advice you would give to them?

Mona Makkawi: Being very persistent and being very stubborn about not quitting, not stubborn about the process because sometimes we have to change course, we have to adjust, we have to be agile. Being persistent and not taking no for an answer. And challenging the economy and the financial situation of the country and everything. So the idea needs to be bigger than the fear.

Stephen Matini: That should be written as a tagline. When you and I met, you said that as a female entrepreneur, you have to work as super, super extra hard in a field that is more male dominated. Can you tell me something about what that is?

Mona Makkawi: It's known in Lebanon or in the region that consulting is a male dominated profession. You can work in a consulting company, but it's hard to own a consulting company and getting big projects. I had to really prove myself in this area. And because, you know, sometimes you work with the Gulf and they are more comfortable working with a man than dealing with the women they used to be. I mean, now they are getting really much better on this area, and I can acknowledge this very well. I had to work very hard and be very attentive to details. And because, you know, any mistake would have cost me a lot. And you know, building a reputation in this field, it takes time. I mean, it's hard.

Prepare yourself and lobbying and having lots of friends and in order for you to be known and to get projects, and I had to join, you know, all the organizations that foster and empower women led businesses here just for me to be known and to be heard.

Stephen Matini: You know, there's a lot of talk in general about differences between gender, you know, if a female leader is different compared to the male leader. Being a woman, does it give you any advantage compared to your male counterparts?

Mona Makkawi: To be very honest and objective, I had bad female managers and bad male managers. So, you know, I used to work in recruitment for the companies I never recruited or never have been biased for gender towards another gender. I mean, what everyone needs in the, in the workplace is someone to do the job and to be good at it and to excel in it and to differentiate themselves in a way. I don't think gender when I work. So I'm really neutral about it and people can feel that. I am a human being who's equipped in this area and who's very knowledgeable in certain area and who can help. This is how I think of myself as a contributor to any solution I give to my clients.

Stephen Matini: Based on what you say, it seems that when we are faced with any sort of potential discrimination, which could happen for a bunch of reasons, including gender, it seems that maybe the biggest step is work that we need to do within ourselves.

Mona Makkawi: It's a matter of culture, because I would not be a hundred percent correct if I said we have to work on ourselves and everything will be okay and all the doors will open. I mean, it's a matter of culture as well. I mean, there are certain cultures in the region that still think less of a women. I mean, even worldwide, the glass ceiling is not broken yet and women still face the same discrimination that they've been facing ages ago. I mean, I've been working with family businesses a lot during my career and I know that they favor their sons more than their daughters in the workplace. So how I react to it is that I don't consider it, but how the society and the environment reflects it on me. This is their issue. I do what's mine in this area, or I change what I have the ability to change.

Stephen Matini: Have you noticed any differences throughout your career when you coach one or the other gender? You know, when you help a female executive compared to a male executive?

Mona Makkawi: Sometimes women know what they want more than men, maybe because they have fewer options, so they know what they want and they work harder to get it.

Stephen Matini: And what about male leaders? Because last time when you and I talked, you talked about that throughout your work, you got to understand some of the distinctive traits about coaching and, and consulting and training male leaders, you know, in South Arabia. What are some of the features that you noticed?

Mona Makkawi: Perceptions are changing, especially now I'm working on a project with young Saudi leaders and you can see that they have totally different views about everything. They are more diverse, more inclined to the concept of diversity and inclusion. They are more welcoming to the idea of having women working with them. They started to even include women in decision making. Some of them, they have no problem being led by a woman, which was surprising for me because being led by a woman creates ego battle inside the head of some man, yeah, you know?

Stephen Matini: To your daughter, based on anything and everything that you have learned as a woman and as a leader, what are some of the biggest lessons that you pass to her?

Mona Makkawi: She's even stronger. Her character have been developed in the past couple of years, very surprisingly. I always tell her to be kind to herself first and to others. We, we've never been taught to be kind to ourselves. We've always been taught to be strong, to be competitive. Maybe they taught us to have this, the traits of men in order for us to survive. And this is very tiring for a woman because it conflicts with our divine feminine nature. I always tell her to be kind to herself, to love herself, to appreciate that she's a woman and she's different and she'll always be different. And this is ok.

Stephen Matini: I could not agree more. Kindness is such a, an underestimated quality because maybe in, in the eyes of some people could be seen as naïveté. To be kind to ourselves and to be kind to others requires a lot of strength. You know, a lot of strength when things get difficult, you know, really, really difficult for whatever the reason. How do you stay kind to yourself and others?

Mona Makkawi: Things that I do that help me stay grounded are, you know, meditation and I pray and I always try to not to lose it. meditation helps a lot. It makes you detaching from whatever's happened. And I journal also, ao whatever is bothering me, I I learn to write it down, process it and letting it go.

Stephen Matini: And what's gonna be next for Mona?

Mona Makkawi: I'm also a dreamer. I have lots of dreams and lots of aspirations. So I hope that I can help as much people as I can. Well, you know, whatever I'm doing, either through coaching or training or you know, or even companies as, as a consultant, I really want to deliver value to people because this is what impacts people's lives.

Stephen Matini: For those who are going to listen to this episode, for people that somehow feel that they may not have a voice or they will like to have a voice or maybe they would like to start their own business, what would it be a first step in your opinion, based on your experience, to move forward?

Mona Makkawi: First to know what you want and to really do the research. Cuz sometimes we have crazy ideas and we start to go after them, and then we do not do our homework really well and we fall short. So you have to be prepared in terms of knowing everything, seeing, trying to see the full picture, being prepared will help you not to overcome all the obstacles, but you will be prepared.

I mean, you will, you will anticipate what's coming and maybe you change course or do something else. So knowing what you want and being very consistent and persistent, you know, and this is what makes any difference in whatever you do.

People told me that I will never make it. People told me that I will never be a good trainer. People told me that I will never deliver anything and if I were to listen to all the voices that were saying anything negative to me, I wouldn't have done anything in my life. Always listen to your gut. Your gut is very supportive to you and it guides you. Listen to your intuition. Try to shut the noise because you know, sometimes we are very concerned about the noise and we tend to forget our voice. So this is very important. And always be true to yourself. Whatever you want to do. Be true to yourself. Know your weaknesses and work on your strength.

Stephen Matini: Mona, have you ever doubted your instinct? Because that's something that me personally, I did it for the longest part of my life. Have you ever trusted your instinct?

Mona Makkawi: I've always trusted my instinct because I'm a very intuitive person, but sometimes I used to fear a lot and I don't know from where this fear is coming until I learned about limiting beliefs. So I started to identify if this is the limiting belief that is giving me this fear and is stopping me, or is it something else? And this made all the difference.

Stephen Matini: What do you do to identify your limiting beliefs and understand that it is a limiting belief and not just the truth?

Mona Makkawi: I start to ask myself from where this coming? Is there anything that supports this idea or thought that I'm having? If things were different, what would be my reaction or my response to it? All these questions, you know, will help you dig more or more information in your head and inside of you. And nobody knows you the way you know yourself, and all the answers are inside of us. We just have to ask the question and they told us something in the coaching school that is, you don't know what you know until you say it.

Stephen Matini: I believe that we all have a different interpretation of reality. You know, we all have a different understanding of what reality is and what is good for us. I tend to agree with you that probably the person that can know us the best is ourselves. You know, nobody else will ever experience ourselves the way we do, at least for people like me. That took a long time to gain self-confidence. Sometimes as I, you know, pointed out, it's difficult to have the trust, you know, to listen to that intuition. So if someone is not particularly intuitive or maybe doesn't have the much self-confidence, what would it be? A first step to feel more in touch with yourself? What would you suggest to do?

Mona Makkawi: Of course, to see a coach, A coach can help you a lot. Certainly for people who are not into it or who don't know how to structure their thinking in a way, or if they have, let's say, limiting belief or obstacles or if they are facing anything. I mean, coaching is an amazing tool to make this shift inside of your head. You know, everyone has capabilities and areas inside of them that they just need to tap on them in order to discover them.

Stephen Matini: In my coaching career, I had different people that have been super, super important in helping me out. Mona, we talked about different things. From your perspective, what would you say that is something really important that would you suggest to our listeners to pay attention to?

Mona Makkawi: The voices inside their heads and the intuition, of course, the patterns in our lives are very important, but we tend to forget about them.

Stephen Matini: Do you think, is it possible for anyone to become more aware of those voices and in making some shifts? Because some people seem to be really resistant to it.

Mona Makkawi: Yes, because even if it is tough on others, it's, it's our comfort zone and people are resistant to leave their comfort zone. I mean, through coaching, I believe that any shift can happen because through the questions that the the coach ask, they can tap into areas in your inside of any person that the person doesn't know exists, not having the willingness to change it's rooted somewhere else in their subconscious mind. It's their defense mechanism towards something. Maybe this is how they've been raised. So they developed this throughout many incidents and this is where the coach interferes and trying help the clients to decode what's happening inside of them.

Stephen Matini: I don't know if I should call it competency or simply quality, but I'm talking about courage. If someone is not particularly courageous, as some people seem to hesitate, you know, to leave the comfort zone. What can they do to take a first step to feel a little bit braver?

Mona Makkawi: I believe they need to redefine courage inside of them because sometimes we have different definitions for, for things because what courage mean to you, it's different than what it means to me and or what it means to somebody else. So I believe that maybe defining or tapping into this definition will help the person understand it more and maybe either embrace it or overcome it.

Stephen Matini: I love that because the notion of courage is often associated with, you know, being fierce. You just keep moving, you move forward. But it's not necessarily what a courageous act is.

Mona Makkawi: Exactly, because you can be courage, but when you will not throw yourself to lions, this will not be courage. This would be something else. You know. Even in the corporate world, I mean, being courage, it doesn't mean that you have to face the CEO or saying something against someone, you know, this is not smart. Being courageous is something that will help you maybe maneuver.

Stephen Matini: I believe exactly what you said before, it is a mix about assessing the situation, be well-prepared about the dynamics, and at the same time to have a, a good understanding of yourself. A big chunk of me, me personally, becoming more courageous involved, to give myself permission to feel all that I felt, to experience all my contradictions and to be okay with different parts of myself that somehow I was running away from, you know, to understand that there's this space and time for, for everything, even to feel fearful and somehow being more okay with all those parts of myself have made me braver. Also, it gave me the ability to understand the situation better and to understand people a little bit better.

Mona Makkawi: And here is not necessarily a very bad thing. It makes you prepare more, it makes you more vigilant and more, you know, aware of whatever you might face.

Stephen Matini: Mona, you have seen a lot of things in your life. You know, you were telling me about your upbringing and what it means to be a woman and to continue to believe in yourself and building what was important to you. As of today, what is the one thing that it makes you feel fearful?

Mona Makkawi: The unknown. The fast pace that the world is shifting into, because everything is moving very fast and, and this is maybe something that sometimes I feel uncertain about what's next? Maybe because of that.

Stephen Matini: When I met you said I think the whole point is to leave this place better. The way that, that we found it. Actually very often when I feel uncertain, what gives me courage and gives me hope is just my contribution. You know, I focus on what I can do today and then what value I can bring today. And of course, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or what can possibly happen five years from now. You know, I simply tend to focus on how I can contribute and somehow that gives me a lot of peace.

Mona Makkawi: Yes, living the moment, I mean, this is very important. Yes. When you live in the moment, you don't pre occupy your mind with the future, which not happened yet, or the past, which you cannot change. Being present and being in the moment, this is what we have to focus on.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that your daughter is going to pursue your same career or something else?

Mona Makkawi: I don't know. She's very influenced by me, . I mean, she's studying business now in the university. I would love for her to pick whatever she likes, you know, it doesn't necessarily that she follows my steps. Of course, she will be welcome to to join if she wants to, to do anything else, I would support her. Of course, she has this ability to coach people even though she doesn't, she doesn't do anything about coaching.

Stephen Matini: Mona, you joined the BARKAT Entrepreneur program created by Puneet Sadchev, who had the pleasure of interviewing for the podcast. The barca program is a social initiative to support female entrepreneurs in Africa and in the Middle East. What motivated you to apply for the BARKAT program?

Mona Makkawi: Actually, it was through an organization, it's called L L W B, Lebanese Meet for Women in Business. So it was through them. They send usually their members any opportunities for either development, training gatherings and so on. I read about the Bar project and I found it very interesting because first it wasn't local, and second, it was, it was the first time for me to, to be coached on the business level. The concept is to connect women leaders, I mean women business owners, SMEs, owners in Lebanon together. So it was for me, great opportunity on all levels.

Stephen Matini: How has participating in the BARKAT program influenced your personal growth and leadership skills as a female entrepreneur? What's been the biggest takeaway for you?

Mona Makkawi: The group coaching is something really different and it's beneficial on all levels because you, you are not only working on your issue that you have in mind, but you also can listen and learn from the group. It's a learning experience for for anybody that's listening and the work that we, that we do outside of the coaching sessions is, is what matters and what's making the, the, the biggest difference. Because we have assignments to do and we have to support each other, creating, supporting groups, creating morning gratitude message that we send on Slack. So we have like certain things to do that are helping us.

Stephen Matini: Mona, thank you so much for spending time with me.

Mona Makkawi: Thank you so much, Stephen, and I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.

View Details

Today, we deep dive into the topic of reframing our thoughts. In this episode, leadership expert Tammy Heermann explores the power of mindset and its influence on behaviors and outcomes.

Tammy openly discusses her path to mastering discernment and conquering perfectionism, advising that we begin by clarifying our vision and the impact we aim to make.

Women in leadership can effectively challenge biases and shift perceptions by employing strategic questioning and adjusting their communication approaches.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to acquire a positive, successful mindset by crafting our internal narratives.

Spotify - https://tinyurl.com/yc8h9d6p

Apple Podcast - https://tinyurl.com/44ds566y

Google Podcast - https://tinyurl.com/3nt3y7np

Amazon Music - https://tinyurl.com/534fyuk5

Podbean - https://tinyurl.com/mr2vc8zh

Pity Party Over is also available on Castbox, Castro, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Podvine, Postcast Addict, Stitcher, TuneIn

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://www.alygn.company/pitypartyover

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://www.alygn.company/livesession

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

#tammyHeermannn #reframing #reframingthoughts #mindset #strategy #management #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You are an author. When that idea came to you, how did it happen?

Tammy Heermann: It was more like when I worked in the consulting company. And so part of my job was to write and to blog and to speak. And because I had two authors that were, you know, on the team, Leanne and, and someone else, Vince, I kind of saw how it worked. And so I think the difference between, you know, fiction, I believe you need so much creativity, you do need that inspiration for business books or self-help books is more like how do I get everything out of my brain that I've learned in the last however many years in a way that is digestible, entertaining, relevant, credible, all of that. So I think it's a very different process than a fiction where, you know, you are literally inventing characters. And for me it was like, okay, you know, this'll be an important tool for my business. It's something I thought, can I do this? But I think it's a bit different than fiction.

Stephen Matini: Was it harder or easier than you anticipated?

Tammy Heermann: Oh, way harder. And I think it's not just the intellectual, like it's hard, you know, it's hard to, to actually write. It was more the emotional challenge that surprised me, the ups and downs and as you're kind of reliving all your own stories and you know, you dig deep in like, why do I think this way wasn't my childhood, what bad bosses have I had? What critical moments have I had? So it was very, very emotional. And then it happened during the pandemic. So that was a whole time in life for everyone. That was tough.

Stephen Matini: Do you feel that you have become somehow a different person, a different professional as a result of going through the process or writing your book?

Tammy Heermann: I think it just solidified for me, you know, I have some insights to share, some wisdom. I, I think it just gave me confidence that, you know, my experience is valuable.

Stephen Matini: You know, a lot of people would love to write a book. A lot of people would like to start businesses. A lot of people have all kinds of dreams, you know, in the drawer. And somehow for whatever the reason they, they stay there for the longest time. What made you finally hop and do it?

Tammy Heermann: . I think it was a challenge. So Leanne and my other boss, they really believed in me. So apparently I can write, well, I don't enjoy it, but you know, it was something that I was fairly good at. And she said, I'm taking one of your articles and I'm gonna give it to publisher. She was working with. She said, can I do that? I said, sure. And they gave it and they said, do you think there's something here? And they're like, absolutely. And then, then it was just up to me to say yes or no, okay, am I doing this or not? She kept saying, Tammy, you have things to share with the world. Like, like you kind of owe it to people to share it. And, and so I was like, okay, I'm doing this.

Stephen Matini: How did you come up with a title? Because the title is such an important thing.

Tammy Heermann: Yeah. And so that's where it really helped to work with an editor. And so part of my process was with the editor, my whole philosophy on learning and, and everything is about our mindset first and we have to dig into that. And so I knew it was always going to be something around mindset or reframing or rethinking or rewriting our story, whatever it is. So, you know, we had the, what the concept was, but then landing on it is just a whole lot of brainstorming, trial and error, living with it, testing it out with people saying it, here's my book I'm writing, here's what it's called. How does it feel? Do they get it? So you kind of almost do a lot of testing as well. I think in the nonfiction space, that's an important thing to do. I think in, in fiction it's probably less relevant to test it with other people.

Stephen Matini: I have the same thoughts that you have only God knows if I can write. The process is enjoyable for the vast majority. And it, and it gets really enjoyable when I stop thinking about it has to work, you know, someone has to like it, it has to be perfect because that would dampen the whole thing will really ruin the whole thing. And so I learned that this is my journey, you know, for this to be anything, it has to be something that I personally enjoy. And then we'll see.

Tammy Heermann: Yes, I'm an author but I'm not a writer. I wouldn't, I don't get up and love and write and love to write. They who are writers would say is just get it out, start writing. Don't edit yourself. Don't like just go with with the flow. That's exactly what what they say to do. And the most prolific famous authors, they have editors like that's their job. Like no one writes something perfectly and it's ready to go. You get your brain on paper and then there's other experts who help shape it. That's their job, right? That's their expertise. So you're doing exactly the right thing and just get it out.

Stephen Matini: Have you always known that at some point you would've written a book?

Tammy Heermann: No, definitely. It was never a goal of mine. You know, I grew up in a, a rural part of Canada. I wasn't that kid who said I always wanna do this or be this and I experimented with a lot of things. I wanted to do something creative, hairdressing, makeup, fashion. And then I was playing working in a bank and a teacher. And as you know a lot of kids do. Now that I reflect back is I love learning, I love new, I love change. Like literally I love throwing myself as we were talking about in the middle of a random country or area and just going, okay, let's figure this out. So I think I was kind of destined to work in terms of helping others learn and accept change and growth. And I'd say some pivotal moments. The first time I had been to Italy and it was in grade 12 and high school, my senior year of high school.

Tammy Heermann: And I remembered not just being blown away with being in Europe but with just seeing that there was this vast world, it opened my eyes cuz you know, so many people don't leave their areas and I come from a very large family and very few people have kind of left the area and I was just in intrigued by this wide, wide world. And so that was certainly an event. And then later on in graduate school, again I returned to the UK and and did my graduate studies and I was just surrounded by people from all over the world learning. When I think about what shaped me and when I was destined, it's like how do I help other people love learning and growth and change and do that with a global lens.

Stephen Matini: When you say learning and learning, curiosity, those are words that resonate very, very strongly with me. And so I would say that's my personal mindset. And hearing you, it seems to be your case as well. You talked about before the importance of mindset. When you say mindset, do you mean a specific mindset or the mindset changes from person to person?

Tammy Heermann: So I think it changes. So, so here's how I think about it and it even goes before mindset. And this is, you know, well documented with psychologists. And so our values and our beliefs, those things that we're kind of indoctrinated with shape our mindsets kind of how we walk into situations and then it shapes the behaviors that we engage in. And then of course that reinforces the values. You know, beliefs, mindsets, there's this cycle and sometimes that cycle helps us and sometimes it doesn't. So I grew up in this family very hardworking with a, you know, the strong work ethic of a farmer and that is fantastic. Like who would say that's a bad thing? And and I remember hearing my dad say, okay, you know, if you're gonna do something, do it once and do it right. And I remember him spending hours on things and perfecting it and it sounds great, doesn't it?

Tammy Heermann: And you probably know where this is going until I get into this office environment and you're leading these huge teams and you have 80 projects happening simultaneously, . And you can't do that. You can't have that mindset of touch, everything, make it perfect, touch it once, you know, do the the best you can on everything. You just can't. And I remember a critical moment where my boss at the time took me and he said, Tammy, he said, you can't keep going like this. You can't do everything perfect. You have to understand when good is good enough. And he said, by the way, your good is most people's excellent. So he, he taught me that I really had to learn discernment when to kind of give a hundred percent, when to give 110 and when to give 60 because it's so in that, in that moment.

Tammy Heermann: And so that gets back to, you know, my values and beliefs kind of shaped this hardworking ethic which got me very far in life. But that mindset of always doing it perfect, I had to say, okay, when does that serve me and when does it not? And how do I adjust those behaviors? So that's kind of the loop. And I think what most training and development and leadership and learning does today is we put people in a classroom and we give them these skills training and we check the box and we think it's all good. Meanwhile people are sitting there going, I'd never do that, I'd never do it like that. I could never do that. And all these stories are going around in their brains and they leave the classroom and they check the box cuz they did the training. They'll do nothing different with it. And, and so for me the approach is always we have to start with the mindset first.

Stephen Matini: It seems that discernment is the recipe to defeat perfectionism.

Tammy Heermann: I think so, yeah. And of course perfectionism comes in various flavors. There's people who you know, again will just give a hundred percent and over invest when it's not required. There's people who won't start something and unless they can do it perfectly. So sometimes I tease my husband, he's like, well I'm not doing this workout cuz if I can't get in, you know, my warmup, the actual workout and then the cool down, then it's not worth it cuz I don't have two hours to do this. Versus any health expert would tell you 20 minutes a day is better than not doing it at all. But to get the, you know, so that that notion of if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do it at all. So again, discernment comes in, in all these places is how do I calculate where do I spend my time? What's the payoff, what's the value to me and others? Absolutely.

Stephen Matini: How did you develop your discernment? Because as I think of this word, it makes total sense and as I stay with the word, I think in order for me to discern, I will need to be more mindful. I need to take a step back to maybe to have a better analytical skill. So for you, how did you develop that so you knew how far to push yourself? 60%, 80% or whatever there was.

Tammy Heermann: The first thing is to understand what's the vision for yourself. And so that's what I do with all leaders, especially women. What's the impact I wanna have? What's the legacy I wanna leave? What does my best self look like? And that's different than setting goals cuz every organization will say, oh, set your goals for the year, right? And this is the higher level than that.

And then once I have that criteria and I have sure my organization makes me have some development goals, then I can sit in that situation and exactly to your point and say, okay, is that helping me get closer to these things or is it distracting and taking me farther apart? And I think most people know the answer to that question, Stephen. I think they're too scared to have the conversation that says, I don't think I should be doing this. That's the thing they, they know they shouldn't be. They know they don't want to be. It's the conversation I think that scares most people.

Stephen Matini: I think you said that your soft spot is to work with people, leadership potential that is on the cusp of making the big jump, right? A lot of women. What are some of the biases, conscious or unconscious that you have seen more frequently working with people?

Tammy Heermann: Yeah, well there is with that group, and I'll tell you why I love it so much, is because it's usually an age and stage conversation. Meaning if they're just on the cusp of whether it's like director or you know, beginning of executive or partner in a firm, whatever the structure is, they're usually at that age where they're either starting to have a family, you know, got little ones at home or maybe decide not to or cannot. And so they're in this really sticky stage of life where there is added pressure, I mean really, really added pressure, especially if you've got little ones at home or you're, you know, getting pregnant in between you're trying to get promoted, all of that.

And what also happens simultaneously is a lot of organizations aren't supportive of that. A lot of countries don't have a lot of support for families and they start to question, am I good enough? Can I really do this? Does it make sense? And it's really hard to just get beyond the hours of day-to-day and kind of look out into the long-term. It's this time where they just, they need a big, and then say, okay, what are you gonna do about this? And so I just love working with this stage because they're on the cusp of greatness in their career these moments. But it can go downhill very fast because they're, they're just questioning everything.

Stephen Matini: When you say that, you mean both regardless of gender or do you see them more prominent in certain type of people?

Tammy Heermann: Definitely more prominent with females and that's where I spend a lot of my time working now with women because you know, for the most part women still do have primary caretaking responsibilities in the home. And then I'd say more generally, cuz you asked, and again I've worked with a lot of high potentials, it's that shift between moving from tactical to strategic. It's how do I get known for not doing everything but to kind of seeing the more strategic picture and leading. And there's that moment where it's so hard you have to work so hard to both build your team and gain your own visibility so that you can let go and kind of move into that more strategic realm. That is a tough, tough jump for anyone. And again, if you layer on kind of the age and stage with women, that tends to be right in the childbearing years.

Stephen Matini: Working with women, what has been in your experience as some of the most effective ways for new female leaders to legitimize their position in a company, to be seen a more as a strategic contributor, better than being a doer?

Tammy Heermann: Yeah, and and gosh, the word, so I'm, I'm triggered by the word when you said legitimize because I'm like, oh they shouldn't have to, and yet you're onto something Stephen. So in my research what I found is when I looked at 360 research, women tend to score higher on most leadership competencies except for one.

And it's that strategic, they are perceived, so to your legitimize, I talk about changing perceptions of our strategic capability. So it's not that I don't think women don't have those skills or can't have those skills, it's that we get so mired in the execution and doing and not carving the boundaries and checking off the to-do list at home and at work and we just get stuck and there's a pride in execution, give it to me, I'll get it done. There's the multitasking that that women are, you know, so great at.

Tammy Heermann: All of these things keep us stuck in the weeds. For me it's about helping them understand, okay, how do you change perceptions of this skillset I know you have and get out of that kind of doing trap and, and more into that strategic realm. And it's how you communicate, it's how you say yes and no to things. It's how you, you know, where you spend your time, how you kind of beef up your team so you can kind of get up into the higher level. It's, it's a whole bunch of things but I'll tell you, when I started working on all of that stuff Stephen, I was promoted four times in six years when I made the deliberate decision to say I gotta get out of the weeds.

Stephen Matini: So which one was the first skill that you started doing differently? Were you more assertive? Was communication, what was it?

Tammy Heermann: I think I wrote this in the book and I had done my own 360 and that's what I had gotten back is my feedback as well. That's what made me curious to kind of look into it. The coach I was working with said, I want you to start by asking different questions and meetings.

And I laughed. I said, how can something so simple like are you kidding me ? And of course all these things are little simple steps that you have to put into place. And so I started by showing up differently by asking strategic questions. So first of all, I'm getting my voice in the room to your point, but second I was showing my strategic capabilities. So for example, rather than just saying why don't we do this or why aren't we doing this? I said something like, given what we know about the environment and our current customers, you know, if they're asking about new solutions in this new place, how about we look at this solution and its impact on X, Y, and Z?

Tammy Heermann: So all of a sudden now they're seeing, oh my gosh, she's thinking about environment, she's taking trends into account, she knows our customers and she's proposing a solution, but understanding that it's gonna have various impacts. That's a very strategic question that shows how my brain works. And I remember the first time I did it, the room just looked at me and stared, there was like silence for a few seconds and I was so uncomfortable. And I think it's because they're like, well A, she's talking and B wow, that was very astute of her right? And guess what I was asked back to the next meeting and the next meeting. And so that's where I started was just showing people I had that capability and bringing my voice into the conversations.

Stephen Matini: I love that. When I said the word legitimate is a word that comes out a lot, particularly with professionals that belong to specific functions. You know, if you're in finance, it's if you're in sales, that's something, you know, if you are into marketing much, much harder to prove that the budget that you are asking is going to produce those results. You know, if you're in human resources. So I think there are some functions that sometimes seem to struggle a little bit more to have that to be seen, you know, as strategic partner, you know, HR being a, a typical thing. I love what you said about asking questions and I was thinking probably feeling comfortable with silence to stay there, to be silent and to listen and to make people feel their presence. When people have to learn how to be more assertive. If I don't say no, then I'm going to continue being this busy, be in operational doing a million things. But if I start saying no to things, how am I going to be perceived? Will I be perceived as someone who doesn't collaborate? You know, am I going to upset someone? What would you suggest to someone that wants to say no, that wants to set boundaries but still struggles with them?

Tammy Heermann: Yeah, absolutely. And I agree it, I think so many people struggle with this. So a couple things going through my mind is first of all we can't just say no. We have to talk about, you know, what it is that that we're saying yes to. And so most people will just say, I'm too busy. I can't take that on my plate, cell overflowing, whatever analogy you use. And that's more of a help me prioritize sometimes even a mental health conversation around overwhelm versus saying, here's what I'm on the hook for with my boss for example. Here's what you're, you know, evaluating me on, here's the new thing that have come. Here's where I plan to spend my time to accomplish X, y and Z. Here's what's coming in. And really think about it as influencing and negotiation to say this isn't possible and, and if you're telling me I can't work, we'll then know that, you know, what are the implications of that Quality's gonna slip here.

Tammy Heermann: This person's on the verge of quitting, da da da da da da. So we have to make these conversations a business conversation. I was also very appointed when I said at that time, you're telling me that I need to be more strategic and then be seen as a, as a broader leader. So expect that I'm going to have these conversations with you. I'm gonna come to you from time to time and I'm gonna say no, I need you to hear me. And then we need to talk it out. And I know I'm not gonna win every time, but I also know that if I lose every time there's gonna be an impact to that. These are the things that I had to dial up to make it known. I, I think we have all these conversations inside our brains and we get so overwhelmed and we don't have them outward with other people and then they just explode as an overwhelmed conversation.

Tammy Heermann: And then the other thing I think we, we go back to kind of having that vision for yourself is, is so for me if at one point I was the global practice leader for women in leadership, so that's a big role and part of my vision for it was that I wanted to be a role model because how could I go out and tell women carved boundaries, but I'm not carving them myself. I'm not trying to say no myself. Like I couldn't do that. I couldn't be a hypocrite. And so I would state that, I would say part of my role is to be a role model and lead the way. So I'm not gonna jump on a plane tomorrow to go there. I will come over by Zoom because it's important for me to da da da da da. And so I think part of it is goes back to that you know, what's the vision for ourselves and how do we have a business conversation.

Stephen Matini: Do you have a sense of where this leadership development is going to? Do you have a sense of patterns or what may be relevant in five years or even longer than that?

Tammy Heermann: So not really. It's so funny because when I did work in a big consulting firm and we'd talk about this and most people would equate, you know, innovation or or advancement and it's always technology driven. That's great. But really like does anyone even do the self-paced learning anymore? Like it's been relegated to the closet where people have to do their compliance training every year in organizations or their health and safety. Like that's where that's ended up. It's good for that. And that's it. For me, it always comes back to instead of getting more distributed, how do we get more human and more together and intense? And so I am seeing a lot more organizations invest in coaching thankfully. And I think a lot of the big firms have kind of tried to democratize coaching through different platforms, but we'll still having, you know, a human on the other end.

Tammy Heermann: So, you know, I guess that's kind of good. And I have seen organizations say, okay, we do realize that being in person together, creating community, like I joke I say like it is not a good workshop of mine unless someone cries because, cause we know that we've hit something really important to them and the room and you just, you can't do that in other ways. So I think it's a long way of saying, you know, I don't know where the industry is headed, but I hope it's less to how do we use technology , you know, and more about how do we start talking about the things that make us human because of the last few years have brought anything to us. It's, it's, we know that we can't separate work and home and that what drives us at work is the very human things that drive us anywhere. And so really understanding that I think is important and, and I think we'll continue on the diversity, inclusion and equity and belonging and, and the name keeps getting longer and longer, which is good. I am seeing a lot more organizations realize that that's something that they have to pay attention to. So that's good.

Stephen Matini: Funny that we have to remind ourselves of the basic way of being a human . We spend so much time anything else, you know, we talking about conversations, being a person, treat people like a person, you know, which you would think, you know, that should come pretty easy to us, you know, but we have to constantly remind ourselves to do the things that make us deliciously human, you know?

Tammy Heermann: Just think back to, you know, when work started coming in all the office jobs, I mean, what was it? It was you typically the man left the home and it was a very separate, like we learned, even I was told to separate and I'm not that old to separate myself, to not bring my home crap into the office. I was told that. And so we were conditioned to separate ourselves to be, you know, one person here and another person there. And we just know thankfully that that just doesn't work.

Stephen Matini: It does not. One thing that I read that you use, but we didn't talk about it before. You use mantras. I love that. So I don't use mantras, but I use mindfulness, you know, in my trainings and the way that I introduce is always okay, can we breathe? And then people usually are open to it, you know, most people are open to it, but it's a bit odd, you know, so I have to be careful how I introduce it. How do you bring such an important piece, you know, to a training, to anything, to any learning experience?

Tammy Heermann: It took me a long time to really accept the word even mantra cuz to your part, and I don't care what people call it, whether it's a talk track or a phrase or a slogan for themselves, whatever. What I want them to think about is, what is the word or phrase usually pretty short that you can repeat over and over to stalk or reverse that cycle I talked about, you know, when we get into those situations where we start saying really horrible things to ourselves and so we create them and you can have as many as you need for whatever situation. But the, you know, ones that I talk about as an example is I remember speaking on a stage and too was a couple thousand people and there were really famous people speaking, like everyone knew who those four people were. And then there was me, it's like, who's that?

Tammy Heermann: You know, who's that person? So of course I'm standing backstage and I'm like telling myself all like, what am I doing here? No one's gonna listen to me. And then I brought out my mantra, you belong here, you belong here, you belong here. Because what did anyone else on stage know about my topic? Like either nothing or very little. I don't know anything about their topic. Why would they know anything about my topic? Right? . And so you belong here, you belong here, you have an important message and it just kind of buoys you and stops that horrible voice in your head. And so that's my example. So it's amazing. I've had women who post them on the screen or I'm actually hearing a lot more about this. So in Michelle Obama's recent book, the Light We Carry and I just saw an interview on TV this week with Mary J. Blige and both of them talked about in the mornings, you know, when conventionally you kind of look your worst, you're just outta bed looking in the mirror and saying, hello, gorgeous, or hello beautiful or whatever it is because it helps rewire our brain because what do we do?

Tammy Heermann: We go in and we go, oh my God, I look, I didn't get any sleep, those bags or wrinkles or blah blah, my hair's a desire. It's like, hello, gorgeous. And I love that. So that's a, a mantra again to rewire our brain to see the beauty within and the strength and, and that's why I think it's so powerful.

Stephen Matini: When you teach people how to use mantra, you let them pick the word or are there words that you suggest to them? How does it work?

Tammy Heermann: No, it has to come from them. It has to, if I tell them to say something and it might not mean anything to them and it'll be very unique to their situation. So for some it's yes, when I'm in that meeting with that person who just, no, you, we all know that that person, right? Okay, how do I walk in? What do I need to say to myself in those moments where I know they're gonna say something that riles me up? That could be one situation. Another is before I give a presentation or before I do this or that. And so it is for them very specific for their context.

Stephen Matini: Which one was more stressful to you release your baby, your book to the world, or given a presentation to you know, 2000 people knowing that other famous speakers, which one was more nerve wracking?

Tammy Heermann: Oh, a hundred percent. The book, I've done a lot of kind of being on stage my whole life. I used to remember I'd played the saxophone at the concert or the organ in church or whatever. So I've always enjoyed being in front of an audience, so that's fine. But once you release that book into the world and there's no taking it back, at least those other things, it ends, it ends in 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it's done with putting your thoughts. And I think for most people they're really personal stories in there. It's very vulnerable.

Stephen Matini: When you have really difficult time for whatever the reason and you find yourself in an odd spot. Is there anything that you normally do to get out of it or it depends. What do you do?

Tammy Heermann: Oh God. And this is so hard, isn't it? And I have a teenage daughter, so of course there's lots of times where you're just like, oh my God, I don't dunno what to do. Yeah, I'd say there's kinda three steps. So one is I remind myself that it's a point in time because of course we've all gone through difficult things many times and we will continue to. So if my first is deep breath, this is the point in time, this is a point in time, I will get through it. So I think that's one thing. The next is kind of perspective taking. So whether it involves another person or myself is like how do I either put in perspective what I'm thinking or I think they're where they're coming from. So I try to do perspective taking. And then the third, I call it learn and let go. But I think your tagline for your podcast is pause, learn, and move on. So that's exactly it. The the third is like, okay, what am I learning? And let go learn, let go, learn, let go.

Stephen Matini: One of mine, one of the many, it is pity party over. I mean, it has become some sort of personal mantra. When I am stuck in the place, there's always a moment that that comes in my mind, you know, like, okay, enough is enough pity party over, you cannot stay here forever. There's just, it's unproductive. It's, it's boring. It's pointless. So one question that like to ask at the end of our chitchat is this one we talked about different things, but there had to be something, some sort of takeaway that you would like listeners to focus on based on anything that we said. What would you highlight?

Tammy Heermann: We know the importance of stories, right? They, they're literally everywhere and they're the main way we communicate in the world, but we don't pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And for me, that is the most important thing to pay attention to. And so many studies have shown, you know, self-compassion and, and what we say to ourselves is the biggest tip for relieving stress, for building resilience. It really is, right? That, that piece. And so I would say for, for anyone who hasn't kind of done that type of reflection before that, it's, it's life changing in the world of sports and performance, they've known that forever. They know their head game is what actually makes them win, not their physical performance. And yet why do we not think that all the rest of us and in our offices and homes and wherever we work. So yeah, I'd say the, the stories we tell ourselves are critical.

Stephen Matini: Is this something that you learned as a musician?

Tammy Heermann: No, I've always kind of played with this notion of, of mindset early days in working in training and development and leadership. But where it really struck me is I was watching a marathon and where I live, I'm right at the turnaround point for the runners. And so I get to see the runners twice because they go by me and then they turn around and they come back. And so I always, I watch it and in the paper I remember seeing an interview the next day with the winner of the marathon. And when they said, you know, how do you do that to the winner? Like, he was like, just over two hours I think was his, his race. And he said, it's easy. He said, I only have to run for two hours and whatever. He said, I don't know how those other runners do it that are there for four hours, six hours, eight hours.

Tammy Heermann: He goes, how did they do it? And I thought, wow, what an interesting mindset shift. And it just, it blew my head because we're all so in awe of him and he is like, we run for two hours. That's it. That really got me seeing the parallels between this whole world of sports and performing arts. Like they get it, they get it led to performance coaches and thankfully psychologists being put with all of these high performing people. Why do we think we're any different? That was kinda when it really hit me that we can borrow from this world that really understands the nature of mindset.

Stephen Matini: It's all about the story that we tell ourselves. True. Ms. Tammy, thank you so much for these important insights. That was really a lovely conversation. I've learned a lot from you today.

Tammy Heermann: Thank you. I've enjoyed it so much too. Stephen.

View Details

Self-discovery is one of the most exciting and scary journeys, where we navigate through self-doubts and societal expectations to unveil the best in ourselves.

Our guest today is Dr. Helen Rothberg, a renowned Professor of Strategic Management and author of the book “The Perfect Mix,” in which she shares valuable lessons about management and leadership she learned while bartending.

Dr. Rothberg states that only after mastering the art of self-leadership can we authentically connect with and uplift those around us, fostering an environment of trust, growth, and collective success.

Join us in this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how leading ourselves is the first step toward leading others through change.

Spotify

Apple Podcast

Google Podcasts

Amazon Music

Podbean

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#helenrothberg #theperfectmix #self-leadership #strategy #management #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You know, I'm curious to ask you something. Why did you get four different degrees? That's a lot!

Helen Rothberg: Oh, and nobody should do that. It's like a letter of salad. When I was coming up in the field of business, it was a time when there were really not many women at all in senior suite. There were almost no women in strategy at all. So there's two reasons. So I felt I needed more credibility than perhaps my male counterparts would need to prove that I was worthy of working at that upper echelon of management.

I also found the whole education process patriarchal and very Darwinian. I went to all public institutions so they were kind of survival of the fittest. And most of my mentors were much older, cranky, older men. And I just didn't know if I'd be able to stomach it , you know?

So if I couldn't finish, I at least wanted something along the way that I could use that would help me do what I wanted to do. But luckily, you know, Nietzsche says that which does not kill you makes you stronger. I got to the end of that rainbow and it's really been a golden career for me. So no complaints. But yeah, no one should ever get four graduate degrees. It's just, yeah.

Stephen Matini: So you did not have any female professors, just guys?

Helen Rothberg: In all of graduate school, I had one female professor. The majority of business faculty were men. Strategy wasn't even an area. That's one of my terminal degrees really until that time, you know. Michael Porter's book came out in 1980, “Competitive Strategy” and that became all their age. So I was kind of that first prop of strategy. PhDs. There was only one female, she didn't get tenure, so she left.

Stephen Matini: When did you decide what you wanna pursue professionally?

Helen Rothberg: That's a loaded question, right? So it sort of found me, but I kind of understood the kind of life I wanted to have when I was really young. Here's what I learned about myself. When it's 75 and sunny, I have to be outside. So I needed summers off.

I also am the kind of person, I learned something pretty quickly and then I get bored and I need to learn something else. So when you put together what can you do that will give you freedom and the ability to always do new things? My two choices were consulting or academia and consulting had a lot more money attached to it. Really as a consultant, you make 10 x of what you make as a professor. But I realized two things about consulting. One, the consulting agency owns you, which means your clients own your time. Clients tend to believe everything is in emergency, so they don't care if it's at night or a weekend or a holiday.

I also wanted to do something bigger. I wanted to do something. I think it's important to help companies operate better. I've been a consultant and professor simultaneously for over three decades. I wound up doing both, but I chose being an academic as my full-time, not only because I could then have my summers, but because I could really influence the future. And to me the future is working with young minds.

So that's how I kind of chose that. And business, I never took a business class until I got to graduate school and I fell into it by accident. I was pre-med as an undergraduate, I realized I didn't wanna do medicine, so I went into psychology and then I realized psychology had the same kind of chains on you, on your heart, you know, trying to help people who aren't getting better. And then I fell into something called industrial psychology, which I got bored with in about six seconds.

And then I found organizational behavior and that was really interesting to me because it was the same thing I did when I was a bartender. You're managing people and groups of people and all of their different needs. And then I found strategies. So, and I found it because it was one person I was working with as part of my fellowship for my doctorate who loved Michael Porter's book. And he said, read this, it'll change everything. And it did.

So then I did a dual pathway of both behavioral science and strategy. So the strategy thing found me, but the decision to go into academia was about working with people who had hope in their eyes and believed the world would be a better place as opposed to only working with executives who were pretty whiny. And having my freedom and always having it change. Every a hundred days my life changes cuz the semester's over. And even if you teach the same course, the personalities are different. You know, the world is different. So I feel very blessed. It's been a great ride.

Stephen Matini: A friend of mine told me that years ago she said, I think you would like teaching. You know, teaching is for losers. That's what , that's what I said, you know? And then she said, no, no, no, no, I think you're gonna like this. And so she said gimme your resume. And she gave it to someone who administered the department, business department in a university here in Florence. And then after, I don't know, eight months, they called me and I taught the first class. And I remember the first second the students came, I fell in love with the whole thing. And I did not expect, you know, to feel the way. But there's something really genuine, open, you know, very vivacious about students that you do not find, you know, working with with all the people, you know.

Helen Rothberg: I agree a hundred percent. There's something magical that happens when people ask me, what do I do for my living? You know, what's my profession? I tell people, I help young people find what's magnificent in themselves.

Because if they could find what's magnificent in themselves, they'll know they could do anything.

And there's that moment, and I'm sure you've experienced this, you can have 30 60 students, it doesn't matter. But there's a moment where some of them get this like in their eye, something clicks into place, everything changes in their outlook. And to me, this is the most addictive drug watching somebody wake up. You're right. And it keeps us vibrant and young. It makes sure we don't get stale. We always have to be contemporary. And I mean I learn as much from my students as they learn from me. I think.

Stephen Matini: Have you always known what is magnificent in you?

Helen Rothberg: No, I did not always know that. That's such a good question. You know, now there's a language for it. They call it imposter syndrome. But I always was very competent, go-getter happy go-lucky on the outside. And on the inside I always had self-doubt. I doubted my intelligence, I doubted my worthiness, you know, and that comes from a lot of our histories. I'm sure you know, I'm not the first person to talk about something like this.

And even as I became more and more successful, you know, I was once accused by a student in my graduate program of you know, you get what you get because you're charming. It really smacked me between the eyes and you know, yeah, I was a bartender for 10 years and I know how to work with people, but I also, I don't think I got what I got cuz I was charming.

But it always was like that little voice you wanna smack but comes back. And to be honest with you, it wasn't until could tell you the exact moment. 2005 after my co-author and I, Scott Erickson published our first book called “Knowledge to Intelligence” and Harvard reviewed it and I got an email from somebody that Harvard, they have an online like subscription service also that, oh my God, Harvard just reviewed your book and I stared at that link for 20 minutes.

I was so afraid to open it because even though I was a tenured professor and you know, I was going up for full professor, here it is, I'm gonna be exposed now. Right? And I opened the link and I cried because they liked the book. They thought the book was smart. I called my co-author who goes to bed early, oh my. And I'm crying hysterically thought like my cat died or something.

I'm like, they like the book. And it was the first moment I really understood that, yeah, I do know things and it's not just because I could be charming and it really helped me grow in every way professionally, spiritually, personally.

I was confident in kind of a bullheaded way, but now I could have a soft confidence that I didn't have before. And it shifted how I taught a little bit. It shifted how I consulted. It made me feel more willing to try things I never did before. So I am the fearful strategy person in my school. You know, the kids who take me know they're gonna work really hard and that I'm tough. But I started reading a poem every Monday just because strategy, just like everything in life is art and science. You gotta open up your whole brain, your whole self. And I started taking completely different kind of risks that have paid off because that day I knew that maybe I knew something

Stephen Matini: Last time when we talked and I'm getting the same feeling this time. You gimme the feeling of someone who is at the beginning considering all the stuff that you have done. You will have all the rights to be a little bit pretentious considering your background, all the stuff that you accomplished. Instead, when you speak everything sounds like you're at the beginning. It sounds fresh, it sounds curious.

Helen Rothberg: I feel like you're looking into my solar right now. It's, I wish you were in America. Or maybe I'll have to come to Italy and we'll spend an entire weekend at the same cafe table talking.

I'm just at the beginning of everything, right? There's so much to learn and understand about myself, about people, about nature, about how we can help people grow and find and come from what's best in themselves instead of always focusing on what's worst about themselves, right? That's the poison of social media, this compare and despair. I want people to always come from what they're best at.

I feel like I'm still learning that even about every new thing I do, every new book I pick up, every new person I meet, there's something else there. So, you know, I don't know if we're reincarnated or not, I'd like to believe that your spirit comes back, but we don't remember anything.

So if we're not gonna remember anything and there's this big world to be part of and to see and to learn from, I wanna experience all of it. So I'm in my sixth decade, but to me, I'm like a child of the universe. So you're right.

And I'm not naive at all. I think it's because I've been through hard knocks that I understand the beauty and wonder of what this life brings us. You know, people always say to me, well do you see the glass is half empty or half full? And I always say, wrong question, where's the new glass? That's how I wanna look at it.

So yeah, I feel the world, it's filled with wonder and sometimes it's hard to hold that. I mean, right now the world is really crazy. It's, you know, my country is nuts. Europe is a little nutty right now. You know, I, I've been through my some pretty hard knocks and I'm still here and I can breathe and I can tell if it's raining or sunny. Well I now have one good leg, I'll have two good legs soon cuz I have a foot injury. But I could stand on my own feet and make things happen. Everything else is manageable. So I think you're the same way though. I think you see the world as a big ball of wonder. So ...

Stephen Matini: A lot of things you're saying resonate with me, including the imposter syndrome. To give an example, when I graduated in Italy, back at the time, we had to write this long thesis, you know, so it took a couple of years to write the thesis and then here comes the day that you have to present the thesis in front of a committee. I presented it.

Then they ask you to leave the room and they ring a bell. You come in and I remember everyone rose. I said, what's happening? And they gave me the the maximum grade. And at the moment, the first thought that I had in my head, I swear to God was, there must have been a mistake! . I fooled them, you know, there must have been a mistake. I must have been charming. I must have said things a certain way, whatever, whatever. It was never because I may have done something right, you know, somehow.

So for the longest time I was always very doubtful of myself. And the blessing of age, you know, I am in my fifth decade is the fact that now I think things have unfolded the way they were supposed to. It is supposed to be a messy path. You know, you're not supposed to know everything all at once. It's about really trial and error and hopefully learning something from it. So I think now I'm just, I'm trying to enjoy the ride.

Helen Rothberg: I think that's beautiful language. I always say actually the world unfolds as it should. You might not choose what happens to you, but you choose how to respond. And you could choose to respond with wonder and joy and a little bit of oh. Or you could choose to feel beaten by it. And I'm glad you and I both have outgrown this self-doubt of, you know, why me? How could I be good? That whole imposter piece doesn't serve us well.

If we're the role models for those that we guide, you know, we have to show them what's possible. And what's possible is believing in yourself. You know, none of us are perfect. And in a way that's what's perfect. There's this brilliant song master, he's since passed Leonard Cohen from Canada, I'll paraphrase from his song Anthem. He says, nothing is perfect, everything is cracked, but that's what lets the light in.

And I know for myself, I have grown the most from the things I tried that didn't work than the things that did. Because look what happened. You know, something didn't work. I failed at something. I didn't die. I didn't lose my kidney, you know, I felt bad. I cried a little, I took my , brushed myself off, got up and did other, you know, stupid things, but never that one again, right? So we learn and we grow and, and how lucky are we that we live in a time and a place and a nation that gives us those opportunities to succeed and fail and move on. Really very fortunate. I think.

Stephen Matini: If someone said to you, I don't think I have a choice, you know that also we know it's part of how people view the world. You know, some people simply do not believe if they have control over what happens, how would you respond to them?

Helen Rothberg: I would take them in my arms and I would hug them very tightly. Just guarantee them that you have a choice. I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I grew up in a very, in America we have ways of grading, if you will, people's neighborhoods. So I was in a very lower, lower, lower working class neighborhood at a very dangerous time when there were race riots in New York. So we're talking about in the sixties and the seventies.

I grew up to parents who never went to college, who never graduated high school, who really did, I'll call it menial, some menial work. We had no money, we didn't go hungry. You know, we had clothing, I had hand me downs for my cousins. It was clothing, you know, we didn't wear hungry. We had medical care, but not a lot else. My dad made a very deliberate decision.

He grew up in the mountains of New York. People think of New York as only a city, but we have gorgeous mountains. Not like your Dolomites, but pretty. And he decided no matter what, his kids were gonna grow up in the city because there were more opportunities. You know, there were a lot of choices along the way from me. A lot of my friends chose to become drug addicts. You know, some of my friends went to jail, some of my friends died of an overdose.

Some of my friends were like me and decided that we were gonna just put our heads into education because the only way to get out of that neighborhood was going to be to get to better schools. You know, luckily growing up in New York, New York City has some schools where if you show potential you can test into them so you get a better education.

And then in my day, you could go to university for free if you were poor and smart. And it was always a choice. So when my friends were choosing to go out and party on the weekends, you know, I would study and get a job. Even as I got older in college, when people were going out and partying, I would save all my money so I could backpack through Europe in the summer because I felt I'd learned more living in different cultures.

I know I scrubbed toilets and made beds all over Europe, you know, with let's go Europe and my backpack and I slept in people's vineyards and I slept in, you wouldn't believe some of my experiences. But the bottom line of it was, it was all a choice. You know, it's whether or not you want something bad enough that you can taste it.

And I wanted freedom. And to me, freedom wasn't wealth. Freedom was choosing how to use my time and what I was gonna do. So it is a choice. You could be very rich, you could be very poor, you can have good parents, you can have bad parents. I was lucky, my parents weren’t crazy. They weren't educated, they were nutty, but they loved us. And that was winning the lottery right there. I had two loving parents. I think it's always a choice.

You know, I think I said to you the first time, you know, you could look at things as shit or fertilizer and to me it's always fertilizer, even bad things that happened to me and some really bad things happened along the way. It's part of life. It was like, what can I take from this? And whether it gave me my warrior spirits or whether it gave me compassion, I'll share a tough story.

So going through this graduate program, on one of the qualifying exams, one of the professors failed me and everybody has to agree to pass you. You know, it was the same thing, you walk out, you come back and the professor who failed me was the professor whose class I was in. So I had this choice, right? I had to show up to class, everybody knowing he failed me.

I had to live that humiliation. But I also knew part of it was my own stupidity because I decided to take a qualifying exam before I finished this man's class. So, you know, that was not smart. That was kind of naive and young. But I also had to make sure everybody wasn't gonna hate him because in the end I still had to pass this class. And if you fail anything twice, you're out of the program.

You could never get your PhD from that school. And I looked at that as, you know what in this is mine. Why did this man really fail me? I did I earn it? Yeah, I deserved it. Could I have avoided it? Yeah, I could have been smarter. I also could have been advised better. I could have approached it differently.

But I came back and over the years I wound up winning the award for the best dissertation in my whole university. And it was named for the man who failed me. And he gave me the award and he put it at me at my PhD. So you could take that battering and lie down and cry, or you could say F you man, I'm gonna show you what I'm made of. I'm gonna show you I'm better than you even understand. Was that a choice? Total choice.

A total choice. And maybe somewhere this older man who I hated understood that's what I needed to smack me into, Hey, think about what you're doing. It was a choice. And everybody wanted to hate this guy. And he gave me the lowest grade I ever got in graduate school out of my four graduate degrees. The lowest grade was from this man whose award I want. At the end, we all make choices. And you know, sometimes those tough things are put in front of you to help you grow. Nietzsche says that which does not kill you makes you stronger, right?

Stephen Matini: It seems to me that you're talking about we have a choice and the notion of freedom and they go hand in hand. And then as you were talking, it seems that everything is about really being accountable to yourself.

Helen Rothberg: And being honest. And that's hard. It's hard to look yourself in the mirror and say, this bad thing just happened to me. And it's very easy to blame somebody else and it's really hard to say what in this is mine. But not always. When a bad thing happens to you is a piece of it yours. Like sometimes you just have bad luck, right? Or you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But sometimes there's an element in there that's yours. And if you could own that and live through the pain of that, you learn from it and you don't do that again. And you can grow from that. So I think once we accept the fact that we're not perfect and that's what's perfect, right? All the cracks are to help us become better if we choose. It's never easy to swallow bad things, but it can help you really grow in a different way.

And I think we have so much power Stephen, in that we don't even realize we're such powerful creatures. You know, throughout evolution, you know, here we are, we're the ones who can walk and breathe and see and sing and dance and love and hate. And that if we could just have more gratitude for the power that we have and use it in more positive ways, I think it's amazing what we can accomplish. I think a lot of the bad stuff we see around us as people acting out about thinking they don't have control, violence is an act because you don't think you have control when you really do. And I think sometimes people are more afraid of embracing their power than they are of not being powerful.

Stephen Matini: Is it difficult or easier than you thought to discover what makes you magnificent?

Helen Rothberg: For the first three decades or me, it was difficult cuz it was trial after trial after trial. But at some point I think I surrendered, I surrendered to it. And that's when I really think I started understanding how much of it was really me, almost subconsciously sometimes creating things so that I could either test myself or I didn't think I was doing the same stupid thing, but I was, I used to call it same ice cream, new flavor.

You know, at some point you decide I'm gonna just eat gelato, I'm not gonna eat ice cream anymore. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have Italian ices, I'm not eating the ice cream anymore. Because if you keep walking down the same road that has potholes, you're gonna fall in them. So sometimes you choose a new road and I think it took me a while, I had success after success, but you know, that nagging feeling of one day they'll find out about us.

I think I just had to choose to do things differently and to embrace what was in my control, to be able to live life a little differently and begin to find that magnificence and to really own what was my magnificence. And I think what I discovered it was the ability to talk to people and help them understand, to help people learn. And as an educator, you know this, you have to understand something so well that you could make it simple. You can't say say things simply or teach it, you know, in a component way until you really understand. Once I got to that point of, oh, I get this, I get what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I get what I need to take from this, I get that what I do best is not giving people 48 references for the same thing. It's about making it so simple that they can hold it in their hands and then I could pile on the references as we go and show them how that works. That everything just started turning around. Once I let go, once I surrendered, I found what it was in me and I found them how I could take what's in me and help others find what's in themselves.

Stephen Matini: Has this changed the way that you see strategy?

Helen Rothberg: Yeah, it has. I used to see strategy as a way of, and I still see it this way a bit, but you know, helping an organization or a person create something better for the future. But now I also see it as a way of managing complexity and uncertainty. We invent this thing called reality. We take all of this uncertainty and give it labels and pictures and schedule things because we're trying to create some certainty.

We're trying to create an illusion of control in our lives.

But what strategy taught me to do is take very complex situations and identify those areas of complexity and handle them one at a time and see what they're really about. And then once I understand all those different components, weave them together like a fabric to try to understand what's possible. So it really taught me how to critically think in a different way. And when I try to teach students and when I do this in, in organizations, that's really what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help people take this complex thing, break it apart in manageable bites, but understand the essence of what's in each bite so that you could put that together and try to create some kind of certainty so you can plan and you know, use your resources in as best way as you can.

Stephen Matini: I do not know if I do what you are saying, I just want to see if I do. Meaning, based on everything you said, there are two words that stood out, which is surrendering, and then the other one is simplifying. And for me, surrendering for instance, the way that I manage my business is understanding that although business oftentimes is seen as a bunch of frameworks, everything very rational.

Somehow the best insights is when I take a walk in the park, you know, I really, when I let it go, like I don't seek a solution. I'm not there on a table thinking super hard, collecting data. I mean I need that obviously, but then I let it go. I just simply completely let it go. And in the moment I get this amazing insight and it really feels like some sort of surrendering, you know, type of thing.

And the other one simplifying is that for the longest time I thought that I could control my business somehow. And now instead I've noticed that it is shit path of trial and error. And oftentimes the right answer is the simplest. It's not necessarily the most complicated, but it is the one that is the simplest, am I going the right direction with my thinking?

Helen Rothberg: 100%. And you said something really important about, you know, you live in these frameworks and then you go to take a walk in the park and you get an insight that's about getting out of your own way. The frameworks are trying to force something. You need that to help you organize the data. But the insight is gonna come when you take what you need from the frameworks, put it aside and then say, okay, what matters most? And that can only come to you when you clear your minds and you let go. And yeah, that's where that all comes from. So I agree, you totally have the essence of what I'm talking about.

I also ask students often and my clients like, what is your deep motivation in life? What really drives you? For me it's joy. I saw enough ugliness and I went through enough turmoil in my life to understand really the value of joy. And if I can't find some joy in what I'm doing, I don't wanna do it anymore. And can you beat joyous all the time? Of course not. But can you seek it and make it your end game for most things, absolutely. And for some people it's peace and for some people it's harmony.

I just wanna be joyous. I just wanna get out there like you and take that walk in the park and notice, you know, the birds that are singing and that the sun is shining and take a deep breath and say, wow, how lucky am I? And you know, it's spring here in New York, upstate New York, you probably, you know, you might be a little ahead of us weather-wise, but right now we have these lilly of the valley that are blooming everywhere and they're these very small little white flowers.

They look like bells it, if there is a heaven, it smells like li of the valley and you just have to open your window and you take a breath and all of a sudden this beautiful fragrance comes into your home. What's better than that? So here I am, the last two weeks grading 86, not masterpieces, okay to finish my semester and I could have been wallowing in, oh my God, I'm wasting what's left of my brain on this.

Or wow the lily of the valley are coming into the room and it smells great. I'm gonna stick with that one as much as I can because you're not gonna get the time back that you sit there suffering, you know? So I graded a bunch of papers and it helps me understand that I have one more year of doing this and then I'm moving on to the next chapter of my life where I'm gonna put my energy in a different place.

Everything has, its, its space and time. And if we could keep our perspective and understand what wants to motivate us. Here's my true secret Stephen. I'm really a 12 year old in an older woman's body. I wanna learn and read and play with my friends and climb mountains and skin my knees and you know, go swimming and get on my bicycle. I just wanna enjoy that simpler time when you just feel joyous.

I'm a grownup. I mean I own a house and I've gotta keep it going. And I have a business like as do you, I'm also an entrepreneur and but you know what, if I can't do it with joy, I'm gonna do something else. And I think that's what we all have to discover is you know what matters most to us. And for some people it's security and some people are in love with money.

It's interesting, these people in love with money, cuz I work with a bunch of 'em. Here's what I discovered about them and some of them are really rich. I mean, I'll just tell you, there's one person I know, his wife doesn't like to drive backwards, so she pulls into the garage and in the garage there's a turntable to turn the car around for her so she won't have to back out. This is crazy wealth. Right?

And are these the happiest people I know? No, I think these people who are in love with money are trying to fill a hole in themselves that you can't fill with the money. So the more things they buy, the bigger the hole gets. So they buy more things and they're happy for six seconds and the hole gets bigger because there's something deeper that's hungry, right? That's not being fulfilled.

Having money is nice, it's nice to not worry about money, it's, you know, but after a certain point, do you really need more? Who needs five televisions and four homes and you know, you gotta mow the grass everywhere. It's like work. You know, just the pursuit of that to me makes me feel sad for some of these people that they're not feeling that thing in themselves, whatever it is that could help them feel fulfilled. Right.

Stephen Matini: Pretend that you and I now are in a room with, I don't know, 15 different managers, right? Or different ages. Some of them nod as you're talking because they've been there, they relate to you a hundred percent. But then some of the younger managers may be, you know, 30 years old, look at you like whatever.

Helen Rothberg: They roll their eyes.

Stephen Matini: Yes. . . How could you verbalize this to them in a way? No, no, no, no, no. What I'm telling you it is the truth. You're going to find out one day. What would you tell them?

Helen Rothberg: You know what I like to do with the younger crowd is I like to ask them, I always start with what do they think they're best at and they're achieving well And then what's giving them struggle? I kind of read the room a little when I do it, but as they talk about what they struggle with, I then ask them, what is the ultimate thing you're looking to get at the bottom of that struggle? What are you trying to get out of what you're struggling with? What are you you hoping for?

And I try to help through a very circuitous maze, but focusing totally on them and their needs, help them identify that thing that matters most to them. And then they're like, oh I get it. You know? And I think sometimes the things that motivate you change over time, right? So when I was much younger, you know, coming from a a less advantage to background financially I wanted security and I was motivated by security and I would sometimes, you know, the way I invested my money, even for my retirement was very secure.

I knew this is all I'm gonna have. I don't take big risks, you know, I think we understand what motivates us as we go if we're asked the right questions. So I help them understand what's driving them in that moment and what their ultimate is.

Ask them, if you had a crystal ball, what exactly would you be doing? How would you invest your time? What would you be doing if you could do anything? And what does that make you feel like? And I help them back their way into, oh, so there is this thing that matters a lot to me that I should always have in my mind that I'm trying to achieve for myself. Because I think sometimes the younger generation gets lost and we're supposed to, right when we were younger, come on, you and I, I rebelled against everything and everyone on the planet, you know, from my parents to the Vietnam War, to whoever, you know, it was just part of how you're supposed to mature.

And at some point, even in all of that rebellion, you've gotta understand a little bit of what you are moving toward. And I think social media has made that very hard for younger people to understand because they think what they see is real and it's not a lot of what you see even on reality. TV is scripted, it's not real.

You know, I always tell my students, this might be a very American reference, but there's this family called the Kardashians. I don't know if you have this garbage in Europe too. These people aren't real. They're put together with money, you know, they're not real and their lives aren't real and, and you shouldn't aspire to that cuz it's not real. So at some point I think it's our job as let's say the Yodas, cuz you are one, two my friend, cuz you have this wonderful podcast.

We have to help people understand what's real and it's different for each person. But I think social media has blurred that boundary. We had the luxury of not being polluted in that way. There was no 24 hour news cycle and there was no social media. Boy we're we lucky. And I think that 30 year old manager who's rolling their eyes, I think some of them look at us and say, you're so outdated, you don't understand. And some of them are rolling their eyes because they're insecure, because they know they don't understand. So we help them find their way. That's our job.

Stephen Matini: And sometimes I wish to make them understand that you know what, it was yesterday that I was 40, it was yesterday that I was 30. I mean that time goes by so fast. And I know it's such a cliche to say that ,you know, I'm still the same person, I'm still the same person who actually thinks like you, but I have this extra benefit of experience on time. They gave me the perspective. Last time you said something that it got stuck in my head and you said that for you, leadership and management are different.

Helen Rothberg: So management is about getting things done and planning, organizing, controlling, getting things done, and getting things done through people. Leadership is about providing a vision. So people want to get those things done with you. It's really very different. I always say a manager could get things done in the dark, but a leader turns on the light. And what leadership does, in addition to providing vision, is it provides people an emotional connection to what they're trying to do. Even if you're a person on an assembly line, all you're doing is tightening the rivet on a tire in a car that gets built over and over and over again.

If you have a leader who helps you understand the role that tire plays in the future of that car and the role that car will play in somebody's life and how important it is for it to be safe and make sure that you understand the entire line and what the product looks like at the end and who buys it and takes the time to help you understand how you contribute to a greater good.

To me, that's leadership, as opposed to get it done my way, now . That's management and that's poor management sometimes, right? Because sometimes the people doing the work understand a lot more about the work than the person above them cuz they don't do the work, they just tell them to do the work.

And leadership, you know, it's interesting, we have all these training programs to train leaders. I'm not sure that's what we do. I think we train people to be better managers. You know, I think we train people how to work with people better and how to manage time better and how to manage difficult conversations better. But I think leadership is a very different thing.

I think it's about being able to touch people's hearts and desire to be part of something bigger than themselves. I'm not saying leaders are born and they are good and bad, but I think that as we can unlock what's inside people themselves, right in that driver for themselves and what they think is possible, what we were talking about before, I think that helps the leadership in them come out.

Because if you don't know where you are going and what you want, it's very hard to bring anybody else along with you, right? So you need to have some of that self-knowledge and self-belief and then we could give you the tools about maybe how to deliver that better and work with that better.

I'm a big believer in leadership. You have to lead yourself before you could lead anybody else. So you have to be really awaken and open to who you are and what you wanna achieve and why and how before you can even simplify that so that you can bring people along with you.

Stephen Matini: Everything that you have said, you know today really is about leadership from accountability, the joy discovering what's magnificent in you. It's interesting when I do leadership development path, the most terrifying thing that people go through, you know they look at me, is now the first step to become a good leader is to spend some time with yourself. So you cannot just simply jump from activity to another and busy, busy, busy, busy, but you need to declutter and to start spending some time with you because that relationship, as you said, is going to become the one that hopefully other people are going to mirror. And that's a really a scary thought for a lot of people.

Helen Rothberg: It is because they don't know who they are and they don't know what they're capable of and they're afraid of disappointing themselves. You know, my next chapter are creating, I call them gateways to human potential. Helping people find the “IT” in themselves, whether they call it spiritual, career path, personal path, I don't care, it doesn't matter.

Because once you help people get out of their own way and face their fear, fear creates control. And control is what holds you back. Once you can show them that you can put your foot in the water and it might be really cold, but you're not gonna drown, maybe they'll go swimming the next time, then they're gonna find that magnificence and go forward. So it's really a tough thing because sometimes for people to see who they really are and what their potential really is, they have to let go of all of these old scripts they had about themselves.

And even if the old scripts are wrong, it created certainty. It created what they knew and they knew how to behave when they're that person. And maybe it was successful to hear, but if they're gonna really climb that mountain and get to see the beautiful view on the top, they gotta start shedding those scripts and that could be very painful. It's scary.

So ... as you guide them, which I'm sure you are a very empathetic and skillful guide, it's letting them feel their pain and letting them know that there'll be a sunny day on the other side of it. And what more opens to them when they let go of that script about themselves. And that's really, really hard to do. But boy is it the good work.

Stephen Matini: It's really interesting that you're saying multiple times getting out of the way. Because I said the same thing this morning to a group, I did a training this morning, we were talking about how you connect with people, you know, how you connect with people when you present, when you train and when you're a manager. What I was trying to say is, and actually I gave this example of a good actor, I asked, you know, what would you consider to be a good actor? They said, well Tom Hanks, they said, yes, that's a phenomenal actor with the tremendous technical skills, but a good actor knows to get out of the way so that the character, the story shines through it. You know, the same thing. Although you're very central, although you have the authority, you have the position, but at some point you really, it's about people connecting with the story and with the vision, you know? And that to me, really that's what a leader does essentially.

Helen Rothberg: Yeah. So you just opened up another door because that's also about allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Because when you start to get out of the way and you start to strip off those scripts and you start to reveal yourself to others, maybe even share their stories and share their failures and tell them about your own, you become more believable to them and more real to them.

But it's risky cuz now you're vulnerable, you've shown your soft side and it takes a lot of trust, not just in those people, but really in the process to be able to do that. And I think the reason you're able to do this with people, you do have a vulnerable side to yourself and I think you're willing to share you and your experiences and that's what people learn the most from. They wanna hear what happened to you and how did you manage that?

How did you make it happen? That's why I shared my story even just before about, you know, failing that first qualifying, you have to be willing to reveal all the parts of what it takes to make leadership of yourself happen.

I've been talking a lot with a very, very successful, more senior than me person who's trying to, you know, write a book and train people. And although his organization was magnificent, he's having a hard time. People aren't connecting to him. And I keep telling him, you're not sharing your stories.

You have to share more about you and how you made this work. And he just refuses and it doesn't work. And it's very different than this other brilliant leader I know his name is Doug Connan. He was the CEO of Campbell Soup for many, many years. This is a man who I admire so much.

He would write personal notes to people, you know, thanking them. And even if he had to lay people off, he would bring them together and help them understand why. And that it wasn't them, it was the business. And he'd explain things and he would explain some of the things that happened to him in his life that were not pleasant, but how it helped him move to other places. He would always make sure the people he laid off had services to find their next job and they had support and he was vulnerable and powerful at the same time. This other leader who's more Machiavelli, if you will, is afraid to let go of any of that outward mask of power. And that's why nobody connects to him. So you have to have that soft and strong balance to help people feel that you're credible in helping guide them in how they could get outta their own way. Right.

Stephen Matini: We talked about a lot of different things. They all interconnected. Is there something that you believe it would be important for our listeners to take away from this? There's a lot to take away, but if you have to point out one thing that you deem to be really crucial, what would that be?

Helen Rothberg: I'm gonna paraphrase Oscar Wild. Might as well be who you really are because everybody else is already taken. Don't be afraid of who you are and what you believe you're good at and what you believe you can accomplish. It's not conceit, it's confidence.

And confidence is very different except what you're good at. And always work from your strength. You know the things you're really not good at. If someone else can do, hire them. Let it go. Don't keep training yourself. That's what I do.

I think the best leaders know what they're good at and hire the people who are really good at what they're not good at. And then they create a smart team. Right? I would say embrace who you really are. Don't be afraid to take risks with who you really are. Enjoy the ride.

Stephen Matini: I'm happy that I met you at the beginning of your ride. Thank you Helen.

Helen Rothberg: Thank you. And likewise, likewise.

Stephen Matini: Thank you. This is fantastic. I'm really, really happy to have had the the time to hear you.

Helen Rothberg: And thank you for being so insightful. What I talk about is only as good as the questions you ask and the way you drive the boat.

View Details

In today's episode, we'll be shining a light on ableism, a form of discrimination faced by people with disabilities, whether physical, mental, or cognitive.

Our special guest is Caroline Vernon, a business coach and diversity, equity, and inclusion champion. Caroline opens up about her connection to ableism, sparked by her sister with Down syndrome.

Caroline highlights the importance of creating inclusive environments where individuals with disabilities are empowered to thrive.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how, by advocating for accessibility and fostering empathy, we can build a more equitable and compassionate world.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session

Managerial & Leadership Development

Contact Stephen

Connect with Stephen

#ableism #d&a #diversity #inclusion #equity #neurodiversity #carolinevernon #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So professionally, how did you get interested in what you do today? Have you always been in this line of work, or is this something that has evolved?

Caroline Vernon: You know, I've been in the world of work in regards to employee engagement and coaching, and so it was just kind of what I'm doing now as practice leader of a coaching organization. It just made sense. It, it was a natural progression, natural transition to focusing on something else.

You know, within the world of work, I've always had an interest in coaching and I've always believed in the power of coaching. So it was a natural transition to go from employee engagement and selection and talent acquisition and career development into career transition and more into leadership development as well.

Stephen Matini: And I wanna ask you, as someone who does also coaching in the whole field, let's call it learning and development. I've done training, I've done different aspects, but then I've noticed that the only thing that still gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction is coaching. What are you find in coaching that maybe you haven't found in other aspect of our field?

Caroline Vernon: Just that authentic relationship, those authentic conversations. They can be raw and I really like to help people and empower people to find their authentic voice because, you know, a lot of people never go there . They don't explore that side of themselves. They don't take control of their own destiny as far as their careers are concerned.

So being in career coaching specifically really has been a really powerful experience in my career. To see people that have never even spent time developing themselves or even thinking about their path or their career journeys to where they end up after coaching and how they see their careers differently and how they plan to empower or advocate for themselves in the workplace. I just, it's a really powerful experience to me.

Stephen Matini: The one thing that I love the most about coaching, it is probably the same reason you pointed out it, just the genuine conversation. And I love the fact that in that relationship we can be ourselves. That can be very transparent and open, and I really love the fact that I can provide that space for people which often they cannot find in other parts of the job. You become a brilliant advocate of people and their singularities and anything that they stand for. And how did you get interested in, in ableism, which is basically, you know, the first topic that you and I talked and when we met,

Caroline Vernon: I have a sister with Down syndrome and I have always been her interpreter throughout her life. So when I heard about the concept of ableism, and it just was something I was naturally drawn to, and I really sunk time into learning what ableism actually is, how it shows up in our daily lives, how it shows up in the workplace. So that's my experience with learning about ableism.

I read an article one time, that's really where it started, is this article, I know there was no malice of forethought and it was supposed to be a beautiful, joyful experience. In the article, the gentleman that wrote the article expressed this joyful experience or shared this joyful experience about his brother, but he shared the words, my brother is a low functioning downsy. A lot of people call people with down syndrome, Downsy. They say this down syndrome person or not person with down syndrome.

That's where the first vision of ableism came to life for me. It's like the slow functioning downsy. There was a picture of him holding a baby and the quote was something like, nobody has ever let this boy hold our family's babies. This gentleman goes on to say, I did and it was a joyful experience and he's a low functioning downsy, and it really stuck with me for a long period of time.

And so I wrote a long article and posted it on LinkedIn about ableism and how just those words, how they impact people with Downs syndrome, how those, how labeling them as a low functioning downsy continues to perpetuate the stigma and continues to marginalize this group of individuals. And that's really where I vowed to never use language like that about my sister and to educate people around me to never use language like that. And the reasons why, you know, how hurtful that is to that community,

Stephen Matini: You know, in the fight, you know, for diversity and becoming aware that we all come in different ships and size, oftentimes language become this displaced that some people perceive to be some sort of a battlefield. You know? And now I cannot say this term, I cannot say that term. I get censored if I, if I use it. So, and I, and, and I agree that it's really important to be sensitive to the words that we use. In your experience, ableism can be combated purely based on being aware of language or what else has worked in your experience?

Caroline Vernon: Being aware of how the language actually impacts the people that it's referring to or that's it's speaking about, but also how it impacts people around you. I've heard the word, this is a terrible word and I, I only use it in this, the R word.

So I'll, I'll use it once and then I'll refer to it as the R word. Yes, retard. I've heard that used still today in the workplace as far as we've come, we haven't come as far as we need to. And I don't care actually who uses it. I will always speak up and say, that word offends me. That is a hurtful word that we used in, in our modern language for many years to actually describe somebody, you know, with down syndrome or rather neurodiverse with other neurodiverse conditions. And it's a hurtful word. And it, like I said before, it further marginalizes this certain group of community or or certain group of people, you need to get away from further marginalizing this group.

Stephen Matini: You know, I wanna ask you ableism and this is something that I'm asking you out of sheer ignorance. Is ableism connected also to ageism or other type of issues or, or specifically is connected to neurodiversity?

Caroline Vernon: It's specifically connected to neurodiversity, typically. Ageism is its own beast, just like racism is its own. And ableism refers to those that have diverse abilities. So not necessarily ageism or racism.

Stephen Matini: You know why I'm asking you this? Because recently I got trained by this phenomenal woman who focuses on ageism. We are supposed to deliver a training in fall about this one. There's a client, there's a company that essentially has a difficult time attracting younger people and keeping them, you know, she's gonna be one who provides some basics about ageism, how that works. And so she explained to me all the, you know, psychological, sociological ramification on that. And then eventually we have to come up basically with a plan, you know, with the participants to start slowly changing the culture so that can be more inclusive. And a lot of the things that she covered somehow reminded me of the same challenges that I've seen you know, for racial discrimination or even things that, that you share with me.

Caroline Vernon: I don't think it matters if it's racism, ageism, or ableism. It's any of those situations are like a dark cloud. You know, they cast a shadow that can never be escaped from unless we educate one another and we advocate for those that this language or this discrimination is targeting its impact, whether it's ableism or ageism or racism or sexism. Its impact is relentless and it's deeply emotional. So it's one of those situations that even though it has its own word, the impact is the same.

Stephen Matini: To make things even worse, and more complicated is the fact that this conversation has taken epic proportion. You know, particularly in some countries like the US has become very polarized around the notion of what is freedom of speech? The fact that a certain words, it should not be used that way or should not be used at all. As some people feel that just censorship. What are your thoughts about, you know, what about really freedom of speech, this ridiculous conversation that is happening?

Caroline Vernon: There is a fine line between freedom of speech and using ableist or racist or, you know, sexist language. It's about respect. It's about fighting for dignity, and it's about not further stigmatizing that community. It has turned in very political. I'm not not sure why it's been associated with woke culture. It's not a political issue. It's about respecting one another. Each of us have a diverse ability. It's about empowering each other and lifting each other rather than using language that tears each other down. The awareness of it is the most important aspect of it. It has nothing to do with, you know, whether you're on the left or the right. It has everything to do with being a decent, respectful human being.

Stephen Matini: You know, this polarity happens all the time. You read it on the news in the us it's almost like witnessing the existence of to different countries. So in your job, in your work as a person who leverages neurodiversity, combating ableism, when you were faced with the hostility of, let's say, with some people that somehow could not quite grasp it, what has been like a successful strategy in order to reconcile these two opposite positions?

Caroline Vernon: More inclusive education is the best way to kind of reconcile that. Educating those that are just not aware of even what ableism is. You know, it's not a word that's thrown around a lot, even when I go looking for it, you know, I don't see that word used a lot yet. Any opportunities I have to educate people that don't understand the impact of ableist language. You know, I think that's been the most successful way.

But also being respectful about that are unaware, I think is very important. It's not the immediate fire back. Don't say that. That's ridiculous. You shouldn't use that language. It's also being respectful in my approach to educating people that are unaware of what ableist language even is.

Stephen Matini: If someone is the target of the language, whichever type of neurodiversity the person can experience based on your experience, what would you say to those people? Maybe they could be listeners of this episode in the future. What would it be the best way they could do? How should they react to the attack?

Caroline Vernon: I'm thinking of my sister, for example. We've always taught her just to ignore, so ignore ableist language, ignore comments that don't necessarily align with her abilities and don't empower her to believe in herself. What I would suggest is exactly what I do, and that is respectful education. That is important for them to feel empowered, to be able to defend unquote themselves against language that is disrespectful.

Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to do that, is to continue to educate and to continue to advocate for themselves and for those that have diverse abilities like them, but in a respectful way. I don't think lashing out ever helps a situation. It's not who these individuals are. However, you know, respectful education, I think is the best way to combat further ableism in their relationships with people.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever organized maybe for a client or for a company, you were working for a program actually to create greater awareness around ableism? And I'm asking you this question just in case someone will listen to this episode and maybe they could be interested in, in structuring, you know, th this education you're talking about in their workplace. I don't know if you've ever done that before.

Caroline Vernon: I have. It's been years and years ago I worked for an organization that we used an assessment that focuses on the individual's strengths. And we provided that assessment to individuals that were a part of a leadership program within the Special Olympics. We started with this assessment and they learned what their strengths were. And from there it was such a natural progression from this specific group of people who have always been told that once you overcome this obstacle, you will get better at this.

And once you overcome this weakness, you will be able to do this. We never spoke those words. We said, here's what you're great at. Here's what you should really lean into as far as your strengths are concerned. And with that information we advocated and empowered these individuals to learn how to be leaders in their communities. And there was a graduation ceremony where they got to show off a, a talent or a skills.

It was beautiful, it was at least a 12 week cohort type of program. And at graduation, I've never seen so many smiles. And even throughout the whole program, like I said, we were focused on what they do well and what they do right, instead of the things that they can't exactly master or haven't been able to do. It was such a beautiful program, it made such a lasting impact on me. I think about it, I think about those individuals that were in the program program. My sister actually graduated from that program as well. Yeah, it's definitely one of the highlights of my career.

Stephen Matini: Has your sister ever told you what it means to experience ableism? I don't know if she ever experienced it.

Caroline Vernon: No. She's never told me what it feels like to experience ableism. She has been pretty sheltered. We've kept her pretty sheltered as a way to protect her. You know, my mom has kept her very sheltered , she's almost 50. And for the first time in her life, she will live independently starting this summer. She will live in a community for people with neurodiversity. It's a beautiful, very protected communities.

So she's never specifically addressed that ableism. I actually shared what ableism meant with her. You know, I've never, never sat down and asked her, cuz I know I've seen it throughout the years. I've seen that she's experienced it. We just didn't have a name for it. We didn't have a label for it. We just called it people that were rude to her or people that disrespected her to make a very long answer. No, she's really never told me what it felt like to be disrespected in that way.

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, there are so many thoughts, so many feelings that come to mind, you know, because a, as you pointed out, ableism is something very, very specific. Discrimination. It really shows up in so many different ways. And so it could be, as we said based on your ethnicity. It could be around a sexual orientation, the fact that gender, whatever that is, you know, and every single aspect is very different. They had different fights to fight. And somehow, in some ways there are certain, I think commonalities.

Caroline Vernon: It's not your burden to bear, you know, how other people think and how their beliefs aren't your burden to bear. That's the exact same way I feel about people who are thoughtless when it comes to the language that they use or their actions against a specific group of individuals. It's not for me to wage some kind of war.

I'm a peaceful human being. , my approach has always been to never just shove it down anybody's throat. I don't think it helps. I think it further marginalizes people, groups of people, you know, diverse groups of people. I think that approach doesn't help. And you're absolutely right. It's what's in your backpack that you have to carry.

Stephen Matini: I think that you know, being okay with whichever life has given you, I think is such an important thing. And it's interesting because the other day, as I was talking to the woman that I mentioned before who focuses on ageism, she says something really interesting. She said when I started training, one of the first exercises I asked people is, how old do you think I am ? And she's in her fifties and she's like, you have no idea people's reaction. It's like, you know, you exploded a bomb and what people do you order to dodge the connection . And at the end she said, you know, the, the first step towards fighting that is actually you being okay with the fact that you are aging. You know, and it's okay and all that comes with it, you know, but it becomes painful, hurtful instead of when you yourself, you're not okay with the whole notion of time going by. So she really made me think a lot because all these forms that we're talking about are so pervasive and they're so imbued in our cultures. You know, the language that we use and the stuff that we say, you are the culprit. You're not aware of that. And I agree with you. The first step is to be aware. So your sister is going to move out. Are you sad about it?

Caroline Vernon: In the back of my mind, I'm slightly worried in my heart, which I think is where it matters most, is I'm happy for her. She needs to have her own life. She has has been a very beautiful and loyal, steadfast companion to my mother, who is 92 her entire life. She has been her caregiver, she's been her confidant, she's been her just all around pal. But she needs her own life. And so, you know, she's approaching her 50th birthday coming up and it's very symbolic to me that it, she is approaching this milestone birthday and moving out independently for the first time in her life. I think it's going to be something that she really enjoys. They are very attuned to the needs of this particular group of individuals. You know, I, I have to keep telling myself, it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine.

Will I miss her? Yes, she lives with me. Both my mom and my sister live with me and they've lived with me for the past six months. And it'll be strange for a little bit. There will be a little bit of emptiness in this house, but I have to keep reminding myself, you know, it's time for her to fly. I know that she will be really happy once she gets used to it. So we're gonna start slow. It's gonna be a couple of days a week versus, you know, just from here to there. So that slow process will be exciting to set up her new place and decorate and everything. So that part is really exciting and I'm excited for her mostly, but I'm a little sad for myself.

Stephen Matini: Yeah. Also a conversation that I've had countless of times in the past with people, and I hadn't mostly believe it or not, around, well sometimes when we talked about LGBTQ rights, you know, and sometimes women's rights and whatever they might be. People naturally they try to understand something by using their own experiences. And that's normal to do that. This is my life, these are my experiences, and I compare it to what I'm hearing just to get a sense of how I should orient myself. And that's fine. But what I say to people is, you know, that's okay. But then you have to stop because you will never live that life. You will never know how it feels to be someone who experiences neurodiversity or to be a woman. So realistically, all that you can do is just learn. You have to shut up . You have to listen and try as best as you can to understand that. Because no matter how much you try, you will never know how it feels to be someone of a different hue. You know, I say shut up, but like, you know, just be humble and listen and grow and to appreciate that experience that will never be yours. I think it's the best way. Definitely for me.

Caroline Vernon: That is the best approach in my, my opinion as well. It's just, you know, you know, that's the old adage of walking a mile in someone else's shoes. You know, you don't know what those shoes feel like. I'll never know what Chrissy has experienced. I'll never know what people that are on the autism spectrum experience in the world, in the workplace. I do know that people, at least in the United States, neurodiverse individuals in the workplace have experienced layoffs more than neurotypical individuals. Especially as of late, you know, it's estimated that 30 to 40% of neurodiverse individuals are now unemployed, which is a significant increase over those that are neurotypical. I don't walk in their shoes. I don't know how it feels to be in a workplace that sometimes doesn't understand the differences that they have inside the workplace. I don't understand how it, they feel being impacted by so many layout. That's a big percentage of individuals that are experiencing, you know, joblessness right now. It's important to be respectful and to just be humble and learn.

Stephen Matini: Knowing anything, everything you know today, you know about neurodiversity. Do you think that the term neurodiversity in neurotypical are, are they still the right terms?

Caroline Vernon: As far as I'm concerned, I believe they're the right terms. I'm not the governing body on what terms are correct. I believe they are , that's a good question. If I'm incorrect, I hope what somebody would respectfully correct me on that language, but as far as I'm concerned, I believe neurodiverse and neurotypical are still the correct terms to use. In all my readings and things, those are the, the words that are used.

Yeah. It's like the word disability. I prefer the word diverse ability. I prefer those words over disability. However, some of the diverse ability community say that disability is the word that they use, I wanna use whatever y they use, I want to address them in the way that they want to be addressed. You know, it just varies so much that I, I feel exactly the same way. Neurodiverse to me sounds better, but it is it to comfort myself. You know, it's saying that's not right, that's not, it's not about me, it's, it's about how they want to be referred to, you know? Because neurodiverse includes things like a DHD and dyslexic. So maybe if you are autistic, you want to be known as autistic, not neurodiverse, because that includes more different conditions in, in that word.

Stephen Matini: Another simple rule that I gave myself is that whatever makes the person happy, I'm going to use it. Once again, I know if it's at the right parallel, probably not, but like the whole conversation now about gender fluidity, you know, some people want to be called they and have plenty of people that say, oh my God, this is ridiculous, this. And then I said, listen, it's not that hard. If someone enjoys that, how difficult can it be for you to adopt that word? I mean, I don't see the point, you know, if someone gives someone else happiness, why does it matter that that's only matters really just to be happy and just use it. I mean, it just, you don't have to become a different person. Just simply be aware of what makes someone else happy and just go with the flow. I mean whatever, you know?

Caroline Vernon: Agreed. And that I think a lot of the time is fear of that, of just not understanding that point of view. And you're right, it is absolutely not hard. It is not difficult to be kind and to use language that people want to have used about them, or words that they want to be used to describe them or called, you know, if somebody wants to be called they, it's not hard to say they , you know, it's really not difficult and you're exactly right. If it makes them happy and it makes them feel seen and heard, then it's not up to me to decide what other people wanna be called.

Stephen Matini: Caroline, we touched different points. One question that I'd like to ask, you know, at the end of our chat, is there anything specific that would be important for our listeners to take away from this conversation? Because we touched different things, but based on anything we said, I don't know, is anything that you would like to emphasize?

Caroline Vernon: I believe in the power of educating, educating yourself, educating others around you. I really believe in respectfully educating those that don't understand how powerful words are. I believe that that is important. Employment opportunities, I believe are so important or just any other opportunities for those that are in the neurodiverse community. There is a glaring lack of opportunity in the workplace right now. And if this can change the mind of one person that's recruiting or hiring right now for a job and they are considering, or they're really teetering on whether to hire somebody with the neurodiversity, I encourage that person, that one person, if even if it's just one, to give tho that person a chance to educate themselves in their abilities rather than their disabilities and people would be pleasantly surprised.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for spending time with me. I send all my love to you and to Krissy for the moving out to be as painless as possible.

Caroline Vernon: . Thank you. I really appreciate that. It's coming up a lot sooner than I know my mother is ready for as well. But it's time.

View Details

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Simona Curci, an organizational development practitioner who has honed a practical approach to managing change from many years of helping people, teams, and organizations.

Simona believes that change is a dynamic process that resembles a dance requiring forward and backward movements. Sometimes, the best option is to stay still and let things be as they are so people can adjust.

Simona points out that you can’t force everyone to move in the same direction with the same tempo. If you push too hard, you may end up creating more resistance. 

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to find the perfect rhythm to navigate change successfully.

View Details

Visual impairment and blindness are major public health issues worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. In West Africa, blindness prevalence is a pressing concern.

Resilience takes many forms. In this episode of Pity Party Over, Dr. Abbey shares his passion for ophthalmology, challenges, and the profound impact on patients through relentless optimism and resilience in a context with limited resources.

Join us in this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how accountability and acceptance pave the way to incredible transformations.

Spotify - https://tinyurl.com/5n8mawkp

Apple Podcast - https://tinyurl.com/5dk67utx

Google Podcasts - http://tinyurl.com/mtdv2cv6

Amazon Music - http://tinyurl.com/4hh4zehx

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://www.alygn.company/pitypartyover

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://www.alygn.company/livesession

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

resilience #optimism #elieabbey #togo #africa #ophthalmology #eyes #eyedoctor #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So how are you? How's your day?

Elie Abbey: I have had a great day. I was operating this morning. I just finished, I changed place because you know, in morning I used to work in another one hospital and now I, at my own facility, I finish operating at 1:30 PM Here is 3:30.

Stephen Matini: How do you keep the stress of being a doctor down?

Elie Abbey: I think it is just because I love doing that job, paying attention and not to be too much involved and I take care of work balance. Also, I used to manage time to be able to, you know, do different things like playing tennis, writing, being involved in different activities.

Stephen Matini: Have you always known that you wanna be a doctor?

Elie Abbey: ? No, I first have my, you know, L level. The L level is here in Tobo we call it is three years before university. Then at the end of the three years you, you pass on exam and you have the A level.

In French, we call it baccalauréat. And after that diploma I decided that I’ll become a petrochemical (engineer) I was interested in engineering and science, but my father was like, oh guy, you are young, you should go to medicine studies. It can be good. Then I was like, okay, we wanna do, you know something, I'm not going to do medicine. I'm not going to go for medicine. Only I will take the exams of in January school and medicine. Then fortunately we started medicine courses two weeks before starting in January exam. I liked medicine after the two weeks and I decided to spend medicine.

Stephen Matini: Can you imagine if the opposite had happened in your life? Could have taken a completely different route.

Elie Abbey: Yes.

Stephen Matini: Like, you know, if you started out engineering and you like that one. Yeah.

Elie Abbey: Yes, sure.

Stephen Matini: How is to be a doctor in Togo?

Elie Abbey: Oh, being doctor in Togo is such a privilege. You know, people respect you a lot, but you are not well paid as a doctor in Togo. It is a privilege and building your own career, but it is one of the best profession here. People like doctors, people like their children going to medical school.

Stephen Matini: And how did you decide to become an eye doctor? Why did you choose a specialty?

Elie Abbey: Oh, yes. Becoming eye doctor, I decided when I was in my sixth year of medical school. Then here in Togo you have to do eight years of medical school to become general practitioner and after that you decide to go to specialty for four or five years.

Then when I was in sixth year, we were doing ophthalmology courses and after two courses I was sure that was my future specialty. Then after the course I came out with the teacher and I told him, I wanna be one of your fellows in few years .

After that I finished the studies and I worked one year in a rural hospital, a big hospital where I practiced surgery, rheumatology surgery, gynecology surgery, and general surgery. Learning, working with, you know, specialties, auto traumatologist surgeon and then I work in that field for a while and I knew that I love surgery, but I don't want to be stressed like a gynecologist or a surgeon being stressed every time.

I have been comfort in my choice because you know, in ophthalmology you can do a clinic, you can do surgery then, and it is a very soft specialty. Yes, very, very useful. Then after one year working there, I decided to go directly to specialty and I have had a chance that one ophthalmology center here in Lomé wanted someone to work with them. Then they decided to support my studies and that is the whole story.

Stephen Matini: I've always wondered how medical students choose a specialty because I have a lot of friends who are doctors, you know, and they tell me the stories I what you just said, you know, I tried a bit of this, a bit of that, maybe I'm going to pursue this route, the other one, and I've always wondered how you choose a specialty, but it must be some sort of a calling, something that pulls you in.

Elie Abbey: Yes. When I was doing my thesis for general practitioner, sure it was not that easy. I decided to do it in oncology service because the teachers there, the mentors are very, very smart and help you work very fast. After the thesis, they were like, why won't you come here to be specialized in oncology or an auto pathology?

And I was thinking about it, but finally I don't think it'll be the good choice because someone like being in contact with people and that specialty would be a laboratory specialty. I'm not sure I would be very, very good with it.

I consider different specialties, but finally the only one who fit with me was of ophthalmology and you know when you want something the universe work with them and I have that very, very good opportunity to go directly to specialty. After one year of experiencing the peer, then yes, it wasn't that difficult. I haven't struggled a lot, a lot, a lot before going to specialty, even if in the choice and the opportunity, it was very, very, very fast.

Stephen Matini: What are some of the most common eye conditions that you see as a doctor in your patients?

Elie Abbey: An ophthalmology, the more common eye conditions are, you know, classic conjunctivitis, but the more serious, the more serious issues are glaucoma and cataract here in Togo. Glaucoma and cataracts and that two pathology driving people to blindness. Cataract can drive equal to a curable blindness, but glaucoma is very, very damageable for people's vision because when you lose your vision by glaucoma, it's not possible for the moment to cure it. Then we are most of the time in prevention and treatment at early, early stage of the disease.

Stephen Matini: As I was preparing to talk to you, I ended up in the World Health Organization website and one of the data that I thought it was interesting was the fact that in West Africa there are something like 60,000 people living with blindness. So there's a lot of preventable blindness work that I assume also you as a doctor you're involved with.

Elie Abbey: Sure. Let me give you another statistic. In Togo we have 200,000 people waiting for cataract, cataract surgery, population of 80 million. You have 200,000 people waiting for cataract surgery here, and we are not that much surgeon to cure the people. Cataract surgery help cure cataract, which is not like glaucoma. Glaucoma is, you know, you lose your vision definitely, but in cataract we can cure it. Then this blindness in west Africa, I think the data are sure for non-curable vision problems. Yeah, issues.

Stephen Matini: How do you deal with these challenges, you know, in a place where resources are more limited, let's say compared to other countries?

Elie Abbey: The challenge is a daily basis challenge. You have to be every time giving your best because for example, in this week I would have to operate four days. Today I operate tomorrow afternoon, I will operate Thursday morning, I will operate Friday afternoon, I will operate because the need is huge. And when you know that the need is huge, you should be more committed than when you know everything is okay. Yeah, there is no huge need. I like seeing people following day of the surgery when we remove what we, we used to cover the eye after the surgery, people can see.

You see a smile and like you can see their life have just changed. I don't know how to quantify it, but it is a real motivation for me. Every day when I'm walking, even when I'm tired, I say to myself, I say to myself that what I'm doing is very important because this man or this woman I'm operating tomorrow, his life will change then I think it is sufficient to be facing all the challenges to build that up. A great project to be able to be more impactful in people life then yes.

Stephen Matini: You know, in these past few days you are the second person who tells me that I do what I do because I love to see people smiling. And the other person who said that is a musician, you know, is a violinist, you know, who I interviewed a few days ago, someone really special, a wonderful person and he said I do what I do because I hope through my music to make people smile, you know? And you're saying the same through your job as an eye doctor.

I wanna ask you as far as the cultural context of Togo, you know, how does that impact the perception that people have of you as an eye doctor?

Elie Abbey: People like me because I made myself available for everyone. I'm not, I'm like them. They like coming to someone can give them a solution to their problem and you know, I used to deal with different classes of age of patients.

When I operate people sometimes there are 60 years old or 50 years old, 70. But when I used to do consultation clinical activities, you have more younger peoples and people like coming to me because they know that we can have, you know, direct conversation.

No barrier between me and them. I think I have a good impact on people making myself available to them, help them to come to me. Sometimes you finish operating someone and the following day after remove doing the wound there that people will start pronouncing, you know, blessings on your life.

Here in Africa, people like pronouncing blessing on people's life is like, oh, my son have done great job on my eye. I can see now I'm blessing you, you and your family, your relative, everyone that you will be in your health, you'll be there to help us. That is, you know, a daily basis. Same, i I live tomorrow I will have two or three people blessing me because today I operate 10 people and tomorrow their vision will be very good then.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever wished to be an eye doctor in a different country?

Elie Abbey: Yes, here the need is huge. I think it is the best place I can be because people need me here more than, you know, a developed country and in Europe or USA or somewhere people, the need is not that huge.

But sometimes I want to do more than what I'm doing now. I would like to be able to do refractive surgery. I would like to be able to do, you know, retina surgery. I would like to do amazing things according to, you know, the evolution of ophthalmology. But here that is difficult to attend that level and that is the only reason why. Sometime I think about if I were at another place I can be able to do that.

But my vision is that in perhaps 10 years we can be able to do the same things here through my projects. Then that is a vision I'm having now and working to be able to achieve that goal to allow my countryman to benefit the same level of eye care people can dream of in develop country, Europe or America. Yes, and I think it is possible.

Stephen Matini: You said that you love your relationship with your patients and you share that your patients, they give you well wishes, you know their blessings, you know, to you and your family. What have you learned from your patients?

Elie Abbey: First of all, a resilience. I mean, resilient people, people dealing with vision, impairment, blurry vision, but they keep being positive, they keep being confident in life, and I learned confident. They are confident on me, they are confident that I can solve the problem. That is why they come to me. They let me operate them. That means a lot for me. That's helped me to imagine that in every situation in this life, we can find out a solution.

Stephen Matini: Ellie, how do you develop resilience? How do you keep it positive?

Elie Abbey: I think my whole life is resilience story because I come from, I won't say poor family, but middle class. My, my father is he's retired now, but he work in a manufacturer of, you know, phosphate. Phosphate is a mineral in Togo. Here we produced phosphate. Then my father was an electrician in the phosphate industry.

For example, my father have never had a car or his life. He was driving a, a motorbike to go to work, but he have been able to offer me a very, very, very good education and I think this is an example of resilience.

Every time relaying on what my father had done with his life, even if he didn't have a huge income, he have been able to give us three of us, me and my two brothers, the best education we can have and we was not needing, you know, basic things in our life then that is an example of resilience and yes, when I was young after the primary school, I used to live in host families to study that need huge residence to go through, you know difficulties living in family from nine years old to, you know, 20, 22 years old.

Elie Abbey: I finished living in families at 20, then more than 10 years struggling with different families, changing places, re-adapting to situations that helped me a lot to have that resilience. Then everywhere I can go in this world, I'm sure that I can be successful.

Stephen Matini: When in the past or even now, you go through a difficult moment, all of us have moments that feel harder. Is there anything specific that you do in order to bring your hope up?

Elie Abbey: When I go through difficult moment, I just throw an eye in the past, just throw an eye at the back I can see that I have been through more difficult things than it is nothing we can go through. It is sufficient for me to look in the past and find the friends. Go ahead.

Stephen Matini: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything about your past?

Elie Abbey: No. . That's perfect. , I like that difficulties, that difficult moment, the build the manner. Yeah. Now I think that I can change, change in the way I'm doing them, but things happening to me, I'm not sure that I can change them.

If someone lied to me, I can change that. It is like that. Being able to go through my medical studies and the choices I used to make, even if they are wrong, I say to myself, you have that, that choice, that is the consequences. You have to assume them and go ahead.

Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly is a combination of taking responsibilities, and understanding what you can and what you cannot control.

Elie Abbey: Yes.

Stephen Matini: I love that , you know, it's not always easy to do that. Sometimes it's easier to complain or to blame other people. Does it ever happen to you?

Elie Abbey: I can say never. I think all of us, we go through situations where we complain we shouldn't stay in that situation complaining. I used to help people around me, my relative, my wife, my brothers. When they are complaining, I just ask them, you are complaining about that situation. Can you change it?

If you can change it, then change it. If you can change it, let it go and do what you can do, do your best. It is the only thing you can do. Then yes, sometimes I can complain, but I very quickly remind myself that complaining is not a solution, but taking responsibilities and yes, accepting situations, we can't change. That is the real way to achieve goals there.

Stephen Matini: These days the news are so negative, it's all about negative, negative, negative news. Is there anything that worries you?

Elie Abbey: No, no, no. I'm very, very optimistic. Optimism is quite define me the best. I'm not that guy. I will be hearing about situation. Sometimes I just stay and think about the worst situation I can go through. I ask myself, what would you have done in that situation? And the answer is clear. It is. I will deal with it and find a way to find the positive in that situation.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that optimism can be taught to anyone?

Elie Abbey: Yes, some people will learn optimism and apply it in their life very quickly than other people. I'm sure that when you want to share something with someone, you have to be patient, you have to be consistent, you have to be intentional. Then yes, everyone can add a different level. Learn optimism and apply it in its life. Yes,

Stephen Matini: Being optimistic is something that you are, or is this also something that the people of Togo are? Is this a cultural trait of your country?

Elie Abbey: I don't think people are that optimist here. You have optimist people. I think Togo is like random country in this world, , and yes, you have optimist people and people who are complaining every time about their situation, the situation of the country. For example, in Togo here, the political situation is not that good. Some people decide to deal with it, to do something, to change. Even if they can change the political situation, they can change people's lives make it better. Optimism is not cultural here, but you have optimist people and people complaining every day. ,

Stephen Matini: What suggestion would you give to someone young who wants to pursue your same career, to become an eye doctor?

Elie Abbey: In Togo, it is difficult to become a doctor and successful is not that simple. You need to be optimistic, to be courageous and to be okay with, you know, struggling a lot of years before being able to achieve something.

But if someone, I have a lot of you know, mentees, people following me, young doctors, the same thing, want to build a career like me, depending on, you know, the backgrounds, how that person asking for help.

Depending on how they manage their life, I can be able to help them. It depends on the one coming to me. If you are decided to do it, you can do it, then I'll just help you. So give you advices, suggestion, and yeah, hold your hand, I can do that. But it depend on the person asking for advice is then yes.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever been involved with the Togo National Blindness Control program? Have you ever worked with the organizations whose aim is to work on preventable blindness?

Elie Abbey: Yes, we are working every time with the national program. I work in two projects. The first project is central, the Ophthalmologic Central, where I, I work in the morning. That center is one of the biggest center operating people here in Togo.

I used to do about more than a thousand surgeries a year. This center then we work with the program, the National Program of Blindness Prevention, and I also work with another one projects, which is training projects. In that project I'm trainer and I train a young ophthalmologist or ophthalmologist who are not able to do surgery.

Then that program also collaborate with the national program. Then I can say yes, I'm working with the National Program of Blindness Prevention. Through that two programs, I'm expecting to be able to work more with them through my own projects which is still in building. That's a mobile operating room. I want to build and been able to go through the deep Togo to bring surgery to people who can afford or who can come to capital city or regular cities.

Stephen Matini: What can I do? What can someone do to help?

Elie Abbey: The best thing you can do to help me recording this podcast and making people abroad know about my, you know, my work what I'm doing here in Togo, I think it is very important.

One of my teachers when I was in ophthalmology school, give example, one day when you were doing public health courses, he asked us if a tree who is falling in a forest, if we can hear that tree falling from where we are, we answered no. He asked us then if someone was close to that tree and record the noise that tree have done falling, can someone far from that place hear that tree falling? And we answered, yes.

That means when you are doing something somewhere, you need someone to talk about it. You need someone to bring the information that this guy is doing that thing here in this country. And you are doing great Stephen.

And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because you, you know, spontaneously came to me and you ask that you want to, to have that podcast with me, to know more about what I'm doing and share with your audience. That mean a lot for me.

That way someone can help me by contacting me directly or contacting my organization to give you know, we are open even if it is advices, contacts or you know, any type of support. Helping people to be able to have that surgeries. I think about in French, we say parrainage. Yes. I don't know if in English it is the same.

Stephen Matini: I don't know parrainage, I have to check up .

Elie Abbey: Like you can be in a different country and decide to have someone to be operated. For example, you, you can say that I want to participate in the surgery of two people. Yeah, by sending money for example, by helping in different ways that we are open. Someone who want to help us can contact me directly by LinkedIn or go to our website, https://precyeux.com/

Stephen Matini: I'm looking, how do you say parrainage? Ah, you know what it is, it's sponsorship!

Elie Abbey: Yes, something like that. Sponsorship.

Stephen Matini: Sponsorship. . Now we know, we talked about different things, you know, during this episode, is there anything that you would like for our listeners to pay attention to, something that will be really important for them to remember out of this episode?

Elie Abbey: I just want to share with them my vision of the world, my positive and optimistic vision of this world. I want them to keep in their minds unlimited possibilities and opportunities here in the world.

The more important is to believe in what we are doing and not to give up. To keep on fighting, to keep on struggling and working hard for our dreams. And good people are somewhere to help.

At any moment you can found someone interested in what you are doing and that people can help you, even if it is an advice or a contact or supports. This world is wonderful world full of opportunities and beautiful things. Don't focus on negativity. Just be positive and optimistic, even if it is difficult. That is all for me. .

Stephen Matini: Ellie, thank you so much for your hard work and for being really, truly and inspiration. I am honored to be here with you. Thank you so much for everything you shared. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It was wonderful.

Elie Abbey: Thank you Stephen. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share what I'm doing, what I believe in. That is amazing. Thank you.

View Details

Are you curious about how organizational culture can foster kindness and transform challenging interactions? Today's guest on the podcast Pity Party Over is Michael G. Neece, a renowned author, speaker, and business strategist.

In the episode, Michael takes us on a journey through his own experiences, where he discovers the value of kindness. He unveils how this remarkable virtue has shaped his understanding of human motivation and workplace dynamics.

We explore the impact of kind awareness and the realization that we seldom know the true motives behind someone's behaviors. We also delve into the power of intentional choices and their ability to bring about positive change in any situation.

Join us on this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how being intentionally kind to ourselves is the first step toward establishing meaningful relationships.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

kindness #workplacekindness #transformativeconversations #michaelneece #michaeleneece #inkind #thepowerofkindness #conflict #assertiveness #boundaries #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Michael, when did you realize for the first time that you want to focus on kindness?

Michael Neece: Kindness has always been very important to me. I think I mean, an awful lot of us are raised believing that we should do unto others as they do unto us, right? I mean, it's the, it's the golden rule. We, we all hear about it when we were young. And I think, you know, you, you go through life and then at some point you meet that first person that is not so nice to you, and then you, you wonder what do you do, right? I mean, how, how do you handle that situation? And, you know, do you abandon that idea ...n ideology? Do you abandon that belief system or do you double down on that and somehow find a way to navigate?

Stephen Matini: Did you get interested in kindness also when you were younger? Or is it something that evolved as a professional?

Michael Neece: It's something that I had to really reevaluate as a professional, because you get into the working world and you find that there are people who misinterpret your actions. There are people whose actions are mystifying. And so it was, it was really after, oh, I don't know, two or three really embarrassing shame filled hard moments in the working world that I, I really had to look at kindness again and say, what am I doing wrong? Well, you know, what's, what, what's, what's the problem with how I'm doing it? Or am I, have I abandoned it? And yeah, that was, that was a big problem as well.

Stephen Matini: I believe in the power of choice, and so every single time that we face a difficulty or someone being unkind, we do have a choice in terms of which route to take. What makes people take the kind or the unkind route in your experience?

Michael Neece: I think it's like money. If everybody believes that these pieces of paper convey some sort of value, then, then they do. And as soon as people start having no confidence in it, then you have a run on the bank. And so the whole idea of, you know, you're, you're there and you're trying to be kind to somebody and they're being cruel back, and you can't just tell, you can't tell if they're having just a bad day or if this is a much deeper, you know, longer lasting issue.

So you, you kind of look around and you see what other people do in response to the conversation that you're having with this person. And if it seems like I, I, if it seems like you're going to get support, then I think people double down on the kindness. And if it looks like you're not gonna get the support, then it's very easy to fall into that trap of trying to fight fire with fire.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that organizational culture plays a role in this?

Michael Neece: Oh, without a doubt. You know, I've, I, I'm currently at a company where we, we have our core values and we put them up on the wall, so to speak. You know, it's, it's on every part of our intranet. We have meetings about it. We have you know, leaders come and talk to us about situations where it wasn't working so well and what did they do.

And I've been at other companies where you have no idea what the culture is supposed to be, and so it's just kind of whatever people make up in that particular office. And that's a much more uncomfortable situation because it just takes one or two people to turn that in a very strange direction.

Stephen Matini: Is it possible to turn any workplace into a kinder workplace?

Michael Neece: See, I think that's the beauty of kindness is that it is your superpower, Stephen. It is my superpower. It is everybody's in the kindest part of your heart, I think that you can always reach for it. It's easier to reach for, if you've just been to the spa, it's easier to reach for if you've, you know, just awaken, you know, just awaken to your day and you've had a very nice breakfast. I think, you know, the later in the day that it gets, or the less self care you indulge in, the harder it is to find that superpower inside of us. For sure.

Stephen Matini: As you compare yourself now as being someone who's focusing on kindness compared to how you were before, what has changed?

Michael Neece: Ooh. So earlier in my career I definitely had a couple of failings. And, you know, a notable one was when I was very fresh into the working world. I believed in kindness. I believed in doing und undo others, you know the best way that I could. It started off like any job. It had a lot of promise, a lot of hope. I was told, oh, you're the right person for this job.

We really expect this is gonna work well. And then people started coming to me and telling me how bad the boss was, and I said, no, no, no, no, no. We'll, we'll work it out. We'll, we'll be together as a team. It'll be fine. And, and so I brought my idealism to bear, but I didn't have any sense of realism at that moment. And so I started watching as these bad behaviors really unfolded, and these things that I really didn't wanna see in the workplace.

And so my own kindness practice was not strong. I hadn't had to flex my muscles in the kindness arena before, and suddenly I was, you know, opposed to this person who oversaw every aspect of my work. And I did not respond well, I, I responded quite badly, actually. You know, the, I, I tried to hold the line for a while, but eventually I had you know, I joined the core of angry voices. I became one of the whisperers in the, in the corridors talking about how bad the boss was. It wasn't until I was sitting at his desk looking across the table at him that, you know, and he was, he was repeating back to me one of the mean things that I had said that I thought he had no way of knowing. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how badly flawed my strategy had been.

Michael Neece: Yeah. For the next oh, 15, 20 years, I, I started really researching. I started trying to understand what motivates people, how is it that people can fall into the different traps that we fall into? What are the unspoken undercurrents of all of the meetings that you're in and how to spot those. And so I just, I went on this sort of whirlwind self-education tour trying to understand how to do things better. And so I would definitely say my, my kindness practice has evolved quite a bit since that bad situation, sitting across from the boss and trying to, you know, try, trying to figure out where I had gone astray. So, yeah, no, I'm, I'm very thankful for the fact that I, I decided to double down in that direction. It would've been very easy to simply say, Nope, I'm just gonna fight fire with fire for the rest of my career. And that's apparently what the working world is. And and I'm glad I didn't go that direction.

Stephen Matini: As you're talking, there are all kinds of ideas and memories that come to mind, or situations that I personally went through. Is it easier to be kind or to be unkind?

Michael Neece: I think both things are easy. I think both things are quite easy. I, I think what you turn into a habit is the thing that you're going to reach for. It's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna confess something here to all of your listeners, which is really embarrassing. But when I hop into the car and I know I have to commute for 45 minutes or for an hour, the way I started my driving when I was 16 or 17, I saw it as a game.

And for every gain that I made, getting in front of somebody, getting ahead, going fast, I saw that as being very, very sexy. Very good, very happy. You know, it, it, it's only been in the last maybe several years that I've been able to look at my driving practice and say, what if that person who's trying to cut me off and is trying to go fast, is trying to get to the hospital to say goodbye their last goodbyes to a dying relative?

Well, now that I've reframed everything, now I'm fine with anybody getting in front of me. I'm fine with letting people, you know cut, you know, cut and go fast and, you know, do, do the little shortcuts because I, I don't know their situation. I don't know why they're acting the way that they're acting. And for me to assume that me getting to the pharmacy is more important than whatever they have to do is silly.

I, I don't know that for sure that, you know, that being said, I don't like having people cut me off. And I, I'm glad to get out of the traffic , but but your, your question of which one's easier, I think it's, which one do you try to prioritize? You know, is it, is it, you know, me centered, or is it the collective good centered?

I spent a little bit of time in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. There are all kinds of different tradespeople trying to cross an intersection and go through the rotary. And what you find is that there are, at least during my time there, there were very few accidents because while people are trying to nose their car forward through the walking traffic, nobody is trying to be harsh and angry and mean about it.

They're, they're simply trying to figure out, where's my place and how can I get to my objective without giving somebody else a, a bad day? And so, so again, I I just turned back to the idea of it. It's, it's whatever you're prioritizing, and it's whichever habit you are building. If you're actively thinking about building kindness, I think you try to act kindly whenever you can.

Stephen Matini: You know, as a driver, I think I'm still, your16, 17 years old, , I, I try not to drive altogether because it drives me insane when people behave the way you describe, you know, more selfish. And so I try, I try to use public transportation, you know, tram. And really, I try not to drive. I love driving, but it's a huge source of stress, you know, particularly these days. When you speak about kindness, all these this mindset that you have, can ... are you thinking predominantly about the workplace or also life in general?

Michael Neece: I mean, I think the two things feed each other. I mean, especially having gone through a pandemic where it, all of the lines got very blurry, you know, is this, is this my work time or is this my personal time? I'm answering an email at midnight. But I'm trying to take, you know, two hours in the middle of the day to go for a rotten.

Stephen Matini: For me, organizations are microcosmos like a smaller society, you know, they abide by their own rules. When you and I talked last time about psychological safety, and sometimes you are stuck with people that for whatever the reason, the chemistry is just not there. So when there's no psychological safety, how do you move around that? What would it be the first step in your opinion?

Michael Neece: Oh, I mean, the first step, if you're in the workplace and you don't feel like you have psychological safety, is to start asking your supervisor and some of your closest colleagues, you know, what, what's going on here? And, and how can we make this better? Is there a way that we can set forth a couple of rules to make things so that it, it's okay for us to talk, it's okay for us to have the opinions.

Every once in a while you read one of these leadership clips about how a good leader will, you know, tell you, we, we hire really smart people, not so that we can tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. If you're in a workplace, you were hired there, there's theoretically some set of skills, some perspective, some, some ability, some knowledge that you bring to that workplace that is valuable.

If you can't bring that skillset to bear, if you can't bring that perspective out in the open, then what good is it doing anybody? And so the business argument is, you hired me to be able to do certain things, and in the psychologically safe space, I feel stilted in like my, you know, my perspectives and things that I would offer are just never gonna come out. And so that's the business argument.

I think the other argument is it's just a lot more pleasant to work in a workspace where you feel like you can trust others and where you feel like you can say to others the things that you need to say. So I, I think the first perspective is to have those conversations with two or three allies that you really trust. If you feel really good about your supervisor, I think you talked to your supervisor and you say, we can make this better. I need to hear what this other person is saying, even though they're always being talked over in meetings. And you do too. They were hired for a reason. So how, how do we get to hear that person and don't make it about yourself, make it about how, how do we hear each other better?

Stephen Matini: If the team leader, the manager, the leader is not on board, is it still possible to build a psychological safe environment?

Michael Neece: I think you're gonna have limited returns on that investment. I think the nice thing about having a really robust kindness practice is that at the end of every day, you can feel proud of how you carried yourself. At the end of every day, the things that you have done for other people, the ways that you have treated every single person you've interacted with, I think that that spills out. And I think people want to be around you.

So going back to your question, if you have a team lead supervisor who is not, you know, who, who they, they don't buy it. They, they think you're being naive or something like that, they can actually see your kindness as a threat. They can actually see your appeal to the general group. You know, the fact that people come to you with hard questions and the people, you know, people come to you because they want to confide in you. They can see that as a very threatening thing.

The only thing that you can do with a team leader, other than, you know, eventually you might have to make the hard decision of to just leaving. But the only thing that you can do that's short of that is to have very robust conversations with that team lead and say, so-and-so came to me with this issue, and I think we can solve this together.

Here's what I thought, and here's what I told them, but how would you have handled that? And then I think you start, you start putting coins in their trust jar. And once, once that trust jar gets full enough, they might really see, oh, you know, Stephen is not trying to, you know usurp. Maybe, you know, Stephen's not trying to outshine me on this team. Stephen is, is an ally Stephen's trying to help me as well, and trying to help the team.

I think it comes back to your own kindness practice and how robust it is. But it also comes back to really good strategy. You know in, in that situation where I was undercutting my boss very early career, and that boss was just not acting appropriately, what I did was I went away. And what I really should have done is I should have gone toward, I should have gone to that boss a lot more often and said, what's your vision? I'm not sure I really understand why we have this policy. Can you help me understand how I can help you more? And I think if I'd had those conversations, I would've had a very different experience in my earlier career.

Stephen Matini: One really awkward predicament that I often discuss with the guests of the podcast is this. Often times people feel fearful of what is it gonna happen to me if I speak up? But they're also aware that if I don't speak up, I may end up like a pressure cooker, you know, I'm gonna boil and rot inside. How can you overcome the fear in your opinion?

Michael Neece: At the end of your life when people are toasting your 80th birthday? What are the things you want them to be saying about you? I think that's the response to that. Because if I make one choice out of fear and then another choice out of fear, before you know it you know, you can think of these jar, you know emotions as jars, right? And that whole pressure cooker idea, like am I, am I putting more things into that pressure cooker? I, I think, I think the response is how do I want to see myself in the world and what's the worst thing that could happen?

Or, or, you know, if, if they fire me, gosh, maybe that wasn't the right place for me to be in the first place. And maybe that's, maybe that's a good thing getting fired from a workplace because you stood up for principle because you stood up against those fears that could have knocked you down.

I think at least you, you hold your head high, you feel good about the fact that you lived your beliefs, and when you step into the interviews for other jobs thereafter, you can say what you did to bring harmony to say the things that were hidden to, to be that voice of reason.

And I, and I think that makes you a more appealing candidate. I mean, as long as you, as long as you can frame it as I tried to be tactful and I tried to be diplomatic in, I delivered the message. But I do like to say the things that otherwise sometimes go unsaid, that's an invaluable person to have on any team.

Stephen Matini: You know, recently I had a conversation, really difficult one with a business partner. So we have been working together overall for I think 12, yeah, 12, 13 years. So lot, a lot of projects. And every single project, there was always this negotiation going on about my fees. Every single time. I would stood my ground, but I would feel very frustrated until roughly three weeks ago. And I said it, listen, I find so saddening that after 12, 13 years clients been satisfied that we are still doing this game. I'm not willing to negotiate any longer this. I want my energy, your energy to be focused on something that makes sense, to have fun together, to build beautiful stuff. I no longer want to have the discussion with you. That's it. My fees are no longer negotiable.

Michael Neece: Sure, sure. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: And ... I mean, when I hang up, I said, oh my God, I might be destroyed ... But it seems to me that this time things, something might have changed because I noticed not just a specific person, but all the other ones associated with this person looking at me slightly differently. Because I did not criticize you. I'm just simply saying, I want to have a more functional relationship. So I love when you say it's a matter of perspective, you know, overall how you want to remember your life to be remembered. For me, in addition to that is, is this really a relationship I want to have? Do I want this relationship to abide by this rules and make me feel suffocated?

Michael Neece: Sure, sure. It's, it's very interesting because right before I got onto the podcast with you I was rereading something and it, it was this idea that you had this very frank interaction, and I think it's really important to be very truthful. And I think you were tapping into something that you suspected was there.

The thing that I was just reading right before this was about limiting beliefs. It's the idea that everybody comes to the table with things that they don't, they don't necessarily even know about themselves. Perhaps they might know, perhaps they don't. But your business partner could have been raised in a family where money was always discussed and money was always tight, whether it was, whether it wasn't, there could have been this emotional response to, to be careful with money, and then that could spill out onto everybody for the rest of their lives.

And when I think we take the time to dig into our limiting beliefs, into these things that, that control some of our behaviors, that can make us sometimes have a, a large emotional reaction to a situation that most other people wouldn't have that same reaction to, I think it, it gives us a great gift. It helps us understand this business partner of yours is probably incredibly thrifty, probably very, very good at earnings, and probably very good at, at keeping everybody very flush in terms of money.

The cutting and hard side of this though, is that there are always discussions about it. It's, it's almost like you intuited that there is something else there behind these discussions, but I feel like I need to speak my truth. And you weren't attacking, you weren't mean, you weren't you know, making it a personal thing.

You were just simply saying, here's, here's what I need and we change this. And so I think it's a brilliant tactic but I think it's also a very insightful into the fact that other people always bring something to the table that is unspoken. There's always an undercurrent, whether you know it or not.

Stephen Matini: My unspoken truth is definitely the example of my dad. My dad was a, a small entrepreneur, and my father repeated countless of times when I was younger. The importance of honesty, honesty, honesty, honesty, honesty. And I want to be honest, and I'm happy to be honest, but sometimes I wonder, should I be more strategic? Maybe there's a little percentage of being hypocritical that I could learn ...

Michael Neece: There's a difference between hypocrisy and being a very good storyteller. You know, as, as someone who just writes incessantly what I've always been challenged with is what do I include and what do I leave out? That's every story ever, right? I mean, what do you know?

Do I, do I talk about the fact that he had cereal that morning, and did he put the spoon to the cereal and spoon to his mouth? I mean, how, how much detail does this person want? So I think it's more a matter of being strategic and knowing which truths to tell at what times, and knowing, knowing how to bubble up that truth.

Sometimes you are not the right person to deliver a particular message, sometimes delivering that message could come from a different ally to both you and the person who needs to hear the message.

Somebody who's trustworthy, somebody who knows that you're not trying to manipulate or, you know but, but somebody who can hear your truth and then can maybe deliver it in the right way for that person to hear. So I, so I think, I think there are thousand strategies. I don't think it's at all hypocritical to say that there are certain truths that you, you simply sit on and you don't ever say to hold back certain truths. I think some of them are obvious and don't need to be stated. I think some of them will never really truly be heard by the person you're trying to deliver it to. So why say it? And then I think there are other strategies. I think there are ways of feeding that truth to other people and letting them talk to that individual who, who might need to hear the truth.

Stephen Matini: Kindness, and assertiveness; are they the same thing?

Michael Neece: I've seen people be assertive in unkind ways, so I guess, I guess they're not always the same. I think there can be times when you're very kind and in a very overt way, and it's very affirming and, and out there. So I, I would say that you can be very kind. The, the, the example that comes to mind is you're in a meeting, somebody is continuously being talked over.

I think that you can be assertive and say, Hey, guys, I, I, I'm so sorry to interrupt the flow. This is, this is such good conversation, I really want to continue it. But I think that Susan over there had some, had some ideas that she really wanted to share with us. And I know she's an expert on this topic, so if you know, Susan, did you, did you wanna share with the group a couple of your idea?

So I think there's definitely some times when you can be very assertive and, and, and forthright. I think there's some other times you can be assertive, and it's not, it's not so kind, you know? If it's, if it's a self-serving sort of thing, or if it's, if it's serving to a, a particular motivation that you have, then maybe, maybe it is, but maybe it doesn't. So but, but yeah. I, I think sometimes kindness, you do have to grab the conversation by the reigns and say, guys, there's this other thing, and I think you really need to hear it.

Stephen Matini: I love when you said kindness is a superpower. What are the adjectives that based on your experience, your studies, you would associate to your notion of kindness as a superpower?

Michael Neece: Well, it's something that is a renewable resource. It's something that again, I mentioned earlier, if, if you just come from the spa, you are happy to tip people, well, you're happy to let people get in front of you in line. And I mean, it's, it's, you have a lot more of that, that buffer built up.

So think, I think your superpower as an all time pie, when you have been kind to yourself first, some adjectives that go with this caring to yourself before being caring to others. You know, they say if the oxygen masks drop while you're in the airplane, they say, if you're the adult, you should put it on yourself first, and then you help other people.

That's not unkind. It is, it is a, a real situation where you have to make sure you stay conscious so that you can do more good. I actually, I actually got a mini lecture on this when I went and visited with my team in New York, you know, for the book that I'm writing. And they said, do you remember that thing where you recently got hospitalized because you weren't taking great care of yourself? Maybe this is something to go in the book ...

Stephen Matini: Is kindness, love?

Michael Neece: I think they're distinctly different things. I don't have to love a very thorny, very grizzly kind of person, but I should, I should still show them kindness. However it's possible to do that. For, for one thing, it makes me feel good about the fact that I, I'm living my values for another thing. It helps me collect a lot of data from that thorny person. If they are, you know, being angry at me, are they just having a bad day? If I continue to be kind, will I break through this barrier? Or is this something deeper?

Think kindness comes from a loving place. I think it really does, but I don't think that you necessarily will feel that big emotion that comes with it about every single person in every situation. Like there are horrible acts that you read in the news or that you know, are in history. It's very hard to find a loving feeling for that person.

It might actually be a little easier to find a, a bit of pity for that person and to feel, to, to feel some moat of if only somebody had been kind to this person earlier in their life, if only somebody had taken better care of this person, if only this person had had their needs met. It doesn't mean that I have to love them, but it certainly means that I, I should be loving in how I approach my thought process about that person, if that. Does that make sense?

Stephen Matini: Yes, it does. Your kindness as an approach, I don't know if you call it approach or method or mindset, it sounds to me very secular, it doesn't seem to belong to any specific philosophy or religious background.

Michael Neece: That's accurate. Yes, that's very accurate. I was raised in a household by two PhD scientists. I think being raised in that environment, I learned very quickly that you, you believe in other people. You believe in hard work. You believe in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and you believe in a lot of equity.

I mean, my mother was the one who was always teaching me about what was in her biochemistry books and trying to, to tell me about the, you know, the wonders of science and how we're exploring the universe through, through this very specific method. So, so yes, I, I, I firmly believe that people can be very kind regardless of what religion or faith they come from, or if they don't come from one I think it's very easy to be kind or unkind, but I, I think, I think you'll find a lot of people who are very kind, who have no faith at all.

Stephen Matini: One thing that you shared with me in the past was you said, we cannot pretend that angry people are not out there. How can you be kind, so make yourself vulnerable, but at the same time, protect yourself?

Michael Neece: First things first. If you are dealing with an angry person and you fear for your own safety, that's a very different situation. And that's, I don't think that's what you're talking about, right?

If you were in a situation though, where the person is angry at you or you have anger between the two of you, I think eliminating the words I and you from the conversation is really, really very helpful. I used to give planetarium shows, right? I used to be in this big dome where, you know, you turn day tonight and you put the stars, you know, replicas of stars up on the ceiling. And I would point out, oh, Ryan's belt and Andromeda and all of, all of the constellations, and I've done it for years. So many people come past at the end and say, oh, I was so great.

It was so lovely, and I loved your storytelling. And so, so, so at one point I had a person who pulled me to one side as they were all walking out and said, this is horrible. This was terrible. What you, you have all of this great technology and what you chose to do with it was almost criminal. It was so bad.

Fortunately, I had just read an article a couple of weeks earlier about what to do when confronted with somebody who has a, has an opinion that you do not care about, and an opinion that is very overtly opposite of your opinion. I looked the gentleman in the eye and I said, I just really want to thank you for being so honest, and I want to thank you for sharing your perspective. I didn't say his perspective was right. I didn't tell him that.

I thought suddenly I was a terrible presenter after so many years in, you know, in the planetarium industry. And he looked at me and he said, oh, and now you're a smart Tim. And so I just looked at him and he said, no, sir, I, I, I don't believe that that was what I was attempting to do. I just wanted to thank you for being vulnerable and for telling me your honest opinion. He had no idea what to do with that.

He had no idea what to do with that. So he stormed out, and I never saw him again with, by not fighting fire with fire. He didn't know, like there was nothing for him to push against it. There was nothing there. And for me, not getting defensive and getting very upset, you know, it wasn't about me. His anger came from something else.

I have no idea what that anger was about, but so why, why treat it as if it's something I needed to defend myself against? So, so angry people will come at you and you can do some jiujitsu on them. You can do some really cool judo move on them, right? They come at you, give them nothing to push up very, very quickly. They realize that they are flailing about, they're losing energy, and they're not making any headway. They're not satisfying that that rise that they get inside of themselves when they, they challenge someone. And so they d they don't know what to do with that.

And so they either will have to storm off, or if this is an ongoing relationship, they'll eventually have to come back to you and say, you know, I'm really sorry. I got so angry earlier and I'm still not sure that we've come to a conclusion on this, but thank you for not yelling back. That's a powerful message that you're sending just right there, is that you are not fighting cruelty with more cruelty. You are trying to be kind even in that moment. I've used this in several different instances in my life, and it is amazing how it is like a Jedi mind trick. And I'm not trying to fool anybody. I'm not trying to, to harm them in any way. I'm simply trying to take their energy and directly ground it.

Stephen Matini: Is this something that you also learn from martial arts?

Michael Neece: Yeah. As you know I started martial arts when I was 17. I did TaeKwonDo for years and years and years and years. I've done a little bit of kung fu as well. I think there's something to that. Interacting with other people in society is a contact sport. It really is, right? . And I think by having done some martial arts, I've learned that I don't really have to be fearful of anything.

I mean, the worst is that somebody can hurt me a little, but if I see it coming and I understand strategy and I know maybe why things are happening the way that they're happening, then I have a shot, then I have a chance at using some strategy in it. So yeah, definitely, definitely. I'd like to infuse a lot of my discussions with kung fu or TaeKwonDo any chance I get.

Stephen Matini: I love that. And I love when you said remove the you and I from the conversation.

Michael Neece: Yeah. And, and I think that's actually a negotiation tactic that they use in the F B I is. If you're talking to somebody who's on the opposite side of a, a negotiation in the fbi, I clearly, there's not a lot of happy love that's going on in that conversation. But if you subtract out the you and the eye and you talk about our goals and how do we do this together, you're, you're showing the other person that I understand there's a problem. I get that there's an issue. Let's talk about the ways that we can get to a good resolution for everyone. And that's, that's what everybody wants. At the end of the day,

Stephen Matini: When I have some conflict with my partner, the first thing that really comes to mind as we discuss is, you know what, this is not about you and I, and I'm not here to get finger pointed, and I'm not here in the business of, you know, finger pointing. You, I'm talking about, I don't know how to resolve this issue. I really don't know, and I need your help. But if you're trying to make me feel crap, I do that all the time with myself, so I don't need another person who does that. And I have to say that it works. It works because you really, you remove the, the you I and you that talk about. This is our relationship, you know, I'm so sorry it's not working the way that we want. What can we do? It makes it more collaborative.

Michael Neece: And that's beautiful, Stephen. I mean, that's absolutely beautiful because that's, that's at the heart of an awful lot of being kind to yourself and kind to the other person is understanding that you're going to have emotions that will come into the circumstance by paying attention to what is our goal? What are the goals? What are our values? What are our beliefs? Then the emotions can inform those.

Unfortunately, we, we, as human beings, we are wired to make emotional decisions and then use logic to back it up. We are, we're wired that way. That's just how we are, you know, what do you want to eat is very much rooted in what, what do I desire? So I, I love the fact that you, you subtract out the, you and the me and you talk about what are our goals, you know, this is such a lovely thing.

We want this thing to be perpetuated. I want it to be perpetuated. I care very deeply about this relationship. How do we give it the care and feeding that it needs? It's like the boss who doesn't sit across the table from you as, as they have your, you know, end of year review, or as they have a hard discussion, they come and they sit next to you and they say, Stephen, how's it going? Are you okay? I care about you. I care about you deeply. And they, and they sit next to you, not across.

Stephen Matini: If you're going through a difficult moment for whatever the reason, you know, your energy is not there, your perspective is not there, and it's harder to be kind to tap into the superpower. Is there anything you do in order to overcome that bump?

Michael Neece: Oh, that's a great, that's the million dollar question. I, I wanna just bring in something that seems like a tangent, but I promise it isn't. Judges hand out nicer, kinder sentencing, right? As they start their workday, and as they get closer and closer to lunch, they are harsher and harsher sentences, and then they go and they have lunch, and you find out right after lunch, they give out okay, sentences, and it gets harsher and harsher, and it's the worst that it can possibly be at the end of the day.

There have been studies that have been done on this. It's a great illustration of the fact that when you wake up, you are feeling your best self. You are the most recharged that you can get. And so if you get into a moment where you're not feeling particularly kind, you're, you've been having a hard day, think about what time of day is it?

I mean, that's, that's a real question for yourself. Another real question is, what are the things that I'm doing for me right now that are loving? What are the things that I'm doing that are kind, have I had a little sustenance lately and was it a, was it a, an apple or was it a donut? How much sleep did I get last night? Y

ou know, so, so I, I, you know, whenever I get into a situation where I'm not feeling particularly kind and I'm in that afternoon traffic and you know, the people are cutting me off, and I'm trying to remember that, you know, me arriving at my home five car lengths, you know, later than otherwise, is not that big a deal. It should be okay. Let them in. Let them in. I just try to remember the self kindness. That's a big, big piece of all of this.

Again, take the oxygen mask, put it over your face first, and then help others do that. That's one big thing. Now, if, if you're in a situation where you have to have a discussion, you have to have a meeting, it is, you know, five 30 and you were hoping to be gone by four. What I try to do is I try to remind myself of the good things that have happened that day so far. I try to remember the good actions that I have taken so far.

I try to slow down my own breathing because I remember that you can actually affect your own psychology by how you are using your body at the moment. And so, if I'm trying to be calm and quiet and take those big breaths that, believe it or not, that can help just an awful lot. If, if that's not helping, then you try to pump out 15 really hard fast pushups, you know, you do something that's gonna get your system going and then give yourself 10 minutes to calm back down.

Stephen Matini: Michael, what would you like our listeners to take away? We touch so many different points, but is there something that is dear to you that you would like them to focus on?

Michael Neece: Yes. The golden rule says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that is a really high bar that is like sainthood. That's a lot to ask for. The silver rule is a lot easier. It's do not do unto others as you would not have done unto them, which is basically saying, don't go around punching people.

Don't go around taking joy and hurting each other, like, just don't harm you. I think that in a kindness practice, you can do something that's sort of in between those two. Anytime you think of it, send a nice text to someone or a nice email, or stop by their desk and say, you know, that project that you know, we've been working on for so long, it's so rare that I say thank you. And it just really wanted to take a minute to say thank you, because without you, this project wouldn't be going anywhere.

So do little things that take you a minute at most, that make you feel better about who you are and help other people around you. They feel those ripples of kindness. Every, every little pebble that you throw in into that lake, it, it's a helpful one. It's something that can make somebody else's day that much brighter and can make them throw a few rocks into the, into the lake as well. If there's any one thing that I would want to say to your, to your listeners, it is, don't expect sainthood.

Just expect little bits and pieces as you can throw them in. And I think that those cumulative bits of kindness add up. The only other thing, I think we've already talked about it a lot, but I I, I do wanna give another plug for it. Get a lot of sleep, stay hydrated exercise, have good nutrition. Do the things that are caring to you as a human being so that you feel more kind, more loving, more generous in your spirit. So the self-care is as critical in this discussion. As, as anything else,

Stephen Matini: Michael, your work could not be more timely. We desperately need Michael and kindness. Thank you so much for all that you are researching, for your efforts in your book and for spending time with me. This is really lovely.

Michael Neece: Well, Stephen, I I'm glad that you have this platform and that you're using it the way that you do. You know, pity Party of Over is something that I'm just, I'm really glad that you invited me onto and and I'm glad that we've had this conversation. And, and another one besides I hope we continue to talk.

View Details

Despite our differences, what brings all of us together, is our shared desire to be heard, supported, and loved.

The guest of this episode of the podcast Pity Party Over is Stuart Ross Carlson, a violinist, violist, and music composer with autism who displayed his enormous talent from a young age.

Stuart shares his unique experience with synesthesia, a condition where he sees colors when he hears music, and his mission to support neurodiversity and inclusion in education, the arts, and the world.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to inspire others and create a more inclusive world where everyone feels valued.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

You can access music from Stuart Ross Carlson on all major streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, YouTube Music, and many others. You can learn about Stuart Ross Carlson on Stuart’s website, Facebook and Instagram:

www.stuartcarlson.com

https://www.facebook.com/stuartrosscarlson

https://www.instagram.com/stuart.ross.carlson/

stuartrosscarlson #stuartcarlson #violinist #violist #violin #viola #music #purpose #mission #annarborsymphonyorchestra #mottchildrenhospital #autism #neurodiversity #yoyoma #billieeilish# katyperri #arianagrande #cristinaaguilera #beethoven #mozart #tchaikovsky #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

View Details

Are you tired of feeling burdened by responsibilities that aren’t yours?

The guest on the podcast Pity Party Over is Molly McGuigan, a Positive Change Practitioner and Appreciative Inquiry Expert.

Molly discusses the project she co-founded called “Ditch the Ditty,” which aims to help women overcome unnecessary responsibilities and obligations.

Ditch the Ditty explores ways to raise awareness of when women can say yes or no to things and the importance of valuing oneself.

Join us on Pity Party Over and discover how to release yourself from the weight of responsibilities that don't serve you.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

conflict #assertiveness #boundaries #mollymcguigan #ditchtheditty #positivepsychology #appreciativeinquiry #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When did you find out about human development that was gonna be your focus of interest?

Molly McGuigan: I, you know, I don't know that there was a moment. I feel like it's been a journey and that journey began really when I graduated from college. I went to school in Cleveland as well. I went to John Carroll University, and then after college, I, I worked for a company that did experiential training and development, and I sort of fell into that.

I was working at a summer camp for kids with diabetes and I got interested in doing work on the Ropes Challenge course. So sort of the out, you know, the out Outward Bound type work that where you have kids that are going up and, you know, learning about climbing and, you know, high, high-end trees and, and teaching them about leadership, about overcoming challenges and things like that. And so I got really interested in that, probably more so from even the outdoor education and working, you know, working with kids aspect of it.

Molly McGuigan: I didn't really think a whole lot about how that impacted human development or organization development at that time. A company that I started working for right after that, that put the, the challenge courses in and did all the training for the challenge courses for the camp, I started working for them right outta college and wow, it just opened my eyes to this whole world of human development organization development teams.

And I quickly got very interested in, in just how all of that worked, gave me the chance to to start to travel. And we started working in bigger organizations like Ernst & Young and, and things like that. And that took us all over the place. And so it was really interesting to meet people from not all, all over the country, but all over the world. And so I became, you know, became intrigued with that and that's where the journey began, and it continued for, for decades after that.

Stephen Matini: And then the whole positive psychology approach, how that one came about in your life?

Molly McGuigan: So I was working for that company Executive Edge, and we, because we were based in Cleveland, we, we had a connection to Case Western Reserve University, and we decided to take a program on appreciative inquiry.

And so it really just, we, we knew actually about appreciative inquiry and about the work of David Cooperrider because we had been doing work with his sister Don Dole in the experiential world. She was actually one of the facilitators for some of the work that we were doing with Executive Edge and decided to, to take a, take a workshop. So three of us went from that organization and took a foundation's workshop with David Cooperrider. And that's where I first learned about appreciative inquiry.

And again, just sort of another part, another milestone in the trajectory of my work was learning about how organizations can use this powerful methodology to, to plan to, to embrace change, to engage people. And it was just such a, an interesting and, and different way of approaching that work. And so I, we quickly started to implement that and use that within the, the work that we were doing with clients.

Stephen Matini: When I work with clients, I noticed that their traditional mindset is very much problem solving. Assess the situation, come up with the strategy, and then different actions, and appreciative inquiry focuses on strength. So it's a really different approach. When you deal with the client that never dealt with appreciative inquiry before, is there a specific way you would like to introduce it?

Molly McGuigan: I usually talk about a couple of things. I talk about, first of all how I think based on the premise that in every organization something is working, it's important to not throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. You know, we talk about that concept of really allowing some of what has worked well to come along, even as you're planning and thinking about the future.

It's very different from organ how organizations orient, especially when they're thinking about change or coming up with solutions to big challenges. You know, they don't necessarily think about it that way. We're, we're really wired to think more deficit minded. And so I, you know, quickly sort of orient them and help them understand how different that is. I think the other thing is that for me, all about bringing the right people to the table.

And again, another way that organizations often embrace change or, you know, some sort of a complex challenge is that they get a group of experts together or a group of leaders, and they're quickly moving in the direction of, of something that is really sort of facilitated by that smaller group of, of people.

But you leave so much out, you leave a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, a lot of expertise out of the conversation, and you also lose the opportunity to bring people along with you to into that moment, into that moment of change, into that next phase of work, whatever that is.

Even if you feel like you have all the answers, which you probably don't , it's so important to allow people to sort of step into that space, to, you know, to really be engaged with that and feel like they are part of, of whatever it is that's gonna come next.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think that so often leadership seems to be not fully aware of the strengths and the people and the resources that already has, and so feels compelled to go outside to the expert, to the consultant that magically he's going to provide you with the perfect formula.

Molly McGuigan: I always, I love it when, when organizations don't feel that way and when they're like, we know we, we have all the answers, , and the answers lie with from within, but it doesn't often happen. You know, most, a lot of times they are sort of looking for that. I think, I think it's cuz they're looking for that sort of quick fix.

They think that there's this magic bullet out there, right, that's gonna change and be new and different. And the reality is there's really not that much that's new and truly innovative in the world, especially in the world of organization development and leadership development and things like that. There's really nothing that's really, you know, different. It's more of a, a reframe or a repackaging of things that we've known all along. But they are looking for something that brings some, some new thinking in, into the equation.

And they don't necessarily, it's not that they don't value their people or that they don't think that they have strengths. I think that they assume that they don't have something new because they are, you know, they're in the system. They're sort of married into that whole to how things are being done and they don't have that new provocative thing to, to think about.

I mean, I I love to think about the fact that, you know, sort of take this combination of people. It's not that one idea, it's the idea that's connected to another idea that's connected to another idea that does spark something new and innovative and something that they haven't really thought about before.

Stephen Matini: Why would you say that has been one of the biggest lessons that you learned from change?

Molly McGuigan: I think the, the biggest thing, and I continue to remind myself of this, is that, you know, the organizations are, as I think David Cooperrider said early on, you know, they're systems of human relatedness. It's all about relationship. The sooner we've sort of realized that it's really about the humans, it's about the human side of, of how people are interacting with each other, how people are relating to people.

And you know, every, every organization sort of has its own unique way of approaching that in the way of culture and how culture comes about. And and maybe in the way that they actually work together and things like that. But really at the end of the day, understanding what is important to people and what drives them and what makes them connected to each other.

And, you know, so much of the work that I do ends up being about that. It does end up being about, you know, sort of a, maybe a process around something, you know, that's new or different and bringing people together and sort of dec and, and deciphering around some of the politics and things like that. But at the end of the day, it's really about sort of lifting up and figuring out what is it that's most important to people and what are they gonna be energized by and excited about.

Stephen Matini: When you deal with the culture, an organizational culture that is very extremely task oriented and somehow the human component doesn't have that much space, how would you approach that?

Molly McGuigan: But it always sort of comes up in projects, you know, what do we do with the, with the naysayers? What do we do with the people that are, you know, are, are not there, are not ready to sort of share. And I, you know, kind of tie that together with what your example was of, you know, well we don't wanna hear from them, you know, and those, those folks probably do have, have something to say, but that, but we don't, you know, we don't need to necessarily bring that into the equation.

But I think that people tend to sort of hold on to what has been done in the past, feel very wedded to that, you know, very tied into that. And sometimes it, it is hard to, to sort of give people the space if you're especially talking about sort of a new process or new initiative, it's sometimes hard to give people the space to air things out or to work out the conflict that they have between point A and point B.

But there's so much value in just giving people that space to do that. And not in a negative way. You know, I always say let's frame a conversation in a way that allows people to feel like they can bring those things along without making it feel like it's this really negative thing, what they've been, just because we're doing something different doesn't mean what they've been doing is wrong . And that's, I think people's biggest fear in change is that they're being, you know, sort of asked to do something differently and maybe the way that they've been doing it is not the right way.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, what would you say that is an adequate amount of time for an intervention to start seeing some changes?

Molly McGuigan: Boy, it really comes down to, in my mind, it comes down to the messaging and the leadership and how quickly they are seeing that something is, is different or that there's, that there's something that they wanna be part of.

And when there's a lot of skepticism and when leadership is not completely on board with doing something or really sort of steering that ship in a different way, it takes longer.

In some cases it can take years. I mean, we know, you know, through our work that culture change, like true culture change can take three to five years, you know, in terms of really sort of rolling something out that looks and feels different to people and that there's consistency, consistency in actual work and consistency in communication around that.

But I found that, you know, when leaders are really truly on board with, with something and there's, you know, there's momentum around something, a new, a new way of thinking, a new way of doing things. And there's that consistency in message and there's that true authenticity that comes through that, you know, it can be just a few months of, you know, of starting to, to do that work where you start to see some of those small shifts.

And that's, I think the key too is that it doesn't necessarily need to be this big audacious change or big audacious thing that happens sometimes. It's, it's the small tiny wins that are the most important and the things that we notice in sort of day-to-day work that might be different.

Stephen Matini: But, you know, you really have to have clear expectations. Like they want to have everything now, you know, it has to work immediately. Mm-Hmm. and I say all the time, it takes time, it takes patience and it takes repetition. So...

Molly McGuigan: It does, yeah. It is hard. I, you know, I found myself changing my work a bit over the last four or five years or so from kind of getting away from doing just one or two days with a group and then leaving and not coming back.

You know, there's cuz there's, there were, I was always asked to do things like, you know, some sort of a team development or a retreat of some sort or, you know, bringing people together to plan for the next year or something, which I still do a fair amount of, but it's when I have a relationship with an organization and there is that opportunity for more long, long-term planning because until you really sort of get in and, and have a chance to really, you know, have some time with an organization you just don't see, I was feeling left out of the potential to see some of that change occur.

And so it was impacting my own connection to the work and I really wanted to see that opportunity to see something happen, to see something come about cuz it, it inspired me, it engaged me, you know, into the work itself. So so I've been really trying to be intentional making that change, that shift.

Stephen Matini: But I have to say that now because of digital, remote connection mm-hmm. and Covid has been a huge boost in the way I'm able to have more touch points, you know, with people. So programs tend to be longer, the budget is not invested just, you know, in a couple of days, super intense and then yeah, a matter of a week everyone forgets all about it. And I love digital for that because realistically what is the likelihood of me going back in person and to see you. Yeah. Especially if, if you're work working with people, they're all over the place, but digital, you know, for that is phenomenal.

Molly McGuigan: Yeah. It is one of the things that came out of the pandemic that was a, a, a bright spot, you know, that our work has shifted and has opened up the world in a way cuz I've worked more internationally with groups, you know, as a result of being able to, as just as you said, do things, you know, where we don't have to travel, we don't have to be in in person.

At the same time there is something that is, you know, back to sort of the, the fact that everything is so relational there, it's, it, you know, it can be a little bit of a challenge to build some of those relationships over Zoom or over teams or, you know, one of these platforms that we all use now regularly. So there's still something to be said for coming together at times to build those relationships because they're so integral to what, to the work we do and the work that they do together. But then it is so nice to have sort of that ability to have a hybrid where you can build that relationship and then connect, you know, over time and continue to build that relationship, you know, just in, in different ways.

Stephen Matini: And how did you come up with the idea of Ditch the Ditty?

Molly McGuigan: ? Yeah. Ditch the Diddy. Another, a project that is becoming more than just a project for me. A few years ago I was part of another project, a big project that I worked on for several years. I was hired to, to sort of lead up a big gathering of folks talking about positive education around the globe.

I'd spent a long time working on that project a couple years, and I was working with a couple of individuals in that project and we were sort of backstage, you know, kind of getting ready to get folks up on this stage. It was, you know, a big conference. We had like 800 people from almost 60 different countries represented. So it was a really big global event.

And so we're backstage sort of getting folks ready to come up and, and speak. And I had someone actually physically hand me this sort of bag, this what we came to refer to as a “ditty bag” a bag of his, his things, his personal things, and said, here, you know, hold this, it, it has my, my, my whole life in it, you know, so hold this and, and take care of this while I go up and, and give this this keynote.

And so I was one of two women that were backstage and, you know, I was sort of surrounded by a lot of other men just making sort of note of that. And I realized in that moment that, you know, I took that bag and I held it out of the sense of obligation, responsibility. And and I also noticed that, you know, that that gentleman happened to, to pass it along to one of the two women that were behind this, you know, backstage, even though I was literally like running the whole show.

So so it was a, a metaphor for me and a moment of time of like real clarity where I realized, wow, you know, how many other times am I being hand in things, you know, metaphorically or real, that I really don't wanna be holding , that I have a choice to not hold, but I'm still somehow holding because I have this sort of sense of responsibility towards others, or don't want make them feel bad or, you know, I, I, I have some, some reason behind, behind that.

And so we started to get really curious about that. And so a couple of my colleagues and I who were present at that event were part of that and have started to, started to sort of carve out this space of when are women more apt to, you know, to pick up these things? You know, how, how do they know whether or not it's something that they can say yes to or say no to? You know, sometimes it's just building an awareness around is this something that I can really let go of? Is this something that I don't have to take on?

And also, probably most importantly, why we are in this space. You know, the socialized tendencies that we have that come from very early communication that we receive about the role that women play and how we need to show up in the world.

And in that process, we've found that there are women, I mean, that women resonate with this topic, this idea of ditching the Diddy. So Ditch the Diddy came out of, you know, let's ditch those things that are un unnecessary, that are, are, that we are holding, that are that are wearing us down.

Cuz I think that the biggest message that we've received through all of the interviews that we've done, the workshops that now we've done in this process, is that that these things tend to, you know, when they, when they pile up, they tend to wear us down and take away from the things that we really wanna be doing. And so it's been a, a really fun journey to get, to get to know this space a bit more and dig into it and understand what the, what the possibilities are.

Stephen Matini: So I'm not a woman, but what you say resonates a lot. As you were talking, this word appeared in my head, which is self-worth. Mm-Hmm. , and maybe I'm going a completely wrong direction, but all those times in my life that I truly never felt that was good enough. Yeah. There's a thought that I have no idea where it comes from. I mean, I may have some sort of idea, but there's been a, a good partner, you know, my whole life and very often has put me in a position of holding a lot of crap.

Molly McGuigan: Yeah.

Stephen Matini: Is this wonderful metaphor connected to self-worth?

Molly McGuigan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think so. And I think that that's where, you know, you say, I, I, I, you know, I know that men, all the men that I've talked to have also said, well, I think diddies, I do it all the time. I pick up these things that I don't wanna be holding. But there again, there's just a difference in terms of how women approach it from the perspective of, of how they've been told to value themselves. And so in this work through Ditch the Diddy, we talk about, you know, things like the Good Girl, you know, like it, you know, the idea that you have to sort of, that you're gonna get your, your, your, your worth comes from people thinking that you're doing things right, that you're doing things good, that you're stepping up to sort of makes, you know, to sort of save the day in a sense, you know, that you've put on your cape and you're, you're coming in to sort of, you know, make things better in a way, even if it means that it's sort of taking away from, you know, some, your, your own sense of being or your own sense of wellness.

And a lot of that is wrapped up in to the idea of self-worth, worth, because it's this idea that I have to do this in order to feel worthy of somebody's approval or, or maybe even of my own approval.

This is the way that I value myself. And and, you know, there's, there's nothing wrong with sort of this sense of feeling, of feeling value or self-worth out of doing, doing good things for people or, you know, or, or stepping into that space of, of kind of of, you know, doing the right thing or doing, doing something that really helps people. Being a, a people pleaser in a sense.

There's nothing wrong with that e until it impacts your, your own wellbeing, you know, until it sort of really does start to pile up in a way where you're doing these things and not really understanding the impact and sometimes the negative impact that it's having on you. And, and also not realizing that, you know, by doing those things, by being that people pleaser or whatever it is that you are potentially saying, you know, not giving, leaving yourself enough space to say yes to the things that you really want to be doing, and leaving that space for those, those moments of, of, you know, of things that you really want, are invested in and that you value and that you want to be doing.

Stephen Matini: How could people overcome the fear that comes with all this? Which is, if I say no, how am I going to be perceived? I will not be a “good girl” anymore. I understand I need to make intentional choices, and intentionality is such a huge word, you know, in, in your work. How would you approach someone that feels so terrified by the consequences?

Molly McGuigan: Yeah. Because the reality is that the consequences to women of saying no are significantly different you know, than than men saying no. Especially within organizations, within, within organizations, within families, you know, which are the original organization, , you know, I mean, with any of these sort of human systems that we live within, there's a different implication for women to say no than for men. So what I would say is, and what we've really spent a lot of time again on with our work thinking about and, and writing about, first of all to sort of think about it as, you know, are there places that you can say no, where you can try it on , where you can say, you know, I, I have a, a dear friend who says who talks about saying yes in small ways, which I just love, you know, just say yes in small ways.

But, but I also think about this idea of saying no, say no in small ways. You know, try it on, you know, say no to bringing, you know, cookies to your child's classroom party or something, you know, that's a little, maybe a little less significant if it, if you get some pushback versus saying no to the big project that you know, is not something that you necessarily have to do at work, but something that, you know, could elevate you to the next thing, or that there's a lot of different implications for it.

So really think about those things that could, could, you could try it out and be brave, but you, but you can see how it feels. And then the other thing that we talk a lot about in our work with Ditch the Diddy is what we call scaling the No. And so there's lots of different ways to deliver a no.

And so much of it again, goes back to this idea that everything is about relationships. And so first to identify what is the relationship with the person that you are saying no to? Is it someone who, you know, what we call a high volume Diddy distributor , and somebody who gives you lots and lots of ditties, and you're finally sort of like, no, I'm, I'm not gonna do that.

You know, and that, and that there's not as much of a a concern about that person takes that no in, or is it somebody who you really feel a great amount of respect for and, but you're really getting clarity about what you want and where you wanna spend your time and you're carving things out a bit more. And so in that case it might be, you know, no, but how might we find somewhere else for this Ditty to go? Maybe there's someone else who is actually really excited and inspired by this opportunity and doesn't see it as a ditty at all. They see it as a delight, . So are there other places where the city might go? And can you play a role in saying no, but finding another solution for that? So there's sort of a continuum, a scale of where that no fits and how you might sort of play with different ways of delivering that. No, based on the relationship that you have with the person that you're saying no to.

Stephen Matini: Last night when you and I talked, you also mentioned the importance of pausing, slowing down, essentially. How did you get to the point of acknowledging that slowing down is something so important?

Molly McGuigan: This work came, began sort of before the pandemic? I think the pandemic was just this really sort of profound pause for all of us , where we were able to sort of take a step back and think about things. But you know, it brought way to that fact that, that it is, you know, I, I think that came out of a lot of those early conversations that we had with women about how they were able to reflect sort of, you know, a about something that happened in the past. And they were, you know, they were faced with this situation in the moment, and then they were able to sort of reflect back and think of, okay, how might I have done this differently? Or what would I have said, you know, or how, what did I really wanna do in that sit, you know, situation?

It was even asked of, of me sort of, what would you have done if you had had more time to pause in that first, you know, Diddy moment of being handed that bag, you know, what, what might you have done differently? And there was so much sort of, even in my response to that, there was so much sort of wrapped up in, well, I don't know, I guess maybe I would've said, where might, where might we find a place for this bag? Where else? Who else can carry this bag? And, and then I thought about that relationship with that person, and did I care about whether or not they were upset with, by the fact that I didn't wanna hold that bag. And there were so many things that kind of went into it, and I realized, I think we realized in that moment too that if you have an opportunity to sort of pause and think about these things as you're going along and have a better sense of self, a better sense of what you value, what you want, who you wanna do work with, you know who you wanna be with, you know, in terms of just relationships and things like that, and you take, take that time to pause and, and reflect on those things ongoing, then you're not faced with this moment of sort of, oh my gosh, I don't know what I want.

I don't know what to do, . But we have to take that time to do that because there's so much baked into it. There's so many things that are happening that sort of, you know, that layer in when there's decisions to be made when there's an ask in front of us. And so taking that time really, you know, more regularly to pause and really reflect and think about what are the things, you know, am I, am I, where's my energy going and how much, how much energy is going towards things that I really want to be working on, versus things that I wish that I could just pass off and that I wish that I could release so that po Yeah, the pause is so important.

Even if it, if it is, you know, sometimes we talk a little bit too about just even not being afraid to not answer that email right away, or not being afraid to spend 24 hours to really think about an idea or think about an ask of some sort and maybe have a chance to even talk with some friends or talk with some colleagues about what, you know, what they think about it.

Kind of vetted a little bit and, you know, spending a little time to, to take that pause and not feel like you have to give that answer right away. Cuz again, you know, because they might think, oh, well they don't, she doesn't care, or she doesn't know, or she doesn't want to, or, you know, all the, the negative things that sort of run through our head. It's, it's it's not, it's not the end of the world if you take that time, that moment, that pause to really think about it and to give it that space.

Stephen Matini: The way that I learned over time to pace myself has gone through a lot of trials and error. And now the way that I pace myself, I know there are certain things that work for me really well. To give an example, I start working in the morning and then usually I like to take a couple of hours in the middle of the day for myself, which could be going to the gym workout, doing something outside, because oftentimes I work from home just for my mind to relax. How do you pace yourself?

Molly McGuigan: Well, I, I think one of the things that sort of re forces me to have a bit of a rhythm is that I have a 10 year old son . And so I, and I do try to orient my time am around being with him, you know, so he comes off the school bus at three o'clock and, you know, I, I value greatly the chance, and I have a lot of flexibility, which I really value. It's one of the things that I value about being able to work independently and, and carve out the space to be able to do that. I know a lot of people don't have the chance to do that, but I, you know, I use that as, as sort of a opportunity to, to check in with him and to try to get my work done, you know, by a certain time so that I can really kind of focus in on, on that part of my day and, and the time that I get to spend with him.

Molly McGuigan: So that, that helps a lot. , you know, the, the ability and I, you know, I think that probably people can find us even within working with organizations, but for me, I have to stop and like take, take a pause and break from whatever I'm working on, because often my best thinking comes when I'm not sitting in front of it when I'm doing something else. For me, I, you know, it's, it's, it's often doing something physical. I'm doing something, you know, I'm taking a walk or I'm working in my garden or something. Something that kind of taps into a different way of, of, of thinking through a, a, a, a challenge or a new piece of work or something like that. It helps me to really think about it differently

Stephen Matini: When you run into a miserable moment, is anything you do to get out of that fun?

Molly McGuigan: Yeah, I definitely get there. , we all do, right? We all get into that space of, you know, just feeling like there's something that is not ins surpass. Usually for me it comes because I'm tired, and I just can't, you know, get, get my thought process around it. The way that I usually overcome that is, I think, again, it goes back to my number one core value, which is relationships. I will always sort of err on the side of finding a person in my network. You know, one of my, one I've got, I've got people that I'm just so grateful to have in my life who I can talk to about work, I can talk to about, you know, challenges with my personal life, whatever, just, you know, those people that are sort of vona friend kind of people that I can just, you know, talk about something with a challenge and, you know, something that I'm having a hard time thinking about a new client situation, a difficult client situation, or again, even something personally.

And so my first go-to is always to sort of think about and I, I'm an extrovert, so that's how I orient too. I process out loud with people . And so it's really important to know that about yourself because I'm married to an in an introvert and he in no way does what I just described . That's not how he orients to the world. He, you know, holds up in his space and he thinks about it and he reflects and he's quiet. He doesn't even talk to me about it.

So it's, I think it's really important to sort of know who, who you are and how you orient because just that whole idea right there of the difference between an introvert and an expert is so important. So yeah, I, I rely on those relationships. I rely a lot on my gut and my intuition.

I was just talking to a friend the other day about a challenging situation at work that she was having, and, and I said, don't underestimate sort of really your, the, the physical feeling that comes about when you are asked to do certain things or, you know, when you're faced with certain things, you know, is it something that you're really excited about and that you feel that excitement and you sort of can't wait to, you know, respond and type that email or whatever it is.

Or is it something that literally lives, that leaves a pit in your stomach, you know? And it's just so important to identify that and to really take a moment to, to understand like how, how you are orienting to that again. You know? And I think the last thing is just, I, I, you know, to, to be a little brave , you know, to sort of, maybe it's, you know, usually those challenges, those things that we are, are those difficult situations that we're trying to overcome are things that we're a little afraid of.

And it might be because of that, back to that whole sense of self-worth or messages that we're giving ourselves about, I don't know if I can really do this. I don't know if I have this expertise. Most of the time you do, you know, believe in yourself. I mean, believe that there's something that you have to offer if it's e either if you're working within an organization or you're, you know, working outside of an organization like, like you and I do, is there's something, there's some perspective that you have to bring that is probably very much needed in that moment. And so be be brave for putting that out there. And I often have to kind of talk, you know, remind myself of that, of those opportunities to really put, put it out there and allow others to benefit from, you know, just a difference in a, a different lens of which to to view that difficult situation.

Stephen Matini: Do you think that bravery can be learned?

Molly McGuigan: Yeah, I do. Absolutely. I think that it's inside of all of us. There's some element of it, and I think we but there's, I think there's, there's, I, I don't know. I mean, I, I definitely think that it's something that is innate and something that we shy away from be, again, because of just kind of more socialized reasons of of, of whether or not it's accepted or not to fail, right? I mean, we're, the bravery is all about sort of a, a a version to failure and how much we've been accepted in moments where we've tried something and it hasn't gone well, and people have still said, it's okay, you tried, it's fine. So that I think is inside of us and a lot of, but I, I do think that we can develop into a space where we try that again.

You know, we've maybe gone through different, you know, parts of our life through schooling, through family structures that we've oriented around that maybe bring us away further away from that sense of bravery towards something. But I think that we can develop that in, in, in humans and people to be able to get more comfortable with that. And I definitely think organizations and leaders can develop that too.

They can give people the chance to, you know, to be okay with, with that sense of bravery around something. Yeah, I think that a lot of our systems don't allow for it. I, you know, I've been in this more entrepreneurial phase of my life, for, you know, for now almost 15 years. Cause I've been doing this work on my own now for almost that long. There is a lot of, a lot of bravery and and a lot of courage in, in that process.

And I'm, you know, I guess I think about where that came from and it really did mostly come from people who believed in me and said, why don't you try this? You can do this. You know, it was, it was not so, I don't know that it was as much, it was about me taking those messages in, you know, I had, I, I was brave enough, I guess, to listen to that and say, okay, yeah, I'll try that.

But it came from somebody, you know, and it, and I can think of different phases in my life, you know, people stepping up and saying, you could do this. Try, try this and, and see what happens. What do you have to lose? You know, it's, everything's temporary, you know, let's try it out and see, see what happens. And you can always change. You can always shift . And I think those were powerful messages for me throughout my life, even from a, a pretty, pretty early age. You know, just giving, giving things a chance. I

Stephen Matini: Don't have many regrets in my life, but the only regret that I have, and there's one specific thing that I regret, is the fact that in that situation, I did not try and I did not try for a bunch of reasons, and I decided to say no, and my life went in a different direction. But I, and, and I'm, I'm referring to a professional choice, you know, that I, yeah, that I, that years ago. But if I'm been honest, I've been thinking about it very often, if not every single day. What if, yeah, what if? And then what if is horrible, you know? Mm-Hmm. and I, and I think a situation in which I busted my and nothing happened, but honest to God, I, I walked away thinking, listen, I've done everything . I don't know what else I could have done. You know, let's hope that life will provide some answers instead. I think when you don't try, it stays with you, you know, and it's not, it's not good.

Well, I think the, the appreciative inquiry background in me would in, would invite you to reframe that into a what now? what's next? You know, because I think cuz every, because I actually really do believe that everything that we do in life somehow, you know, there, there is some reason and for it, and even those difficult decisions that we make or those things that we do, and, you know, we kind of wish we had done something differently.

We end up in a place where we look back and we think, oh, that's, that makes sense. You know, that makes total sense. These things are coming together now for this purpose. And maybe it was a difficult decision at the moment, and you feel like you could have done something differently. But I, I really, I, I don't know. I guess it's the, the optimist in me, the, the pragmatic optimist in me says these, this is, this is all, this is all how it was supposed to work out. You know, I was supposed to do these things and now it's all coming together and I'm doing this work, or I'm, or I'm playing this role, or I'm, you know, I'm in this relationship with this person because these things, this trajectory that I was on all makes sense.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that there seems to be something important, even though you would like our listeners to know?

Molly McGuigan: I think what comes to mind for me is, you know, life is a journey and be in the moment, being in the moment within each of, each of the components of that, of that journey. Each, each portion of that journey. And, you know, understanding who, who is around me, who who is influential. And really most importantly, what about myself was, you know, most important to that part of the journey. What can I learn about who I am and what I bring and what I value.

Stephen Matini: It is a squiggling line. .

Molly McGuigan: It's a squiggling line, . And that's the exciting part. I would actually be born to death if it was a straight line. I'm not a straight line kind of gal . And one of the things I value most is that it, it, yeah, it, I don't even know where the line is headed today. . Yeah. I think I, we, you know, we spend a lot of time in the work. I know that we do, you and I do a lot of, a lot of times encouraging people to come up with some big vision for their future, you know, some big audacious dream.

And I, I do, I find I find a lot of value in the exercise of doing that. I think that there is tremendous value, but I also think that we need to sort of ditch this idea that there's this there, that there's this big audacious sort of space that we're supposed to be going towards, you know, because really the beauty is in the, in the journey there, and it can, it can shift and it can look completely different.

I mean, I think it's important to think about those things, but at the end of the day, it's about really sort of getting a better sense of what are your values? What are the things that really light you up, you know, day in and day out, and spending the most time doing those things and, and pivoting and adjusting as you go along to make, you know, make the space for those things. I think that's really how my work has, and my, and my life has evolved the most is, is in recognizing that it's okay, I'm letting myself off the hook, that I don't have like this big, you know, in 10 years I'm gonna be here, you know, I'm going to have, have this whole you know, this, this whole world around me because, you know, the reality is right now is, is the most important thing.

Stephen Matini: Your kid is really fortunate.

Molly McGuigan: .

Stephen Matini: He has a, he has such a wonderful mama. Wow. ,

Molly McGuigan: Thank you. Well, I'm gonna make sure he listens to that. And, and here's that one. I'm telling him to clean his room and do all the things that mom still do.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for spending time with me. Thank you. This is was wonderful. I loved it.

Molly McGuigan: Oh, thank You. Thanks for the invitation. I really appreciate it, and I love talking to you. It was, it was, it was a wonderful chance just to to take the, take a moment, take a pause for myself, and really think about some of these important questions that you've asked.

View Details

Today's guest is Puneet Sachdev, a global people and culture leader passionate about leveraging data, technology, and humanity to create inclusive and innovative workplaces.

In a world of incremental technological changes, Puneet believes staying close to people is the key to success.

In this episode, Puneet will share his views on the existing shortfalls in how organizations are developing senior female leaders. Puneet talks about Shakti, which is the principle of divine feminine, and how it can help bring balance to leadership in a world that is still predominantly masculine.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to close the gender leadership gap in organizations.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

leadership #change #femaleleadership #shakti #divine feminine #puneetshadchev #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You lived in so many different places, so many different countries. What have you learned from all these traveling and all these experiences?

Puneet Sachdev: When I look back on this and who I am as a result of it, of course one of the things which comes from doing that and having, like you said, lived in four or five different continents, worked in all over US, UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, a bit in Africa as well, actually Botswana off for very short period of time.

I think you have to have a lot of tenacity or you will develop that. Because remember each time you go in a new context, some situations I've had to go and create my life there. And then you have to start networking and you're dealing with a lot of stereotypes, a lot of mental unseen barriers. That's one thing which I have learned that just constantly have to be upping your game, build your networks, try to find people who understand who you are, what's your value proposition. That's one.

It makes you very adaptable. It just makes you extremely adaptable. You can be, you can hit the ground running in utterly, I can talk myself that hitting the ground, running in no time is absolutely becomes a part of, you know, who you are in.

In a way it's adaptation for survival as well to an extent. The challenging side of that is that networks, friends, because when you go to these places, they are people who you would like to hang out with, but they have their local schoolmates college friends. You gotta be there for a long period of time. And then also it depends on the culture. So I think it's you know, it's been a number of these different things. So it's, it's got it ups and it's got it's it's downs as well.

Stephen Matini: Have you always known that you wanna be in change management, leadership development, or is it something that unfolded over the years?

Puneet Sachdev: Not really. Stephen, no. My dad's from the Indian Navy, the area in which I grew up, whatever, where, you know, when finishing off college school in, in the nineties, the middle of the nineties and all of that, there were very few options available.

There was in India, the engineering, doctor, lawyer, armed forces, rights? So mainly these were where you would get the jobs. I have a very, I had a very impressive uncle, my mother's brother, Tenesh Tata. I mean, until today, I don't think I met anybody else who was as impressive.

Very charismatic, very handsome guy, dresses up extremely well. Very intelligent international chap, one of the pioneers in the hospitality business in India. One of the first few people to go overseas to Salzburg and study and come back and he joined the Roy Hotels as a management trainee in their first batch in the 1970s.

I think subconsciously that was planted that I want to be like the mau. That's what we call Uncle Mau in India. I finished my college and then I applied just for that program. Nothing else. I just applied for The School of Management. Now it's called The Center for Learning and Development. I actually don't know what I would've done had I not got selected for that way stringent the talent acquisition process. But two thousands of people apply and they hire only 10, 15, whoever they think would be general managers down the line, right?

I think I was one of those eight or 10 who managed to make it that year. That's the way life started for me. Transition into OD work, which I do right now, people, culture, organization development, change management. It wasn't a part of my plan. I was doing very well where I was. What happened was General Electric was ramping up, scaling up at India considerably. Okay. This is I think like two thousands now.

One of my fathers grand, Dr. Cherian, he was a management consultant in organization development working globally. He had suggested, why don't you think about stepping out of the hotels into corporate?

So yeah, the transition was completely happenstance, but I love the work I do totally, you know, number of things, right? Which for me, create flow at work is connection with people is very important for me to know that, to have a sense of contribution into the world, into people is important, it creates that to me.

As far as I have the ability to do that, to be creating the solutions I design to be, to bring in research, to bring in technology, work with smart people, solve problems. I'm happy , honestly. And I think the choices that I've made, it has given me all these options. So I really think it's been really lucky to have been doing all this work for so many years.

Stephen Matini: You have traveled hard, you have worked hard. Because you have seen so many different cultures, you have experienced at so many different organizations. From the perspective of someone whose specialty is change, you know, is organizational development, have you noticed any elements that seem to be consistent across all these experiences?

Puneet Sachdev: It's very easy to now get squared data driven and tech and all that. Fantastic. I think it has its place, but we don't want the tale to act the dog in many ways, and the dog in many cells, many sense it still remains the people, it still remains the humanity of the world, right?

And we have a very privileged show to play, in my opinion, to raise the consciousness of organizations. That's the lens through which I do my work is to go there to elevate the consciousness of this organization, whatever that looks like. Consistent elements for me will always remain staying close to people, no matter what you do.

Let's look at it in two different ways. Explain close to people. If you look at it in the sense, if I'm leading a team and I'm dealing with stuff, then having a regular one-to-ones with the people having two-way communication channels, having the opportunities to, to best practice sharing, to understand, to help grow and all of that.

So I think, I mean always staying close to the people has been important to me to understand the people as much as I can. I'll give you an example.

Hotels, at least the Old Roy is very, very strict on the customer satisfaction scores. The the board or the leadership team of the organization, every day they would get these CSAT scores from all hotels, 30 hotels in the world. They would go through it. They would actually give a call to the general manager of a property if they saw anything that was, so it was a measure higher than I think for them money was the employee experience, right?

In that context, the teams that I ran over there, we always ended out with the highest CSAT scores consistently throughout f and b operations. And the other part was the highest density of employees of the month. And I can attribute it to one or two things.

We are still remain universal no matter where you go. I really, honestly, genuinely care for the people that I've worked with. I not only knew them, I knew about their families, I knew about their dreams and desires. I used to go to the houses, give them flowers and cakes. If there was any occasion, I've done that all personally.

Even today when I'm working organization consultancy, I feel that what has made me successful and because it's me, right? I'm walking through all these cultures and everything else, I think is that first of all, that ability to just care about the people, build the rapport and be honestly on their side. Everything else will fall into place.

I believe when you do that, when that's the soil in which you are cultivating what you are doing. Yes, there's people analytics there, employee experience there, employee external strategies, all that will come. But the essences, you're serving these people today.

The other very important aspect, which has to be recognized by any leader is wellbeing. It's very overwhelming all around. Whether you look at the social environment, political environment, now you add the old complication of generative AI and all the anxieties, which that is bringing up with people. D&I is a big deal. There's so much going on. You need a robust heart in a human being to be a leader today. And that comes with a lot of self-awareness. I think that's the genesis of everything for me.

Stephen Matini: When you work as a consultant and you step into an organization, there's somehow that component, the human component that the consciousness is just not part of the organizational fiber. How do you move around as a first step to introduce a such important concept?

Puneet Sachdev: The way I would look to influence to shift the zeitgeist of leadership, to elevating the consciousness and the inclusivity of the human being is of course, number one, you walk the talk, right? So you role model it yourself. And fortunately for me, I have done incredible amount of my own interpersonal growth work, spiritual work.

So I think it has automatically given me a level of depth naturally to create a level of comfort and safety for people around me.

So role modeling it and the other way, the best way to do that is because we have, we have the influence, you design your leadership solutions with that built in. So I think it's just weaving it into the employee experience and into the design of solutions in leadership development.

The easiest, and I suppose the most lowest barrier way to do that if you, if that language was very confrontational, is through coaching. It's through incredible coaches, people like that can shift the consciousness of leaders and organizations hiding the right kind of external people. Coaches then trigger more of those conversations in many ways.

Stephen Matini: Are you ever afraid of the impact that digital and artificial intelligence could have? And you have a lot of experience in digital transformation. Do you have any concern moving forward?

Puneet Sachdev: I think if I also think about concerns, I would break them up into two different buckets. One is systemic and let's say organizational. The other is the whole human aspect of it, right?

I think as far as the systemic side of it is concerned, I would say there would be the, the whole data privacy, the, the cybersecurity, all of that is a very big concern.

I think on the human side of it, which is more importantly as well today, is this constant and sense of surveillance, protection, insecurity. It has a lot of implications on mental health because the more and more we dependent on looking on the phones and the technology that is becoming a much more mental health epidemic than it has been, especially for the younger generations. I think those are the most common, I mean I, I think that's very commonly understood that these are the key concerns today as far as tech is concerned.

Stephen Matini: You mentioned last time when you and I talked the notion of the divine feminine. You talked about Shakti. Would you mind sharing, how did you gravitate towards that?

Puneet Sachdev: It's, it's an evolution. Yeah, it is, it is a percentage of the work I've been doing recently. Still not the bulk of it. Maybe it will in the future, who knows. But it is a, it is it's a percentage of what I do today. It's an evolution of the work I've been doing with women leaders, right? So I've been doing the coaching work, actually, it, it's even before that coaching over time I've seen that most of my clients tend to be female leaders. Bulk of them, like 60, 70%. They have been female leaders, you know, for one reason or the other. And they've come from all over the place. They've worked incredible places like Hollywood and from Rolls Royce to Goldman Sachs, like I said, et cetera. So a lot of them from tech as well. Cause I do coaching on the NASDAQ Center in San Francisco.

So I'm on the coach on the coaching panel for the number of years. I do that as well, Jen, from there it was to start looking at what would a solution look like for in-house women leaders, right? So most of this was one-to-one work with women who would come to me outside of my regular work consulting work that I was doing. So I started looking at the, the data around it, you know, now the concept of divine feminine in a very simple, very simple language is that it is both it is basically about the qualities of creation, nurturing the life, giving energy, the empathy. We are talking about those qualities. That's what we mean of the divine feminine and that that is there in both men and with women, it's just that it's easier, it's more prevalent and it's more of the d n a of a woman than it is of a guy.

When I started looking at the data, right, in terms of what are we doing for when there's a lot of talk about programs and solutions to address the leadership gender gap, to look at elevating women's leadership. All of that is going on right now in, in the world, as you know. So I started looking at some of the information. To me it still looks very, very traditional. It may be given a very fancy name of like wild, which is women in leadership development is one of them. But even if I look at some of the top business schools, I still think it's so masculine. It is so outside in the, the crocs and the essence and the drift of what is happening is around imposter syndrome, confidence, networking and understanding your leadership. So it's generally in that genre still. This is based on my research, right?

So, but that's what I notice and the soil in which it is created is still outside in. You are the problem. You go get fixed, go to this program, to this leadership, women's leadership program, learn these different things, and you come back into a patriarchal container in most of the situations. And then you fit in and you behave with those, those masculine capabilities or those somewhere masquerading there to be able to move up and succeed, right? So you are subjugating who you really are at the core and that's what it looked like. Like you know, you So it one is that the other part of it, what I don't think they do very well, they do not address the water in which this is going on. There's a huge big cultural piece to it. The performance environment piece to it. The legacy thinking, the legacy practices.

I mean, if you're not gonna address that, even if you do a great job with women leaders, they're gonna leave. That's what you'll do. You'll only make them more attractive, more self-aware to know that this is what I don't want , I don't want to do this anymore. You'll make them more aware of it. That is once they get tuned into truly who they are. So it began from their step to look at it. And then from there I started then I designed the solution. It's got shock theorizing. Shocki means the divine feminine as you already mentioned. And it's got two pillars to it. One is the individual tra the other thing as well, which I would like to add as well, most organizations, the work is still very cerebral. It's still very left brain oriented, right? I don't think it is transformational.

Now you look at the life of a woman leader, right? Let's just say directors, VPs, all that, they're probably late thirties. They're into their forties and fifties and that's their station in life today. So you, let's put two and two together. You look at their life outside of work, personally, there's data around it. In the UK there's a recent research of 2000 women leaders in organizations researched. They talk about traumatic experiences and between the, I mean many of them between, let's say between 40, 45 and 60 65 have been through at least five traumatic events in their life. Sexual abuse, domestic violence, there could be the menopause. And you have to remember this all leaves an energetic signature in the nervous system of that human being who is dealing with it, whether they acknowledge it or they agree to it because it's become so normalized that, right?

You just get on with it. But it does imprint. Where does that show up? It shows up in your wellbeing and your health. Most of the autoimmune diseases, 70% that happened to women. I'm not saying there's necessarily a core correlation, but there is something around there. Mm-Hmm. . The other part of it is decision making. You know, it will a hundred percent impact the quality of decision making. I think when you're designing a solution for the women leaders, and I've written extensive, I, I recently posted around International Women's Day, I wrote an article, which is when women lead firms win the metaphysics, the business case, and the approach for closing the leadership gender gap, it starts with this whole conversation about the divine feminine. Why is that important to the humanity? And then I have put a lot of data around it, McKenzie, Lena Gallop Gardner, which clearly states that when women lead firms win, you know, very much whether you look at the ebot performance of an organization, which is top quarter in their, in women in leadership, they will outperform their peers up to 25% in earnings before income and tax.

And then there are statistics about women, what 30%, at least 30% in leadership positions is a tipping point for profitability, et cetera, et cetera. So the number of stats are quartered over there. So it's very clear the solid business case to be able to doing, to do this work comprehensively and well enough. So the solution which has been designed, which I've designed, has got two core elements to it. One is the transformative experience for the women leaders. It's done in a group coaching and an action learning container. Okay? So business goals, what are you gonna be accomplishing or what we do? But diagnostics beneath Engram 360 on leadership do all that stuff. The ultimately the goal is to be able to take them deep with the themselves. The deeper they go within themselves, the more they get in touch with their own core needs, what they have not addressed, what they are, the better, more integrated people they will be.

They'll have clearer boundaries. They'll have a clear yes, a clear no that will have its own ripple effect in the organization and at homes in a positive way. It'll be uncomfortable to begin with. But if the sponsors and the people around these women are aware, then I think, you know, you know what you're creating. It's a very interesting quote by an Indian Bollywood actress, let me see if I can remember it. Her name is Pre Zinta. She says that behind every successful man, there's a successful woman behind every unsuccessful man, there are two women and they are behind. I thought that was hilarious. And behind every progressive woman is a progressive man. And that is the essence behind every progressive woman leader is a progressive organization. And that is what shock the is designed to do. So it's there, it's got wellbeing, self-compassion, understanding of leadership masculine and feminine leadership dynamics.

So it's got all that covered. It's a mind, body, spirit approach. The other element of it is looking at the performance environment. So that's, so this is a seven month journey, the individual journey, which can be bespoke and tailored. The other one is looking at the performance environment in the organization. So core element of the women's journey is the group coaching, the leadership, the business, your own business goals, personal development goals, introspection, self-compassion, and also allyship. If an organization was to say, just run the group coaching and the action learning piece, that's not shocking. That's, that's just group coaching it for it to be shock. The, the group coaching part of it, your business goals, the introspective piece, the self-compassion, the wellbeing piece, and the commitment by the organization to allyship is critically important. That makes it what it is, right? And as a part of the onboarding journey, all stakeholders are a, are there present in the room to hear the same language around let's say the divine feminine, the importance, all this data around what's happening, I shared with you about the traumatic experiences and business impact data.

So everybody is present to the same container that we are creating and that can be then taken and that these women leaders can be supported individually as well as organizationally. And then there is a five to seven week kind of a diagnostic piece that dives into looking at the performance environment in terms of policies, practices. Is there a clear charter on our approach towards general equality? If so, what is it? What are the KPIs around it? If an organization is well down that path, then it's fine. Carry on doing that, great. If not, then this is a comprehensive solution to actually genuinely address the challenge of the leadership journal gap and creating very targeted, very bespoke way persona oriented solutions for women leaders who require a lot of nuance. And you can't just do blanket the stuff that we've been doing in the past.

Stephen Matini: You have so much experience when you hit a rough spot, when you have somehow a bad moment. How do you get out?

Puneet Sachdev: I regularly have to be dealing with situations I haven't dealt with on a fairly regular basis. That comes as a part of doing, having worked and traveled so much and being in so many different situations, my own just dreams and desires. They just keep expanding and I'm always in a situation, I don't know what the bloody hell to do now.

One is that I have got my practices and routines where I think are just the most important things to do. Getting up early in the morning, I do my prayers and my meditation for about a half and half, 45 minutes, sometime longer, sometimes lesser. I run regularly. And that also the running came into my life also because I was dealing with a lot of mental health challenges during separation and divorce. I mean it was about 10 years ago now, but I did not want to go down the root of antidepressants, which every people around me was suggesting.

I spoke to a few people and I said, no, I don't want to do that. So the way I dealt with it was more through prayer and running, quite honestly has been incredible. So I think that really has to be dialed in into your life. Even if you're not dealing with constant change, just looking around you, it's very overwhelming today. Ultimately, why you doing all this? To just keep your nervous system in the, what you call the parasympathetic nervous system as activated, which is your rest and relax. It's a nervous system game, Stephen.

Nothing else. If you bring it down, it is all how you are regulating and co-regulating your nervous system. Co-Regulating would be with the people around you, the people supportive with you that COEs gives you energy and stuff like that. But otherwise, my own regulation mechanisms are my prayers are my running and exercising, having my green smoothie and eating clean food.

But when I'm going through some really challenging questions, decisions to make, then my prayers and my fasting, I do fast. Then for decisions, I would fast. When I say fast, I'll probably have one meal in a day for let's say three days or whatever I wanna be doing, depending on what I'm dealing with. So I can quiet and be noise within me and really get access to the truth. But the fact also is, you know, you can do all of that ultimately when you have to make a decision. It still is tough. It still is so bloody tough to make certain decisions. Whether it was a decision to move from the UK to Australia, right? The decision from them, it was a personal decision to have been made, et cetera. I regularly work with coaches and people who I trust as especially one lady Daphne.

She has been the most incredible support for me for the last 10 years. She knows me extremely well. I definitely will have a touchpoint call with her or maybe a few of them, but whoever I think I need to bring into the conversation. So that is my way of making decisions through challenging situations. And if you talk about organizationally when I'm working with teams and let's say you're going through challenging times.

You know what I have done for my, what I've done is, number one is with the team being very open and upfront about what is what we are dealing with. Clear open communication, involve the team, break that down into constituent parts, bring the team into cre. Looking at that, okay, you look at the problem of the, let's say the revenue. You look at the problem of the people side of it, you look at this, you look at that, and then let's work on that together.

So that makes us all very cohesive way together on this. What I would also do is to have some kind of play or creative activity. Alright, we are gonna go do some basketball, but we'll do something like that. We get out. So we are tapped into our creative energy as well to create different solutions from the problem. What I've also used in the past very well is best practice visits or conversations quite okay, who do we know who is done this? Let's just line them up or let's go to their office. Let's have a conversation. So do that and do research.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for your generosity and for all these amazing thoughts. This is really, really wonderful. I

Puneet Sachdev: Hope for this episode to be

Stephen Matini: Listened to by as many people as possible. Thank you so much.

Puneet Sachdev: Thanks Stephen. Thanks for the opportunity.

View Details

It's fair to say that most people do not enjoy experiencing conflict. Conflict is uncomfortable, and it's challenging to handle it properly when we are a piece of the equation.

Today's guest is Dr. Liane Davey, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and facilitator on conflict. Liane is a spoonful of sugar in the world of conflict, combining a solid academic background with a wonderful sense of humor.

In this episode of Pity Party Over, we will discuss many practical tools to handle conflict, like the importance of understanding the truth of others before sharing our own and how to balance vulnerability and accountability to strengthen our connection with people.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

conflict #lianedavey #thegoodfight #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

Stephen Matini: I'm here with “Lady No,, I'm here with “Lady No.” My first question for you is, when did you become aware that “no” was gonna be center stage in your life, in your professional career?

Liane Davey: , when I started doing a lot of work on conflict and the importance of healthy conflict it, it started to dawn on me that no is a really central and important word in being able to have boundaries, have healthy conflict.

I think it, it was, I don't even remember how long ago it was, maybe 2013, I'm not even sure, and I was writing for Psychology Today, and I wrote a post playing off of the name of the month, November to call it “No-vember.” That's when I started this, you know, identifying my brand with saying no.

And so in this subsequent Novembers, I've been doing this sort of 30 days of things to say no to, to be happier, healthy, and more productive. So it was that first realization, and the first year it was just one article, about 10 things to say no to. But over time, it's become something very important to me. And not only, I think it, it started as a conflict thing, now it's about focus, and it's about boundaries. And so now it's using no for all sorts of good.

Stephen Matini: One of the comments that I receive from people most of the time is, it's easy for you to talk because you are an independent professional. So you are in a position you can say no, but me in this place, in this organization is much harder. People are often caught in this dichotomy: if I say no, how I'm going to be perceived? And if I don't say no, I'm gonna end up being a pressure cooker. When that happens to you, what is the first step that you take with the client?

Liane Davey: So what I'm trying to do anytime that I'm gonna have conflict in a healthy way with somebody, is the first thing I'm trying to do is understand what is their truth.

So what we want to do when someone says something we disagree with or we want to say no to, we tend to assert our truth. Let me tell you, , why that's so wrong and what I really need, instead of just spending a moment pausing to try and understand where that suggestion came from. So first of all, I would just reiterate what they said.

Okay, so I understand you want to host a big in-person client event, just reiterating and even that quick pause that says to the person I'm listening to you, even that is gonna help you be on a better path.

Then I'm gonna ask a question to understand where are they coming from? So I might say, tell me about your thought process. What got you to recommending a client event? Those sorts of questions. Big open questions that allow them to paint the canvas with their truth. You know, probably you need a couple additional questions to really understand what it's about for them.

And then you wanna get to the point where you can say, all right, so my sense is that for you, this is about maybe our marketing campaign didn't land. Our customers don't understand the value, and you really wanna bring them together and have a have a second shot at telling them about our new product.

If you can get to the point of having their truth come out of your mouth, they won't even know you're having conflict. And from there you can share your own truth. But the, the first step is very counterintuitive. It's not at all what people think the first step of conflict would be. The first step of conflict is to get to speaking their truth.

Stephen Matini: Easy, easy or hard to implement in your own life what you preach?

Liane Davey: Hard. It, it was really funny. I posted something on LinkedIn and, and my 21 year old daughter who's now away at university, you know, she was seeing me writing all of this stuff about productive conflict and, and she just texted me like, mm-hmm. , like .

So it's hard and it's hard because the stakes are very high. It's hard because you have decades of baggage with, with your family members with doing it at home, but I'm getting better at it and I'm, you know, really focusing on raising things sooner, working through the discomfort all those sorts of things at home.

Professionally, you know, it's a little easier, but if I can figure out how to do it at home, then I'll be in a much better spot at practicing what I preach.

Stephen Matini: People say that to me all the time. They say, well, you must have been able to handle this well, so that mm-hmm no girl the same thing. Maybe I know how to handle a little bit better. Yeah. But you have to be vigilant all the time, really.

Liane Davey: Absolutely. Yeah. I, the only difference for me is I say there's just a lot of accountability. Once you write a book about productive conflict, it's, it's really good accountability. So I just have I have more of a, an obligation than other people might feel because I do take it very seriously that I can't tell other people to do this if I don't do it. So I put a lot of energy into doing the things I recommend, but , that's the main difference.

Stephen Matini: You have become such an important voice for conflict. So now that you have become an important voice for conflict, how do you see it compared to, let's say, when you started out this whole thing? What has changed?

Liane Davey: Yeah. So I, I think when I started working as a team effectiveness advisor and consultant, I, I think my original point of view was that there was too much conflict in teams and all this unhealthy, dysfunctional conflict. Now, all these years later I believe there's not nearly enough conflict and, and there's much, much, much less than you might think.

So one of the things that's changed my perspective is differentiating between, I like to think of conflict as a verb, like as a, a process, as something you, you do. And so I, I pull out all the things that are, oh, no, we have issues that we aren't addressing, and I try not to talk about those as conflict.

So we have grievances and resentment and bitterness. There's lots of that. So don't get me wrong, when I say there's not a lot of conflict in teams there is lots of resentment and bitterness and grievance, but what there isn't a lot of is the active path toward resolving those sorts of things. And so I reserve the word conflict to be no, no, you have to actively be doing something. For me to, to call it conflict,

Stephen Matini: I was working with the leadership team, and these are people that have been working together for a long time mm-hmm. . So they had really very specific ideas of one another. There was a lot of cliquey weird stuff happening among themselves. So a lot of mistrust. Yeah. So we did the whole program and I'm, I don't think it was successful. And in the end, I still sensed their hurt, that inability to be transparent, to be communicative. So yeah. When you work with people that have been known each other forever and they don't trust each other, , what is the first step that you would take with them?

Liane Davey: So, interestingly, I don't start with the relationships because as soon as you start with the relationships and the team dynamic, I find people become defensive. They immediately are like waiting for the accusation to be pointed at them, and or worse, they're ready to launch the assault at, on, on somebody else.

So instead of going into a team that has trust issues and a dysfunctional dynamic, and talking about the dysfunctional dynamic, I go in talking about what is the organization counting on this team to do? And there are a couple of things that help with that. First of all, I start talking about how is the world changing? So I'm talking about trends, opportunities, threats to their organization that come from the external environment.

So the purpose of doing that is that if we're going to make changes in how we're behaving, we can say, it's not that we were failing. It's not that we were doing it wrong, it's just just that the world has changed and we need to evolve to keep up. And so there's a little bit of psychological safety in not admitting that this change is because of, of of, of me or being wrong, but instead a, about the future.

And so, external orientation, longer time horizon, those kinds of conversations about what the business needs from you are safer. And people tend to align around those things. Their shoulders go down a little bit as they relax, but then the question becomes, okay, so if that's the way the world is changing and therefore our team needs to be more of this and less of this, then you can get to the, okay, so how do we need to show up differently to be that? And it's just a safer path toward the same conversation.

So that's how I come at it. And again, unconventional, counterintuitive. I think a lot of people who believe they have trust issues and, and go to a team offsite expect to be bearing their souls. And, and, and usually at the end of the day, people will say, well, it's not what I expected, because it's been a more constructive conversation.

It's been back to, this is the other thing that's important, but getting them out of their own grievances and into, there are a lot of people counting on you to be an adult here, the shareholders, the customers, your suppliers, other employees. And so sometimes that's also helpful to give them some perspective that if this team can't pull it together, there are, there are people who are gonna feel that and who are gonna lose as a result. So that's where I start in a situation like that.

The other thing that's worth saying is that in the vast majority of circumstances, there's at least one person on a team in that situation who just can't believe again. And I make that clear before we start, and the goal would be for the people to raise their own hands and say, I can't be a part of this. I can't believe in this. I can't let the wound heal. And those people just decide to, to leave. But almost always, at least one person leaves before you can reset the team.

Stephen Matini: If the team leader, if that person is not fully involved, is that person doesn't fully sponsor the event, can the team still become more functional and trustworthy?

Liane Davey: Yeah. I believe that they can. I think about it a little bit like children who are raised by very dysfunctional parents, and at some point the kids learn to band together and, and protect themselves. You know, help meet one another's needs, be a safe haven for one another. So it's, it's a positive step. It is going to feel better for team members.

So one of the things you can do is if one of the ways the general manager is failing is that they don't get people aligned, they don't prioritize effectively. If that's the case, getting together with your teammates and saying, okay, at least we should be aligned, and let's all agree among ourselves what we're gonna prioritize, you can do that.

If the team leader is pitting you against one another, creating competition, you can again come together and decide, we're not falling for that. Let's support each other. You can manage up together, . So there are lots of different things you can do.

They aren't a full solution. I include it in a category that I call, if you can't make a dent in the problem, like you can't fix the boss, reduce the dent it makes in you. And so that's gonna make it a little bit better. Your experience will be better if you've got your colleagues and your teammates on side. It's not fixing the underlying issue of a poor leader, but at least you can buy yourself some time. See if that, you know, leader disappears if they, you know, have an epiphany. If you manage them up in a way that allows them to be successful in new and more healthy ways, at least for the time being, I do think you can make it a bit better.

Stephen Matini: You have this way of approaching this topic, which is so different compared to anyone else in my opinion, because you have a strong academic background, and you can feel it when you talk, but the way you speak it, it's always unconventional. You say things in a way that make a lot of sense. Where do you get your inspiration for talking about these things in a way that is so interesting and fresh?

Liane Davey: Yeah, you're gonna laugh at this story. This is a silly story, but this is the truth. Many, many, many years ago, I was watching the TV program, 60 minutes and 60 minutes. It was coming up to the American Thanksgiving Day holiday when everybody cooks turkeys for, for the holiday.

They did a little segment on, there's a, a brand of Turkey called Butterball Turkey. When you buy a Butterball Turkey, it's coded in plastic and it has a telephone number on it, a toll-free number to call for Turkey emergencies, . And they did this segment on TV of the approximately 30 people at the time, all women, home economics graduates, this is probably in the eighties, I saw this segment.

Those people are there just to answer your calls and deal with your turkey emergency. So it's things like, it's my very first Thanksgiving as a married woman and my mother-in-law is coming for dinner and I forgot to thaw the turkey. It's still frozen. What do I do?

Or I forgot to buy the ingredients for stuffing. And these ladies would do things like tell you to open your fridge and open your cupboards. They would write down everything you had and they would create new recipes for you on the spot for how to make things.

It was of a fun segment, but the most important part of the segment and the inspiration for me was the leader of the whole group. She said, look, there's only one magical thing about what we do, and that is we begin, we respond after they've told us about their turkey emergency, we respond to every single call with, it'll be fine. And what we're doing is we're projecting to the people that no matter what this is, we're the experts. We got you, and we're gonna get you to the other side.

And that truly was my inspiration, realizing that, you know what? I have so many recipes for better listening, better conflict. You know, I, I have all the recipes. I do have a PhD in Organizational Psychology. I'm not worried that I can open the cupboards in the fridge and find a way to get you through this.

The most important thing is that you believe that I can get you through this and you can get yourself through this. And so as I've come to understand neuroscience better over the years, understanding the role of mirror neurons, the role of emotional contagion, I know that what I'm doing is giving the room a chance to believe, to stay in the moment, to stay with it. But all of that inspiration came from a very simple Butterball, Turkey lady , just saying, the most important thing is it'll be fine.

So that's the truth of where my silly inspiration for the, the way I carry myself, the tone I use, the words I choose, I want them all to be, you can do this, I'm right here with you. Okay, let's open the cupboard and see what we got to work with.

Stephen Matini: So you're like the Julia Child of conflict

Liane Davey: . Yes. Exactly. I love that. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: You know, now that you said it, I understand

Liane Davey: I, that's the holy story. But that's, that's where it comes from.

Stephen Matini: Before when you were talking ... have you noticed any gender dynamics in the Henley of conflict within organizations?

Liane Davey: I think if I am, if I reflect on it, I would say no , that individual differences are massive and much bigger than gender differences. So there are certainly ways that men and women are socialized differently, the women to be more, to be more submissive, to, to give in, to bend to power.

But I, I can tell you many examples of women who are vicious in conflict and, and really nasty. And, and so I might say women are more passive aggressive than men, but women's passive aggressiveness is, is gossip and that sort of thing. But men are very passive aggressive, but it's often in the form of sarcasm or one liners or those sorts of things. So it's not that men or women are more passive aggressive than the other, but that we've been socialized to channel that.

I see many women who are conflict avoidant. They often talk about it from the, either, I don't want to hurt somebody else. I don't wanna say that cuz it would be hurtful or it comes from imposter syndrome, who have I to disagree with that person? But I see many, many, many men who are highly conflict avoidant.

Over the years I've had moments of thinking that men are more conflict avoided or I see more of those than women who are. So I think it's really about massive individual differences. Each person I work with, I try and treat them as somebody who has a very different story, different baggage about why they, you know, approach conflict the way they do or run for conflict the way they do. I do think there are very interesting things about men and women in the workplace. But I wouldn't say that it's that we can say, you know, women do this and men do this.

Stephen Matini: One thing that I may have witnessed are cultural differences.

Liane Davey: Very, very true, right? So I was facilitating a session in Bangkok in the room, there were a couple of very senior women from Asian countries, one from Korea, one from Japan. There was a man who was Dutch and another man who was Colombian. And I would say the big differences in the room were both cultural differences, so just the, the Colombian participant, the way he expressed everything was so passionate that it was very easy to over-index his contribution just because it was so passionate.

And the, the Dutch person beside him, people were not getting as upset about the issue as I think he wanted them to be. But it was because he was so level as he described it. But then I think we had the, when we had the Asian folks in the room, I think we had this interaction of both Asian cultures, but also women in Asian cultures.

So all of it is in the mix, you know, certainly understanding the difference between how an Israeli is going to, you know, show up in a conflict. It's not personal, it's just the issue, and it's going to be very direct versus various South Asian cultures where it's gonna come at you very indirectly, maybe only on the break. So there's, there's all of that. You really have to be attuned to all of it. When you do this work, don't you, ,

Stephen Matini: What is the Canadian way to approach conflict?

Liane Davey: A hundred percent passive aggressive.

Stephen Matini: Oh, really?

Liane Davey: Yeah. So it's very funny because Canadians have a reputations as being very nice. We're always talked about it as a very nice culture. And I just laugh. I'm like, no, we just stab you in the back.

So we, we do have a very strong culture of being polite and civil and friendly to your face. And I would say English Canada versus French Canada is a little bit different on this. I think, you know, culturally québécois folks in Canada tend to be better at at getting the issues out on the table. But for lots of Canada, lots of passive passive aggressiveness in the culture and it makes things hard. It means conflict avoidance is, is a big deal for us.

It's like anything else. You can't, you know, describing an entire nation, of course 38 million people with one description is, is unfair. But just relatively speaking, I think that's what, and it's interesting cuz I work with a lot of expatriates who've come to work in Canada or Canadians working in US teams, and people are always surprised at, at how much effort it is to try and get them to get the issues on the table. It's challenging.

Stephen Matini: One of your interests right now is the concept of messing up. It is about becoming, expressing all the who you are. This idea, is it connected to conflict? I think it is. Would you mind telling me more about?

Liane Davey: Yeah. So for me, the ideal combination in relationships is this interesting combination of vulnerability and accountability. That's why I love messing up, because there's no better chance to get this perfect combination of vulnerability and accountability then when you mess up .

And so by that I mean vulnerability is being willing to sit in the awkward, to sit in the discomfort of, I messed that up. I know that me messing that up had an impact on you. All of that. That's not a great feeling. Or I haven't messed up yet, but I feel it, I feel it coming. , I don't know how to cope with this. I I I'm not on track. All that vulnerability. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. So when we show someone else that we are fallible, but we are willing to be seen as kind of whole creatures who are imperfect, it encourages others to do the same. So when we're vulnerable with our teammates, it strengthens the connection.

But if we're only vulnerable, our teammates might feel like, okay, I'm a little nervous about counting on Leanne because I'm not sure she like she's making me, she's making me worry. . So vulnerability on its own, while it's great for connection, it's not good for confidence.

So we have to add the other half of the equation, which is accountability. And accountability says, yep, I, this just made me break into tears and I own that. I'm gonna take ownership of continuing the conversation, getting to an answer, still realizing that I own this and I need to figure it out.

And so when you have accountability, then you get that sort of confidence. But if you have only accountability and no vulnerability, it's like you're driving, but you're driving through people, not with them messing up is this amazing chance we get to show, oh, okay, I'm not perfect.

You know, you can see me sitting in this true discomfort of learning that I've let other people down or let myself down. But also to show you that I own this. I'm learning, I'm making changes, I'm gonna do something differently.

If you have a team full of people where you know, they're not hiding things from you, they're not pretending they're perfect, but they're also earning, your trust doesn't get better than that. And until you go through the fire together, until you mess up together, you don't really know if, if that's where they're at. And once you do, you go, okay, now I can relax and we can just know that we'll get through whatever we need to get through.

Stephen Matini: I had to learn how to handle conflict. And it was someone was actually a professor who taught me how to do it. For a couple of years was this constant no, no, no, no, no, no. And then for a while I thought, well, now I figured it out. But based on what you said, I think that for me now, the biggest challenge is probably balancing my accountability and me wanting people to be accountable with vulnerability, which is showing up as myself, my emotions, how this one affects me and all that. Which is hard. It's not easy.

Liane Davey: It's like yoga, it's a lifetime practice trying to get that balance right. And it tips right? , you have, you have periods where you tip into more vulnerability and what you're expressing in the, there's John Iso. Dr. John Iso talks about everywhere you go, you spread a virus. You decide if it's positive or negative. And when you tip into the vulnerability for a little while, you maybe spread a virus that's kind of negative and you have to like, woo, gotta tip back the other way. But if, if you tip back too far, the virus you spread is this sort of false sense of strength. And that's not a good thing to spread either. So I think it takes a lifetime of, of just constantly getting that, that balance right.

Stephen Matini: So maybe it's time to change the notion of conflict management because you talk about good fights. Yeah. And now you're talking about the importance of being messy. So I'm thinking that maybe it's time to change conflict management into, I don't know, how would you call it?

Liane Davey: Yeah. I totally, I've never had that thought before in my life, but I love it because it does make it sound like we're going to contain it and we're the boss of it. Exactly. It's the very opposite of let's throw it open and see what's in there and really, so like stop managing the conflict, start kind of experiencing it and moving through with some forward velocity. Right?

Yeah. And I think it's why some people switch to conflict resolution. I think that is a good term. But the, the problem I have with conflict resolution is I think it applies to each decision and each deliberation, but I think some people who hear about conflict resolution think, oh, we can resolve the conflict in our team and not have any conflict anymore when I believe that conflict is something that needs to be present in your team all the time. The productive tension amongst very different and opposing demands, wishes, needs, all those sorts of things to the extent that we can think about conflict resolution is let's pick one thing, work it through to the right decision. I'm good with that. But if we use that term to, to suggest that, you know, we're done with it once and for all we've resolved that we don't need to have conflict anymore. That's an issue. We should, we should be looking for the good fight in every conversation we have.

Stephen Matini: The way that your approach, you know, your, your angle comes to me is about ... what is the word? Continuity. It's not something that should be managed, something that stops. And now we figured out. In change management a better word is more resilience. You know? Yes. What the heck? You manage something that changes all the time. So resilience gives a sense of, that's something you continuously have to work on.

Liane Davey: I don't have a perfect word for it. You know, I always talk about it as embrace productive conflict, right? Mm-Hmm. It's something that we have to like hold onto, get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's something that should be a part of in an ongoing way.

Stephen Matini: I don't know if the right word is messing up, but when you said it to me last time, I felt that I could breathe. It feels as so much more humane, more realistic than managed conflict or whatever that is, you know?

Liane Davey: Yes. And people are messy and issues are messy and you know, decisions we have to make in organizations are messy. So let's actually appreciate that. And the key to making optimal decisions in a messy world is having all the information.

I always think about it like algebra, you have your equation, I have my equation, and we need to solve for the unknown. We can do that. If I know your equation and you know mine, then we've got all the data we need to solve it. But unfortunately we don't do a very good job of getting your truth on the table, my truth ...

You come from sales and I come from operations, we have very different perspectives. Your equation is very different than mine. We need to figure out what we do that optimizes the system and we just, just don't think about that frequently enough.

Stephen Matini: Conflict management or whichever word that we're going to use in the future has so many ramifications. And one of them that is so important is time management, which maybe that's another obsolete concept, but you said it's not a workload, it's our thought load. And you said, I work really hard at not being busy. I thought it was beautiful.

Liane Davey: You know, a couple of years ago I realized that it's not workload that's killing us, burning us out, it's our thought load. How much is buzzing around in our brains, waking us up at night, keeping us up at night, you know, having us in a conversation with one person fretting about the conversation to follow.

That's when I got really obsessed with this. How do we think differently about our thought load? How do we manage it in a way? And of course we're back to NO, because you don't manage your thought load unless you are able to compartmentalize, really figure out what is the one thing that I need to be paying attention to right now.

And so that's work that I've been focused on. So, you know, very practical things I've been working on like the bullet journaling technique. So I did a YouTube video about how to use bullet journaling as a way of taking things out of your current thought load, putting them in a schedule only at the time when you're gonna turn it into your workload.

Collaboration and saying no, and, and understanding how somebody else’s, so doing a a, a racy understanding, okay, I don't own this so I'm gonna stop worrying about it. I know this person is on it so I don't need to fret about it. It's another piece of the puzzle.

There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Of course the most important one is prioritization. And most leaders and managers I know suck at prioritization. They are profoundly abdicating their responsibility to their teams.

Prioritize comes from the Latin for one, not seven. So there's all these pieces of the puzzle that I've been working on to help us get out from this absolutely inhumane thought load. Because as many people keep telling me that their workload is too high, I'm not buying it. I don't think people are actually accomplishing very much at all.

It's like the difference between watching FIFA watching a football game where you know, you have 90 minutes and the run of play is 90 minutes. And if, if something distracts you, like an injury for two minutes, will we add the two minutes on because we need 90 minutes. And then I thought about NFL football and how there's, I don't even remember the stat cuz I can't stand to watch it because there's so little action.

And I think that's what most people do with their work week. They're they're talking about, oh, like it was a three hour game. Yeah, but you were on the field for seven minutes. Like what? So we have so much distraction, we have so many things that are slowing us down. That's not a workload problem , it's a thought load problem. So I'm very excited about that. I think it's where my next book is gonna go is how do we manage the thought load problem? And, and that excites me.

Stephen Matini: This way of thinking of time. When did you approach it for the first time?

Liane Davey: No, it hasn't been around all that long because I used to be pretty bad at it. So I think about five years ago starting to do more mindfulness starting to manage my own. And I, it was really deciding a few years ago that I choose not to be busy. You know, another epiphany I've had is I'm okay with having a busy schedule. I'm just unwilling to have a busy mind.

So many days, I think the day I spoke with you I had the wonderful conversation with you. I enjoyed very much and nine others that day , I was 10 different conversations, client meetings, sales calls, all sorts of things. But at no point did I feel busy during that day because each time I was fully invested in the conversation, I wasn't thinking about anything else because I have used a whole variety of techniques to manage my thought load.

So it's probably been about five years all tied to this decision. I was working with my colleague and friend Tammy Herman, and we were doing a program years ago to help women be more influential at work. And one of the things we realized we had to work on with them was their introductions, just their casual, if someone says, hi, how are you? What, how do you respond? Because they were all responding with busy.

I said, as soon as you respond with busy, you look like you're not on top of things, you signal to the other person that, oh, you should probably be quiet now cuz this person needs to run off. You don't say I'm open for more cool opportunities.

So we actually started with changing how they even respond to those casual conversations. And that was many years ago, I think it was 2007 when I decided I was never going to use the B word. I was never gonna talk about being busy as as a description for myself. So that was really valuable when I, when I had that epiphany and it just took until a little more recently to figure out all the tools to manage my thought load so that I could live up to that.

Stephen Matini: Yeah. If I had to say when things started changing, it's probably the same thing, these past four or five years, you know? Yeah. Like to give an example, today at some point I was it around lunch time, someone that I've been working with forever, she said, can we talk, can we talk at 4 something? So it was like 30 minutes before being here with you. Yeah.

And I said to myself, no, I don't want to get to my conversation with you feeling tired or stressed out. I really want to enjoy it because how many times will I have the chance to talk to you? I really wanna be here. , you know, and me in the past it would've said, yes, this could be an account, could be a project, girl, you need the money. You know, I would've thought a million things, but I said, no, no, this is my day, you know, and I want to enjoy this and we can talk about it tomorrow. And the world is not gonna end.

Liane Davey: The likelihood that postponing that call by a day makes that opportunity evaporate is close to zero. And actually, if that person is so frenetic that if you didn't answer today, it, it's probably something you are better off without. Right. So I, I think just being conscious like you are, like you were in that moment, it is absolutely so liberating.

And you said something earlier that's probably worth coming back to. Like, okay, well you two are entrepreneurs, you know, you control your lives, isn't it easier for you? And I would say no because of exactly what you said. You have that thought of nobody's paying me a paycheck. I don't just all of a sudden two weeks later get by, here's what's in your account. So it's very hard often to turn down those things to say no, to disagree with a client or prospective client about what they need.

So it's really just how you think about it and how you frame it. Certainly if you report to someone and they're your boss, you need to have conflict with them and use some techniques. I have one of my most popular YouTube videos is how to have conflict with your boss. And I go through four steps for, you know, how to do it in a way that won't get you fired. So you have to think about it, but, but I wouldn't say it's easier or harder to do it in one situation or the other, just the stakes are different.

Stephen Matini: I so do not envy younger people for that because yeah, I think it's something that probably comes with age for some people, you know?

Liane Davey: And, and for some it just never comes, right? So, you know, one of the things I remember doing when I was a manager and I was managing, I was young, so I was probably say 38, something like that.

I had young kids and I was a manager of people who were even younger. On Mondays. My kids were competitive dancers. And so they danced six days a week and the carpooling was quite something. And so it just worked out that Mondays was my day among the, you know, there were two couples, four of us who split all the driving and Mondays was my day. And to leave the office, drive home, pick up all the kids, take them to get a bite to eat and get them to dancing for 4:30, I had to leave the office at 3:00. So I started this sort of really, really important thing for me as a manager, which is at three o'clock I would do what I call leave loudly.

Even though some people who need to leave the office, we would normally leave about five 30 and I was leaving two and a half hours early. Some people would just sort of quietly slip away . And I did the opposite. I'm like, okay, off to drive the dance bus and, and make sure everybody heard me. Because leaving loudly was such an important way to say, we can do this. It's okay.

We need to fit personal lives and our work lives together in a way that's gonna last for the long haul. And I let a team of consultants, it's a grueling thing. Everyone knew that it, you know, as soon as the kids were in bed, I would be logged back on making up that time. There was no question about it. And I said, see, you don't question that. I don't work hard enough and I don't question that you work hard enough. So leaving loudly was a really important thing for me early in my career to signal to people that work hard, contribute value, and then be where you need to be. It's always been important to me.

Stephen Matini: Would you be an actress if you were not be doing this for a living? You would be great at stand up comedy Yeah!

Liane Davey: My favorite compliment I ever got was a salesperson in the organization I used to work in said I was like a love child between Jim Collins and Tina Faye. And I was like, okay, that's the greatest compliment. I try and sit in my big powerful brain, Jim Collins and hopefully I always refer to my brand as the sort of spoonful of sugar from Mary Poppins, right? The conflict work is very uncomfortable, very intimate, very deep. People are often yelling or crying or all these sorts of things. So if there isn't a little sugar to help the medicine go down.

Stephen Matini: We talked about a million things, . Is there anything that would be important for people that are going to listen to this, to bring home, something that you think it would be really, really important for them to focus on?

Liane Davey: I always go back to one line, which is some things are worth fighting for. If there's one thing I can encourage your listeners to do, it's to, and maybe it's even a daily practice or weekly or just try it once and see what you think. Make a list of the things that are worth fighting for.

If you are in operations and that salesperson keeps selling new, different customized things to everyone, you may say consistency, efficiency, that's worth fighting for. I need to make sure that the sales leader understands the impact that all these differentiated products have on our ability to be efficient.

It could be in a relationship, right? It could be the way you're treated by your colleagues and feeling comfortable and feeling respected. That's worth fighting for. Whatever it is. It's amazing how, if you're clear on what's worth fighting for, suddenly the courage to have the harder conversations to say no or to say yes or or to really engage. You'll find it. But if we aren't clear on what's worth fighting for, it's much, much harder. So that's a practice.

You know, today. What's worth fighting for today? As you're going into a meeting, as you're walking in the door, you know, who that's not in the meeting is counting on me to fight for them. And what are they counting on me to fight for? Because pretty much all of us, when we walk into a meeting, we represent people who aren't in the room. And if we aren't willing to fight, no one's fighting for them. That's just what I would encourage people in any domain of your life, in a relationship at work, what is worth fighting for. And if you have the answer, you're gonna feel really emboldened and empowered all day.

Stephen Matini: Liane, you are a blessing. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you share with me that it is going to enrich a lot of people. Thank you so much.

Liane Davey: Oh, I, I have found our conversations so joyous. So it's very, very, very much mutual, Stephen. Thank you.

View Details

As human beings, we all face difficulties and struggles in life. However, during these moments of darkness, we can often learn valuable lessons that benefit us and those around us.

Our guest for this episode of the podcast Pity Party Over is Andy Frick, Owner and Founder of A Place 2B Recovery Housing. Andy has a background in positive psychology and has provided a place where people recovering from substance abuse feel they belong.

For Andy, adding value to the lives of others provides meaning, a sense of belonging, and mattering. When we help others feel valued, we also validate our worth.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to create a purposeful life by supporting yourself and others effectively.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

belonging #purpose #mission #mattering #recovery #substanceabuse #leadership #andyfrick #aplace2brecoveryhousing #lindseygodwin #davidcooperrider #isaacprilleltensky #martinseligman #positivepsychology #appreciativeinquiry #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When you don't work, what do you do to relax, to center yourself?

Andy Frick: Well, one, I play a lot of soccer. Not the most common American response, but I, I play quite a bit of soccer, always did growing up and still a, a great way to connect with others and get some physical activity in which I'm sure I know I could certainly use more of.

And then I, I really enjoy fishing, so I, I found out over the past, I don't know, maybe five, 10 years that I really enjoy fishing, especially just being in nature in general, you know, walking, outdoors, all that jazz. But fishing has become a passion of mine. So ...

Stephen Matini: Where did you grow up?

Andy Frick: I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where unfortunately there's not a whole lot of fishing opportunities, . So there's more here to offer than I had originally thought. But mostly Akron is pretty much known for... well, if you're a little bit later in life, you might know it from being the, the rubber capital of the world at, at some point. If you're a bit younger, you probably know it from LeBron James. And that's about the extent of , Akron's notoriety.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever thought about moving elsewhere?

Andy Frick: Oh, certainly. Yeah. I have, since I started going to Florida for vacation as a child, I had always dreamt of not having to deal with the cold winters of Ohio. Fortunately, life is taking me that way, and I am moving to Miami here in about a month's time, so ...

Stephen Matini: For real? Oh, wow.

Andy Frick: Yes, yes. So it'll be quite a change.

Stephen Matini: How did you get to where you are professionally?

Andy Frick: So really, my, my life experience guided me to this passion of wanting to help others in some way, shape or form, right? I've been driven by service for the, the past 10 years or so, and it was, it wasn't always the case. So I look back to my experiences growing up. I struggled to find meaning, purpose, a sense of belonging and mattering, connection to others, some of the things that are fulfilling in life.

Those struggles kind of led me to some dark places. I think it was in the process of change that I experienced for myself, that transition from some of those darker places to experiencing some of those things I just described, where, where I had a sense of belonging and mattering purpose and meaning mostly through service to others, that really sparked my interest in helping others to experience that same thing for themselves.

I found myself having a, a a lack of all of these things, then experiencing them in my life and then asking that question of, okay, how can I help others to have the same experience? Where, where am I needed to best help others experience wellbeing in their lives?

Stephen Matini: For many, many, many years in the past, I looked at those experiences as mistakes. And only later on in life I realized, well, probably they really had a purpose, because if they did not happen, I would not be where I am, and most likely I would not have developed the type of sensitivity that I have. Do you think you would've gotten to where you are if you hadn’t experience such darkness?

Andy Frick: No, I, I certainly don't. And I'll kind of talk about it in, in two different ways. So the one is something you touched on. You know, it's funny, I was speaking with a professor of mine, Dr. James Pawelski, from the University of Pennsylvania, and this was after I graduated from my master's program.

There I was looking at the application process for PhD programs, and I was struggling to find, to trust the process and, and have faith that, you know, things will work out as they're supposed to. And it's something that I've grown to, to share with others, but when I needed it, I couldn't find it, right.

And it, it was funny cuz he, he shared with me how we can't really engage in the process of sense making until we're further down the road looking back on our lives. And in the moment it's hard to explain to ourselves why things are happening the way they're happening.

We can't quite see the whole picture just yet. But when we find ourselves a little bit further down the road and we look back on our lives, kind of like you were describing, and, and my experience has been as well we, we can make sense of things and we can connect the dots and we can see, well, maybe there was some greater purpose to why this happened that happened, or I end up in this place, or, or whatever the case may be for each individual and for me in particular.

So my work has been in the addiction and recovery space. And when I refer to these dark places for myself, it was in addiction. So I'm in recovery myself, and I had experienced active addiction. I certainly don't feel that, you know, that's maybe a more specific case, but I've likely not ended up working in that field had it not been for my experiences.

But more broadly, I still think that holds true for some of my other life experiences. You know, again, you don't notice it in the moment, but when you look back on your life, you recognize that, okay, I may perhaps I needed to endure whatever it was that I experienced so that I could, you know, maybe be the light for the next person. Right. And, and I think it, it does something for yourself, right? I, I found some self-fulfillment in experiencing those hardships and finding myself on the other side

Stephen Matini: When I experience darkness for me was the result of a series of really unfortunate events. At some point I experienced depression, which is something that I never had before. It really feels like all happiness has been sucked out of yourself, when you realize that it's too late, you know, I call depression the invisible assassin.

The one thing that helped me out was the realization that the people that really love me couldn't care less about me being successful, or not all they wanted me is to be happy. So the question to you is, if we have someone that is in a dark place, for whatever the reason, and is trying to cope with that heaviness, whichever way, what would you say that could be the first step that we can take?

Andy Frick: Yeah. That, that is something I've certainly dealt with in the addiction recovery space in particular, right? So I, I find myself working with typically younger men as they're transitioning from inpatient treatment facilities and taking that next step in their recovery process.

Oftentimes I find myself having conversations with their family. The family is of course like any of us would, looking for ways that they can help fix the problem, right? And, and that's what we wanna do for each other. We wanna find ways that we can relieve the pain for our loved ones, that we can help them to feel okay and, and fix the things that they're dealing with.

The unfortunate reality, especially with addiction, and I think this translates well to other areas of life, is that there's only so much we can do as a loved one. We typically can't take away their pain or change their problems or make their, their situation go away in, in fact, I actually think we would be robbing them of a necessary process of life if we were able to play God, so to speak, anyway. But we can't, we're powerless over them and, and the circumstance, and the best thing we can do in my experience is, is to love them, love them unconditionally through that process.

And that can look a little different depending on the situation, but most of the time it simply means letting them know that you're there and available and that you care. And that's about where the extent of our responsibilities end, right?

It's about as far as we can go is, hey, if you need something, I'm here for you. I love you. I support you through this process. I'm willing to do whatever I can to help. But beyond that, there's not much we can do for that individual in that circumstance.

I think especially in, in the addiction area, parents in particular have to find a balance between that love and not enabling the individual further, right? So that's kind of overstepping our responsibilities and kind of what I was talking about earlier, a little bit of robbing the individual, the, the opportunity to experience the pain required to initiate change.

Yeah, my experience has been just that we love them unconditionally. We support wherever possible and we recognize where our responsibility ends, and that's important. I don't think that's something we talk about very often in supporting each other through these places in life.

Stephen Matini: One thing I wanna ask you, it happened to me in the past to deal with people that were trying to cope with that deep pain in different ways, you know, it could be alcohol, it could be substance abuse, whatever there was. And I love when you say that you should not deprive them from the possibility of going through their, their journey. When you are in the situation as someone, close to someone going through so much pain, and at some point you realize that it's hurting you, that relationship is actually hurting you, how do you find balance between loving someone but also taking care of yourself?

Andy Frick: You know, sometimes loving someone means separating ourselves from that individual, somewhat similar to the situation you described in your own life. We recognize that in order to love somebody appropriately, we have to love ourselves appropriately as well.

When we're focusing on trying to help somebody else, that's fantastic. And of course, I've found that to be tremendously fulfilling in my own life, but I find that one, I'm less equipped to do so when I'm not taking care of myself. And two, I might not being as effective as I could be when I'm not taking care of myself.

Taking care of ourselves might leave us with that awakening that says, unfortunately, there's not much I can do and this is creating more harm in my life than good I'm doing for this individual. And in the end, when you do that, the relationship suffers regardless, right? So we find ourselves fighting to try and fix something that we cannot fix.

We're harming ourselves, and in the end, we're actually probably doing more damage to the situation than good, right? At what point does each individual come to that realization, and at what point is that in each specific situation? I can't say, right? It's different for each situation that we find ourselves in.

For me, one of the best ways I've found is to make sure I have other people with me in the process so I can feel supported in my own process, because these are challenging times for us as well as the individual. So when I have people I can trust and that I love that are close in my life, it's important that I include them in that process as well so they can help check me and say, hey, you know, this might be taking a bit too much from you and we're worried about you as well. Right? and that's important to have.

Stephen Matini: You know, now I'm thinking about from the point of view, the person who's going through that. I did not experience, you know, substance addiction, but I definitely experienced super dark places. One thing that was really hard for me for many, many, many years was the sense of shame, like, I could not even verbalize what I was going through to people because there was so much shame and feeling that way and thinking, I wonder what people are going to feel are gonna think if I said that, and the tremendous amount of pain I would give to people that I love. And so as a result, I wouldn't say anything to anyone. Until finally I decided to speak up. So for you, when you experienced that dark place, what was the first time that you started seeing a glimpse of something else? What did you do?

Andy Frick: It's somewhat of a I don't know if I'd call it a cliche or a phrase that gets used in the recovery community. We talk about desperation and we consider it the gift of desperation. It's an interesting phrase because oftentimes I don't think individuals or anybody really would consider desperation to be a gift. But in these circumstances, I think eventually we find ourselves in a place where we're so desperate for something different than what we're experiencing, that we're willing to make the change, right?

So we find ourselves in desperate situations, and the pain we're experiencing is powerful enough to invite a process of change. Again, this process is different for each individual, but in my own experience, that's exactly what happened. I found myself at the end of the road. I had burned many bridges. I was 19 years old and I was homeless.

I was pretty much in a, about as dark a place as I could have ever imagined my life being. The level of desperation that I experienced was enough for me to say, I don't even think I, I had this process of considering some of those things of, of, I don't wanna ask for help, so to speak.

It was more so everything became fueled by desperation, and I was willing to do anything it took to experience something different in life. Now that's an extreme case, right? Like, that's not everybody's experience. I don't think everybody does find themselves in a place of desperation quite like that. Or the degree of desperation might be different.

But I still think there's commonalities that we can experience no matter what it is that we're experiencing. And everybody's bottom is unique to them, right? It, it doesn't mean that everybody has to go to the places I went to experience this sense of desperation.

We can experience it in our day-to-day lives. I, I look at things like in my life today, trying to exercise, right? And I, I might find myself really struggling to get the ball rolling, and I don't wanna tell people how difficult it is for me to just go to the gym.

And at a certain point I become so fed up with the circumstances that I become desperate for change. And I invite other people in to help me in that process. They say, hey man, look, I've, I've really been making an attempt to go to the gym regularly, but I can't seem to get myself to go.

And just inviting somebody else into that process starts that process of change for me. And now I've got some accountability. For my specific experience, that point of desperation was the eye-opener that I kind of needed that began that transition to the recovery process.

Stephen Matini: Were there any particular people, special person that somehow has been instrumental to your journey?

Andy Frick: So many, it's impossible to discuss them all. I am immensely grateful for the people I have in my life. Has made my life incredibly rich and meaningful. In particular, my mom certainly deserves immense amount of credit for one, enduring all the stuff that she had to endure through those times, loving me unconditionally as I went through my process of change.

And, and that extends to the rest of my family and some close friends as well. But my mom in particular comes to mind and has always been a, a supporter and cheerleader for me all throughout, all the way until today. It's really been a, a incredible relationship born out of some of the trials and tribulations we face together.

Stephen Matini: So your mom sounds really cool.

Andy Frick: . Absolutely, she is. She is. She's a fantastic, fantastic human being. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: If I remember correctly, both you and your mom, you are deeply interested in appreciative inquiry. So for those who are going to listen to this episode, appreciate inquiry is a method of change, which is based on strengths. It is the notion that we can transition faster if we focus on existing strengths rather than obsessing about how to fix an issue. How did you get interested in appreciative inquiry?

Andy Frick: The rebellious kid that I was never wanted to listen to my mom growing up. My mom really did some incredible work with appreciative inquiry and the folks at Case Western University, Dr. Cooperider, Dr. Fry, Dr. Godwin, you've spoke with Dr. Lindsey Godwin, fantastic human being.

But nonetheless, so she, she had experienced some incredible work first at Roadway and then some work with the US Navy. And so she had shared these experiences with me at different points throughout my life, and I was reluctant to listen to what she was talking about.

Of course, I had to find my own path. I actually, I found myself reading the book “Flourish” by Dr. Seligman. That was sort of my introduction to positive psychology, and it was the gateway to appreciative inquiry as well.

I remember reading this, coming to my mom and saying, wow, look at this. This is incredible. Look at these overlaps to my life experience. How interesting the science of wellbeing and how have I not known about this? Right? And my mom says, yeah, I've only been telling you about appreciative inquiry and positive psychology for the past 20 years, . I'm like, no, no, no, you haven't. And sure, she, she surely had been, but I was reluctant to listen because I didn't want to hear it coming from my mom. That was sort of the gateway to that experience finding out about appreciative inquiry. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: Is she getting to appreciative inquiry because of you or other stuff?

Andy Frick: No, she, she worked at Roadway. They worked with some of the folks at Case they brought appreciative inquiry into roadway as a change method. That was her first introduction, I believe.

Stephen Matini: How did you come across the concept of mattering you mentioned that before.

Andy Frick: My experience growing up was interesting. I felt as though I never truly had this sense of belonging or what, you know, I, I would now define as mattering and we'll talk about in a second. I never felt as though I was truly connected to others, and I felt I was somewhat yearning for that sense of connection.

I touched on the fact that I experienced addiction and then found myself in in recovery when I was 19 years old. And at this transitional phase in my life, I found myself being of service to others in the recovery process. And more specifically, I, I found that one of the best methods that was shared with me from other folks in the recovery community about change was to give of yourself to others. And in doing so, we might experience some things for ourselves.

And, and what I mean more specifically is when I found myself inviting others into the group, helping others to feel as though they belonged, I experienced belonging for myself. When I found myself accepting and loving others unconditionally, I started to experience those things for myself.

For the first time in most of my life, maybe my whole life, I found that sense of belonging that I was always looking for. I started to find purpose and meaning through service, work to others, and, and helping other folks feel like they mattered and belonged as well.

Fast forward a bit and I found myself reading “Flourish,” I have these conversations with my mom. Eventually, this leads me to applying to the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

I didn't think I had a great chance of getting in, to be completely honest with you. The interview process went very well. I really connected with the faculty and folks I got to speak to before I was accepted into the program.

I really just felt called to this program and, and like this was the place for me to go. And I was determined that if I did not get in, I would just be applying again the next time around. Fortunately, I did get accepted. I found a tremendously welcoming and inviting community of people and academics in that master's program. And that is where I was exposed to the idea of mattering scientifically.

So we, in our first semester in the program, we had a guest lecture, Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky. He spoke to us about mattering amongst many other things, but one of the ones that truly captivated me was mattering.

He described mattering as this experience of adding value and feeling valued. And that can occur in a few different domains with the individual, with others in our work, in our community. He shared about the science of mattering.

I found myself recalling all these experiences in life and realizing how valuable mattering had been to me when I was one, not experiencing it growing up. And then that transitional phase in my life, when I started to experience what he was describing as mattering, I was like, wow, so you know, this, this engagement and, and, and adding value to the lives of others and then feeling valued by a group allowed me to feel like I was truly a part of and belonged and had meaning and purpose and, you know, all these other wellness outcomes.

I was captivated by his presentation. It became something that I referenced quite a bit as I went through the program time and time again, I found myself turning to his work, using it in my papers. Actually, after graduating, I circled back and I had an incredible conversation with Dr. Prilleltensky, which led me to applying to the, the University of Miami's PhD program. That's what is sparking this, this move to Miami. So I was accepted into the PhD program at the University of Miami, and we'll be working with Dr. Prilleltensky come this, this fall. So ...

Stephen Matini: And I thought you were going for the sun .

Andy Frick: Yeah, the sun doesn't hurt. I'm excited about that as well, .

Stephen Matini: Well, congratulations Andy. This is wonderful.

Andy Frick: Thank you. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: You said feeling valued and adding value. In my job, I come across very often with people saying, I do not matter. I feel that in this organization, I'm just a number. I'm not heard. Is someone feels that way, what could it be the first step to feel that you matter?

Andy Frick: My experience has been that in order to experience something such as mattering, and I think this goes for a lot of other areas, love, acceptance, et cetera, the best pathway I have found for myself, and that seems to have worked for others that I have worked with, is to first find ways to give those things to others. When I find ways to help someone else feel as though they matter, I in turn experience mattering for myself.

I think that that has been a key factor in what has allowed me to experience some of the, the richness of relationships throughout my life. First focusing on how can I add value to the life of somebody else? And in turn, that has allowed me to feel valued.

That's really at the core of experiencing some of these things that we might be missing. I've heard people say they don't feel accepted, they don't feel loved. Some of these things, and the first thing that we can look to do is find an opportunity to love others, find an opportunity to accept others. It's been my experience that that has allowed me to feel accepted, loved, welcomed, and as though I belong as a result.

Stephen Matini: One of the early thoughts that I had when I was finally stepping out from this darkness was this thought, which is I think connected to what you're saying. I thought, if I can learn something from this, maybe this could be useful for someone in the future. And to these days, I'm always amazed when people come to me with specific questions about stuff that I blatantly failed say, why would you ask me? Well, because you know how it feels, you know how it is, you know, how, how it feels to be with your on the ground. So I'm asking you that because you went there. That's one of the beautiful thing about going through rough experiences, they become a tremendous treasure for yourself, but not just for yourself, also for others.

Andy Frick: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And that, that deeply resonates with me as well.

Stephen Matini: How did you come up with the idea for “A Place 2B Recovery”?

Andy Frick: Really, it was born out of a lot of what we just described. I actually started it with a friend of mine in the Akron area. I think there were two key factors that led us to start a place to be recovery housing, and the first of which was just the need in the Akron area and worldwide, really for that matter. Addiction is obviously everywhere, has been immensely challenging to deal with for our, our communities and our loved ones.

Having a safe drug-free environment to begin the process of recovery, we felt was an extremely valuable component that we could add to our community and help others as they embark on this journey of change. And I think there were limited opportunities for individuals to have that safe place to go home, be away from some of the people, places and things that they were around previously when they were in active addiction.

Coupled with that was my personal experience of being homeless when I was 19, and it was a, a short-lived period of time, but it doesn't take many days of being homeless for it too really sink in on you, and it was that, that made me want to be a part of something that could provide housing for recovering addicts as they're transitioning from inpatient treatment facilities, so ...

Those were at the core of our interests when we first got started. And I don't think we knew a whole lot of what we were getting into. And we approached it with an open mind and we asked for help from our community. And, and then I was later exposed to some of these other concepts in appreciative inquiry and positive psychology and how these could be influential on, on promoting wellbeing for the recovering addicts within our program.

Stephen Matini: When I read the difference between a place to go and a place to be, I smiled. So I think I understand what you mean, but would you mind explaining what that means to you?

Andy Frick: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think simply put, folks could find themselves in the circumstance leaving a treatment facility, and oftentimes they need a place to go. That could be from requirements to be fulfilled by the courts or other fulfillments they might need to meet, whatever the the case may be. Oftentimes folks just need a place where they can go.

We found it more important to provide a place to be where people can feel as though they belong, that they're a part of something meaningful where they're in a group that cares about them and where they can add value and feel value, right? Terminology I didn't know at the time, but later became relevant. We really set out with the intention of providing a place to be rather than just a place to go.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything that you've learned so far, you're still so young, , when you go through a rough time for whatever the reason, what do you do to get out of it?

Andy Frick: Hmm. I find that I am in a very fortunate situation in life today. This wasn't always the case where I could lean into those around me. Over the course of the past nine or 10 years, I have been able to apply much of what we just talked about, and that has led me to experience richness in relationships and develop trust with others. Thankfully, I have a support group of family friends that I feel I can turn to in these trying times.

Most of the time I think I do well of turning to those people. However, sometimes I find myself and some of those dark places that we talk about and having that experience we described earlier where you don't quite want to, where you're just not ready to allow other people into that process. There's a couple things that have worked for me in that space.

One is just time. And unfortunately, as terrible as that might be, in some of the circumstances we find ourselves in allowing things the time required to pass has been an important tool in my process. Sometimes I just have to sit with my feelings and experience my experiences and recognize that eventually these things passed.

And, and fortunately for me in my own life, I can turn back to past experiences and say, look, we've been through this and this will pass too, there are brighter days ahead. I don't know when, I don't know how, if I sit and let things pass, eventually things pass.

The other is turning to ways to help others. I have found that to be a freeing experience for myself. You know, sometimes I think in order to get the relief we seek, maybe it's best to seek ways to help provide relief for others, right? If I can help to serve others, then in turn I might experience benefits to my own personal wellbeing in some way, shape, or form.

That's been the action piece, the piece that I can, I can turn to and say, if I am feeling bad, I'm feeling down. I'm stuck in self-pity, I'm in the pity party. How do I end this? How do I get through this? Well, let's turn to action. What's the action? Let's help somebody else. And that's, that usually starts the process.

Stephen Matini: Today, I felt a bit weird, you know, this morning particularly. And so my method today to pity party over, I would say, is piggyback from you. Like talking to you is so energizing. So being the company of people that understand has a tremendous impact. You know, he really suits everything. So thank you. .

Andy Frick: Absolutely. And thank you. Thank you so much.

Stephen Matini: Andy, I wanna ask you, we talked about a bunch of stuff. When everything is so important, is there like something that you think it would be important for people who are going to listen to this to know or to take away from our conversation?

Andy Frick: Yeah, I, you know, I don't, I don't wanna feel like a broken record because I think I end up turning back to the same core piece and it's because it's served me well at the end of the day. The key piece for me has been that if I want to experience something in my own life, find a way to provide that in the lives of others. If I want to experience wellbeing first, focus on how I can add wellbeing to the lives of others.

Stephen Matini: You know, you have a lot in common with Dr. Lindsay Godwin. Now I understand why she suggested for me to talk to you .

Andy Frick: Oh gosh. She is an incredible, incredible friend, mentor, supportive individual. And her curiosity is unbelievable. And I think it makes all those around her equally curious and excited about what could be.

Stephen Matini: Andy, thank you so much for talking to me. I really loved every minute of being here with you. This is wonderful.

Andy Frick: Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. This was terrific.

View Details

In this episode, we'll discuss how leaders can communicate effectively by listening and paying attention to people.

We have an extraordinary guest, Diane Lennard. Diane is a performance coach and faculty member at NYU Stern School of Business.

With her background in theater and coaching, Diane has honed her exceptional communication skills and has a unique perspective on effective leadership communication.

Diane believes that everybody wants to be seen and heard, and by establishing empathetic relationships based on respect and dignity, leaders can create more meaningful connections with any stakeholder.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

conversations #people #human-centered #leadership #dianelennard #coaching #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Where did you grow up?

Diane Lennard: I grew up in the middle of Manhattan.

Stephen Matini: A New Yorker!

Diane Lennard: I am, born and raised!

Stephen Matini: How was to grow up in New York?

Diane Lennard: Well, I grew up in a an apartment complex that had, that was very large and had lots of playgrounds, lots of families, lots of children, and it was wonderful. And there was a really good public school with a lot of parent involvement. So it was a very, very nice place to grow up.

Stephen Matini: Do you think it's true when people say that anyone who moves to New York after six months becomes a New Yorker or to be a real ... ?

Diane Lennard: No. That’s a definitive no. , you can tell by the way people cross the street if they jaywalk, they're likely a native New Yorker when, you know they stand at the street corner for a really long time, that's not a typical New York activity .

Stephen Matini: What would it be other typical things that New Yorkers do that no one else would do?

Diane Lennard: I would say that we tend to be really good at shielding ourselves from difficult situations. It's a street savvy in a way, you know, how to manage just situations that you don't wanna get involved in. You know, whether it's on the subway or on the street, not making eye contact if it's gonna protect you, things like that. Just common sense safety.

Stephen Matini: Were there any people or events that somehow have impacted more than others the way that you are today?

Diane Lennard: Oh, many. I would say that two most prominent are my exposure to cultural events and my exposure to multicultural food. In growing up, every Sunday my family went to a different nationality restaurant. So from a very early age I was exposed to different cultures, not just the food, but the culture.

We would talk to the waiters and I grew an interest in international cultures that definitely impacted my career. And I also was ex, went to lots of theater and museums, was very involved in the theater. So I know from my friends who were not native New Yorkers, when they came to visit me, they got exposed to things that they wouldn't have unless they had come to New York.

Stephen Matini: Theater plays a huge role in your life. When did you decide to actually get into theater?

Diane Lennard: I started taking ballet lessons when I was six years old. Actually five years old. I was actually part of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company and performed on the old Metropolitan opera stage. I got paid a dollar a minute for running across the stage, barefoot in an opera. But I had the experience of a huge audience and the backstage and it was very intriguing to me.

I also took piano lessons and went to a special high school for music and I remember at about age 11, 12, 13, I really was wondering, what am I gonna be when I grow up? And I recall sitting down with my parents. I, I remember the actual dining table where we sat down and to discuss my, my future and I was barely a teenager.

The suggestion was, why don't you put music and dance together in theater? So I went to summer, summer theater programs and eventually summer stock and it was a way for me to put it all together. And so it's really been forever in my life.

Stephen Matini: I did theater for a long time and I did it mostly as an act of rebellion because of high school. I never thought I could do it, because I'm not really an extrovert. I'm not someone who lost to be the center of the attention. But I did very well. And to my surprise, lot of actors, are actually quite introvert.

Diane Lennard: That's definitely true. I had a similar experience when I went to, there were two arts high schools, one of them is very famous called, the one from the movie “Fame”. It was the High School of Performing Arts applied to that one for dance, and I applied to music and art, which was much more academic.

I got into music and art for piano and voice, but I sang folk songs, rebellious teenage folk songs and in music and art they taught us opera. You know, I did the opera, but that wasn't my passion.

What's interesting is now when I teach communication to business students, I am using all the vocal training that I got. And I'm not calling it voice training, but it is how to use your body and your voice. So all of what I learned, I'm applying to my current career.

Stephen Matini: How did you make the transition from, you know, the theater, the acting to what you're doing now, communication?

Diane Lennard: I always had an interest in teaching. I actually think, I'm not as much of an actress as I am a director and a teacher. So for years I supported myself by creating theater companies.

So I would direct them in a play, but teach them how to act, come to my acting classes three days a week and will form a theater company and you'll perform. Which really appealed to my sensibility because they were learning and performing, not just ego performing.

So I did that for a long time. I got a degree in teaching, a master's degree in teaching. I was still teaching acting for non-actors in a theater school, but then I started coaching executives on their speech. It was actually Boston Consulting Group.

They would have people come and learn how to tell stories and learn how ... we had a whole coaching program. Then I did it for my university on a pro bono basis while I was doing my PhD. And then they hired me. So it, it kind of evolved.

Stephen Matini: One of the paradigm shift that I see noticeable in people is when they understand that a good presentation is not about performing, but it's about being. And somehow that gives people the liberty of being themselves. Have you maybe noticed something similar?

Diane Lennard: Oh, absolutely. The way that I frame exactly what you're saying is it's a conversation. And what I notice is people who are trained in theaters sometimes have a hard time with that because they're so used to being performative that they're not really engaging and connecting with individuals. It's more that they're connecting with themselves.

I work very hard on making sure they're not performing because for me, when someone's performing then the audience is just observing. It's a passive experience one way as opposed to a conversation, which is a dialogue. It goes back and forth. Even if the listener is not talking, they're engaged in a conversation.

So I find that really fascinating and I actually much prefer the conversational mode to the performative mode unless I'm in a theater. But if I'm in a presentation, I don't want people performing. Although some students, I must say enjoy entertainment, but I'm not teaching entertainment. Nor are you, I would imagine.

Stephen Matini: I don't . To be in a conversation for some people is hard. It means to be vulnerable, it means to be permeable. How do you make it easy for people to get in the mode?

Diane Lennard: Having a purpose to their message when it becomes about the message and less about me getting them out of their heads, self-evaluating and focusing more on the other person. Actually, I feel like my mission in life is getting people to focus on the other person.

Stephen Matini: So listening...

Diane Lennard: Listening and paying attention, listening and observing. I think both.

Stephen Matini: The professor-student relationship is is a pretty interesting combination and often time is very layered. It means different things to different professors. How has this relationship contributed to you, to your own growth?

Diane Lennard: I certainly learn a lot from my students in terms of technology. Very often they say things and I go to my daughter privately after class and say, I just heard my students say this. Is that something I can say? Because they are privy to a whole slew of things that I'm not aware of. It's not part of my lifestyle. So I certainly learn from younger people.

But I also gain a lot because I get to be myself and that models to them, it's okay to be yourself. Something I've noticed after years and years of teaching is more and more people are saying, I wanna be funny, I wanna make people laugh. And my point of view is that people are funny when they don't tell jokes just because by being themselves, they're funny. And I think what I tried to do, I do my best at is be myself so they can be themselves. It's permission.

Stephen Matini: God, that being funny is hard.

Diane Lennard: Yes. And it's certainly not something I teach, although I did watch this show called Comedians Getting Coffee ...

Stephen Matini: In Cars. Yeah, yeah,

Diane Lennard: In Cars ... yeah. And I found that fascinating to listen to comedians philosophy and points of view. It's very specific and it's really an art form and I respect it. And I also think comedians are very, very good communicators. They know how to pause, they know how to emphasize, they know how to express, they know how to get a reaction. Whether it's think about this or laugh at this, I think they're wonderful. Good comedians are wonderful communicators.

Stephen Matini: I think it's a special skill that some people seem to have. I think sometimes I can be funny, but if I try to be funny it would be a disaster. It would be horrible.

I wanna ask you about the students. Some people, particularly now the workplace is filled with the different generations and so there's a lot of talk about generational gap. Do you think, is there such a thing as a generational gap from a communication standpoint?

Diane Lennard: Absolutely. Yes. Last night I, I do some faculty consulting at, at our university. What I do is I observe classes and then I give feedback to the professor on whatever they're interested in learning about their class.

Last night I sat in on a three hour Zoom class. It was an online class. The professor had never used breakout rooms, was totally unaware of what he could do to engage his audience and basically lectured for three hours.

Now this professor was even older than I am and made no bones about, I don't like remote, but I'm going to do the class the way I always do. He thought he was being funny. I would say out of 60 students, 45 of them had their cameras off. We don't even know if they were in the classroom. It was an astonishing experience of generational disconnect. And I felt badly for the students because they appreciate it, I’m sure they respect this professor and learn something, but they could certainly learn more.

The professor was saying to me, oh, I like it much better in person. Well of course, but he's not in person. It's time to go with the changes. So yes, I think there can be resistance to change and there can be huge generational conflicts. Part of the, that's what I was trying to say before that I learned from the students. I knew I had to do remote, so I had to learn it.

I mean, I'm always learning something new because largely because of technology at this point, now we have to contend with AI (artificial intelligence), how do we wanna deal with that? So there's always something to learn and I love that. But yes, an answer to your question, yes, there are generational differences.

Stephen Matini: When I hear people saying that in person works, versus digital, I could not disagree more, because I think if you have a difficult audience, that doesn't care, it's the same in both medium and realistically, there are pros and cons in both medium. What has been your experience about digital versus in person communication?

Diane Lennard: For many, many years I resisted digital because thought incorrectly that I couldn't do the kind of coaching I do, which involves the whole body and the voice speech coaching, unless I was in person, but I've been doing it remotely and I, it's different, but it can be done just with awareness, exactly what you just said.

You have to learn how to manage being on a screen. I just finished writing a whole book called “Humanizing the Remote Experience.” It actually talks about many of the challenges, but then there are ways to overcome them.

And the book is less about teaching techniques, but more about what happens to the brain when we're not in person. And there are a lot of challenges, but there are also a lot of strategies for addressing them. But I think for some people it's so different that they haven't and it's necessary because it's not going away. It's necessary to adapt.

Stephen Matini: I also want to ask you, you studied even your book, you talk about a lot about leadership, you know, leadership development and how communication can play a huge role for effective leaders. What would you say that is the some of the most important things as of today for leaders to keep in mind?

Diane Lennard: I would say empathy even more so because people are remote. So showing that you care about other people. This gets back to my mission in life, which is focusing on the other people, but understanding where other people are working with that, creating shared purpose and values really matters because if people are gonna follow your lead, they have to want to, they're not going to, unless you show that you also care about them and you have common purpose. And so I think empathy and understanding social sensitivity is really important. And this used to be called a soft skill, but now I think it's an essential skill.

Stephen Matini: A lot of people struggling and talking about executives or people they're transitioning more and more and more in a leadership position is the fact that for years their worry was about this quarter, the numbers, have to make sure that everything works fine. And then as you step into leadership position, you become more of a people connoisseur, you know? So the transition is really hard and a lot of people are put in a leadership position thinking they're gonna do well, but it's a completely different type of job. Do you think that empathy is something that can be actually taught?

Diane Lennard: In the process of writing this book I learned something that to me really had an impact about empathy. That there are two different kinds of empathy, and one kind is called affective empathy. So it's, I feel your pain, you actually feel what the other person is feeling, but there's another kind, and I think that I use this kind more and it's called cognitive empathy, where I understand what you're feeling, I understand where you're coming from, your perception, your perspective, but you don't necessarily have to feel it yourself. And so yes, I think you can get more and more attuned to it.

Stephen Matini: By observing people, as you said before.

Diane Lennard: By observing and paying attention to who they are.

Stephen Matini: So if someone has always been very task oriented and we are asking the person to be more people oriented, some people probably would do it, other people could be more resistant. And the company now says, well, so far you've been really operational, now you have to stop being this operational, you have to become really leader.

You have been so used to just worry about numbers and that's it. But you have to understand that from now on, people mostly are gonna look at what you do. You have to set the example, you can ask people anything, but you have to be able to behave in a way that is consistent with your ask. Otherwise people are not gonna follow you.

Diane Lennard: On a simple level, I experienced this with a lot of young people, my own children who are adult children, even my husband at the time. When you're very good at what you do, then you're promoted to a managerial level. That's a different set of skills because on the one hand you do your area of expertise, but then all of a sudden you have direct reports and you're responsible for people.

I recall with my own daughter when that happened to her earlier on in her career, we would spend many nights on the phone talking about strategies of dealing with difficult people situations. And it got to the point over time that she got really good at it and now loves it. But it was, it's a different skillset, just as you're saying. And that's why I think it's really important in university level that they're trained in these human-centered, what used to be called soft skills because you can't manage people unless you have some understanding of what matters.

Stephen Matini: There's not really a big correlation between possessing a certain trait or displaying a certain behavior and automatically gonna be a great leader. Somehow, some people are called in a leadership position, incredible leaders, and they are probably the last person that you would think in that position. Do you think that leadership can really be learned? Can you learn to be a leader?

Diane Lennard: Yes, yes, yes. I definitely think it can be taught. So there are two references that come to mind when you talk about this. One is a wonderful article, it's a short article in Harvard Business Review called “Leadership is a Conversation”. And I love that approach.

There's another wonderful book “Leadership Can Be Taught”. It tracks a professor from the Harvard the Kennedy School of Public Service, which is part of Harvard on how he works with leaders. So those two things really had an impact on my thinking about leadership being taught.

And also I audited a wonderful class at NYU Stern School of Business called “Leadership”. This professor, and his name is Kablas Warren, professor Klablas Warren. He has a cab's model of leadership and it's three E's. The first E is envision, the second is engage, which is really about communication. And the third E is empower.

First you have the vision, then you communicate it, and then you make sure it gets done. His course is very interesting cuz he looks at the biography of leaders who you wouldn't expect to be leaders. What happened early in their lives that got them to the point of being a leader in the time that they led? Because it's often in context, you know, the time, the country.

And he, he goes through biography after biography and it's absolutely fascinating. So these different readings have taught me that it is a skillset that can be taught.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think these days there seem to be such a shortage of strong leadership in the world?

Diane Lennard: I'd have to really think about that. I don't know the answer to that. What do you, what do you think?

Stephen Matini: It's interesting because when I ask this question, when I ask people, who would you say is a good leader? Oftentimes people stay quiet. Sometimes people would point out amazing leaders of the past, but very, very rarely people point out someone that is a leader right now.

First of all, it's a reality that changes really fast. So I think it would really challenge any leader, anyone, to keep up with this exponential variety of things. You know, it just takes a tweet of someone to change completely direction. I think it's really difficult.

One of the questions that I received from employees all the time, we do not know where we are going and we are upset because they don't tell us. I truly believe it's so much harder now to be a leader than maybe it was in the past.

Diane Lennard: I definitely agree with you because, and I think technology is a big part of that. So part of training for leadership necessarily involves flexibility and adapting to change and paying attention to change.

That's actually a big part of this teaching philosophy of leadership can be taught, is really almost looking down at the situation and seeing what is the context, what is going on, where is this? And really getting a view, a large macro view in order to be able to implement difficult change.

So change is difficult and good leaders can see it and manage it. I think you, you hit it, that that feels really right to me. This morning I noticed a headline of an article about this particular woman (Mira Murati) who created ChatGPT, which is an AI tool and she's now the leader of AI because she created it. So it's not that she's leading everything, but she's leading that.

And so let's say a leader of a corporation would have to be able to manage that and many, many other changes, leaders have to adjust to many, many changes. I mean, look what happened after Covid, now work is hybrid and that change of having some people come to work and some people not come to work, it's hugely different than it was a couple of years ago. So managing change is, is key.

Stephen Matini: And to be a leader, as you say, that is capable of seeing at the larger picture that it has a sensitivity to it, number of audiences, you know, stakeholders and issues is a very difficult thing to do.

Diane Lennard: I think responsible leadership, I believe that what it's referring to is being responsible to all stakeholders, as you just said, including the employees, the investors, the society at large. So that's a huge responsibility and it's really looking at a huge picture.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, what have you heard to be some of the biggest communication challenges of your clients?

Diane Lennard: Lack of confidence, who knows where it comes from? I mean, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, although a lot of coaching, communication coaching involves people's feelings about communicating.

A simple example is when people inflect their voice up like that and they don't wanna come to an ending. Often that's because they keep talking and talking and talking and talking and I'm gonna keep talking and hopefully I'll hit it as opposed to, here's my point, get it. Just going for it and standing behind it, having conviction in it.

And also standing in front of people because often people feel judged and evaluated and I'm not good enough. And all of these negative talk that has nothing to do with the message. So for me, getting people out of their heads and focused on the message, landing on the other person, it's really about the other person. That's a change because people think public speaking is about themselves. No, it's really about how effective they are with their audience.

Stephen Matini: If I don't feel confident, what would it be the very first step that I could take?

Diane Lennard: My particular approach to that is being behaviorally oriented. So thinking about what are you doing with your word choice? What are you doing with your body language and what are you doing with your voice?

So rather than think, I wanna sound confident, what is your pace? Are you taking pauses? People don't know what to do with their hands, but if they're in conversation, their hands will move naturally.

So rather than focus on the impression people have of themselves or others have of them, I focus on very specific behaviors and we work one at a time. Usually there's one turnkey. So for instance, if they slow down and this happens a lot, then their body language works, they're emphatic, or if they're conversational, their pitch changes and they're not monotone. So there are, there are certain things that are most important and they become the practice priorities.

Stephen Matini: You strike me as someone definitely very confident. Have you always been confident?

Diane Lennard: ? I'm not always confident. I'll confide in you. When people ask me to give a talk, I won't. I don't like giving, I'm not an introvert at all because I really learn from talking. I'm not an egomaniac where I have to be seen and I have to be in front. I'm much more of a director. I like to organize things. I love a conversation like we're having. I think I'm confident in my message. Communication is extremely important, but it's about the message.

Stephen Matini: I'm exactly the same way. I don't, I don't like to be the center stage, but I love people, I love conversations and I love when you say the message. I express that concept by saying, if you have something dear to you, focus on this gift and I want to give to you. And that probably makes me look a confident or effective. The minute that I start thinking about myself and people looking at me, that would be not fun, you know?

Diane Lennard: Exactly. Mm-hmm. exactly the same. So one of the ways I get people to focus out is the more you focus on the other person, the less you're thinking and judging yourself. And I love that. That's part of what I love about teaching. A hundred percent of my attention is on them. I am really not judging myself. I'm focused on accomplishing what I want them to learn in that particular class.

Stephen Matini: The name of the podcast is Pity Party Party over, which means “enough is enough”. Enough with this whole feeling awful, let's move on. When, if, you hit a rough spot and you feel in a moment that you are low for whatever the reason, is there anything specific you do to get out of the funk?

Diane Lennard: Yeah, I mean, and now you're making me have a little epiphany. I am a very action oriented person, so I spend very little time way down. I've been divorced twice. Those were way down times. But other than that, I don't spend a lot of time pitying because I believe in action. Yeah, I think that that's my strategy and that may be why I appear confident because once I make up my mind to do something, I do it.

And I'm pretty conscientious and maybe verging on obsessive compulsive. If I promise to do something, I'm gonna do it. But I am action oriented. I like to think, but I'd much rather take action. But I thoroughly enjoy the thinking. But my first impulse is to take an action. And I think that's from theater training because it's a very much about doing, you don't just think about a character, you be it.

Stephen Matini: I always say keep putting a foot in front of the other. Then eventually you're gonna get somewhere, you know? Yes. And I've always been that way and, and maybe, yes, I have to say that theater must have something to do with it because in theater you have to keep going and so you can stop, sorry!

Diane Lennard: There's this show called whose, a television show called, “Whose Line Is it Anyway”, and it's about improvisation. There's a technique called “yes and” so whatever's given to you, like if someone sort starts acting like a pink elephant, you can't say no, don't do that. You just have to go with that and move forward.

I never thought of it before, why I'm so action oriented. But I do think that theater may have contributed to it. I don't think it's the only thing. I do believe without being a psychologist that a lot of this starts from childhood and what you needed to do in your family dynamic. In my family, I had to pay a lot of attention. I had to observe and be really sensitive to what was going on in the moment. Nothing really harmful, but it was just in my best interest to do that.

I've had years and years and years of practice observing behavior. Even before I got way involved in theater, seeing things and listening to things is what I know how to do. Left to my devices, I had to take action. Like I, I learned that it was up to me. And so I became very action oriented.

We really are as a human species focused on survival first and foremost. And that that book, “Humanizing The Remote Experience” starts with that. What are our basic human needs? Our human needs are to feel safe and comfortable to experience understanding of what's around us and people. And the third is to feel a sense of belonging. We need those things and we do what it takes to make that happen.

Stephen Matini: If you had to say, what is the heart of our conversation, what would you say that is?

Diane Lennard: I would say it's about being human-centered. I know that's very non-specific, but I think everything we touched on addressed people. The focus of leadership, the focus of communication, it thinking about the human fir in the center. The center is the person.

I used to teach a course called Foundations of Business Coaching. So I was teaching potential leaders or emerging leaders, emerging managers, how to take a coaching approach, which is really working with people. And many of their cultures were not coaching oriented. They were much more command and control oriented.

Because people are people, if you take a coaching approach, let's say different than the the organizational culture, people will respond. They'll want to work with you. So I think even within a system that doesn't have the same approach, you can deal with people in a human centered way and it will work because people respond to similar things.

Stephen Matini: That is true.

Diane Lennard: And I, and I think it's important to do it even though it's different than the culture. And if it's that different, then it's maybe not a good place to be.

The more you pay attention to another person, the more they feel good about themselves and bottom line, what everybody wants is to be seen and to be heard. So I think it's about observing and listening that gives people what they want, it respects them and it treats people with dignity. And I think we need to do that. We need to do that.

Stephen Matini: Diane, thank you so much for these wonderful words. I think they're going to warm the hearts and the souls and the, the intuition of a lot of people.

Diane Lennard: Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure talking with you.

View Details

This episode explores the vitality and richness of a diverse and inclusive leadership approach to help the success of organizations.

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Wagner Denuzzo, a Latino HR leader specializing in the future of work, talent strategy, and leadership development.

Growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, Wagner moved to the United States at 22 with little means and big dreams. As a minority leader, Wagner's professional career has been committed to creating inclusive practices in organizations to foster effective leadership.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

diversity #inclusion #minority #wagnerdenuzzo #leadership #coaching #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You were born in São Paulo.

Wagner Denuzzo: Yes.

Stephen Matini: And then what happened? How did you get to the States?

Wagner Denuzzo: A convergence of things because I was finishing college. I was working during the day to make a little money, and I did college a night. In Brazil at that time in the early eighties, in mid eighties was important for you to know people to get somewhere.

It was important for you to belong to a social class that had connections to get you in. I didn't have that. I didn't have connections and I start feeling that although I felt I had some talent, I didn't have an opportunity for me to start my career in Brazil.

And I didn't wanna do clothing. I was actually manufacturing women clothing with a friend of mine that worked to get some money, but it's not something that I wanna do for life.

So I decided right after college to give the manufacturing, small manufacturing company to my partner and decided to come to United States. And actually it was my first flight ever. And the first flight I ever took was outside my country and had four stops, cause it was the cheapest fair. So between some polling Orlando, I had four stops in my first flight ever. I'm glad I wasn't afraid of flying. It would be really difficult if I did.

Stephen Matini: How old were you back then?

Wagner Denuzzo: 22

Stephen Matini: 22, God, so young

Wagner Denuzzo: And I came to tonight and I came to United States not knowing English. I didn't have English and I had $600 with me. So it was an immigrant story.

Then it is interesting because I'm very resourceful. I think living in Brazil, Brazilians are very resourceful. We've figured out how to do things with very little resources. Arriving in Florida, I immediately start getting to restaurant work, being a busboy, trying to learn English.

A lot of bullying, a lot of people making fun of you when you're an immigrant without the language. I went through all that ,and after a year I decided that Florida wasn't for me. New York could be. A friend of mine said, let's go to Florida, and we drove up in one of those cars that you help people drive their cars in, into Manhattan. And that's how we came. And was really interesting because it was very rough in New York.

I remember having $1 and thinking, I eat pizza or I smoke cigarettes. I chose cigarettes because they last longer . And that day I found two jobs as a dishwasher and a food runner. So I quickly understood that I had to act fast and there was nobody to ask for help.

New York was a real challenge because it was very difficult. However, little by little I started learning the language. One person that was so remarkable in my history is this Canadian waiter. After I became a waiter a few years, he said to me, Wagner, you have so much to offer.

Read this book because this book is about enhancing your vocabulary. Because being here, you're gonna need to enhance your vocabulary. It was so beautiful. He gave me, that was the first person that extended their hands and said, Hey, this is how you're gonna get through and be successful.And I will never forget him.

Stephen Matini: You started communication, right?

Wagner Denuzzo: Mm-Hmm. . Yes.

Stephen Matini: How, how did that come about?

Wagner Denuzzo: Communications is because I, I, I love the idea of advertising, marketing and radio and TV. I specialize on radio and TV. I love writing as well. So to me that's how I would make a living. But clearly in Brazil, communications, is something that's, you know, reserved for very few.

In New York actually. It really helped me to think broadly about how can I connect with people, you know, taking pictures and, and doing things that could enhance my experience here . I did that, but inevitably you have to do what you need to do to survive. So being in restaurants, I worked in restaurants for 10 years.

Patience was so incredibly important to me. I didn't have an office job until I was 29, 30. When I start volunteer, I volunteered for gay men's health crisis during the AIDS epidemic and then they gave me a job. That was my first real job in an office.

And to be honest, it was worth go through all the experiences. I learned how to connect with people from all over the world, at all levels of expertise, levels of social, economic backgrounds. And it is beautiful how you can create empathy towards everyone because you can see that everyone has value.

And to me this is a lifelong lesson to never discard anyone regardless where they are. Because the hidden figures, the famous hidden figures are our responsibility in HR to identify them. I really enjoyed that.

So my first job, 29, 30 years old. Then I start getting burned out because then I worked for St. Vincents Hospital was an incredible experience. I work as a social worker in St. Vincents Hospital, in the immigrant program, was undocumented immigrants with HIV and AIDS and we had 43 country represented, 340 patients. And they all need us to figure out care, housing, living and all the immigration problems that they had, we had to help them solve for them.

So was very enhancing in my life, the experience because you see how, how critical it is to have social systems that support people. The experience burned me out a little bit, to be honest. My, my boss actually said, hey, would you like to go to an employee assistance program? Somebody I know is hiring a counselor there. So I finished my social work degree as a clinical social worker and went to work for an employee assistance program. That's how I started my career in executive coaching, in training, in doing the, the work that I do today in HR.

Stephen Matini: Throughout all those years, those formative years, were there any person, any, any specific event? I mean you already touched some of them, but were there any specific person that somehow was really pivotal, you know, for the decision that you eventually made for your life?

Wagner Denuzzo: Well, several people. In, in sometimes I was thinking about this: many of the people that influenced me don't even know that they had an impact in my life. As an immigrant, I think you know this, you start becoming so hyper vigilant in hyper observant. You observe people at all times. You under, you try to understand how to adapt and assimilate new norms, cultural norms in the way of living. That's a survival mechanism.

Many people influenced me, but what's really important to be influenced by one person in my life that I always carry with me was a teacher in college. I grew up in a, in public school system in Brazil. I didn't learn that much in the public school system. And she was the first person who believed in me and said, hey, I need an assistant, could you help me? I like the way you read. Do you write? And I liked your ideas. Come support me.

I never forgot that because every time I have the imposter syndrome or those self-limiting beliefs, I go right back to the people who said, hey, now I believe in you. And she was the first one. And in fact, the funny thing is, last year I decided to contact her after 30 years and she loved that I contacted her and she remembered me of course. And we met in New York, it was a wonderful meeting because reconnecting to people who demand so, so much to you is was incredible. So she was one.

There is always others, but it's, it's mostly my partner. My husband's amazing, you know, he helped me understand that actually I can be myself and always have the unconditional love at home. That was important to me. I didn't have any other support here. As soon as I met him, it was an incredible feeling of support.

Stephen Matini: I love when you said as an immigrant you become, I would assume a very empathetic, you know, you, you can read situations very quickly. Do you think that empathy is something that can be taught?

Wagner Denuzzo: I do believe they can. A few years ago there was an article in the New York Times about a research that showed, and this is related to positive psychology, which I really believe in. An individual who put themselves out there to help others during crisis are much more likely to develop empathy and be more resilient themselves during their own difficult times.

And that was very interesting because not only you are helping others, but actually you are building capabilities for yourself to become resilient. And that's important. And that's how I think you start learning how to empathize with others.

The other one is when things happen to you, you know, when things happen to you, so many crisis that happen to people health wise, economically or there's an accident, there's so many things that happen in life that makes you step back and say, how can I cope with this?

And then you notice the people that try to help you, usually don't know how to help you because it's overwhelming to help somebody. So this empathy towards others develops by experience, but you have to be open to that. I know a lot of people who are not really open to being helped or open to helping others, because if people accept that they need help or that people accept that others need their help, they might get in touch with a lot of feelings that they're not ready to be in touch with.

And people try to protect themselves with mechanisms, what we call defensive mechanisms, right? We all do have them. But it's unfortunate that people don't try to go through the dark side of being a human being because it's worth it. It's more important to go through the experiences that enhance your abilities to be a human being fully than trying to hide and protect yourself from paying emotional pain, social pain or physical pain.

Stephen Matini: Acceptance, empathy, representation, everyone feeling included, which leads to things talked about these days, you know, diversity, inclusion. But oftentimes I had this sense that it's almost like a box to tick. A lot of organizations seem to have a hard time understanding how can this be of any advantage to me? Based on your tremendous experience, you had so many professional experiences, what would you say that it is the first step for an organization to build an environment that really feels inclusive?

Wagner Denuzzo: What I believe is the first step is acceptance. Leaders must accept the stage of maturity of the organizations and how far they have come in their efforts to create an inclusive environment.

What I see is that we have mastered the ability to narrate a good story. We have mastered the ability to talk about our values, our principles and our mission and our commitments. But those do not correlate to actions.

And I think the acceptance that actually just been committed to something in talking about something is just the first step. But the first step to actually make a change and create a more inclusive and more diverse organization is acceptance that actually we have failed in the last 20 years to bring to fruition our wish for a more inclusive organization.

I was thinking about this now we have data. People rely on data to assess the representation and all this. Representation is not influence, it is just representation. And how you create a culture that's more inclusive demands a lot of self-awareness. Because many organizations that I see, they use data insights to confirm their biases. And it's so easy to do that.

So I tell people, don't use technology to confirm your biases because then everybody settles back in their comfort zone and say, see we have representation, we have the opportunity, but people are not taking the opportunity. I don't think it's like that.

I think we need to stop putting programs in place, start thinking about taking chances on people who have potential, cause we all have potential, and start placing people.

Ginni Rometty, CEO for IBM, once said, even herself had some biases when we are doing talent reviews for example. And she noticed that in her environment sometimes the male mindset was that men had the experience, and could take a new role to challenge themselves. Women usually were said to be in need of further development for some reason.

There is a huge problem about self acceptance. If we accept ourselves at having negative biases towards others who don't look like us, I think we go much farther because then we can take the risk, provide support services for the person that we place instead of putting them outside on a program.

Because it's very easy right now to mask our biases by putting people in programs, oh put so and so in the Latino program, put so and so in the affirmative action program. It's not a program, you are delaying their advancement when you don't take a bet on them.

Stephen Matini: It seems to me there's an awful amount of white men in a powerful position. That seem not to be self-accepting, but somehow are very vocal in terms of telling other people what they should be doing. What would you say it is the first step towards self-acceptance?

Wagner Denuzzo: I have a lot of empathy for senior leaders today, because they're being asked to represent their companies publicly about all issues from political issues to social issues and economic issues. We're asking them to be empathic towards their own workforce because workforce is very diverse.

And I think one thing we need to realize is that the workforce has changed dramatically. They're distributed. We can't get away from that. They're distributed, they are dynamic, they wanted the next experience. Cause they know growth comes from a variety of experiences. So they're dynamic. You have three years to convince them that your company is the right one for them. And they are diverse and they're growing diversity just by the sheer number of people in the world. And they are digital. You have to be a digital leader if you wanna manage a digital workforce. And the last one I think is something that we are still struggling with: discerning.

Our employees are discerning, they're paying attention to the narratives, they're authentic, those they are not. They're paying attention to leaders who have a consistent approach to values-based principles. They're paying attention to companies on sustainability and the work life harmonization is very strong right now. It's not work life integrations, harmonization. They wanna have the control and autonomy over their life. And that's very important.

Senior leaders are dealing with all this and they have to respond to the needs of the board, shareholders, stakeholders and the public in general. They are in a really difficult spot.

I think, I know a lot of senior executives who truly believe in inclusion, truly, truly believe in the actions that they wanna take. But there are so many nuances because your organization, let's be real, might be led by a few senior men if you put it that way, but the organization's, the collective of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who need to be aligned to that strategy.

To me, senior executives have to be the most authentic today and really walk the talk. Make sure that they are looking at the he figures, make sure that give access to those people, to leadership, give them exposure and show their value. Leaders now have to do that, represent an advocate for diverse populations. And I think that's the first step.

Stephen Matini: Being authentic. How to be a genuine role model. You can ask to your people anything you want, but you have to be willing to provide the example. But for a lot of people, being authentic is a risk.

Wagner Denuzzo: Authenticity is one of those words that is becoming a buzzword, right? Everyone is talking about being authentic. The reality is human development demands, reflection, introspection, and a lot of self-knowledge because authenticity is not about behaving the way you want to behave anywhere in any settings.

Being authentic is really having this sense making skill, of understand the context you're in, the situation you're in, and responding accordingly, but always consistently according to your values, your principles and who you are. That's being authentic.

I see a lot of people that confuse authenticity with rigid behaviors that people say, I am who I am, I'm gonna behave how I always behave. That's a big mistake. That's somebody who is not aware of themselves, that's somebody who didn't have the introspection to think the authenticity is about integrity, values, principles, but how you communicate and how you engage with others have to be a confluence of understanding the context, listening to others and really being empathic to not cause harm.

Stephen Matini: If I said that emotional intelligence could be the main competence to become authentic, would that be a fair statement?

Wagner Denuzzo: It’s a fair statement. The only thing I would go a little farther because what we are seeing now, you also need to understand cognitive mastery. Emotion intelligence allows you to understand how you react to things. Cognitive mastery allows you to step back and respond appropriately to stimuli.

It is the Viktor Frankl’s famous quote. I love that quote. Between the stimuli and your response, there is a pause in that space. In that space is your chance to create your response, in your response is your growth and your freedom. I love that because that's exactly the essence of being authentic with a positive energy towards others in the environment.

Stephen Matini: There are so many leadership development programs, they use different approaches. You know, some of them, they're deeply imbued in emotional intelligence, others use different types of framework. You know, some of those frameworks could be a bit more normative, more prescriptive, you know, this is how you do in this situation, this is how you read a specific context problem, whatever that is. Based on all your experiences, is there any specific approach to leadership development that as of now you would recommend?

Wagner Denuzzo: I think there are some things that are timeless and some things that have to be very contextual. So for example, timeless things, vulnerability. We talk about this, but we haven't seen really coming to fruition at the highest level of leadership. When I was the head of leadership development for this global technology company was really important to start executive programs with the facilitator who was also a leader in the company to tell a story.

They actually change them emotionally or kind of radically in their perspective of the world. That creates a safety. And we talk about psychological safety. That creates a safety you can't create through frameworks. It has to be a vulnerable leader, allowing others to share the vulnerability and experience something that has an emotional, transformational impact. I find that incredibly important. So without that, it's very hard to do leadership development if it's not an experience, it has to be a an emotional, cognitive experience.

But, when you think about the contexts we are in today, I think that's very different. You have to use the timeless vulnerability and all the emotional intelligence perspective, but also you have to help leaders understand that distributed power for distributed teams is the way to go forward. They will only be successful if they allow this collective leadership, shared leadership, sharing their knowledge, sharing more their vulnerabilities and their expectations. It's about sharing and letting the teams do the work to come to fruition. So I think leadership development today is missing the opportunity to create situations and experiences where leaders can get in touch with themselves.

I recently did an executive program where I asked the leaders to do a breathing exercise for three minutes just for them to be present, to be in their own body, to focus without judging. Because right now, if you ask leaders, I think they're not having a great time, they don't know how to act forward. They are having imposter syndrome, feelings of imposter syndrome because it's hard to not know where to go. And I think they're not in touch with themselves because it's easier and it's less painful.

I urge leaders to start being more introspective and allow themselves to just breathe and be in their bodies, being the moment. Because if you're not in the moment, you're not listening. If you're not in the moment, you're not learning.

Stephen Matini: I like when you talked about shared leadership, you know, and you were talking about teams. Do you think that that could be the next step for really, leadership?

Wagner Denuzzo: I truly believe that that's the way we are going forward in organizations. I've been advising a lot of HR startups. These startups, they're most successful. They create a community. They don't create a workforce. They create a community where members are mutually accountable for each other and care for each other. And with that, naturally they have to start sharing power, sharing knowledge, and becoming less fearful of becoming irrelevant.

Senior leaders are afraid of becoming irrelevant because with the digital transformation of the last 10 years, people have access to a lot of data, a lot of information, a lot of everything. So leaders have to be comfortable and embrace that because that's the new, the new world that we are in.

So I do believe shared leadership because in my concept of shared leadership is about consciousness. Consciousness speaks to the idea that you need the mental power to understand where you are, sense make, understand who you are, who you're talking to. Having this consciousness allows you to be present. Then you have to be curious because I think being curious allows you to always learn from others before you start talking.

And you have to be curious about what's happening around the corner. You have to be curious about things that you never thought about, and you have to be courageous.

When I was in this global company, we had early career folks interviewing MD’s, managing directors who are very successful and one of the early career folks. As the leader, do you really have authority? How much authority do you have? And he just turned to him and said, I have as much authority as my courage allows me to have. So it is about courageous acts of sensible leaders who are actually really centered, aligned, and know that courageous acts will lead to different outcomes. And many times courageous leaders lead to very positive outcomes.

Stephen Matini: When I read the news, everything is polarized, everything is sensationalistic, trivialized, you know, reduced to cheap bites to eat without much thinking. So how do you keep your energy up? How do you keep your strength?

Wagner Denuzzo: Let's put it this way. From my clinical background, we use to say that depression might be the most logical and normal reaction to the reality of the world. Period. But what you need to understand is that those emotions you need to experience, but you cannot isolate them and they become bigger than they are.

What I advocate is for clarity. Clarity creates capacity for you to think, for you to grow, for you to cope but you need to be clear. Be clear about how you're feeling and what you are feeling is about in your organizations. Be clear about your strategy. Don't guess like people.

Now there's another term that's emerging, gas lighting. It is true when you're saying something to the public and internally you're saying something else. The way I approach life is you only have one job. Manage your energy, generate energy, manage positive energy in groups, in workshops and teams. Because I love what somebody said to me once, a good leader is a thermometer. You can get in the room and you see the temperature. A great leader is a thermostat. You set the temperature in the room, but you need to know yourself. You need to have the capability of doing that. So be clear about what your intentions. So clarity creates capacity.

And the last thing that I would say is having a realistic optimism is important because regardless what's happening in the world, you always can find nuggets of hope and aspirations that you have in inspirations everywhere.

You do need to start stepping back and feel comfortable being on your own because that's when you have the time to start assessing who you are. What are you feeling and how you can cope with this.

One thing that we say in mental health is when you feel depressed, one of the best things you can do is to socialize. I think it's more important for you to engage in something social, engaging in the flow of life, engaging something that takes you away from that moment. Because actually it is important for you to take action.

Stephen Matini: Maybe the first step it is to understand that it, it's okay, a good leader, you don't need to be perfect,

Wagner Denuzzo: Nothing is perfect. You might try to control the environment, you might try to control things around you. And that's a natural tendency that human beings have, especially leaders. Leaders have to have this sense of control over their environment, over their actions. But that's a false sense of self because it's not about control. It's about understanding and sensing, making sense of things.

Because I have so much information, so many data, and I always say focus on progress, not perfection. And I think now the world is asking leaders, you have to start focusing on progress even when it is not the most lucrative.

That's why sustainability now is coming to fruition. That's why people sometimes are even taking their salary a notch down because they know that there is pressure socially. We are much more aware of the situation of the world and there are some positive pockets. So that's why I still feel optimistic.

Stephen Matini: If you have to come up with the name, a noun, an adjective for this new paradigm, which one would you pick?

Wagner Denuzzo: . That's a good one. I will pick several, but I would say versatile because that does not deny who you are and does not deny your authenticity. But versatility allows you to understand different realities because to your your point, a new paradigm is because we are in a paradoxical world. And being versatile to look at one's reality and not deny it. Look at your own reality and not deny it and accept multiple realities being part of your ecosystem. That's incredibly important.

Stephen Matini: Do you think you would've gotten to this mindset if you hadn't not been Latino? If you hadn't been part of a minority community, do you think you would've gotten to the same point?

Wagner Denuzzo: No, I'm clear. Valda, being a member of the LGBTQ community, being a a Latino immigrant from a lower social club, as in Brazil, I had to observe, understand, and overcome so much. All those messages made me who I am today. So I don't have any regrets about the paths that I took. They're very hard. Some people say, oh, I wanna go back to my twenties. I don't.

I worked really hard on my twenties. It was really difficult, but it was worth it because I feel so much more integrated, because there is something in human development that I always tell people. Be aware that when you enter a different phase in your life, when you're more mature, some people get into despair, some people get into integrated moments.

There are moments that are good, there are moments that are bad. There are moments that you fail. There's moments that you succeed. So try to integrate yourself because you're gonna be in a better place. If you're always trying to be defense, defending against what's happening to you, you're gonna be creating a false self that will lead to despair. It's not worth it.

Stephen Matini: When you go through a rough moment for whatever the reason, is there anything specific you do to get out of it?

Wagner Denuzzo: Sometimes it's important for me to be with the feeling, but I play a beautiful song. Sometimes it's just sitting with the feeling. But having something that creates a beauty in that moment.

But I think also walking in nature, allowing yourself just to breathe, observe a bird. The little things in life can take you out of your self-rumination and your self-absorption. It's very easy to be self-absorbed these days. I think the best trick is to get to a place where you can get out of yourself a little bit.

One thing that we didn't talk about, but it's so essential today for all of us, is being non-judgmental. When you feel you're reacting too quickly because there are triggers, right? People trigger you all the time. But you have to suspend judgment because you don't know exactly what the reality of the other is. It's so hard to step into a space where you don't have preconceived notions of how you're gonna respond to something.

Cause the moment you start judging, you start projecting others things that you accept on yourself. And that's where it is to do. Imagine the interactions, five generations in the workforce, how leaders can manage the cultural norms that lead to positive psychological safety? It's very hard, but I think starting with being non-judgmental improves the culture tremendously.

Somebody that I really admire, Hitendra Wadhwa, he's a professor at the MBA School in Columbia University in New York, and I love his approach because he's one of the first leaders. He was at MaKinsey. He moved out of MaKinsey and he start growing this amazing theory that inner knowledge and inner confidence come to fruition as an outward success.

And he talks about the energies, talks about love, energy, the growth energy, the self-actualization energies. And he's been very successful in transcending the business dialogue into a more meaningful dialogue. So he's been very successful in bridging the business and the self-knowledge and the human-centered leadership that we talk about. And I love that, you know, not many people are able to do that.

Stephen Matini: We talked about many different things, all of them are so important. Is there anything that you would like our listeners to know?

Wagner Denuzzo: The most critical thing to do is to nurture your leadership skills. In today's world and in the future, I predict the organizations are gonna rely on collective leadership, shared leadership, all members of the organization have to nurture those skills because you're gonna be in cross-functional teams.

You're gonna be working in the no hierarchical environment, most likely agile teams are self-managed. So I'm advocating for leadership skills being developed as soon as you enter the workforce.

I'm writing a book right now. Maybe it's gonna be ready by next year. It's called the Lead From Start. It's the idea that you are in charge of your success if you focus on leadership skills because it's the most important skills that you can have.

Stephen Matini: Wagner, you are so wise, you are so experienced. Thank you so much for the time you've giving me. I really, I really enjoyed this.

Wagner Denuzzo: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

View Details

Is it possible to be competitive and sustainable? Can leaders meet the needs of investors, employees, customers, and the environment?

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Beate Klingenberg, Professor of Sustainability and Supply Chain Management at FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management in Germany.

Professor Klingenberg’s professional interests combine two needs often viewed as antagonists in business: a short-term focus on efficient operations that meet quarterly quotas and a long-term sustainable strategy addressing the interests of all stakeholders.

For Professor Klingenberg, a sustainable mindset combines systems thinking, ecological worldview, and emotional intelligence to develop leaders capable of driving organizations into the future.

Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/eSZZMb34

Podbean - https://pitypartyover.podbean.com/

Spotify - https://lnkd.in/d7bqfSnM

Stitcher - https://lnkd.in/d6qzxMZp

Podchaser - https://lnkd.in/dUsxUQPQ

Amazon Music - https://lnkd.in/eMMkfa4Z

Subscribe to Pity Party Over - https://lnkd.in/dMDJRsa8

Sign up for a complimentary Live Session: https://lnkd.in/eKsYi_6P

Managerial & Leadership Development - https://www.alygn.company/

Contact Stephen - stephen.matini@alygn.company

Connect with Stephen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmatini/

Sustainability Mindset Indicator by Isabel Rimanoczy and Beate Klingenberg

https://smindicator.com/

sustainable #mindset #change #beateklingenberg #isabelrimanoczy #leadership #coaching #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So, how is life in Germany?

Beate Klingenberg: How is life in Germany? A little bit too busy, which I know is a running theme for me, but, and part of it is myself because I never say no when something interesting comes my way.

Besides, I'm also, I'm always, always acknowledging that in comparison to my previous always busy life as an academic, I also have a startup. And it is really taking a lot of time by now, and it's all exciting. It's all there is so much new, new experience and new things to think about, but it, the result is basically that all what I do is work.

Stephen Matini: Is your life now that different compared to your life in Italy when you lived in Florence or in the US?

Beate Klingenberg: It's different because the, the circumstances around me are different. I think if I compare first to Italy, simply the German-ish lifestyle is, is a little bit more orderly, I would say.

Stephen Matini: No way. Who would've thought ?

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah. I mean, surprise, . I'm actually missing my chit-chats going to the mad car or when I would go to my groceries on Saturdays or just going to a cafe where people know me, where you talk.

And I haven't made those kind of connections here yet. A, because it takes time. I know at the Marcato Centrale, it took me probably between two and three years before the, the people were willing to talk to me because initially they just thought, well, yet another stranger, she'll be here for a month and then she'll be gone again.

So they didn't put a lot of effort in creating a relationship. And it's the same here. Of course, even there, there is an open market twice a week where I go and I try to go to the same places, but it will take forever before they know me.

And then if I compare to the us, the US has this largeness to it, because a, you have to do everything by car and the country. I mean, you've lived there. The country is just vast in comparison. And so everything is a little, yeah, is, is bigger.

I think my lifestyle there was different in a sense that I, I was driving around with a car a lot, but I was definitely, and this is the surprising thing, but it, it's a little bit because I don't have a car. I think I was more in nature when I lived in the US to go for hikes.

I haven't established routines here in where I'm now in Germany, because I live in, in the middle of a big city. I have a big park, right ten minutes from me, which is nice. But to really go into woods and hike for three, four hours, I have done maybe two or three times in the last year because I have to train, take a train to get out somewhere, and you can't reach all parts easily with public transportation. I'm happy that I don't have a car anymore, but my nature connection has been reduced since I'm in Germany.

In Italy, it was also easier because Florence particular is a city where you can do a lot of hikes even within the city, and then you get out into the hills. Connection to nature is important for me. So maybe that contributes also to this feeling that I, I feel a little sterile where I am.

Stephen Matini: The word sustainability is a word that, even in the past when you and I talked, comes up a lot. That's a really important word to you. What does sustainability mean in Germany versus the U.S. versus Italy? How does it manifest differently?

Beate Klingenberg: First of all, the word for sustainability in, in Germany has a different connotation, but it's, it's more something that means to be, to do something very long lasting, to do something that is, that is reaching into the future.

And in terms of em, embedment in society, you hear many more people talking about sustainability in, in Germany than in the U.S. particularly in the U.S. And I just have to walk out of my house where there is a little area for shopping at the street, and there is a shop where you can buy things without you bring your own containers so you can buy pasta and, and all sorts of other things, dry goods in your own containers.

Then there is another shop that is called the, the rescue market, where they sell off overproduction or food that is already beyond their, their official edibility. And it's, but it's still good and obviously for very low prices.

So you can see just with these two examples that you have a lot of solutions that are being offered and people are very conscious about climate change and talking about alternative transportation. The reason why I don't have a car is, is for me personally, because I don't want to have one.

In fact, also right outside of my building is a parking lot where there are car sharing cars. I haven't tried the system out yet, but technically if I need one, I can make a reservation and, and hop on a car.

In Italy. I think being in Europe also, there is a good understanding for sustainability and it manifests itself in, in different ways. Maybe people talk a little bit less about it as in Germany, but I remember this idea that in supermarkets or in markets, you only have the, the plastic bags for the fruit out of biodegradable plastics. It's a huge step forward.

In Germany, I think it's again, this the German word would be grundsätzlichkeit (principle), this fundamentalism that people always want to have these deep discussions and it's easier to move forward and to do something, I think in Italy because people just do it.

Stephen Matini: Do you remember the first time that the word sustainability entered your life?

Beate Klingenberg: I would think probably towards the turn of the century, because prior to that, at least what I recognized is more that we talked about pollution, environmental protection, and that of course goes back into the 1970s that those discussions were there for even into the 1960s for the longest time.

But this more overarching idea of sustainability, which doesn't only include looking out for the environment, but it has a strong aspect of social justice in there with a recognition that if we're not fair to each other, we will never be able to protect also the environment because poor people simply don't have, if I make it quite simple, they don't have the time to think about, is this good that I use this thing in plastic or, or not, because their life is simply just about the basics.

The concept of sustainability is really more overarching, and I think the first conference I went to that literally had the topic, sustainability must have been around the beginning of the century, doesn't mean that it didn't exist before, but that was about, so a little bit more than 20 years ago that entered my life.

Stephen Matini: When people hear the word sustainable, it means different things to different people, and often times evokes scenarios of climate change, the whole environmental issue and such and such. What I love about your background is the fact that you focus on operations, you focus on supply chain and those reasoning, those area often times are about optimizing, it's about saving money, it's about how to be more profitable. So how do you combine based on your experience and sustainability with areas such as operations and supply chain?

Beate Klingenberg: If I look at the, the consumption sector, we're basically flooded with products to make that really more sustainable in the sense that we look more for the resources of the planet that we use for these products, we look at if there is a circularity that we, these this materials that are being used come back into the productive cycle.

We go to the basics. How can I make a, a container for water more sustainable? Only when I ask myself from the very beginning, what is this product actually going to be? How am I going to design it? How am I going to produce it, and how much can I think of the, here's this, I know plastic is always an easy example, but what happens to this plastic bottle when it's finished?

If we start at that early stage, there is a concept that is called cradle to cradle means the cradle is the, the moment when a product is even conceived, not even produced yet, but the product idea that's already when we should start thinking.

It's like, what will happen to this product when the consumer doesn't use it anymore? And then the question, do we even need this product that should even come before? Which of course here I'm being a little radical because I I really think we have way too many products, but that's let's not go there.

But for me, the practical thinking is like we're producing so many things, that's where we need to start. What is this product, what it is supposed to be, and how can I create it that it is the least impactful and uses the least resources and still fulfills the need that the potential client wants to have fulfilled.

Stephen Matini: In your opinion, what could be for an organization that decides to be more sustainable, the first step in that direction?

Beate Klingenberg: A profound reflection of their values. When I say profound, really to the deepest sense of looking at humanity and asking, what is this product for? What does it serve?

And I'm going to refer to a concept that I am encountered a couple of years ago, which is called the sustainability mindset. This has been developed by a researcher whom I know by now very well, Isabel Rimanoczy, and she developed it based on talking with business leaders that were by themselves without stakeholder pressure, but just out of their own interest turning their organizations to be more sustainable.

And then the interesting thing, and this was very, very insightful for me coming from this practical operations and supply chain discipline, is that yes, there is a piece to it that in this concept of the mindset is called the ecological worldview.

So you have to understand all these ecological consequences, but then there is a big component that is called systems thinking, which in engineering disciplines is not a difficult thing because sys engineers are trained to think in systems, but business people often are not.

Two components that when I heard about it for the first time, surprised me, and one is emotional intelligence and the other one is spiritual intelligence. And at the beginning I was thinking it's like, yeah, okay, maybe nice to have, but when I say profound over the years, I, I really came to realize there is big need for exactly that, this understanding and not emotional intelligence in the sense of Daniel Goleman who wrote a lot about it, although his, his work is very important, but more in the sense of understanding how my emotions actually impact my decisions towards sustainability.

And the spiritual intelligence is of course a piece that is very personal. Everybody can develop their own spirituality and their own sense of it, and for one person it will be rooted in a certain religion, and for another person, it's simply meditation and, and concentrating on the self. There are, there are many, many variations, but that is important for me today to ask this question, what is the real value of what I'm doing?

Of course, that is a type of change for organizations that is really deep or do we want to be, how do we want to be part of this productive cycle of our economy? What I've learned also really working also for myself on this mindset is that we humans always talk about we are human and there is nature and we separate the two to a certain extent that it's nature against us or we against nature. And I think that's profoundly incorrect because we are nothing else than a species on this planet.

We're not better or worse than the amp that crawls around on the floor looking for for food. We just developed a different level of intelligence that unfortunately allows us to destroy, I, I'm not familiar, I wouldn't say there, there doesn't exist one, but I'm not familiar with any other species on the planet that does that, that purposefully removes resources and uses them for something and then you can't reuse them again because the, the resources on the planet are not infinite. Eventually they're gone.

So this profound recognition that we are just a little piece in a system. We are not the controllers, we are just a piece. And that makes a difference in, I would think, how you look at how you consume things, how you live your life. Nothing in this concept of the mindset is normative. Nobody says, you must do this, you must think like that. But there is, yeah, this deep sense of being connected to our natural environment because we are simply a part of it and that that changes perspectives tremendously.

Stephen Matini: To me, the ability of adopting a sustainable mindset probably is a transition from being a manager to being a leader, because you talk about values, you're talking about having a, a vision, you're talking about an organization that has a soul.

One of the hardest bump that I see people going through is when they understand that operations is not enough, you know, to have an eye on this quarter, being able to meet the number is not necessarily the only strategic thing that you need to do.

You really need to have a much larger perspective or you won't be able to survive in this competitive marketplace with things changing all the time. Why should I give any thought to what you just mentioned, all these important elements? Is just that it is a strategic, it is a strategic thing to do.

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah, definitely. It, it's of course if you read the quarterly reports of firms, you, you think, yeah, okay, sustainability, we do a little bit of ESG reporting, it's all fine. We try to reduce our carbon footprint, but it's not enough.

Prerequisite is a realization that the impact humans have on the planet is unbalancing to the way we are living at the moment. What we're doing right now is not, it's not sustainable for the next a hundred years. A lot of things will change and they're already changing. I'm a manager or I'm a leader, I develop a vision that is more systemic and that is more looking into these many, many different aspects that a true sustainable mindset requires.

And it's a journey. It's not something that happens in one step. In the theory of the (sustainable) mindset, there are 12 principles, but even if we go beyond the, the structure, I regularly go back depending on things that happen to me on a daily life, and I question myself like, is is this consistent with what I really want to be to put the focus? First of all, what do I want to be before saying what is it that I want to do?

Stephen Matini: It's like we're going through a paradigm shift in the way we approach management. There was such a focus on task that eventually shifted with human relations on people. And now we are talking more about really the context. How did you come up with the idea of the assessment, the sustainability mindset indicator?

Beate Klingenberg: I do agree paradigm shift is exactly the right the right word. The lady that I mentioned, Isabel Rimanoczy that developed the sustainability mindset as a framework, she approached me about two and a half years ago. We had met on conferences and she asked me that she would like to develop something that we can actually assess where a person's mindset is.

And she had already thought a little bit about how to do it in terms of a type of questionnaire, like other personality assessment tools exist. She's a psychologist, so she's also very familiar with these kind of frameworks. But we try to come up with phrases and with statements that allow to connect to the 12 principles that I mentioned that so basically we, we have for each of the 12 principles, three sets of statements where you can decide if a statement represents you or not. And why three, because we also try to assess the emotional as well as the cognitive and the behavioral aspect of a principle.

Who doesn't know about air pollution or pollutions through through industrial agriculture. It's just something we read about, but knowing about it doesn't necessarily mean that we do something about it. It seems like people only start to become active if they also engage their emotions, but if we assess these three for each of the principles, we get a snapshot, or it's the mapping of the place where you are on your journey towards a mindset.

Based on these questions we developed, of course there is an algorithm behind it, but you get a, a report, you get a personal report that guides you if you want to try it, to proceed on this journey. Nothing is normative, so also you don't get a score. It's not like, wow, you have 90 out of a 100, because that's not, that's not productive in that context because we want to have a paradigm shift and we want to guide people in this paradigm shift if they're willing to, to take that journey.

The report is about thirty pages, so it's an enormous amount of material. There are some graphs that show you where, which aspects are less developed than others. So you can first focus on that part. You can jump back and forth in the report and see what speaks to you at a certain phase in your life and what you want to work on.

And around that we developed training programs. We started with training programs for educators because originally we thought that the assessment tool would be very useful in the development of leaders in the, in the academic context in universities. And now we're reaching out towards the coaching community because we think that there's also a huge interest in coaches to learn how they can help their clients in turn to develop such a mindset and to become leaders, as you said, yourself, leaders towards sustainability.

Stephen Matini: If someone starts gaining a greater awareness about being a sustainable, what would you say that would be some of the practical benefits on a personal and a professional level? What would I see?

Beate Klingenberg: At the end there is much more satisfaction with what you're actually doing. You're not just going somewhere, working your eight hours, and at the end of the day, you're coming home, you're happy about your paycheck.

If I go back to what I said before, this understanding of the connectedness of us with our natural environment and us as people, if, if I can go to work and I can say what I did today is actually meaningful, not only in the sense that I produced something somebody else can buy or I offered a service somebody needed, but that it connected to the, to the essence what we are to the human side of us, it will be much more satisfactory to be more the person instead of just being the hamster in in the wheel.

Stephen Matini: I had a big question for you. Well, it's big and it's not. What do you hope to leave behind with your work?

Beate Klingenberg: It doesn't matter that my name or I am attached to something, but it’s ... I think it would be a very good feeling for me simply to know that something has gotten into motion that people start to think differently.

I'll give you an example. I actually used the sustainability mindset principles as well as the indicator in the class in the fall semester. The students used the indicator, so I knew a little bit what the group looks like as a total. I did certain exercises, interventions, discussions with them, and at the end they wrote reflective essays.

And in the reflective essays I could read that I've actually reached some of them. Some of them started to state as like, I'm after this class, I'm looking at my studies in a different way. I'm looking at my world in a different way. I'm starting to question my own behaviors. I'm starting to listen more to myself, various aspects where just feels, I guess something was set into motion that makes me, I feel, I feel glad for that person that I was able to trigger something.

Stephen Matini: That feeling you are describing, I describe it as the gentle reminder, that awareness, that feeling that I will not be forever. I want to enjoy it as much as possible, this whole path, as long as it will be, and hopefully is going to benefit people, they're gonna stay here longer that I do.

It's not something that makes me feel sad, but it's nice. It's a warning of using my time in a way that is mindful, is productive, you know, not just doing, doing, doing, but also being and allowing other people to beat someone of value.

You are truly one of those few people that I know that have had the courage to change. When you think about hard moments in your life, when you felt stuck, you know, in a rut, were there anything that you specifically did to get out of, of being trapped there?

Beate Klingenberg: That's not an easy question to answer, because sometimes the process wasn't entirely conscious from being in a situation that was really awful to suddenly being able to reach out and, and do something.

Quite a few years ago, I, I would think at least 12, 13, 14 years ago, two colleagues of the university in the U.S. were worked convinced me to go rock climbing with them. I was very athletic at the time, so they said, oh, you can do that. We went once into a climbing center where there was just a, a wall, like 10 meters.

And I actually, I thought, this is interesting because you have to be a little technical. You have to be a little strategic, and it's entirely satisfactory if you're up there. The only part I didn't like is that I had to get down again because I actually am, I don't like heights.

So they took me out after that on a real rock, and they had organized a guide. They were experienced climbers, but they, they said, okay, we want somebody else with us. What they didn't tell me is that the climb they had prepared for me to do was hundred meters .

They just let me start and they said, anytime you don't feel like it, we can go back down. And eventually we came to a point, there were a lot of trees, so it was just straight up, absolutely straight up. I didn't really see what was happening. I was like, okay, we're going up. We're going up. And then I had to move myself around the corner of the rock, and it was suddenly in the open. And then it was a very difficult move I had to make. It was a very high grab, and then I had to pull myself up and I didn't make it.

The guide was ahead of me and my two colleagues were under me, and they said, well, we can go down, but it's going to be difficult at this stage. And then the guy had said, okay, let you, you sit in this harness and you said, let dangle just for a while, don't ... relax your muscles. So I was dangling in my seat, some probably 60, 70 meters above ground. And then I said, okay, I'll try it again.

And I did, and it worked and my colleagues later said, they were absolutely convinced that we had to go down at this stage. They were so amazed that I got my strengths together in a way and pull myself out, literally speaking. And I think, although this is not a very precise answer to your question, that's what it is. At some point, there is a collection of energy and, and willingness inside me that say, okay, this has to stop, or I have to do something.

It was this suddenly listening to myself and realizing somewhere inside myself, there is the strength to do it. And it's not that I necessarily think specifically, oh, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? But I let things flow. And that's very often when that moment happens where I can then say, okay, now, now there is this piece of strength I should add to that, that I did a lot of martial arts in my life, so I know about the chi, about the center of your energy. And then it's suddenly theres, then it's suddenly ready and it will not be easy, but you say, okay, now I can do the next step and pull myself out.

Stephen Matini: And maybe to find the strength, as you said, you need to dangle a little bit ...

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah. Yes. There needs to, there needs to be, I mean, the dangling was entirely scary. I have to be very, very very honest. It's, even when I talk about it, I get sweaty hands. It was a scary moment, and I said, oh, now we have to go down all of that, so I better, I better try to get me out of this situation.

The recognition that something is happening to yourself that is really, really not good for you, even if it's difficult to try to change it, that at the end you know it will be better. Or it's like peeling layers of stuck-ness away from you, and with every little layer you get out of the energy increases, of course.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like the people that listen to this conversation to take away?

Beate Klingenberg: I think specifically when you asked about change and how to help yourself in difficult situations, then I think it's the suggestion to trust yourself that it's possible to find the energy inside yourself, and it will take time potentially to find it particular if you're not used to it.

I'm thinking again, of these aspects of spirituality in the sustainability mindset. It's really that, it's like asking yourself, who am I? This being aspect, trusting yourself that there is something inside your, your being that you can trigger if you want to change. And then being trustful that there are people around you that are most likely willing to help you in whichever way it takes, be it practical or just talking or psychological support, whatever it may be.

Stephen Matini: A sustainable pace, that changes from person to person. And I believe recognizing what your pace is is absolutely crucial.

Beate Klingenberg: Yes, you're absolutely right with that. A person who's slower in taking the steps to change should not feel discouraged because somebody else is capable of doing something similar in a much faster pace.

Stephen Matini: You are one of the most fabulous people that I know. Thank you so much for these amazing thoughts that I'm so sure are going to warm a lot of people. Thank you so much.

Beate Klingenberg: Thank you, Stephen. That's a big, big thing that you just said, .

View Details

Life circumstances may sometimes appear discouraging and far removed from our biggest goals and dreams. That’s when we might feel voiceless, unrepresented, and trapped in a loop that leaves us with no options.

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Kofi Douhadji, an American entrepreneur, executive coach, and airman in the United States Air Force.

Growing up in the village of Afagnan in Togo, Africa, Kofi has learned early on the power of an optimistic and curious mindset that intentionally focuses on opportunities rather than letting circumstances define who he is.

His latest memoir, Unbroken Optimist, is a testament to Kofi’s tenacious and grateful attitude toward life.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Unbroken Optimist by Kofi Douhadji

https://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-Optimist-Kofi-Douhadji/dp/1737624354

Contact Stephen Matini

Connect with Stephen Matini

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

optimism #change #unbrokenoptimist #kofidouhadji #leadership #executivecoaching #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: In your book, your dedication to your children, in which you say, “For the minute you start working for your freedom, that is the very minute you start losing it.”

Kofi Douhadji: Yes.

Stephen Matini: So why you wrote that?

Kofi Douhadji: I wrote that because I don't want my kids to take anything for granted. I want them to keep an eye on where we are coming from. And to know that success is like a rent. The minute you stop paying it, you're probably gonna go hit the streets. So I want them to, to know that it's a daily effort. You have to keep up your effort, you have to keep investing in yourself, growing, learning taking care of your responsibilities and everything. So I thought it was important for me to have my kids sink that in and know that their freedom is not a guarantee. Whenever they stop working for it, they're gonna lose it.

Stephen Matini: Do your kids have a, a sense of your upbringing?

Kofi Douhadji: They do. We talk about it a lot. I'm very big on conversation, so we talk a lot. And also we go beyond that and send them, for example, in 2022, they spent seven months in Togo where I grew up. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but for me, it was important for them to go and see, hey, where dad grew up. We are living a, a pretty decent life, they're living in their own rooms, they have their own beds, they eat whatever they feel like they want to eat on a daily basis, but I wanted them to go and see for themselves where I grew up. And that many people are not so fortunate as we are today. And I think even though my daughter is only 11, that brought her some perspective, I don't think she would've had otherwise.

Stephen Matini: And how do you feel now when you go back?

Kofi Douhadji: Personally, I haven't been back since then.

Stephen Matini: Oh, you haven't out?

Kofi Douhadji: I haven't. And I'm going in March. But from what I heard from my kids and my wife when they, they went back for several months, is that it makes you appreciate a lot more every single thing we have now here. And I know it's gonna be a very interesting experience for me going back

Stephen Matini: The circumstances, your experience were definitely super difficult. And somehow in those situations, without having anyone telling you how to do, you found the power of gratitude. Even in a difficult situation, you can always be grateful of many different things. And somehow that was your first paradigm shift.

Kofi Douhadji: Yes.

Stephen Matini: How did you do that by yourself, so young?

Kofi Douhadji: I would attribute the first trigger to providence, and I would attribute the second one to curiosity. I was very curious. There was this, there is this hospital that non-profit from Italy built in my village about 10 or 12 miles away from my, my village where we lived. I discovered this beautiful library in the hospital growing up, and there was one nun that came from Italy periodically to the hospital, her name is Clementine. I would spend time with her even though books I couldn't read when I was in high school, I will ask her to read and explain it to me. That reading books like that with her and having her explain certain concept to me, brought me to the realization that, hey, with controlling your mindset and being mindful and intentional about the things you wanna achieve, you can change your life. And I, I would attribute mindset shift to reading starting from that moment where I started reading through the library at the hospital, and also something in me that I can't describe that pushed me toward that place.

Stephen Matini: Other than Clementine, were there other people in your life early on that you considered to be influential that somehow have shaped the way you think?

Kofi Douhadji: I think there were, but again, when you grow up in a village where you know almost everyone in the village and people don't really have a futuristic vision, it's hard to have someone in your circle to look up to. When you are dreaming about stuff, people don't even encourage you to dream about. So I think most of the people that I consider that have shaped my life growing up are mentors met in the book. Like I like to refer to them. So some of those people, I met them in a book.

Stephen Matini: My life growing up was different than yours and in many ways was it was a different life. You know? However, there were a lot of parts of my life that I didn't like. And I remember pretty early on I learned how to escape in my head and books and games. There was, I think, something that I did in order to basically survive, you know? And I would really wonder what my life could be. And I would always say to myself, one day, I would have a different life, a very special life. So that curiosity for me came also as a form of how do you say it? Like escapism, you know, as a way to cope with very difficult situations.

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. I did have almost the same approach. You know, I would just go sit by myself on a farm under an orange tree, and just imagine things happening, a better life, an extraordinary life, and dream about it, visualize it, and just dwell on those feeling I would run following an airplane, flying over the village as fast as I can, as far as I could until it's nowhere to be seen un and then I'll stop, and then I'll just imagine myself being on that airplane one day. So I can relate to that es escapism, if you will.

Stephen Matini: If someone doesn't have that, doesn't have the ability either to escape or to focus on something positive or maybe doesn't have the innate curiosity, do you think that optimism can be learned?

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think anyone can learn to be more optimistic. And optimism is a mindset that can be developed with practice, just like any other skill. Some ways to do that I have worked for me is reframing negative thoughts when challenging situation happen, challenge negative thoughts, a more positive light, instead of saying, for example, I cannot do this, say, I haven't done this yet, I never done it before, but I can learn. And I think as human beings, our ability to learn and grow should be enough for us to be confident in ourselves.

For example, as an officer in the United States Air Force, I was recently put in a position myself where I took leadership of my first flight with people who are older than me, have more experience than me from a different career field leading a flight that operates in a different career field.

But instead of feeling overwhelmed, worrisome about what's going to happen, the way I process the information for myself is, wow, this is going to give me the opportunity to do something I've never done before.

So I started thinking, who can I reach out to to help me plan this out? What can I do to set myself up for success? When I start doing this, it's gonna help me become a better leader and give me more experience, therefore, I can lead better in the future. And instead of being worried and anxious, I was excited and thankful for the fact that I have this opportunity to serve people and grow along the way.

Also, practicing gratitude, starting each day with a grateful heart can be really helpful to growing a more optimistic outlook on things and on life in general. Take each day to reflect on what you have. Feel grateful. I call it my counting my blessing practice. Every morning I will take a piece of paper and I'll start writing all the things that I'm grateful for until I can no longer have a space on that sheet of paper. And then I'll start. Most of my days, I start them like that.

Surrounding yourself with positive people. Seek out people who have a positive outlook on life and support and encourage you. Being around them. Being around positive energy can be very contagious and help you develop a more optimistic outlook or mindset.

One last practice or approach that worked for me is focusing on solution, not problems. When facing challenges, try to focus on finding a solution rather than dwelling on the problem itself and how crushing and putting up a pity party for that problem instead of doing so.

When you focus on the problem, you increase your chances of finding a solution. I always tell my coaching client that it is not about the size of the control you have in life, but it's all about how much use you make of the little control you have that makes the difference.

Remember that developing, you know, a more optimistic outlook or any other skill takes time. Practice persistent and foremost, consistency. So when you engage on your journey to building a more optimistic perspective or mindset be patient with yourself, be gracious with yourself and understand that you are both a masterpiece and a work in progress. And be kind to yourself.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that are the things that kill optimism?

Kofi Douhadji: I will start with negative thinking and negative people. You can be around someone who is positive. If you don't accept yourself, accept the fact that you can to build that positive outlook on life, it's hard for you to become a positive person. So when you are around people who are always complaining, drowning, drowning your energy out of you that can kill optimism.

Not being able to make a difference between your needs and your wants can also kill optimism. Thinking, wow, I want, I need this, I need this, I need this. I always say that we are the captain of what needs. We decide beside the basic foundational needs for us to stay alive and healthy. Everything else, we decide what is a need or not.

With that knowledge, we have the power to design a life that is built on abundance in a sense that you are not more happy because you have more, but you are happy because you need less. And since we are the captain of our needs, we decide how much more we need. And that powerful ability for us to decide what we need makes life that much more enjoyable when we know, yes, there is more out there, but I'm going to stop here and enjoy what I have.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think so many people seem not to be the captains of their needs?

Kofi Douhadji: So many people fail to be the captain of their needs because they have society decide for them. They have other people define success for them. Success for you, Stephen might be different than what success is for me. So when we start comparing ourselves and wanting to be like other people, then we lose the ability to be the captain in command of our needs.

Stephen Matini: There are also a couple of things that I hear talking to people. One is probably fear. And fear is a term under which there's all kinds of different things, but fear often blocks people from moving forward. It could be the fear of losing a certain status, the fear of losing love. Choosing the right thing for you sometimes means to say bye to certain people, certain situations. And some people really struggle with it. If someone is still deeply attached to something, or someone, because of love or whatever habit, whatever that is, and somehow seems to have a hard time moving on, what would you say it is a first step?

Kofi Douhadji: Tell them they're gonna die.

Stephen Matini:

Kofi Douhadji: Tell them they're gonna die one day. And whether they want it or not, they like it or not, they're gonna be forced to lose everything, not just that one thing. And also tell them, the world is a place of abundance. There's a lot of everything. There's enough for all of us.

Losing something is just as important as gaining something. And you can choose not to, you know, dwell in the lost and go find something new. Or you can choose to dwell in the last and still face the fact that what you lost is gone. So which one is more helpful? Adding more pain to what is already a fact or being grateful it happened and move on.

So I think ultimately it's a choice. You can only change what you can control. And if you cannot control it, whether you embrace it, you change it, or you suffer for nothing.

Stephen Matini: Do you ever struggle with moving on?

Kofi Douhadji: I do. I do. I'm not gonna gonna shy away. We are human beings. Sometimes it's difficult whether it is a, a beloved one, whether it's a business you're working on, a project, a friend, something, a car. Sometimes it's difficult because you unconsciously build bounds with things with people. And sometime you don't realize until you lose them.

What works for me is, yes, I'm gonna die. It could be tomorrow. It could be in 10 years. It could, could be far in many, many years, but ultimately that is the only truth. I can for sure tell you for sure that's gonna happen in my life. With that being said, I'm going to lose everything. So losing some now is fine. Just move on and go get other things. There's so much more out there to explore. There's so much more out there to have. And sometimes you can only pick up more oranges when you drop all the rocks in your hands.

Stephen Matini: I express the same concept by saying, you need to shut some doors to open new ones.

Kofi Douhadji: Definitely.

Stephen Matini: I love the thought one day you're going to die, which maybe sounds very scary to a lot of people. And I'm not saying that I'm not scared of dying, but I have to say that as time goes by, as I'm aging like anyone else, I am becoming more and more sensitive to what you're saying, as somehow is just a gentle reminder of not wasting my time now, now is the most important thing, and I should try to make the best out of it. And often times that's a huge motivator for me to, to do stuff, you know, to contribute.

Kofi Douhadji: In my family we sit and we talk about death. We talk about losing someone we love. We have a conversation about it. We try to do that every weekend. People would disagree that young kids can have that conversation. But I'm from a culture where that is praised. Not only does it train the kids, if anything unfortunate happens, but it also give them perspective and help them build that sense of urgency.

It's not about the length of their life, but it's about the quality and the impact you can have on other people. Death is part of life. You can have the one without the other. And ignoring it or being in denial is not gonna change it whether we talk about it, yes, some people are superstitious, I am on certain aspect too. But disregarding something doesn't change. It's true nature. Yeah, I, I think considering that kind reminder for myself on a daily basis have helped me a lot with decreasing the amount of procrastination in my life, embracing a sense of urgency in everything I do.

Stephen Matini: Urgency is an important word for you.

Kofi Douhadji: Urgency is one of my favorite words in the entire whole dictionary for many, many reasons. You know, I attempted an artistic career, a music career back in Togo, which I failed to do. But during that process, writing songs and, and making music, there's this specific song I wrote, but I was waiting for it to be perfect.

I will go back to the studio and have my song recording engineer go back and change things over and over again. He was tired of me of the project, of everything, but hey, he's working for me so , he's gonna do what I wanna achieve.

So fast forward, I was in my car driving down to work one morning, and this song, this new song came on only to be shocked how similar the genre, the, the lyric. Everything was so similar that I myself could hardly believe if I put my song out that I didn't steal that person's idea.No one would believe it. So I never put that song out and that was my first reminder that you have to, to have a sense of urgency in life.

Fast forward, I met this great man, we served together in the Air Force. He's such a beautiful soul. When I was leaving for training last year, we were testing back and forth, hey bro, I need to see you before I leave. He'll be like, Kofe, stop it, you are coming back. You know, we can hang out when you, you get back.

I'm like, no, I just don't wanna see you. And the family share some hugs before I leave and I kept going back until he's like, fine coffee, let's meet Sunday. And we did that, spent time. And I can still to right now as I'm talking, feel how we squeezed each other. When we, we hugged the last time I was leaving, can you believe during my training, I found out he passed, he passed away.

It's always difficult when I talk about it always, every single time it's painful. But I'm happy and glad that we had that moment that I get to see him before I left, that I get to spend time with him. I can remember his face, his smile and everything. The smell of his hair when we hugged. That was a friend.

So a sense of urgency. We always think we have time, but we don't. We are running out of time every single minute. We are running out of time. And that's how I see it. I have a lot of things to do, a lot of ideas I wanna bring to life, but I'm running out of time. So I have to put a sense of urgency in that I wanna stop. I want to be present and listen. I wanna go tell someone, make it known to them that I appreciate them. I don't want to give anything to tomorrow because I might not see tomorrow

Stephen Matini: With the sense of urgency, you seem to be a person that does a ton of things. You accomplish it so much , so much. So how do you make everything happen? Where do you find the time?

Kofi Douhadji: For me, it all boils down to management, management of resources, time, the self family, your team, your hobbies. I think it all boils down to self-knowledge, self-management, self-leadership, and then combining all that to make sense.

I personally don't go with the work life balance mindset. I think of it more on a harmony perspective. Try to build harmony. If you take your favorite song, it has multiple instruments playing at the same time on multiple levels. Sometime the guitar is higher than the piano, sometime the voice takes the lead.

That's how, what approach I use with my life sometime by prioritizing and using sense of urgency, you know, which instrument you wanna bring to the lead and what you wanna turn down a little. And just giving it harmonies and building the music you love.

So for example, when I'm at work during my breaks, I take my guitar and I sit down and I play. While that allows me to decompress and break away from what I do, it gives me that space to distress and to relax and to recover.

So finding those little ways to make things happen will be determinant in being able to do things that people can perceive as you are doing a lot, but you are just being mindful with how you use your time.

When it come to the business side of the house though, I think something we look over a lot is teamwork. When you take my publishing company Flying Wings, I'm good at stealing the credit, but there's a team behind doing all the difficult stuff. If you are building a company that when you get sick or when you die cannot survive, then you are just, I mean, it's not meaningful in, in my opinion. So I'm building something that can outlive me. I'm building something that is not gonna stop when I'm gone. I want it to, to be here after I'm gone.

Yeah. When I'm here or I'm working as an officer in the United States Air Force and people think, how are you able to run a publishing, a whole publishing company? Yes, I don't, my team do and I just create time to be there with my team when they need me to provide the vision, the support, and create the resources they need to get the job done and build the network they need to support them. You might see me being up in front about Flying Wings as a publisher. That's the team. The team is what en enables me to make it happen.

Also, building processes, something that you can build and repeat. For example, I'm very present on social media. I used to think the number of followers doesn't matter, but I've changed my mind. It's very important how much people follow you on social media. You know, it's very important, but that's not the topic here. The topic is that when you can build processes, it helps manage time and resources better.

When I have time on the weekend, there are tools that I use to schedule my post throughout the day or the week. When I die ... I know I talk a lot about a lot about dying. When I die, my social media platforms will post at least three months before it stops because I have a process in place.

When I have time, I create content and schedule them out. So you might see me in my uniform doing military stuff. You'll be there with me and all of a sudden I'm posting on social media. So it’s, it's all about managing and building processes that are a sustainable,

Stephen Matini: A lot of people would love, or they dream of ... to have their own company, pursuing their dreams and what you just said is so important. Finding the right people, the right team. How do you select the right people?

Kofi Douhadji: It takes a lot of different things. For me, the most important thing is trust, integrity, and the willingness to fail. When I am interviewing my people, I'm prospecting to bring on the team. If you're trying to portray yourself to me as you know it all, you're strong, you're smart. You, you are talking to me about all your achievement. I will ask you about all your failures. I'm more interested in your failures.

Those people who have failed the a lot of time, but still have the drive to win, those are who I want on my team. I've started things multiple times. I've been beginner at multiple things. I want people who can have the same drive because when we fail, not if, when, when we fail, I want people who are going to remain motivated and thrilled to keep going. People who find the joy in the journey.

Stephen Matini: You have so many interests. Of all these interests, is there any of your activities that somehow give you the biggest pleasure?

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. I would say coaching my bread and butter where I find a lot of fulfillment. I work with junior leaders stepping into their first leadership positions to build confidence, develop their own personal toolbox that they can use to navigate their first leadership positions.

I also work with the seasoned and experienced leaders going to crisis or change in their organizations to gain clarity and build a roadmap that they can use to navigate the crisis or the change they're going through. Going from, oh my gosh, we are crashing, what are we gonna do, to actually next week? We need to do so and so, so that in two months this burning building here can be under control. When I see that happen, that's the most rewarding situation for me. So yeah, coaching is definitely where I find most of, of my pleasure.

Stephen Matini: There are so many thoughts and ideas about leadership.

Kofi Douhadji: Yes.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, what would you say that are the most important components to keep in mind about leadership development?

Kofi Douhadji: John C. Maxwell said, leadership is influence. You cannot influence people if you're not walking the talk. You cannot do that if you don't have integrity. I always tell my airmen that I, you have my trust, you don't need to earn it, but don't lose it.

I think the most important things is to start with self-leadership. Everyone wants to lead others, but most of the time we overlook the self leadership. It all start with the self knowing yourself, being able to lead yourself before you can lead others.

The most important second thing I could talk about when it comes to leadership, the best leaders are the best followers. The best leaders are able to switch into a followership position in a split of a second. They know they're serving, they know leadership is not a position, but it's influence.

The Air Force has helped me tremendously on multiple level, becoming a better person, a better leader. The force has invested in me than any other organization has ever invested in me. I think I became a better leader. I gained better tools thanks to the Air Force.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like those who will listen to this episode to know?

Kofi Douhadji: I would love everyone who would come across this episode of Pity Party Over to know that they are amazing. Whatever your dream is, I know you have what it takes to get it done. You are worthy and none of the situations currently going on in your life does not take or add to your worth. You are worthy and you will always be worthy. And don't let the situations define you. You define what you do.

Stephen Matini: That will bring a lot of warmth to a lot of people. Thank you, Kofi.

Kofi Douhadji: Thank you very much for the honor and the opportunity to share sometimes with you and your audience.

View Details

In our personal and professional lives, we all spend much time pondering problems, but focusing excessively on them may not help us overcome a challenge as quickly as we wish.

The guest for this episode of Pity Party Over is Dr. Lindsey Godwin, one of the most influential voices for appreciative inquiry, emotional intelligence, and experiential learning theory.

Whereas problem-solving focuses on deficits, appreciative inquiry is an approach to positive change that leverage strengths.

For Dr. Godwin, inquiring means paying attention to our thoughts, emotions, and bodily signals to make intentional choices on what is important to us.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I would like to know something about your upbringing, if there were any special people, events that somehow have shaped and contributed the most to where you are today?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I would say my upbringing and yeah, the people in my early life had a tremendous impact on who I am and how I see the world completely. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia, sort of rural Appalachia, West Virginia Buchanan, West Virginia, where sort of many generations of my family were from. So it's sort of a lot of roots there too. Right.

My grandparents were from there. My parents, you know, I was born in the same hospital my mom was , sort of all of that. Small, you know, small town sort of life where everybody knows everybody. So had a very sort of close-knit family where I had my, my grandparents were, both of my grandparents were sort of sets of, my grandparents were very active in my life. In fact my, my one grandparents were literally my next door neighbors.

So we had like dinner together, like a multi-generational dinner together every night. Which I realize now is not always, is not necessarily a typical normal thing in our modern world. And so I had a really sort of beautiful intergenerational upbringing. And part of that too, the closeness of our family and even the having my grandparent feel close.

I'm the oldest of four children, and so that also impacts, I think, my personality, right? The sort of the oldest child and all of that stuff is true. , all of that oldest child stuff, I think is totally true.

And I had two younger brothers and a younger sister, and my most immediate younger brother when he was three months old, he contracted infant botulism and through medical, different medical issues and actually some medical accidents at the hospital, some medical malpractice issues that happened at the hospital, when he was in the hospital recovering from his illness, he actually lo lost oxygen to his brain and, and different things.

And so he ended up being profoundly mentally and physically impaired. He basically was permanently sort of mentally three months old. And so, although his body continued to grow normally, his cognitive ability was stunted at, at three months of age.

And so he was non-verbal you know, couldn't feed or walk or talk. He basically communicated and interacted like a three month old so he could recognize voices and he would, you know, could laugh and, and and reacts again, much, much like you imagine like a three month old baby interacting. And so our whole family was really focused around his care and his needs. And so from a, I was three. I was three. I'm the oldest, right? And so he was three years younger than me.

And so, and then my other siblings are younger than him. And so our, our household really learned that taking care of other people is something that we just do inherently without asking. And sort of the idea of, you know, looking at, at the needs of other people around us, I think was something that we saw day in and day out.

And also the fragility of life, right? We saw that sort of day in and day out because he did have sort of fragile health. And in fact, he when I was, I was a senior in high school, so I was about 18 and he was 15. He had a massive seizure in his sleep and passed away at our, our house. So he al we always lived with us, right? And so even just the going through that right as a family and losing losing anybody is traumatic and, and such an impact on us. But I think that that all of that totally obviously had an impact on me.

Also growing up, my grandfather was a, a Methodist minister, two uncles and a cousin who are Methodist minister. So there was a lot of also sort of this idea of, you know, again, focused on taking care of others and how can we sort of be servant leaders in the world, I guess is really from both, literally in my household, you know, being so focused on being such a, a primary caregiver to somebody who had special needs to growing up in a family where service and sort of asking, you know, how, how can we help other people?

You know, my mother, my grandmother were teachers, my dad's a pharmacist. So there was a lot of , a lot of sort of service, service to the world. And so I think that I realized, I realized it then, but I definitely realized it now looking back how much that was an imprint on me in terms of A) believing that I can be of service first of all, right? So that self-efficacy belief of like i, I can be of service and of help in the world is hardwired in me, I guess, to where it's you know, I've seen in other situations.

There was also a unique optimism in my family where, you know, this, this is, it is in so many, it's a tragic story, right? What happened with my brother? And it could easily sort of rip a family apart, right? I mean, I saw that with other families. So, you know, leading to divorce, leading to all kinds of things. And if anything, it made our family stronger. Like I said, my grandparents, you know, lived right next door to us, were so involved in helping to, to raise us and stuff.

And so there was also, it might sound paradoxical in the face of something that really was quite tragic, was that there was a lot of optimism, and not, not optimism, but like he was magically going to be better, but optimism in the sense of we can still create a life of love and goodness and, and stuff. And so, so I think that those things really just were so hard. So yeah, not hardwired and lived day in and day out in my household.

And so when I find myself now being called into like education, higher education, and then my work with appreciative inquiry and sort of, you know, positive psychology and all of that, and working with organizations to try to help them be their best self, right, leverage their assets and stuff, I realized, you know, that that comes from a very primal place in me, if that makes sense.

Stephen Matini: This event made your whole family a family of service. How did you find out what was gonna be your specific way to be of service to people?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Oh, that's a great question. And I, being in this space where I saw you know, my, my brother had unique attributes, different than other people and stuff, but I also became very aware of my own abilities too, right? In the face of, of having such different abilities than my brother.

And so I was a really good student. I was a straight A student. I was valedictorian of my high school class. I always knew that I wanted to, I had a long, a long vision of myself going all the way in school. It was no question I was going to college. I was like, gonna get like higher ed degrees.

Again, back to remembering that I lived in this, in, in West Virginia, in this town where I would say the majority of my people that I graduated with, a lot of them were first generation to go to college, some of them, right?

Where I grew up in a, in a family where education was my, you know, my grandfathers both had higher degrees, which wasn't the norm in terms of the population that I was living in. And so education was a very, was a very valuable thing in our household as well. Cuz I think my parents also realized that that was the path to having options, right? To having different options in the world and, and things.

So I was this straight a student and knew that I wanted to go all the way, and I had a, I knew I wanted to get a PhD. I had no idea what I wanted to get a PhD in. That didn't matter to me. I was just like, I'm gonna get a PhD. And I had visions of being a professor.

I started off as a genetics major. Actually. I was gonna be a genetic counselor because that was part of my like, oh, I can help other families, I could help other families. And I have that sort of empathetic experience that I could bring to that. And, and maybe, maybe there is genetic things that could help, you know. So I was in this very sort of space with that.

So I went off to college and I was a declared genetics major, and then I took my first psychology class and I just like, it's like sometimes when you meet people and you just fall in love with them. Like, I, I took this psychology class and I was like, oh my God, this is like the missing piece of the puzzle. And for, and of course I love my professor, so I like fell in love with her. But I fell in love with the like, field of psychology and I was like, you mean I can understand human nature and I can understand how people react.

And so I fell in love with psychology. And then of course I, I went on and I took sociology classes. I fell in love with sociology. I just, so I ended up I ended up Stephen being a psychology, sociology double major with a biology minor . So I joked that I was like, I just like studying people and trying to understand them like at all levels from the like, cellular level to the interpersonal level to the societal level.

So I, I was sort of following my passion and my heart of like, this is interesting to me, this is it was like opening up, you know, it's like opening up your eyes and seeing new things when you're studying things you're in love with. And so again, I knew that I wanted to go on in education. I had no idea what, I had no idea , I wanted to do it.

I pressure, I was like, I knew I didn't wanna be a, a counselor actually, I did know that like, I again, knowing and seeing the, the weight of my own family, I was like, I don't know that I can hold that for other people day in and day out. So I actually knew I didn't wanna become a therapist, an individual therapist.

And so upon graduation I started, I was like, well, but I know I'm gonna get another degree, so what is it? It was just like, it was like not even a class, like, I'm gonna get another degree, but what will it be at? I have no idea.

And so I, I came across this program in conflict resolution at George Mason University, and it was like this wonderful intersection of, you know, the psychology and the sociology and even bio ..., you know, it was like all of these things. And so I like traipsed off to George Mason at what is now the, the, the Jimmy Carter School for Peace and Complex Studies at George Mason.

And still with this, I think it was like, I was still trying to figure out how can I help? I mean, it was still this calling of like, how am I understanding and adding to my toolbox and my sense of understanding people so that I could show up as a better catalyst or support for positive change, right? I mean, those weren't the words I was using, but I realized that's what I was trying to do.

Stephen Matini: I love that you studied people from different angles. What have you learned about people so far?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I think, and I, I, my husband and I joke about this, at the end of the day, I always say, I was like, you know, at the end of the day, we all wanna be loved and seen and heard. I was like, it's so, I was like all of this complexity that like, you know, we've studied and all this stuff. I was like, you know, at the end of the day, all people want is to be loved and seen and heard. Like that's what we want. We want to just be seen and heard. And, and fundamentally I think, you know, it does actually come down to wanting to be loved.

And so there is many, you know, master's degrees, a PhD, at the end of the day, I was like, it's actually pretty simple. What people want and need and what we're all trying to, I think, act out in different ways, whether that's in our family life, in our organizational life, it is when we see so many, you know, whether it's wrapped up as a communication challenge or a, or a, you know, it's whatever. It's like, well, what's going on?

Or do people feel like they are being seen and loved and heard often? Not often not. When we see sort of the symptoms of all of the, the strife and the things it often comes down to, not that solutions are, are necessarily that easy, but I think that is a huge thing that I've learned just about human that has sort of resonated with at people that I see and work with, is that at the end of the day, I think that we are human and what makes us human.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think we make us so complicated as humans?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: ? Oh my goodness, right? What a great question. If we knew the answer to that, Stephen, you and I would be millionaires, . I don't know. Maybe we're surprised that it could be that simple? My dear friend David Cooperrider always says, you know, that people, no organization was ever made to be a problem, right? Organizations are created to be solutions to things, right? They're created, whether it's a healthcare system or it's a, it's a service.

Organizations are, structures aren't created to be problems. They're created to be solutions. And I think sometimes we get overcomplicated and we forget that. I think we forget that, you know, a we've created all this, like we've created our, if our structures aren't working for us, guess what? We created those and we can change them, right? I mean, not that it's not gonna take time or be messy or there's, you know, there's not all of the things with change that we know in the sense of fear and loss that come with change that's so natural and normal.

But I think that we, we forget, we forget like we create these entities to be a solution and then we sort of edify them or you know, and we forget that we've created them and then we feel like they start creating us. Somehow we change our behavior to fit into the system versus realizing actually, you know, the system...

And we also I think are creatures of habit. I know I'm a creature of habit. I should just, maybe I should say the royal we, but me, I'm a creature of habit and many organizations and people I work with are creatures of habit. And so we also, I think get into our routines and we definitely, you know, there is comfort in our systems and stuff. And, and I understand right that, that there's then a sense of, of wanting to not change or keep sort of the status quo and all of the, like, this is how we've done it.

And so there's comfort in knowing that even though as we're seeing very increasingly rapidly now that our systems aren't getting us the results that we want anymore. Or in the ways that we do. And so it reminds us that we need to revisit that and make changes. But I think we do, right? We get, we create these things and then they kind of take a life of their own. And then we forget that we were the, we were the artists, we were the architects, , we were the, you know, we were the painters of all of that we're seeing. And that we could pick up a brush and sort of paint with new colors, even though that might be a little scary.

Stephen Matini: You're one of the most important voices for appreciative inquiry, emotional intelligence, experiential learning theory. How did you put together these ingredients? I mean, you just simply were drawn to them. I mean, how did it happen?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I love it, Stephen. And I wish I could say yes, but I had this magical recipe and that I knew what I was doing. But I think I was listening to my just like I sort of went off to study conflict resolution. I, I found myself through listening to my own instinct and stuff. I ended up from George Mason with my master's. I went to Case Western Reserve University to the Weatherhead School of Management to do my PhD. Cuz I told you I knew I wanted to get a PhD.

I didn't know. And what, and so this this is so funny, it's almost embarrassing to say this. I was taking a class, I was at George Mason, 9/11 had just happened. So here I am in Washington DC 9/11 had just happened. I was the we had a university dispute resolution project that did mediation and dialogue work on campus that I was the director of.

Again, here we are in this, you know, historic moment, sort of at this epicenter in DC where there was a lot of conflict happening afterwards in terms of things happening with our student population. Everybody again, trying to make sense of what was going on. There was things happening. And here I was in this center, this conflict resolution center, these like professors were sort of the go-to people around the world that were, you know, and I looked at 'em and I realized like, they don't have this figured out either.

What do you mean you don't, you know, he help us, like we're students here, we're trying to like, how do we show up in this moment, in this turmoil, in this crisis? And realizing that they really didn't either. I started again, I went back to my, what is my thing? My, my fallback is like, I need to learn something that my instinct is like I have to, there's something here for me to learn.

And so I actually started then taking classes outside of the institute. I ended up taking a course called Consulting for Organizational Change because I was like, okay, I've studied all this that and then like may, maybe the missing piece is the system piece. This, like you said, this organizational system, like what the, the sys the system that's broken and like is holding us into these, you know, non-functional relationships with each other. What's, you know, maybe that's what I need to study.

I ended up taking a course with a woman Ann Baker who's phenomenal, who had been a student of David Kolb’s experiential learning theory at Case Western. And she knew I was looking at doctoral programs and she's like, I really think that you should go look at this doctoral program. I think you would really enjoy it. And I was like, okay. I knew nothing about, I didn't even really know what organizational behavior is.

I shouldn't say that out loud, but I didn't, I didn't know who David Cooperrider was. I didn't know what appreciative intelligence was. I didn't know what, I didn't know any of these things. I just knew that I was like searching. I was for knowledge to help me again, show up in this what felt like, you know, nobody knows really how to show up and be a positive catalyst in this moment.

And so I was, I was, I felt like I was on a quest and I found myself, I was like, okay, well I'll look at this program. It was like the top rated organizational behavior program in the world. And it just so happened it's the top rated cuz there was just these amazing thought leaders that were there together at the same time. So I landed myself in this moment of time when, again, David Kolb of Experiential Learning Theory was one of my professors.

And Richard Boyatzis with Emotional Intelligence was one of my professors. And David Cooperrider and Ron Fry were my professors. And I, I felt like coming home, people come there to study with them, right? And I was like, I didn't know any, I was like, just following my, I was like following my curiosity and my quest to sort of fill in what felt like gaps, my knowledge and my skill base.

And somehow this mixture just really, it did feel like a magical recipe. I joke, right? Like, so it wasn't that I actively went to the cabinet and pulled out the ingredients. It was more, I think I fell over backwards in the kitchen and some stuff mixed together. And I realized that I had this beautiful thing that had been baked in terms of sort of studying and learning alongside of these amazing thought leaders and seeing how these different pieces go together.

I always joke like I'm sort of a boundary spanner. Relationally like I'm the kid that was like friends with people that weren't friends with each other. I was like in, in sort of academic world. Like I studied things like across disciplines, right? That people usually stay in one silo and then stuff. And I, I think maybe I'm more like a bumblebee .

So I like the cross pollination and I really, I started doing work. I did some work with Dave Kolb and his wife Alice. And so I got some, some deeper knowledge and wisdom and really seeing how experiential learning and really can impact. And again, it just so resonated with how I learned and how I showed up in the world.

I started doing writing with Richard in emotional intelligence. And then when I started doing applied work with David with organizations and before I knew it, I'm like going off to the United Nations and different projects, you know, David's around the world doing amazing things and bringing students with him.

So I had this sort of front seat learning with these amazing people. And so you're right, these were ingredients that to me felt like in and of themselves, one alone wasn't the answer. But together weaving them together really, like I said, sort of creates a new, it just again, helps me understand the world at a deeper level.

And it helps me be a better interventionist because it gives me a wider tool set, it gives me a wider appreciation, it gives me a wider curiosity of the questions that I ask. And again, I wish I could say it was because I was so brilliant, I put them together and it was because I was brilliant enough to follow my curiosity, my instinct that this was gonna be a, an an intellectual home at case Western for me. And it led to, yeah, my discovery of these amazing fields that you will know are just each and of themselves impactful in the world and together, I think are just so rich.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, curiosity and instincts are the same thing?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Curiosity and instincts, are they the same thing? That is a good question. I've never thought of that. I think they are related, but not the same thing. Instincts are a form of intelligence. There is a wisdom in our instincts. I think that sometimes we've lost the sort of tapping into like our physical wisdom in our bo like you feel it, right?

Like something feels right or like you meet a person and you, you either you have an instinct about them or a situation, you have an instinct about them to be an instinct is sort of that, yeah, that sort of innate wisdom that we have that we don't always listen to , but that we have this innate wisdom often at a cellular level, right? Like at a physical level, whether it's sits in our stomach like I'm holding my stomach right now, I feel it, or right. Or it sits in our, you know, our chest or our head.

And it's more of a sense of how or what we wanna show up in a situation or what we wanna do. You know, like taking a new job, is this right or not for me? Is this, you know, do I wanna promote, you know, like whatever, whatever sort of coming our way, an instinct of do I go left or right versus curiosity. I mean we can have, I think instincts can lead to curiosity.

I think curiosity is more of the question, right? The inquiring, it's then it's the act of then actively asking and getting that curious, right? So asking and inquiring, I wonder why I feel that way. I wonder why that is my, you know, where did that come from? Or you know, you can get curious about your instincts and it can go back to like, oh, it's because this was my experience when I was five and that's , right?

That's why, where did it come from? But I think they are different. But I think they’re maybe cousins or one, you know, can lead to the other. I think they can sort of point us, right? Our curiosity can, we can get in touch with our instincts by sort of getting curious about, well what am I really feeling right now? And okay, if I make that decision in my head, how does that feel in my body? Right? Like in getting curious can help us tune into our instincts and I think our instincts can help open up curiosity. That makes sense.

Stephen Matini: Maybe, and I'm thinking out loud, maybe curiosity is how instincts manifest themselves..

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Hmm. How say more. That's really interesting. Like, yeah, I love that.

Stephen Matini: You know, I have a very coaching like question, which I hate to ask, but I cannot verbalize it in any other way. A as a result of all these ingredients which you found and you pursued through your curiosity and instincts. Now who have you become as a person? How have they affected you as a person?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Well, part of it too, I think for me is the learning. It's been, I've become a person who has learned to trust her instincts and curiosity. And that might not sound like a big deal, but I, again, I think you see this probably with definitely people that we coach with organizations, is that I think we actually often sec second guess or ignore that innate wisdom or we suppress our curiosity because we're in a system that's telling us that we should look this way and act this way and, and this is what we should want.

And so I think I, I, I feel that I am a person that being on this path where I have sort of followed my curiosity, my instincts towards sort of certain, whether it's things I'm studying or positions that's led me to do things that other people think are crazy .

But, but that have have worked out, right? So like I, my husband and I, for example, were at, we're at a university together. We were on faculty at a university, we were on tenure track positions together before we moved to Vermont. There was this position that sort of appeared in my radar at this little school in Vermont.

And they were talking about experiential learning. They were talking about business as a force for good. I had never been to Burlington, Vermont. I had never right? Like, and I, my, I was like, well, let's explore it. And so we explored this, it felt like this job had my name on it and we explored it. And so next thing I know we're like, you know, my husband and I are giving up tenure because the school that that I'm at now doesn't have tenure cuz it's a different kind of professionally focused school.

You know, we're selling our house, we're moving away from our family to go live in Vermont, which is beautiful. But as far away, we, my husband and I sort of operate like this together. People thought we were crazy. People thought, like, my colleagues, you know, they're like, what are you doing ? What, what's going on? Like, what are, what do you mean you're like, you know, you, you have like tenure at this other place basically.

So sometimes it leads me to do things that don't seem quite rational to other people that are sort of going step by step, like in the system that is created to do, to say yes to things, right? So again, playing on, in having the opportunity to collaborate with amazing people like David Cooperrider, right? Like he's invited me to do projects and I've been connected up with people around the world that's like organized and we'll plan a world conference in Nepal.

I had never done that, you know, in the moment. I was like, what was I thinking when I said yes to some of these different things that have just because they feel right? So I think it's, it's a long-winded answer to say, I think these different ingredients grounded me in like being an honoring my experience and also seeking out new experiences to learn from or the emotional intelligence definitely sort of tuning into the my emotions and the emotions of other people and sort of navigating the world that way.

And then of course, appreciative inquiry. Inquiry is the verb , right? Like is inquiring and intentionally seeking out what is here that is giving life to me, to my family. And it doesn't have to make sense to other people. It doesn't have to fit into somebody's box of this is what my career should look like.

You know, again, I graduated from Case (Western), like, people were like, oh, I'm gonna go off to like a tier one research school. Well I knew I wanted to be at a teaching school because I knew that that's where my heart was, is I wanted to be an experiential teacher myself, I wanted to, I wa doesn't mean I still don't write and do academic things, but I'm not, that wasn't my vision for myself, even though it was maybe some other people's vision for me.

You know, following and, and continuing to decisions and really trying to navigate the world from that place of instinct and inquiry. What is it that feels right and I know is right in my heart? And getting really curious about the, you know, from that appreciative inquiry space of what is giving life and energy to me and my family. And it doesn't have to make sense to other people.

Stephen Matini: Everyone wants to be loved, it wants to feel connected, you know? And and now we're talking about instinct. We're talking about the importance of being curious, you know, of constantly inquiring. I don't know how it works for other people, but I have to say that I made my life really complicated in the past because I did what you said. I second guessed my instinct. And I've done that most of my life. You know, the instinct was there, I knew, but in many situations was at some point afraid of making the decision. Have you always trusted your instinct or, I don't know, like me was you, you had to learn this along the way?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I know it's like, it's a, it's a cheap answer if I say sort of both actually. P paradoxically actually, if I get serious, paradoxically, I think that early on, and I think through even just the, like, you know, here I had just like lost my brother went off to college. I was very tuned into like, it was actually the first time, right? It was the first time. Like I went off to college. It was the first time like I could focus on what do I want, right?

Like, cuz it wasn't, my life wasn't swirling around taking care of somebody else. And so it was sort of this opening moment for me to be like getting really in tune with my instincts. And so I think I had this wonderful sort of several chapters of my life where I was really tuned into following my instincts, following my curiosity.

And like I said, that led me to sort of case that led me to sort of then professionally land. It led me up here to Vermont to do this amazing work that I'm doing at the, the center and, and working with organizations. And I think actually in the past, I've been now here for 11 years going on 12 years. And that's the longest I've ever been in one place, one institution.

I think I'm actually working to not reawaken, not that they're asleep, I don't know what verb I am. Maybe they need dusting off. I think maybe I've become a little, taking it for granted. I need to find the right verb. What is the right verb of of I think maybe ru I don't know if it's a rusty. I, I, I don't know Stephen, if you have a verb here, sort of like.

Stephen Matini: You got comfortable.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I got comfortable! That's a great thank you. Right? So it's like, I think that like I, my instincts took me to this beautiful place and like created this life that I love with my family and doing work that I'd always dreamed about. I'm a co I am a, I'm a full professor. I've won the awards and I've written the things and I've done the stuff.

So now I'm kind of, and it started, I had a sabbatical in 2019. My first sabbatical was this wonderful gift in academia and just starting to try to reawaken and maybe check in with my instincts and my curiosity to make sure, and I'm sort of on that quest right now and it's active work that I'm doing right now to be like, how do I wanna continue to build? What is my next chapter? What is my next chapter individually, collectively with my family, you know, so that I'm not operating just from a place of comfort, just like we talked about with organizations, right?

Like, this is what it looks like and this is what it feels like and this is what my roles are. And I am starting to more intentionally check back in with my instincts. Where is my energy? There are, you know, new, new things I'm wanting to write about and talk about and put out into the world and what does that look like?

And oh, does that mean that then my life still looks like this box? Or do I need to actually, it needs to look like an octagon or it needs to work. And so, you know, and then everybody has an opinion too, right? Like, oh, you should leave higher ed. Oh, you should be a full-time consultant. Oh no, you should, you know, everybody has opinions.

And so it is going back to, and, and tapping back into my instincts, like it's sort of tuning all of that noise out and really sort of doing the work. Here I am at this stage in my life and my career and my kids are in high school and I still have so much more that I wanna do and be in, create and offer in the world. What is that gonna look like and how and where is the best place to do that? And it's not an either or, how am I continually actively creating what I want and what gives me life and what I think gives me an opportunity to add value in the world in new ways and not just being comfortable.

Stephen Matini: There's a wonderful master coach, his name is Michael Stratford. One day I asked, I said, how would I know that I'm right? And he says, righteousness, when he feels right., which seems to be such a simple answer, but it's true. And for me, like there's this sense of .. YES, that I have to go that way, you know? If someone were still in a phase of doubting herself, you know, her instinct, what would you say that could be the first step to be more reliant on that, on listening to that voice?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: When I'm thinking about the righteousness thing, I think that's so true, . That is so true. I love that. I think the advice that I have, whether it's an an individual, organization, I always start from a, a place of small steps to just take a baby step and like experiment. Like just with my kids who are picky eaters and don't wanna try anything. I was like, you don't have to eat the whole hamburger. Just take like one bite. It's sort of finding like, where can we give ourselves the opportunity to experiment where I'm not gonna lose my job. I'm not gonna , I'm not gonna totally like, you know, fall apart ...

Stephen Matini: Safe.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: There's a safe space in it, but also that it does push me, right? So like, it's, it's safe. Like we're on the, we're ice. I always like, I'm terrified of like pond ice skating here in Vermont. You know, you're not gonna fall through the ice , but you're on the ice.

One thing. What's one thing today that you can really try out, you know, make a decision about what, based on how you're, not how you're thinking, but how you're feeling. See how that goes.

Great advice that I've been given that I do myself as like I try on decisions like clothes we're so out of touch with how we feel cuz we're so in our head, my dear colleague, she was like, you should, you should live in a decision for 24 hours and try it on like a coat.

First of all, recognize and we often have more time to make a decision than we give ourselves. But if you can can really sort of in your head be like, fine, I'm gonna try on the yes to this, right? Somebody's asked me to do something and I'm gonna try on the yes.

So I'm gonna live in my head and my body for like 24 hours that like I have said yes to this ask whatever it is. And like, how does that feel? Do you, do you, does your stomach hurt cuz you're thinking about it? Are you excited? Like just noticing, right? And then switch, like then sort of be like, nope, I'm gonna say no to this and live with the, like I'm saying no to this. And what does that feel like and what, you know. So part of it is sort of the giving ourselves even the, the space and the exercise of, of listening, right? Getting in touch with what those instincts are.

So the trying on of decisions is a great exercise to then, because then, you know, I mean, we know, right? You know, as soon as in your head you like said yes or no to something. And if you're really sort of, yeah, like my stomach hurts, okay, well then that probably isn't what I really wanna do.

Stephen Matini: When I go through a rough moment somehow becomes a super, it becomes harder to listen to that voice, to be self-reliant, to, to listen to those instincts. When you have a difficult moment, for whatever the reason, is there anything that you do to get out of it?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Try to connect with people, things or places that make me laugh . Like, so again, sounds easy, sounds silly. It's actually hard, right? When we're like in a space where we are. So, but sometimes again, that's one of the gifts my husband brings, that some of my best friends, my kids bring is like to see the, not necessarily even the humor in the situation, but to find humor in something.

There is such a healing power in laughter. Whether it's seeing the absurdity in something else or the absurdity in ourselves. If I can, I try to like then actively connect up with people, things move these books, something that will, it's a shift. And we know that from a neurological, right? It's like stuff that we know even now from a neurological standpoint, right? Thanks to our positive psychology researchers and stuff. It's like I'm literally changing the chemical flow in my head.

I mean, they say right laughter's the best medicine. That's why, you know, I've cried until I've laughed, right? Like, you just sort of like, you've, you've probably experienced that too, where it's just you get to a place and to me that's like an emotional switch helps me to get into a different emotional space that then it actually helps me get into a place where I can be more reflective and I can be more thoughtful even because when I'm in such a negative emotional space, whether it's sad or angry or you know, fill in the blank, disappointed that I, you know, I'm literally not thinking straight. Right?

And again, we know that neurological, we know that neurologically, right? That like our prefrontal cortex has literally shut down. And so it's sort of how do I, how do I reawaken the rest of my brain so I can even process what's happened? Richard Boyatzis from emotional intelligence and stuff, right? They talk about how, you know, you well know this, right? Amygdala hijacking, right? How do we hijack it back? Right?

Like it's, so it's sort of, I try to find ways to sort of have that sometimes I literally have to be in a different space. I have to be with different people. I have to, I know when that first laugh comes out that I am, I'm switching gears.

Stephen Matini: If you had to say what is the main theme that has come out out of our conversation, what would you say that is?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I think there's a thread. There's some intention, I don't know the word intentionality is coming up for me. I'm gonna listen to my instincts, but I, the word intentionality is coming up I think because I think there's a lot of connectivity in the, the being intentional from whether that's, we've talked about sort of, you know, following our own path to listening to our instincts, being intentional about inquiring, being intentional when we're in a negative space. And how do we intent bring intentionality to honor that space, but also move forward from that space.

And it's a nice, I think juxtaposition actually with our exploring of things like instincts and stuff. But I actually think the way that we've been exploring and talking about it, that there's a lot of intentionality, acting from instincts and a place of inquiry that actually requires a lot of intentionality, which I think some of our stories and conversation have shown.

Stephen Matini: I love the fact that we touched the topic of instinct and curiosity. And I find it really interesting because the whole business world, as you know, it's not set based on that type of thinking, if anything is about problem solving. You know, very rational, logical, and always say there's a space and time for that. Then you got to move on. And very often when people engage in that sort of thinking, they sink, you know? So that's actually what I personally love about positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, it just pushes people forward.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: It is right. That intentionality. It takes, I guess it takes courage, , right? I don't often think about that. And I love, back to your word that you said, sort of righteousness, that there is something when you know that you're on your path. It's not that you're not gonna make mistakes to your point. Like it's not that the things are gonna be all easy or that it's, you know, things are always gonna be, I always joke, it's not that it's like rainbows and unicorns, like that's not what we're talking about.

But we are talking about righteousness and I love that the righteousness, like the right, it feels right. Like, you know, you're on your right path. Decisions actually become a lot easier when you tap into that because you know, know that left is the way that you need to go. And it doesn't matter if everybody's going right because that's your even, you know, your right path happens to be left, well then go left. Right?

Stephen Matini: You are so precious, I really love the way you think.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Well this is ... Steve ...

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for doing this with me. I really, really love listening to you.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Thank you. It's been a joy. I said, like I said, this has been my, I'm making a soft re-entry back into the semester and so you're helping to reawaken my brain. I really appreciate it.

View Details

Our past experiences impact our lives, from how we interpret current events to how we view ourselves and others.

Sometimes our past experiences are responsible for the fear that keeps us trapped in a loop despite our best efforts to move on.

The guest for this episode of Pity Party Over is Nina Bressler. Nina is the Global Head of Societal Learning for Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Switzerland whose mission is to discover new ways to improve and extend people's lives.

Nina believes that learning from our experiences is the medicine to overcome fear and live a life with a sense of purpose. Moving beyond fear is adopting a growth mindset that allows us to see the world and ourselves as ever-changing dynamics filled with possibilities.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I read your essay, “Do What Makes You Feel Alive.”

Nina Bressler: Oh ...

Stephen Matini: You struck a chord because my parents were born in 1929, and a lot of what you wrote, you know. resonated with me because both of them went through World War II ...

Nina Bressler: Mom was four years old when the siege of Leningrad started. She escaped with my grandma who was just who's quite young. She was only 21. They were on one of the first transports to leave Leningrad because my mother's father and my grandfather was pretty high up in the Army. And so there were two transports that went across.

I don't know how much you know about Leningrad, but when the Nazis surrounded it there was, it was completely under siege and there was no supplies coming in. The Soviet government, you know, Stalin wasn't really helping the people of Leningrad. But in the winter when the, when Lake Ladoga froze, they were able to start bringing transports across. And my mom tells the story that she was in one of the first transports. It was her transport, another transport.

Nina Bressler: And as they were crossing the lake they, there was some bombings and they saw the other transport actually go through the ice, but they were able to make it across. And then she spent the majority of the war first, the first few years in Russia and then eventually in Georgia as refugees, but with some family members.

And then my father, he was also a child during the siege of Leningrad, but he spent the first winter in Leningrad, so he really had memories of people starving. And he was a little bit older. He was six when the war started.

When they came back to Leningrad after the war, you needed to register either as Russian or as Jewish. And so both my family, both sides of my family actually had Jewish roots. But what that meant was in the seventies the Soviets opened up the borders and let people through the Iron Curtain with the intention of immigrating to Israel.

But many Russian Jews in the seventies went to other countries. So they used that opportunity to leave the Soviet Union. And then, yes, my mom ended up in Vienna then was my grandmother who was, you know, already in her early sixties. And and my brother who was 15.

Stephen Matini: And then she found out she was pregnant with you in Vienna.

Nina Bressler: Yeah, so my mom got to Vienna. She you know, they went to the Jewish Refugee Agency and they actually said, oh, well you see your mother's baptized Lutheran, so you're not real Jews, so we're not gonna be able to support your asylum to the US.

And they went across the street to Caritas, which is the Catholic charities. And Caritas said, oh, you know, we we would love to help you. And actually I think for my family it was better because all of the Russian Jews that were then transported from Vienna to Rome and a lot lived there almost in ghetto conditions for a year or more waiting for their asylum to be sorted.

But Caritas kept their refugees in Vienna. So my family actually had a relatively nice apartment and my mother she was 42 years old, her stomach started to hurt one day and she went to the doctor and the doctor said well you are pregnant.

So yeah, so when she was in Vienna, she found out she was pregnant with me. And definitely a lot of people said, oh, you know you don't speak English, you're immigrating to a new country. Probably not the ideal time to be having a child, but she yeah, she always wanted a second child.

And so I was born in Vienna and my father, you know, I'm very genetically very much like him. I look a lot like him. So he didn't meet me till he was able to get through the Iron Curtain when I was already almost nine years old.

My mother had to stay in Vienna until I was born. That's what Caritas asked her to do. And then we came to the United States when I was four months old and you know, there were a lot of other refugees in the US and friends from Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg.

And they yeah, they would take pictures and send, send them to my dad and things like that. So he saw pictures of me. But you know, even then it wasn't like today you didn't have Skype or other, you know, video calling services, but even letters always were opened by the KGB and read and there were a lot of problems to even just communicate with people on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Stephen Matini: There's one thing in your assay that resonated with me, I'm gonna read it and then if you don't mind maybe sharing some thoughts. You say, “the story that I was born into was one of luck and with that came an unspoken sense of duty. The sense of duty one feels to the legacy of the family can be both an enabler and a hindrance.”

Nina Bressler: Yeah. So, you know growing up my mother shared the story of her childhood a lot. And her childhood was not a nice one, it was in the middle of war. And now that I have a daughter, I think about that a lot because you know, as your child grows up, a lot of times you wanna process your own traumas or you start to process your own traumas as your child goes through that same period of their life.

And probably a lot of my mother's storytelling was just trying to process what she had been through cause she couldn't relate it to how my life was so different. And so she would all highlight quite often about how lucky I was. And I think it was common to hear that anyhow from immigrants. You know, we gave up so much, we left our homeland and we came to this country to give you opportunity.

So you have that sense of duty that you need to achieve something in order to live out their dreams in some way. But of course it also puts on a lot of pressure, especially in people who maybe are already, you know, looking to please and things like that. So it's an interesting psychological dynamic that plays out over time.

Stephen Matini: I believe it is such an important point of in the developmental maturity of any person. Some people are able to overcome this, this friction and some people get stuck in it.

Nina Bressler: At the time really wanted to be very American, right? And so there was this like age divide cause my parents were much older when they had me. Then there was the cultural divide. And so I definitely felt like an outsider in the family but also felt like an outsider in most other situations. But I got quite good at kind of becoming a chameleon I would say.

So I actually didn't live with my parents from the age of 14. I lived with my brother for some time and then I lived in a roommate situation when I was still finishing high school. And I got really involved in like several subcultures. So I got really into horses and this was almost like my doorway to being really American cause I like celebrated all the American holidays or the Catholic holidays rather.

And then also I got really involved in the Boston music scene that also, you know, that subculture and there's many subcultures within that. But I was always able to be quite eclectic in my like tastes but then also fit in and almost any scene that I got involved in. So I enjoyed it was always this balance where I enjoyed observing what was happening in a culture a little bit from the outside, but also taste testing it a little bit, if that makes sense. And I think that those kind of patterns still continue today for me.

My parents, I did a lot of work I think on understanding their relationship with each other, understanding my relationship with them. And I do feel that it's been an ama a wonderful perspective to understand what I take from them, but also to consciously be able to say this, these are things that I've chosen not to take from them. Cause these are patterns that have been passed down generation to generation sometimes, or just because of the, you know, culture in the society that don't serve me. And so I can also make the choice to not take them. That's sometimes harder to do than it actually is to say, but you know, if you work on it, you can achieve it.

Stephen Matini: When I was 16, my father was diagnosed with cancer. And so for many, many years I lived this really anxiety that I didn't have that much time. We loved each other, but somehow we really, there was a lot of friction, there were a lot of stuff that needed to work out with him.

But at some point I remember that, I don't know how that happened, but there was this thought in my head which was, listen, if you just simply stay in this space, it's gonna be a nightmare for the rest of your life, especially when he will not not be around. So you really have to let it go. And somehow I started looking at him from a different perspective, which is really the perspective that I have now, which is I truly believe he did his best with what he had.

So the question for you is, is there anything that you did that helped you make the switch that put you in a position of actually understanding what you could take from your family and what you could leave behind?

Nina Bressler: I think probably one of the main triggers was when my daughter was born. So before I gave birth to my daughter, I definitely had like underlying anxieties or issues that I knew existed, but I didn't spend time on them.

And then after she was born I started to really kind of see the world a little bit differently and really think about, okay, what is the, what is the kind of parent that I want to be and how do I wanna show up for her? How do I wanna show up in my relationships? And that led me to start doing some work. So actually, you know, going and seeing a therapist and digging into some more of my family background cause that's where you start. It's like doing a master's thesis on yourself, right? , these are some really interesting patterns.

I don't know that I would make these same choices for my daughter. I'm not saying I would've changed anything, but for years yeah, I realized that oh wow, I was really hurt and angry because of choices that were made that were actually nobody's fault. They were trying to do their best.

The catalyst was that I didn't wanna live with that anger, so I needed to kind of find a way to work through it. And neither of my parents are able to really hear my experience without feeling defensive or not enough. Processing it with them directly hasn't worked for me.

Actually going and doing the work to understand where they were coming from, how really horrible traumas impacted their behavior for life, being empathetic to that and then also being compassionate to myself that resulted in behaviors that hurt me too. Makes it possible to kind of forgive everybody and be compassionate to everybody, but also to not be judgmental about my anger, let's say.

Because for years I was like, oh, I shouldn't feel like that about my parents. And you know, the anger that just comes out sometimes cause you're not in touch with it. By being able to be somewhat compassionate that you do have some strong feelings about it you're, I think much, it's much more effective in terms of transforming it than feeling shame about it.

Stephen Matini: Your story has shaped your purpose, your motto, which you sum up in, “Do what makes you feel alive.” I always find interesting people, but throughout all these years in my career, I've seen very few happy people. Interestingly enough when we work together, oftentimes people have this question, which is, is this really the life I was supposed to have? And inevitably comes up an element of fear that may have prevented them from taking the steps to be really, let's say, align with who they are. What was important to them. What would you say? There could be a first step to, to find that the voice that makes you feel alive?

Nina Bressler: The first thing is you need to just reframe the way that you see your work. So I think for me, I really never pursued a position, so it wasn't a job title or at least the idea of pursuing a job title. I kicked out quite early that I pursued experiences and growth.

So and I think, yeah, I mean I did so many different jobs. Like I worked as a bike messenger, I worked as a waitress and a bar. I worked as a veterinary technician I worked as an English teacher. And when I moved to Prague and others and all of those experiences, I got such valuable skills from and tools that I took to the next one. My advice is to shift your perspective and think about instead of building yourself towards a position you should look at building yourself in terms of skillset, tool set and mindset. And then the position is just what you do at that moment in time.

Stephen Matini: Learning is a form of medicine. That's brilliant.

Nina Bressler: Yeah. So that came in the past 18 months I studied art first of all, and then I did a degree in communications, didn't study adult development. And I'm just so lucky that I ended up this role first working on some learning technologies and then owning the skill taxonomy at Novartis as the competency leader. And then helping to drive the curiosity pillar of the of the culture transformation.

And out of that I saw that we built up all these technologies and tools and have these amazing resources that were focused internally for this company for Novartis, which is a med medicines company, right? And I thought, wow, there's so many people who would benefit from these same tools externally and how can, you know, that feels like the right thing to do. It's not enough just to scale these within this organization of a hundred thousand.

How can I take them beyond the boundaries of the company? And with that, we start to think in the past 18 months about what this agenda for societal learning looks like. And yeah, this l learning is a form of medicine is really the overarching, let's say, vision for that. We as a medicines company, of course we are bringing medicines to patients, but learning is a form of medicine as well because it helps create space for dialogue. It helps to mobilize systems. Learning as a platform is much more powerful as a communications tool because it gives you a space to really understand and dialogue with and include many different voices in your understanding in a way that, let's say a one way a communication platform. Can't do.

Stephen Matini: It sounds, I'm thinking out loud, a beautiful alternative to just straight marketing, you know?

Nina Bressler: Yeah, yeah. I mean definitely. So being a little bit of an outsider to learning, I really felt like the journey of the learning function over the past few years was very similar to the marketing function. You know, we were really looking at how to put metadata behind content, how to get the right content to the right people, the amount of content, so it was following very much the same trajectory as digital marketing.

Only the impact measures for digital marketing are clear, it's consumption, it's click throughs, it's things like that. For learning as a society or as a fa or as let's say as an industry, we haven't solved for impact measurement in learning sufficiently because the impact measurement of learning is desired behavior change. And we don't have really scalable ways to measure that yet. So I'm also really interested in that.

And part of my work on societal learning is also looking at how learning can be used to make impact on individuals who then drive outcomes in alignment with, let's say, broader goals like the UN sustainable development goals and how we can really measure that all the way through to show what the impact of investment in learning really can do. And so we're running some control studies around that already this year with some behavioral scientists and the Harvard re-skilling lab. Cause I'm so curious to see where that, that kind of thinking and work can go.

Stephen Matini: Before talking to you today, , I was watching on Netflix, “Megan and Harry.”

Nina Bressler: Oh yeah, I just watched it too.

Stephen: You did? So at some point he says that misinformation is a humanitarian crisis, which I thought, oh my God, this is so brilliant. It is true in the sense that we are so hyperconnected, there's so much information out there. But the one thing that so many people struggle with is what is real and what it’s not, what is accurate information and what is not accurate information.

Nina Bressler: If I look at the quality of deep fakes and everything else, like the ability even if you take a lens of criticality, the ability to really decipher if something is real or fake is or if you're being influenced by an echo chamber that you're already in, it's getting harder and harder to do. I mean, everything we hear around our US is curated to align with our perspectives, right?

As an American who experienced the influence of, let's say Fox News propaganda on the American populace and now is really, as I'm somebody who understands Russian and is experiencing the influence of Russian state media on the mindsets of Russians, I just think we are so, as a species, we are so easy to influence. I mean, ultimately we're social preachers. We want to trust and believe what we hear and we become easily convinced of what we hear as being the only truth.

And I think at something that I think is really interesting is that at this time of actually quite a lot of instability in the world and great change, we as humans are looking for security, right? We can find that security in many different ways. Probably the healthiest way is through inner development. So we get grounded in our inner values. However not a lot of people have those tools or opportunities available to them. So they look for other frameworks to ground themselves in for that security and stability. And a lot of times those frameworks are extreme in terms of politics or religious affiliations and when, and they become quite polarized against each other. And then once that polarization starts, it evolves into more extreme and extreme polarization as they push against each other. Come on. We probably are gonna say of course the answer to everything is inner development. But I do think the answer to everything is awareness and inner development, right? So...

Stephen Matini: You wrote in your beautiful essay, People are provoked when it pokes at their fears. The person has to push it through the edge of the fear to find the light.” Yes, it is in a development, but it is that relationship with fear that I believe it is such a, an essential point in how you deal with it.

Nina Bressler: So do you wonder how I deal with it or how I think people should deal with it?

Stephen Matini: Both

Nina Bressler: I became really interested in kind of what fear feels like in my body. Cause I realized that a lot of times I'm, I'm acting from fear still and I wanna know the difference. I wanna know when decisions are coming from, you know, a place of security and confidence and not overconfidence, but a healthy place or when they're coming from place of fear.

So I think for me the work really started by spending time feeling how different emotions come through my body by practicing that and practicing meditation really. Just being able to recognize when something is fear-driven, but step out of it before I take the action, that is fear-based. So I think it's that same knowing that I'm quite action-oriented and for me fear, it doesn't drive an anger response in me, it drives an action response and sometimes those actions just need a little bit more time.

And it can also be good. I can, it, my intuition can kick in, I can do the right action, but it's just asking myself for a split second, is this something that needs a little bit of stillness? What is the wise thing to do here? Because wisdom is not driven by fear, right? Wisdom is knowing whether to go with the intuition or go with, take some time and just create space and stillness. So yeah, that's, I would say how I try to practice not being ruled by fear.

When the war in Ukraine started, I could feel so many thoughts and decisions being completely fear driven and it still peaks at certain times for me. I mean, I live in Czech Republic, so we have a huge refugee crisis and, and we're pretty close to Ukraine, so you're obviously aware. Plus there's the trauma that this country went through with the Soviet occupation, et cetera.

So the topic of people kind of being triggered into fearful stance is definitely front of mind for me all the time. And I think fear is useful too when you need it. It's just a question of asking yourself, is it useful to me in this moment? And being able to catch yourself before you make decisions that are fear driven unnecessarily.

Stephen Matini: Not that I'm trying to minimize the humongous problems that we have, but I do have faith that we can learn as humans in a way we can flip things around and really believe we can do that for sure. And somehow, oftentimes the way to learn difficult stuff is to go through pressure and pain. That's what I often see.

Nina Bressler: Yeah. Well coming back to the Harry and Megan documentary though.

Stephen Matini: Yeah

Nina Bressler: Actually, I think that there is a lot of really amazing interpretation and work happening under the surface in our societies. It's just that what is shown in the media is a totally different story and it's so similar to their experience, right?

The media created such a fear mindset for them and, and it was legitimate. I'm not saying it wasn't but based on kind of this story that they created. But we do that same thing for ourselves individually. We take all of the stories that are out there and then we weave together a narrative that it feels really threatening for us and it feels just as threatening as a war. So, and then the way that people act in it is yeah, can be really extreme.

I think that it's necessary to appreciate that even, yeah, I think the practice of awareness and then integration of fears is just something we have to continually do and help others do through compassion and empathy even, just that they can behave in ways that are more constructive to the society as a whole. And that means giving them security also socioeconomically social safety net and that people have opportunities to work and learn and grow.

Cause ultimately, I don't know, I'm of the belief that ultimately people want, those want to apply their talents to something that feels purposeful and that's, yeah, part of the work that I'm doing around societal learning now is also creating new career paths in, in my case, into healthcare for people who haven't worked in healthcare before at scale around the world, working with an a really leading educational partner on that from the learning and development industry, partnering with our company, with Novartis.

The idea behind that, this impact framework I was talking about before, I needed to really, let's say, confirm my hypothesis, but the hypothesis is that if you give people these opportunities to grow into stable careers that are needed, we have huge skill gaps that you can actually really influence socioeconomic conditions which have really positive impact also on the kind of stability of the country from a political and yeah, socioeconomic perspective.

Stephen Matini: I would like to ask you about Nina the entrepreneur. “Inner Landscape,” how that idea came about?

Nina Bressler: Oh yeah. So this is just a new project I've just started this year, but I, in my own development work, I actually found words are really restrictive for me, like it's hard for me to describe. And for me visuals or music or colors were a much better association to certain feelings.

It made me think as we ultimately, what is growth? It's identifying that you have certain patterns and then having a growth mindset, meaning is believing that those patterns aren't static, that they're dynamic and they can change. And actually they're very fluid. They change all the time. Words feel too finite and too slow in some way. And colors or art or images or even music, I think are much more fluid.

Two years ago I start to think about, oh, how could we take the verbal representation of somebody's patterns? Let's say for example, there are big assumptions about how the world works and translate those into art. But at the time there wasn't an AI art generation tool that was able to handle that much language.

Yet actually now this year in 2022, there's some amazing neural networks that have come onto the landscape that can take huge blocks of text and visualize them. I would like to eventually develop an app or some tool that gives, allows you to do this visualization at scale. For me, like I said, visual and auditory are the ones that help me get into seeing that dynamic way in which we can look at our inner landscape. But for other people it's a journey. Not sure where it's gonna go.

Before I started Novartis, I worked for myself as an entrepreneur for a few years at the time, developed a product that I would say was a visualizer of competency and skill frameworks. So the timing was a little bit too late for the big tech. And I had a nice sales channel planned with a world, a global HR consultancy. And it was about to start kind of gonna be pushed out through a lot of their human capital consulting practice.

And then they got acquired by an, an even larger global consultancy. So I ended up going back to the corporate world. But this yeah, this inner landscape project is a way for me to enjoy being creative and bringing my other interests together with human development.

But I also feel that in my societal learning role at Novartis right now, I'm also very entrepreneurial. So it's almost like a startup running within the boundaries of an organization. And I feel really lucky to have that opportunity because I'm taking on some project that I think can make the most impact, measuring that impact and then looking for the next one. So it's that same startup mindset.

Stephen Matini: If you think about all the things that we covered, what would you say, what do you sense to be the center point of our conversation?

Nina Bressler: I would say it's moving beyond fear and being able to really live a growth mindset. To ask the right questions of yourself and of your contacts, to see that the world is dynamic and you can be dynamic too.

Stephen Matini: You are fabulous.

Nina Bressler: You're fabulous. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: Thank you. You are fabulous. And you come from a fabulous family.

Nina Bressler: Oh ...

Thank you for listening to this episode of PITY PARTY OVER.

If you have any questions about the content of this episode, you can contact me via email or LinkedIn. Please check the episode’s notes for information.

If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER podcast, available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our leadership and managerial development programs at ALYGN DOT COMPANY. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N dot company.

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

Organizations often view change as something to manage, an unfortunate and inevitable inconvenience that gets in the way of solid performance and results.

My guest for this episode is Minola Jac, a transformational business professional whose background combines consulting, organizational development, and journalism.

Minola has worked as a senior consultant for Deloitte and is currently the Group Change and Organizational Lead for the Syngenta Group, whose mission is reducing emissions and improving biodiversity.

Minola believes that, too often, organizations focus predominantly on change management without fully understanding what change entails and its impacts on people.

Minola highlights the transformative power of the change process to become a metaphorical mirror in which people can see their infinite potential.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

View Details

Excellent communication requires an ongoing effort of self and social awareness to understand both the relationship and the context of the relationship.

My guest for this episode is Brian Hanssen, Director of the Management Communication Program and a Clinical Associate Professor of Management Communication at New York University.

For Brian, storytelling is a vital communication journey transcending cultures and experiences to help any audience transition from the present to the future. As Brian says, “begin with the journey” to be more inclusive, self-aware, empathetic, memorable, and persuasive.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You and I share a somewhat similar background. Both of us decided that communication was going to be the focus of our professional endeavors. You've consulted, you teach, and so I've done the same thing, you know, so it's really nice to talk to someone who actually understands my world, without having to explain stuff. I don't know much about your background.

Brian Hanssen: The short answer is my formative years were Boston but I'm born in New York. I was a child in New York. I lived in New York and I've lived in New York longer than anywhere else, but I lived in LA for eight years. I've lived in Central America, I've lived in the East Africa, I've lived all over Europe. My mom is from Germany. She grew up in Germany, so I've spent some time there. I've lived in China or East Asia actually, specifically in China. So, yeah, I mean, you know, those are, I, I, for me to say I'm from New York is what I would say, but actually it's not always. Half of my life was other, other places, but Boston is where I grew up.

Stephen Matini: Were there any events, people, or situations that somehow have shaped the way that you are?

Brian Hanssen: So, actually, I'm gonna start in LA. I went right into education. I went to college in Los Angeles and then stayed out, stayed there for a long time afterwards. And I was a teacher. I actually was emergency certified, because they needed teachers and they went to certain schools and they said, if you went to this school, you don't actually have to have a teaching certification, you can just start teaching and then you have to do it over, over time.

There are two experiences, both from LA both at that same time frame that really stood out to me. One, I was actually, it was my first year ever working out of college, and I was a teacher in a school district that had been taken over by the state because it was so underperforming. And there were a whole bunch of issues. It was the Compton Unified School District in Los Angeles, if you know Compton in, in LA.

And the second example is actually I shifted to teaching with students who were court adjudicated in students who are having issues in the traditional school system. And I became an administrator very, very early on in my career. The Compton experience, I think I went in there with such an idea of what education was. Basically, this is what I experienced, and so therefore I'm going to mimic that and deliver that to my students.

And the pushback, the recognition that my style was not going to work with my audience. I think understanding how to basically break down every institutional system that I had ever thought was the way life was ,right, and realizing I had to start over and actually understand my audience, and rethink how I deliver everything for an audience that just, you know, had such low expectations of the system, did not find that system to be valuable, did not, you know, the basic understanding, the basic assumptions I had about why I was there and what we were trying to do and the goals of this educational experience were sort of BS frankly to the students that I was working with.

And I had to rethink knowing your audience, which is what we teach, right? So really thinking about delivering and communicating to an audience with very specific expectations and doubts, you know, reasons of disbelief, concerns. These are the sorts of things that totally shaped me.

And then if I can go into the second example, I'd love to just share that one. I went into administration at this other high school also in Los Angeles very early on. I was a, like a vice principal kind of role at that, at that school. And I was much younger than the other staff that worked there. That school was in East Los Angeles, the student population, and actually the faculty were largely Latinx. And I'm not, I went into leadership and I was much younger, and you can understand how perception is reality, how challenging that was.

I think for the, for the faculty I worked with. And it was, for me, we really, I think learning about communication and trust, and again, going back to this idea that like, just cuz you're in this position doesn't mean anyone's gonna authorize you in it. And just because you're in this position doesn't mean that like you're automatically going to get the same sort of like, outcome that maybe, I don't know, my experience would, I mean, it was just, at the end of the day, it was sort of like, who are you? Why are, why are you in this position? What value are you going to bring? And until you actually prove any of those things, we aren't going to trust you.

And I think early on, learning these sorts of experiences and being like, wow, all the things that I've sort of assumed to be true in terms of like hierarchy and like following rules and like working towards a certain goal was like, it just because I'm the boss doesn't mean that that's, that's the way it's gonna be.

And, and, and I think that everybody should learn that because it's changed my, like my entire way of communicating, leading everything in between is sort of like, yeah, like I need to rethink every assumption I make about my own experience and why that might be relevant to someone else. And I think that's good.

Stephen Matini: So everything is ... what is the word? Situational?

Brian Hanssen: Situational leadership and, and, yeah, for sure.

Stephen Matini: So education was always part of your plan or you ended up teaching by coincidence? Was it a conscious choice? How did it happen?

Brian Hanssen: Yeah, I wanted to teach. I actually was going to be a lawyer, like most college students. They just assumed that being a lawyer is a good thing. So I was like a political science major. I, you know, took the LSAT and all of that, and I was like, I have no interest in going to law school. I actually interned when I was in high school at like this amazing company and I was in the legal department there.

And I had a lot of exposure to the type of work that they do and lots of respect for it, but it wasn't for me. And I realized I went my, my, like summer before my senior year there was a, a teaching strike in Costa Rica. And basically they were doing a partnership between the University of Costa Rica and the University of California, the whole system.

And they were trying to find Spanish speakers who were interested in not strike breaking but going down and working with students just so that their educational experience wasn't completely like broken, right? So we just worked with students, we had lessons, we, we played with the students, we worked with them and that sort of thing, just so that they were still learning. We were not teachers, we were not paid. And it was more for the students benefit and still very much in solidarity with the teachers who are teaching in Costa Rica. But you know, it was a really cool experience. I'm so glad I did that and it made me realize I wanted to be teaching. That was, that was it.

Stephen Matini: What is that you love the most as of today about teaching?

Brian Hanssen: For me, I think it's actually the, you go into a class, you could teach three classes in a row and they go so differently and it's sort of like, wow, this really killed last year. Like everybody was so into this topic, I'm gonna like, I can't wait to do this again. And then it just dies. It just falls flat on its face. Or other times where you're like, I think I should get rid of this. And then you don't, and people are like really into it and you're like, why?

I don't understand. Like, it's the same exact delivery. I've done nothing different. But I actually loved being a, like, so we, I was a consultant for many years as well, and I loved the change, the nature of change, new projects, new clients, and what I went full time into to this role now, I in academia, I was like, I think I'm gonna get bored teaching the same class for 20, 30 years. And that is so not the case.

Stephen Matini: When was it like maybe five years ago or something. I had two classes. So one was late in the afternoon, and then the following day at 9:00, I had the same exact class quite with different students. And so the one late in the day was a miracle, was so much fun. They were interested, interesting, kind, funny. I mean, one of those classes you think if every single class could be like this, this would be truly heaven, I had so much fun.

The following day, and nine was the opposite. It was the opposite. I could have literally exploded a bomb, nothing would've happened in the class. Like I played all my tricks in the, and everything will will fall flat. But interestingly enough, the one in the morning performed better than the one in the late afternoon.

Every single class, every single group has a life on its own. That group really have a chemistry that is that, and you have to be okay with it. A big chunk of it that is completely beyond my control, I think.

Brian Hanssen: One of my favorite moments was actually that's when I knew I was a better teacher because I've been struggling. I mean, I've always wanted it to become a better teacher, right? And this was now a couple years ago, but the class was just bombing. It was just not, I was not doing, nobody was into it, right?

And it, like halfway through this like little thing I was talking about, I stopped and I was like, I turned to a student to my left. And I'm like, this isn't going well at all, is it? And she went, No!” And like gave me this like, like face and it was just, instead of being insulted or like insecure, I was like, it was just delightful. Just that student's response was like, this is bombing man. Like, you need to stop. And I was like, all right.

Stephen Matini: What did you do after that?

Brian Hanssen: Well, so I, I stopped and I'm like, you know, I actually was really, this is, this is me, right? In a nutshell. I was like, I spent like six hours yesterday alone, putting this together and making this specific for like what's going on in the world and whatever. I'm like, you are so not into it and I just need to understand what's going on. Can we like just take a minute first to like talk to each other and just like wake yourselves up because I'm like dying inside for you.

And then two, I need to hear what's going on. It turned out enrollment was happening at that exact moment and these students are trying hard to get into certain classes and they're competing against upperclassmen or whatever. But the idea was like, because there's no computer in the classroom or there wasn't at that for that class, you know, it was, it was one of those like, they're just really anxious. And then that, that it woke everybody up. It woke me up. I was like, okay, there's a reality. I did not know.

Stephen Matini: You're ne in people's minds. You don't know why they react to you the way they do.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you said, there's a couple of things that come to mind, which to me are so important in communication and somehow you seem to embody them. One is being authentic, and the other one is to be willing to be vulnerable. And both are not easy to do at all.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah.

Stephen Matini: Particularly, you know, in, in the corporate world. How do you show up to people in a way that is authentic and vulnerable?

Brian Hanssen: In my classes, especially when we're doing, let's say an impromptu exercise or looking at a presentation, like I, I have a couple of presentations that are pretty public actually, and some that are from classes that are just for me to see. But either way, I'll show them, I'll show them and I'll analyze the things that I, that I did not appreciate about my delivery style.

It sets up for the idea that this is the type of experience we're going to have where we're not striving for perfection, we're trying to understand how we can always be more strategic, more persuasive, more engaging, more memorable, those sorts of things. As opposed to you are or you aren't. Which I actually, it's a big pet peeve of mine when people say like, this binary, like you are or you are not, is we communicate every day whether we like it or not.

There's no way we're not, like, unless you have some sort of physical issue of being able to speak, even then you're still communicating, right? So I, I don't, I don't buy it. I don't buy this idea that you're like bad or good at communicating cuz we have to do it. It's a requirement to, to survive. You know?

In leadership I think it's a little bit different. I do think that it's like, I have a sheet right here, it looks like this. And it's basically every promise that I make to someone and it's like, you know, whatever it is. If I say I'm going to do something, I don't just say it, I write it down. I think doing, saying what you're going to do, and then following up and being like, I'm sorry. I know I told you I'd get back to by Friday about X, Y, and Z, but it's just not gonna happen. These are little things that sort of like, again, I think signal I'm real can't do what I promise, but at least I can follow up. And like, I think that's such a big part of establishing trust, being real, all of that. It's a golden rule for me.

Stephen Matini: For me, I guess, it is the switch between thinking that from a communication standpoint, there must be something that I can do or say that comes across authentic. But if you put the emphasis on the relationship, then everything changes. People want to feel that they can trust the person, they can see a real person, someone that is the way you show up. It's the way that you are

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you have observed or study or experience. What would you say that is one of the most important thing to create a better cross-functional communication?

Brian Hanssen: My short answer is doing your homework for whatever reasons we expect alignment or the sort of cross-functional connection to organically happen. And I think o of that can happen if we have regular meetings where we have cross-functional, but often times even in those cross-functional situations, it's a report out. Most people aren't listening to the report outs of anybody else. Maybe there are one or two key leaders who want the macro view from across the board, but typically you're spending most of your life in your own bubble and you're not necessarily engaging around seeking to understand what's happening elsewhere.

So, you know, I would say of course, having these cross-functional opportunities to meet and discuss are huge there. Or I should say they're the baseline. I mean, there are so many different ways you could do it. You could go to like the happy hours, you know, that are part of a different department and just get to know people or, or understand where they're coming from in that type of context. Working groups and really having them discuss and go through real organizational issues and like truly working together and, and not just giving a report out or some sort of like, you know, basic info.

I'm thinking now in the world of academia, like I go to people's talks like from Steinhardt and I'm like listening to people from the history department talk about like, you know, something that happened in the 17th century and you know, it really does not relate very, very much to what I do on a daily basis. But those sorts of connections I think are are key. Like you doing the work to like actually show up for things that aren't necessarily related to you directly, I think make a huge difference.

If you're in leadership, understanding problem solving is a big way of actually like understanding how you change problems to think about how you might solve problems differently. That's culture change. That's Edgar Schein in a nutshell, right? I mean, so I feel like, you know, if you are actually getting people to do real work in real teams that actually reflect the diversity of the organization and get people truly sharing their best selves with other people, that's how you're gonna get some of that cross-functional and it's really hard to do.

One quick story, I will, I I pride myself on being one of the, when I was working at NYU Shanghai, I was one of the only business faculty that would go and show up to these like, you know, arts and sciences happy hours. I will say that I eventually just got on the list and I was invited and I was sort of like in the, in, I was in the in group for that kind of for that kind of thing.

And it made, I mean it made such a huge difference in terms of getting things done and working with people on committees and actually, you know, I think there's a social side to cross-functional that we don't necessarily always, we don't always put enough emphasis on to be like, I trust you, I wanna work with you. It's not just that I have to, or you're somebody who's representing your area in this discussion.

And that for me was like, you know, it was really cool to see how we got things done because I knew everyone's, I went, I wasn't a strat, I wasn't like, I went naturally to these happy hours. I wasn't trying to like ease my way in so that I could like, you know, have the insides coop. It just turned out that way. But it was actually really fun.

Stephen Matini: People try to handle this cross-functional relationship with a very clear idea of what their own agenda is, but they’re almost oblivious to what the agenda the other person can possibly be.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah.

Stephen Matini: They’re so worried about, as you said, at their own bubble that they don't get that the other person may have a really different priorities that are very important to them. So in your opinion, if the organizational culture somehow does not foster a certain type of communication that is open and straightforward, is it still possible to improve cross-functional communication?

Brian Hanssen: Yes, I think that there are absolute grassroots things that individuals who care can do. And I think that they fit into some of the examples I already gave. Like there are low stakes ways for individuals to get to know and understand other people. I can see how frustrating that might be if you're articulating to your own group or to a leader, the disconnect and they don't see it themselves and they kind of shush you.

I can see why that might get demotivating over time. Ideally, you know, in an ideal world, the insights that you bring from these natural connections that you're making as an individual do get recognized and you are able to shine as a result of some of those, those insights. And then from there you are chipping away at this maybe closed culture to collaboration or to, you know, to interdepartmental understanding.

Stephen Matini: There is an organizational culture, but also there are many subcultures that are created at functional level departments, sometimes teams have their own soul. If you understand the culture, the subculture and work within that, I think it's there's a lot that can be done that usually that's where I operate. But that massive cultural changes happen really over incredible long period of time.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you have seen. If you had to say what is the secret to good communication, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Brian Hanssen: Gosh, one thing. If it's just one, then I'm going to say self-awareness and empathy building. I'm sorry, those are two things maybe, but I I, to me, understanding yourself and understanding others is like the same. It's like one larger, I don't know, I'm, I'm gonna put that together.

Stephen Matini: Emotional intelligence basically.

Brian Hanssen: Exactly right. It's so interesting because the students that come into the classes that we teach often times are like, here's the situation, tell me what I should say. And I'm almost like, I'm always like at a brick wall, I have no, like, why, why would you wanna know what I have to say? I'm not in this situation. I'm not you. I don't know anything about these people.

Part of the classes that we teach, I, I think so much of that is to pull the students back like 10 frames and be like, you need to understand yourself and you need to understand the world around you, and you need to find ways that you can do that easily and quickly without being intrusive and asking its ton of questions about other people, right? You've gotta be able to do this stuff.

I'm gonna have a part B to your question because I think that only gets you so far. I think the other aspect that I think really distinguishes a good leader and a good communicator is the ability to understand how storytelling works and being able to adapt a story to that emotional intelligent situation or, you know, adapt approach if you will. I think that the storytelling is a big part of it as well.

I see my whole life through storytelling. I like the way I every, everything. It's sort of like, this is where we are now. This is what I'm asking and to get you to a new place, and this is what that new place is gonna be. Storytelling, it transcends culture, it transcends experiences. One little aside to this is I am very against someone like us, meaning people, people who are professors walking up in front of the class and saying, based on my 30 years experience, this is what you should do.

This is not about what I did in my 30 plus year career. Like, I feel like that's just so pointless. There might be interesting stories that get you to think like that's one thing, but to me, storytelling transcends like we've been storytelling since humankind existed, right? And it's the way that we are memorable. It's the way that we actually convey something. It's the way that we actually get heard is through stories. And so being able to do that well after understanding yourself and others and really figuring those two pieces out, I feel like that's what distinguishes you from someone who's not obtaining the objectives or not communicating where they could be.

Stephen Matini: Like you, I love storytelling and have people understand there's a bunch of technicalities and things to know, but the most important gift that you can give to yourself is to be yourself. You know, as you said, to be self-aware. Embrace anything that is you, your oddities, what makes you special and different. And then to show the same kindness to other people or to take the time to actually understand that someone may not be like you. And so you have to, as you said so many times, craft your message in a way that is understandable, maybe should not be called communication. It should be called more like a relationship, made.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: When you go through a rough time, do you have any favorite ways to pity party? And then what do you do to say that's it, that's it. I have to move on. Is anything you do to move on?

Brian Hanssen: I truly, truly believe in this. I see the world as sort of like a current state, some sort of action, and then a future state. And I always want that future state to have, you know, not every future state is amazing and perfect, right? But a future state that has some sort of reframe to it, that's going to move me in a direction of positivity, right? Like that's, that's my, like, that's what I teach in my classes in terms of the messaging, the thought process around communication.

And when I say where are we now, that's where the empathy and the understanding comes in for both myself and for them and really trying. It's not just like, who's my audience, it's my students, right? But I think in terms of doing that same thing for myself, right? Like if I'm in a personal or professional situation that I think is really, really challenging or, or not where I, not what I want, right?

I do the same exercise for myself, like what am I feeling? Where am I at? What, what am I, where are my true needs and wants and feelings in this very moment? What's actually happening around me right now? And then what is one ask that I may have of others? What is one ask that I may have of myself to get me to a place where those needs are either met better or whatever the, the better state is.

If I wanted to go here and three of my friends wanted to go somewhere else, it was like, it's better for everyone if we can. Like I would prefer for the group to be in a, in a unified space. And to me, that's actually a better state than where I am now. Which why, you know, I mean, these are the sorts of things that I, I naturally reframe and I'm proud that I'm able to do that.

I will add to this pity party over that, you know, fine. Like reframing, thinking about story, asking yourself, you know, what is your journey and how are you gonna get there? Sounds so cheesy, but I really do believe in it. If you can do that. I think that the reframe becomes so, so helpful. If they don't have something on the menu, I'm like, I get to try something new, right?

Like I, and I think that that is like, I'm so, I'm so happy that that's the way I see the world because I do think it makes it, I don't wanna say easier, but more like I said, more, more like, you know, there's lots of change in the world. It's just fulfilling, right? Like to be able to be like, I can get myself excited about a million things, even if that's not what I wanted to do in the first place.

For us as change leaders, like we've, we also have had to do that for organizations, right? Like, as we work with teams and leaders and organizations, it's like we have to embrace change ourself or we're not gonna do a very good job.

I love uncertainty. It does not actually scare me. So, you know, I think that there's, that is a, that's my pity party over not everyone sees the, no one probably sees the world exactly like that. I'm curious, like, so are you a re-framer as well, it sounds like, is that kind of how you deal with this? Or what's your answer to your own question?

Stephen Matini: There's someone that I interviewed like two episodes ago. You see her on the podcast. Her name is Linda Hoops. Linda dedicated her entire life to the study of resilience. She talks about different strategies, and one is reframing is really playing with expectations and I think that oftentimes a lot of pain is caused by harboring not the right expectation. So it's kind of hoping for something to be different and you always end up short, which creates further sufferance.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything we talked about today. If you had to say, what is the central point of what we discussed, what would you like people to remember? You know, the intent?

Brian Hanssen: If you're talking about inclusive and inter departmental communication and connection and empathy and all of the things that we've talked about here, right? I would suggest or say that taking the time to understand this audience journey and framing your conversations around that audience journey surpasses cultural boundaries.

It forces you to go deeper in terms of who you're talking to, who you are. It forces you to think about like a clear ask and and even if it's not communicated directly, at least it's something that's in your head. And like, that should sort of be part of the, the message crafting, you know, it helps create much more specific benefit statements for the audience, right?

I think if you actually take the time to frame your communication around the audience journey and think through that, I really do think it goes right now. We're not the 30 plus year experience. This is what you should do now we're not, this is a very US approach to communication. It's like, no, we all actually can start to frame the way that we connect with others around a very, very basic but important journey. And I think that we, we naturally forget to do that. And yet we naturally appreciate it when others do that.

Start with the journey. And if you can start there, you can be inclusive, you can be self-aware, you can be empathetic, you can be very, very mindful of who you're talking to and communicate clear, well-crafted benefit statements, riddled messaging, right? You have a much better chance of being memorable, being persuasive, having people engage with you and essentially just being heard. Which I think at the end of the day is the number one thing that when people come in my office, I'm hearing that they don't feel that way and it doesn't get any easier as we get older. And so I think if it's about inclusivity and connection and being heard, then I think that frame can just eliminate a lot of stress and challenge.

Stephen Matini: That's fabulous. , that's wonderful.

Brian Hanssen: I believe it. The whole, I really do. I believe that wholeheartedly.

Stephen Matini: And it's interesting because it's these are points that you're never gonna find in a communication textbook, really. No. You find other stuff, but not this, you know, but right? Brian, thank you so much for, for all this. This is really wonderful.

Brian Hanssen: There's a lot of overlap in terms of what we do and how we see the world and how we respond to things. And I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You have been, you've gotten me to think about things that I'm not sure I necessarily articulated before, so thank you.

View Details

Living a successful personal and professional life requires a lot of things, including tremendous commitment, strategy, gut feeling, and courage.

This episode's guest is Sergio Azzolari, CEO of DSQUARED2, the high fashion brand launched by twin brothers Dean and Dan Caten.

Sergio embodies the cosmopolitan spirit, combining worldliness, wit, culture, and wisdom imbued with humanity and kindness.

Sergio's life experiences span from Benetton and Missoni to Luxottica and Hogan, speaking six foreign languages and living on five continents.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on Twitter

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome Stephen Matini: So, how's your life in Ireland?

Sergio Azzolari: Well, life is in Ireland is good. I mean the weather is always a surprise. I mean, you have a wardrobe that is basically layers. Maybe it’s sunny like now, or maybe like dreadful like a few hours ago. And, you know, but that was good. And Dublin is really booming again. You know, it used to be one of the Celtic Tigers years ago, and then it developed incredibly. And then because of Brexit, a lot of tech companies are moving over here.

So there's a lot of hustle and bustle. This is good. Very young, very young city, very young town, very young people around, obviously being tech and all. So yeah, it's quite interesting. It's very interesting actually. A lot of things. And, and Dublin is Dublin and then you just go like minutes, minutes away and it's scattered side and beautiful cows, all that. Just kinda, kinda refreshing as well. Why not?

Stephen Matini: You lived in London before, right?

Sergio Azzolari: I lived in London. I lived in the US. I've lived in Hong Kong, I lived in Australia. I've lived in New Zealand, in Argentina ... yeah ...

Stephen Matini: How does this experience compare to the other places?

Sergio Azzolari: Well, you know, places are different, and you are different because you are, you are different. As you grow, as you grow up, obviously you have different sets of eyes. How do I compare? Well, if I compare with ... I mean it reminds me a lot of the US many years ago not now, now the US is not what it used to be. It's all woke. You can't say anything. You just have to be like, you know, super tame and be careful, not respectful before you were respectful. Now you have to be careful, which is a completely different set of mind.

Here reminds me of the Google Days in US. So kinda laid back with the sense of humor. Good to stay home, good to go out and see friends, not being afraid what you say, what you don't say. So it reminds me a lot of that.

It reminds me a bit of Australia as well in terms of mentality. You know, very laid back. I have, I had a meeting with our landlord because we are renovating offices and things, and he doesn't see me on Wednesdays because he has to go play golf. And it's so refreshing actually because, you know, being used to Milan, for example, where everybody's busy.

Or New York pretty much the same mentality, or London. Here it is, is a lot more refreshing in a way. So you, you wanna have amazing and say, oh, do we need to discuss, or do we need to sign things? Okay, do we need to sign things?

You come to the office, we don't need to sign things and we just have to have, have a chat. Okay, let's meet at fiver thirty at the pub, order a couple of pints or more. And then, you know, you have a conversation. And that's, there's a lot of human side of things here, which again reminds me of places like Australia or the US many years ago.

And it's quite nice actually. And if I compare it to Milan, I go to Milan quite often cuz we have one of the offices in the showrooms and all is in Milan. So I get to see the difference almost weekly. And in Milan, we are stressed. The atmosphere is always a little bit, I wouldn't say gloomy cuz it's not the right word. But it's always like, there's always an underlying tension. Underlying current, it is not really good vibes, and it's self-generated.

And it is not someone telling you that you should be stressed, you should be underprivileged because you live. It's a self-inflicted pain. Yeah, absolutely. So there's, there's a certain degree of masochism in Italy that I don't understand really. Cause you know, the work life balance is possible. I mean, I work here in, in Dublin, my days are very full. I have calls, I have meetings, I have things, and I have to prepare budgets. So I have the same degree of stress that I would say that I have in Milan without the stress stressful part. So I get to do a lot more in a shorter time here. Versus what I do in in in Italy.

But that's, that's also, I think it’s a bit of the difference between let's say the Anglo-Saxon world and the Mediterranean world. Where you have to talk and convince and meet in the Mediterranean world, whereas here it’s a lot more simple in a way. It's a lot more, I wouldn't say directional, but it's like, yeah, we need to do this. Okay, let's agree or let's agree to disagree, and then you just, yeah, do things.

Stephen Matini: Maybe pragmatic?

Sergio Azzolari: It’s, it's a lot more pragmatic. That's true.

Stephen Matini: When people ask me the question, where's home, I never know how to answer.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, we’re in the same club. Okay, well people say home is where your roots are. And that's not a question. Cause I was born in Italy just because of my mom's choice. So my parents at that time were were based in Trinidad, part of Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago. So knowing my mom, she must have gone to the local clinic, browsed around and said ... not here.

So I was born in Como, which is kind of cool, but I never lived there. So, because when I was like a few weeks old, I was already on a plane back to Trinidad. So is home Como? Not really. Is it Trinidad then? I was conceived there but most likely no, because I've never returned after I left when I was two years old. So it's very, it's very difficult to really say where you're from.

I elected to be from somewhere a few years ago. I never owned any house. My family never owned anything. Like, you know, whatever we owned was like long gone. And so we always rented. I mean, even my parents lived in Milan for a number of years and they rented. So years ago I decided to buy myself a property, a small cottage in the hills, not far from Milan.

And that's what I call home now, it became sort of my hobby in a way. So I started building and doing things and, you know, designing. I designed the complete house, and designing complete furniture, designed the entire thing, even though I'm not a designer. So working with local artisans and all, and it's, it's like never ending, never ending projects. And that's what I call home.

Am I from there? No. Do I speak the local dialect? No, I understand it, but I don't speak it. But as home and that's, you know, so people like us, I think at the end of the day we sort of elect where we are from. Cause if we just look backwards and say, okay, where my roots are, okay, they just go everywhere. And then you say, yeah, where were you born? Okay, that's inconsequential.

Where are your friends? Pretty much all over the world. So it's, it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly where it's home. You know, when you see other people that, you know, they have their childhood friends and you know, they have the family, they have, you know, all the certainties around them, and you don't, in a way you be jealous. But then again, you're not ... say, okay, yeah, well I'm free for Christmas. Put it this way.

Stephen Matini: In hindsight, were there any sign back then when you were a kid of the person you would become?

Sergio Azzolari: Signs? I don't know. I mean, probably like ... Look, I always traveled, but I always wanted to travel. I always wanted to accomplish something. Everything that I did was always with a certain degree of commitment. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. So I wouldn't do something. I would not try everything if it's not my cup of tea, but just give up the same day.

So I cannot play guitar. Biggest regret I cannot play music. And I said, okay, that's fine. I mean, I'm not good at it. I won't be good at it because, I mean, it's probably not in my DNA set to be a musician or anything. So just, but everything that I did was with a, with a full on commitment.

So I played rugby for 32 seasons, and I played rugby internationally, I played rugby at the highest standards even before the professional year, or at the beginning of the professional year. And it became one of the first professionals. I started, and I graduated early because I wanted to get my PhD out of the way. And actually I started working even before getting my PhD.

I wanted to be one of the first foreigners in China who could speak the language. And actually that kind of helped and that's what I did. So everything that I did was with a certain degree of commitment. Did it, did I, did I have the big picture in mind? No, not really.

Like for instance, I'll just give you this example. Well, I, I studied economics and I studied Chinese. And I went to Beijing actually in 1989, it was Tiananmen when I was there. And so I was set up to be like probably an economist or working in that kind of environment. And actually I did my thesis on joint ventures in China, because back in the eighties, that was early nineties, that was the only way to do business in China. Joint ventures were local enterprises actually, or govern-owned enterprises.

I started working for a legal firm you know, making contracts, or like studying them, the ways to do contracts for joint ventures. The idea that I would end up in fashion? Never. Right? But, so it happened that I was working for the Chinese Malaysian counterpart of what the joint base with Benetton would have been.

And I was sitting on the other side of the table cuz I was with the Chinese side. And the Italian was just saying, Yeah, but you are Italian. I said, yeah. Why are you sitting there? Cause I work for them. And they said no, that's not acceptable. You can’t, you have to come and work for us.

And a few weeks later I was folding jumpers in Taiwan and that's, that's how I ended up in fashion. So it's like, it's bizarre because you don't plan these things, so you have to sort of go with the flow. God knows if I refused, or maybe I would've done something completely different. I dunno. But did I set my life goal to be like a you know, a manager, or director, or a CEO in the fashion business? Not really. Did I like that? Yes, absolutely. That's why I commit myself. If I didn't like it, if it was some, a field that I wasn't particularly inspired by, I would've said, yeah thank you, but no thank you. But so it struck some chords, so to speak. And that's how, that's how I ended up in working for fashion.

And then it was 30 years ago or thereabout. And I worked in fashion since, fashion and luxury since. So do I mean that's also what I say to my to my kids. One is 20, he’s studying oenology in Italy. He wants to work with wine, and it's a great opportunity because there's very few people who do that. And the other one is is here in Dublin with me and is, is studying in an international school. But I also chose a school that gives full a full vision of what he can do, right?

And that’s what I'm telling them. Like, don't, don't put limits. Don't, don't think that what you do now is what you gonna do in ten years. If you do, you get, you're gonna get distracted, or you're gonna get absolutely, you know, disengaged.

Like for instance, I wanted to be an archeologist when I was a kid. And still I'm a history buff, I always went to all sort of excavation areas around the world with my mom, or on my own when I was older. I slept in the great pyramid when I was 15 years old. So I've done a number of things that were like, you know, that's what I want to do.

I studied classical in high school then. Then you know, reality settles down. Well, if you want to be an archeologist, either you are either very rich, or you have a lot of sponsors, or you gonna be like begging for food. I didn't want to beg for food.

I said, ok, being big and everything. So I said, Well, maybe not. That's not a career that I could pursue. So I, again, at the end of the day, am I still interested in archeology? Big time. Am I still in history? Totally. Am I doing what I was setting my goals when I was 12, 13 years old? No, absolutely not. So it's, it's not mandatory that you have to follow your heart. Just follow your heart but always mix it with mind. Otherwise you end up doing something that you just regret.

Stephen Matini: Were there any people who influenced your path?

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, I think, I think you know, my advantage has always been that it could relate to people and it could speak their language. I mean, it takes me like a few weeks and I speak the local language, right? So I speak six languages quite fluently. But, you know, I can, I can converse in other languages as well. So by doing that, obviously you, I mean if you break the language barrier, sometimes it helps and you start having conversations with which are a lot more meaningful.

So obviously my parents were very influential because they gave, I mean. I was the only child, but they gave me complete freedom. So they said, you know, we have your back, but do whatever you like. My father was an engineer, he would've loved me to be an engineer, but hey, you do your your thing. I'll just criticize whatever choice you do you make. But, that was his prerogative.

And my mom always had my back and she, she was more the humanist in the family. So she told me like, you know, to appreciate arts and, you know, study classics and all sort of things. So they were influential, but not influential you gotta do this, you gotta do that.

So, and you know, and talking to different people, in different geographies, that also kind of helped. Because all of a sudden you realize like, why did I choose Chinese? I went to China for the second time, actually, the first time, I was only six years old. Second time was eighteen. And I, because of my far acquaintances and all, I had a special visa, all access kinda visa, and I traveled all around China for two months without speaking a single word of Chinese.

And back then, talking about 1987, not many people would speak English, actually very few people. So it was kind of difficult. And then you realize, and you, you start adding one plus one and say, hey, if I understand economics, if I understand the business, I see this potential because it's a largely untapped market, and you get to speak the language, maybe it's an advantage.

So by talking to people in China, around China, off China around the time, that gave me the influence at least to open up the China chapter of my life. See if I have to, to really list all the people that were influential in my life, I would put, you know, the number in the millions probably because every single person you talk to has a certain influence.

So, that's again, that's where you have to have an open mind. So some people need mentors and tutors. I had great mentors. I, I had great tutors, and bad tutors, and bad mentor, or people that were my bosses. And, and there was more fear than respect in a way, but it was more their fear of me rather than the vice versa.

Because a lot of people, especially in Italy, at the beginning of my career, not at the beginning of my career, my second job when I moved, when I, my third job when I moved to Italy, I was almost 30 and it was made a director in a company I was actually 29. My, I was the youngest director in the company by far. The second youngest was 12 years older than me, and he was called a kid. So you can imagine.

And my immediate boss was, was not afraid of me, but it was kind of jealous of me because I could speak languages. I was talking to the President, the owner every day. Cause he wanted to pick my brain about things, and so on and so forth. So it was bypassing it by definition. It was like, it was, it was kind of jealous of my proximity to the sun, right?

And that influenced me as well. So you might say, well that's that's, that's a bad chapter. No, quite contrary. I mean, it was very influential because I understood what it means to be, you know, what it means to try at least to be a good boss, that you have to nurture your people, and you have to raise their bar, because if you raise their bar, then your bar raises too.

So rather than trying to keep them low, and that’s influenced a lot of my career because you know, you put that kind of spirit in everyday life. And if you have good people working with you or under you, I always say “with me”, never under, cause you have always colleagues, you never have subordinates. But when you have good colleagues and, you can be their mentor, you can be the one that shines the diamond, you know? And it's actually rewarding.

So if you have someone who is really good, and you help them with their career, and you don't care about them being grateful, cause ultimately you don't have to care about that, but just, you know, it's more of a self-rewarding exercise than I just held them because they'll be grateful, and then they'll do something in return, right?

That's the most wrong thing you could possibly think of. But you do that and it actually helps because them, and their career flourishes. They do great things, and you are proud, and you know, and that adds to your, and that influences other people. And at the end of the day, that's the great thing. So I try to influence people, as much as other people influence me.

Stephen Matini: Based on what you say, you're really good at building good relationships.

Sergio Azzolari: Well, I always tried, cause that's also ... probably a bad side of me is that ... there are two people. There's two kind of people in business. People who always to be confrontational, and people who always want to find a sort of win-win situation. I'm very much in the win-win situation area.

Sometimes I, I know I should be more confrontational, but probably style, breed, whatever, you know, I always despise people who will talk over you, or speak loud, and, I don't, I mean shouting, shouting matches are not my style. So I prefer to go, and look for win-win situations, it helps on the other side, obviously some people think, or some people, some superiors, or whoever, want you to be more aggressive. I mean, it happened a number of times in my life in my professional life. They wanna be more aggressive. But aggressiveness is a different thing.

Cause I played rugby, I can be very aggressive, but for a purpose, cuz you have to conquer the ball. And in business you cannot just go grab business out of someone else’s hands. So you have to work different kind of aggression in a way. More subtle, more ... sometimes more political, but more win-win. Cuz otherwise, you know, it doesn't work, really.

So that’s always been one of my characteristics in a way. So I try not to be confrontational. I try to find a good way out. So I'm more of a negotiator than a director and say meaning like, I direct you to do things. But I think the outcome is, I mean, so far it's been quite good, so I can't complain, really.

Stephen Matini: I work with a lot of organizations, a lot of people. What you just said, very often, is probably the hardest thing for people, which is organizational politics. One thing that I hear a lot is I'm just a number. I have a point of view, I have the experience, and the know-how. I know how to provide a solution, but they would not listen to me. And often times people experience this fear, what is it gonna happen if I really say what I want to say? And then if I don't say it, I end up feeling completely frustrated.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Matini: So what would you say to people?

Sergio Azzolari: I'm laughing because it sums up my first big step in my career. I was with Benetton. And that it was really early in my career as I said. Well, I was a newbie in the fashion world, only like four months before I was, you know, like a legal / economics sort of guru. When it came to contracts, I didn't know, I mean, I didn't know much about the business per se, but it was, you know, my logic was more on the, if you do this, that happens, and so on and so forth. So, it was more like a cause effect kind of thing, not really thinking business implications and all. And I was 23 years old, right? And it was the Chief Commercial Officer of Benetton visiting China, and my boss was there.

I was sent to to meet, and another candidate for a joint venture. And I returned to the hotel late at night and I found a little note, back then it was like, no mobile phones or anything. So I just found a little note returning to hotel by the Chief Commercial Officer saying, “Call me up when when you return.” So I like, okay, fine. So I called them and they said, “Would you think? I said, “Well, these are really good, and they would be much better than those ...”

So I give my, you know, like my SWOT analysis in ten minutes. So this what you should do. So like an advisor, I put down the phone, had a shower, and so on and so forth. Half an hour later, my boss, my immediate boss calls me, say I need to fire you because how dare you to speak.

Without having your conversation bettered you should have around things past me. I said, Oh, okay, what did they do? So, apologies, but hey, I found the note. I was like very adamant. Following morning, I was like, okay, I, I got fired. Fine. At breakfast, these two gentlemen are already sitting. I arrived there just like out polite, sit together with them and the CCO says to my boss, “Okay, this guy is really a gem. I want you to double his salary and make him a director today.”

So in other words, you are never a number. I mean you are a number as long as you want to be a number. Cause if you're always afraid and you never want to, you know, pull your head outta the sand, and and just think that things are granted, and because you work there, you should be considered because you're there every day.

You should be considered because you are in the org chart, you should be considered. And all of a sudden, you know, new hires are put on top of you and so on and so forth, and you complain. And I see that the company like, but have you ever spoken up?

If you don't agree on something, can you say, hey, yeah, okay, I'll do that because I'm paid to doing that, but I would do this instead. And that's what they tell people, you know? Yeah, you, you don't have to agree. You have to also agree to disagree sometimes. And it's fine, you know, and then fine. And, but that's, that's the direction. It's too late to take another decision. Find point taken. We've taken that into consideration. And then second time around, maybe we'll consult people, that person and that, but that self pity is is another big thing in corporate business.

Oh, they never consider me, I never, I always buy, I'm always bypassed for promotion. Bullshit. Have you done something about it? Have you spoken to someone? No, just go and back home or to HR and complaining and you just wanting to pay your rise. And that's, that's another thing I probably am wrong because I never got reached. But still, I never worked for money, ever. Not one day in my life. I thought by my salary and all the pay rises that I got during the years were never asked for, in a way.

People say, well, probably because you're you, you were well off when you started. Not really. No, quite a contrary. I mean, my parents had to work for a living and my father provided, and they gave me an education that they paid for and everything else. It's not something that it was everything given for free. There's no, there's never free lunch anyway. So, but again, I never worked for money.

Yeah, there's always someone better and someone who pays more, and you can't be a mercenary, which is completely fine. I mean, it's your cup of tea, fine. Or you are always envious, you are always jealous. You always, you know, say, ah, I should make more. Look at the amount of hours I'm putting in. I'm only getting that much.

And you just compare yourself to others and say, yeah, he's working less than I do, and he has my same salary, so my cost per hour is lower. That's wrong. You know, so you just work, just do your thing.

And you know, I've been fortunate enough that rewards came and that's another piece of advice that I give to to my children, especially my son, you know, he is starting obviously his career, and I said, look, before you make a decision, you have to experience everything there is to know about wine. You go and be a waiter, you go and be a sommelier. You go and, and work without a salary. You go and don't even think to be paid.

Whatever they give you, it is gas money, and it's fine. So don't think about how much you're gonna get today, but if you have a big experience, and you are respected, and you have the right relationships that you built naturally, not forcefully, then the rewards will come naturally. But again, if you work, oh, no, I have to make that much money now, you’re bound be there forever. Especially in Italy, you know, if you start at a certain level, the odds that you're staying at that level for like 20 years. And that's, that's another big thing, I think.

Stephen Matini: Everything you say, If I had to summarize it with one word, it keeps coming to my mind, would be “courage”.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah. It takes courage and it takes, yeah, it takes ... I mean, everything you do takes courage. I mean, if you always want to be in the comfort zone and, you know, stay home, but even home, it's full of threats. I mean, these are the soap and in the bathtub you can, you know, can slip on it and bang your head. So there is, it takes courage to have a, you know the only non courageous thing to do is stay idle.

Everything you do, and again, it's a matter of commitment. So you always have to think, if I do something and I'm committed, things will do, will go the proper way. Or not. Unpredictable, but at least you get out of your comfort zone and actually experience something new all the time. Obviously it's uncomfortable the moment any one of us does something that is not accustomed to do.

There's always a degree of, I know I wouldn't say fear, but apprehension. Oh shit, what am I doing? Am I out of my death? Am I actually, it's funny because it takes courage, but you have to kind of, it's sort of a stage fright. You know, the first time I had, I had a speech in public, I didn't know I had to give a speech in public. I was invited to do this thing to talk about China. And I was, again, 20, must have been 25 or something.

And so they invited me and, Oh yeah, sure, I’ll come, blah, blah, blah. And I get there and there are 3000 people attending. I didn't know, I, I thought it was just a one-on-one or like a small board run conversation. And at that time I said, well, it takes courage to go in front of people without any preparation or anything, but you take the bull by the horns and just do it. What can go wrong?

I mean, do they crucify you, or do they, do they burn you at the stake? Probably, but you don't know yet, right? Everything you do in, in many circumstances, yeah, it takes a bit of courage. But if you, if you don't take, if you don't have that little bit of courage, even, you know, the courage of asking her out, or the courage of breaking up some, I mean, it's a lot more courageous. How many people do you know that are very unhappy with their lives, very unhappy with their wife, and the procrastinate the inevitable, and they never divorce? Because it takes courage.

Stephen Matini: You have no idea how long I thought before asking you to be part of the podcast. What is he gonna think, you know? I'm so glad I did, but I thought it for a long time. Oh, no, he is never gonna agree to do this.

Sergio Azzolari: Whenever I can, I know I I like to have conversations. I like to and I don't mean to say, or I don't even mean to be someone to look up to or someone, I'm just a guy who's had, who's having, still having a very interesting life, which is Confucian-Chinese, ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, that's a curse.

So I'm cursed in that. If you do things and life is interesting, it's a threat. I'm blessed that I'm cursed, you can find time for everything. That's another life lesson that I've learned. It's very hard that I say I don't have time. I don't have time, maybe today, tomorrow, the after the month in a year. But I will always carve out some time to do something meaningful, anything that is maybe not a long time.

So if you ask me, can you spare an entire day I’d say ... shit. Okay, look, let me look at the calendar, probably in two years. Can you spare an hour? Yeah. This will mean that I'll need to work longer hours today. Yeah, it's fine. But what's the deal? You just organize yourself differently and then you get an hour later because of things that happened before. Again, that’s another thing. You know, pity party, pity party over, I don't have time. No, no, you make time. You decide. It's, it's only up to you.

Stephen Matini: When you're going through a rough spot. How do you summon the courage to move on?

Sergio Azzolari: I always reflect on the outcomes of things, right? So probably one of the things that I've learned especially my first experiences, was always to weigh consequences. So the what if scenarios, right? And that's where some courage is. Well, okay, there's a risk-benefit ratio in everything. And if the risk is worth taking, then courage comes naturally.

I wouldn't stand on the top of a building and roll on the ball of my feet because I know the risks and there are no rewards basically. So, I mean, the reward is not to fall off. So that's stupid. That's not courage. That's, you know, that's a different thing. But in a, in everything that you do, just think, you know, just sit down, think past. Cause if you think too long, that other other things come in, into, into place and come into the picture. So don't think too long.

First thing is think, but don't think too long. Think about the risks things, think about the benefits. Think about if, if it that doesn't work, what happens? It's more than a risk. It's actually what happens in broader terms to yourself, through your business, through your immediate people.

And so, so of course, so think of the chain of consequences that you set in motion, if this works or if this doesn't work, but be fast in thinking. And that's what I do. Like, I, I think fast. I try to think fast and I regret later. So there's always time for regretting anyway.

In a way, you have to sort of combine your gut and your brain, and with a bit of heart, and then you take decisions, and that's where sum the courage, really. So it's always a calculated courage in a way. It’s always with a pinch of salt in.

Stephen Matini: And my wish for you is to be cursed for eternity.

Sergio Azzolari: Thank you. In a way it means that there's never rest. I actually, you know, my wife always teases me because when I'm resting, when I'm doing something, I cannot just stay idle and watch TV. I have to do another three or four things at the same time. Can you just stay quiet? No, it’s a curse ...

If you have any questions about the content of this episode, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter. Please check the episode's notes for information. If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our managerial and leadership development programs at alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A. L. Y. G. N. dot company.

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

The word resilience pops up everywhere these days. It has become a catchy term often abused and misused to indicate the importance of being flexible, stern, and adaptable.

My guest today is Dr. Linda Hoopes, which I affectionately refer to as the Goddess of Resilience. Linda represents one of the most influential voices for researching resilience and helping people become resilient.

For Linda, “Resilience is the ability to deal with high levels of challenge while maintaining a high level of effectiveness and well-being.” Linda believes everyone has the seeds of resilience and that learning to weather life’s storms with grace and skill is crucial.

Linda spent 25+ years in business psychology and organizational change, and then she gravitated toward resilience as the focus of her professional work. Linda has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology with a minor in Statistics/Psychometrics.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Dr. Linda Hoopes on LinkedIn

Resilience Alliance

Prosilience

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on Twitter

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini. Let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company.

Hi everyone, I’m Stephen, and welcome to Pity Party Over. The word resilience pops up just about everywhere these days. It has become a catchy term often abused and misused to indicate the importance of being flexible, stern, adaptable, and all sorts of things.

My guest today is Dr. Linda Hoopes which I affectionately refer to as the “Goddess of Resilience.” Linda represents one of the most influential voices for researching resilience and helping people become resilient.

For Linda, resilience is the ability to deal with high levels of challenge while maintaining a high level of effectiveness and well-being. Linda believes everyone has the seeds of resilience, and learning to weather life's storms with grace and skill is crucial.

Linda spent 25+ years in business psychology and organizational change and then she gravitated toward resilience as the focus of her professional work. Linda has a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology with a minor in statistics and psychometrics.

Please welcome to Pity Party Over Linda Hoopes.

Stephen Matini: I was thinking, you are the goddess of resilience. You know to me you are you represent such an important figure. And so I was wondering, as you think about your life, were there any specific people you looked up to? You know, specific events in your life that somehow have contributed more than others, to shape who you are today?

Linda Hoopes: Gosh, that's a great question. So I would say I'd have to start way back. I grew up in a family where I had some good role models for resilience and also so my dad was a logistics engineer, and my mother was a musician. My mother is still alive. And so I got this sort of whole right brain left brain really curious about the world, you know, applied things.

So I got into applied psychology as a field because, you know, business world and also human beings and so ... then going to grad school in industrial and organizational psychology exposed me to a lot of the quantitative and qualitative ways that we understand humans in the world.

And then I went to work for a consulting firm that did work in organizational change. So Daryl Conner, who is one of the early thought leaders in the change management space has been one of my mentors for a long time and in fact he was writing his book called “Managing the speed of change,” which had resilience at the center of it.

And so a lot of my work was stimulated by that environment and thinking about how humans go through change. And then over time I've come to broaden my interests outside of organizations and change and think about all of the different kinds of challenges that we face. So that's kind of the short version of the story.

Stephen Matini: Was there any specific moment that you understood? Oh this is my talent, this is my thing.

Linda Hoopes: I can't think of one moment, but I can think of making the decision to leave the consulting firm world and then take this piece of work that I've done and start my own company and then write the second book and the “Prosilience” book.

And so it's sort of become clearer over time that this is a unique thing that I have to say and that I have some perspectives on it. That might be valuable to people.

Stephen Matini: In my conversations with clients. I often hear people wondering what their lives would be like if they had their own business. Is there anything that helped you make the jump?

Linda Hoopes: Probably two things. One was midlife crisis. Somewhere along there I went to massage school and decided okay, you know like I just need to pursue this thing. Uh and then the other thing was actually the situation around me. The company I was in was changing their business model and becoming less of their business model before was more of a training and transfer models for teaching other people to do things. And they were moving more towards a traditional consulting firm model where they would have teams of people come in and I'm much more of a teacher.

I'm much more of, I want to teach you how to do it. That spider plant in the background is my metaphor for what I do. You know? It's like we plant plants out there and then they grow new plants. And so I really just not cut out to be a road warrior consultant who goes and you know since at a client site for four days a week, for months on end, that's just not me. And so as they were moving there, it became clear that I was I needed to shift something. So so that's what happened.

Stephen Matini: You also were an adjunct professor?

Linda Hoopes: I was an actual professor before I got into consulting. I taught at several universities and in psychology and business, in statistics research methods. And and so I did that and then at some point I went to work as the research director for this consulting firm and that's sort of how all of this got started.

Well after that I became sort of I did the adjunct thing too because that world is is fun. You know, it's fun to be in an environment where people actively want to learn. So I was in a an organization development program teaching uh master students in as an adjunct professor. And yeah, it's it's really fun, isn't it? What do you teach?

Stephen Matini: I teach Organizational Communication at N.Y.U. here in Florence. This is a main course for our business students. I belong to Stern School of Business and I had this fabulous group of professors that teach the same course all over the world.

So we get together, there's a lot of exchange of information, and the specific slant we give to the course is very organizational development. I’ve been teaching the course for over 10 years and it's been great working with students, most of my students, are 20 years old, you know, so this is the their second year,

Linda Hoopes: Yeah, you know, every now and then I'll have a student come to me, a graduate student, usually in a master's program or a doctoral program wanting to know if they can use the resilience tool that we have and so on in the research. And I always try to find a way to say yes, because I like to encourage that way and we learn things that way.

I don't have the wherewithal to do a lot of direct research myself right now, but I love participating in studies that other people are doing and contributing my thinking too, that it’s, it's and working with the students that are finding their way through that I agree.

Stephen Matini: A fun fact about you that I learned from the Prosilience website (https://prosilience.com), your website, is about the fact that you like to simplify complex things. So I thought it was really neat. How do you do that?

Linda Hoopes: So there's a quote that I really like that is from justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the US justice, that it talks about the simplicity on this side of complexity and the simplicity on the other side of complexity. So, and he talks about how he would give his life for the second one?

The first one is not worth much. And so there's like stupid simplicity and then there's the simplicity that requires really working through complexity, and that requires just sort of sitting with it, understanding it, living with it going off on tangents, getting the big picture in mind and then you figure out how do I boil this down into its essence, into the things that are most critical for people to understand.

And I really love that, you know, I really love um figure, I mean I really do think of it as distilling as thinking about like how can what is the simplest way to express this that captures the power of it that has elegance to it. And you know, you living in Florence all the art that's around you, does a lot of that, you know, really good artists do that with human forms with buildings and all of that. I like doing it with ideas.

Stephen Matini: Well, complexity is a huge topic with all my clients. One of the struggles that people go through is the fact that there's so much information and very often is difficult to understand in this jungle of information, which one which piece of information comes first, which one is more relevant, which one is not as relevant. So I like the way you said that you distill. Is there anything specific you do to distill information or is more of a natural ability you've always had?

Linda Hoopes: Well, I can give you an analogy, I'm also a musician and um and one of the things I love is Irish music and so I play several instruments and so I, but in the summertime I go to this summer music camp and there is a beautiful fingerstyle guitar player named Robin Bullock and he teaches a class.

And one of the things he teaches is about how you learn a song by ear and he talks about finding the corners of the tune. So like a lot of Irish tunes, the notes are, there's a lot of fluidity around the ornamentation of it, but just listening to what are the sort of the core things that sort of make the shape of the tune, and then you fill in the bones from there and then you fill in all the stuff around that.

And I think that's kind of what I try to do with ideas, is like, what are the corners? Like I write down the four or five things and then I figure out sort of how do you embellish it around that? How do you embellish it around that? And some of it comes from making outlines, you know. I remember once upon a time in school we had to make outlines of things, you know, what are the key points and then what are the supporting points? And just even thinking that way is a really helpful process. So I think I just kind of do that with ideas.

Stephen Matini: One topic that comes up a lot is the notion of boundaries in the workplace. People oftentimes find themselves in this weird predicament between basically two opposite needs. On one hand, they feel like being a pressure cooker if they do not set healthy boundaries, and then on the other hand, they feel fearful of what might happen to them if they say no to people. So, what has been your experience in with setting boundaries and to help out clients with boundaries?

Linda Hoopes: Well, first of all, as you know, priorities is one of the resilience muscles that I talk about, and this idea that resilience is about energy. And so if we're not setting boundaries, then our energy might be going all over the place. And so so so it has a role in helping us focus our energy.

I think my experience is that we are always saying no two things. It's just a question of whether it's conscious. Everything that you say yes to, is no to something else. You know, every time I choose to be home with my husband, I'm choosing not to go out and play music. Every time I choose to go on a trip, I'm choosing not to be home.

And so if you don't set boundaries, then you're letting other people decide what you're saying yes and no to, and so I think some of it is just really um you have to start to learn what does yes feel like inside me and and and recognize the cost of not honoring that yes, because you're saying yes to all the other things.

And so to me, it really becomes doing that work of figuring out what's most important to you and then practicing in small ways. I mean this is not like setting a big boundary first, right? You just practice them. There's a no muscle that you use. And so you practice the no muscle in little teeny ways. Um and and polite ways. You know, this is not about being rude either, it's about, well, you know, let me get back to you on that.

Buy yourself a little bit of time, think about it and then come back to it. But it's a it's a self-respect thing and I've also found that people respect you when you respect yourself. So if you find ways to set a boundary, you're actually increasing people's esteem for you because they can see that you value and honor yourself and that you're that you see your time is precious that you see yourself as a worthwhile resource.

And so I think it's it's really I would ask the question what happens when you don't set boundaries, then people feel like they can take advantage of you walk all over you. They, you know, you can't they can't respect you anymore than you respect yourself. So that's that's sort of where I would go with that.

Stephen Matini: Probably what is behind all of that is fear. Typical questions that I hear from people are, what is it going to happen to me if I say no to my partner, to my family, to my boss. There is often a big fear behind that. You know, what I find brilliant about your approach is working with expectations. Sometimes I may need to change how I view issues. Other times I may need to accept them or use different actions. Often times all of us, you know, we wait and wait and wait and analyze the same situation a million times. We may have the impression of moving forward, but what we are simply doing is just to have a greater understanding of the dynamics without any traction. So really nothing improves. So my question to you is, how do you choose the right strategic combination of changing expectations, accepting what is, and putting in place some actions to finally move forward?

Linda Hoopes: So as you know, that's that's one of the building blocks is what are the strategies that I choose? When do I take something on, when do I accept and so on? This has been a problem for people for as long as there have been people right, you know, and I went back, so you are you familiar with the “Serenity Prayer”? I went back and looked at the original version of that.

So the serenity prayer was authored by an American theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr. And it’s, it's been useful in 12-step programs, alcoholics, anonymous and other kinds of things. But the original wording goes like, this father give us courage to change what must be altered serenity to accept what cannot be helped and the insight to know the one from the other.

And he wrote that back in the 1930s. And so you know, for as long as there have been human beings, we've been struggling with this issue of what can I control, what can I control? How do I get up, how do I stand up for the things that I need to stand up for. And I think it comes back again to the thing we were talking about before, which is having that clear compass inside you knowing what's important.

I remember a situation where my brother and I were facing a common challenge and his, his impulse was to try to fix it. And my impulse was to try to just work around it and figure out how to how do we deal with this just being the way it is and neither one of us was right or wrong. It's just, it's just different choices about how we spend our energy.

I think the self-awareness to say. I'm saying I'm saying to too many things, it's okay, just the way it is, like I'm not standing up enough, this one kind of self-awareness and then there's the, I'm banging my head against the wall and trying to fix things that I have no control over is another kind of self-awareness.

So I don’t, there's not one right answer, but being aware that there are multiple strategies and that we need to choose our battles and that were possible. We need to reframe things as uh to find ways to see them as hopeful as full of opportunity rather than as problems. You know, all of those things are our ingredients in the mix. How do you do it?

Stephen Matini: Ah! Well, I'm not someone who likes that much arguing, I don't like to get into conflicts, like probably a lot of people and I had to learn how to set boundaries because I felt that my life was all over the place in terms of interpersonal relationships. And so years ago it was a professor, his name is Enrico Cheli, he's a professor at the University of Siena in Italy. He's a psychologist and sociologist who taught me how to do it how to set boundaries and the importance of say no, but to answer your question, I believe that you set boundaries because it boils down to the person you want to be and the life you want to have and I agree with you, there's no correct or wrong answer, let alone giving people advice on what they should be doing or living.

But I can definitely say that the moment that I began setting boundaries, my relationships after a while improved, they simplified, they became much simpler, essentially more functional. So I truly believe it boils down to a choice. Is this something that I want to be part of my life? Is this an experience I want to give to myself? Is this how I want people to treat me? Is this how I want to treat people at the end of all? It's all about happiness and people's happiness, those are really paramount to me.

Linda Hoopes: You know, there's another, I'm gonna take this off on a little bit of a tangent. But one of the things I've been talking to people about lately, I don't know if you're familiar with the model that I have in the “Prosilience” book that's called the challenge map that talks about all the different kinds of challenges that we face. There's the challenges that we choose the things that we step up and decide to do in the world. There are the challenges that just happen.

You know, the weather, I just, my family is down in Florida and we just had hurricane Ian that came through there and you know, all of that, that stuff happens. And then there are the challenges that come from people in the world who are seeking to harm us, you know? If you live in Ukraine, right, there's there's people in the world that are out to take your country over well.

So one of the things that I talk to people about is that the benefits of the resilience work are that if you can use less energy on all the challenges that come from out inside of you. You have more energy available to do the things that are particularly meaningful for you to choose those challenges that you want to step up to in the world and the world needs that, right? You know?

And so the more resilient we can be and use our energy effectively, and as you say, say yes and no to things um that come at us, then we have we can be more choice more intentional about where we put our energy into the things that really matter.

Stephen Matini: At the beginning of this year, I've done some reframing as you taught me to do, there were some professional relationships that somehow I found really aggravating after many, many years of trying to make them more productive, and truly not seeing anything changing.

And so at some point I really felt frustrated, and I got tired of feeling that way and I said to myself, I don't want to feel this way about anyone. And so what I did, I made the deliberate effort to appreciate what worked. So feeling grateful rather than obsessing about what the relationship was never going to be, and then I thought, well, I need to seek elsewhere different dynamics that could be more representative.

So that was the choice. And it did the trick because what it did, it freed a lot of energy which was consumed in frustration and I invested it in other activities, which definitely were more productive. Like, you know, this podcast

Linda Hoopes: Absolutely freeing up your energy and I have found to that decluttering things, you know, just taking the time to just we'd the things out of my life that I don't need, whether it's stuff or people or whatever. It opens up space for new things to come in and it's beautiful.

Stephen Matini. I noticed from your LinkedIn profile, which are also an appreciative increase practitioner. I love appreciative inquiry, it's one of the tools that I use the most with clients. And over the years I met many appreciative inquiry practitioners whose approach focuses on strength as it should be, and positivity,

On the other hand, I believe that there is space for feeling bad sometimes about yourself. It is about positivity is about focusing on strength, but I strongly believe that if I want to move on, there's a space for everything in your opinion, is there anything positive about having a pity party?

Linda Hoopes: Oh my goodness, that's a great question. So, um so, I actually, in preparation for this, I had to look up, sort of the whole pity party thing just to make sure that I was understanding what this is about, and you know, this gets into the whole zone of of what some people are called toxic positivity, you know, sort of this idea that oh, it's all supposed to be happy.

I've never seen positivity that way to me, positivity is really recognizing that I have a choice to pay attention to the things that are going well and right without denying or dismissing the bigger picture, but that I choose to focus my energy on the things that are healthy, healthy and that I want more of, rather than focusing my attention on the things that are that are sick.

And that's that's kind of the whole thrust behind the positive psychology movement. It's thinking about what is health look like, what is flourishing look like? Uh you know, and how do we get more of that? And so, um and so part for me.

So there's this other resilience muscle that's that we label creativity that is really about polarities, it's about both, and it's about recognizing that there's many ways to view a situation that there's many layers to things, and I think that's that's a muscle that's really useful here too, because I think we need to recognize that the world can be both terrific and awful at the same time. That there can be beauty, and there can be sadness, and that there can be all these many things that are going on.

And I think acknowledging that letting ourselves move through those feelings that we feel, not saying, oh I'm not supposed to feel that way. I mean I grew up thinking I wasn't ever supposed to be angry and then at some point as an adult I realized no anger is a gift. It it helps me see where I need to set a boundary.

And so being able to sort of recognize those emotions and let them move through us without taking us over is a is a really powerful skill. And so I would say bring on the pity party if that's what you need to do, right? You know, if if you need to just sort of um let yourself spin for a while, but the idea of a party is great because it has a beginning and an end, right?

So this is not the pity life, this is not getting in the emotional spin and get and staying stuck, it's about saying, okay, I feel like crap right now, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna let myself feel that way for a while and you know, eat the extra ice cream and you know, do whatever I need to do.

Um but I would say a couple of things about pity parties, one is if possible, make sure it includes some dancing because getting, you know, getting up and like putting on some music and moving around while you're having a pity party, even if it involves, you know punching things.

Um and the other thing is like don't invite the whole world, you know if you need to have one or two people at the pity party with you but you don't need to inflict that like negative emotions are super contagious. And so um and so just be careful about you know sort of who you're inviting to the party. But you know I think pity parties are a great tool for resilience because you know we like we have to acknowledge that sometimes stuff just is terrible.

Stephen Matini: This past two and a half years have been very challenging for everyone. Is there any specific resilience muscle somehow that in your opinion takes the front seat during these difficult times?

Linda Hoopes: So I would say that one of them is connection. So this idea that resilience is a team sport, we don't have to do it alone. And I think um one of the things that's been very difficult with all of the covid stuff and everything that's going on is the isolation. Humans are ... so so one of the you know the first building block of resilience is around calming is around being able to bring ourselves to a calm place.

So one label that psychologists use for that is self-regulation, visibility to regulate ourselves, but we also co-regulate humans co-regulate, we see each other's faces the expressions, and the masks hide that it's hard to read people's expressions and so finding ways to be together with people to connect with people.

We've gotten so clever about using Zoom to talk to people halfway around the world. But resilience, we draw other people have physical, mental, emotional spiritual energy that we can draw on. And so recognizing the communities that were part of, nourishing them is a tremendously important muscle.

And then the other thing I would say is one of the ones we've already talked about, which is priorities. Which is this idea that being um choosy about what you do. I mean I can only sit on so many meetings a day, right? And I know like I had a woman come to my office yesterday for a meeting even though she doesn’t, she lives a ways away. Like it took her a little time to to drive, but she's just tired of zoom meetings and she decided it would be better to meet in person and it was, it was great. I would say priorities and connection are super important at this time. Not to say that they're not all important.

Stephen Matini: Priority is a critical factor. That seems to be an issue with many professionals. Managing time and stress gets challenging even for seasoned professionals. They all struggle to understand what comes first, second ... would you have any tips for them?

Linda Hoopes: So that actually brings in an additional muscle, which is the muscle of structure and that's the muscle that is about estimating and planning and getting into the details and figuring out, you know, what needs to come first, what needs to come next. And that muscle is about efficiency, it's about not wasting your energy on the things that are predictable.

And um you know, I think that sometimes just taking a few minutes to think to sit down and think about what's most important, you know, whether it's a journaling practice or reflective practice or just taking five minutes at the beginning of each day to think what's most important for me to be doing right now.

The other thing that I would, the other thing that brings up for me is the is the impact that leaders have on the people around them and the way the culture can either support or not support resilience. So that's that's an area I'm doing some thinking about right now.

There are some organizations, have you ever been on an airplane where you were stuck in a middle seat? You know, and you just can't move for anything right? There are some organizations that are like that with your resilience muscles. You can't move, you can’t, you can't say no to things, you can't take risks.

You can't like all of these things that we try to do to be creative to come up with ideas to, you know to say no to things to prioritize and when leaders set a bad example or when the culture doesn't reinforce that, like think about the experimenting muscle which is really about curiosity and trying things and taking risks.

There are some cultures that just beat that out of people, you know because you have to be right 100% of the time and you can't afford to fail. And so so I think that leaders have a huge impact on the positivity, the confidence that people have really all of that and with priorities being a great example because if a leader doesn't set clear priorities then it's not okay for the people that report to them to come back and try to set boundaries and say, hey boss, you know, you just gave me the ten thing to do. Tell me which three I should do.

Stephen Matini: Well what you just pointed out is politics, and I have to say that it is probably the one component that people struggle with the most. So often I see people struggling with the nuances of politics, they do not fully comprehend the levers of power surrounding them. I observe great ideas that slam against cement walls, you know like you cannot do this, you cannot do that. So I was wondering in your studies, have you ever researched how resilience applies to politics within organizations.

Linda Hoopes: Yes. And what I will say is that um those are specific kinds of challenges, those are dealing with relationships and sort of and also how the confidence that I have in my own abilities and the circumstances that I'm in. So when I do some coaching with people around resilience, it often gets very specific around dealing with a boss who doesn't value me or whatever, and so then you sort of have to go through and say, where's my energy going? What muscles am I using? How am I working through this?

I would say that in my own experience, confidence is the muscle that's really important there knowing I'm gonna be okay because I think in my, when I've seen people who have dealt with all of that effectively, what they've been able to do is to get to a place where they're okay if they leave, so they're not afraid of getting fired.

I that that happened to me some years ago when I was in a situation that I wasn't particularly happy about, I just came to a point where I decided, you know, I'm gonna just say what I need to say and if it means that I'm gonna have to make a choice, like it wasn't about, I'm out of here, it wasn't at all, it was like if that's what happens, I'll be okay with it, you know, I know that I can survive this, I know this is a challenge that I could take on, I'm not, I'm not looking for it, I'm not seeking it out, but it gives me the courage to say what I need to say.

And, and so, and so as as a strategy for, as a resilient strategy, recognizing that I'm a person that brings value, that I that there's a lot that I can do, that I've dealt with challenges before that, you know, the challenge of looking for something that's a better fit for me is a challenge I can take on. And so there are some people who are using the resilience work in career um development, so in career planning and, and just thinking about, you know, how do I step up to the next level?

How do I stretch myself in a job that I'm not big enough for? Um or that that's that's not big enough for me and you know, like how do I decide the next thing? How do I deal with this coworker? All of this are the, you know, these are the challenges that we face every day that that call on our resilience and our energy. So 100%.

Stephen Matini: A big chunk of your work is about energy, which I personally love and few people talk about it in the business world. Often times is seen as something that doesn't quite fit. So I have been practicing mindfulness since I was 18 and I sometimes use mindfulness in my, in my work, what is your favorite way to calm yourself, to center yourself?

Linda Hoopes: For me, so I also raced sailboats. So getting out on the water in a boat is, you know, so breathing is the obvious one and you can do that anywhere. But for me, getting out of nature, whether it's a walk or getting out on the water is one of the centering kinds of things that I like to do. And sometimes it's getting a hug or listening to music, but there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of tools we can use.

And I think as you say, um, what a mindfulness practice does is it gives you sort of the experience in bringing yourself back, returning yourself to that place of feeling grounded and centered and, and, and that’s, that's very powerful.

Stephen Matini; You know, you're the second person this week that, that tells me about sailing, so maybe that's a hint. I've never done it.

Linda Hoopes: Come on over, I'll take you sailing. Well, there’s, so there’s, there's a place I'll go. So one of the things that you just said brought up something I learned in massage school. So, um, and, and so they, they always talked about, um, don't work on clients who drain your energy, you know?

And so, so how that's translated to me in, in the non massage world is spend time with people who nourish me. So there are people who nourish you in various different ways, whether it's mental. You know, you have fun just with the ideas with them or emotionally or spiritually or, or even physically people that you just feel physically good around and you do activities with.

And so I really try to be attuned to what is happening with my energy when I'm with this person, if it feels drained, like if I start to feel an energy drain when I'm around somebody, I really intentionally try to make sure that I spend less time with that because I don't have any time in my life for people who aren't nourishing me in some way. And I try to be that sort of a source for others as well.

Stephen Matini: It is a matter of choosing those situations and people we want to be part of our life. So these days I hear people often saying they don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do that in your opinion. How can we find the time?

Linda Hoopes: I don't think you do. I think what you do is you reframe, you reframe the world as your resilience gym. You know, when you're in traffic and somebody cuts you off, you say, oh resilience practice. So you don't look for time to do separate things.

You just find every day in every moment a chance to do things that lift your energy that lift the energy of the people around you. Um, I've started focusing more on this idea of how our energy spirals and so, you know, often times mental health issues can result from a series of symptoms that just get into a spiral that feed each other.

And so resilience is about breaking those patterns. It's about seeing things in a different way. It's about taking that moment to pause and have a different reaction. And so, um so I've really gotten um focused on this idea of micro challenges that the little challenges, you know, you're on the phone and the customer service representative is really crabby.

So your job now is to see if you can make them laugh right. Um or you know, you just sort of start to see resilience challenges and opportunities for development every place. And those are the things that start to rewire your brain. And so uh so, you know, I think it really is a different mindset around it.

It's not how can I go find time for a meditation practice? Although I will tell you that my meditation practice when I do it is about six minutes long. I have a timer, you know, it's like, I don't have 30 minutes to go do it. But um but you know, you just, you just do do little micro bursts, just little things that are in the moment that that enable you to become more aware of how how your resilience in your way through the world.

I see resilience as a verb anymore. You know, these days I see it as a verb, it's the motions that we go through as we deal with the challenges in life. And so you're always resilience sing. You're always dealing with large and small challenges. You're choosing challenges, you're doing that.

And so so some of it's just bringing that mindset to it and just seeing it all as practice because every now and then the final exam comes, you know, every now and then the hurricane does knock your house down, um, or a loved one dies or something like that.

And and you really have to deal with all of that. But the more you practice, the more you built those muscles, the more you built that capability, the more you have to draw on when, when the big test comes.

Stephen Matini: Linda, have you always been resident?

Linda Hoopes: No, there are days when I'm not resilient at all! But I, I often, you know, I'm always able to see that it'll come back like on the days when the tide washes out and I'm just feeling drained and crabby and blah. You know, I recognize that the title come in, you know, that this too shall pass and you know, whatever it is. And so I'm sort of a little bit more able than I used to be to recognize that, you know, there’s, there's an ebb and flow to it all.

And um, and there, there, I mean there are times in my life I've been, what we say in the southern us here. I've been a hot mess, you know, like I've just just done stupid things and made bad judgments and all of that but you know it's all part of the road that's gotten me here and so yeah, no I'm not always resilient now even though I've been teaching about it for so long.

Stephen Matini: What’s gonna be next for Linda?

Linda Hoopes: Well, so some of the stuff that I talked about leaders, about the role of leaders in creating an environment that supports resilience. I'm actually working on a blog post right now. That's about the fact that um some environments are more challenging than others because of the physical environment or because of the history that we bring or because of the level of psychological safety or you know there's there's all these contextual factors that make it easier or harder for people to um to bring their resilience to the table.

And so I'm really kind of interested in that because I think it speaks to issues of um power and influence and justice and all of that there, you know there are people for whom walking through the world every day has an extra layer of challenge in it because they're disabled or because they carry a stigma of some kind or because they are in a minority in the group that they're in or whatever it is, you know and I think we need to figure out like how to we both equipped people internally to bring their best resilience to the table and to resilience their way through and also create environments for people that that let them flex those muscles that let them bring their best energy to the world and give them the opportunity to build and replenish that energy when they need it. So that's one thing I'm working on.

Another thing that I'm working on is I am um I have a project going. I have my great grandmother's journals that she wrote starting in 1927 in rural Iowa. And she wrote all the way through to like 1955 just before she died.

So they went through the depression, they lost their business, their farm, all of that. They went through World War II and she wrote every day of the world. And so I'm working on having those journals transcribed and publishing them in a weekly installment with comments and things. And so I'm learning so much about history and about the resilience challenges that people have faced throughout, you know, my family's history and other people's history and so so that's another thing that I'm working on is figuring out how those stories get told.

My um my great aunt um taught school in Iran and in Thailand um and so she left Iran before about the time that the that the Shah fell and the and the current administration took over. But they went and traveled.

They, you know like that part of the world will never will never be the same and will never see it again in that way, I'll never be able to go over there and experience some of the things that she experienced and so there's part of that like there's this set of so stories that I want to tell that that are there related to resilience in a way?

Um that's not, that's not why I'm doing them, but ut there is this relationship to recognizing that history comes and goes and stories, you know, people have faced different things in different times and that there are ways to find light and hope and possibility and curiosity in so many ways

Stephen Matini: Linda, this is wonderful. Are there any questions I did not ask you that you wish I did?

Linda Hoopes: One of the questions that you wrote down for me was this question about how do we replenish our energy? You know, when our energy is feeling drained, how do we replenish our energy? And one of the things that has become clearer for me is that um the question is not always about how do I do less?

Like how do you like if I'm feeling spread then drained whatever oftentimes our first impulse is to stop doing things, you know, is to do less is to take things off the table and conserve our energy. I actually find so the metaphor I've been using for that is, here's my phone, if this phone, the battery is drained on this phone, I can't possibly turn off enough apps to recharge it, you know, what I actually have to do is plug it in.

And so the question that is as human beings, what is plugging in, look like for us, you know, what is it that is a power source? Like what, what does that for us? And sometimes it's really just a posture like, like for people in the military standing at attention, you know, or if you’re, you know, if you're a yoga practitioner doing some sort of opposed that causes you to stand strong and firm, a tree or a warrior or something like that.

You know, sometimes we recharge our batteries by doing things that engage us in the world, you know, and so so so thinking about what is your power source, you know, for you? Um it might be your meditation for me, it might be my sailing. Um, but recognizing those things that feed us that feed our energy and not sort of succumbing to the temptation to get into a spiral where we're doing less and less because that is not necessarily going to recharge us.

So I have this wonderful group, global group of resilience practitioners that have been through the training that I do and we do, we do calls every quarter to get together when the, when the pandemic started, We met every week because we just needed to support each other and then it sort of stretched out now we're doing them quarterly.

But on one of our calls, we did a dis discussion about what do you do to recharge. And so I captured some of that, you know, you we were talking about elegance and structure. I sort of captured that into a set of things for some people. It's work for some people.

The work that they do is energizing enough that engaging in and that's true for me to to a certain extent I can't ever imagine retiring because I like what I do and so it and it nourishes me but for some people it's just watching stupid movies on TV and laughing out loud you know, and so there's there's you know, there's just different ways that we do that and nature is a big one for people. So yeah, so knowing what your replenishment strategies are is a is a good thing too, good thing to work on.

Stephen Matini: Linda thank you so much for spending time with me, I'm so appreciative. So happy to meet you finally and thank you for all these important bits and pieces. Thank you.

Linda Hoopes: It's been my pleasure. It's great to meet you and thank you so much for inviting me.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. In the episode Linda covers a lot of aspects pertaining resilience. She points out that resilience is a verb, and by that she means that resilience training is something that has to occur every single day around small tasks, so that we can be prepared to face significant life-changing events.

For Linda resilience is a series of muscles that entails seeing possibilities, recognizing our capabilities, understanding what's essential, thinking creatively developing connections, structuring activities, and being willing to experiment.

Sometimes we can reframe a challenge by changing our expectations. Sometimes we can change it through specific actions, and other times we can accept that we cannot control anything.

Developing resilience entails becoming mindful that our energy needs to be managed, from the people we welcome in our life to the tasks that consume our time. We are always saying no to people and things. It's just a question or whether it's conscious.

If you have any questions about the content of this episode, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter. Please check the episode's notes for information. If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our managerial and leadership development programs at alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A. L. Y. G. N. dot company.

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

Business people tend to think of their jobs as results and efficiency. However, whether we like it or not, professional and personal relationships strongly affect performance.

This episode explores the best way to care for ourselves and those we love, family members, friends, and colleagues, near the final days of life because of illness or age.

My special guest is Charlene Shaw, a physician with 20+ years of experience providing care to vulnerable geriatric and terminally ill patients. Dr. Shaw points out that not knowing how to deal with mortality hinders our ability to be compassionate and caring towards others and ourselves.

Developing a deeper understanding and awareness of this natural process has the healing power to turn grief into growth: we become advocates for our loved ones in their most glorious moment to provide relief and peace.

Dr. Shaw earned her medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Miami.

SUBSCRIBE TO PITY PARTY OVER

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on Twitter

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Charlene Shaw on LinkedIn

Compassionate Care with Dr. Shaw on YouTube

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini, let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company.

Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to Pity Party Over. A lot of business people tend to think of their jobs as results and efficiency. However, whether we like it or not, professional and personal relationships strongly affect performance.

This episode explores the best way to care for ourselves and those we love, family members, friends, and colleagues, near the final days of life because of illness or age.

My special guest is Charlene Shaw, a physician with 20+ years of experience providing care to vulnerable geriatric and terminally ill patients.

Dr. Shaw earned her medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Miami.

Stephen Matini: I cannot think of a better person to do this with, someone I've been knowing for a long time. Would you mind sharing where you come from, how the whole idea of becoming a doctor, a physician, came into your life.

Charlene Shaw: Thank you for having me on your podcast. And yes we go back quite a ways. It's a beautiful thing that we can do this together.

So how did how did this whole doctor thing come about? Well I was born in Trinidad, then we moved to Miami when I was I think about eight years old. But the thing is is I've always wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a little kid.

I remember watching Marcus Welby, like laying on the living room floor with my grandmother watching Marcus Welby. Maybe that left an impression, but since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to be a doctor. There was never anything else.

Interestingly enough, um ... as a a little girl and growing up in adolescents and so forth, there were no life changing events, so to speak. That you know, a lot of people, they go into medicine because they lost someone, and they want to know how to help people, how to keep people from dying, or dying too soon, or dying necessarily and things like that. I've never had any such events.

It was a true desire to be a physician, to be the person who understands how the body works, and helps people manage what's happening with them, or prevent things from happening, and so forth and so on. It's just been an internal desire.

Now is another story because as you know, I just lost my mom. While I understand all the medicine involved, it's just a devastating loss.

Stephen Matini: Yes. And you were there when my mom went away. As you studied to become a physician, then you started working, how did you choose the focus of your career?

Charlene Shaw: That's an easy one. I always wanted to be an O.B. guy, you know, an obstetrician, so I would be delivering babies and and and dealing with gynecological issues and so forth and so on. But when I did residency, I had O.B. guide rotations. I couldn't wait to do these rotations. Once I started and I saw what was truly involved, I had to stop and think, okay, is this what I really want to do for the rest of my life?

It's a beautiful event bringing a child into the world, but, but ... everything that happens before that, you don't know until you're there. So women that are in labor or they have false contractions and things like this at two o'clock in the morning as the new doc in the group, guess who's gonna be constantly at those kinds of situations?

So, once I saw that it's not just about, oh this beautiful baby is brought into the world or oh these women need this kind of care and that kind of care, it's a lot more involved. I suppose I romanticized it as I was growing up that this is how it's gonna be and this is what I'm gonna do. And the reality of it is quite different.

The hours the time spends and what the time is spent doing. It's a lot of preparation and look and see and know you're not ready in three days and four days and five days. And you know, it came down to a life decision: is this the way I want to spend the next at least 10 years before you know, I become let's say a senior partner or something?

This is not how I envisioned this particular specialty of being. And so no, this is not how I would like to spend important years of my life. The meat and potatoes of obstetrics, it's still very appealing to me, but it's all of the business around it and and the on call schedule and, and having your life being literally on hold while other things are happening, not really being able to live my own life because I'm bringing other lives into the world.

Stephen Matini: You went from thinking of focusing on the beginning of life, to the other side, to the other end. What appealed to you, the omega, the ending.

Charlene Shaw: It was a process. It wasn't okay, that's what I'm going to do next. It was actually a process. In the last year of residency, you need to apply for your specialty. You know, if you wanted to sub specialize. I got an invitation. It all began with an invitation.

One of my senior residents said, hey Shaw, come and check this out. I'm like check what out. And she says, I'm in the, I work with nursing homes. I'm like, oh God no. And so she says just come, come and see for yourself, and then we can talk.

She was one of the people that sort of held my hand and then I looked up to. I meant to her, her name is Kim. So I went on a rotation with her through these nursing homes, I was completely, completely blown away and humbled by what I saw and what she did.

It was a building filled with people, an incredible need of care. I suppose up to that point, I was still living in this very romanticized idea of what medicine is and what patients are and what they need and and so forth in my role with them.

And when I walked into the nursing home and I saw these people, they're all vulnerable, terribly ill, frail people that needed a lot of care, that needed attention. It was that was it. I was done. I'm like this is where I'm going to be. These are people that need significant help. And I decided in that moment, yes, this is what I'm gonna do.

So once residency was finished, I signed on with her team because the population of people that I was seeing were elderly, it made sense that I would go on and become board certified in geriatric medicine.

Like you see these TV shows where you know, death is never an option. Never, ever. People are jumping on other people's chest, they’re doing CPR and they have this magical, oh, oh I'm alive and it's like, oh my God. That is so far from the truth!

But you know, society and television, they don't prepare you for the end, they don't prepare you for what's next in old age. They just don’t, and so people live with this idea that they're never gonna die, they're invincible, and so they become ill, and the end of their disease approaches, the end of their life approaches, and they have absolutely no idea about how to deal with that or accept it.

The families are saying, do everything that you can, and you look in the bed of the person who is just simply in agony and suffering and nature is taking its course and this person is in the process of dying.

How do you let that happen in a compassionate way, in a caring way? And how do you help decrease the suffering that's involved, not just for the patient in the bed, but also for their family, because they're struggling with the idea that, oh no, this person is leaving us, this person is going to die. How are we going to carry on? It was just a complete full circle chain of events that led from internal medicine to geriatrics, to hospice and palliative care.

Stephen Matini: What would you say are some of the most meaningful lessons that are with you as a result of all these experiences?

Charlene Shaw: Oh my gosh humility. It’s, it's humility. You walk in and you step into a room, and in that room is a 90 something year old person, who has lived their best life and they've had tremendous experiences.

They look at you and, you know, I just melt, and people look at the elderly and take them for granted, and don't really give them the time of day, and you know, things like these people have tremendous amounts to contribute in terms of, you know, telling stories of their lives and telling and sharing their own experiences. It's just very, very helpful. I feel um I suppose honored to be the person that is there to take care of them.

Stephen Matini: What we're talking about is reality for all of us. These moments are moments that truly demand for you to become the leader of your family.

When I acknowledged the fact that my mom was not gonna make it, it was truly the help of one specific physician that helped me gain the right perspective, and to make the decision that eventually has given me peace. And even now when I think about those moments, and that horrible decision which was to let my mom go, I feel such a sense of pride. I feel so courageous the fact that I was there until the end.

Is there anything that will be in your opinion important for family members to know to face those moments?

Charlene Shaw: Recognize when their loved ones are dying, or in the dying process, and be the person who's there as their advocate for them in a loving way as opposed to no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't die. This is this is not how this goes.

It's a lot easier for that process to happen, because the person who's dying gets to sort of have some relief, to know that their families are there by their side, they understand what's happening, and they will carry on, and that they will be okay.

I think the most important thing is for people to know that this is natural, this, that it's accepted or recognized, the easier it is for both the person who's dying because they understand and they're here, and their family is there, and you know, like this, and also for the people who are left behind, like this gut wrenching and heartbreaking, but can still go on and represents or be a part of the one that you just lost.

Stephen Matini: You share with me that the loss of your mom has changed a lot of things. You became interested in other facets of your profession, like the use of medical cannabis in palliative care. Also you mentioned second opinion, which may have the critical influence on the diagnosis and treatment.

Charlene Shaw: For all the time I spent doing what I love to do, taking care of the elderly, seeing them through all sorts of, of illnesses and diseases and talking with their families and things like this, it was a beautiful thing, that I felt humbled and honored to be able to do.

But when it came my turn to deal with that and it's still difficult so ... it was impossible ... to continue to do that ... So ... I needed something else ... cannabis .. woo

(laughter)

Stephen Matini: You know, I never tried it.

Charlene Shaw: Believe it or not, me neither. It's not something that I do or did. It was okay, here we are. The State of Florida legalized this, um, legalized medical cannabis, not recreational. And it's always something in the back of my mind because being in hospice, I saw patients who used cannabis that were a bit better off in terms of managing pain, managing nausea, and um even though it's the end of their life, they're still able to embrace this overall sense of well being.

And it was hard to deny that it was hard to ignore that. I went to some lectures, I, you know, became better what it does, how it does. It let me just do the certification, if I use it, or if the opportunity comes around, I'm prepared. So I did the certification. And lo and behold there it was, I got an offer that I said yes to. And so there went my other direction to medical cannabis.

Seriously, it was just, I could not continue with hospice, not for any reason other than I was personally grieving. I was not able to give myself to other families and other people that were in similar situations because of my own grief. So it was a way to continue medicine on an entirely different level, entirely different level. And so that's what I did.

Stephen Matini: Cannabis and weeds, are the same thing?

Charlene Shaw: Yeah, weed is sort of the slang term for cannabis. So there are so many things on this plant that have shown medicinal benefits. We can talk about things like cannabinoids which is the CBD and the THC here in the States. The CBD is determined to be sort of like an agricultural commodity, so you can buy it over the counter as long as there's less than 0.3% THC by dry weight, then you can buy this product over the counter just about anywhere.

THC is the component in the cannabis plant that is not federally legal, and so each state has taken it upon itself to determine, yes this is a benefit, this is not a benefit, we will allow this but not that. So anyway, long story short THC is the component in the cannabis is what it's the cannabinoid that provides relief for a great many things, as does the C.B.D.

You put those two things together and you get an impressive response. The THC works directly with pain. It works directly with depression. It works directly with insomnia, directly with anxiety, directly with nausea. CBD, on the other hand, works exceptionally well with inflammation, it works with seizures. The FDA approved drug PD L.X, which is CBD for children.

Cannabis has the smell, right? And the thing that creates the smell, it's called terpenes and the terpenes themselves have medicinal benefits. It's a world of potential. So we find that patients with Crohn's disease greatly benefit from cannabis use, patients with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's actually also greatly benefit from cannabis use.

You know the Parkinson’s, the tremor can become significant. Some of these patients we've seen where they take a dose of the cannabis sublingually, which is a liquid that they put under the tongue, and they give that some time, and the tremor goes from very rapid, to practically non existent for some period of time. And it's the same if they smoke the cannabis, it tends to stop quicker.

As far as second opinion consultations. There is a clinic, the VIOS clinic (www.viosapp.com) that is set up, and it's an international clinic, and the idea is they have a pool of physicians from multiple, multiple specialties. Usually what's involved in a second opinion is not simple.

Okay they're looking for a doctor who is an expert in the field of. So if it's a cancer diagnosis, obviously they want uh an expert oncologist. If it's like multiple sclerosis or a. L.S. or something like this, they want an expert neurologist.

They're looking for an expert that can give them a second opinion to corroborate the information they got from their primary doctor, from their local doctor. The idea is they would call in get this expert. They have 30 minutes to discuss whatever they want to discuss it can be as soon as they want. So if if they want a second opinion tomorrow, then ideally you can call in and get that second opinion tomorrow.

And it saves all kinds of time scheduling because the expert is not usually in the same town. So they don't have to travel first of all, they're sick in the first place, right? So they don't have to book hotel, book flight, take a long drive, go somewhere else, and it's like two months, three months out before they get the appointment in the first place.

So all of these things are just like chopped off. Telemedicine has problems quite a nice long way since Covid. There is a feasible way to to continue this telemedicine process to help those patients or those people who are limited, who cannot simply get on a plane or get into a car.

Stephen Matini: For those people who are not familiar with second opinion, why would you say is important to get a second opinion?

Charlene Shaw: I think peace of mind is the best answer. If somebody tells you carrying on with your best life and then something happens, you're in the hospital, they do diagnostics, and they find let's say a mass or a tumor, or they find something, that you are not expecting, you're completely devastated. Most people don't just want to say okay and carry on. Many people do. But not everyone.

And so if you're not settled with the opinion or with the diagnostics or the result of your your visits, then yes. You can get a second expert opinion, to help you feel secure or more in charge of what you do next.

Let's say the cancer diagnosis, and it's a terminal cancer, or the cancer has spread or something like this, and the doc says, well in these cases people, the five year survival is only 35%. A second opinion can just kind of, it's never easy but at least if you decide to go to treatment, you have some idea of what to expect. Or if you decide, I'm not doing anything because ... whatever your reasons are, then you can make that decision knowing that okay, this is what I can expect. and just kind of gives people some peace of mind to make whatever decision they feel they need to make.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever listened to Lady Gaga's song The Edge of Glory?

Charlene Shaw: Probably.

Stephen Matini: The song is about her grandfather, when he passed away. The edge of glory is the most glorious moment in life, when you decided that it's okay to go. You don't have any more words to say -you know she says- more business, more mountains to climb. You're on the cliff, you tip your hat to yourself and you go. You finally move on to the next chapter.

So, you chose a job that is stressful, to say the least. When you feel down, you know when you feel really in a massive pity party, which all of us had the right to feel ...

Charlene Shaw: Right.

Stephen Matini: What is something that helps you overcome it? That's what I call a pity party over, like okay enough is enough, I move on.

Charlene Shaw: I sit quietly. Silence is an amazing tool for me. Everything becomes crystal clear at some point. So I sit and I meditate. Sometimes I listen to Mooji, he uh he as well as Sadhguru are two gurus that have been very influential in terms of being able to handle life and the, you know, making lemonade out of lemons and things like that.

But the act of simply being silent and letting like unfold, rather than forcing it, or trying to live by my projections, is a remarkable tool.

So pity party over, I just sit quietly and contemplate and and just be, and look for a different way to express what is happening, or just look for a different direction to focus, and silence usually brings out.

Stephen Matini: Which is often counterintuitive. Particularly I see it a lot when I work with business people, you know, it's all rush, fast, you need to get things done and often times that is associated with them not being productive. Instead for me, just a different way to manage your time.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for all your thoughts. This is ...

Charlene Shaw: Oh, you’re welcome!

Stephen Matini: This is really wonderful.

Charlene Shaw: It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: You really chose an incredible job. You've got to be a special person to do what you do, seriously, on a daily basis and to do anyway, that is humane, thank you for sharing all this because I think a lot of people can definitely benefit from this.

Charlene Shaw: I appreciate it and thank you. You know, as a physician, it's demanding, there's no way around that, it's very demanding and I have to bring my A game every time I walk into the door, there's no letting anything slip.

To keep that going, requires a good deal of effort. To keep the humanity and the vulnerability, I think going back to that silent place, really makes a big difference. So when I made my life choice about what part of medicine I wanted to participate and I was true and honest to myself, how much of this and you know, how do I want to show up? How do I want to to be? I think I chose well because it all needed a balance, there has to be a balance.

Stephen Matini: And silence shall be.

Charlene Shaw: Silence shall be.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over.

Dr. Shaw points out that not knowing how to deal with mortality hinders our ability to be compassionate and caring towards others and ourselves.

Developing a deeper understanding and awareness of this natural process has the healing power to turn grief into growth. We become advocates for our loved ones in their most glorious moment to provide relief and peace.

Keep in mind that many resources optimize the quality of life of patients and their families, including palliative care, and second medical opinion.

If you have any questions about the content of this episode, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter. Please check the episodes notes for information.

If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our leadership and managerial development programs at alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N.company

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

This episode explores the importance of assumptions, choices, viewpoints, and purpose to formulate a successful strategy.

My special guest is Jessy Hsieh, Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University Stern School of Business. Jessy’s research interests include strategy, creativity, digital sociology, and philosophy of education.

A good strategy questions all certainties and assumptions with a curious, open, and flexible attitude. Strategy is not a rigid plan based on dangerous false assumptions but the smallest set of choices that optimally guide or force other choices.

The best strategic ideas require leveraging different points of view by listening to your people and giving them a voice. Strategy is about choosing, and choosing is the freedom to reframe challenges to make us feel we have agency in our personal and professional lives.

Subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast to never miss an episode

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to design successful strategies

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Sticher, TuneIn.

Connect with Stephen Matini via email

Connect with Stephen Matini on Twitter

Connect with Stephen Matini on LinkedIn

Connect with Jessy Hsieh at New York University

Connect with Jessy Hsieh on Twitter

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini. Let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y GN . company.

Stephen Matini: Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to Pity Party Over. This episode will explore the importance of assumptions, choices, viewpoints and purpose to formulate a successful strategy.

My special guest is Jessy Hsieh, Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, Stern School of Business. Jesse's research interests included strategy, creativity, digital sociology and philosophy of education. Jesse teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses and she is currently pursuing her PhD in the department of Applied Statistics, Social Sciences and Humanities at New York University.

Stephen Matini: I am curious to know where you grew up, and what were your early experiences that somehow shaped where you are now.

Jessy Hsieh: I was born and raised in New Jersey, Parsippany New Jersey to be specific, but you know where I grew up, and who I am and where I'm from is a compilation of what I would say everyone before me. So a little bit about my, my parents were both in, one born, my dad was born in Southern China. My mom was born in Northern China.

Their families in 1949, they all went to Taiwan. They were both raised in a small, a small city in Taiwan, but it wasn't until they both came to the United States for graduate studies that they met. I might have been born in Morristown New Jersey and raised in Parsippany New Jersey, but the history of where I'm from is a confluence of so many chance occurrences that created me.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that has been the biggest contribution of your parents in the way you think, the way you are?

Jessy Hsieh: Strategies at the confluence of choices and chances, so chances, things that you don't have any control over and choices, those decisions that you make to kind of pivot or to make those moves. My dad was a, he's retired now. He was a biochemical engineer, and those that was really, not really by choice, but something that he was very good at and that he knew that he could get a scholarship to study here in the United States.

For my dad was always very interested in history and my mom was a very accomplished, she loved to paint in her in her free time. I come from a family of scientists, but always there was this artistry, humanities, there was a crux of people's interests that they weren't able to pursue. So for me, I think that where I learned to appreciate both scientific mindset and although also the artistry and interpretive mindset of artists, and putting them together in terms of my teaching as well, just a science and an art.

Talking about strategy and a confluence of choices and chances, things that you cannot control and things that you can control. One of the most salient memories I have was when my mom died from cancer when I was 17. That was a very, very big learning for me, because she was the only person whose opinion really mattered to me when I was growing up. And so having no longer be able to rely on that, I had to really make a lot of decisions for myself. That's important to me? What do I have at hand? What's the environment and then to make those choices?

Because I could not rely on the wisdom, the opinion of this person who matter so much to me. So that to me is a very formative experience. This person was removed from my life. It actually forced me really rely on my own thinking, my own decision, making my own kind of internal motivator, and also internal compass to make those decisions, to own those decisions, and to move forward.

Stephen Matini: Do you look like your mom?

Jessy Hsieh: I look like both my my dad and my mom I think.

Stephen Matini: In 2015 you said, you tweeted, “Strategic equals skeptic of false a certainty, citizen of enlightened ignorance.” So has that thought changed since?

Jessy Hsieh: Skeptic of false certainty, yes. And then also citizen of ...?

Stephen Matini: Enlightened ignorance.

Jessy Hsieh: That definitely works, still holds! I actually don't think that that could be mine. I must I must have been somewhere where I heard that or something. I should have, I should have credit that, or if it's mine, that could work. I mean ...

Stephen Matini: I think it sounds like you, yeah.

Jessy Hsieh: Yes because I think that one of the biggest challenges when people think strategically or when formulating strategy is false certainty. The moment somebody says like this is definitely the way we should go ... to me, it’s kind of like we're not cynical of that possibility, but the skepticism is really like, okay, why? Are these decisions in this statement ... are these based on assumption of the past that might not be true to reality, and that are basically guiding you to think something that is certain when it's not.

The only thing worse than uncertainty, is false certainty. That's kind of where I would think strategy really comes in. We're always going to live with uncertainty, because there are so many things that are out of our control. The only thing worse than living with uncertainty is being falsely certain that you know the right answer, that you know the right course, that you know, or assume that what you are doing is either wrong or right, right? So false certainty is the danger.

And enlightened ignorance. I think enlightening ignorance was definitely a phrase that I've heard somewhere before. I'm definitely not as poetic as that, be able to come up with that. But enlightened ignorance really is, constantly being in the state of asking questions, never being falsely certain about what you think is true, what you think is the right course, and being flexible. What's the next thing I want to know? What's the next thing that I can clarify. There's so many things that we don't know. Let me find out what I can know.

Stephen Matini: It is my understanding that strategy typically involves two major processes. One is formulation, which includes a strategic planning and strategic thinking. The second one is implementation, which refers to the action plan taken to achieve the goals. Do you have a similar approach or a different one?

Jessy Hsieh: The definition of strategy that I would use is from Eric J. Van den Steen. His definition of strategy I love just because it kind of encapsulates both. It can go for individuals, it can go for groups, it can go for organization. So his definition is that strategy is, “The smallest set of choices to optimally guide or force other choices.” I love this, this is about the formulation and also it guides action.

As an individual. What's your strategy for this? Sometimes it be like, I need to find a new job, I'm going to find a new job, right? That's in my mind, not a strategy, that's an action, maybe a tactic. That’s an implementation of something, right? Perhaps in terms of a strategy might be something like, I want to work in a place that utilizes my organizational skills or something like this. That is a decision to formulate that guide.

We want to be best in kind in this, or we want to develop innovative strategies. Even just using the word innovation is actually again, falsely certain. What are those choices you need to make in order to continue? Formulation. That set. That set of choices. Then implementation. What do you need to take action on those choices? A job is something you do to make money. A career is a job you're good at. And a profession is a career you want to get better at. It's about coming up with these constraints.

Again, another strategy thinker that has really influenced the way I think, the mindset, but also how I live my life, my work here, is Adam M. Brandenburger. Adam M. Brandenburger is a professor here at NYU, and he has this four seeds of creativity. What are your constraints? What are your context that you were in? How can you look around to see what you're in and do something opposite? And combination. What are those choices that you can actually take something and add it to something else?

Because if it's too broad, it's too vague, it's really hard to take action. It's almost in-actionable, un-implementable if you will. It’s about that sweet spot, formulating some sort of idea or action, formulating that set of choices, and then using that set of choices to implement. Formulation, implementation are all part of the thinking process and action taking process this idea of strategy really lends itself to.

Stephen Matini: One of the things that I used to hear a lot from clients in the past, what is a strategy for the next year? For the next three years? For the next five years? And somehow this concept has become almost ridiculous, in a world that changes all the time. How is a strategic approach changed in your opinion?

Jessy Hsieh: They always think about the strategic plan. I think I heard this from Adam M. Brandenburger, or he may have quoted somebody else, foolish is the person who comes into battle or comes into something with a plan. It's not flexible enough. Plan all you want, maybe schedule you want and have all these goals, but things often don't turn out to where you want them to be. Using time as a strategy is time-bound, is like a goal, by year one. This is what I will have done. Those are goals. Not necessarily strategies. Strategies are choices, like choices that you're making.

The key thing about strategy is these decision notes. Every little pivot, any one of those things could lead off two totally different timelines if you will. There's multiple outcomes that could come from any type of decision at any moment that you decide to take another course. If you're a retailer, are we going to be a fully organic or we only use organic cotton for our garment?

That's a strategy, because it limits what you will do. The best in kind in providing fully sustainable organic products. That gives you a direction, that guides other decisions that need to be made. That guides then who you're gonna get as your suppliers, who are you going to target as your customers, how you might have to price things in the future, like these are all those are the types of decisions that are going to guide other ones. Is it a plan? Not necessarily is it time bound? Not necessarily. Time is a helpful tool to help meet targets, or to meet goals, and to see if you're on the right track, or making progress. But strategy is decidedly not a plan. It's a set of choices that you're making. That you have to decide upon a set of choices. A set of decisions. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: With that said (laughter) ... the notion of choosing is so central in the way you approach strategy. What are the ingredients to choose well?

Jessy Hsieh: I want to say that about you Stephen, what do you think are the ingredients?

Stephen Matini: For me the first thing that I thought about is to be aware of how I look at things, because everything can be interpreted in so many different ways, you know. What is objectivity? It doesn’t exist. So for me to become mindful of how I look at things could be probably one of the most important steps.

The other one that I thought about is the multitude of points of view, or different ways that something can be can be looked at, to be mindful there could be other interpretations, other angles that I'm not aware of.

When you were talking before ...it is about choosing. It's not just about a plan. For me, it's probably the soulfulness of why I do what I do. So if it's a company maybe it's something that is deeply connected with the vision, mission and values. Because to get there there could be so many different routes, but the soul of the organization, why we do what we do, probably is one of the components that is going to dramatically kick out some of the choices.

Jessy Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. I love, I love how you're talking about this choosing well and then also purpose. Why are you doing what you're doing? Simon Sinek, you know, always start with why. Because why, if you had that, then the what, the what comes from the why, and how is near infinite. It helps you limit those choices. So like why are you doing what you're doing.

In terms of choosing well I have had many, many jobs, many things I've gotten paid to do, investment banking, so many different things that I've gotten paid to do. From there, I'm like well what is it, what is it that I'm actually good at? I could have chosen, right. I probably could be good at it. I haven't really tested. But my last job for example, you know, working at an investment bank. I was getting paid, I liked what I was doing. You know, I was good at it. It's a career, but why am I doing this? Like do I want to get better at this? And that to me was fundamental kind of purpose question.

So now I'm in a profession, I'm teaching is something I get paid to do. That I believe that I'm good at, and I want to get better at it. Like every day is something I want to get better at. Why is fundamental, because that's something you can just go back to. It's not necessarily something that you decide on first, but it is something that is foundational. What is essential, what is foundational to your core business, to your organization? Then you go, okay then you can decide what, and how.

Stephen Matini: Recently I was talking to a general manager that I worked with in the past, and he said, results are really important, but results alone do not do the trick, especially if you want to have a long term strategy. So you have to look at results. Those are important indicators that allow me to understand, yes, I'm going the right direction, but there's so much more than that, you know. Managers, executives are so obsessed about results, and rightfully so. But that's not really a strategy. Not at all.

Jessy Hsieh: No

Stephen Matini: It's just getting by.

Jessy Hsieh: For sure. I think the results are observation, this is data. They're all data to see why did you achieve that excellent result. Why did your, your first quarter earnings outpaced your last quarter. The results are one thing, understanding what it was, and why you achieve those results are much more important, because those are the things that last. Organizations are sometimes just making broad, sweeping decisions. You must come into the office, you must be in person three days a week, four days a week.

However, so they are actually making decisions that are how are we going to do our work in person or totally remote? That’s a how question. You're going deeper into as a General Manager is why do I, why do I want people to come back in person? Is it because I really want to have more, increase a culture of collaboration? Is it because I wanted to increase those moments of spontaneity and generative ideas that can only be captured in spontaneous interactions?

Utilizing the data from when you were in person, when you were on Zoom. What situations lead to the reason why you're doing it? Were you able to build collaboration particularly on Zoom? Just like we're doing right now, right? We don't need to be in person to be able to have a meeting of the minds.

As companies are grappling with how to structure their work, other work time, they're going to these decisions without first deciphering when and how. When do we work best? How do we work best? And what do we want to achieve? Making decisions based off of past decisions, so that you can unearth why did this work well. Results are just indicators of things that work, or are things that don't work, the extent to where things work, and perhaps observation points for how things might be able to work better in the future.

Stephen Matini: Executive roles, those people are the ones who are supposed to make strategic decisions, and yet a good idea may come from anywhere. People that are closest to the issue, most likely they're going to see what's happening. Based on your experience, how would you say that an organization could transition from a model of having people on top being the strategic one, to having everyone in that conversation?

Jessy Hsieh: When you're saying the people on top of losing their identity, could you clarify what you mean by that?

Stephen Matini: I mean the C-suite.

Jessy Hsieh: Each organization is going to be different. But I do think though that in terms of strategic leadership, in order to generate the best possible ideas you want to have a lot of observations. In your organization how can we include all of these ideas so that we can be sure that we are at least having the broadest set, the broadest ideas? Then you amplify those ideas that are generated.

In terms of strategic leadership, it is part of their identity to ensure that all the voices are heard or at least they're generating as many ideas that they can. Then, how do we raise that to the power of 10? A lot of times people who are in those positions of power, they come from the assumption that they have the best ideas. They've gone up the ranks, they assume that they might have. It's the people who are in leadership come from that thought that will never be falsely certain.

They’ve risen up the ranks mostly because they now have experience in seeing all the different as many perspectives as I can, even from like multiple functions, multiple perspective, being able to see from different vantage points the organization, then they can operate at the strategic level. A strategist, C-suite, really being able to have this thinking, what are those things that we can move as one?

Strategy hopefully is really allows multiple functions in organization areas of interest in an organization, multiple people, to be able to move as one organism. At the C-suite level, their identity is not in the title, but their identities really should be in their experience, to see that they can never know it at all, and then also to utilize that experience to help marshal, and bring an organization to be able to move disparate parts as one organism is strategic leadership I think.

Stephen Matini: People have amazing ideas, and actually what they found tremendously frustrating is the fact that often times their voices are not fully heard.

Jessy Hsieh: Yeah, for sure.

Stephen Matini: And those are missing opportunities for innovation, for creativity, and for being more strategic.

Jessy Hsieh: Often times, I think that back to the order of operations, real leadership is empowering, that’s the exponent. Seeing what you have in these parentheses in your organization. What currently exists. People, their ideas, each person's experience and then empowering. That's the exponent. Empowering people who work in your organization to speak their ideas, to feel heard, empowering to give them voice.

Giving them voice often times just asking them, what do you think about this? Give us examples of what is your day to day? What do you think would improve this? That is really just empowering them, before you go outside, you know, to find what other people are doing. Data is quantitative and qualitative. It's not about how much, it's about how. How many ideas do people come up with? How are you empowering people to feel heard, to speak their ideas, so that you can ensure that you are gaining the broadest range, broadest variety, and also the deepest?

There are many excellent consultants, who bring forth the best ideas, that their experience from seeing across organizations will lead to the best practices. But each organization has such a depth of knowledge that is all kind of within individual minds. How do you get empower those, that diversity, that depth of knowledge, those depth of experience? And bring that and empower people to speak their ideas is critical.

Stephen Matini: All the choices that you made in your life that brought you here, you know, you told me about your mom, your parents ... what is the contribution that you hope to give through your work in strategy?

Jessy Hsieh: Oh ...

Stephen Matini: That’s deep!

(Laughing)

Jessy Hsieh: That’s really deep. I think for me teaching is the closest that I feel that I can experience infinity, because every little minute that I spend with students, it's just the starting point of a seed that can germinate into infinite different possibilities. What I really hope to contribute is that the students that I interact with, they can see that there nothing is a foregone conclusion, that there is no such thing as the right way. There's no such thing as the one way, that if we are thinking about in terms of that, then we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to experience the possibility and the infinite possibility of the future. I love teaching. I wanted to get better at this because I it's the closest I've experienced to infinity.

Stephen Matini: There's a word that I don't think we have said in this conversation, but I think it's probably it could be a synonym of infinity, which is freedom. The national strategy for you is so much connected to choosing. You know, for me choosing is about freedom. Choosing is the biggest freedom that you can possibly have. And so the last question for you is this. When you feel like crap, when you're having like a really difficult moment, for whatever the reason, is there any specific choice, or something you do to get out of the funk that somehow, you notice, works well for you?

Jessy Hsieh: The title of this whole podcast Pity Party Over. I just love that. Okay, I just, I just love it in so many different ways. So for me, I would actually say that translating things to action, something that you can do is an initiation of freedom, it’s an initiation of choice, and it's also a way to get out of the pity party if you will, right, like the funk.

For me, for me, I always feel the most free when I think of things in a different way, so I will give it exam. I recently turned 40. So leading up to this, a lot of my friends were like, oh by the time you're 40 we should have this, we should have a, b and c, we should have, you know, accumulated in some sort of thing. It always seemed like an end point, like 40 just seemed like some sort of endpoint.

No, screw this, you know, this is just the beginning. So freedom to me is reframing certain situations in a way that makes us feel that we have agency in our life. I want to start a movement, I'm gonna call it my F. F. Y. F. F. It's the start of my 41st year of 40-first. For example, my first time having a dirty Martini, which I've never had, which I love. The first time eating mutton. My first time, my first mammogram that I had, it was also during ... My first time, what else did we do? What else they did? This is the anti bucket list.

I don't care what everyone else has done. This is my first, my first time seeing my friend's new daughter. My first time doing a 2000 piece puzzle. It's a movement to reframe how we're seeing things that are expected to be the end, or the mark of an end of something, and really it's part of the first of a new beginning. What can I see differently? Instead of thinking things are coming to the end or things that I'm losing out, or things that I don't have, constantly going with that mindset. What are the first things that you, you are doing for the first time? You are thinking for the first time, that you are feeling for the first time? Those first. Pity party over, how do I get out of the funk? Freedom is refraining. It's a mindset to look at what currently exists in a new or different way, that puts your own stamp on it.

This decade. My mom was diagnosed with cancer when she was 45 And she died when she was 50. All of us, if there's anything that we learned from the pandemic, is that there is no certainty about what's going to happen in the next moment. For me switching that from like, oh gosh, you know, what am I going to do to like? Okay, what is it that I can do right now? What is it that's new for me right now? What are those things that I want right now? There's no such thing as a plan. You come to life with a plan, you're going to be sorely disappointed

Stephen Matini: Miss Jessie, you are a precious gift.

Jessy Hsieh: Oh Stephen ...!

Stephen Matini: Thank you for doing this with me. We should do this again.

Jessy Hsieh: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over.

In the episode Jessy points out strategy as a confluence of choices and chances, things you can control and things you cannot control.

A good strategy questions all certainties and assumptions with a curious, open, and flexible attitude. Strategy is not a rigid plan based on dangerous false assumptions, but the smallest set of choices that optimally guide or force other choices. Understanding the context of those choices is also critical.

For individuals, teams and organizations, choosing well requires awareness or why we do what we do. Purpose drives results, and results tell us how things might be able to work better in the future.

The best strategic ideas require leveraging different points of view by listening to your people and giving them a voice. Strategy is about choosing, and choosing is the freedom to reframe challenges to make us feel we have agency in our personal and professional lives.

If you are interested in developing your strategic thinking, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter, or sign up before a 60-minute complimentary Live Session. Please check the episode's notes for information.

If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our leadership and managerial development programs at alygn.company dot. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N . company.

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

This episode explores how “Human to Human” conversations can help leaders bring the best out of people to deliver outstanding results.

The special guest is Carly Anderson, an Australian-American leadership and executive coach. Carly began training as a coach in 1998 and became a Master Certified Coach in 2004 by the International Coaching Federation, the leading coach credentialing body. Since then, Carly has mentored hundreds of coaches, becoming one of the most authentic voices for leadership development.

Leading people through change requires a carefully organized process. However, leveraging people’s potential and boosting motivation entails integrating a consultative-training approach with honest, kind, authentic conversations.

Human-to-Human conversations mean creating space where people can be seen, heard, and acknowledged as whole beings. That is where fundamental transformation, actions, and behavioral change occur.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to leverage human to human conversations

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Connect with Carly on LinkedIn

Carly’s mentor coaching programs at www.carlyanderson.com

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results and greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini, let’s pause, learn, and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by Alygn, A L Y G N . company.

Stephen Matini: Hi everyone, I'm Stephen, and welcome to Pity Party Over. This episode will explore how Human to Human conversations can help leaders bring the best out of people to deliver outstanding results.

My special guest is Carly Anderson, an Australian-American leadership and executive coach. Carly began training as a coach in 1998 and became a Master Certified Coach in 2004 by the International Coaching Federation, the leading coach credential body.

Since then. Carly has mentored hundreds of coaches, including myself, becoming one of the most authentic voices for leadership development.

Stephen Matini: The question that I have, the first one for you is this one: I know a bit about you know that you're Australian, and here and there you told me different things about yourself. But I'm curious to know what are the these steps that brought you from the beginning to where you are right now? Like you were born in Australia now you are in the US, so which were the main steps in your, of your development?

Carly Anderson: As always life doesn't happen as a straight line. If you had said to me this little girl born in a very small country town in South Australia would be talking to Stephen who's in Italy from, and I'm in Los well I'm not in Los Angeles but I'm in California, and that you would consider me one of your mentors. I would go, no way that could ever happen!

Yeah, I came from a very middle class, lower class family who none were educated, and, and somehow I was not like them. So I guess that thing was I always had ambition. I didn't know what that ambition was, but I just knew that I had to keep learning.

So from a very young age, I just noticed when I look back now on that person, I was that I was always just a learner. I mean just ... I studied, well, I always I loved history, I loved Mesopotamia. I loved ancient history for some reason, then I love sport, and so I would just practice because I love the act of getting better.

So if I go through my life, that's what drove me to be honest and how I'm here because learning took me to the next place. And also this unknown drive as to I don't belong here and I don't know where I belong and I don't know why I'm not comfortable in my own skin, which for a very long time.

Until my early 30’s, I did not feel I felt something was wrong with me, and I didn't know what. And all of my family were like in the country town and here already I had moved to the city by the age of 19 and that was considered like ... what?

And then I can tell you, I mean from there I got a job in an advertising agency in Adelaide and I went to see “Cats” actually at the Sydney Opera House with one of my girlfriends who was very sophisticated. My first ever trip to Sydney when I was 23. And I was staggered by the beauty of looking from the airplane seeing Sydney for the first time and how green it was. And I came from a place which was very not green.

And then we went to the Opera House and I was stunned by the beauty and I remember Andra, her name, was saying to me on the way home, I don't know and she was a laboratory assistant technician. She said. “I don't know why I'm going back to Adelaide?” Uh and I went, “Oh I don't know why am I going back to Adelaide!”

And so then I asked for a transfer to Sydney with the advertising agency I left without knowing I had a job but I interviewed for the same agency when I got to Sydney and they gave me a job in the media department which I loved, and then I just got promoted because I was a learner and got better and better and eventually ... I left that industry but I wanted to be, I was driven by wanting to learn and I engaged in personal development.

So I did my first personal development course when I was 27 or eight, I've just been fired from my job, and it was perfect timing. They collided where I did this personal development course, which was transformational for me. And so that then led me to wanting to have my own business. So then I had a strategic planning company, had employees, I went from being employed to being an employer.

And then someone said to me, coaching is coming to Australia and bringing the first ever coach training program to Australia, it was 1997, and I think you'd be a great coach. And I said to my peer colleague, I said, “”hat are you talking about? I don't know what you mean." Sports coaching was all I knew. So he said, look, I'll send you the brochure when I get it. Okay.

So four months later send me, sends me the brochure and I was like, okay, so I did it. And short story is I within a year sold my half of the business trans started to be getting involved in coaching, Went to a coach conference coach conference in 1999 in Orlando in Florida and met Michael, didn't do anything but a year later we met at the same conference, but this time I was in Vancouver and I came from Sydney, he came from Philadelphia and this time we were both free at the first time, we were both involved in relationships.

And then we married in 2001 and here I am living for 20 years with the most wonderful human, 21 years married soon and ... that's how I'm here and that's the steps I guess.

Stephen Matini: So coaching really you discovered it early on, like at the very beginning of coaching ... how interesting.

Carly Anderson: Yeah, 1998 was when I encountered it. 1992 was when you know around that time was when it really began. So I was about six years in ... yeah.

Stephen Matini: What coaching had that your previous career did not have?

Carly Anderson: Yes. Well this is good because I had been an employee but now as an employer and I had five employees at the time that I heard about I learned about coaching. And so my company what we did was take the strategy vision and values of large organizations, like banks and insurance companies and others, and translate that into stories, into graphics, into pictures into corporate storytelling before it actually was that.

What I noticed is from the C suite down through the organization we would have great conversations, they would take the information but nothing happened. No change happened. It was just communication and making lots of money but I didn't feel like I was making a difference.

So after about five years of doing this I was going there's something missing and then along comes coaching I was like oh ... okay this is what makes something that you are talking about from a consultative perspective, and takes it into transformation and action and behavior change. That's what was missing until I coaching came along,

Stephen Matini: You learned quite a bit of leadership, and also your own leadership style, and what could work for you or not based on having bosses, and you as a boss.

Carly Anderson: So interesting to how often we get messages in life about things and I guess that's also true with for me about people making people important versus process, because I was very much into the process of learning and getting better, and I never thought about humans along the way until much later in my life really.

And so one of the first things that I noticed is when I was preparing for this with you which I think is a fabulous thing that you're doing here, it's just discussing things about people and get out of the pity party and just think it's wonderful what you're doing.

And so the first thing I thought about was my first boss was a part time job in my small country town where I grew up, and it was a real estate agency that had a small travel agency with it, and I was the receptionist at the time, and I realized he was such a kind, you know when you look back people often say who made a difference in your life?

Well this my first boss, his first name is Paul, I don't even know if he's still alive, I tried to find and I could not find him a number of years ago. Kind, very, very interested in my development from the beginning. He could see I was an introverted, sort of quiet person, and he he was a Rotarian. And so he's said, I think it would be good for you to learn more about people. And so how about you raise money for charity for the rotary club and that will help you just that process.

And he was just this really kind person and he made a difference without him seeing that and helping me in that way, that was hugely important to me. And I didn't realize he was really seeing me as a human being for the first time. That's the first time I ever felt like I was really seen by somebody in my life.

Stephen Matini: There are two words that you use, even in the past, and I have learned them from you. One is when you talk about talk to people from “human to human,” and then I guess maybe the opposite is “process”, which is, you know, when you get more, I guess formulaic? So what is a “human to human” conversation”?

Carly Anderson: What we're having right now.

Stephen Matini: Thank God!

Carly Anderson: Yeah! Because I'm interested in you, you're interested in me, we're interested in how you think feel, act, react ... I mean, I wanted to ask you how come you wanted to live in the United States? You see that's a human, I'm interested in you. I'm not trying to get something from you. I don't care about the act of it. It's like what's important to you about that.

That's me being curious about you as a human being. And when we actually show and demonstrate that we are curious and understanding, wanting to understand or seeking to at least understand a little more about the person that we're engaging with unconsciously we're also saying: you matter.

And that you're important as with when I treat somebody like which I used to, you know, it's like get this done. I want this done by this time. We have to get we've got deadlines. Of course everybody wants results. It's how you go about it. The behavior we all have is a choice, whether we realize it or not, and we're either choosing to make results the way we speak. We're saying you're not important. The result we get out of this is more important.

As with if I say, how do you go about? What, what's making this difficult for you or what do you find enjoyable about this? Okay, so how does that make you more productive or what do you need in order to be more efficient? I'm interested in you as a human being to get the result, and it makes a big difference.

Probably know this Stephen, I can't quote exactly now where it's from. But it was originally the Gallup organization that did a survey that showed that people leave organizations mostly because their direct superior doesn't care, doesn't show they care about them. They only get feedback when they've done something wrong. And by the way that's I'm interested in that. Why do you think they don't give feedback when they're doing things right? I'm really interested in that from your perspective as well.

Stephen Matini: The way that I see it is that some people tend to be more naturally people-oriented, and some people tend to be very task-oriented. We need both. You know, we need both. You need to have an eye on results. You need to have an eye on people. The question is always, can you teach people to be more sensitive to people? Like one of the questions that I received most of the time is that, can you teach empathy?

Carly Anderson: I'm with you. Well, I've noticed observed in myself, first of all, I didn't have empathy and I've developed it and it's definitely something you can develop.

Stephen Matini: You?

Carly Anderson: Yeah. No! I mean, No, I did not have empathy. I mean, for instance, when I was a young manager, I was around 26, in the advertising agency, I worked in if somebody was two or three minutes late who was coming to see me for a meeting from an external supplier, I wouldn't see them. I'm sorry you're late by three minutes. I was like rigid originally to process. And no, I've learned that, I've learned that it actually matters that, you know, and seek to understand people.

Hence, one of the reasons I love coaching is that keeps me honest in my own development, because to me I'm always wanting my behavior on the inside. I want to be a person that appreciates myself and appreciates others. I've learned both are important. And if I've had, I've chosen to develop empathy and I've worked with.

I remember one person I coached who was a medical person who was in charge of a large research and development division inside of a medical devices company, and he was brilliant. He is brilliant. I imagine, I'm not coaching anymore. Brilliant. But the feedback was, this guy doesn't trust anybody else in the team is team to be as good as he is. And so he doesn't give much over two people and he's losing good people. We need him to stop because we think he's brilliant but ...

He and empathy, I'd say to him, “What do you think is going on here for you that you don't trust people?” He goes, “Oh it's not about trust." “Then, what is it?” He says, “Well I just need to get the result done or whatever. I don't care what other people think." “So, just checking, where in your life do you care about people?” He said, “With my son who's disabled.”

And ... so by him actually ... I had no idea. I've been coaching him for a little bit already before this came up. And he realized that he was compartmentalizing his ability, he was so empathetic toward his son, I saw no empathy, no caring in his work environment, and he'd split himself in two.

And once he realized and started to understand that he could in fact maybe be a little more kind, or empathetic two people in the workplace, and maybe that that was something he'd learned how to do really well with his son, it transformed him, and his environment, and his results, and people stayed, and the thing just shifted.

So yes it's not only can be taught but I think sometimes people do already have empathy or caring and part of their life, they've either blocked off, shut out, or forgotten about for whatever reason.

Stephen Matini: On your website, carlyanderson.com you have so much information that I that I love. There's um, there's one thing that I took you say, “I believe that we all want to be valued and respected for who we are. It's the behaviors and beliefs that we use unconsciously that can stop us from being valued and respected as we want to be.”

Carly Anderson: Yes, exactly. Which is part of a broader statement. My husband and I have a corporation together. Full it's called Full Being, F U L L Being Coaching and our tagline is, “Because who you are makes a difference in what you do.” Coaching the person taking actions is more powerful than merely coaching what actions to take. People have a greater capacity to solve their own problems than they currently employ. And we're dedicated to enhancing, enhancing and strengthening that ability.

Stephen Matini: Statistically lots of leadership development programs fail. Tons and tons of money are spent in leadership development and they fail. Based on your experience, what would you say that are some of the most important elements to pay attention to, to make sure that the program, a leadership development program, when it's deployed, is successful?

Carly Anderson: Group and individual coaching and teamwork, team building and all of that. Yes, it's a multi functioned approach. You have to take it from a just a teaching or training approach alone is minimally ... in fact, there are statistics that show just doing that you're going to get minimal retention of action and behavioral change.

Without some ongoing process to have behavior because habits take a while to change mindset beliefs, attitudes, behaviors all have to be something that you engage with as a process. And so if you don't have a process for doing that and coaching is a process, because you have, it's not a once off session. Like a training session can often be, well, let's go learn about emotional intelligence, let's go learn about empathy.

Well now you got to practice it. So whether you do that in the team coaching, individual coaching, it has to be an ongoing amount of sessions that creates the opportunity for accountability, because when you come back ... I have a coach as well, and I go through cycles of coaching even though I'm 24 years into my sort of developed my coaching.

I still, I love being coached, and I employed two different coaches for two different purposes right now. And it's great, I love the accountability because when I go to my next session, if I've said I'm going to do something ... I like to, I want to know that I'm going to show up and not have, it's not that I'm trying to please my coach, but it's a good accountability for me! So you need ongoing support in order and that's what coaching offers, whether it's team and or individual.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience. Is there a certain specific formula, combination, or percentage that you would use these two, coaching and training?

Carly Anderson: I've been part of effective corporate programs which have had a two day training or started out first of all with some sort of assessment, especially when you've got smart people, really smart people, you have to give them something that gives them a current ... especially about themselves and about not only their brain but about their emotional intelligence of some kind.

And so when you have an assessment that you can debrief first. Then they go into some training for a couple of days or a half day, a half day or half day, I think half days can be effective. I don't know about any less than that or whether it's being on Zoom for three or four hours is tiring I find, at a time.

So some sort of process where they're getting the information and then next is coaching after that, which is to me maybe the micro learning that takes it into behavioral change versus the information. But I found that when I've been part of those programs, assessment, debrief training, and then coaching, I found those to be, they've been very effective from companies I've worked with.

Stephen Matini: For those companies organizations that are evaluating the opportunity of “human to human” type of leadership development. What would you say? How would you explain to them the value of this approach

Carly Anderson: When you actually engage in this, like we are right now in conversation there's something magical that emerges in ... I mean I feel the energy just talking to you Stephen, and the vibrational excitement. You know, it's like a popcorn, in a good way!

Most people think they know how to listen until they start going through a say a coaching training program and then they realize how much they don't hear. And fundamental, fundamental to anybody is are you really hearing what the person is saying and there's so many levels to listening. I think that's the fundamental training that needs to happen.

If you don't know how to listen, what you're doing is just listening long enough to respond, or react, or have the solution, and so it doesn't actually show that you're actually taking much notice of that person in front of you.

And listening is where you have to, first of all also listen to what you're saying to yourself. Most people are saying things like, I can't get this done, I'm overwhelmed, there's too much to do, I need to get this out the door. And so what they're not hearing is, I'm afraid I'm not going to be good enough, I'm afraid that if I don't get this done, I'll be fired.

So therefore there's so much we say to ourselves that we don't hear, and then there's so much when we can't hear ourselves, we don't hear others as well. So there's so much around listening that can be done. I think training and listening skills is so under valued.

Stephen Matini: This podcast as you know is called Pity Party Over, right. When you're in a funk, essentially, is there anything specific that you do, to get out of it, to pity party over, to move on?

Carly Anderson: Yes, I think it's a fabulous saying. Wes. So choice, choosing, that’s, the number one thing out of a pity party is no matter what's happening, like, Gosh, I'm nearly 60. As much as I'm healthy and all that, I almost died five years ago. Now, there was things outside of my control that happened that meant I ended up having a misdiagnosis for six months, and I had 60 blood tests and still didn't know one new doctor came along within 24 hours we had a prognosis.

I had surgery. I had ... removed that was killing me and treatment, and I'm fine. Now, that process taught me a lot about where I choose to put my attention. And right now five years later, I also have choices about what I put my attention on. So, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional as they say. Now, whether I go, oh well I've got pain or oh Gosh, I got this diagnosed for six months and almost died. It's like, oh, what can I do?

So I kept going. I kept going, I'm choosing to find an answer. I am choosing to ... and at this point take care of myself in ways physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social. And so my pain level right now is almost zero. And yet a month ago, it was pretty high, in my body. But every moment I choose, I'm choosing to embrace what's happening to me now because that's the power. The moment I think it's all being done to me, then the pity comes in.

Stephen Matini: It's called locus of focus.

Carly Anderson: Ah ...!

Stephen Matini: Yeah, essentially thinking that I'm fully equipped, I have the resources to choose, or someone else has chosen for me. Either the economy or, you know, Covid or whatever, it might be other people. You know, and it's um ... To me what you're saying is freedom, it is really having the freedom of choosing, it is the most incredible thing

Carly Anderson: Yeah, but just to add to that, it is the words we say that matter. So for instance, I had cancer five years ago. I never called it that I said I had a visitor.

Stephen Matini: A visitor!

Carly Anderson: So no one around me who knew about it, could call it that, you had to call it the visitor, how’s the visitor, because that visitor was the mindset, and that's how I could choose. Now. To me, the cancer cells were a result of the tumor that was poisoning my system. So I was lucky that it was stage one and it was very treatable and you know, there was, my body was able to have blood infusions, and my bloody was able to recover within about 6, 8 months. And it was good.

However, consciously choosing the words that we use about our life situation makes a difference, to the pity or not, to the locus of focus ... hands down. If I say every day, I don't sleep because sleep is one of my challenges. Last night I got seven hours of sleep in one without waking up. That hasn't happened in two years, literally. I'm working on it all the time from many different aspects. But if I said, and every day I say to myself, I am having, I'm going in with, I'm giving myself the best opportunity to have the best, most restful sleep versus, oh, I'm not sleeping well and it's affecting me and it's all bad!

It's like the words I used to describe my experience matter and that's the same with our clients when we hear our clients saying, I don't believe this person is able to do the job. Well, okay, then they won’t. Or, I don't trust this person. Well, why not? What would have to change in the way you're viewing them, and the words we use, and how we then frame up our experience determines our experience.

Stephen Matini: This is fun. You know, you're you're so precious. Thank you so much for the for for doing this with me for the time that you gave me.

Carly Anderson: Such a delight. I was so excited to have this opportunity with you. Thank you for inviting me.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. As Carly pointed out, there's so much we say to ourselves that we don't hear, and when we cannot listen to ourselves, we don't hear others. So this episode is an invitation to all of you listening to create the necessary space to pause and listen.

Leading people through change requires a carefully organized process. However, leveraging people's potential and boosting motivation entails, integrating a consultative, teaching and training approach with honest kind, authentic conversations.

“Human to human” conversations mean creating space where people can be seen heard and acknowledged as a whole being. That is where fundamental transformation, actions and behavior change occur.

Everybody wants results. The bottom line is made of profits, savings, outcomes and outputs. All these are good health indicators for an organization. The choice though is between focusing on results alone, or taking the time to listen to people to create relationships that deliver outstanding results.

If you're interested in developing human to human conversations, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter or sign up for a 60 minute complimentary Live Session. Please check the episode's notes for this information.

If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify and many podcast platforms and apps.

I also invite you to browse our leadership and managerial development programs at ALYGN. Alygn is spelled A L Y G N . company.

Be happy be well and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

This episode explores the importance of being accountable for personal and professional success. Our special guest is Charles Panarella Assistant Director at Florida State University International Programs in Florence, Italy. Charlie is Italian-American with a Master’s degree in Italian Language and Culture and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

In the episode, Charlie shares his experience helping college students find their voice by overcoming the victim mentality. Accountability is a crucial developmental step for the managers and leaders of tomorrow, and an awareness seasoned professionals need to leverage to perform at their best.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to boost accountability to drive results.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Connect with Charles on LinkedIn

Connect with Charles on Instagram

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host Stephen Matini. Let’s pause learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by www.alygn.company.

Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to Pity Party Over. In this episode we will focus on the importance of being accountable for personal and professional success.

Our special guest is Charles Panarella, Assistant Director at florida State University International Programs in Florence, Italy. Charlie is Italian-American with a master's degree in Italian language and culture and is currently completing his PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Nevada las Vegas.

In the episode Charlie shares his experience helping college students finding their voice by overcoming the victim mentality. Accountability is a crucial developmental step for the managers and leaders of tomorrow and an awareness seasoned professionals need to leverage to perform at their best.

Stephen: You were born State Island New York, and I love when you talk about your dad, why don't you tell me something about your dad?

Charlie: Yeah well he was a very special guy. I mean he grew up in the 20s, he was born in 1922. So basically he was you know part of it I kind of skipped a generation let's say, because he had me when he was 55 that was like another world unto itself in the United States that generations like the pre World War Two generation they have kind of like this.

Let's say these characteristics of being a very tough skin, very hard nosed generation and stuff like that. So when he grew up in the twenties, you know, by the time he became conscious of his own life in terms of like, you know, when you're a child and you start to realize what's going on, uh the great depression had begun and the stock market crashed and stuff like that.

And then, you know, my dad basically grew up on the street so he didn't have an education and maybe had a third grade education at best from what he told me. He couldn't really read or write so well. So all his experience and everything that he taught me was basically how he lived his life. And he passed on these different things to me, including the love for Italy, my cultural background and things like that.

Yeah. He used to tell me all the time, you know, eventually he's like, I have my PhD in the street. He said, but he always used to say to me all the time, Charlie, you're green, you're green, you gotta learn, you gotta learn like it didn't happen until I was about 30 years old when we really felt like we were on the same page because for a while we didn't really see eye to eye, nothing that we didn't love each other.

But I mean there were times when we weren't just we weren't on the same page, we weren't clicking, we weren't getting along, you know, I was like, I was missing him. He was missing me. And when I say miss, I mean misunderstanding and shortly after, you know, as time passed, my mom was on the phone with me and she's like, hey, you know, your dad wants to talk to you because it's on the phone, he starts telling me how proud he is of me and you know, I'm like 38 years old, 37 years old, waiting to hear this, you know?

But after all these years, I'm like, you're saying, you know, because I don't have to worry about you anymore. You know, you can take care of yourself. You know, you don’t, you don't need me for certain things anymore. Um, you know what to do. The greatest compliment he ever gave me. He told me that I became the man he always wanted to be.

Stephen: Oh, WOW!

Charlie: Yeah. And I never, he was actually, he's the guy I always, it might want to be. So we had a mutual respect and love for each other was very deep.

Stephen: You shared with me that it was a failed relationship that helped you gaining clarity of the route that you want to take, you know, with your profession.

Charlie: So, you know, the fast forward a little bit, I end up going to college on the west Coast. Um, you know, I meet this girl and it's fantastic. You know, it's kind of like the first time I ever really fell in love with the girl and uh and so it happened later, I was 25 26 you know, um and this didn't work out and I was like thinking to myself all the time, like when my mom and dad taught me this, they said this is a family and this is the way this has got to be an etcetera etcetera etcetera.

I'm thinking, I kept beating my head against the wall and thinking, what, what went wrong? I don't get it, I don't understand, this has to be something to do, this has to have something to do with my upbringing where I come from, but I think it goes deeper than New York, I go, I have to go to Italy, I have to go to Italy and find out if I'm crazy, right?

So from the second that I got off the plane, I never had culture shock, everything was fine, everything was fantastic. It started reminding me of my childhood and stuff like that to myself. You know what, I don't think I'm crazy, I think I'm just probably a little Italian go, it was, it was like a second home. Yeah. And so I, I realized that that part of me that part of my identity was very strong and it was very important to me um you know, as well as, you know, certain things about the Italian-American side of things. The American side of it is that which is some of the things that I incorporated my classes that I guess we'll talk about um the mentality yeah it was very important to me so I came here because of that and it just kind of like set me on a path to what I'm doing.

I really wanted to perfect Italian,I wanted to study Italian, I was like what better way to do that than to be a teacher and of Italian language. And then I said well besides that I want to go to Italy for an extended period of time, you know a week, you know American vacation a week or two, it's it's like flies by in a second year and before you know you're already back to work.

I was like that's not enough, I go I need I need a month or two or three or whatever it is the summer. So being a teacher would offer that and that's how I ended up getting into education.

Stephen: You are the assistant director at F.S.U., Florida State University. What would you sa that are are the biggest misconceptions about going to college?

Charlie: I think people look at it as a place where somebody's gonna go, I'm gonna go to a class, somebody there's gonna be a teacher there who studied this material for X. Amount of years and they're gonna magically insert information into my brain and I'm gonna be able to take this information and I'm gonna just go out in the world and I'm gonna be successful and I'm gonna, you know, overcome everything and everything's gonna be fantastic. I think that's one of the things that is something that it's a misconception, it's also maybe a little misconception, I'm maybe thinking of this now that, you know, students absorb a lot of these things, you know, it's not the students are not just numbers, they're not just, you know, there to just write papers that they're individuals human beings.

So part of education in my opinion, and this is what my dad used to tell me all the time. He's tell me Charlie teach him about life. I feel that if we're gonna have a person in front of us as a, as a as a teacher, as a professor, I signed the moral contract with them already to, you know, not to hold their hand, but you know, to give them whatever I can personally, that that will help them succeed, not to lie to them, not to make them feel good about things. Of course I want them to feel good, but also that life is not fair all the time, but they don't have to beat themselves down.

They don't have to feel like defeated or they feel like, you know that the world is against them, I want them to be able to accept these things and be able to say, okay, how can I create a plan to succeed, how can I get around this? How can I have this fire in my body that gives me that will that I want to conquer these problems and these problems and these issues.

Stephen: It's interesting because different people approach teaching differently when I got into this, I never planned to teach, it was actually a friend of mine who said, I think you would like this.

I walked into the classroom, I saw the students and I had this sense of warmth, you know, they were smiling. I don't know, I fell in love with it right away and I think now I know how what was the feeling, because I've been teaching for, what is it 11 years now, so it's been a while.

Charlie: It’s the same for me.

Stephen: And I think what I, most of all what I what drives me is I think I wanna be the type of person that I very often I could not find when I was a student.

Charlie: Well one of the things that hit me more than anything and this is at the beginning of my teaching career, I was at a college in Manhattan where it's like I always say this it's kind of half true and half not, but you know, some of the kids are like going to jail and they're just getting out of jail. I mean they had it was a rough school great kids though because when I was there after my first semester was the toughest because I had to get, it was like I would say it was like a scene out of dangerous minds because nobody's paying attention.

People are throwing notes across the room, that kind of thing. Um And I go into my chair and I told her, I said Maria, I go, these kids can't go through life like this. And she looked at me and she goes Charlie, it's not hard, they just need somebody to care about them and you're gonna be fine. And I looked I looked both ways inside of me and I'm like that's it, that's all I have to do. She says, yeah, just do that, trust me and you'll be fine.

Stephen: When you and I shared ideas for this episode. You pointed out the importance of losing the victim's mentality. I find this concept crucial in the developmental path of all of us students included.

Charlie: If they don't root out this way of thinking early on in life, it doesn't mean that they can't get out of it. And I think it may be a little bit harder. But what's gonna happen is they're going to put themselves in situations now that they're gonna have to dig themselves out of a hole.

Why? Because there's this negativity hole that they've been digging for 30 years or 20 years or 15 years however long it takes them to quote unquote, wake up from being a victim and I think one of the things that I see all the time is like.

It's good that you want to express yourself. It's good that you want to talk about things. It's good that you bring things to light. But I want to know what are you gonna do about it? You know, I use, I use Navy Seals, the United States Navy Seals for special forces soldiers, some of the best in the world, apparently from what they say. And this is the kind of mentality that you guys, these individuals that go in these dangerous situations.

They choose to be there and not only do they choose to be there, they actually think positive, believe it or not. So I'm not telling you this just to make you feel good. You know, if these guys can do that at that level, think about what you can accomplish as a civilian, as somebody who can is focused on their personal goals, your everyday life and that the imminent danger that your life is in danger is not there, but but hold on, I told him I go, I don't think that there isn't a danger because there is a danger. Your danger is invisible. Your danger is slow. Your danger can happen after 10 years of thinking in a way that's gonna be detrimental to you.

So, you start at this starting point and little by little you go off the track, it's like a train track that goes off this path and then one day you wake up and you save yourself, “Well how did I end up here?” Well you ended up there about 10 years ago. We weren't thinking when you weren't looking at life the right. So to have this mentality that I can't do it or the world is against me or they want to make excuses all the time and why they can't do something. My answer is there's a solution to everything, find a solution. And if you can't find a solution that is quote on quote easy because everybody looks for the you know the most efficient, easy way to go.

Sometimes the solution is not gonna be easy but the only way to get from point A to point B is to get that mentality in your head, get on you get on your feet and press forward and keep going until you get you have to will it at some point because sometimes there is an answer but the answer is not going to be simple and what are you supposed to do? You have a way to do it? But if you choose not to take that role and do it, your solution is never gonna happen. So you have to persevere, you have to lose the victim mentality in thinking that I need somebody to help me, I need somebody to you know to pick me up.

But what happens if you find somebody like that which is fantastic because I love I love talking with people like you especially, you know, who believes in these kind of things. But what happens if Stephen is not there? What happens if Charlie is not there? What are you supposed to do? Okay, that's it. Game's over.

I try to get them to put the focus back on themselves and give them control of their life because as a victim, you don't have control. You're giving control to the outside world. And if you let the outside world control you to that degree, you're gonna feel even worse because you feel like, oh I can't do anything because the control has not been, it's not been put back inside once you decide that I have control and I had my way of looking at this and approaching this, even if it's a bad situation, you're gonna already feel better because you're in control

Stephen: What you're saying, it is really the core of this podcast. I think it's normal to have a pity party to feel a victim. And it's really, really hard when you made a bunch of decisions in the past, thinking that you were doing the right thing, but you still end up in a place that you never hope to be. That's really, really hard. In your opinion, what is it that some people seem to be able to overcome that victim mentality and other people get stuck?

Charlie: Well let's talk about these quote unquote talented people, the ones who have it easy. So there's 500 NBA players that exist that are on teams that's usually the number of approximately. You can take the worst NBA player and some videos of this on on Youtube.

The worst NBA player put them against some of the top college basketball players in the United States or even maybe in like a G league or whatever it is and they will wipe the floor. And I'm talking about guys that scored like 200 points in their ten-year career, which is next to nothing.

You know, just goes to show the talent level that exists. Well, why is there this disparity between someone who is so talented at the 500 rank position in the N.B.A. and like Michael Jordan. What’s the difference? The difference is, is the mentality they have to push themselves to work hard. They have to push themselves to be the best of the best at that point because now the competition is so stiff, they have to find any angle that they can and it's a curve that increases at a decreasing rate.

So you're going to be very, very good at this. But your progress may be very, very slow. But these people are so driven, so interested in being the best or perfecting whatever they want to perfect that they end up becoming out of the school of people who are so gifted, quote on quote hating and using that term. Um that they become the best of those people. So, you know, it's not just, it's not just people who who don't know have, let's say advantages or quote on quote talents, we're talking aboutIt shows up among people who have high level high ability in doing things.

Stephen: There are infinite nuances between the victim mentality and taking responsibility for our life. You mentioned the importance of understanding what fear is and how fear plays between these two apparent opposites. Would you mind telling me more about fear?

Charlie: Yeah. So I think everybody's afraid all the time. I was um you know, I was always scared of like, well, what's gonna happen, I don't know what's gonna happen. Now, Michael Jordan brought this, you know, and I kind of stole this from him because Michael Jordan's said, fear is an illusion. Fear is when I'm not sure of my skills, I've been nervous before, but I've never been afraid because I'm confident in my skills.

So basically, um I think fear comes from the unknown and I think the unknown can be like, you know, the same thing with these these special forces soldiers and things like that when they've been through situations, you know, and practice these situations when the time comes when it's real. They've done this so many times, that there is no fear. Of course there's this innate nervousness that they have as anybody would because they want, they want to succeed to have that desire, that adrenaline's flowing through your body, but they're not afraid though.

There's a difference. You know, and I think when you're afraid, you're afraid because you think something bad is gonna happen, I'm not sure how I'm gonna do, I'm not sure that I have the ability to do this. They know they have the ability, they're just nervous that maybe this time I might miss it or not make it, it's not the ability. They know they can do it. It could be the 20%, like, for example, if they make the shot seven out of 10 times because nobody's perfect.

They're nervous that it's gonna be the three times they miss it, as opposed to the seven times they make it because they know they can do it. Whereas somebody who doesn't believe in themselves, it's going to be afraid of everything because they're gonna be afraid of failure.

If I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna lose, I'm gonna, something bad is gonna happen. Um, but at the same time, I think they sit there and think to themselves instead of something good happening tomorrow, which is possible. They always think something bad is gonna happen, something, what if this happens, what if it doesn’t, what if something good happens? So what they do, they're always like thinking of every which way that they're going to, they're not going to succeed. But in the, in the reality, if you, even if you don't succeed and you have to get over this fear of, quote unquote failure, even if you don't succeed, what can you learn from that failure?

One of the Navy Seals that I used to follow, that he passed away because of cancer. But one of the things he said, he read this quote on a pamphlet when he was being, you know, when he was interested in becoming a navy seal, he said there's two ways that a man can lose when he quits and when he dies, which means that if you don't decide to give up as long as you're alive, you got a chance.

Stephen: Never thought that way (laughing).

Charlie: So wait, I mean, so, you know, it's over. I tell the kids, I'm like, listen, it's over when you decided it's over and what's what's gonna happen. You know, are you gonna die from this? If you go and talk to that CEO if you write an email to a company or if you decide that you want to open up a business, what's gonna happen to you really? Are you gonna die because of this, 99.9% of the time, it's not gonna happen. You know, who knows? You may have that weird situation, but I mean, nothing bad is gonna come of it. So if you get that out of your head, that nothing bad is gonna happen and who cares that fear is no longer there because you know what you're doing, you're focusing on development instead of a, an outcome.

And that's one of the things they talk about in this book, “Mindset” by Carol Dweck, who is a professor at the University of Stanford, Stanford University is that if you focus on development, your focus on getting better. So there is no failure because development means that I'm gonna learn as I go as every level, I'm gonna make mistakes, I'm gonna fix it, I'm gonna learn what to do next and so on and so on, and I'm gonna keep continuing to become an expert, even if I'm really good at something because I'm not practicing or if I'm not really good at something, I can get better at it if I practice.

So that outcome, that moment in time doesn't define who I am. What's more important is the journey. And I always say that Tom Brady, he won seven super bowls. Well, Tom Brady didn’t, he had seven days of his 20 year NFL career that he had that moment of feeling that he won a championship the other 10,000 days or however many days that I haven't done the math, what was he doing? He was practicing. So he wasn't a champion, he didn't win the Super Bowl every day for 20 years. He wanted seven times, which is seven days out of a 20 year career.

So the focus shouldn't be the end result. The focus should be the development the process that you go through. Even even professional athletes have to learn how to lose before they win because they don’t, they don't develop the grit, they don't develop that perseverance. They don't develop these certain things that, that take, let's say a sustained because if you want to sustain success, you have to have these things, you have to have these qualities because if you just get lucky, you know, and things happen to go right for you, which can happen, but you're not mentally prepared for what's gonna come next. If something wrong happens, you have no idea how to handle a crisis.

Stephen: I think it's almost inevitable that you blame yourself, you lose faith and you lose your strength. I so wish that I that I knew back then. What I know now, not completely, because now I know, as you said, truly it is a process and it's gonna be uncomfortable many times, it's not going to go the way that I want, but it is true, bettering myself that eventually I'm gonna get there.

Charlie: And then once you get to the point where you're comfortable with being, nothing really bothers you, you know, and maybe it does, but you know how to handle how to channel that energy.

Stephen: Well, sometimes despite our best efforts, we are in a funk, we feel miserable about our abilities about life in general. So when you feel discouraged, not motivated, what is one of the best way for you to pity party over, to get out of the funk?

Charlie: If something like bad happens to me, I basically try to piss myself off because the more I get aggravated, the more I get this, this fire man, I don't have to explain it anymore, but I just need to win, I need to conquer. I need to figure out a way, I don't care if it comes hell or high water, I am gonna get to the other side of this problem. So I get to the point where if something happens, I really think about like even I have to trick my mind because it's something I kind of picked up from some of the things I read about Michael Jordan's basically, there were times when he got on the court and maybe he wasn't feeling at that, he was like, you know, I feel an average, but tonight it's an important game.

So he'd be going up against people that maybe he'd never played against before. They, I mean they obviously knew who he was, but these are like just average guys and stuff like that. He walked on the court and then then they walked up to him like you know, a good game and have a good, have a good game, whatever good luck. And he looked at them and he would say, I heard what you said about and the guy looks at me goes what I say, I don't even know you, it was the first time I met you, he goes, I heard what you said about me tonight, you're gonna pay for it and he would, he would come up with some kind of crazy way to motivate himself to get him aggravated like this person is trying to stop me from reaching my goal, this person is trying to prevent me from doing what I want to do.

So I started doing that and the more I started thinking about even if it wasn't true, people telling me I couldn't do something or you'll never do that or you don't have the buildings, you you don’t, you don’t, you don't understand, the more it would piss me off to make me want to do it even more. So the second that I run up against the problem, the first thing that goes in my head is alright, here we go, it's time for me to turn on the power all the way and now I'm gonna, now I'm going to destroy this problem in front of me, 100,000%.

Stephen: Basically channeling your energy.

Charlie: Absolutely yeah, it's a way for me to challenge my energy and you know, I think some of it comes naturally now because you get into these habits, they could be good habits or bad habits. So I started saying to myself, I want to develop good habits. So these good habits of attacking problems is well what's the quickest way to get to a solution, Start doing something that's going to get you to a solution, did you do everything that you could have done Charlie and if the answer is yes.

Alright, let's find another way to figure this out if the answer is no, I'm gonna be disappointed in myself because why I let this happen and this is and this is what I tried to tell the students this victimization, this this victim mentality, you know what you're doing? My parents did this to me, society did this to me, this did this to me. No, you did this to yourself. Nobody's saying that other people don't have advantages and disadvantages. There could be people who are born in rich families that fall flat on their face because they have all the advantages in the world, but they don't take it, they don't take advantage of them and what happens, they just they they fail because they don't have they don't they don't take responsibility for themselves.

Stephen: So if professionals, anyone really educated students needed to get in touch with you to talk about any of these topics, how could they find you?

Charlie: They can find me on LinkedIn I'm on there. Um I mean even like just on the F.S.U. website there's that as well. Um I have an Instagram account. I just got to post videos and stuff like that about food because I go around Italy, I'm a food lover. So I always put it's all it's all pictures of Italy and food has nothing to do with motivation. I mean it's another avenue, I suppose the content.

Stephen: Maybe there could be an angle to get into motivation through through food.

Charlie: Yeah exactly. I'm always motivated to eat so ah ah ...

Stephen: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. In the episode Charlie and I loosely used the victim mentality expression to highlight the importance of being accountable to avoid negativity.

In psychology, a victim mentality indicates a learned behavior characterized by helplessness, often evolving as a defense mechanism to cope with adverse life events.

People who constantly blame other people or situations for their misfortunes have a victim mentality. When we are stuck with no apparent way out ,we may experience different degrees of the victim mentality.

We might not have caused the circumstances we experience but we always have the freedom to change the outcome based on how we respond and that's our responsibility, and greatest freedom.

As Charlie pointed out, get comfortable at getting uncomfortable, knowing that success comprises both winning and losing. You may start by identifying small things you can take to make a positive difference. Focus on development rather than the outcome.

If you have any questions pertaining how to develop accountability, you can find my contact information in these episodes notes. If you enjoy this content, you may subscribe to my podcast or blog Pity Party Over and we can also connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I invite you to visit a website, alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N . company where you can find many routes for managerial and leadership development.

Be happy, be well and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

This episode explores the importance of resilience for leadership development. Our special guest is Maria Giovanna Vianello, Global Leadership Development Consultant at Novartis, a well-known Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation.

In Maria’s experience, “Leadership is not the power you are giving yourself, but the power people give you because of the role model you represent.”

Maria has been dealing with type 1 diabetes since she was a kid. Her story shows how our biggest struggles might reveal our life mission, in her case, helping leaders reach their highest potential.

Resilience for Maria is being “mindfully tenacious,” which combines perseverance and taking care of her body. Resilience requires incremental proactive steps and avoiding perfectionism, which depletes adaptation resources.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to develop resilience.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Connect with Maria Giovanna Vianello on LinkedIn

Transcript

Stephen Matini - Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini, let’s pause, learn, and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N . company.

Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to this episode of Pity Party Over. How are you? Today we will talk about the importance of resilience for leadership development.

For many resilience equates to toughness and elasticity. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Also it is the ability of a substance to spring back into shape. Essentially life has ups and downs and resilience is how long it takes me to get up when I experience a significant changes, setbacks and disappointments.

The special guest for this episode of Pity Party over is Maria Giovanna Vianello. Maria's Italian, she's a global leadership development consultant at Novartis, a well known Swiss-American Multinational Pharmaceutical Corporation where Maria has worked for almost 10 years.

Maria has a master of business administration and a master of science in business and organizational psychology. Currently she's completing her PhD in transformative studies at the California Institute of integral Studies.

In this episode Maria shares how her hardships helped her become resilient and also unveiled her mission to help leaders do the same.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I was reading your questions and truly thinking about resilience and when did I realize that I had to be resilient in my life? When did I truly develop consciousness about it? When it was natural? What did I keep from my natural attitude? You know when I was young, for example, I mean, you know my life story, you know, I was struggling with with you know, health issues since I was very young. And so I, I believe that there was a some, some sort of traumatic event, not a fast moving event, a kind of a slow moving event, but in any case it had a huge impact in my life. And so what did I leverage of that throughout my life?

Stephen Matini - If resilience were a percentage, what percentage would you say is your natural resilience, your natural attitude and how much of resilience you have acquired through learning and anything that you've done?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think my natural percentage will be around 65%. Which I think it's above 50, so sounds good to me. Uh but still, when I'm in very challenging situations, I need to do something else. In addition I need to almost pose, take a deep breath and tell myself, okay, wait, you need to do something else. Your natural level of resilience is not enough.

You need to strengthen your, your capabilities to go to the next level where things will maybe not look easier, but you can get through this challenging experience in one way or the other. And uh and at the same time, because I think that is part of the consciousness, um you can take care of yourself in the process because maybe now that I'm thinking about my own natural resilience level, maybe that can be pretty high, but I could have the tendency maybe even 75% without thinking about it, right? I can go through stuff, you know head down, do move and progress.

But then if I do that and I don't take care of myself, then there is a moment when the all ecosystem, the all infrastructure boom ... falls apart and this is when you have to to deal with challenges and troubles and and it can be confusing daunting and just and then you lose time and you lose resources and you don't know when you can recover because you are completely out of your control.

Stephen Matini - So I can be resilient, but I also need to take care of myself in the process.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think that was a huge part of my personal development, I would say most probably during the past 5-6 years or so, I realized how much taking care of my mind was important but my body, it's connected with the mind. And so unless you usually properly you drink, you hydrate yourself properly, you drink enough water, you allow yourself to eat nutritious food almost like celebrating yourself like a gift. So to say you cannot be truly completely resilient.

Stephen Matini - What does resilience mean for those who do not know what resilience is, and what does resilience mean to you?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think that more or less universally and here I just go back to my coaching and leadership development, you know know how ah it's the capacity to bend and not to break metaphorically when you are dealing with a challenging situation. You adapt, you re-adapt and adapt over and over again and you can make sense of yourself why you're doing that.

So it's not just happening by chance because that is not enough. And for me it's more or less the same with the, with the addition of uh you know specifically caring of about your health, it's crucial and that is my, you know, my additional understanding was there. I thought for a long time that learning things from books and and and studying and then be very diligent in my job, taking care of every task in in challenging times.

I can do things uh and I can do things and to end and top quality and so I am resilient because even if there is a lot of mess, I can go through the mess and see things through, right? But that's not enough because if you don't take care of yourself, you will be in trouble from your letter. And that's I think a very recent, maybe the most recent learning about resilience as a process of it all.

Stephen Matini - For some people, resilience is a synonym for perseverance, tenacity, determination. But you seem to have a different explanation, a different, a different way to explain what resilience is which is mostly connected to taking care of myself 360°.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think it's it's about being tenacious but with awareness, be mindful later nations because when you are tenacious, you are using resources in your body and because of the adrenaline under pressure, you are resilient because you are under pressure and so you have to deliver, deliver, deliver.

And with the adrenaline you don't feel the pain in the body. You don't feel you maybe need to drink some water to eat nutritious food. Okay. I don't really need to sleep every night ... 78 hours. I just who cares. I have a lot of things to do and so you go on and on and on and you are tenacious and maybe you will get at the end of the process and you will achieve the results and you will go through the mess.

But at the end, how long would it take to recover and what if something else happened in the meantime, when is the resilience reaching you know the edge of your own capacity? Because I think there is an edge for that and and that's the end. And so what can you do to prolong that?

To avoid that you reach the ceiling almost this glass ceiling and there's nothing else you can do about it. But if you are tenacious and mindful about being tenacious, I think that makes you resilient.

Stephen Matini - How do you become mindfully resilient?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I don't know how in general, I know what for me. Um I think we in general as human being, maybe because of the school system, since we are very young, we are inclined to think that we have to do things aiming for perfection? Mhm That's beautiful, right?

Achieving perfection is beautiful, but I don't think that is crucial in an extremely challenging, complex situation when you don't know how things would develop. So to me, it's not about perfection, it's taking things step by step, being compassionate with myself in the process, finding time to acknowledge and celebrate every tiny tiny little step.

I can share my example. Recently I moved back from, from Singapore to Europe, back to Italy to my home country. I organized the move and the old logistic in in three weeks I had to do most of the things on my own, booking flights organizing the move and all that sort of stuff that you do when you are moving across the world.

Stephen Matini - Yes

Maria Giovanna Vianello - Then I arrived back to my country and I realized that it's almost more complex to move back in your own country rather than being an expat in a foreign country, right? Because if you are an expat, someone will tell you what you are supposed to do. But if you are back in your country, you're supposed to know everything about rules, regulations and permits and and and and everything.

So I realized, oh my God, I am on my own, how am I gonna do that? Right, just crazy. What am I gonna do with the, with the custom for for the move? How am I going to rent an apartment? How do I get my documents? How do I open a bank account? I mean, these are all the basics, right?

But even that for me was extremely challenging. But to do that, um I have to do things step by step very slowly uh Giving myself the time, acknowledging that I cannot do 10 things per day because that will be too tiring and I mean, I will expose myself to, to doing mistakes. But if I do tiny incremental steps every day, I can achieve way more. And if I do any of the things one at a time, even if I do a mistake, it's going to be a tiny little mistake. Not a big one because I'm engaging with, with a small step and, and with those tiny incremental steps, uh you can almost assess your own well being in the process because you are not rushing too much. And that made a huge difference.

So If you ask me after a month, I moved back on April 27. Now it's ah you know, June six a mouth and a week. Do I feel tired? Yes. Did I achieved what I needed to achieve? Almost. Um Am I fulfilled satisfied at ease with the process that I'm facing, I do. When I go to bed at night can fall asleep, which is amazing and priceless. And that's because I did all these tiny little incremental steps and again, I did some mistakes and it's not over yet and it's going to take, I think a couple more months to finalize everything.

I mean I don't have a driving license and I need to go through a, the approval process to get my driving license because it expired when in 2020. So because of Covid, I could not travel back to my country to renew the driving license. And so I need authorization from the, you know, it's all complex and, and I can not fix this in one day. But I know that one step at a time I can also deal with that part. It's not perfect because I need a car.

Honestly, I would really like to be able to drive a car to go around instead of taking public transportation and then walking. I mean it takes me twice the time to go from one place to the other. But again, it's not about perfection. There's nice weather outside and I walk and I tell people I'm running five minutes late. I'm so sorry, but I don't have a car. So please can you wait for me? And that's how it's working for me right now.

Stephen Matini - And it's bizarre because when you get back to your country, you are in a place that in the meantime has changed. You have changed. So it's like almost to move to a foreign country in many ways.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - Yes, it is. And and it's all about having the right expectations. Again, it's not about perfection because if I would have expected that everything was perfectly falling in place, moving back, I would be right now, extremely disappointed.

Stephen Matini - You were mentioning earlier on that experiences that you went through when you were young. Also some health concerns might have contributed to your natural resilience. So, I know quite a bit of you because of our friendship, because of our our professional doings. But for our listeners, I would like to ask you where you grew up and how those experiences have shaped also your your professional choices, the professional direction that you took.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I grew up in a, in a family of doctors, physicians where be perfectly in tune with your body and taking care of yourself was crucial. And and I mean it was normal, right? The other part of my family, they were teachers. And so again, that was about perfection, getting things right, learning and and and being a very proficient student at school, that that was also part of, you know, of my family context. And so when I was diagnosed, I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with diabetes type one, which is an incurable disease. You have to leave for the rest of your life out of the blue because it was an immune reaction to, to an infection, something like that. So my body overreacted to an infection.

My family was extremely concerned because they were not used to deal with unhealthy people in the family. We were very lucky, you know, and and I was the first one with a real disease that require injections 4,5, 6 times per day. And uh, and how do you allow yourself as a parent to, to help your daughter to develop the capacity to inject herself with medication when she is nine years old. I mean it's it's it's just unbelievable.

I think my parents did an amazing job to keep me accountable and it wasn't a walk in the park, but I had to step up and be responsible for myself and the price to pay for not being responsible because when you're very young and you are, you know, just a kid, what is responsibility really I want to play and it foods that other kids eat, but I couldn’t, that was very dangerous for me. I mean, not impossible but dangerous.

Uh, and so when you have to take care of yourself to, to the degree of uh being aware that if you eat a certain amount of, of something, you will trigger some reaction in your body that will be very negative. And so that is extremely challenging for a young kid, I had to develop the capacity to to take care of myself despite the odds. Despite this extreme situation, despite my family being extremely concerned, I had to build trust to make sure that they can trust me. I had to build trust with them.

So I had to show up is a very responsible person who can get things done from end to end can take care of herself. And uh and I have to be reliable but to be reliable. I have to learn from mistakes because unfortunately everybody is unique. Everybody reacts differently to medications and so you have to learn by mistakes basically that took me a lot of energy, a lot of devotion for my, you know, for taking care of my disease, A lot of positive thinking because being upset that was just being in trouble.

Stephen Matini - Your family taught you or you figured it out?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - We were learning together. There was no way to learn. There was, you know, at that time. I mean that was more than 30 years ago. There was no Internet or not reliable sources on Internet or anything like that. There were no books. Um, not so many people. I mean there is a small percentage with people with diabetes, type I.

There are many people that have diabetes type II, but type I is, it's very limited. So unless you really have met in your life, somebody who has that specific disease, even doctors sometimes struggle to give you specific indications that they can give you a approximate instruction.

But you have to try and so you have to go back to the doctor every 4 to 5 weeks and check again over and over and over again 4 to 5 weeks if you are doing good if you are not, it's almost a daily trip to the doctor to check your blood sugar level and especially when you are young and and almost on going up and down your blood sugar level is going up and down.

And that can be very dangerous, especially during the night, you can fall asleep and you don't wake up and that's um, that's extremely dangerous because there's no oxygen to your brain to do all the things we have to learn together. We have to be very patient with each other. I think my family sometimes was very scared, but because I realized that if I would show up in those moments where it was very difficult to make a decision about, you know, dosage of medications uh if I show up with the attitude of trust me, we can try and see and I will take care of myself for the next 10, 12 hours, don't worry, everything is gonna be fine with that mindset. They were giving me the chance to try and so be resilient, allow me to grow up and to practice and and learn by mistakes.

And today, after 32 years of this very impactful disease, I must say I am healthy, I do sports and I have a meaningful life which challenges of course like everyone, but I wouldn't say that I have more challenging situations to deal with compared to someone who is not diabetic. So um I have a normal life and that that's because I'm resilient I think, but I learned resilience when I was very young.

Stephen Matini - How this impacted your professional choices?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - That’s a marvelous question, because that had a huge impact on my professional choices. My passion for supporting people, transformation, uh leadership development, coaching, which is you know, the core component of my job and what gives me energy every day. Um that is all connected with the idea that I was so lucky in my life to meet people that from very early stages helped me to develop, to grow to make decisions, people that were not telling me what to do, but they were rather holding the space for me helping me to think about different perspectives, see reality from different angles they were holding the mirror and giving me the chance to face, you know what I was experiencing.

And that helped me a lot. And so I decided what if I can do that for other people, I am supposed to be quite experience, I'm not saying that I'm good at that, but I'm definitely quite experienced because I learned from practicing and I had to and I will never stop because my disease will stay with me for the rest of my life. So because of that, why why don't I use that just to help other people, why why not leveraging something that was an issue for me to help other people to unleash their potential to generate more positive energy in their life, not necessarily to get a better version of themselves.

I believe we are already the most beautiful version of ourselves, but just sometimes we miss the awareness of that with the work I do, how I can help people to understand that they are amazing and beautiful and powerful and there is no limit to what they can achieve because of my experience because of all the pain I went through and uh and because I am definitely an example that there are no boundaries, there are no limits, you can always overcome challenges, maybe sometimes what you are missing, it's only another angle on the problem that you're not seeing. But as a coach, as a leadership development practitioner, I can help you to see that and with that you can go to the next level of your life, your existence and and do amazing things.

Stephen Matini - How old were you when you decided to get into human resources?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think I started with the idea that I was very good at solving problems, that was my first step and I was around 17 years old, 17, maybe 16, something like that young, you know, before starting a real job, I could say, oh my God, I was at school, I mean doing some, you know some, some school projects and I could just see myself very passionate about solving problems.

And then I took another intermediate step when I realized okay I can be quite efficient in the problem solving thing, but it will be way more efficient if I can help other people to solve their own problems and I don't you know I don't get myself tired of solving other people's problems so I have them, I don't tell them what to do, but there are ways to help them and then the next step after that was okay.

What if I do not only help people to solve their problems? What if I help people to transform to evolve to mature? And this is where you know I think 10 years ago I decided that coaching a leadership development where my my sandbox, so to say a place where I can bring my experience into the game and without pretending that I know creating a safe space to have conversations about each other challenges and grow together.

Stephen Matini - So based on your experience, why resilience is necessary as a leader?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think because when you are a leader, formal or not, I mean it doesn't matter if you really have a proper job title Leader of something. We are all leaders in our life. That's something I strongly believe when you are a human being, you should role model, that challenges can be overcome can be dealt with. That there is hope that there are possibilities and possibilities are literally endless and it's up to you.

But the way you show up the resilience, you you spread around the world with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, that is, you know, something that would make the difference in the life of other people. And again, it's incremental, it's tiny, tiny, tiny, it's it's not about delivery worship on resilience, but it's literally every day, how can I show to other people that life is full of possibilities despite we're all facing so many challenges over and over and over every day.

Stephen Matini - I think there's a misconception. There's a misconception about leadership as something ... some sort of power you have to influence people whichever way. And from a leadership development standpoint. Also based on what you're saying, the biggest chunk is actually taking care of yourself into becoming mindful as a leader. So you can set the example. I always love to say that people look up for consistency and you cannot lead people, you cannot influence people if people don't see the very specific behavior you want them to acquire, in you, if you don’t walk the talk.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - If you show up to your team tired not caring about yourself, how do you pretend that people will then be able to continue to do their task, their job despite all the complexity they are facing. If you are not showing up the way you want them to show up. The power of a leader is the capacity to influence other through their own actions, not through the words because words are beautiful and I mean people can say a lot of amazing things, don't get me wrong, but then it's action that makes the difference.

And if your action is not consistent with the word, this is where leadership, it's not sustainable and it's not what makes the difference and it's just confusing and and you don't have credibility. So yes, I think leadership is about power but it's not the power you are giving yourself. It's the power other people assign you. Because of the role model you represent.

Stephen Matini - It seems to me that you believe that resilience can be taught, resilience can be developed. When resilience is low, and you are a leader, what to do? Where would you start based on what you have learned, not just on yourself but also helping others, you know, developing their resilience.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think it's about taking time short amount of time. Again we are talking about small, tiny incremental steps in the right direction, taking time to reflect in a challenging situation, maybe a few minutes per day when you wake up or when you go to bed, how many times during the day was I resilient enough in front of my family, with my friends, with my colleagues, how resilient do I feel well that's do I need?

Which kind of support help do I need to increase my resilience, my capacity to stay strong despite the challenges I'm facing, taking care of myself, how can I do that, What do I need because I think there is no perfect recipe and every time the way you develop resilience in different situations can be completely different. My way to recharge is making sure that I have some outdoor time, maybe even half an hour every day. That's my resilience building resilience time, right?

So if we can all find a small amount of time every day, 10 5 minutes, our resilient time dedicated to resilience, I think that will be sufficient to turn that tiny little muscle that we all have into something stronger and stronger and stronger.

But it's a matter of not doing that overnight because we can attend worship on resilience to learn techniques and there are plenty, we can read books on resilience, we can spend times with resilience guru that's all possible and extremely, extremely useful. But if at the end of the day we do not take the time to practice consistently. It is irrelevant.

Stephen Matini - One of the most frequent misconception that I see is underestimating the organizational context, there's a lot of focus on what's happening outside, you know, as a leader, you're supposed to be strategic, you're supposed to read it very well the external environment but there's not quite full awareness of the organizational climate.

And so often times in the past that had leaders, they want to initiate programs, even leadership development program without preparing the organizational context, without doing the work on themselves to set the example and as a result the leadership program could have been really great but then those people that went through that training that coaching inevitably were faced with a lot of barriers. So one of the misconceptions that I've seen is an excessive focus on the outside more than the inside.

Before you said that when you were talking about the definition of resilience, you said it is I believe you said it's the ability to bend so for you, the perfect metaphor for resilience. What would it be like? Like a bamboo for some people is like you know it's water, it's a rubber band. What would it be? The metaphor for you?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I think it's a bamboo in the wind, very strong wind. Think about Japan, you know one of my favorite countries, whether it's that strong strong wind in winter, you can literally see bamboo bending in ways that you say, how is that thing not breaking right, how come? But the bamboo, it's very flexible, it is strong but it's also extremely flexible. Almost never break.

Stephen Matini - The reason why this podcast is called Pity Party Over is an expression that I used to say all right I am sick and tired of this situation, I had it enough and now I'm going to move forward. And so when ... you are resilient, for sure, I've seen you through literally thick and thin and I'm always surprised to see how resilient you are ... When you have a moment of pity party, you know I feel really bad about the situation or myself, is there any specific way, favorite way to pity party, you feel, you know, self indulgently sorry for yourself?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - Sometimes when I do mistakes that are public, when I do something and people really notice that I did something there's no doubt and I screwed up and in the open, right literally under the spotlight and it's no way I did it and sometimes it's I did it again because sometimes I can be pretty repetitive in some of my mistakes. That is usually those moments where I get very upset with myself. I learned to spend less time about complaining about myself and my mistakes done in public because usually I do mistakes in public. But yes that's my time where I am just again. No.

Stephen Matini - Well when that happens, what do you do? Do you spend time alone and do you sob do you what do you do?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - I developed a very fruitful relationship with food. Food influences my my mood right a lot. And so if I really have a bad day, I try to prevent myself a proper dinner, nutritious food, not junk food. Absolutely. But I really take care of something I can control take is done. Everybody knows about it. It's going to take a couple of days to fix it. Reputation has been impacted. I can be pretty harsh with myself as you can hear because maybe if you talk to my colleagues, they will say oh no, come on. What are you talking about? But I, I can be, you know, pretty strong. I have a pretty strong opinion about myself. So that’s, that's what I'm talking about. And in that case I really give myself time and space to relax and, and with food.

Stephen Matini - So food is one of the way that you overcome a difficult moment. Like you're taking care of yourself through food, which you said before, be mindful of how you treat yourself eating well. Is there any other things that you would like to share with the listeners on how you overcome that bump?

Maria Giovanna Vianello - Again, that's something very personal and maybe it’s, it's something silly, but I buy myself flowers, nothing super fancy. But I buy myself flowers and usually put the flowers on my desk close to my laptop where I work and every time during the day where I feel, oh my God, now I have to deal with this challenge and it's going to be a challenge. I will be facing for a few weeks a month or so. I look at the flowers and I feel better. I don't know why, but maybe they are called and fragrant and, and I, I don't know, but it's just beautiful. They have a very positive impact on me.

Stephen Matini - So let's say someone wants to develop as a leader. They want to work on their resilience. Where they can find you online if they want to get in touch with you.

Maria Giovanna Vianello - Um my LinkedIn profile Maria Giovanna Vianello on LinkedIn, that will be the place to reach out and have conversations about life challenges and resilience.

I think it was lovely to spend time on something that I take for granted so often because I know I develop resilience since I was young and I and I take that capacity for granted in challenging moment has been extremely crucial. So today talking about it was awesome, almost like a celebration and I want to thank you for that because you are offering me this amazing safe space to talk about such a crucial, important topic of my life and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Stephen Matini - It is my absolute pleasure as always, thank you.

Stephen Matini - Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. I invite you to connect with Maria Giovanna Vianello on LinkedIn for any suggestions on how to leverage resilience and mindful leadership.

Maria has been dealing with type one diabetes since she was a kid. Her story shows how our biggest struggles might reveal our life mission. In her case, helping leaders reach their highest potential.

Becoming resilient for Maria meant making her body a priority, something we so often neglect when we get busy with millions of things to do. For Maria becoming resilient implies being proactive, taking incremental steps in avoiding perfectionism, which depletes adaptation resources.

Leaders should role model not just ask people to change. You cannot influence people if you're not mindful of your own development and send an example for others to follow.

People have to see in you the behaviors you want them to develop. As Maria said it so beautifully, “Leadership is not the power you're giving yourself but the power people give you because of the role model you represent.”

If you have any questions pertaining how to develop residence, let's talk. You can find my contact information in this episode's notes. If you enjoy this content, you may subscribe to my podcast or blog Pity Party Over, and we can also connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I invite you to visit our website, alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N.company where you can find many routes for managerial and leadership development.

Be happy be well and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and see things from their point of view. By understanding how people feel, empathy helps us respond efficiently to any situation.

As professionals transition from non-managerial to managerial and then strategic roles, the ability to connect with people becomes crucial both to get things done, and make a vision become a reality.

Can you learn how to become more empathetic?

The special guest for this episode of PITY PARTY OVER is Elia Nichols, an actress who has worked in TV, film, and theatre in the United States and Italy, who also has built a successful career as public speaking and communication coach. Elia received her Bachelor of Arts in theatre from Tulane University and her Masters of Fine Arts in acting from the University of Texas at Austin.

Elia points out there is empathy at an emotional and physical level. We can practice empathy by using an outside-in and inside-out approach as actors do.

With outside-in empathy, we observe the context and circumstances of the other person, their body language and voice. I can put myself aside and speak less to create a space for listening to the other person.

With inside-out empathy, I experience the other person's emotions by tapping into my own experiences. I may not have lived the same issues as that person, but I may tune in to incidents that have a similar emotional charge.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to develop empathy

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Elia Nichols Web Site: Communicate The Best of Yourself

Connect with Elia Nichols on LinkedIn

Connect with Elia Nichols on Instagram

Connect with Elia Nichols on Facebook

Connect with Elia Nichols via Email

Transcript

Welcome to PITY PARTY OVER the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini, let’s pause, learn, and move on. PITY PARTY OVER is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company.

Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to this episode of PITY PARTY OVER. How are you today?

We will talk about the power of empathy to connect authentically with people.

Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and see things from their point of view by understanding how people feel, empathy helps us respond efficiently to any situation.

Can you learn how to become more empathetic?

There are a lot of studies on the matter, for instance research suggests that the activation of mirror neurons in the brain plays a part in our ability to empathize with others; essentially we tend to mirror the behavior we observe.

Teachers, doctors, psychologists, social workers, counselors, coaches and salespeople and consultants. All these professions require loads of empathy to connect with clients, patients and students effectively.

I've always been fascinated with actors because they must embody the perspective of multiple characters and grasp their beliefs, intentions and emotions.

So the special guest for this episode of PITY PARTY OVER over is Elia Nichols, an actress who has worked in TV, film and theater in the United States and Italy. Elia is also a public speaking and communication coach, so I decided to talk to Elia and hear from her experience what it takes to become empathetic.

Stephen: When did you decide to become an actress?

Elia: I was seven years old, I saw Othello, Othello came to my little town. It was a national tour and they came to the auditorium of our local university and I think I was in the front row, and my parents brought me and I just, it transformed me.

I mean from this first word until the end of that play, I just was wrapped and I vividly remember this one moment where Desdemona was at the edge of the stage and I think she was begging a fellow not to kill her. I think it was that moment.

And I just, I completely lost myself in them and I thought, oh my God, this is real, this is real. I looked there was no fourth wall, you know, I mean I totally lost myself in in their performances and I literally walked away from that night and said I'm going to be an actress.

And I remember literally when I was seven, I told my best, one of my best friends, Becky Reiser,

I said I'm gonna be an actress and I'm gonna win an Oscar. And she said, I'll make you a $5 bet that you're not gonna win an Oscar. And I said, yeah, I'll bet, you know, I still owe her $5 because I haven't won the Oscar yet. But but I did become an actress.

And um as I said, I just did everything I could to perform. And because there was no theater from seventh grade on my parents would let me go away in the summers to New England and do theater summer programs because there was nothing in Louisiana.

And so I fly by myself to Connecticut and Massachusetts and Boston to do theater. And then when I got to university I got my bachelor's degree in acting. That's when I finally learned what it means to be an actress, right? Like how, how I actually learned technique and, and then I got my Masters in acting. So after that I felt okay now I'm now I'm an actress, I actually know what I'm doing, but I needed even the Masters, I'm a student, I'm a student. I like to study.

And by after my Bachelor’s, I remember a lot of people in my program said I'm done,

like I'm sick of studying, I'm done, I'm ready to be out there in the world and they went to New York immediately after their undergrad. I'm not ready yet. I knew inside of myself that I hadn't honed my talent enough, you know? And thank God because it was so true. I mean my Master's program changed radically changed how I act interactively changed my life in general. The things I learned there were wildly life changing.

Stephen: And then what happened after that?

Elia: So we we had a showcase as you often do in master's programs and actors showcase. We flew to New York and L.A. And we auditioned for agents and casting directors and I got a manager from L.A. from that showcase. And I got an audition for Warner Brothers from that showcase. And so I said, okay, I guess I'll go to L.A. You know, it kind of shows it for me.

And I went to L.A. And I hated it, I hated L.A. It was so not my place. Um first of all because at 24 I was considered old in L.A. So bizarre to me. You know, I I thought what are you talking about? I'm so young, you know? But honestly the people that make it in L.A. Usually get there, they are child actors often. Right?

So they get there when they are 7 or 8 or 10 or they grow up in the area, you know, they grew up in California and so they make the connections that you need to have early on. And so by the time they are 21 or 18 and can really finally play the, you know, the adult, the teen and adult roles, they have enough connections to get the right auditions. But when you arrive to L.A. at 24, you don't know anybody. By the time you make enough connections, it takes about five years, you're 29 and then you’re old. Right? So I realized that pretty quickly when I got to L.A.

And the other thing is that, you know, I'm from Louisiana and in Louisiana we eat really well,

you know we drink well too, right. I mean we eat, we eat jambalaya and gumbo and shrimp and crab and crawfish and you know drink bourbon, mint, juleps. And so I grew up loving to eat and then you get to L.A. and everybody's on a diet, you know and everybody's detoxing and everybody's going to the gym constantly.

And so all of a sudden I was going to the gym 18 hours a week. So three hours a day, six days a week. I was on the South Beach diet. I've always been thin. I've never had a problem with my weight. I'm very lucky. I just have my, you should look at my mother, she was stick, you know,

she looks like an ostrich or something and her legs do and and so but but I was on the South beach diet because that's what you do and you know, and I was, I looked perfect. I mean I literally had, I was in the best shape of my life, I was perfect, I was toned, I was thin, I was you know, I was healthy.

And I remember one day I went into my manager's office and he said Elia, you look good but keep going to the gym and I said you know what, no, there is no less of Elia than this. I'm not going to become anorexic for you in this industry and I already go to the gym 18 hours a day and I'm on the southeast side, so there is no less than this and he was like okay, you know it's just that the camera puts on pounds and I was like well then maybe this isn't the right place for me, you know and I had, I had already studied abroad in Italy and I loved it and I thought you know, I ate ridiculous amounts of pasta in Italy and was still thin, I think I should go back there, it was so happy and so I did you know, I just did and I've never looked back yeah ...

And then when I when I moved to Italy, okay, immediately founded a co founder of theater company in in english english speaking theater company and from then we, we just worked constantly and we made such amazing productions and then agent saw me and director saw me and they started hiring me and then I had a great business, I mean I've had a great career that that has been varied and stimulating and wonderful, so I think it was right, you know, here I'm kind of a big fish in a small pond and there I was a small fish in an enormous pond and I think it was all all right for me.

Stephen: I have this huge, truly huge admiration for actors because it's a tough life, they come across as professionals in empathy, you know somehow being able to empathize to this story, the character, responding to others ... they really are masters of empathy. What have you learned about empathy because of your acting career?

Elia: I think I've learned everything, I think I am intuitive and I think intuition and empathy go, they run in parallel that they are connected course as an actress, you are trained to understand people from the inside out and from the outside in and you literally, you know, they literally talk to you about that and I'll give you an example, there are certain roles where the costume is so important and until you put the costume on, you don't really understand that person that's outside in right?

So that's an outside in empathy. Whereas inside out as I understand the emotion, I'm feeling the emotion and therefore I externalize it. And so that's an empathy from inside out. Right? So as an actor, you're trained in both. You know, we were literally sent out with journals to observe people to just watch people, we watch their body language, we had to record their voices.

We I had a dialect class where they would they would make us interview people from different countries. So you had to find people on our campus. I went to the University of Texas at Austin and you had to find people in your on the campus that had different dialects. So I found a French person, a Russian person and an Irish person. You had to call you to make a monologue from their recording and study their dialect and act the monologue in their dialect in French,

but speaking french English, right? So a French person speaking with a French accent, not not dialect accent and that was actually really, really helpful and continues two absolutely affect the way that I relate to people.

There's a lot of my clients as opposed to, you know, I'm a public speaking coach as well as an actress and a lot of my clients have accents and we, we talk about that because of course it affects the way they speak English, their accents come out in different ways and we talk about that.

I wonder if you, you're like this, like when I watch movies that are really engaging, I get so into the movie that when I'm done with the movie, I think I'm the character in the movie, it takes me two or three hours to leave that character and become Elia again and I've always been like that.

I remember like sitting in a cafe in Austin Texas and seeing this woman who I thought, okay, actually that's it, that's her, you know, that's that's my character and I remember kind of taking on her posture, you know, and what the and trying like what does that feel like, oh gosh,

it feels out of balance. It feels so heavy and once you start doing that, you realize what that must feel like literally to be that person and to live in that person's body right?

There's even an empathy not just on an emotional level but on a physical level because I really believe strongly that all of our emotions and life circumstances stress happiness, everything. I mean it is it manifests in your voice and your body, right? And so if you're paying attention enough, you know where people are emotionally right? And I think all of that is thanks to the acting training and the curiosity, just the natural curiosity of wanting to observe somebody somebody and understand them.

Stephen: When I do trainings and we do work on empathy, I ask around people from 1 to 5 how empathetic do you think that you are? You know, some people will give themselves different scores and say well I think I'm highly empathetic, I'm four and three I'm not and then we do simple observation type of exercises and everyone gets it. If you have to read between the lines, what do you think is happening here? And people are so precise.

I truly believe that everyone has that ability and all that it takes is sometimes too get out of the funk of your head and just simply focus on that person get and it's incredible to see how accurate people are. People always get it truly never happen to someone responded by saying I don't know, you know people are very, very intuitive you know and you said that you know intuition and empathy go hand in hand. I think it has to do a lot with observation. Our lives are so busy that people simply forget to look at other people.

Elia: Oh so that's because I was curious if you think that everybody can be empathetic and can learn empathy then what's blocking them from not being empathetic.

Stephen: I think what prevents them different things. “Buziness” I think is a huge thing. You know, we live busy life. The other thing you got to have a genuine interest in people.

Elia: Yes, I agree. I think it's all about real curiosity really wanting to understand somebody really wanting to listen to them. I mean that's where active listening comes in, right? You can't you also can't empathize if you're not actually listening to the person because you're not you're not taking your thoughts are getting in the way or your actions are getting or your cell phone is getting in the way, right? But if you're really focusing on the other person and then it's actually quite easy to empathize and understand them.

Stephen: It’s the biggest struggle that a lot of business people have. You know, as they transition the career they go from “I do my staff”, I have become a manager then eventually more strategic, you know, leadership position, at some point it really becomes being an expert of people more than anything else. You have all the skills to let's say to read a financial report or um you know, your industry, you have enough experience to understand how something works. But it really becomes a job of understanding people.

Elia: Curiosity is quite innate, curiosity is not everybody's curious, you know?

Stephen: True. And also, I think another indicator for me is um silence. Like if I'm empathizing, if I'm really listening to someone, I live center stage to the person and I observed and you see that through silent, are you talking all the time? How can you empathize with someone if you're the one constantly speaking? How did you get into public speaking?

Elia: When I was in graduate school, they made us teach a few classes. So we were getting our masters and they made us teach undergraduate elective classes and I had to teach introduction to acting and training the speaking voice and training the speaking voice was partly, you know, a public speaking class. Part of it was literally literally training your voice so that you have more control and more variety.

But another part of it was obviously they at some point have to get up and speak and so it began there. So I've kind of always done both. Actually, when I moved to Florence, I started teaching, I was asked to teach at a university here and the class they gave me was body language and communication and it that too had elements of public speaking in it. The final, the, the two final assignments that they had to do performances that they had to do, they were basically public speaking assignments in the end. So I've kind of always done both.

But then in 2019 I remember my husband who is a lawyer, he came home one day and he said, oh what's a coach? I said, well a coaches and I explained it, it explained that they help people, you know, become more aware and they help people, you know, hone their skills and become better, empathize ear's and better blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, right? And he said, well you could do that but you could do it for public speaking. And so when he said that it kind of just clicked, I said I could be a public speaking coach and that sounds really exciting. Really interesting and I literally just did it. I went and I got my Partita IVA, my fiscal code, and I started creating classes and I just put the word out there and and I just took off and I haven't stopped.

Stephen: Do you have a favorite client to work with?

Elia: No, I'm I feel really fortunate because I have tons of very different clients. So I, one of my first clients was a politician. He was, he was running to my first clients actually. Now I think about it, they were both running for, one was running for the European parliament and one was running for the they were both running for the European parliament actually, and they had they had me coach them on their you know their speeches and presenting their campaign and so that was really interesting.

But I love the variety of my clients because right now for example I have high school students who are working on their college interviews and they desperately need practice and awareness of what their body language and voice are communicating and how to get the messages out in a concise, inspirational, you know way.

And then I have C.E.O.s who realize that while their leadership skills are powerful or they're strategizing or analyzing skills, you know, analysis skills are really good at home and they're not good communicators yet.

And so I work with them a lot. I even working with a housewife right now who's been housewife for 14 years raising two daughters and wants to get back into the workplace and feels really intimidated by that and has no idea how to present herself, you know. And so it's really exciting the massive variety of types of clients that I have. So no I don't really have a favorite client,

Stephen: What have you learned from all these experiences to help you running your business and making it sustainable?

Elia: I’m not a natural entrepreneur, I am, I realized when I founded the theater company, I co founded it with five other women but the main one, her name is Shaun Loftus and Shaun is a true creator, she is the one that has a wonderful, amazing ideas, you know, and she dreams them up and I realized she and I were great partners because I am fabulous at realizing those ideas, I can make anything happen, but I don't have the original ideas, I'm not the creator. And in fact if you think about an actor that's even true as an actor, actors are given their characters, they're given their lines. So an entrepreneur as the original idea, right? They are that that's the whole basis and so it was very difficult for me to be an entrepreneur.

Now the good thing is I have a lot of drive, so I'm not one that is afraid, you know of trying things out and pushing my goals, but I've never taken a course in business, I've never taken a graphic design course, I've never taken a web design course and I regret that immensely in the end when you get out there as an artist, you are your own business and you need to think as a business person because otherwise you don't get jobs and luckily my husband is an entrepreneur, his mind naturally works that way. So he has been very helpful, he's coached me along where you need to do this, you need to do that. He, we we have a few friends that are brilliant entrepreneurs and honestly you have been really helpful for me.

Stephen: Me, me, me?

Elia: Absolutely as a coach with with more more years of experience than I do. You're further down the line and you've been so generous to share your, you know, your processes with like processes with me. Um, so I've actually needed the help of others to, to, to get on this road, you know, but what one thing I do think has has certainly helped me is that I am good with people.

Part of it is empathy part of it is that I am naturally curious, I love people, I love to speak to people and so I am going to establishing the relationships that are necessary to get the job.

Stephen: The name of this podcast is PITY PARTY OVER. The reason for that pity party is when you feel bad about yourself, right? Like poor me, poor me. So what is your favorite way to pity party?

Elia: I don't think I pity myself actually, what I think I don't have enough time if you want to know the truth. I really don’t. I think that as a mother and two young kids and uh, you know, and an entrepreneur and I'm quite social, I love to see my friends and I love my husband and so I don't literally think I have much time to sit in pity.

What did occur to me though is these patterns that everyone present themselves back in my life and they always have and that pattern is this and I am really busy and then I do something really well and I get a lot of attention for it. I obviously know I'm not aware of this in the moment, but I obviously that manifests as egotistical attention seeking and she's forgotten about me.

And someone in my life in that moment comes out and says, Elia, you've forgotten about me and you're only thinking about yourself right now and it's not nice or aliens get off your high horse. You know, this success was not due just to you, It was created by a team. I mean, I vividly remember probably three or four moments in my life when a good friend that was literally just like slap me down. Okay?

And I I'm very thankful, very thankful for those moments because it's very clear that I'm not a nice person in those moments, I'm not my best self, but when your ego starts to really eat that up and enjoy it, you do forget about the other people around you that helped you get help, get you there right then, and then that that are important to your life.

And so when that happens, they slapped me down, I reflect um ... And I usually have to go and meditate because it means that I'm kind of out of myself. You know, I'm literally if you if you looked at like my auras or looked at you look at me from an energy level, like I'm separated from myself, and so I have to meditate and ground myself again.

Um ... I usually stop drinking wine for a few days because I've noticed that like that glass over dinner makes me more superficial. I usually have to literally stop drinking wine for a few days because I need to return to the clarity so I will meditate and I will get, I will kind of detox or if you don't, you know, just just make things simple and then try and concentrate on the people around me instead of myself. Because that is what helped has helped me a lot is is really putting my focus on others because then you have a new perspective,

Stephen: So you Pity Party Over cutting down the wine and then you say meditate. Is there any specific type of meditation that you do that seemed to work really well with you?

Elia: Yeah, I studied two different types. One is called Theta healing and just a woman I met in Florence taught it and I was really just curious to learn something new. So I went and learned this technique with her and it's really, really powerful because it grounds you to the earth and kind of the sky and and and everything in between and um I don't know, I really connected to,

it was very easy for me to visualize. I'm not a person that I've never studied meditation that's not guided. So I'm not that good yet. Um and I would love to someday I feel like at the moment I don't have time for it, but I eventually want to want to learn how to just meditate in total silence.

Stephen: Anyone should work with you, you are super prepared. You are fun. Your energy is what is the word is cathartic? I think anyone shoot him should contact you and thank you so much for doing this with me.

Elia: This is so much fun and I think anybody should hire you as well because you are one of the most prepared and empathetic person people I've ever met in my life and I have to say that you're one of the best listeners that I've ever met.

Stephen: Oh wow, that's a huge compliment!

Stephen: Thank you for listening to this episode of PITY PARTY OVER I invite you to discover Elia's programs on presentation techniques, soft skills and nonverbal communication at elianichols dot com. Elia is E L I A and Nichols is N I C H O L S.com. You can also reach Elia via email, Linkedin and Instagram. You can find Elia's contact information in this episode's notes.

As professionals transition from non managerial to managerial and then strategic roles, the ability to connect with people becomes crucial both to get things done and make a vision become a reality.

A good starting point to develop empathy is to become aware of those characters in movies and TV shows that deeply resonate with you.

As Elia pointed out in the episode, there is empathy at an emotional and physical level. We can practice empathy by using an “outside-in” and an “inside-out” approach as actors do.

With “outside-in” empathy, we observe the context and circumstances of the other person, their body language and voice. I can put myself aside and speak less to create a space for listening to the other person.

With “inside-out” empathy I experienced the other person's emotions by tapping into my own experiences. I may not have lived the same issues as that person, but I'm a tune in two incidents that have a similar emotional charge.

If you have any questions pertaining how to develop empathy, let's talk. You can find my content information in this episode's notes. If you enjoy this content, you may subscribe to my podcast or blog pd party over and we can also connect on Twitter and Linkedin.

I invite you to visit our website algyn.company. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N.company, where you can find many routes for managerial and leadership development.

Be happy be well and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

Marathon runners know more than any other athlete about sustaining a proper pace while getting to the finishing line as fast as possible. "Running in the Green" is a heart-rate based training approach for marathon runners. This method aims at improving performance by training within a heart range that feels comfortable rather than pushing to the max.

I learned about the "running in the green” approach from British designer Rebecca Milner, the guest of this episode of Pity Party Over. Rebecca is a surface pattern designer whose phenomenal work spans wallpaper, textiles, clothing, and furnishings for her international clientele.

Rebecca studied at Central Saint Martins in London and currently resides in Florence, Italy. Rebecca is an entrepreneur, and she also runs marathons, from which she has learned a lot of lessons to run her business at a sustainable pace, Rebecca Milner Design.

Running in the Green refers to the pace that allows us to reach our goals without running out of fuel, so that we can enjoy the journey of becoming someone, of achieving something.

Running in the Green is also the awareness that we do not need to accomplish everything at once, but we need to focus on what we can do today by changing our perspective, from the finishing line to small steps.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to slow down to get better results.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Rebecca Milner Design A surface pattern design brand exploring playful escapism through color, pattern and print

Connect with Rebecca Milner via email

Connect with Rebecca Milner on Instagram

Transcript

Stephen (00:04): Welcome to PITY PARTY OVER the podcast for people, teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Steven Matini let's pause, learn and move on. PITY PARTY OVER over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company

Stephen (00:29): Hello everyone. And welcome to this episode of PITY PARTY OVER. How are you? I hope you're doing really well. Today we're going to talk about achieving goals at a sustainable pace.

Marathon runners know more than any other athletes about sustaining a proper pace while getting to the finishing line as fast as possible. Running in the green is a heart-based training approach for marathon runners. This method aims at improving performance by training within a heart range that feels comfortable rather than push to the max.

I learned about running in the green from British designer, Rebecca Milner the guest of this episode of PITY PARTY OVER. Rebecca is a surface pattern designer whose phenomenal work spans wallpaper, textiles, clothing, and furnishings for her international clientele. Rebecca studies at Central Saint Martins in London and currently resides in Florence, Italy.

Rebecca is an entrepreneur and she also runs marathons from which she has learned a lot of lessons to run her business at a sustainable pace, Rebecca Milner Design.

Stephen (01:36): Rebecca, I know quite a bit of things about you. I know where you come from, you share a lot of things from your past, your family. You’re British. For our listeners, I would like to ask you as a first question, why don't you share where you grew up? What was the surrounding that influenced you?

Rebecca (01:54): So, yeah, I'm British and I grew up in, in England, went to school there and everything, but I think probably the most influential thing that happened when I was young is my dad was to live in work in Italy when I was younger, when I was 13. And that event kind of changed the trajectory of my life, I would say because I just completely fell in love with it immediately, instantly. I decided at the age of 13 that I wanted to live and work and the rest of my life. So that was kinda a, a really big thing. Um, and in terms of what I was doing, what I was interested in, I was always interested in art that had always been a thing. And then I think when I came here and I saw these really great artists, who'd done all these incredible works of art. I was just really set on the fact that that was what I also wanted to do.

Stephen (02:43): Did your whole family move to Italy when you were 13 or just, uh, some members of the family?

Rebecca (02:49): Yeah. I know we all moved together. There were six of us to Naples.

Stephen (02:53): Ooh.

Rebecca (02:54): I love Naples. Everybody seems to have an opinion about it. Um, it feels like an open air playground, a giant playground just for me. And I was so young that I, we lived an amazing life. We just would go to parties all the time, down to beach all the time. We would go and explore Italy. I've seen more of Italy than I have England.

Stephen (03:13): What was your first impression of Naples? The first thing that you noticed?

Rebecca (03:19): The volcano, obviously, I learned about the volcano when I was six years old and it terrified me and it was thing I was petrified about. I never, I didn't wanna go there to begin with, cause I was so afraid it was explode. Um, and that , I have to be watching my back every day in case it's erupted . Um, so that was kinda a really dramatic side to it as well. Cause I had this kind of fear mixed in with excitement. Um, but uh, yeah, apart from that, like I remember we came in on the tangent alley and was flying high above the, above the city and all these high rise buildings, colorful yellow ones with, um, washing hanging out. And it was, yeah, it was just an amazing impact. And I love cities on the sea as well. That's all sort of exciting vibe to me and the sunshine, the heat, just, yeah, the smells, the, the dogs, there was so many dogs barking. How you sleep at night?

Stephen (04:16): You know, I went to Naples only once for, I think it was four days, five days and he rained the whole time oh, I know. So I have to go back, but I, no, I thought it was great. I went there for Easter and then I visited all the surroundings. I went to Pompeii and Pompeii mm-hmm blew out my mind. I thought, oh my God, this is so big. It was incredible. I really love it. Yeah. I wanna go back. So at the time you already spoke Italian or not at all?

Rebecca (04:43): Not at all. No, I would, um, my dad had a, he'd been out there for a few months before, so he had a grammar book, so I would grab his book and read it in the evenings and learn the names of the vegetables and a few directions and stuff like that. Um, but that was kind, that was it. Yeah.

Stephen (04:59): And how long did you stay there with your family? In Naples?

Rebecca (05:02): Two and a half years. I was still at school in England. So we were coming out for the holidays. Um,

Stephen (05:09): So how did you manage to learn Italian then?

Rebecca (05:12): So after that I went back to school and they offered it for a level. So I did two level, two years of a level. And then, and then I came to Italy for nine months. I came to Florence for nine months to study at the British Institute. Uh, and yeah, but it was difficult to speak Italian then at that point, because lots of students and everybody you spoke to wanted to learn English. And so they would end up speaking English and it was easy to speak English. So, so I did, so I can't say I learned that much in that year. Um,

Stephen (05:47): When the whole, um, design art component came into your life? Was back then in Naples or you started before?

Rebecca (05:56): That was always something that was kind of in me, I guess, from the start, from a young age, I knew that I wanted to work with my hands doing something creative, and I knew that I wanted to run my own business, but I didn't know what that would take or form that would take. Um, it was just a kind of big idea, but I loved to make things that was always something that gave me a lot of peace and a lot of joy. And at school I studied art and textiles in particular. Um, and then after being in Florence for a year, I was, I had a place at university to study Italian, but I just decided, no, I can't do that. I have to go to art college. I have to I did that. And then when I went to art college, there were so many new things to try at school. I'd always done textiles and I knew all about that. And I kind of, there was a part of me that wanted to try something new. Um, so I went towards graphic design, which strangely seemed very exotic. And uh, I dunno why, but it did.

Stephen (06:58): One of the ingredients that you share in the past is also your love for running. So when did you start running?

Rebecca (07:06): I started running very late in life, probably only in 2016, I think. Yeah. So it's only been six years or so, but I always had this desire to run, but I never believed that I could run because at school we had this “one meter, no one mile” challenge every year and I never was able to do it because I would always kind of conk out before the end is, oh, this really heavy labor breathing. And so I never believed that I was able to run. I could did the 200 meters, that was fine, but anything longer was just yeah. And no, no. And then obviously living in England, the London marathon is a big thing. So you see that every year and you see people running along, carrying fridges on their backs or, you know, Big Ben or something. People of all ages, all walks of life. And I would look at these people and think my God, you know, how can they do that? It just seemed like a mystery. Um, something completely unattainable to me, which is always something it's, something feels like that. It always becomes a bit of a challenge in my mind, you know, something so unattainable that other people can are doing. Can I do that myself? So it had this kind feel for me.

Stephen (08:21): What made you decide to get into marathons?

Rebecca (08:24): Well, it, it was something I wanted to do because I saw one day in London, I saw I was walking along to the pavement and I saw this billboard and there was a man sitting on the billboard wrapped in one of the silver foil sheets that they give you after the marathon. And the caption at the bottom said, “One less thing I have to do in life.” So it was like, really kinda, for me, it felt like a personal challenge. Um, and I started applying while I was still in London to run the marathon, even though I wasn't running, I had no training. I had no idea what I was doing, but I would just apply because it was so difficult to get into. Um, luckily they rejected me time. After time I moved to Italy and I still hadn't done any running. Um, but one day I saw near the Duomo, there was this running club on a Wednesday night and they would run eight kilometers.

Rebecca (09:08): So I thought, okay, I'll join them. And I signed up with the slowest group, um, and I managed to do my first eight kilometers. I dunno how, but somehow. And then I kept going with him and after a while I was like, Hey, I can do eight kilometers. If I can do eight kilometers, maybe I can do 21. Maybe I can do a half. So I signed up with a trainer to do a half marathon and he gave me the program and I thought to myself, okay, all I have to do is follow the program. I trust the guy, you know, I'll just see what happens. Um, and sure enough, I was able to run a half marathon, which was amazing to me. And then I thought if I can run a half marathon, maybe I can run a full one. So I signed up for the same guy, asked him for a program for the full marathon and seven months later I achieved it

Stephen (09:55): Dear Lord. Wow. I could never do it!

Rebecca (09:58): You say that, but , that sounds like a challenge to me.

Stephen (10:03): Well, sure. Maybe, maybe. So you didn't have any sore back? Nothing. I mean?

Rebecca (10:08): Oh yeah. I couldn't walk four days after

Stephen (10:13): I would be a mess if I, no, I used to, I used to run a lot, um, because I don't know if I told you this, but, um, I used to play volleyball. I started out, I was 13 and I did it up to 20 years old. So anyhow, when I stopped, I didn't have a sport to do. I, I worked out and I decided to start running. So I would go, you know, here in Florence, um, to the park, near my house every morning, religiously. And, and I did that for long this time. Like for years and years and years, it was my meditation essentially, but I never, I never done it with intention of, I have to accomplish this, you know, I have to compete against people just for me, but I know the feeling. It's incredible.

What do you love the most about running other than the challenge of pushing yourself, doing something that seems to be unachievable?

Rebecca (11:02): The sense of freedom that it gives you when you, especially in those moments, when you can forget about your body and the pain that you might be going through and you just get those moments of mental freedom, not only the physical freedom of, and you know, that feeling there, but just like just, you could just forget about everything else and you're just in this kind of zone, everything else just kind of goes and suddenly something will happen. You'll be like, oh, brought back into your body. But then you realize you've had that amazing moment of just kind of liberation. So it's just a kind of, yeah. Feeling of freedom.

Stephen (11:40): There was a moment when I started running and I still remember it, you know, like when you start running and you're always out of breath, like what you said. Yeah. And there was one day, I don't remember how many months it took to get the point that I was running. And it felt like I was flying. Like there was no effort. It really felt, oh my God, I'm running on a cloud. And I still remember the feeling, you know, it didn't happen at first, but eventually I got, you know, at that point.

The thing that was curious to ask you is this one you mentioned in the past to me, the whole notion of, uh, “running in the green” now, which is part of your training. So how does that work?

Rebecca (12:17): So running in the green is something I have discovered lately because I, I suffer a lot when I'm running. I find it incredibly difficult. Um, I'm always huffing and puffing and struggling to, to go any faster because I literally can't breathe or I can't speak. I, you know, there's a lot of, um, effort and I look at other runners and they just seem to glide along and it seems so easy for them. And I'm like, what is the difference between me and them? Like, how come I'm having such a struggle Fest and they are just gliding. Um, so I did a lot of research, um, and it turns out there's this thing called heart rate training, which was a complete, um, unknown to me. Cause I would just go out and give what I could go as fast as I could, but I was always suffering.

Rebecca (13:01): So with this method you run like there's five different heart rate zones, I think. And you run in the green, which is a kind of, um, aerobic state. So you can run for a long time at a level that you can have a conversation at. So you're breathing well. And if you do that for a long time, it's supposed to develop your aerobic capacity so that you can eventually run faster at that same heart rate. Yeah. So you can kind of develop your ability. And that's what I'm hoping now is kind of the idea of this has opened up a whole new world of potential running, how it could feel if I could actually go out there and, you know, feel okay when I'm doing it, not feel like I'm gonna pass out every that's a bit extreme, but you know,

Stephen (13:45): So if I understood it correctly, it's basically the notion that I can improve it without killing myself.

Rebecca (13:50): Yeah, exactly. This could actually, um, feel good. I could go out there and do better and have a good, you know, feel good while doing it. Not have to kind of go out there and feel like I'm at the max every single time.

Stephen (14:06): You and I talked about so many times how exciting and challenging it is to run our own businesses. You know, you and I are in different industries, there are ups and downs, sometimes it’s super hard, anxiety and fear, excitement, possibilities, and all the whole gamut of things that happened to, to people that want to run their own business. What did running teach you? You know, they, maybe you, you have used in your business.

Rebecca (14:31): I think for me in both places, both in the running and in the business, I feel a lot of overwhelmed. So obviously in the running that comes into that translates into a physical form, you know, I've got a lot of breathing difficulties and, and kind of feeling physically that this is very difficult. And in the business, I feel overwhelmed so often because there, I feel like there are so many things to do. I don't know a, how to find the time in the day or B how to get started, which one to do first. It just, sometimes there's still to be such a weight of stuff to do. I, I kind of get bit like a rabbit in the headlights and I don't know which way to go or how to start. And so when I discovered the idea of running in the green, I was like, Ooh, you know, that could be possibly a way or like a philosophy that I could take and adapt into my business.

Rebecca (15:23): Um, maybe one way is to, instead of feeling like, okay, I've got X amount of hours to, to work on this or a day or whatever, feeling like I have to get the whole thing done. You know, like tomorrow I've got tomorrow to do it. I've gotta achieve the whole of my website. I've gotta achieve the whole of this or that. Just, you know, breaking it down, small, manageable chunk size pieces that I can actually do and not looking at the, the great distance that I have to cover, but just breaking it down into bits that feel manageable and that feel achievable so that when I've done that little bit, I feel good and I don't come away feeling, “Ah!” You know, um, so just kind of re-dimensioning it and putting it into a better perspective,

Stephen (16:11): Running a business is a marathon. It is a long, long marathon that takes a good pace. Otherwise you end up, you know, out of breath completely, absolutely the whole notion of this podcast it's called PITY PARTY OVER because I was interested in exploring how people get out of a funk. You know, when you feel bad when somehow you get stuck, uh, maybe you go through the same cycle again and again and again. And so the first question is this, how do you love to pity party? You know, when you want to be, indulgently sorry for yourself. What is your best pity party moment? What do you do?

Rebecca (16:51): I think I kind of probably pace around and feel like I have too much to do and, and make endless lists of like all the kind of things in different. I mean, I could show you my desktop. It was filled with so many different forms of this. I love to overwhelm myself and, um, myself, I'll never get it and that a failure, I, how it's never gonna work out all those kinda, really negative things. I just, you know, I love to pile them on top of myself, really wallow and all that.

Stephen (17:28): That sounds a lovely pity party.

Rebecca (17:30): Oh, it's great.

Stephen (17:32): You know, but yeah, I I'm, I'm a firm believer that we need pity parties in order to move on. I mean, if you don't hit rock bottom multiple times, it's really difficult to, I think, to develop the stamina, you know, the resilience to get somewhere else. And I, I also strongly believe that when you really, really get fet up is when miracles happen, when you push yourself, you know, extra hard and you get out. The second question is how do you pity party over? So based on what you have experienced, what are some of the tools that you use in order to get out of the funk?

Rebecca (18:04): one of the ways, well, often my pity party happens when I'm sitting here at my desk. And so it kind of feels a bit swampy, um, you know, these lifts of like a fog or like a mud I have to move through. Um, so one of the things that I do is I get up and I leave my house and I go for a fast walk because I feel like physical movement really helps me to get out of that mental stuck, stuck-ness. And then I have a couple of like mantras that I'm always telling myself, you can do this, you always do this. You always get it done. I just kind of repeat that to myself. And especially if it's something visual that I'm trying to, if I'm feeling stuck in a kinda ... with a, with a design or, or just with anything really, I really, I feel like moving helps me just to shift perspective and I get more ideas by seeing things. Yeah. And just moving through the space and it just telling myself I can do it. And then I come back when I come back in, I'm often in a different mindset, so I can sit down and do something. Even if it's not the whole thing, I can get something done.

Stephen (19:08): I love that. And actually I do the same. I go for walks, Running a business is hard. What would you say that is the biggest motivator to put yourself through this ordeal of ups and downs and doubts and, and excitement?

Rebecca (19:25): To me it's like pulling something intangible that's in my head, into the physical world and making it real. That is, has always been a great giver of joy. I love to imagine things and digitalize stuff. Um, and then make it physical.

Stephen (19:48): Make it physical.

Rebecca (19:48): Yeah.

Stephen (19:50): When you were talking about running, you said something that got stuck in my head, you said, um, you talked about freedom, feeling of freedom. And also you said that about art. Is freedom, something important also is one of the reasons why you have your own business?

Rebecca (20:04): I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. I love to feel that I'm driving my own train and that I can decide where I'm going. You know, I've got this gift of life. I'm here on the planet, and it's really fun to think that you can kind of shape or achieve what you wanna achieve. I mean, obviously within some limits, you're not necessarily gonna achieve everything, but to, to be able to have an idea and, and to, to able to work towards that, have that a goal and take the steps and make it happen and make it come true is such a rewarding thing for me. Um, yeah. And, and to be able to decide that for myself and not have somebody say, okay, you need to shuffle 10 envelopes today. Or, you know, to be able to make those decisions for myself is, is a great freedom.

Stephen (20:51): I am a huge fan of your designs, and I'm not saying this because you are here, you know, we are recording this I think the first design you showed me must have been the tiger. I think when you show me that what I loved about your design is how they look intricate. And at the same time, they have all these different flavors. They remind me of places, emotions that I went through, that I cannot quite pinpoint. When people use your designs, you know, it could be wallpaper, it could be something printed on a pillow. What do you hope people to feel?

Rebecca (21:23): Happiness. I hope that it brings a smile to their face, that they, that when they encounter my work in a shop or on a website or wherever it might be, that that's something about it just gives them a bit of joy and lightens up their day. And if I can make somebody smile, if I can make somebody laugh, then, then my job is done.

Stephen (21:45): Amen.

Rebecca (21:46): , ,

Stephen (21:48): It's a wonderful vision for your business where people can find you online. If they want to check your, your beautiful designs,

Rebecca (21:57): They can find me on my website, Rebecca Milner Design.com, and also on Instagram at Rebecca Miller Design.

Stephen (22:06): Wonderful Rebecca, it's been a joy to hear your experiences and all that I can say. I wish for your business to get bigger and bigger and bigger because your talent is huge. So your heart

Rebecca (22:19): Thank so much.

Stephen (22:21): Thank you. Thank you. Bye

Rebecca (22:23): Bye.

Stephen (22:25): Thank you for listening to this episode of PITY PARTY OVER. I invite you to enjoy Rebecca's creations at rebeccamilnerdesign.com. And also you can find Rebecca on Instagram at Rebecca Milner Design. Rebecca is spelled R E B E C C A and Milner is M I L N E R. You can find Rebecca’s business details in the episode’s notes.

So running in the green refers to the pace that allow us to reach our goals without running out of fuel, so that we can enjoy the journey of becoming someone, of achieving something.

Running in the green is also the awareness that we do not need to accomplish all at once, but we need to focus on what we can do today by changing our perspective, from the finishing line to small steps.

You have any questions pertaining how to proceed at a sustainable pace with your professional endeavors. I would love to talk to you. My contact information are in the episode's notes.

If you enjoy this content, you may subscribe to my podcast or blog PITY PARTY OVER, and we can also connect on Twitter or LinkedIn.

I invite you to visit our website, align.company, ALYGN is spelled with a Y, A L Y G N.company, where you can find many routes for managerial and leadership development.

Be happy, be well. And until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

How do you strike the perfect balance between jumping to a conclusion too quickly or missing out on an opportunity? I want to share some observations on the importance of slowing down to make sound strategic decisions.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to make better decisions.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Get inspired

Lowney, C., 2021. Make Better Decisions: Slow Down If The Lion Isn’t Coming. [online] Forbes. Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2022].

McCartney, C. et al., 2022. An update on flexible and hybrid working practices | CIPD. [online] CIPD. Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2022].

Weir, K., 2020. Nurtured by nature. [online] https://www.apa.org. Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2022].

Transcript

Welcome to Pity Party Over the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matin. Let's pause, learn and move on. Pity party over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N dot company.

Hi everyone I'm Stephen, how are you? I hope you're doing great wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over that is dedicated to decision making.

This episode of pity Party Over doesn't want to be an all inclusive recipe on how to make great decisions. Decision making is one of those topics that is largely investigated. Virtually every single day I noticed new articles, new studies are conducted on decision making. And decision making is quite complex. There are many ingredients that come into. So there are a lot of facets that we need to consider and what I want to do with this episode. I would like to share just some observations on how managers and leaders make decisions, and also I would like to point out some of the challenges that I see them facing on a daily basis as they try to make good decisions. And then I would like to point out a couple of things that I hope I'm going to help you out making better decisions.

The reason why decision making is quite complex these days has to do a lot with change. We live lives that are super complicated, in which realistically it only takes the tweet of someone to change markets, for opportunities to arise for troubles to come up. And so one of the questions that I receive a lot from clients is what is the right pace of decision making, meaning how fast or how slow should I go in making those decisions? How do you strike the perfect balance between a jump into a conclusion too quickly or maybe not doing it fast enough and so I'm going to miss an opportunity.

And so as I often do when a research for my episodes of Pity Party Over, I came across an article written by Chris Lowney, I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. Chris is the best selling book author. He wrote this article in 2021 on Forbes, which I really love, it is “Called make better decisions slow down if the lion isn't coming.” I really like Chris’ article because it contains a lot of interesting points about decision making. He writes beautifully, you know, very clearly, very to the point, so I'm going to put in the notes of this episode all the information that you need if you want to read the article and definitely do it because it's really cool.

There are a couple of points that Chris makes in the article that I found really interesting. The first one is the impact of the organizational culture on how people make decisions and specifically Chris points out the dangers for managers in macho corporate cultures that regard decisive and fast as the synonyms.

So this one pertains specific cultures, organizational cultures, in which if I do not come across as decisive, self assured, but then I may not be a good leader and for sure many situations we have to do just that we have to make swift decisions but in other instances that could lead it to big big big disasters.

So we do know how perceptions are important in ... when we work, you know we are constantly seen by the people, how we come across, it is absolutely vital and so what Chris also does in the article, it points out the opposite of moving too fast which is moving too slow and he says that it's really important for professionals to cultivate the courage to make timely decisions and to avoid what he defines analysis paralysis, which can happen very easily when to give an example,

you don't have enough time to make a decision, you are urged to make the decision, you may not have all the data that you would like to have to make the decision and as a result you freak out.

So that's also another problem that can lead it two more issues. So this dichotomy between fast and slow Chris writes really nicely, he says, bottom line “Some of us habitually go fast precisely when we should be slowing down and vice versa,” so it really is a balance between the two. It just depends when I'm supposed to go fast and when I'm supposed to go slow.

Now how we make decisions is not just a matter of personal preference, personality, what my behavior is, but can also be explained by understanding more deeply some of the mechanics of our brain. A lot of information pertaining decision making comes from neuroscience. So neuroscience is the study of the nervous system and neuroscience. These past 20 years have advanced a lot because of the magnetic resonance imaging which is the M.R.I. So you might have taken M.R.I. when you injure yourself. So M.R.I. are these big scans, you know, they look like pipes, tubes in which a specialist puts you through. Essentially through a magnetic field they are able to create a visual mapping of your internal organs. And because of M.R.I. we know quite a bit about the brain. We know that based on external stimuli, you know, what happens to different regions of the brain.

In its most um simple explanation in terms of how we interpret reality, how we make decisions, our brain essentially constantly compares what's happening to us in the present moment with anything that has acquired and stored, you know, from the past.

So all my experiences, all that I went through in the past that represents a database that I use whether I like it or not, consciously or unconsciously, in order to determine what's happening to me in the present moment and to make decisions.

Mostly in Western societies there's still a strong stigma around emotions, what emotions are, whether or not, whether or not it's good to use emotions when you do business because oftentimes being rational, be called be detached is something that is associated with a good decision making and anything that pertains emotions is seen as um dramatic, it is seen as something that somehow would hinder my ability to make decisions.

But for neurosciences, what we know is the fact that the very core of my brain, the so called the limbic system, the engine of my brain is very much my emotional center and these emotional center impacts everything, impacts how I interpret information. It conditions strongly how I respond to those situations and also impacts how I make my decisions.

And you must have heard a term that is really popular right now, a ton of articles have been written about the amygdala. So what is this? Amygdala and how it's connected to the brain. Essentially, the amygdala, there are two, the amygdalae, are two glands almond shaped are really small and they are located at the center of my limbic system, the emotional center.

And so the amygdala is some sort of home security system. It is a mechanism very ancient that really we inherit from our ancestors and essentially every single time I am confronted with a situation that could be dangerous for me, the amygdala fires ,the amygdala activates and what it does it produces a series of events, a cascade of events that produce hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol that flood my system and create a state of alert.

So that's the reason that the amygdala is associated with strong emotions such as stress, anxiety and fear, which are not really that comfortable to feel, but as I said, it's an alarm. It is a system that has been designed to really preserve a life, you know, to to help us surviving.

And our lives have gotten really complicated, definitely way more complicated than the lives that our parents used to live or our grandparents. We live lives in which complexity, change is happening super fast. We're also surrounded by so much negativity, you know, it is fostered by the media, and it doesn't matter of the media outlet that you choose in order to retrieve information, but it really is a litany of anxiety, of negativity that constantly surrounds us.

And so what this one does, um Particularly now, after more than two years of COVID-19 pandemic are our brains, our limbic system or emotional core has been really tried it out, it is really fatigued and more than ever has gotten difficult for people to make decisions and to navigate through all these problems by making the right move that can help the organizations succeed, that can help your life moving forward, you know, for you to grow.

So long story short, what we have learned through neuroscience is the fact that our brain is designed to make snap decisions as a survival mechanism. Um when there's not enough time to weigh all the variables, um to be able to have all the data that I need to have to make good decisions inevitably my brain needs to resort to a lot of unconscious biases as a navigational tool.

So what is an unconscious bias? It is essentially a belief that you harbor towards something, it springs from the past, it springs from your experience is also very often is acquired through cultural conditioning. And the distinctive feature of unconscious biases is the fact that they fall outside our conscious awareness. It's almost like you make a decision without being fully aware of why you're moving, you're reacting the way, and instead good strategic decisions that require complete centeredness, mindfulness that really require tremendous consciousness.

So that is to say that when you are bombarded by so much negativity, when emotionally you feel extremely tired, when for work you move at a light speed, making quick decisions may be the perfect recipe for disasters. And I'm not saying that every single decision takes a long time to be made, but now more than ever we need to be mindful. We need to probably slow down to be able to make the perfect decision.

With that said another factor that has impacted tremendously our decision making from my point of view is the so called hybrid working practices and what I mean by I mean I'm referring to the discussion that's been going on since the explosion of the Covid pandemic or whether people are more effective working from home or working at the office.

So one thing that I've noticed throughout the pandemic is the fact that the lives of a lot of professionals have gotten even faster. The amount of activities, tasks people have to deal with has literally exploded. That is mostly the result in many cases of people of not knowing exactly how to work from home, a lot of people simply did not have the digital mindset and very often unfortunately, several organizations did not deploy any program to help people transitioning from working at the office to work in a home.

The one thing that I kept hearing from clients during the pandemic was how difficult it was to work from home, although they are clearly, you know, huge advantages, a lot of people did not have to commute. Also, there are less amount of distractions which can foster productivity.

The one complaint that I heard the most was the fact that working from home, you feel detached, you don't have your colleagues right there. So it may become in many instances a very lonesome type of activity.

Going back to our decision making um discussion, one ingredient that is really important for decision making is the flow of ideas when you have a multiple perspectives coming into place that gives you a nice um ground to make those decisions, to weigh options, and now they were coming off two years of pandemic the one thing that I hear a lot from people is, oh my God now I have to go back to the office now that I got adjusted, I got used to working from home. I finally enjoyed the advantages of working from home. Now I have to readjust myself and going back to the way things used to be.

So there's um a nice a couple of nice reports that I put in the notes of this podcast that point out to the website of the CIPD. CIPD stands for Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. And for those of you who do not know CIPD is the most important organization in the UK for human resources.

What's really cool about these two reports is the fact that CIPD points out how the pandemic has shifted our working practices towards what they call a hybrid model, which essentially can be managed by using some days in the office as some days at home. So these two modalities can be complementary. It's not a matter of which one works best, which of the two may produce better productivity and also decision making. But I found really interesting, the fact that every single person is different. Every professional is different, um we are not the same people every single day, our energy, you know shift from day to day.

And so by finding the right modulation between these two settings, that's when we created the right circumstances for us to work at our best, something that didn't exist before, you know, before our life was completely in the office and then during the pandemic, we were forced in lockdown. But if there's one thing really interesting that we learned from the pandemic is the fact that every person requires a customized approach on how to work. Some people enjoy to spend more time in the office, some people enjoyed instead of working at home. So these two components can be very depending on our needs.

One of the things that I've seen a lot this past, I would say two years, 2.5 years in a lot of managers and leaders is the so called “busyness,” which is basically the assumption that if you have a lot of stuff to do that you need to go faster. You know, if I go faster, I get more stuff done and this one, it may be completely counterintuitive, but realistically, if you go faster doesn't make you necessarily more effective.You may be under the impression and getting more done. But what can actually do, it can create just a state of increased anxiety and fatigue, which from the point of your decision making definitely is not the best scenario to find yourself in moving frantically from one task to the next, having a lot on your plate.

Sometimes what I've noticed leads to pursuing a lot of goals without fully understanding how each goal contributes to the success of the organization you represent. Also for your own personal success and the reason for that is because not all tasks, not all decisions require the same amount of time required, the same importance.

Usually it's much easier to see what you're doing when you look at things once they happen in hindsight. So when you turn back you see you might see someone super super, super busy and have the impression that you have not really advanced that much in your life. But the one thing that I believe it would be important to remember is this one that when you have a lot of stuff to do usually there are some strategic actions that could potentially allow you to hit the first piece of the domino so that all the other components would follow. The notion of strategy is to be efficient to be economical.

Sometimes a behavior that constantly rush that is always fast, holding high standards for yourself being a perfectionist. All these components may result from a lack of confidence, the fear of failing, meaning not feeling adequate, and what this one does, it creates a vicious dynamic that hinders decision making. The whole notion of fear as a protection mechanism, just like the unconscious biases that I pointed out before it is something that in many instances creates extra speed, or sometimes does exactly the opposite which is a procrastination.

In my experience, slowing down is not just striking the balance between taking more time. When I am evaluating different options or maybe postponing a decision. If I feel uncertain if I feel that I'm not ready for it, good decisions require what I call the “mental distance” to evaluate the issues.What it means is to take one step back, maybe a couple of step backs or three. So that from far I may see the details, the components that I need to way to make a good decision and understand maybe that some of them are not as important as I thought they were.

A metaphor that I often use for this concept is the painter in front of her masterpiece. It's this constant moving closer to the painting and sometimes stepping back so that you can check the colors, you can check the light, you can check the proportions to make sure that everything is in the right place.

As long as your face is stuck too close to the painting, you may not have an overall picture of what you're trying to accomplish. So slowing down, it means above all softening the mental noise

that is caused by constant rush. You know that deceptive impression that if I do more, I accomplish more, but instead I'm running in circles if I keep rushing. If I keep having my nose is stuck in the issue, it is very difficult to weigh all the options to understand how every single ingredient can be used for good decision making.

There are so many different remedies, so many things we can do in order to soften than mental noise that is caused by constant rushing. One of my favorite is basically spending time in nature.

A lot of research, a lot of psychological research that has been done to show the power of nature on our mental well being and the way we perceive things so our cognition can sharpen because of the time that we spend in nature.

So there's an interesting article written by Kirsten Weir and published um in the American Psychological Association website, I put in the notes of this episode the URL, hat essentially points out the benefits of spending some time in nature and Kirsten says something really nice.

She says, From a stroll through a city park to a day spent hiking in the wilderness, exposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits including improved attention, lower stress, better mood produced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation.”

And so what is the pity party over of this episode of the podcast? Pity Party Over is an expression that I used to say now that you went through those hurdles those challenges what you learn from them so that you can move on.

The whole point of this episode is the fact that we often have to make decisions in business with little data and time sometimes we want them but we don't have them and that's really the biggest challenge in business. Good decision making is basically a balance between pacing ourselves and understanding that sometimes we might have to go faster.

Sometimes we might have to go slower and then understanding that we can play with different settings, you know, working from home, working at the office to make sure that we have the right energy to make those decisions.

My biggest recommendation when you feel anxious, maybe fearful when you feel the stress is about to make your head explode. Sometimes the best option that you have is not to continue rushing is not continuing other people's expectation interrupting your work, but it may very well be closing your laptop, your computer then put some comfortable shoes on and then step outside step outside of your home, step outside your office and to spend some time in nature.

And what it does when you spend some time in nature, your emotions start slowing down, your thoughts, your intuitions, everything comes together, your limbic system, your emotional core, that is so fatigued to start slowing down. Start finding some peace and at the moment very likely the most incredible solutions may come up from parts of yourself that may feel completely unexpected.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over I hope it was insightful, it was interesting. If you have any questions pertaining how to make better decisions, I would love to talk to you, I'm always available.

My email is in the notes of the podcast. It is at Stephen.Matini@alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A L Y G N.company. If you visit the website online dot company, you will find lots of different routes for individual team and organizational growth. You may subscribe to my blog or to my podcast Pity Party Over, their references are in the notes, and also we can connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Be happy be well and until we connect again, thank you for listening.

View Details

Episode 1 focuses on building greater organizational synergy, what creates synergy, typical symptoms when synergy is lacking, and the importance of communication and leadership when transitioning through change to build synergy.

Sign up for a free Live Session to learn how to manage change. Subscribe to Pity Party Over to be notified of new episodes.

Listen to the episode on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Castbox, Castro, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Listen Notes, Overcast, Player FM, Pocket Cast, Pod Bay, Podbean App, Podchaser, Postcast Addict, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Subscribe to the PITY PARTY OVER blog

Connect with Stephen via email

Connect with Stephen on Twitter

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

Brought to you by ALYGN Organizational Consulting

Get inspired

Hoopes, L., 2022. Change Management Classics: Synergy | Resilience Alliance. [online] Resiliencealliance.com. Available at: [Accessed 20 April 2022]

Transcript

Welcome to Pity Party Over over the podcast for people, teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Steven Matini. Let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company.

Hi everyone. I'm Stephen. Thank you so much for checking this episode of Pity Party Over wherever you are in the world, I hope you're doing great. So why this podcast is called Pity Party Over? Pity Party Over is an expression that I started using years ago. I was talking to a couple of friends of mine and, essentially means a couple of things. Pity Party Over is that moment when you feel so utterly fed up with an issue that you may have tried to tackle in many different ways, but it's still here in your life, it is still annoying and you haven't been able to find a way out. And so Pity Party Over over is when you're really ready to take the last leap in order to overcome it. And then Pity Party Over over also means what you have learned from a situation. So after all said and done, when a problem, a struggle becomes part of your past, as you look behind, what is that you learn from that situation?

Today's episode is going to focus on organizations. One of the most frequently asked questions that I receive from clients is how do I build a stronger synergy? And what they mean is how do I make sure that my organization, that comprises all kinds of different people, departments, systems, and processes, all this incredible complex machine, how can I make sure that works nicely all together? The reason why synergy is such an important and predominant feature in organizations is because reality is changing at a speed that is absolutely unprecedented. Organizations are faced on a daily basis in front of the scenario that mutates based on really ... someone's tweet. And so what we have seen for these past 20 years are huge technological changes that have revolutionized the way we operate, the way we do business, the way we compete in markets. And yet the ability of humans to adapt to those changes is still the same.

Meaning our brains have not evolved as rapidly as our technology. So now more than ever, it is really important that the organizational machine needs to be really functional. It is imperative that all its components are able to work together seamlessly, are able to interpret such a complex reality and to respond to it in a way that is efficient. So in order to achieve, um, a greater organizational synergy, there are so many ingredients that we need to consider. It's not just a one thing, but synergy comprises the ability to navigate change. So first thing is change, and change is such a big topic that we're going to explore a little bit more in this episode. Communication, communication is an incredible, super important ingredient to guarantee greater organizational synergy. Also, another component to consider is engagement, how motivated people are what's happening to them, why they seem to be into the organization or why there can be be some mismatch or some, uh, misalignment.

Also another super important component is leadership, you know, leadership provides the example leadership helps people transitioning in a moment of change. So that's also another very important ingredient. Anything that goes into organizational design, meaning how the organization itself is structured, how, who does what roles and responsibilities, how functions are organized. That's also something really important. Teamwork, you know, teams are such an important component these days. They do represent the main cells that allow any organization to move, seamlessly, nicely throughout change. So that's also another component only that we need to consider and then so much more organizational culture and, um, many, many other components.

So first thing, first symptoms, what are you going to see when synergy is not there? One of the observation that I make very often to clients is ... gossips. When you hear a lot of people complaining and, um, a lot of negativity, lot of remarks that tend to be more on the heavy side. That usually is an indicator there is something is not quite flowing within the organization. So complaints often times may indicate that something important to people, some needs are not fully addressed, maybe even something more fundamental and as values that drive their lives are not fully expressed within the organization where they work. So, a pasty, negative, dark type of conversation moving around the organization is a symptom that shows that there's really not great synergy. Another clear symptom, in my opinion, of lack of organizational synergy is when roles and responsibilities are not clear, meaning it's not quite clear to everyone who does what, and this is something really common to happen as organizations react to make changes. And, after a while, the whole structure becomes so complicated that know-how knowledge gets stored in silos, different parts of the organization and not properly shared. And, people are quite unsure exactly are what every single function, every single component does within the organization. So unclear roles and responsibility is another sign of lack of synergy.

One thing that I see very frequently working with different clients is this notion that the people on top, top management, the ones who are supposed to provide the strategy for the organization are the ones that should provide all the answers, you know, because of their role, because they are highly paid because of their experience, they should have the answers. And the thing is when we try to increase organizational synergy, the best starting point is actually to put ourselves in a position of listening, listening to everyone within the organization at different levels. And listening means to see from their point of view, what they observe, what is they see from the specific angle of the function, in which they work or the specific role where they work? So, in my opinion, when you collect a lot of data, a lot of quantitative data, a lot of qualitative data that gives you a tremendous amount of information to get the pulse of the organization and understanding what is really happening.

So that's really the point in which I always recommend to start a point of listening, a point of non-judgment in which everyone has the ability to voice out what is it? They see the great thing about listening to people is the creation of a space in which everyone finally has a moment to say what's in their heart, what bugs them, what they would like to suggest in order to create improvement in order to be more efficient. Also, the wonderful thing about listening to people is that you finally understand exactly what can be done in order to create that stronger organizational synergy. There's a lot that can be said about change, but essentially every time we want the organization to perform better, we are going through some sort of change. We are asking people, we are asking teams and the organization to actually operate in a way that is more efficient.

And so it's really important to understand how change works and also how that affects people. And, um, as a general, I would say almost rule of thumb, something that I've seen is that a lot of information and the fear of unknown are often responsible for the resistance to change when people are requested to change and they do not fully understand why that is needed, how that is going to benefit them. Usually that's when they start putting their foot down, they become really, really resistant because simply they don't understand it. You may be observing quite a bit of, um, anxiety, fear, blame, a type of attitude that tends to be more skeptical, even anxious. You know, it mostly results from not fully understanding what is happening.

People actually transition through change through small patient efforts. So when they understand clearly what's in that for them, when they understand the benefits of change, that's when slowly and patiently people start transitioning. It's generally a very, very, very slow process that requires a tremendous amount of patience. And, you know, probably I'm one of the least patient people that I know in my life. And, um, but I have learned throughout living really, personal and professional experiences, that patience is such a key, you know, great things, amazing things require tremendous amount of efforts, consistency, persistence. My mom used to tell me all the time, you know, you're not patient, but you'll see one day you'll learn. And she was right. She was absolutely right. If you are the person in the organization initiating change, you can be for instance, working for human resources, or you could be the head of a department.

And over time, you may have noticed the same issue coming up again and again and again. And so the need of doing something about it. There are some questions that in my experience will be very important for you to clarify. And the best place to clarify them is probably to consult with someone who is not part of your organization. It is very difficult to have the objectivity, to have the emotional distance from an issue and to see it with a clear mind. And so some question you would like to clarify are how do I help others during change? So it has to be very clear what to expect from the change process, how I'm going to deal with resistance to change, how much time should I give to people in order to change, and then how I'm going to make sure that results stick.

So it is a process that require quite a bit of knowledge, and very often people jump into it with a timeframe that doesn't actually match with what actually is going to happen. And so my biggest suggestion is to be fully informed because you see, you cannot perform surgery on yourself. And this is something that a past amazing, wonderful mentor coach used to tell me all the time. She used to say, you cannot perform surgery on yourself, and what she meant to say by that is that through the help of someone is much easier to see clearly an issue, and to navigate through that issue more quickly. The feeling of impotence, feeling powerless is something that I've seen many times in the past. It is a sensation that often times accompany those spearheading change within the organization, it could be the person who started the whole initiative, or could be a set of people that are also responsible to make sure that everyone transition. The feeling of feeling powerless and not being quite sure at what to do is something that is very prevalent during a change type of program. As you are trying to build a greater organizational synergy, one comment that I would like to point out is this one. Feeling frustrated is perfectly normal, it's natural specifically when you have been trying so hard for quite a while to help everyone transition. However, if you do feel super frustrated towards, let's say a staff member, someone who seems to be incredibly stubborn, not willing to change, that could be, it may signify that you do not fully understand the dynamic of change, which really requires once again, a tremendous amount of patience, also requires constant communication so that people can really transition. Everyone has different timeframe to go through change.

People proceed at the same speed. So long story short, change requires patience, consistent efforts, and also super, super important, celebrating every single small victory along the way. Every time we see people coming on board and making small improvements, that's a moment of really celebration and, it can be done in many different ways and believe me a simple, thank you. You know, if it comes from a place of true authenticity and gratitude, it goes a really a long way in terms of boosting people's motivation. So I pointed out a few times the importance of communication when an organization is going through change. From my perspective, I believe that very likely the other component that is vital for change is leadership. And from a leadership standpoint, a general rule thumb is that the more you hide, the less you share with people the reasons behind change, the dynamics of change, the fewer people are on board.

So leadership is such an important component for change because when we create a space for listening in which people can voice out their points of view, and we can help them out facing whichever emotions, whichever frustration, and difficulty that's when we provide the example, people always look for consistency. They look for what I often times refer to as "walk the talk." And so when leadership promotes change, when supports change, endorses change, people understand this is something that is here to stay, that's when the signal comes out nice and strong. So some questions that leadership can ask in order to make sure that everything is ready to transition is: What information, resources, and support do people need to be on board? What do I need to disclose with them to be on board? Are we communicating the reasons behind change How are we supporting each other throughout change?

These three questions in my experience have been really helpful and important to be addressed. So what is the Pity Party Over of change? If you feel frustrated with change, you are under the impression that things are not proceeding, are not developing, and unfolding as fast as you hoped, there are definitely a few things that I suggest to keep in mind. First of all, communication and leadership truly are the queen and king of change. These are two components you truly want to pay close attention to. When the reason behind change is clearly communicated and people are constantly kept in the loop that helps a tremendously overcoming fear and managing any sort of discomfort from a leadership standpoint, your sponsorship sending out a clear message that change is here to stay is fundamental when presenting change, when introducing change to everyone. Remember that people look for consistency.

So it's not enough to ask people to change, but you must be willing to provide the example because people look for consistency. You want to provide regular reports on the steps the whole organization is taking through change to improve its performance. You want to reassure people their feelings are normal and shared by everyone doing change. You want to give people specific tasks and opportunities while navigating change, so they understand how to apply the request for change operationally in their daily lives. And then super important, you want to acknowledge every success doing the change process to keep the momentum going forward.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. I hope it was informative. The intention with this podcast is to share with you some tips and suggestions to overcome the frustration that you may experience when you want to really move on in your professional life. I tend to believe that the whole point of living is learning. When we continuously learn, we are better equipped on how to navigate through life so that we can enjoy the journey as best as we can. If there's anything that I've learned working alongside so many clients over the years is that growth is always possible. And the process becomes more pleasant and more efficient when you are accompanied by someone who has your best interest and heart. Remember you're not alone. There are so many phenomenal professionals who dedicate their lives to helping people developing. If you need any help, if you want to bounce ideas back and forth, I will be so happy to hear from you and to assist you. So I'm going to put my contact information in the podcast notes you can reach me at stephen.matini@alygn.company. I also would like to invite you to visit our website, ALYGN, A L Y G N.company where you can find lots of solutions for individual team and organization or growth. Until we meet again, thank you for listening.