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Marycay Durrant on What Horses Can Teach Us About Leading · Step Wise

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it strikes me that there are places to be performative where fake it to make it work.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's places that we need to build trust.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: And if we want our teams to work, if we want our families to work, building trust is a very different thing than being able to perform.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: In my humble opinion, no conversation about leading others with one's own wisdom would be complete without our next guest, Mary Kay Durant.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: She's a self-proclaimed vibrancy architect who brings health and performance to leaders and the organizations they serve.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've known Mary Kay for years and have had the privilege of working beside her on a number of occasions, many quite challenging.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: She's one of the smartest and most courageous people I've ever known and innovative.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Her philosophy of leading and perhaps life is built on two building blocks, a partnering paradigm and a living systems approach.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Without stealing her thunder, I'll simply say she is engaged and admired by some of the most successful companies today like Pepsi, Deloitte, PayPal, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: What is a vibrancy architect?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: What does her personal mission statement, live from love, serve from joy mean?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: How does that play in today's business environment of turbulence and change?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk to Mary Kay Durant and find out.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Mary Kay Durant, thank you for joining me on Stepwise.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's an honor to walk with you, Foster, as always.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I came to know you a number of years ago as a wonderful friend to my daughter.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: She told me about your history with Thomson Reuters and the incredible work you did helping to integrate a number of firms that were coming into the Thomson Reuters world.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was such it was such an incredible and serendipitous opportunity.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'd had a really difficult thing happen in my personal life around challenges of fertility and family.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: And in the midst of that heartbreak, I decided I need something more interesting in my work.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I think nature, which I know we'll get to talking about, always provides us support and challenge if we know how to soften enough to look for it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: In that moment, I was given a development role as the chief of staff to the CEO at a time that the business was growing for those that like business things from 800 million to about 3 billion.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: What was so fascinating to me was to go all over the world and see these businesses and realize in each of them that the quality of the leaders and the way they attuned to the human beings that were there was the thing that had a vast and visible difference in how fulfilled people felt, how enthusiastic they were, not just about the work that they were doing, but about the communities that they lived in, about the connections they had to each other.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I found that that vitality translated and matched the numbers, the financial numbers that that business had experienced.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: So it really got me intrigued early on in my career with this idea that, you know, honoring humanity and tuning into what's unique about each of us, while much more complex than what an MBA book will teach us, is a way to get the business performance that leaders ultimately want.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's good for the communities and the humans too.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just as a sense of scale, how many organizations did you work with in your role as chief of staff at at Thompson Reuters?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was uh about 28 businesses.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: In all different parts of the that's a really it was a big number.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: And what was really fun about it is the CEO that I was working for at that time, he used to say that you develop people before you do anything else.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: And if you develop people, they'll even tell you if you need electricity in the business.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't turn on the lights first, you turn on the human beings first.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: And what was so incredible was that we were acquiring these businesses, and for example, in Spain, it was a 500-year-old business that had been in the same family for centuries.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: And after we acquired the business, established a university on site, did a lot of work to help bring people together, the King of Spain wanted to meet us to understand our philosophy because it was so unlike how they had seen other organizations come in.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel so grateful that I, early in my career, got to work for someone like Brian Hall, who was the CEO at that time, just an incredible mentor to me.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful story.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like the perfect opportunity.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: I won't say it's MASH, but kind of joined with you and your talents at that time to create some incredible leverage and performance.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: For those people that don't know you, what is your superpower?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: What is it that you bring that allows you to play at those levels and help people and organizations through transformation?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a hard question for anyone to answer, but I'm actually going to tell the story that might sound awful, but I think illuminates it from that moment in time, which is I found out six months into that job that the chief strategy officer and the CFO both really doubted I was the right person for the job that the CEO had hired me for.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: I was more junior than anyone else being considered for the role.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: And they had a bet, an over-under, on how long I would last.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: People don't do that in business.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it'd be really easy when I found out about that to take that in a way that was diminishing to me.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: But the CFO told me, I have never seen someone with more tenacity and more commitment.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You were willing to get it wrong and go back and try again and get it wrong and go back and try again.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think my two superpowers, one is just a deep love of human beings, to which I give great thanks to my mom and my family, and a lot of tenacity, a willingness to keep trying different things if I believe something's worth doing.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: For those of you who do know Mary Kay, you probably know the wonderful, gentle exterior that she has.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: For those of you that have seen Mary Kay work, she is tenacious.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: I will absolutely vouch for that one.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: You do pushback in a very respectful, kind, but very clear and strong way.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Many would really benefit from learning that balance.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for saying that.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I will say I learned it from the horses as you know.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is fun.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: People listening to this podcast may not understand the relationship between what we can learn from the natural world and especially through your work that you do with horses.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm a new leader.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Why should I pay attention to what people are telling me about horse personship?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's that got to do with me making sure that, you know, the widgets get out the door?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm gonna take us back a little bit before I answer that question, Foster, because I think it's helpful to always understand context.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: And this isn't just for us as new leaders, but no matter where we are in our life, if we go back to the age of reason, and don't worry, this isn't gonna be a history lesson, almost every culture had five elements.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in the age of reason, they took one out.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: So we now have earth, air, water, and fire.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: And depending on the culture you're in, it might have been called ether, quintessence.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: Aristotle called it the element that elevated and brought dignity and divinity to all of the others.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: So it infuses life into all the other elements.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Why that's relevant is that in the age of reason, when it was taken out, it brought in the industrial age.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: When we started to turn people into machines in the ways that they were working, and we started to tell them that having things was how you had meaning.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if you look forward many generations now, we have a culture around us where we're dramatically disconnected from each other, isolated, often very divided, and that things-ness has taken over.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: But nature still remembers quintessence, the connection, that's the connective tissue that is what brings life, vitality, growth, meaning to everything.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: So now let's look specifically in nature, why horses.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: So horses are prey animals that thrived for 55 million years by coming together, by cooperating, by being in adverse changing conditions, but always being in communication.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: Their model of leadership and work together is grounded in authenticity, it's grounded in respect, it's grounded in the idea of gentle as possible, firm as necessary.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: A lot like how you were describing what I aspire to in the ways that I work, because they are prey animals, they're deeply and social, they're very social, they're deeply sensitive to energy.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: So if you imagine, they are always tapping into and feeling our energy to say, are you trustworthy?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: Are you a good leader?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Are you someone I can follow?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: So they're always feeling that energy for us.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And because they are a thousand pounds, move faster than the domestic cat, and many of us are not used to being up close to them when they're at liberty, they give us immediate feedback on the ways we show up under pressure because often we're amped up when we're around them because it feels nervous we feel nervous and uncertain and we can't control them the way we think we might control things at work or at home.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: And what's so beautiful about them is they mirror our patterns, but with no judgment.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: They don't have a story about why Mary Kay is doing this or what's bad about Mary Kay.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: They're just like, wow, that energy feels like too much, or I don't even know that you're there.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then they give us a chance to practice new ways of relating.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: So it's the most powerful kind of feedback we get to try something new, all the way back to tenacity where we started.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: I got to learn more about how to be an effective communicator in five days with horses when I first went to my first equine leadership experience than I have learned in a lifetime of being around human beings.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Can you share an experience of a leader going through an equine learning experience like that for the first time that in that same way got a very profound jolt about what he or she was doing or wasn't doing energetically, directionally?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I'll start with a CEO, an entrepreneur of a very small business who had a board and was having a real challenge with the one of the leaders on the board and felt like this leader was always diminishing his ideas, wasn't supportive of the things he felt was really important.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: So he felt very challenged and he knew that this was an influential person on his board that he needed to figure out how to work more effectively with.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: He came out to work with the horses and he walks into the round pen.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it's, you know, 60-foot round pen, the horse is at liberty.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: He's just kind of getting warmed up.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I say, Wow, is this what's happening with the board member?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, How do you know?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Well, the horse just showed me.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so what he got to see was how he was showing up that was causing that board member to feel like they had to go on the offense.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: And as he started to reflect on what was underneath that, it was some old beliefs he had about authority and that he was projecting onto this to this other person.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: So he got to practice relating in a new way to that horse, and then went two weeks later into the board meeting, sent me an email the day after, one of the most beautiful emails I've ever received, with all of the things that went differently on that day.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'll fast forward two years, that board member has now become the strongest advocate for his business and feels like he has become a mentor to him because the beginning of just starting to shift the energy in small ways out of what he saw in that single session with the horses.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: So he walks in the round pen with that same sense of confidence and authority that he has learned over a period of years.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: And what did the horse do?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: How did the horse react to that?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, because he was walking in with that confidence, but it wasn't congruent.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: So inside he was trying to overcome and, you know, prove that he was confident.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: What was happening is that the horse was moving away, turning its backside to him, and he's like, it's just like the board member who turns their back on me and gives me the rear end, you know, some version of that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so what he then could look at was what was going on inside of him and his energy that was having him try to project so hard instead of actually telling the truth about maybe some concerns or fears he had at the same time that he really believed in what he was recommending.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: So learning how to hold both of those things in himself and be more genuine in the way he was talking about things.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the horse, who has developed these emotional sensing mechanisms over 55 million years so it could stay alive, I'm told has a thousand times more ability than a human to sense, to pick up energies and to pick up emotions before we even know them.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is that accurate?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Our art is 17 times the size of ours, and it operates on the same meridian.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: So they have the immense capacity for sensing, but they also have the capacity to help us learn to resonate our hearts at different ways at different levels.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, like a tuning fork.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: They can help us tune into that presence or tune into authenticity, tune in to being able to tell truths that feel uncomfortable, but that often create deeper connection.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating stuff.
• 13:51
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• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Last fall I had the opportunity to take a Division I Women's Athletic Program into the arena.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Most had never been that close to a large animal before.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Which is freaky.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: One of the second or third string athletes who wouldn't normally be a leader on the court, embraced the experience, embraced the horse, the horse embraced her.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: She could walk around the it was an indoor arena.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: She could walk around the arena, the horse would follow her.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the star got up.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's an expression in in sports, fake it till you make it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: So she was faking it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the horse had nothing to do, wanted nothing to do with her.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a shock, just a shock.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it strikes me that there are places to be performative where fake it to make it work.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's places that we need to build trust.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And if we want our teams to work, if we want our families to work, building trust is a very different thing than being able to perform.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: And what the horses were teaching, that's, you know, modeling in that second string player is her capacity to be trustworthy.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because the lead horse is the one who's the most trustworthy, the most congruent, the most consistent under pressure, because that means I'm safe with you out in the wilds of the world.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what human beings want.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: We want to know we're safe with the people that we are going to be working with, that we're going to be partnering with.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: There are places for both.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: Performance definitely has its place, the fake it till you make it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And what we can learn from the horses and from nature is in the places where trust, connection, passion, purpose, meaning, all of those things that are so core to being human and being fulfilled in our lives, where those things matter, their mirroring can give us a lot of great lessons.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: This woman that I was with yesterday has been reading books about being confident.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if you read and think about things, you get them in here.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: She got in with that horse and she was tentative and you know, not moving really well.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, we did some work to tap into some of the things she had read about grounding herself and having an intention about what she wanted to achieve.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you could just feel the energy shift the moment she got clear and started, the horse started moving gracefully and powerfully around her.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And people 50 yards away in another round pen all turned and looked because you could just feel the energy.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the kind of charisma that isn't from performative ability, but is from that internal finding it within yourself.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think it's what Brene Brown says.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Knowledge becomes wisdom when it lives in our bones.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: It becomes an experience that we can return to and we can start to feel when it's off.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: I can feel it when I'm off now, and I can be like, okay, wait, I need to stop, take a few deep breaths, get back to what I really care about.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like it gives us the ability with the horses to realize it in a way that it isn't just an idea, but it's a way that we show up.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: If I take from that the kind of core elements of what you just shared, resonance with who we are, deeply held belief in our connectedness and trustworthiness, uh the ability to sense the other.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: My question was going to be what are you seeing the best leaders do today?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm guessing it's not going to be far from that.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if you add into it the way the lead horse in a herd sets vision, sets pace, and pace that keeps unity, keeps everyone working together.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's something else that I would add, that intentionality.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: And what I see in different herds having had the blessing of seeing horses in the wild and with horses with a lot of freedom that get to live in very natural ways.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I see a couple of really important things that those lead horses provide.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: They provide a container in that herd for horses to heal.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now, often in our world, that's healing from things that humans have done to them.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the most healthy herds, the horse provides an intentional way of leading where they use the least amount of energy to communicate the most amount of clarity.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Can you give an example of that?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'll give an example from another CEO who loved the horse work so much.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: She now volunteers at a she now volunteers at a at a place where they do work with children.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: So she says, I study every day the lead mare in this herd.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, the young horses will be frolicking and doing all the things, and she'll be fine with it until a child is nearby.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then I will watch her and her ear will move a little bit.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: And all those frolicking younger horses just their energy settles, they get calm, and they kind of move into a more gentle and quiet space.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: So she is so clear that it takes like one move of the year.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the younger horses are attuned to that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they can sense it, they can see it.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not about punishment or being wrong, but it's about this is who we are.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: And this is how we are when children are present.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's her intentionality.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And she doesn't have to go around and remind them all and have a you know a checklist to go through, but she's so clear on who we are as a herd and the way that we work that it takes very little energy for her to say, this is the moment.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned that the lead horse in that herd was a mare.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: So what's up with that?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Is that common where the female leads the pack?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and you know, I think that we all have masculine and feminine in us.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: We live in a world that asks us back to where we started to be machines, to produce, which is highly in the masculine side of our way of being.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: What the horses and much of nature remind us is that being informs the doing.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: That the feminine is a really important part of the equation for relationship, for connection, for trust, for intention, for possibility.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: Learning to tap into that very cooperative, cooperative and relational way of leading, like the horses show us, is something that our world really needs.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: That statement being Informs the doing is profound.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm a leader, I'm a new leader, and I'm trying to figure stuff out, and I've been promoted up because I'm technically very good, or I'm very smart, or I'm very pedigreed, or I'm very connected, or whatever the reason is.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that ramming through results is going to be the most critical piece.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: The counterposition to that really argues that establishing trustworthy, authentic, sustainable relationships is a better sustainable way over time than just focusing on the doing side.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: I love to use an example.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So a couple years ago, my mom was quite sick.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: I found myself in the middle of taking her to her appointments.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: I had the checklist and all of the things that we had to do.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: And what I realized is that if I didn't focus on who I was being, was I being patient?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: Was I being present to all of the ways that the immense gifts that my mom had given me in my life?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: That if I could just take a moment to pause and orient, and orient is something that every sentient being in nature does all of the time and we have forgotten to do.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: If I just pause and orient to my way of being and my intention for my way of being, I completely change that experience for my mom, for the relationship between us, and frankly changed the experience for the care providers.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: This was shortly after COVID, and you know, the healthcare system so deeply, deeply taxed.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Still lots to be fixed, but deeply challenged in that moment.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: All of my siblings were saying, like, you're the one to help navigate getting this care that we need through this eye of the needle, because I orient and have that capacity to really quickly think about how my being is informing my doing.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: A young leader or a new leader might say, that doesn't apply to me getting this technical thing or this big project done.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, if your work touches any other human being and you are reliant on them to get those results, you may be able to push through a few times by using whatever pressure, momentum, incentives that you have.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Over time, you will be unable to continue to have that kind of performance.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: Either because the relationships will lose trust and people will only comply, which doesn't bring their heart and spirit fully there, or they will leave, which impacts your cost structure of being able to replace people.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: So there's all sorts of dynamics that come into play if we don't stop to think about in big and small moments, how am I orienting in this moment?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then letting that inform what I'm gonna do.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: How can a new leader learn that sense of groundedness and self-orientation?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think values are always such an important exercise, and I would start much smaller than that.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: I would say to someone who's saying, I want to start to tap into this beingness every morning before you get out of bed, take a couple deep breaths, and before your feet hit the floor, you take a deep breath and you say, Who am I today?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: How am I?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: What matters to me today?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: Come up with a couple questions that two or three that you answer and do that as your feet are hitting the floor and say, I am orienting towards generosity.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: I have a tough meeting with some people I don't really like.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm orienting towards curiosity.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: I have, you know, I have a long commute today.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: I am orienting towards patience.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: And then a couple times a day, just take a breath and check in.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you just do the morning and then when you plop into bed again at night, check in.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And not from a way of saying, I'm gonna beat up on myself, be hard on myself, but in a way to say, what can I appreciate?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And if you do that for a couple of months, what I find is then leaders start to find their own way into the practices that give them presence.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: So for some people it's meditation, for other people, they start with values, for other people, they start with going for a walk.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think there's one path in, just like in nature, every expression of life has its own way.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we start to find our path into our ways.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: But just that small step of orienting in a couple minutes is can be just life-changing.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: And what's most important, and we see this in everything in the way organic things grow in nature, is the small consistent steps.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I try and make it so simple.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like before your feet hit the ground, two questions.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: If we look at the math of the way the physics of our planet work, those small consistent steps are actually the path to the life force itself wanting to come in and contribute to our growth.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we see it in the 10,000 free throw shots or whatever.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: We hear that all the time.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we can look in nature and see that that consistency is rewarded by the infusion of the very life force itself.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: So this is another practice that I think is so valuable.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's something in our world of produce, produce, we have become cynical because it's safe.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's a quote that for many years I have attributed to Albert Einstein.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: I recently found out he did not actually say this.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: He's quoted as having said the first and most important question every human being must answer for themselves is is the universe a friendly place?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we are actually all answering that question every moment of our lives, whether we know it or not.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: We are answering that question in how we show up.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: If we believe it's a malevolent universe, we need to armor ourselves up against it, and then we expend so much of our energy armoring up and resisting and assessing everything.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: If we can soften into just noticing all of the places that the universe is cooperative, nature lives at a frequency of cooperation.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: The species and the beings within species that are in the most cooperative and the most playful adapt the most quickly, are the most resilient, and have the greatest chance of evolution.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: Back to this idea of the small consistent action.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: If we take small consistent action every day, that benevolent universe, the life force that grows the tomatoes in the garden and the peonies you planted yesterday, the systems that breathe us and run our bodies so that we can have this magnificent experience of being human on this planet, all of those systems come into play in service to growth, potential, aliveness with those small, tiny steps.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: So the idea of find the smallest, tiniest thing you can do and play with it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And if in 30 days you don't like it, play with something else.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: But just really tap into that and start to notice the things that are beautiful and working and cooperative around you because that actually softens us so that our energy can be used for the things we care about.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think starting to think about return on energy rather than return on investment.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a big believer in those small steps.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Years ago, at the encouragement of my daughter Erin, I started, I took on the practice of morning pages, you know, kind of daily journaling.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I notice that it does this for me.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the skipping stones metaphor in my book.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Just settling in and settling in and settling in.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I really started to get a very practical sense that my soul, when I feel most grounded, resident right here, it thinks at a very different speed than the rest of the world around me.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if I don't do that, I operate here.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if I do do that, I can operate here, but I can also operate in both places.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: But when I do operate back here, if I'm grounded, as you say, it's a very different experience.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, Mary Kate, but let's get back to the horses for one second because you introduced me to a term that I just love, which is the notion of healthy pressure.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Can you describe what it is, how you see it work, maybe where it came from for you?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I learned it from the horses.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: The lead horse or a horse that's mentoring a younger horse will use energetic pressure as an invitation to that horse to grow into ways of showing up that are part of that herd's norms.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And when I learned it from the horses, it reminded me as a kid that grew up with a ton of time in nature that I saw that idea everywhere in nature.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, an acorn doesn't become a tree without the pressure of being broken open.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: So pressure is an integral part of becoming our potential, which we know from so much research, including Daniel Pinks is probably the most famous, that mastery and purpose and these things that gives us meaning is growing into our potential.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Pressure is a way that we can help ourselves and others become who we yearn to become.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what we see effective in so many forms of nature is the pressure and release of pressure.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: That pressure is a gift that we give each other, that pressure in dialogue is a way that we get to clarity, especially if we can have it have a cadence of ebb and flow between us.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then the second thing about it is learning to modulate our pressure in a way that is understanding of the other human being.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: The pressure that you might need for me to break through your awareness might be very different than what your wife might need.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like there's a dial and I can say, oh, this is a pressure of seven for this moment.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be different for every single person.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: So true trust and relationship is learning how am I using my way of pressure and how clean can my pressure be?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: We all experience people who have a lot of bite in their pressure.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: Punishment, right?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's not clean pressure.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Emotion can be manipulative or it can be authentic.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: So there's no checklist, but we have to look internally, and the more clear we are in our space, the more we have ability to assess how pure is my pressure around the intention that I have here to develop this other person, to have us achieve clarity on what we're trying to achieve with this project.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: And how much ability do I have to escalate the pressure where needed and then release it completely?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if I walk into a horse arena, and I'd love you to give some examples of this because I've seen it and it's magical, and you said I think it's a you use the minimum amount of pressure to get the task accomplished.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, what's an example of that in our horse world?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you a really funny story about this.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: I had a new property that I was gonna be working with their horses.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: The man who owned the horses and a couple of his colleagues were there to introduce me to these horses.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: They have a horse in the round pen and they say, we don't think this horse is gonna be very good at this kind of leadership work at all because he's a very lazy trail horse.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, maybe he's just bored with trail rides.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: And they kind of all looked at me funny.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I walk in and I use a lot of energy.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: The motivation zone for horses is at the back end.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm putting some of my, you know, waving my arms and kind of moving to try to get the horse to see if he'll move around the round pen using my energy.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: So that's pressure.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm applying pressure to the gas pedal, right?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Boy, woo, does he move?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, he's giving a sassy little kick and off he goes.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, wow, this horse is really sensitive.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we quiet back down, release a pressure, and I try just moving my hand, a lot less pressure.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't quite get the woo kicking, but moves right out.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: So then I think I'm gonna close my eyes and picture and take a deep breath and invite with my imagination this horse to move.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: And he starts moving around.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then we stop in the middle, and I look over to the owner and this group of people who are 60 feet away from us, and I say, This horse is exquisite.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: He is gonna be extraordinary at this work.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the owner says, Oh, don't say that, he'll get a big head.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: And the horse lifted his head, looked directly at him, walked across, took his nose under his baseball cap, and flipped it off his head and turned and walked away.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: What a great story.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't that great.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like that idea, the pressure is that simple, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Just how we're using our bodies, how we're using our intentionality of our thinking, and with humans, how we're using our words.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's amazing.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: What the equine experiences have have helped me understand too is that we embody our emotions, we embody our thoughts, we embody our fears, we embody all that stuff in a way that we're seldom aware of it.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: So for a new leader, you know, don't just think it's your words, don't think it's your job title, don't think it's the task that's necessarily going to be driving the bus.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I go back to your idea for these, for a new leader or somebody who's trying to build relationships with anyone that they work with.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: We've been domesticated as humans to be nice and often to comply with directives from leaders because we maybe need the job, but our bodies are always assessing the congruence.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: Our mirror neurons are always sensing.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's a man named Gavin De Becker who wrote a book called The Gift of Fear.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And in his work, you know, he talks about that we uh override our senses all the time because of our culture.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if we learn to listen to them, we would avoid horrid situations, but also we would be far more productive in our work.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I really value this encouragement to leaders to, even if you can't be with a horse, find people.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: I call them our imaginal cells, that are willing to tell us the truth, that are willing to hold with us an intention for the kind of leaders we want to be.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: And we engage with each other in such a way and with such truth-telling that it actually helps us have that pressure of growth back to that healthy pressure.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that we are kind to each other and the release of pressure, so we have that space to integrate and try new things.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: It is such an important gift if we really want to be the kind of person that truly inspires and motivates other people to achieve great things.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that kind of the ultimate expression of respect when we can be ourselves and candid with others, to share with them honestly, you know, coming from a respectful and compassionate place, but being able to speak our truth.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's what nature is always showing us, telling the truth all the time, and trusting, no matter how messy it gets, that real growth, real connection, real healing, real fulfillment is on the other side of telling those truths.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: You always have a creative outlet that allows you to kind of think about what's next.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: What are you working on?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: The thing that I'm working on this launching this spring is something that I'm calling Awaken to Wonder.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's a field note that I'll be giving people access to with this idea of if we want to orient to the benevolent universe, if we want to in a world that can seem broken, divided, and really hard, if we want to lean on the side of I believe in possibility.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's playful, it's fun, it's practical.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so if people are interested in that, they can go to my website and sign up.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to look for ways to help people with the small daily access to the bigger wonder of the world that we actually live in.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's wonderful.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Mary Kate, what are you listening to?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: What are you reading?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: What should the listeners have a chance to take a peek at?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm rereading right now Regenerative Leadership and Braiding Sweetgrass, both books that I loved and have read in the past.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: Listening to, you know, I grew up without TV, so I like the quiet sounds of nature, so I'm trying to get out and listen to the sounds that are in nature.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's how people like you help people like me find this show.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if what we talked about today sparks something in you, there's a book called Leadership Rethinking the True Path to Great Leading.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's the real title, that goes deeper into this territory.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's on my website, fostermobley.com.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then sign up for our email list to be notified when my next book, Honoring, goes into pre-sale in 2027.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if there's one person in your life who needed to hear this episode, send it to them.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: Not because we need the numbers, because they need the conversation.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Set the table, invite cool people, magic happens.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Foster Mobley.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: As always, friends, stepwise.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Our music for season three is composed and performed by Montana musical legend Philip Auburn.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Courtesy of Sweet Grass Music.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Phil's recent passing was felt by many, including those of us associated with this podcast.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: We thank Patty Auburgh and Sweetgrass Music for access to this beautiful piece.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Stepwise.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Stepwise is produced, edited, and promoted by Zedist with support from Amber Gillard Consulting.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Find more episodes and resources at fostermobli.com and follow Foster on social media at fostermobli.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.