Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Alex Lange on Leaders as Humans (#004)

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Alex Lange on Leaders as Humans (#004) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Alex.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's great that uh you've been kind enough to be the guest on this podcast.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I believe uh what you do is very, very interesting.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so really looking forward to this conversation, Alex.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Sony.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm really honored that you asked me to even talk with you and just even from the name Compromise to your podcast, I feel like the idea of our mindset and framework has become really essential to me.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that we can both learn together as we talk through some of these ideas, um, kind of the process we go through.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like, just to let you know a little bit, I feel like my passion desire has been to catalyze transformation and people and the world.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years, as that's taken different shapes, starting to look at what leadership development and human development has really formed that um in me.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like it's been there for a long time.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the last few years, it's starting to kind of show some of the fruit of it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's really great, and thank you for your time.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in the midst of your coaching schedule, you've taken time off.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much, Alex, for being a guest.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to be here.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I just wanted to start this conversation with this uh big theme that you talk about, Alex, which is people as humans, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's really the big theme that you talk about.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh why do you think it's so difficult for uh you know leaders to be more human in an increasingly technology-centric world?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great question because it's not theoretical for us.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's practical.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: We see it play out.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We see a lot of times I think we end up seeing the failures announced in the news more than we see the success.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think what's happened is that in our present day, if you look back 200 years ago, we're doing things that people couldn't imagine.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So machines, technology have advanced us, so we can achieve better results.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can we have the technology to feed everyone on earth.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have the technology to give everyone clean water on earth, and yet we haven't done it.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think being so close to this technology, the newest, fastest app, has tricked us.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so this modern time has tricked us.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we think the answer to humans is another app, another piece of technology, um, a life hack.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: How many books can you go to a bookstore and see new life hacks or a new Netflix show?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: This one modification, this pill will change your life.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what that does is that reduces us to humans is creatures that just do and know.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we're doing and knowing creatures.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a significant portion of us humans is the being part.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea that as humans, one of the things that makes us different is that we're meaning-making creatures.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we make meaning out of things.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't come from technology.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: An idea that you think of in art, especially about making meaning, is something like the Mona Lisa.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at it from a computer standpoint, it can take out the colors, it can look at the lines, but humans are the ones who put meaning into it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is she smiling?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is she upset?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: What is she thinking?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who was this woman?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why did they paint it this way?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we put meaning into things.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's also inherited meaning we get.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think what makes the trick is that technology tries to tell us if we know more information and if we do more, we're more complete as humans.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad to see that even in the business world, that's starting to shift.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: People are seeing how that makes us incomplete.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: It boils us down too simple.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: You start to see people like Daniel Goleman, his research on emotional intelligence, did a big push forward in this.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, saying that there's something different than just a massive knowledge and a massive ability to do that makes quality leaders, and I would say quality people.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the big things in my mind is that the modern time holds something so close that all we can see is that technology is an answer.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it does another thing is it tells us black and white, yes and no, binary thinking.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're now in an age that we need complex thinking.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to be able to hold two almost opposing ideas at the same time.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to think of dilemmas that can be managed rather than always problems to be solved.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that technology-centric thinking makes us think that there will be a quick fix to these solutions.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know you're a parent, I'm a parent, there's no quick fix to raising humans in this world.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as adults, we should continue to develop the same way.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We should see how we can grow and change and not think that there's an app that'll train a child how to treat their sibling kindly or become mature or responsible.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as adults, we should also think that same way.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have an example I was thinking of when I talked about parenting.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the tools I love as humans, I think sometimes we are boiled down to be a machine, the most efficient, the fastest, the strongest, the newest model.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a tool that we use to teach my kids.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I found out when I talked about it in front of a group, I actually had people that are quite older than me, some elders came to me, even months later, one lady came back and said that it's changed the way that she interacts with her family and work.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the tool, and I think this is an example of how this is not a technology problem, this is a human development problem.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved to India a year ago.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what's typical is to say, How do you feel about that to the child?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to talk to them, are you happy?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sad?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we want them to answer with yes, they're happy, or yes, they're sad, or angry, or afraid, and give one emotion.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, what we told our daughters, um, even at three years old, our daughters able to understand this is instead of saying a paradox, we use a joke to say a pair of ducks.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd hold up, we actually had two rubber ducks for them, and one had a tear on its face, and one had a big smile.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd say, as humans, we're complex beings.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's more to life than yes and no.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea is that we can hold these two seemingly opposing views, that we can be happy about moving to India, we can love it, we can love our new neighbors, our friends, our flat, the brand new world we're seeing, and we can also be sad at the same time.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were talking to our kids through this, and so they're able to say, I'm happy and I'm also sad, or I'm afraid and I'm excited.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I found that that's an idea of what it means to be more human is we're not saying you're a machine, are you successful or a failure?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're instead bringing in these complex ideas that we have feeling, and that way allows even the three-year-old to start making meaning out of what's happening.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: To say, there's things I like about this, there's things I hate, there's things, and we can hold these complex ideas at once.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a big part of fighting against this is giving even a language.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So now my four-year-old and six-year-old can talk to each other and pretty complex ideas of a paradox of feelings that they can be angry at their sister, but also still love her at the same time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh uh what I'm picking out, uh, Alex, is the importance of chemistry in relationships, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: There can be uh, you know, good things and there can be bad things.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's an interesting uh point uh that you are making.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was very intrigued, uh Alex, that uh you know you hold a master's degree master's degree in health science, spend time performing neurosurgery in Oklahoma, USA.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Before you started taking up leadership development, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So where did you find the connection and the inspiration uh with two such diverse fields which are there?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel the quick answer is I think it's within me, as I was putting something on the medical field that wasn't always there.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I found a really good place for that in leadership and human development.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: The longer answer is that I think they're more interconnected than we think.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into the medical field because I wanted to impact people's lives and help people in need.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that was in my heart, and I thought the quickest way to do that is to be able to physically help people with their physical problems.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit more like the doing and knowing.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, if I know medical care and I know more information, I can help the most amount of people.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a big blessing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that I was able to do over about 10 years that I forget other people don't have that experience from operating roomwork, seeing inside of a human body, looking at the brain, talking to people about some of the hardest moments in their life and their level and the decision making.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are a great experience.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it made me who I am.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the flip side, I also saw a deficit.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for the largest employer in my state, which is a medical employer.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that their culture and behavior did not line up with their slogans on their billboards.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't do what I thought the medical field should do.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so at one point I was able to do a little bit of what I wanted.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And on the other side, I wasn't able to see the impact that I thought should be there.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned a little bit going through it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I learned the most is I was working alongside of brilliant neurosurgeons, other surgeons, uh specialists in their field.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I really saw that regardless of how intelligent and capable, how many degrees somebody had, myself included, we could give all the information.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're sitting with someone and talking to their family about cancer, they don't need to know the changes within a cell that happen.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to know the numbers and what you scored on your last test, they don't need to know outcomes.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's helpful and that's a piece of it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we missed the human side of it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so people were undergoing this massive experience that could change the rest of their life.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're considering things like what does my legacy mean?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is work valuable?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: What have I poured my life into?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get another holiday with my family?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't need just information.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was the part I love was stepping into that part of people's lives and saying, how can you make sense of this?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: How can you form who you are?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's important to your family?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are your core values?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to honor in these months or years?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have more.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like we were only adding a part of that information in the medical field.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the more practical side, is the system worked like almost any corporation or big system that starts to grow, governments, even NGOs that shift and worked for NGO for a while and found the same thing.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's often a deficit in leadership.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so you had these high principles and values, and people would sign on with the right motives, and then there'd be a gap in fulfilling that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so you ended up with people with the right desires, a system that could do some of it, and then the leadership seemed to kind of trail off and not take people where they were wanting to go and what the best, excuse me, the best potential we could have.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I I remember the conversation I had a friend when I was talking about a CEO at a nonprofit, and I said, Well, he just does something different.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like when he interacts with other people and me, he's not ever telling us the answer.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it could get infuriating, but I loved it because what he allowed people to do to discover and empower other people.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend said, Well, you know, he's just coaching you.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time I heard somebody reference coaching or even human development outside of the sports world.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so that started me on a journey that I've been on and I've been able to give names.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I like to say I used to work in the ICU a lot or the intensive care unit, and now I'm working in the with the International Coaching Federation, so the ICF.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I say my journey from the ICU to the ICF wasn't textbook how you would start it, but I find that it made it a lot richer so that I've experienced some of these things in a pretty diverse world, and I'm not just coming in with a textbook on this instead of saying I've seen how it hurts to miss the human side of doing great things.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's an incredible opportunity to do surgery and change somebody's life.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we missed, myself included, the chance to make it more human than that.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's been a great journey, it's been an adventure to see these, but now I get to actually actively do the thing to see people learn and grow and change as humans.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh great points there.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh see, in this age of uh machine learning and algorithms, uh, you talk about the need for leaders to spot deep fakes, right?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um what kind of leadership is required in this age of deep fakes?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what's the uh you know, what's the concept of deep fakes?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Can you kind of uh talk about it a little bit?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think a few years ago this is even that term was a little more popular where we have technology that's able to completely deceive us as humans.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we buy into something that's not real, not seen.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it is done to prove that it could be done, where a comedian or a system would take a politician and digitally change that looks like they're saying and doing something that they weren't.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, I think in the last year or two, the idea of fake news does the same thing.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what I found is a lot of people will then discount who just can't trust anything, and they just stick to what they already knew and don't apply any new information.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the opposite of what we need is we need to instead say like our senses can be duped.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Malcolm Gladwell just had a book, I think his most recent book is Talking with Strangers.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it even covers some of the subject is that we think it's a new issue with these fakes, but it's the same thing.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: He covers a lot of the experience in prior to World War II, where people would meet Adolf Hitler, they would know the information on him beforehand, and then come away and say something entirely different about him and think that he's a charming, normal guy, that you should have him over for dinner.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not just the technology that lets us be tricked.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's as humans, that's one of our faults, is that we are in a good way trusting.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: We believe people, we tend to think the best.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us do anyway.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we can end up being deceived.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the deep take is just one side of that coin that is always there, that technology, information can always be twisted and be malicious for us.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this last year for me too, I think underlined when they talk about the volatility of the world that we're in.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll often talk about a VUCO world, which is the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment that we live in.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the more technology, things like deep fakes, strip away things we thought were sure.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it used to be, oh, I can show you a photograph, you know it's true.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now somebody can show you a video, and it may not even be true.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to actually transform our minds in a new way so we start thinking differently, not just about information, but we actually think differently.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think when it comes to that, one of the things a friend of mine wrote an article on this a few years back, and he was saying, actually, this idea of VUCA or the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, we need to fight that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: He came up with another set of letters, too, with a different type of VUCA, which is vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So those all have to do with our internal processing.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we do need to have people on systems that can pick out these deep fakes that can say this information isn't real.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But as American, even in this last couple of years of our political world, we notice how quickly the hottest take on something or the new version or information, text messaging, um, what's that messages fly faster than people's ability to process what's happening.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to step back and say, where do I need to be able to see clearly through what's really happening?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that some small amount of data doesn't change how I see my core values, my deep relationships, the legacy I want to leave.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where can I have understanding, which isn't just information, but it said information applied, so we end up getting wisdom out of that.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then also, where can we have clarity of vision?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things I love about coaching both individuals and then executives as well, is how can we be people that clear the fog of our vision in front of us?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how can we clear out the confusing paradigms we have set up, the biases we have, what questions can we ask to be more curious and start exploring?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so the code type is a lot of fun is to start asking these questions that are really powerful.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then the last one is the agility, where we can say we've got this vision, whether it's a company or your family or as an individual, here's what I want to go.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the best version of our company, this is what we want to be.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then we often get bogged down in what are the strategy and tactics.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in an uncertain world, this last year underlined that what you thought was stable just isn't there.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how do we have agility to say we're holding tightly to what we think is essential?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're aware of our values as a company or group or person.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: But how can we hold loosely to how we get there?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: How can we not be derailed by one video, fake or real, that throws everything in chaos?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think just this modern time is everybody has to have the fastest response.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be the first one to tweet about something or retweet it, you have to be the first one to make a meme over some event.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think again, that pulls away from the humanity of things.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um instead, we're meant to process and reflect.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's adults learn great through reflection.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we take that out when we have to be the first one to respond.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're considered behind the times if we're not the first person to have an article out on something.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you see, as a humans over our history, is that we should be slow.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why people respected their elders.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: They had to have time to sit and process and think, and they wouldn't be overwhelmed by the newest change.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now everyone can respond very quickly.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: They see a video on Lake Night TV and it changes everything they think.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they won't talk to their next door neighbor because there's a disagreement on it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I also saw deep fakes as one more uh, you know, point where when you're a leader, what you say and what you do when there is a big gap, uh, you know, I also feel that's a deep fake.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh people look at you and say, you know what, you're asking me to do this, but you don't seem to be practicing it.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this uh uh and this leads a lot of uh this leads to a lot of uh you know mistrust uh uh in people and uh organizations go through this, and I constantly see it in organizations where the leader is really talking about something but not doing what he expects others to do.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that is also something which is affecting organizations?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think that absolutely is.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we used to teach something, and they did this from some studies, is that when you walk talk about sometimes where leadership comes from, especially the title leadership or positional.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: In ancient days, it used to be age.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: The eldest, particularly the eldest male in a tribe, would be the leader.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's reasons for that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then it became your ancestry, was what was essential about you.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then a generation or two ago, it was the assignment.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're given a title, if this person's your boss, you follow them no matter what.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get to question that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the last 20 or 30 years, you start to see people's ability so that if somebody's really able to do what they're promising, you follow them.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when people start having that disconnect of what you talked about, a deep fake, we stop following them now.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think what we're looking at now is there's even a push in the younger generation for authenticity, just to add another A in that line of age and ancestry and assignment abilities and authenticity, where we're saying we now want something that is integrated, somebody's life is whole from start to finish.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if they believe in this, they do this.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: If they say this is what they're about as a business, they really do it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one of the things I found very, very inspiring uh, you know, when I was reading about what you do uh your inspiration from the industrial designer uh Dieter Rams, where you take his design principles for leadership development.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I thought it was a very interesting juxtaposition of taking an industry industrial design principle into the human development field.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk to me a little bit about it?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, so I am by no means an expert on Rams and his theories, but as somebody who's gleaning the best and the easiest that I can from it, I think his process was human-centered.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, rather than simply doing a process or what worked, is saying, think about the human that gets this at the end.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are they really asking?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not what do they think they want up front or what does the marketing firm tell you?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of what we've done is said, and I'm definitely benefiting from other people who put in a lot more work for years and decades, and started to say, why should this only be available?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why should development only be available to top-tier executives?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those are great things that need to happen, but there's other people that'll never have that access.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if the only way you can teach someone how to develop is they must have multiple degrees, certifications, they have to have hours, they have to have a private office, they have to fly at a special location.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're leaving out the majority of the world.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of the my colleagues I work with, they actually years ago started saying, How can we say leadership development or human development for everyone everywhere?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the way we are doing it and have done it, and often still do today, can't be transferred.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's many people who can't read and write.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least, or they don't speak a language that you could produce everything in.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they started to say, what can we do to take these same principles?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not handsome to a textbook, but how can we make this accessible to everyone?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so you start looking at, I've got a list here because I didn't want to forget it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some of Rams' design principles to say innovative, the product has to be useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough down to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and have as little design as possible, which I think is a great one to finish on.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I think when I look through that, that doesn't sound to me like the last book I read on personal development.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like the last business meeting I was in.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like the last training.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't sit down and say, ah, that was the most honest meeting I've had.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not a common occurrence for us.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or everything that was said in that training, I understand I can use right away.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the ones I thought about is even thorough down to the last detail.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: When I started working with this group a couple years ago, actually experienced one of their leadership clinics, and talking about it to the facilitator, he said, Yeah, we have to think about everything.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: We don't just do it because.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they come to the room beforehand and say, We shouldn't be sitting in a row like we typically do.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make people have actually higher levels of interaction?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he said we think about what food, not just to bring food, but what food.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: So 45 minutes after you eat, what is everybody's mood going to be?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've got to keep people's energy high, they can't want to take a nap.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when do we have breaks and why?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And not just schedule break every hour and 45 minutes because.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where does it fit?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we actually get a narrative?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we get peaks and pits and make a drama out of this event?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the event is your weekly meeting, we can still do that.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then how do we use our space?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: How do we orient the crowd?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we not say this one person doesn't come in and tell you what you need to know, but instead have people interact around that?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think when I look at most of the learning experiences we have, especially as adults, we throw out a lot of really good practices that we could have.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: We learn so many things by absorbing it, by watching, by doing.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as adults, we say the best way to learn is to sit upright in a chair.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the way we always do it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we start innovating, we start saying, No, we're not designing a product that you can hold in your hand, but we are is we're wanting something that people can use so that they can understand it right away.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think almost that whole list we go down and think, how can how can that apply to a training session we're doing?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or now we're doing virtual retreats.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: How does that apply to a virtual retreat?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make people engage?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit easier to be environmentally feeling when you're virtual now.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but how do you actually do each of those things?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so those are all good questions, I feel like, to ask.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is this innovative?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are we just doing it because?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is it useful?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for me, that's one of the biggest things.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even getting a biology degree, I felt like some of the classes they just had you check a box, you could say the class was taken.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's you get an A and then it doesn't matter to any of them further on, instead of something being useful.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does this actually help me in this next stage?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to use this?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think this for me, it gives a lot of questions.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I can say, rather than just training because we can train people and they want to be trained, how do develop adults learn?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do we grow as people?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: How do we change our mindsets?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we really catalyze people who go through that transformation?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I think different origins, but the same view of looking at either a product or a service to people is how can it be immediately useful to people, how can it be long-lasting, how it can be well done?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all of those I think apply really well.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think there are some excellent points here.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one of the things uh that uh uh interested interested me a lot uh was this concept of uh dynamic dialogue during meetings.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how does one uh really uh you know look at consciously practicing dynamic dialogue in a meeting?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really good because most of us have experienced the opposite in meetings.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um meetings energized.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if people do have high levels of energy, it's usually frustration and a lack of resolution.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they have a high level of energy.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there's one of these things in this more complex world we live in is we no longer need just a single expert to come in the room and tell everybody how things should be, tell the answers, assume the questions that people are asking.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of leaders, it we should be saying is we've got this complex world.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Things are changing rapidly.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We need people in the room to be invested in the outcome, to actually have ownership.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, where can we raise their awareness, their level of responsibility?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then for adults to truly learn something, the best way is for them to be able to apply prior knowledge to it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for something to really stick to an adult, kids don't need this.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Kids, you can throw them in a completely unknown environment and they pick it up really fast.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Adults need a connecting point.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our brains aren't quite as fluid, our neuroplasticity flows way down, and so we need to connect things.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as a leader, if we want to draw on people, we have to do that in a meeting.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I think usually people will they'll come up with reasons why they can't.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Primarily, it's a self-limiting belief because they haven't seen it done that way.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you look at um, I think Patrick Lincioni has a book called Death by Meeting.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's most people's experiences that meetings are the most miserable thing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you believe that they're valuable, you still dread their coming, you dread, you dread everything about it, you dread the follow-up meetings after the meeting, and then the meetings in the hallway talking about the meeting, and nothing goes the way you want it to.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a couple different practical ways we can create dynamic dialogue, which is actually a real back and forth.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and keeping in mind that you do have somewhere as a positional leader that you need to get the group and the team.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to unsettle people from where they are so that they want to go somewhere different.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple ways we do this.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: One is to have people interact, and this works great in the digital age random, especially everybody working remotely, is to ask a framing question that gives boundaries on the conversation you're about to have, gives a lot of freedom.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And coaching often we'll call it a powerful question.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's open-ended, there's a lot of freedom, but it gives boundaries.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so you think of something like what is collaboration?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not coming in and telling a group, let me tell you what collaboration means, but I'm saying, what is it to you?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we give people, and this sounds like a waste of time if you're uh if you're used to really efficient meetings, but if you consider how much time is wasted in meetings, I think the payback is extremely valuable.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you let people spend 30 seconds to a minute and just on their own write down what collaboration means to them.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or it can be what is effective leadership, what are the core values, what do you think of, when, fill them the blank.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you let everybody interact.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're using Zoom or Skype, you can do some breakout rooms, have people act interact one-on-one and talk about it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so immediately people have a buy-in because they've been heard, even though it's by one other person, they feel invested in it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you have enough time, you can do it's an exercise called one, two, four, all, and you just do that.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: First, one person reflects, then two people talk about it, then you go in groups of four.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the trick is you can't share what you shared in the last group, you can only share somebody else's thoughts, which makes us truly listen because now we're getting ready to say, I could say, Swami said this, and I thought this was really valid.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you what I thought all the way through.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, you can keep going until you get to the whole group, but that allows a lot of buy-in up front with the team.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they actually, as a leader, that can help you because if four groups in your room all have the same idea and it's not where you are going, that lets you realize a leader that you are off in your awareness of what's going on.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so then you can pivot and address those needs.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another one that is really good for dynamic dialogue, excuse me, dynamic dialogue is what's called mediated dialogue or putting something in the middle.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I found this is great, it's even good in conflict resolution.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I talked earlier a little bit about us humans us being meaning-making creatures.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so often, if I come to you and tell you I have a problem with you, it's immediately offense and defense.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: But even if I write down on a piece of paper my thoughts about you, and I can set it down in between us, and we can talk of that as a third party, it lowers the level of confrontation.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can have more trust between us.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the idea goes back, and it's some brilliant mind.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually a gentleman named Bohm who interacted with like Einstein and Heisenberg, brilliant people I couldn't sit in the same room with.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he got frustrated that they were talking past each other all the time.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were always arguing their own point and never dialoguing.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said, What if we put something in the middle of the room that we can all speak into and apply meaning to?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's developed through a lot of brilliant people that I had no work with, but I've been able to see the fruits of their work.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so they found that that works with all of us.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: We like to apply meaning to something.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you can ask a framing question, an idea.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've done this in coaching, even for somebody to envision what they want their life to look like in say six months after a coaching series.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then you actually you can do it online.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have a series of pictures, or you can do it in person, I think is a phenomenal way to do that.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: They actually will go through something without talking, you look at these pictures and you pick one.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does is picking a picture as a visual representation triggers the right side of your brain more than the left side of your brain.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so now you're having a meeting that's engaged people, they're bought into it because they've been heard, and now they're using their left and right side of their brain.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so their ability to innovate and be creative just skyrocket.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a couple series we go through to let people share on that.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what you really see is people start talking about their picture, and then they say those things that they might not have said up front as they start describing it.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: They start saying, Collaboration, I fixed this picture because they're it looks like a field or whatever the item is they they're describing, and suddenly they say, like, but not all you don't always get the harvest you want out of the field.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you realize as they're talking that they're concerned that collaboration may not really work.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's a great way to allow people to have a little bit more liveliness in their discussion right away.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes, you know, five to eight minutes out of your meeting, but then suddenly you have people who love it.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um this has been really effective even in coaching.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: So people sometimes that picture they pick early on in the coaching series, they remember forever and they want a physical copy of it, print it, put it on their wall because it comes really significant.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes back to making meaning.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they, as humans, we put meaning on a picture, and then suddenly it becomes significant for us, and even a metaphor that they use about everything in their life.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's been a really fun way to raise the energy level that people have, um, and then get to see where they're really at.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's daunting for us, especially in a remote world, when everybody's sitting on a Zoom call or a sketch call, um, you don't know if they have shoes on or not, you don't know if they, you know, what's going on right behind the screen.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so you feel like you've lost something.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what really happens is you're giving people opportunity to buy in and have their perspective heard, the level of relationship has grown because now you're starting to hear what people really feel and think, and then also the candor or the ability for people to share it, share freely and quickly, which is where innovation and creativity really take off.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Those have all risen.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so we use some of these tools, and it it seems a little bit systematic sometimes, but it works because it's really tapping into the way we're wired as humans.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: We love stories as humans, and so then we say, like, you get to tell a story basically about this picture.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can hear, even if I disagree with your opening statement, I hear why you feel that way, your process to get there.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the trick is good leaders, especially early on in their career, can get things done, but great leaders start empowering others to do great things, and so you start letting people own what's going on.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like those really help, you know.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: We start, I started thinking when I was doing this and I was running a few meetings, I thought, what am I doing?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not exciting.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the content is important.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things I did is I actually strapped giving out an agenda to people beforehand.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I would not tell them what we're talking about.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to know that I had to know the story arc of the meeting my own.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there wouldn't be anything, and afterwards I give them an agenda and let them see any fine points.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that way they couldn't just skim down the list, see where they want to be engaged because they never knew when their passion would come up or their their needs would come up.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would just take out the agenda and move through a meeting where nobody knows what's going to happen except for the leader.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the leader has to be flexible because he's actually allowing for real feedback to happen in the process.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever I don't know if you've ever seen that um or experienced dynamic dialogue, but I feel like that's the difference between sometimes a dialogue between two people because there's give and take, and we bounce ideas off each other, and then you end up somewhere that you didn't expect.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: So some uh you know, some of the dialogues that you have with people, uh, you know, you end up in uh great exhilaration.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some of them uh you know you realize that you know you're energy depleted.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so then you know you don't have a dynamic dialogue with them.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh that's that's one way I kind of uh you know uh configure what are you seeing.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I think uh when uh you know uh use for dynamic dialogue uh is really people don't uh uh observe the body language text.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh speaking of the forms of looking at the body language text.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh in the dialogue.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Then what is being tested?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think that's really where dynamic dialogue is uh can help because you have to have a self-awareness of what the person is saying and what the person is not saying, and you've got to continuously work towards having a real dialogue.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I see that as a challenge for a leader.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's so true what you said.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: We need that self-awareness so we can be self-aware and then self-manage, obviously, like engage with ourselves.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then what you're talking about is it's really hard is the other awareness and then this ability to engage others well.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes kind of a two-pronged attack on how we deal with other people well.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the third piece, of course, is our values.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like we want to be aware of our deep values and how to be practicing them.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think what happens otherwise is somebody might be really self-aware and they might be in control of themselves, and like you said, misread the whole situation.
• 37:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: They walk away and think, I gave a great speech, everybody loved me, or we had a great conversation, and the other side comes away completely drained, doesn't retain anything they learned, um, and has a completely different level of energy coming out of it.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: How can we be aware to say, here's where I'm missing, here's where I'm getting energy, where's the other person driving from?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a great point because you can kind of self-reflect after a meeting and think that was that was a great learning experience, or that was a terrible learning experience that I'd rather do better next time.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: So true, so true.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you also talk about this concept of uh, you know, work-life harmony being much better than work-life balance.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh tell me uh what difference does it make uh to a person and how does one get there?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very, very tough thing that you talk about, which is work-life harmony versus work-life balance.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I can't give you a super easy answer of how to get there, but some tools maybe that help.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the reason work-life balance, if we think about paradox that we talked about earlier, is we want to say it's either work or life.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it one or the other.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so something like my wife is at home with our kids right now.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the ideas of motherhood or leadership are not one or the other.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's an issue that she can hold both of those well.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so for us to pit work versus the rest of your life, I think is a harmful way to think about it.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, if we start saying of work complex, like how does this interaction work between people, your relationships, the priorities you need, the actual physical things you need for your job, your goals, and how do these things begin to interweave?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's talking about what sort of behaviors we have, what sort of beliefs we have, where we get our identity from, and these start playing out in this idea.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the Center for Creative Leadership did a study and they have an assessment on it to kind of see where people fall in these, and it's kind of more of a clarity and self-awareness than necessarily telling you what to do.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they looked at the idea of people who are integrators between work and family life or work and life, and people who are separators.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so some people by default are wired one way or the other where they want to bring those two things together, and some people want to keep them completely separate.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another way they broke break that down, some people are work first, they get their big identity from work, and then these other things come back, or it's family first, some people it's another thing altogether, like a hobby or a separate passion they have.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's some people that cycle between these.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: So in one phase of their life or one area of the week, it's a work first that takes priority, they get their identity, they get their meaning from it, and then maybe on the weekend they get it from their family.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you start to think through these, you can think, well, where are the boundaries from?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can say if there's a strong boundary between those two and separating them, typically that means that there's lower stress in somebody's life.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you can think about somebody who's maybe hourly paid or a shift worker, and when their shift is over, they can clock out, they don't have to think about the job anymore.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: They can go home and sleep, and it has no effect on the rest of their life.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas often a CEO or maybe a uh a director or somebody who started their own company for sure, they tend to have a really low separation between those.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of thinking about their family while they're at dinner, they're thinking about either closing the next business deal, what bill they're pending, the next opportunity.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we see people have the strong barrier or the weak barrier between them.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then we start seeing kind of these either somebody starts to have a harmony between these and they know their behaviors and their identity, or they have a disharmony, and so they don't know where these are coming from.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Their stress levels increase.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so one of the things I sounds helpful to think through like which one of those people am I?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um do I get my identity from work first, or do I get it from my family first?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do I hold both of those equal?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get it from something entirely different?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: How strong are my boundaries between those levels?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I good at spanning across those two boundaries?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Am I good at stepping in when I need to?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: If if I get my identity from work, how what impact does it have on my family and friends, my health?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: If I get all my identity from my family, what impact does it have on my career?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: When a family member is sick, what does that do for my job for being able to provide for my family?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if we make it always binary, we end up picking one or the other.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: One is good, one is bad.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you talk to your boss, your work identity is good.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you talk to your mother, then your family identity is good.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Instead we can say, these are really complex.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: We need to talk about our beliefs, our behaviors, our identity, and those significant relationships with us, how does it operate?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so just by the fact of coaching and consulting, like I have periods where I have to travel more, I have late night calls or early morning calls.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of those typical boundaries for family time we get stepped on.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing I found is to talk, especially with my wife, sometimes my kids are a little young, and say, like, am I spending too much time in this area?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I work, you know, till 12:30 at night one night, where can we find time that I am pouring into those things that I find valuable the rest of my time?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so it becomes like a really complex fabric that we're weaving rather than saying how many hours a week do you put into work, how many hours on your free time or leisure or family.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I found that's a helpful process to say, where do I get my identity?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I find my focus?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And how strong are my boundaries?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like for me, I start thinking through and say, I think I get my identity from family and relationships, not just my work.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I get my identity there.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I struggle with the boundaries.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes my boundaries get really weak.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm sitting with my family, but I'm thinking about something else.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I want to be truly present with people.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be truly present when I'm working.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as a coach, that's one of the biggest things you can call the secret, is to be truly present with somebody.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I gotta work on my boundaries.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then where am I focusing?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be somebody who can have the right focus or like foreground and background things.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like at this moment, I want to be fully present here.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so to think through where do I need to grow, and we can't do this as an island, right?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're not individuals, like we're all connected to community, whether we're married, have kids, or don't.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have other relationships, and so to get feedback from other people and say, Do you find?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I talk, do I seem to get my identity out of my work and my success or my career?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get it out of sports?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get out of recreation?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get it out of what I know?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get it out of friends?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so to start working through that, and these are for me, at least that's a pretty deep reflection.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: You start thinking about your real core values.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when there's a misalignment, it's a lot more significant than a few hours at work that you should be at home.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're saying, am I authentic?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like you talked about.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Am I somebody who's authentic?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I say family is important, but then my life doesn't show it.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I say we should all be doing a good job, like we should be professionals, and then I'm not really present at work.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have some inauthentic authenticity there to be dealt with.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh, you know, this work-life harmony is a very interesting concept, and uh most often uh you know I take inspiration uh from uh you know say professionals uh who actually do it because it's not their work.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to have work-life harmony a lot more.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Say, I'm an architect, I'm a musician, uh I'm a doctor.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the integration between my work and life then.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And many of them are easier in our in their work.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: They don't discover that.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the same thing.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that is a very, very strong description in the workplace balance uh is is that is that something that you see or uh is it something that uh not all of us can be mistaken, not all of us can say uh but you can be uh in the job that you love, right?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore uh that's something that people tend to not discover.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you see all the time?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I felt it with myself in the past, um, and it even doesn't discount you might be very excellent at the job, but it's not something you're passionate about.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: So oftentimes even coaching with people that comes up.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client that he's working a job in oil and gas, and he doesn't have a particular passion for it, but he used to love his job, now he doesn't.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so as we're talking through that, why he was able to kind of uncover a few of his core values and saying what he loved about his job originally was his interaction with people to take teams of people and essentially spark life and motivation in them.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so now he's been able to see his job as the vehicle that allows him to do that.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what he loves to do is he's not a project manager, like he's bringing, he calls it sparking life, sparking life into people's lives.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: These people come in and just want to check off a box and go home and say he's changing their lives.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So now the job is just the vehicle, but he can say, here's what I do, like I change people's lives.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now he may be working with oil and gas, but it allows him to have ownership of who he is and his job, and so it's not just a job description that he checks off a box on a list and says, That's done.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I think, like you said, that we see that all the time.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the sad part is I feel like for a lot of us, it takes a lot longer in our life than we want it to.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I was coaching somebody who's in his 20s, and he was bemoaning the fact that it's taken him to his 20s to start figuring this out.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Don't say that to anyone older than you.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you start becoming self-aware and transforming how you see the world in your 20s, you're way ahead of the rest of us.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: The other important uh thing, you touched upon it in one of the conversations that we were having.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the big difference in the way adults learn.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you know, uh how maybe uh you know kids learn.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you talk about that being very, very key in your facilitation process.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh if I'm an adult, and given that there's so much of change.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to continuously upskill myself uh, you know, through every phase of my life.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh adult learning is something unique.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do adults learn?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, what do you think we should do to uh you know keep ourselves in the learning path?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's great.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um we see that all the time.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I personally believe if we think of the idea of discovery rather than just learning, that immediately thinks changes how we think about adult learning.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we're learning to incite discovery and not just transfer information.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I am not an educator by by training, but I've started to pick up on some things in here.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we see very simplified, like the framework that I'll use is that adults need an experience, whether it's in life or a specifically designed training experience, they need a reflection on that, time to process on it.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be led by a framing question, a discussion, even somebody having a commentary about it, like a leader, other director, or a teacher.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so once they've heard that, then adults need to be able to take that specific interaction and process it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then we need to be able to turn that and generalize it to the world.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the last thing is actually practice applying that to themselves, to their groups, organizations, and even at a societal level as well.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we break it down.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think four steps would be somewhere similar like that.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm designing a training, I'm thinking through, we know children's brains are so much faster and quicker at new neuropathways, developing things.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we show a get a picture of a dog on a piece of paper, and a kid is able to learn that we call this a dog, and then they're able to abstract, and when they see a dog in real life, apply the learning from a book to that dog.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to think about that more for adults as well.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: How can they have a specific experience and let them own turning and seeing what the world's really like to this fit?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm thinking of a training session, especially the longer it is, it doesn't always have to be community-led, like we talked about in meetings.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that involvement's really helpful.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'll do is I will think of and talk with, especially if it's for an organization, we come up with an extremely clear objective.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we want people to walk away with owning.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like they can go home and teach it to their family, they can go back to their teams, to their organization, they can go down on a street corner and tell people about it when they leave.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we want it to be pretty clear, not a vague idea like leadership.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: We want to say like effective leadership in modern times, something with much tighter parameters on it.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's in the background, and so you may never tell anybody this is what they're going through in their experience.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we'd say, okay, I introduced the topic, so I need a concise way to introduce the topic, but I'm not giving people that clear objective yet.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: I may never actually give it to them.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to give it to me at the end.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I want to create attention.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: So as adults, we need a little bit of dynamism when we're talking.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to tell you the problem.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: How have you seen this play out?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where does what does that look like?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're talking about deep fakes, like where have you believed something fake?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a family member or friend that shares fake news?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: How does this affect people?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to create attention so now people want to get from where they are to somewhere different.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll start cycling between either through dialogue or small group sharing between this concept and a new mental model or framework to work on.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: What does this look like?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: If we answer the VUCA of the volatility with the one of vision, does this work?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: How would that interact?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: How would you combat fake news?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: How would you combat an inauthentic leader?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: How would you see better?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that is able to keep the energy up if adults are learning.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's when, as a trainer, you can introduce a specific tool.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we often use a couple things.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: One of them we use an essential, it's often a piece, probably three parts most of the time that adults can learn and say, This is a tool for it.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you a few things about it, and I'll try it out.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: So then the next step is to practice that tool.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then we let adults reflect.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have to give them space to reflect.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Reflect on it, apply it to a specific situation, and then give them time to generalize it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: So now that you've introduced the tension, they're frustrated where they are, you've let them work through the process, and then get them to highlight it.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if they've created a new neural pathway connecting two things they didn't know, we want them to reinforce that.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like laying down the concrete, they're getting the more they reflect on it, the better it is.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, over time, we also want this to happen.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if I get the opportunity to do a training, and somebody says, we don't need to train us for eight hours, I would hope they would let me do it four hours over two different days.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because that allows them to go home, decompress, process, reflect, think through.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: We learned about feedback at work, and then they're at home and they're realizing they've never given feedback to their spouse.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: What would that look like?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: They come up with questions, they think through it, and the next morning their brains have really decompressed it.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you spend time reflecting, and suddenly they've now taken this tool and applied it outwardly.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of my process, and I think when I will write it out on a whiteboard as I'm trained, have I done all these things to get somebody where I want them to go?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think it's really thinking when you think there's an educator that talked about Bloom, talked about Bloom's taxonomy and how we learn, and often just hearing or reading, we have very little retention a few weeks out for most people.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as you get down the list, finally you have somebody reteaching it to somebody, there's a really high retention rate.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a facilitator, I want to be moving toward that high retention rate of training.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll often have people, if we're teaching it, and at the end of the day, you can't walk somebody through it.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Have I really taught you well?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so definitely not what adults are used to.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're coming with an empty notebook and expect to take pages of notes, and then at the end of the day, they're teaching the subject, which is really fun to watch.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and adults also uh, you know, you talk about this uh, you know, having a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and typically as adults, uh uh, you know, we tend to become uh, you know, over time we have a fixed mindset of many things.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you talk about the need for a uh growth mindset.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: So how does one uh you know get out of the fixed mindset syndrome and start having a growth mindset uh uh model in one's head?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it takes a lot of practice because we're taught the opposite from being children.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're always looking for an endpoint of success rather than progress.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you look at grades and marks that you get, whether or not you passed an exam, what school did you get in, um, how good a drawing is when a kid does it.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you drew a picture really well.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those are all fixed mindset issues rather than saying, Are you making progress?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: People when I coach them, they often want to basically get a thumbs up or thumbs down on how they're doing rather than if they're progressing and growing.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the ways that I'll talk about it is if we look at somebody's ability to learn over time, if we're a fixed mindset, we do grow.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: We experience things, we take small risk and we change.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if we're to take real risk and we don't see failure as loss, but as a learning experience, a growth mindset, we have it usually have a dip in performance, and that's what we're all scared of because if the goal is performance, nobody wants a dip in performance.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is after that dip, we now have new learning, and we actually come up at a higher rate, and so we have growth and change.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if we kept on that original trend, we have an area that we have lost learning that we could have had.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a process of saying, Am I scared of just the specific outcome?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Am I looking at a system and a process that will improve?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's one of the things early on in coaching is that you're not trying to get somebody to pass a test at the end of your time, you're trying to get them to grow.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes you're with a client, and sometimes it's very specific, a specific area of emotional intelligence they want to work on for like in my weekly meetings, I misread this cue, and I need to grow on this.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they need a lot more basic structure, like what is self-awareness?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're gonna work through that.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can't say like you're a level three person, instead, we're looking at how do we develop people to grow from where they are.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think even for me, I had a pretty alternate education system, and so when I entered into university, it was actually the first formal testing that I had was maintenance exams.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember on my first chemistry test, I missed one problem, and so I went to the professor because I didn't understand why I missed it.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he just looked at my sheet of paper and said, You made an A, why does it matter?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And handed it back to me.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like that was running up against what a fixed mindset can do.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was saying your outcome in this class is you want an A, so on your exams it shows that you got an A instead of saying, How can we learn?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like the rest of my life that trickles over.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: I want success or failure rather than progress.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the uh other important uh framework you talk about is experiences, essentials, and explorer.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh can you talk me through what is is this framework about and how does it help me uh you know become more human, become a better leader?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is actually my favorite thing um that we get to do.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty off the beaten path of what you expect.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people expect lots of information.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is kind of the compilation of some of the things we've already talked about here.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we started how do adults learn, what can they retain?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean like to be truly human?
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: How can this be applied to everybody?
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let me see that the essentials, experience, and explore.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the essentials are one of our key pieces when we do trainings.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: These are small consolidated pieces where we've taken the benefit of deep research people have done, case studies, life experience, and we boil those down to a few key things.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: Usually three or sometimes four, adults really retain those number of things really well into a way that can maybe be applied to our lives.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we take something like, let me think, I can even walk you through maybe if we took we could do something like listening, like a concept of listening.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: With all those, what we might do in a training.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so let me introduce the others.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those would be essential.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: The experience would be we come across them in life all the time, but in training, those have to be artificial.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we want to put somebody in an area that they have an experience that they have time to reflect on, and hopefully makes them uncomfortable in some way.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so on a larger scale, those what they call heat experiences where they put us somewhere where we're not comfortable, it can be in life, any stressful time.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: It can be something like jumping out of an airplane can do that to you, or they can be much more minor, which is what we typically do.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then the explorers are a way of tapping into our brain a little bit differently than what we're used to.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, if we were to talk about listening, a way that we might use all three of those tools is we would say, What is good listening?
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about to give people time to reflect.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is good listening?
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: People reflect on that, they write down their thoughts.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in this case, I would not have them share it with anybody.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's just to get the word, then you're doing the analytical processing.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you're often thinking, what if somebody told me listening is?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are there key pieces?
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'd say, Okay, shut your notebooks, your journals, and we usually have somebody walk over and we usually have it hidden so they haven't seen it.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we have about like if it's a group of about 10 or 12 people, we'd probably have 70 photographs, you know, settled on the ground, and they walk around, and we'd say these are the instructions without saying anything.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: Look through when you see a picture that represents good listening selected.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't give them any further steps.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll go through, they'll pick a picture, everybody's holding on to their picture.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are a little bit ashamed of what they pick.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people know right away, other people just can't decide between them.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then what we allow people is actually go through a process we have, but basically they get to share what they see that's objective.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: The people listening to them get to respond what else they see that's objective, and then the person applies that meaning.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're using this is what we call visual explorer.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're now using the right side of their brain to express things that they might not have expressed when they wrote it down.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that'd be an explorer, and then actually the group will go through and be able to share once you've done that.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's really helpful for people to create a whole framework in a way that we normally don't process.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've done it online now, too.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple websites we have that you can go to and get a list of pictures.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's also helpful sometimes for the other people not to see the picture that puts the pressure on the person to actually describe what's in there.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that would be a visual explorer.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple other types of explorers we use, and then the experience we might use is we might say we're gonna practice listening, and the experience is you're actually gonna pair off with people.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is a really fun one to do with people.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you and I are paired up, the instructions would be okay, Swami, first of all, you are gonna tell me a three-minute story about something very significant in your life.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: So often people pick things like first child, first job, last time makes all a loved one, really significant pieces in their life.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: As the listener, my job is to be the worst listener possible.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I will ask questions of you, like you mentioned body language earlier, poor body language, and I'm not listening, but I ask questions about things that are unimportant, basically to discount your story the whole time.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you might be telling about your firstborn child, and I talk about like, well, what kind of tires did the car have that you took to the hospital?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they basically discount what's significant to you, and then we reverse it, and you actually tell a story that's very unimportant, a very mundane task, like how do you brush your teeth?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, I actually engage in such a way that I really want to learn something from you.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though I've brushed my teeth as well, I'm asking every question I can to learn from you.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when people debrief about this experience, it changes both parties.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm really trying to learn about brushing my teeth, I've learned something from you.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you found out that as a person you felt hurt, you felt dishonored, you felt shame when you're talking about a significant moment, people ignored it.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you're talking about brushing your teeth, suddenly you feel like a valuable person because somebody cares about what you say.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that creates a small heat experience that people can actually experience over four or five minutes.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then what we'll do is say, okay, we'll draw you this on a board.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: It looks kind of like in here, like three half semi circles, and say, good listening comes from paying attention.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: So attention, comprehension, and intention.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we have ACI written on there.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this comes from um a guy named Kluger out of uh the University of Jerusalem, I believe, of what real listening is.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first step we all know, I teach this to my kids too, is you have to pay attention.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this is putting away distractions.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the modern world, that means put away your cell phone, turn it off, out of sight.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't open up your email while you're on a zoom call with somebody, all those things that everybody does.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to truly pay attention to the other person.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's best that that's value-driven.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is another person significant?
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are they worth my time and attention?
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second one is comprehension.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to ask clarifying questions, not to clarify whether you're right or wrong, but to clarify that I understand what you're saying.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll practice this because our goal often with questions is to see right or wrong rather than to actually truly understand someone.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can ask clarifying questions to see if I understand what you're saying, not if I agree or to disprove it.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I can repeat back key points.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're saying is, and then you can let me know if we actually have comprehension between us.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last one is intention, and this is the most important one, is I have to listen with the intent to learn or be changed by what you're saying.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean from the outset that if we're talking, I agree that I will agree with your opinion at the end.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what it means is I agree to be changed by what you're saying.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: So at the very least, if you're dead wrong in what you're saying, I should be changed by the fact that you're coming with a different perspective than me.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that people in the world see and experience the world different than I do, and now I can actually hear where they're coming from, and I can find out why.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so then we said, okay, now you have ACI.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm listening and I'm in a conversation and I realize that I'm not paying attention, and or I know I'm not listening well, or I don't understand, there's not true listening going on.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I'm not entering with a posture to be changed, if it's not true listening.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear political debate, especially on social media, you can immediately say like they're not checking all three boxes.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: And even if somebody's saying that they're paying attention or in a debate, they're paying attention, they're comprehending.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: But in a debate, they are not intending to be changed by the other person.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're waiting for their opportunity to prove their point.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we do an exercise like that, it might take maybe an hour, an hour and a half with a group, but they've walked through an experience that lets them feel good and bad listening, to be dissatisfied with where they are in their listening skills.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: They've been able to use that explore to kind of tap into a different part of being human, so they're not able to take a test on listening right away, but they can tell you, no, I know what good listening is.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: I might not be able to give you.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Three initials to help you, but I know what it looks like.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like this picture, and here's why.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then they walk away.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: So adults can then remember ACI and they draw an ear.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so they know kind of the three parts of your ear.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: They can say attention, comprehension, and intention.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that'd be an example of the three tools we use, and they work with a lot of other subjects, and you can find ways of essentializing really complex ideas.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of academics have put a lot of time in.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my colleagues works in Ethiopia and they work with a lot of language groups.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people who are their cultures are either pretty literate or partially literate.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they have to work through from English to MHARC and MHART to tribal language.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're trying to do really dense textbook information, it doesn't translate well.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: But drawing something like an ear in the dirt and talking about three ways to listen suddenly begins to help things like even old tribal lines and issues with peacekeeping suddenly make more sense because now two people from either two different religions or tribes can decide that they haven't really been listening to each other.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: And how can they step into that?
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I love about it something that works in a boardroom.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can talk about the board of directors of a company needing to listen better to each other and what that really means.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you can say, hey, we're like, I think often there the fault is nobody's has the intention to be changed by another person's opinion.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know the outside, like pay attention skills, and our vocabulary is well enough that we can comprehend.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can also take it to somebody who doesn't know how to read or write, and they can think through what it means to truly listen to someone.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I love about Explorers is a piece of information that can really change how we live and see the world.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I really love the concept of attention, comprehension, and intention.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I really love the ACI as a as a concept.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: So finally, um, Alex, uh, as a leader, how do I become more and more aware that uh, you know, there is a human factor in my leadership?
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: How should I be observant and how do you see me uh you know uh grow this uh skill?
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: What should I be doing?
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what are your three uh top things that I should be doing?
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um that's a great question.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I ask it a lot.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember several years ago, um a guy actually asked me, he said, We're actually playing basketball.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he, I'm not very good at basketball, but he read over to me and he said, Okay, I'm finally admitting it.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: People told me for years I'm not self-aware.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do I become more self-aware?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was no shock to me.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: I knew him, that was true.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: But at that point I didn't have an answer for him, and I was just fumbling around these ideas years ago before I learned some of this and before I'd hopefully changed and grown.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, Well, I mean, you gotta start like asking people and listen to what they say.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I could tell them.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what else to say, but I think there's some truth in that.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a couple of the ways that we would grow in self-awareness and understanding who you are, your values, understanding where other people are coming from, or other awareness is one have a long, hard discussion, conversation with yourself or other people about what success or your values are, um, and really work through that.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's a hard conversation to have.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: What do I really value?
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's important, what values am I proud of, what values am I not proud of?
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can start seeing not only to yourself how those play out as both challenges and opportunities for you, but then you can start to appreciate other people that they're bringing another set of values, not necessarily right or wrong, but they're bringing other values to the table, and that's why their behavior looks different.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think redefining what success and understanding what your values are is key.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is eliciting feedback from people.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we are not islands.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like as humans, we're meant to have communities.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even the most introverted of us have a community.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I found that feedback is extremely hard to get.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It takes people who you can trust and trust you enough to give feedback.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, especially as you move up in leadership, that even becomes harder because of our conditions.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think getting feedback from people is key.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I said it to that gentleman years ago, but I think it's still a skill that we should all do to say, how how do you perceive me?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's it like to be on the other side of me?
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: What sort of values do I have?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Am I candid?
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel that I'm manipulating?
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see this?
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like you talked about in authenticity.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see that in my life?
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where do you see mismatch?
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see disharmony between my work life balance, all those things?
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we need people who actually speak into that.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as leaders, it's exponentially harder because of positions to do that.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing is to invest in yourself.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know you and I have talked about this before, but so few of us, I did not do this when I was younger.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so to become self-aware and grow as an individual takes time and it's valuable and it's worthwhile.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so to set aside time, set aside resources, whether it's money or a place, to actually grow as an individual.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think those things, feedback, investing yourself and defining your values are key because of the outflow of those, and you start to see the benefits as they grow.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of it's hard for sure.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're growing self-awareness, you ask for feedback and somebody tells you something that's hurtful, then you have to think about listening again.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I I was paying attention, I comprehend what they said, but I don't want to be changed.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they told me that I discount my employees or vendors that come, you know, I treat them like less than I am.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or you act differently when you know the board of directors are here than you do when they're gone, or especially from family members are great because they see so many more sides of us.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I think those are three areas that, at least for me, have been really helpful.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I found they're all challenging.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: To really define yourself down to several values that you filter your whole life through is a difficult thing.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I found those often start really broad, um, maybe too altruistic in what we say about ourselves, something like integrity is a value of mind.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to get a lot more specific when we start seeing how that plays out in our behaviors and beliefs.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then, like I said, the feedback, you have to find people that will actually give you true feedback, and then investing in yourself, which is also part of that's a form of feedback as well, where you're giving yourself feedback.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: What went well, what would I improve?
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: What would I do differently next time?
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what emotions am I feeling after this?
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I found those all take a lot of time to process, and it takes a real investment in yourself to set that time aside.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a great session, uh, Alex.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a lot of learnings, a lot of points that you said resonated with me.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things that uh really made sense in terms of being self-aware, being uh the need to invest in oneself, the fact that you need to take feedback, tough but challenging.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the more uh human you become, uh I believe you've got to be more and more authentic.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the key takeaway that I've had.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fantastic question, and thanks for your time, Alex.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for the speaker.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's wonderful.