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From Opera Stages To Boardrooms With Compassionate Communication · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barby.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Every episode, we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Equal Parts informative and titillating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So let's go ahead and start with our first question.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start at the beginning.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: What was your very first paying job?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: My first paying job, I had a job that I was fired from when I was a little bit younger than this, just because I never showed up.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm pretty sure they were reciprocally not giving me any money for that.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think I was paid.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was when I was 15, right?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: My first actual paying job.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a 16-year-old high school senior, because I had one of those early birthdays or late birthdays.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: My first serious girlfriend got me this job because her previous boyfriend had this job and he was leaving it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So not just keeping the seat warm, so to speak, relationally, just keeping seats warm relationally, so to speak, but she got me this job.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was as a liquor store delivery fella and stock person.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really interesting in that I became my my popularity went up a notch.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say that it was I was instantly popular because I was on the edges of things when I was a kid.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: High school was not a happy time for me.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can get into that at some point if we like.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably why I'm a coach now.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, yeah, so there I was driving cases of Seagram's seven-crown to lonely embittered old alcoholics in trailer parks and also supplying parties around the Stanford campus.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was a little bit light-fingered at that time, not like seriously criminally light-fingered, but I would lift like a six-pack to take to a party, or like two six-packs to take to a party, or something like that.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, I got invited to more parties, which was nice.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that alcohol could take the timidity out and the and remove a barrier to some kind of like enjoyment.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I also went back to those folks 40 years later and said, Hey, I stole from you.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's what I think it's worth in today's money.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't much, but man, it had burned me.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hated that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I hated that.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my first job.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was there for about six, I was there for about six months.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you were the first DoorDash to loving alcohol.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Kinda.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Kinda.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that job exists anymore.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a family-run liquor store.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: They all worked in the store.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: They were the Ragnos, and this was in La Dera, which is the on on the entryway to Portola Valley.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I grew up in that area, and so it was a natural spot for me.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would show up late and barely dressed from seeing the girlfriend that got me the job.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do now?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do any kind of speech communication, presentation, speech writing, page-to-stage, directorial coaching, eliciting story and writing your story for you.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we know, as we who help people with story know, folks don't know what's so great about them.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in a position to know.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I spend a fair amount of my time, at least in the beginning of engagements.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say I've got a TED talk, or let's say I'm helping somebody write a keynote or something like that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they want some help with some storytelling, because everybody's heard that's the way to go, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll just illicit, let's say, talk to me, tell me, and then I'll go, that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, What?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's nothing.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's everything.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's everything, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I do that, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a listener that way.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I sift through people's stories, just like you two are trying to with me, with some minimal cooperation on my part.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I guess I could say a recent splashy one was a guy.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: If I told you his name, you might know it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's a serial tech founder.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: You would definitely know the companies that he was involved in.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was helping him with a keynote speech for a big lead dev conference in Europe, let's say.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's suitably anonymized, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a good story from that that I may bring back in a little bit later.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then so that's the sandbox that I've played in for 30, 40 years, right?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: My new sandbox, that's a sandbox that I know every cat turd in, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just really, there isn't no surprises in terms of how I work, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Always surprises in terms of who's in front of me and what they're doing, right?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And always stuff to learn.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I still love it a lot, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I should also say that part of that, and I'm getting a lot more call for it these days, who knows?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have my guess is as to how come, is people worried about their voices.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: People trying to do something to rejuvenate, to find them when they're lost, to change them, to make them sound more like themselves and less like who they've been masking as, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Masquerading as.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a beautiful thing.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoy that.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the new sandbox over here is nonviolent communication.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I use that to help folks in every kind of relationship.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it begins with self-compassion, self-connection, self-empathy, and results in one's ability, one's desire, one's commitment to imagining other people's needs and feelings, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I get very in touch with my own, and that allows me to be truly curious about and truly committed to others' needs and feelings, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what is that good for?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's good for parenting.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's good for being in any kind of relationship, it's good for leading, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's good for teaching, and it's good for conflict resolution.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, how does one get from filling in shoes of an ex-boyfriend to what you do now?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Tell talk to us about that.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Holy there's some missing film right in there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's about 18 minutes of missing tape, let's say.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I had just finished flunking out of UC Santa Barbara my freshman year.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had mooned around a little bit and taken some classes at a local JC.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then I ended up at at Boston University for a year.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I did okay there, but I wanted to come back home.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was taking some more classes at the same JC.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody said, Why don't you try out for this play?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it turned out to be a musical.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I had always sung, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got a spot, I got a job, I got a role.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And remember when I said that I was shy before, right?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was shy.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was it was that that part was really difficult, but it kind of drew me out.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what I discovered was, oh, drama is about what it is to be human.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that was so beautiful and so sense-making and so entrancing for me, and really gave me a place to land and stand.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, I was just everything was murky, and I didn't care about anything, and I didn't know where I was going.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that for some decades, and there's some stories in there.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then when, how long to make this?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I eventually ended up singing opera because I was still as shy as I was, and self-esteem stuff and imposter stuff and shame stuff and all that stuff.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had difficulty with no, with people telling me no, right?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Still do.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I would kind of crumple, right?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I wouldn't be able to go out on a ton of auditions and all that stuff.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was in LA at that time, and I thought, what do I do?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody said we should study opera.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I started studying opera and ended up singing at the LA Opera, ended up singing at the San Diego Opera, ended up singing in Germany, got married, had a one-year-old, moved up to the North Bay area, and I was auditioning at that point for, I'll just speed it ahead.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Eight years later, I had done seven years of shows at the San Francisco Opera in the chorus and covering parts and stuff like that.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was an okay living, and I was doing some other things too.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a, at that point, a what did I have?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I had a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, and I wanted them to go, me and my then wife, I and my then wife wanted them to go to someplace non-commercial, non-corporate, non-pornographic, non-violent, these things to try to get a little bit away from some of the modern culture stuff, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we heard about Waldorf education and it ended up placing our children there.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I was like, huh, I guess I better get a real job.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is getting expensive.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so the real job turned out to be the very next day after I said that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a serendipitous thing.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mused aloud to my then wife the night before this thing happened.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I wonder if there's something I could teach over at the school.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the school has an international reputation.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's hotly competitive to teach there, to send your children there.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's expensive.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And looking ahead, I thought, how are we going to be able to afford this?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe I'll try to teach there.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, maybe I could teach something there.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, No, you know how competitive that is?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be ridiculous.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: The next day I got offered a job, just out of the clear blue sky, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because they knew I was singing opera and they said, Could you run choir?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Could you help with some of the drama stuff?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And within a year, I was three-quarter time.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Next year I was full-time.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was there for 13 years.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up teaching everything that I'd done professionally.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had also been an editor for Stanford and Berkeley and UCLA.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had also waited a lot of tables.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Had also taught writing and taught poetics and taught voice and all that stuff.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up teaching all this stuff.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then a mother of a child who was in one of my high school, I taught all high school and all kinds of subjects.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of my dear students' moms said, Kevin, you ought to really offer this professionally.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to offer this to the business world.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So anything to do with all the stuff I already did, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did, and here I am.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was about 15 years ago that I started doing that.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I hung out that little shingle to the side while I was still performing and teaching.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then when COVID struck, I was like, I guess I better make the leap.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it, man.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So how did you get from teaching to really understanding I was gonna say humans, but understanding humans and finding speeches for them?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: How did we make the transition?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was an easy transition in the sense that it was immediately word of mouth.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I never did any pipeline funnel construction, no marketing, nothing whatsoever.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: My first client, my first real client was a young by my standards.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about yours, 23, 24, a year old woman, who was from Tahiti and who had a super interesting background.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: She had been given a TED talk with absolutely no guidance whatsoever, a TEDx talk, TEDx papete.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I worked with her, and she had never been on stage.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't know what to do with these.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: She had no idea what was up, right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I worked with her for six or seven months, and it was really formative for both of us.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: The thing became a smash.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: She became a coach.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was confirmed in stuff I'd already been doing, both in the business world and for a long time in the arts, education in the arts, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then how I want to go back to that question a little bit because it's a rich one, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: What the question, what is it to be human?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest bang for the buck crucible around that question that I was ever exposed to and went through was teaching 10th grade.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Man, if you teach 10th grade and I taught a ton of 10th grade, you're kind of set.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you can survive 10th grade classrooms and putting them in plays and doing things like that, I don't know.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us never get out of high school, would you agree?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all we're all still in high school, and and that's the dark night of the soul.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's where all flesh comes off bone.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's walking around X-rayed, and they look at you and man, they really want to see if you're for real.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can be for real in that situation, you can survive.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love helping folks transform.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that I suppose that's where that was formed was what I was doing with these kids was so transformative.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: The real question I want to ask is I should probably frame it this way: what made you think that you could go from being on stage and as a performer and then performing other people's words into creating the words for people to perform?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose the answer really is what made me sure.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't think, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the same, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm able to help folks who have any kind of communication problem, any kind of inability to find words, any kind of misapprehension about how to treat people.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've been into that.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I realized that my my stage world and my education world, especially my stage world, that presupposes psych safety.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: You go in there, look, you got three and a half weeks to make a show.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm talking about a legit stage show, maybe a little bit longer for a musical, right?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you got this time, you're delivering.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be late, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're shipping.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you got all these people you don't know, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're coming from everywhere you haven't been.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're all different, it's intersectionality heaven or heck or whatever you think, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so what is the job?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: The job is to see the human in them as soon as possible, to let them see the human in you as soon as possible, and to get together and make creative work.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there's tons of risk in that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you got a director or anybody there, I'm talking about a stagehand, rolling their eyes, that workplace sucks.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, I realized that I had been in that culture forever already.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I had also been in innumerable meetings in various organizations and in education.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I know how this stuff runs.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And to shift that over into the business world, uh, as people say these days, I'm not gonna lie, it was scary.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because I'd never been part of it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been allergic to money my whole life in in many ways, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and the idea that I would go in there and be able to get this lingua franc, get this vocabulary going, pass as a business person was very daunting to me, very scary.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's been a it's been a really beautiful journey.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of grown me up in some ways that that I had not been.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you like most about what you're doing now for work?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of stuff.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's transformation, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's helping somebody find courage, inspiration, imagination, going, helping them with an imagination of something, and then building a kind of a pathway and kind of a bridge, right?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that they can see themselves maybe a little bit there, right?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love helping them, walking side by side with them through all of that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just adore that.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings up one of the pitfalls, too.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Don, you can probably relate to this and you two else in some way.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I have to watch out for mission creep.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have to check in with my client all the time, even to the point that they say, hey, don't be so hard on yourself.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing fine.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm not being hard on myself.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your business.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I what I am doing is I'm making sure that I understand point by point where you want to go.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because I get excited about where they could go.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I love about it is yeah, helping them find courage and helping them with uh toolbox, giving them the nuts and bolts skills to get someplace that they that they mostly were able to identify that they wanted to go.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: They don't always know.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody comes to you for coaching for exactly what they end up getting coached on.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so one has to really honor all of that, but then not you know, not honor it so much that it stays uncracked, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta crack that egg, whatever that is.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I love that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like teaching, look, it's just like opera singing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can never get it right.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as getting it right.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna make mistakes all the way through.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I love.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get it right.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It takes your full attention, it engages your heart, your soul, your mind, and your work, you're doing this work with somebody.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's so important to me to be in community with people.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: It almost seems like you become a therapist because you're trying to unlayer and getting to know these people.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes people share things that maybe you're not equipped.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not any of the things.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, thank you.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're not equipped to handle those tracks.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that stuff has happened.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say that it's happened in a big rush where I'm like, oh my God, what just happened?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: What shall I do?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's an emergency.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do I call 911 or do I not nothing like that has happened.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I would also say that.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don, you can speak to this.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know what they you know what the boilerplate stuff is in in coaching certification?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty of thou shalt nots, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't worry about that so much.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree, Elsa, that there are some gray areas, right?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or some multicolored areas.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't call it so much unlaying something that I shouldn't have unlayered, and then, oh, what did we just uncover, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have found that stuff doesn't come up un unless the person is ready for it to come up, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also true therapeutically.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I'm practicing that, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this gets to something like nonviolent communication.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a couple of parents.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a routine problem, right?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they would really like to raise their children without shame.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't know how.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually so if they're landing with me and they're asking for that, then they already have some support, right?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: They already have some, they've already traveled a little bit, right?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I can and so then to say, do I know what to do?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know what to do.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And also I don't, right?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just figuring it out together.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's Don, you might have more to say about this from your more what about a year ago or so, you got your certification, and I'm sure you have may have some things to say about it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: At all about like it, like there is a separation.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't worry so much about that separation, and I have never been in a situation yet, could happen, where I damaged anybody, or where I said, Oh yes, I can take that on and all will be well.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: What surprised you most about this type of work that you do?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: What surprised me most about it, it's constantly surprising, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the same thing that always surprises me and that I always honor, which is that people actually have a lot of faith, they have a lot of trust, they have, they really can get very vulnerable.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking around or to, I'm not speaking to what you said about, okay, what it are we appropriately working with people, or is it getting more like therapy?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about, let's say, and this has been happening more and more.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: People are coming to me with concerns about their voices.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody comes and they're having, okay, people have told them, either lately or all their lives, that their voices are hash, that their voices don't serve them, that their voices are weak or thready or patchy or inaudible, or that they have fry, vocal fry, which is all over NPR, and women do it more than men, and it becomes a whole Phillip, it becomes a whole style, right?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so if they self identify, they're already doing something really risky.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say self identify, their boss has not said she needs vocal work.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or he needs to step up and do better.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if they self-identify, they're like, Yes, this is gonna be hard.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do they know?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're playing an instrument and it's you.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so the vulnerability and the identification in that is something that always, I don't know, honors me.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: That I always say, Wow, look at your courage.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because people, and I say, remember you in fourth grade?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when your voice could cut through plywood?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: What happened to her?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: As as I like to say, if Hillary had me, she'd have won by 20 points.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody likes to be lectured at.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Women or men, and we have a terrible problem in this culture.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Men and women hate women.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible thing.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's and so how does that get reflected?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It shows up in women's voices a ton.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And women in the business world a ton.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And men's voices too.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're pushing down.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tenors want to be baritones, and baritones want to be basses and all that shit.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what impresses me and surprises me every single time is how somebody will take something that is that vulnerable and with which they are that identified and say, Help me.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big deal.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got several of those clients right now.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does that mean?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It means, just like nuts and bolts wise, there's a combination of tensions and relaxations that you would probably never guess at if you hadn't done some somatic work or some breathing work, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that feeds into what happens with your phonation, with how your vocal folds are coming together.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And now for folks who can't see me, I am showing the vocal folds with my two index fingers rubbing against one another, right?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I just had a call about that this morning.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was just coaching somebody from nine to ten my time about that, our Pacific time.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, like I say, I keep saying it's a nuts and bolts thing, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Around, okay, so diaphragmatic breathing, getting your jaw relaxed, getting your neck muscles, your trapezius, everything relaxed and all down, and then coordinating that with these teeny tiny, and here I'm mapping with my index fingers again, teeny tiny vocal folds and your brain, your noggin, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is the coordination of that?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you were a kid, you knew that innately.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what were you signaling as a kid?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: You were signaling your emotions and your needs.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no doubt.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's mine.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: He took it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Give me that.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry about that.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't mean to trigger anybody.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then as adults, what do we do?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: We do, we go, we do everything we can do to not get into our own emotions, much less show them, and not to get into our own needs, much less speak them, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so all of that, it's all really connected to the nonviolent communication, compassionate communication as well, because what is this instrument for?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: This instrument is for connection and for self-expression and for wondering what the heck is going on with you that you come in and you sling your bag down and you slump in your chair and you give me that look, and I go, huh, that looks like an unmet need to me.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Are you maybe tired?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you hungry?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: You need a hug?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You need a sandwich?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: You need more honesty than you just got all day long?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: So those are that's where I go.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: What's the hardest part about your job?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Self-promotion.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: That goes back to my allergic to know stuff.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: On some level, I am total guru level in terms of anything to do with communication.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Speech, performance.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can really buff you up.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can we can really get some shine going.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And still, there's something about putting that ask out there.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other one, it's like, oh, do I really know what I'm doing?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: With with the nonviolent communication.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I've only been doing it a handful of years, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a ton to learn still, but man, is it beautiful?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the hard part.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is self-disqualification, putting yourself out of the game.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hard part.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I would say that's the thing I wanted to touch on a little bit before is that this journey of professionalizing these offers of mine and of self-representation, self-self-presentation, marketing, all that stuff, man, that touched some super scary spots in me where I just really needed to take another look.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: That that has, without getting more specific about it, that that has changed me, you know, and made me just much more grown up and much happier and much less angry and much less afraid and all that stuff.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Demons have been like battling, and here I am battling, you know, all my life.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been extraordinarily great and just difficult.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: This solopreneur thing, this this sole proprietor thing, oh my gosh.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would never have guessed how difficult it was going to be.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: What's the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've ever witnessed at work?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh I don't know.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: There there isn't anything crazy.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you a quick one that that comes up.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So back when I was teaching high school, I used to take ninth graders on wilderness trips.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're out on the Lost Coast, which is in Northern California, and it's got some interesting features.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of eucalyptus out there.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we have some time to kill, and I thought, okay, this will be fun.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I will make an agility and balance course that is a circle around this whole stand of eucalyptus.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there was plenty to work with, lots of down eucalyptus branches and some other things around.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made this thing that was about a 50-yard loop that was up off the ground by about 18.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: When I say I, I engage the kids to do this with me, right?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time we finish, it's about a 50-yard loop, and it finishes with a ramp, and all this is branches and bare stuff and tricky stuff.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we had a bell for some reason, I forget why.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea was that you were supposed to, you were going to get timed, and you go all around this loop, and kids were falling off all over the place, and then run up this ramp and ring this bell, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody's stumbling and fumbling and having a tough time.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And these are ninth graders, they have good balance.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was tricky.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this kid named Rye, who was a little bit down there on the not exactly popular, whatever, seemed to me like a bit of an outlier guy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: He gets on the thing, he runs around it like a gazelle, and he runs up the ramp and he rings the bell and he drops off.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he just folds his arm and he just looks at us.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Folds his arms and just says, Yep, that's me.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, and everybody's just stunned and slackjawed.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I said, Rye, what can you can you say anything about what it was like?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I moved faster than my balance could fail.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, I love that.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he said.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that was one.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I don't know.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have like wild, weird work stories, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a waiter in Los Angeles, waiterslash actor, I waited on Prince, right?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a star spot, so I waited on a bunch of people, right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was when he was with Kim Basinger.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: You might remember her, it's possible.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when there were still paparazzi and all that stuff.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was waiting on Prince and Kim, and I went into the kitchen and I came back, and tables were overturned, and his bodyguards were on the floor, and people had been subdued, and Prince and Kim were gone.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: This all happened in about 40 seconds, right?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so the story was that this guy, I think he was Australian, paparazzo, had a little mini camera, and at some point he jumped up from another table and he snapped them in this booth, right?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: The two of them together, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: This blonde woman and this black man and so the bodyguards tackled him, but not before he passed the camera to an accomplice and they didn't notice.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the pictures were sold to National Enquirer for$100,000.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was, but it was a big deal, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest is everybody knows that education is a snake pit, right?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: At least on the adult side.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: You treat the kids really well.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: The stuff that happens among the staff is pretty crazy.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: What's next for you?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lunch.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have a guy who's going to be calling me from Turkey.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to do some NVC work.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting, so I'm in a referral network marketing group, and they see me as this voice and communications guy, this performance and speech writing, and that's fine, right?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see me as this conflict resolution fellow or somebody who helps you get sane and feelings and needs based.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what's next is I'm trying to grow that.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy with almost, like I said, the sandbox, that kind of almost feels like my day job now.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can relate to that, Elsa.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my and the job, but what I really want to do is direct.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, but what I really want to do is increase people's feelings and needs literacy.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to do, right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because we do such violence to first ourselves, just in the way we envision ourselves, talk to ourselves, treat ourselves, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And how is anybody else going to stand a chance when we're treating ourselves that shitty?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I love to just help people go, huh, yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Could we maybe stand a little bit of vulnerability and self-care for just a minute and see where that could lead us?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds like psych in some ways, but isn't it isn't.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like taking the psychological aspect and then bringing it into communication, like into existence outside the body, right?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would agree.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking for anybody's, you know, story.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking to help resolve trauma or abuse or the things that you know proper shrinks do.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: My partner of 10 years is a proper shrink, right?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can always check with her and say, How out there am I getting Mary?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I do.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so that's next because it just is so needed, right?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Look at how people talk to one another, for goodness sake.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or don't talk to one another.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or don't talk, right?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or don't talk, right?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I guess I would say, if I didn't say this, I I would be not sad, but I'd probably be wanting another interview.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So here it is.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's choose grief over grievance.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Grievance is what gets autocrats elected.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Grief is what lets me stay in primary feelings, not secondary feelings, not cover feelings, not strategic or faux feelings.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's way easier for me, and I do this every day, to be angry than sad, to be contemptuous than lonely, right?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: So choose grief.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we we take responsibility for our feelings and our needs.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just what we do, not what happened.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not very interested in what happened to you.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I am on a human level, but it's like, what do we do?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: We'd like to thank our guest today who enjoyed us to literally like thank you.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so shy.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: So shy.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: So shy.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was really hard pulling out some answers from him.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And with that, what a scandal.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: You are scandalous.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm honored and thank you so much for asking me and having me on.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for this week's confession.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got a workplace confession of your own, we're all ears.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hit us up at our email address.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.