Latest / The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast / 302. Every Workplace Has a Nervous System | The Same Pattern is Everywhere

Transcript

302. Every Workplace Has a Nervous System | The Same Pattern is Everywhere · The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast

• 0:00
  Kathie (2): Have you ever had a dream that stayed with you for years?
• 0:03
  Kathie (2): Not because it scared you, but because you knew it meant something.
• 0:09
  Kathie (2): And I'm talking about a nighttime dream.
• 0:11
  Kathie (2): That's what I'm talking about.
• 0:13
  Kathie (2): For me, it was always the same dream.
• 0:16
  Kathie (2): It was about a tornado, and looking back, I realize that dream wasn't predicting my future.
• 0:22
  Kathie (2): It was teaching me how to recognize patterns under pressure.
• 0:28
  Kathie (2): Welcome to the Kathie Owen Perspective podcast.
• 0:31
  Kathie (2): My name is Kathie Owen, and I study human behavior under pressure, working with founders, leadership teams, and organizations navigating moments of uncertainty from mergers and acquisitions to succession, growth, and major change.
• 0:47
  Kathie (2): My work focuses on the patterns that quietly shape leadership, culture, and enterprise value long before they become obvious.
• 0:57
  Kathie (2): Today's episode is unlike anything I've shared before.
• 1:00
  Kathie (2): Instead of teaching a concept, I'm gonna read a chapter from my newly revised memoir, The Truth Bubbles Up.
• 1:09
  Kathie (2): People often ask me where my work came from.
• 1:12
  Kathie (2): The answer is not a certification.
• 1:14
  Kathie (2): It's not a degree, and it isn't one workplace or one relationship.
• 1:21
  Kathie (2): It came from a lifetime of watching pressure reveal what was already there.
• 1:26
  Kathie (2): This book is the story of that journey.
• 1:29
  Kathie (2): It's the origin of the ideas that eventually became human patterns under pressure.
• 1:36
  Kathie (2): If you'd like to read the entire book, you'll find a link to that in the show notes and description below, along with a companion blog post that expands on this chapter and includes additional resources.
• 1:50
  Kathie (2): Now, without further ado, let's get into the chapter.
• 1:55
  Kathie (2): The Truth Bubbles Up, Chapter 15: Same Pattern, Different Building.
• 2:04
  Kathie (2): "Every workplace has a nervous system.
• 2:07
  Kathie (2): Under pressure, it tells the truth."-Kathie Owen.
• 2:12
  Kathie (2): There are moments in life that seem insignificant when they happen.
• 2:17
  Kathie (2): Then years later, you realize they mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
• 2:23
  Kathie (2): For me, one of those moments happened in December of twenty nineteen.
• 2:29
  Kathie (2): Our human resources director was dying of lung cancer.
• 2:33
  Kathie (2): A small group of us went to visit her at the hospital.
• 2:36
  Kathie (2): She could barely breathe.
• 2:39
  Kathie (2): I remember standing there watching someone take what would be among her final breaths.
• 2:45
  Kathie (2): There was nothing dramatic about it.
• 2:47
  Kathie (2): No profound speech, no final lesson, just the reality of life.
• 2:54
  Kathie (2): A few hours later, she was gone.
• 2:57
  Kathie (2): At the time, I didn't know why that day stayed with me.
• 3:00
  Kathie (2): Looking back, it was because something else was ending too.
• 3:05
  Kathie (2): Not a life, a season, a culture, a way of operating, a system.
• 3:13
  Kathie (2): A few weeks later, our chief financial officer retired.
• 3:17
  Kathie (2): He had been the stabilizing force within the company for years.
• 3:21
  Kathie (2): Soon after, the pandemic arrived, and that's when everything changed.
• 3:27
  Kathie (2): Not overnight, but steadily, almost imperceptibly at first.
• 3:32
  Kathie (2): Then all at once, fear entered the system.
• 3:37
  Kathie (2): And when fear enters the system, something interesting happens.
• 3:41
  Kathie (2): People begin searching for certainty.
• 3:43
  Kathie (2): Policies multiply, control increases, trust decreases, communication changes, curiosity disappears.
• 3:52
  Kathie (2): People stop asking questions and start protecting positions.
• 3:57
  Kathie (2): The company I had known for years slowly became something different.
• 4:03
  Kathie (2): I wasn't working in human resources.
• 4:06
  Kathie (2): I wasn't an executive.
• 4:07
  Kathie (2): I wasn't involved in strategic planning.
• 4:10
  Kathie (2): I ran the wellness center.
• 4:12
  Kathie (2): I was the fitness and wellness director.
• 4:15
  Kathie (2): At least that was my title.
• 4:17
  Kathie (2): But over the years, something unexpected happened.
• 4:20
  Kathie (2): Employees talked to me a lot.
• 4:23
  Kathie (2): People tell fitness professionals things.
• 4:26
  Kathie (2): They tell us about stress, marriage problems, health concerns, work frustrations, family struggles, leadership challenges, burnout, fear, life.
• 4:36
  Kathie (2): By the time the pandemic arrived, I had spent years listening, and when you spend enough time listening, patterns begin to emerge.
• 4:45
  Kathie (2): At first, I thought I was helping people improve their health.
• 4:49
  Kathie (2): Eventually, I realized I was studying human behavior.
• 4:52
  Kathie (2): I just didn't know it yet.
• 4:54
  Kathie (2): The wellness center became an unexpected observation deck.
• 4:59
  Kathie (2): From there, I could see things happening throughout the organization.
• 5:03
  Kathie (2): People who felt valued performed differently than people who felt invisible.
• 5:09
  Kathie (2): Leaders who created trust generated different results than leaders who created fear.
• 5:16
  Kathie (2): Departments developed personalities.
• 5:18
  Kathie (2): Cultures developed nervous systems.
• 5:21
  Kathie (2): Pressure revealed things always.
• 5:25
  Kathie (2): The more pressure that entered the system, the more visible those patterns became.
• 5:29
  Kathie (2): I noticed employees becoming afraid to speak openly.
• 5:32
  Kathie (2): I noticed information being filtered.
• 5:35
  Kathie (2): I noticed growing gaps between what leaders believed was happening and what employees were experiencing.
• 5:41
  Kathie (2): And because I cared deeply about the organization, I spoke up.
• 5:46
  Kathie (2): I thought that was what responsible people did.
• 5:49
  Kathie (2): I shared concerns, I reported observations, I communicated patterns I believe leadership needed to understand.
• 5:56
  Kathie (2): I wasn't trying to create conflict.
• 5:59
  Kathie (2): I was trying to create awareness.
• 6:01
  Kathie (2): There is a difference.
• 6:04
  Kathie (2): What I didn't understand at the time was that awareness is only welcomed in systems that feel safe enough to hear it.
• 6:12
  Kathie (2): In fearful systems, awareness often feels like a threat.
• 6:16
  Kathie (2): That realization changed my understanding of leadership forever.
• 6:20
  Kathie (2): Over time, I found myself less focused on gym equipment and wellness challenges, and more focused on people.
• 6:27
  Kathie (2): The gym had started with a few pieces of used equipment, and over the years it evolved into something much bigger: health fairs, wellness initiatives, fitness programs, education, connection, community.
• 6:42
  Kathie (2): But the most valuable thing that I gained wasn't any of those.
• 6:46
  Kathie (2): It was perspective.
• 6:48
  Kathie (2): I began seeing the same patterns I had witnessed in families, the same patterns I had witnessed in relationships, the same patterns I witnessed throughout my own life.
• 6:58
  Kathie (2): Different building, same pattern.
• 7:01
  Kathie (2): Control, fear, identity, belonging, trust, psychological safety, pressure.
• 7:09
  Kathie (2): The names changed, the pattern didn't.
• 7:12
  Kathie (2): Eventually, the gap between what I was observing and what the system wanted from me became too large.
• 7:20
  Kathie (2): At the time, I thought the story was about being fired.
• 7:24
  Kathie (2): Looking back, I see something different.
• 7:26
  Kathie (2): The system and I had become incompatible.
• 7:30
  Kathie (2): The organization wanted someone who would stay inside the boundaries of the role.
• 7:34
  Kathie (2): I had already stepped outside of them.
• 7:36
  Kathie (2): I was no longer simply running a gym.
• 7:39
  Kathie (2): I was observing human behavior.
• 7:41
  Kathie (2): I was connecting dots.
• 7:43
  Kathie (2): I was asking questions.
• 7:45
  Kathie (2): And once you begin seeing patterns, it's very difficult to stop seeing them.
• 7:51
  Kathie (2): The day I lost my job remains one of the hardest days of my life.
• 7:56
  Kathie (2): I didn't get to say goodbye to many people I cared about.
• 8:00
  Kathie (2): I left carrying confusion, grief, anger, disappointment, and fear.
• 8:06
  Kathie (2): As I drove off the property for the final time, something caught my eye.
• 8:11
  Kathie (2): A black hawk sat nearby, eating a snake.
• 8:15
  Kathie (2): I stared at it for a moment, then I drove away.
• 8:19
  Kathie (2): I don't pretend to know exactly what it meant.
• 8:22
  Kathie (2): I only know it stayed with me.
• 8:24
  Kathie (2): Some symbols arrive in our life for reasons we don't fully understand until much later.
• 8:30
  Kathie (2): The months that followed were difficult.
• 8:32
  Kathie (2): Then difficult became unbearable.
• 8:35
  Kathie (2): Anxiety showed up.
• 8:36
  Kathie (2): Panic attacks appeared.
• 8:37
  Kathie (2): My confidence disappeared.
• 8:39
  Kathie (2): My identity collapsed.
• 8:41
  Kathie (2): For eighteen months, I wandered through one of the hardest seasons of my life.
• 8:48
  Kathie (2): I thought I was grieving a career.
• 8:50
  Kathie (2): I wasn't.
• 8:51
  Kathie (2): I was grieving an identity.
• 8:54
  Kathie (2): The woman who had spent years helping others suddenly had to learn how to help herself.
• 9:00
  Kathie (2): And that lesson humbled me.
• 9:03
  Kathie (2): Then something unexpected happened.
• 9:05
  Kathie (2): I found my way back to Toastmasters, not because I wanted to become a speaker, because I needed to find my voice again.
• 9:13
  Kathie (2): I had spent years observing.
• 9:15
  Kathie (2): Now it was time to speak.
• 9:16
  Kathie (2): The speeches came.
• 9:17
  Kathie (2): The insights came.
• 9:19
  Kathie (2): The patterns came.
• 9:20
  Kathie (2): One observation led to another, then another, then another.
• 9:24
  Kathie (2): Eventually, everything connected, the childhood stories, the marriage, the custody battles, the therapist, the workplace, the pressure, the fear, the control, the identity, the belonging, the nervous systems, all of it.
• 9:41
  Kathie (2): For years, I thought I had lived through a series of unrelated experiences.
• 9:47
  Kathie (2): I was wrong.
• 9:48
  Kathie (2): I had been studying the same thing my entire life.
• 9:54
  Kathie (2): Human beings under pressure.
• 9:57
  Kathie (2): Families, relationships, organizations, leaders, teams, different buildings, same patterns.
• 10:05
  Kathie (2): And for the first time, I finally understood what I was here to teach.
• 10:10
  All right.
• 10:11
  That is chapter 15 from The Truth Bubbles Up.
• 10:17
  Kathie (2): Every time I read that chapter, I notice something different.
• 10:21
  Kathie (2): When I first lived those experiences, I thought they were separate stories.
• 10:25
  Kathie (2): Today, I see one story, one pattern.
• 10:29
  Kathie (2): As I drove away that day and saw a black hawk on the ground carrying a snake, I knew I had witnessed something significant, even if I couldn't explain it at the time.
• 10:39
  Kathie (2): Looking back now, I don't think it was predicting the future.
• 10:43
  Kathie (2): I think it was reminding me of something much older.
• 10:48
  Kathie (2): Nature doesn't resist reality.
• 10:50
  Kathie (2): It responds to it.
• 10:51
  Kathie (2): The tornado that opens this book taught me something similar.
• 10:55
  Kathie (2): For years, I thought that dream was about surviving a storm.
• 11:00
  Kathie (2): Now, I think it was teaching me how different people move through the same storm.
• 11:06
  Kathie (2): One son instinctively stayed close to me, sensing emotion before anything else.
• 11:13
  Kathie (2): The other son let go of my hand and stepped into uncertainty, trusting what he saw instead of what he feared.
• 11:21
  Kathie (2): Neither response was wrong.
• 11:23
  Kathie (2): They were simply different ways of navigating pressure.
• 11:27
  Kathie (2): Some people recognize emotions first.
• 11:29
  Kathie (2): Some people recognize intentions first.
• 11:33
  Kathie (2): Over time, I realized my work has become learning to recognize emotions and intentions.
• 11:41
  Kathie (2): That's what I study today.
• 11:43
  Kathie (2): Not because I have all the answers, because life kept placing me in situations where the patterns became impossible to ignore.
• 11:51
  Kathie (2): If you've listened this far, I hope one thing stays with you.
• 11:55
  Kathie (2): Pressure is rarely the whole story.
• 11:58
  Kathie (2): It simply reveals the story that was already unfolding.
• 12:02
  Kathie (2): Thank you for joining me today.
• 12:04
  Kathie (2): If you'd like to read the rest of The Truth Bubbles Up or explore the companion resources for this chapter, you'll find everything linked in the show notes and description below.
• 12:14
  Kathie (2): Until next time, keep observing because sometimes the smallest patterns reveal the biggest truths.