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Same As it Ever Was · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you collect the themes and you do some affinity mapping, which is just organizing the themes together.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it really gives you an out it kind of breaks through that maybe fixed position or opinion you have of yourself.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe you can go back to something that's more structured.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm really excited actually to be joined by Becky Farone, who uh has got a wildly interesting background.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Becky and I have been uh speaking for a few weeks now and and uh was very excited to get her on the podcast.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um she's a credentialed career change coach and she's the founder of Fireworks Coaching.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now her specialty is really in helping professional women over 40 and men decide whether to stay or leave in distressing work or careers and what to do next using a foundation of design thinking.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we're really going to focus in on today, which is kind of that about what to do next thing.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Becky's got over 30 years of experience in the IT and software industry.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: She's delivered projects and developed people in retail and technology and the consulting sectors.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and as a liberal arts major, she kind of fell into the software world when she joined Microsoft as a member of the original Microsoft Outlook team.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a lot of people with a Microsoft background here, I guess.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Including me, but it's uh but uh it's it's pure coincidence.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to let people know that.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so uh since then Becky's helped many multidisciplinary teams and execs at a whole bunch of companies, including Nike and Starbucks and Kaiser and Columbia Sportswear.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and she's really helping them as program manager, team leader, usability researcher, scrum master, agile coach.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she's got a master's from Carnegie Mellon and uh a self-designed degree in product design.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now I could tell you a million other things as well, but otherwise the podcast would all just be an intro to you, Becky.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna get into some into some discussion here.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and let's let's actually get to the real topic that I that I wanted to talk to you uh today about.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think probably the easiest way to do it um is a discussion that we were just having a few days ago.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: You you told me recently a story about how you were dealing with a ton of change aged around 30 and how that ended up making it difficult for you to decide what you wanted to do going forward.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Can you can you share that story with our audience?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I happened to write a post on this on LinkedIn, so I think the first line is a good segue.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, once upon a time, on the eve of my third decade, I threw myself off a career cliff.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: It took me five years to recover.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Subtitle, How to Save$80,000.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: I love that one.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put a link to that uh to that post in the uh in the podcast notes.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, please continue.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm happy to tell you.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, we had uh just released the first version of Microsoft Outlook, trying to figure out what to do next.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up um kind of getting pushed into uh a different job that I didn't really want.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I'd just gotten, like many people do in a high-intensity tech world, got really burnt out and stressed.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I finally made the decision to leave, but it happened to coincide with a lot of things that were in hindsight too much.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I turned 30, I left this big job, broke up with a boyfriend, and I moved.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've ever seen that list of life stressors, you know, way up at the top there.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I did, I did.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, over, over ambitious.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And for a while it was great.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I got, you know, to do nothing for a while.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I had freedom and autonomy, and I thought, oh, uh now I have all the time to do all the things.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That is a myth.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I some someday I'll write a book called The Myth of Time.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then as time went on, I wanted to be more productive and what's next in my life.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: At this point, I thought, Paul, I just had to decide what I wanted to do next, and I'd never have to go through that process again.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: We all laugh heartily at this point in the story.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I started to get uh very isolated, you know, like like many people in their younger years, a lot of my social life was also at work.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I thought, okay, well, I just I I gotta go to grad school.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Did I know exactly why and what I wanted to do with it?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, not really.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I focused my what's next on which grad school to go to.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I applied to four different ones.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to say I got into all of them.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's still like, is this really what I want to do?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I finally just did make a decision.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: But none of the things, even even grad school itself, which I'll get to, but none of these things got to the core issue, which is what's really important to me?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: What are my values?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: What am I trying to, what kind of life am I really trying to have?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So conversations with friends and parents and stuff just didn't turn that up.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I was following um more what society says might be a path to success.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um then I went to Carnegie Millon and moved across the country and spent$80,000.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a really good experience, but it didn't solve the oh, now I'm a thing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a thing.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my story.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, truly fascinating.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing how the the the thing that we should know the best ourselves, you know, I mean, yeah, we're with ourselves every minute of every day, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: The thing we should know about our uh the best, we often know very, very little about.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and because we're constantly changing, the when we think we know who we are, sometimes we don't.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: We still don't at certain points in our lives.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a yeah, it's a I can imagine that kind of has got you into um this this field that we're gonna be talking about a little bit today, which is around designing your life.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is is this sort of fundamentally the reason why you're into that?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, though I didn't know that's what I was doing at first.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I will say there's a couple fundamental things.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is something you and I talked about.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the fundamental thing is a fascination with people's experience of work, my own, yours, other people's, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: From an early class and as an undergrad to reading, you know, um the studs turquoise working.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So just like being of it and in it of like how do people like and how do people get satisfaction out of work?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always really been fascinated by that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: But with design thinking, though, the thing I never really realized till somewhat recently, as much as I was accustomed to using it in the workplace, how do you make, you know, good decisions about what product or service to offer or to design, uh, especially as a consultant, which I have been at times.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really occur to me until I came across this book, Designing Your Life, which is actually written by two Stanford professors from the iSchool, um Dave Evans and Bill Burnett.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they have applied this concept of design thinking of try things out, ask questions.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a certain mindset, which I'm happy to share with you in a minute, to designing your career and your life, with the idea that there needs to be kind of coherence with both for you to really have a satisfying life, not just the career, not just the life.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what, Paul?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: No one teaches us how to figure this out.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's true.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um for those people that are that are news to the podcast.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we've we've had a few episodes that have talked about this field of design thinking or human-centered design, it's uh um sometimes called.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: I encourage people to go back and listen to the Karen Ziegler episode where she's uh looking to apply it to leadership.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, take a listen to the George Anderson uh episode as well, where we go into design thinking in a bit more detail.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then also um the Manalvo Pyre episode where she looks at where we look at how design thinking is applied to create equitable organizations.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: But that's one of the interesting things about this field, it can be applied to so many, uh, to so many areas.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you talk us through the outline, uh if you like, outline the approach that is needed to make this work when you're looking at yourself and you're trying to figure out how to um you know how to use it to guide your approach going forward?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I gave credit where credit's due, at least.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: We just talked about the design folks at Stanford.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So um their approach, I'm gonna tell you their mindset and their actual steps, and then I'm gonna just layer in what I've added onto that to be specific for the career change people that I work with.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So their approach is a mindset, they have five five uh aspects.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: One is be curious, always a good place to start.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Have a bias to action.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: How many of us have just gotten stuck thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Bend there, have the t-shirt.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, reframe your problems to broaden your perspective.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Know that's actually a process, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can have good days, bad days, but just sort of accept there's no magic wand here and always ask for help when you need it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um, both myself as a coach and the professors who wrote this book, they really designed this to be done with community, right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So don't go it alone.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the actual steps for designing your life from them so far.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's six of those.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So start with where you are.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they have some ways, some exercises to help you say, okay, so uh they look at your whole life, your health, your finances, your um family, your love, career, like where are you in terms of satisfaction for those things?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you actually literally build a compact compass, if you would like to, to actually help identify, like for me right now, I happen not to be working out a lot.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if I wanted to design something new in my life and my score there was low, that would be the problem that I'd want to kind of address with these techniques.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing is to generate a lot of ideas.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: They recommend something called mind mapping, which I know you're familiar with with the de Bono methods.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you anything works.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a bunch of stickies and a pen.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the the key here is don't censor yourself.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the time to say I can't, I shouldn't, I won't.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a great thing to do with other people as well.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then start winnowing down.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you, if you happen to do a mind map, it's really interesting to see all the different word associations that come out of that.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: What is something new that you can create from what you generated just by thinking of things that are related?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then you create some new life paths, they call these odysseys, and you just pick three of them.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So just say, Paul, you wanted to open a bakery.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of one of the ones you're considering.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the other one is to stay right where you are.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe a middle option is to maybe do kind of what you're doing, but for somebody else.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the bakery that has captured your attention.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: What would your life look like in year one through year five?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: What questions do you have?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: How coherent is it with the things you've already identified are important to you?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what is your interest and what are your resources on how to do that?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of the earlier steps, I kind of wish I'd said something a little bit more about this, in designing your life, they also have you write something called a work view and a life view.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So those are also foundational pieces.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you look back at those with your three odysseys and kind of say, okay, well, where does the, you know, opening a bakery fit?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe my lifestyle, I want to travel a lot.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's not gonna work.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you conduct prototypes, and they're not just literally as a from a design perspective, like a software prototype.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is where you actually go out and talk to people and you ask them questions.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you're not asking them like, can you give me a job?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying, tell me about your life.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't like being asked about their life and their experiences?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have a podcast, so you know this.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then you make a decision.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that sometimes can be the hardest part because a lot of us, I don't know about you, but I I like to return things.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: My husband calls it the catch and release style of shopping.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: But they really encourage us not to do that.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna pause there before I tell you what I've added on.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: But what are your thoughts?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's uh there's a few things that I like about the overall approach.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you one very specifically, which is the is the fact that it is actually a defined approach.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um to the point that we just made when we when we started out here, right?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um we think we know ourselves, and in many cases we don't.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so we need a if you do this kind of structured approach, um, it it can be really, really helpful in in uncovering uh what what we do.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I but I work with people myself that are uh sometimes early in career and sometimes later in career.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: And actually in both cases, whether they're later early in career or later in career, um, there are kind of two things.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: One is to help them understand um, you know, what what their natural ceiling is, even if there is one.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in most cases it's way, way, way higher than we than than what we think it is.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: But then once you start to do that and people start to realize, well, I could actually do you know pretty much anything if I if I work in you know in the right way with the right focus.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: But then it becomes much more important as to what do you want to do.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: So for example, I've worked with people in the past who um who think they want to be a CEO, for example, because they've been told that they could be.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but they haven't actually stopped and paused to see say if they want to be, which is something which is very um which is very different.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I think I think this type of approach um underlies is it kind of like especially that bit where you're kind of talking about these different journeys and seeing which ones catch your attention, those are the uh really, really important aspects because it allows you to sort of pick up on the signals of the of the things that you that you really like.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's I think that's a uh a really fundamental thing that kind of comes through when you insert some more discipline into the process.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the signals are kind of interesting because one of the steps that they use and I use as well is they call it the good times log, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing during a day and what kind of energy are you getting out of it?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: High, medium, low, are you in flow?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's actually a big part of it, just as important as the ideas.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: But and just a couple things I've layered on top of this, though, after my own experience and just so many people are coming out of um very toxic work environments, distressing work.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to use the word toxic when I advertised myself, but distressing.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I layer in the first part I do is similar to the compass idea, is I help people really articulate their values.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of us we know what they are like kind of instinctively, but we've never articulated them, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, like autonomy is probably a big one for many of us at this point in our career because we've just been doing what everyone's told us all along, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that gives us a direction.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that helps us set.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then we also it gives you an explanation.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So so many people who I talk to are in the middle, they're in the middle of something going on.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: If they say, oh, my top values are learning, creativity, and autonomy, and their job is exactly the opposite of that, it's a relief, Paul.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's really quite a relief.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then just three other things.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I also hope I'm trained in something called positive intelligence.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: You may have heard about this, but it's about really understanding who are those saboteurs or gremlins or inner critics in our mind.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's personas for each of them.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: How do you like catch them in the act?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do you counteract them?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you actually weaken their influence?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So many of us coming from whether it's a good or bad work situation, you've just been working for a long time by the time you hit 40 and you've built up some stuff.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we never learned how to um not tell ourselves that we're terrible because our pants are tight and worse, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we talk about that in so inner strengths, moving past some traumas and also building self-authority, which is especially important for women.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you just think about like, I happen to be wearing makeup right now because I want to.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of people do things because they think other people will criticize them.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And those people are usually women.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a big thing to help people um have a choice about.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And radical radical acceptance.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I hear people saying, I should do that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do that.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I really work with people on like just accept where you are.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do any of these things.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you're unhappy because something isn't happening, what are you telling yourself?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are some techniques for that?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then the last part is just I help people get to where they want to go next, whether it's interviewing, negotiation, whatever that is, I have a lot of experience in that area too.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that is yeah, that's great.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of things that I would add to that that I've that I've seen, uh that I've seen as well.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: One, you talked about what people you know choose to do uh with their, you know, with their day, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that we've had a lot of success uh looking at as well is particularly in situations where there is a bit more autonomy and you can kind of choose what you do, but quite a lot of what you don't do.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like look at the things that you're always procrastinating on or you're putting off or something like that.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because often there's clues in that, right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's clues in terms of of what you don't want to do as much as what you uh as much as what you do want to do.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: So we often have like we have people who like welcome a Kanban, for example, like that, where you've got total freedom in terms of what you're pulling across, and then go to the end of the week and go, okay, I left that one, I left that one, I left that one.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: What's common about all those things that I uh that I chose not to do?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a um that's a really interesting piece.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's another piece that you picked up on, which I think is really interesting because you said, I like kind of how people get to the next step.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's the point, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you to borrow from that CEO thing, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: When you're 20, you might want to be a CEO, and you might want to actually be a CEO for lots of good reasons, and you understand what that means and all that kind of stuff, and it's not just an ambitious thing or anything like that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or you might be that, want to be that because I don't know, your parent your parents were, or when you went through college, everybody sort of like mocked you out for it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if you didn't do it, you might be failing and all that kind of stuff.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: So there could be good reasons or not so good reasons why you want to do it.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: But regardless of what they are, by the time you hit 30, or by the time you hit 35, or whatever, that might not be the thing you want to be anymore.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so it always is sort of getting people to that next step and then kind of reevaluating and getting them to that next step and then kind of uh kind of re-evaluating.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: It takes courage, Paul.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: It takes courage to even stop and think about it or consider doing something unexpected.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:00
  unknown: Yeah.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: So um you kind of did this with your own life, I'm guessing that's kind of the next piece of this of this story.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about that, where you kind of started, where you ended up.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the answer is yes, I have with caveats.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because some of this literal technique is a little bit new to me too, but I realized I had a lot of instincts.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So um my secret sauce has been really um following my curiosity.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't even really know my own, like really get really clear on my own values until a couple years ago, honestly.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I, if I was curious about something, I would just ask Paul.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that if people take nothing but that away from this podcast.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you're curious about something interested, just ask.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so for an example, so when I started at Microsoft, um, I happened to be in college recruiting, quite the low level in the organization, but we brought in some consultants to build a database to track campus hires.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, can I be in charge of that?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they said yes.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then I knew through that database which managers were hiring campus hires.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I went and had informational interviews.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: One of them happened to be the guy running what became Microsoft Outlook, and I brought my best attempt without knowing anything at a feature spec.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he hired me a couple weeks ago.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or sorry, we sorry, a couple weeks later.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: I am reliving it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, but no, it was just like this whole concept of whatever you're slightly curious about.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always been the person that's gone honestly sideways in my career versus vertically.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was always more important for me to keep learning and fought, like, hey, what's over there?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt bad about that for a very long time because that's what we're taught in this society.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to go up, be in charge, make the money.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Until one day I happened to hear this would be a good link for your listeners too, The Flight of the Hummingbird by Elizabeth Gilbert.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever heard that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the key thing that made me feel very seen was being a cross-pollinator.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Take ideas from here to here and cross-pollinate the world.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, but from that point forward, though, just to get back to your original question, I do actually use the techniques, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: My values, the intercompass, the saboteurs.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I do mind maps.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: I do them on the computer now with mural or muro.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I continue to ask people a lot of questions.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it would be helpful for people to understand because sometimes these techniques seem just unattainable in many ways.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like tell us the values piece, right?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us, share with us what your values are.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is gonna be fun.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's hard to narrow them down.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I ask my clients too, but I will tell you what I think are my top, you know, five or something.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've already mentioned Curiosity.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I even have a tattoo that says stay curious.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: So there's Number one creativity, um, growth.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I kind of count learning in that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I when people come up with their long list, I try to ask them to have their headings, so I'm giving you my headings.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um clarity and communication or collaboration, they kind of both go together.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you the last one for now is fun.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Humor, fun.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so once you know that, particularly once you know it sort of around headlines, then I'm presuming that you're kind of like like assessing, right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And going, okay, am I am I being fulfilled in in in these particular ways?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Is it does it map?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: I can look back at past jobs or even, you know, even currently as a coach, like, and I would say one of my key ones is also autonomy, which I'm getting met right now, working for myself.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's it's helpful to say, okay, what's going on in this particular work environment?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why am I stressed right now and kind of go through your own checklist and see what's potentially not being met?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna get your needs and your values met all the time.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if it can give you a clue.
• 23:13
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• 23:15
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• 23:18
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• 24:39
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• 24:43
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• 24:44
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• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I know that you, as you mentioned, right, you work a lot with women in their 40s that are uh often kind of at an inflection point and trying to figure out what they um what they want to do going forward.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what kind of specific considerations are is this group of women dealing with?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, everybody's different, but I'm just curious as to what patterns you're seeing.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting that you asked me that because when I was first building my business at the very beginning, I asked myself that question.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had written down seven things, which I happen to have right here.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's more.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll get to seven, maybe we won't.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a turning 40 is a big milestone for all of us.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's other milestones too.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: 30 is also, and so is 50, and so on, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's something about 40 that gets us into the I'm gonna do what I want phase.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can do what I want phase.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe for a woman in particular, if you have children, often, not always, that's a point in which they're way more independent and you can actually start thinking about yourself again.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say that's a big part.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think another thing that goes on around this age is we kind of have this little wake up, maybe not literally, but something along those lines of like, oh my God, what am I doing in my life?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: What am I doing in my career?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Did I mean to do this?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just like the, you know, talking heads lyrics, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Who is this beautiful home?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that's a big part of it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And people maybe have the maturity to start thinking about like, I don't, or not even just the maturity, the courage, like I mentioned before, to start saying, maybe I don't have to do this thing.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then what instead?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then some people are just done, whether they're done saying yes to things they don't want to do or done because they have completed something in their career.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, every single person I've ever coached has said learning is one of their top values, right?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's time to move on and learn something else.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Very interesting.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and do you think that specifically how much of that do you attribute to the age?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: And how much do you attribute that to being predominantly working with women?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: The last part about learning or the whole thing?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would say about 75% of what I said is probably specific to women, um, particularly if there's a kids' element, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because women are right.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say the learning part is is universal.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: From the people I've spoken to.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I can't say that for other cultures or anything like that, but yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now, previously on the podcast, we talked with Matt Watkinson, and the discussion that I have with Matt was really around the outsized role that uncertainty and luck plays in in all of our all of our lives, right?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it it depending on how you look at it, like almost every influential thing that we do has a luck element into it.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: You've described how you kind of fell into the outlook role, for example.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: For example, but you know, often our significant others, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Almost everybody's got a like a like some kind of luck element as to how they ended up with their significant other.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: So um, and I think anybody with a long career was like, oh, I ended up here, and that was because of, I don't know, like a serendipitous meeting at a bar or whatever it would happen to be.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: So luck clearly plays a very significant role in in how people's lives figure out.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious as to we're talking about like the concept of designing something, which is a very um, which at least sounds on the purpose as though like you're very much in charge of this whole thing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's this other thing outside, which is which is luck.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious as to how you think luck and uncertainty fits into the future.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I happen to have just recently listened to that podcast you did with Matt.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two quotes that jumped out of me.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let me show my good students that is he said, the more I practice, the luckier I get.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that absolutely ties in.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you why.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then expanding your luck surface area.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: I just love those things, and they absolutely tie into this process of getting curious about your life and going out and asking yourself, what's all the possible ideas I can generate?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there you are, you're practicing your possibilities muscle, right?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go out and talk to people and you have these prototype conversations.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't always have to be like this, like we're talking.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: You could go on Reddit, you could, you know, whatever it is for the introverts in the audience.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's how you're expanding your luck surface area.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said before, just ask.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, the act of asking can lead to so many different things.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think a lot of us have have had a situation where we've asked somebody for help in one area and it's resulted in a connection in another area, which has resulted in something very dramatic that is that's happened in our lives.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: So any one of these interactions is in itself um expanding that luck surface area and getting you closer towards the idea.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just a good story was I ended up at Microsoft because I um went to look at an apartment to share with someone who is a recruiter at Microsoft and I brought my resume.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: So see how it's kind of the intersection of luck and preparation, right?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is opportunity.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: So you've touched on some of these bits already, um, but um particularly in a professional context, unless, you know, there's a very few of us that are independently wealthy.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: So um, and um probably fewer than uh than than there used to be these days.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: But um in the situation where you're not independently wealthy, just figuring out what you want to do isn't enough, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotta be something that you can make money doing and something you've got to be good enough at to make money.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would love to be a professional cricketer.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: I am 52 years old and I'm not good enough at cricket, so it's not gonna happen, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: So so what's the uh and I'm still getting over that, but but um is is this sort of experimenting and prototyping thing that you've outlined, is that is that in part where is where some of that come comes in as you're figuring out what not just what you want to do, but what you kind of can do and how you can make money out of it?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I would say definitely yes.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I will tell you um, still thinking of more my values as we talk, one of them is security, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I um whatever I decide to do next has to have some element of security or stability around finances.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what I like to really encourage myself and you and other people is when you do the brainstorming, put try to put it down for a little bit.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, because otherwise the you know, you get into the fear and the scarcity mode.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: And really let yourself be creative about how could you make money?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are some other ways?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, maybe you're really good, you want to be really good at cricket, but maybe you can go be an announcer on whatever network shows.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Cricket, I'm unaware.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: But ESPN Plus has some if people want to know.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's something called Willow TV if people want to know.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: PSA for Paul's cricket career.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's what I really like to tell people is and and the values can be a touchstone for generating creativity, but uh going back to that radical acceptance.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: A, you must radically accept it's what you need and what you want.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And B, you have to radically accept that not every idea that you come up with is going to result in that.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: It is, I I love the point you made there about you know, putting it down because I think that's that's the mistake so many of us make.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if I go back to my early um to my early career and and uh I've spoken on a couple of other podcasts about this, but you know, I wanted to be a surgeon and then one of the challenges that I faced was that you know, unquestioningly and in a kind of a blinkered way, that was all I wanted to be.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: That was all I wanted to be, that was all I wanted to be.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I got to a point in my life where it was very clear that that was not what I was gonna be.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I was stuck.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was so stuck because I had no, there was no plan B.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it's great.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's you know, it's it's very interesting, right?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're schooled a lot in this idea that, you know, single-minded focus and that's all you think about, and you know, there is no plan B.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the more you focus on it, the more you the more you focus on it, the more it will happen.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: But then it does cause problems or can cause problems if it doesn't happen, and if sort of life's magic journey is has is taken you elsewhere.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, my sort of response, my sort of knee-jerk response to that was I can't do that.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I don't want anything else to do with any other aspect of that career.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be not be a surgeon and be something else related to life sciences because I didn't get to do the thing I want to do.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I would often tell people, I would say, Well, if I if I do something that's adjacent, I'll just be looking back at that and going, Well, I didn't get to do that.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: That can be terrible advice, right?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: It can be there's some interests that get you to the point that you uh that you want to get to.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can go a little bit deeper and understand the why you want to do that, then that opens up so much in terms that could be adjacent fields, they could be similar in terms of the way you work, it could be similar in terms of the people that you interact with, it could be similar in a whole bunch of different ways, even if it doesn't have that exact same title.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so it could be great when you're, you know, for anybody who's just even helping a friend out to try to figure this stuff out.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is like if you can just get that one layer down and go, let's say, for example, you want like my son wants to be an MBA player, right?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if he's not gonna be an MBA player, he what what do we know about the fact that he wants to be one?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one is he loves the NBA, he loves basketball, right?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: So what can he do that involves involves basketball?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: So few of us do naturally do that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we need a process to kind of help ourselves through it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there's um actually a technique that is part of designing your life, it is part of design thinking in general, and it's part of curiosity, which is reframing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: How can you reframe the situation?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something you can do, um, whether you mind map on your own or get together with a group of people, because those people can help you reframe.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if they if you'd said, like, you know, doctor or bust, maybe the way you're asking the question isn't getting you a good answer.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Someone else, some friend could be like, you know, what is it about being a doctor?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or, oh, I like to help people.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, tell me three other ways, Paul, you can help people.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the reframing is very powerful.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't do it, you end up in a very, very circuitous pod to get to the point when you can't help people again.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I think one of the things that will be interesting a lot of uh people here, certainly it interests me when we're talking about this.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds kind of analogous to like traditional career counseling and things.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: So is this something that can work alongside career counseling?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Is it different?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: What how do you think it fits?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't do traditional career counseling, but I've had traditional career counseling.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that comes to mind to me with that phrase is maybe doing assessments, right?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or what are your strengths?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or there's all sorts of assessments at different levels of like what careers would you be great at?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think those are great for generating ideas.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a danger, especially if somebody is administering the test to you, that maybe you start thinking of yourself from their fixed narrative.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know, if it if it gives you somewhere to start, wonderful.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: But just be careful to not think of it as the end all be all.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone told me I'm gonna be an accountant.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say if you saw my checkbook, but that was dating myself, but yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think it can absolutely be helpful.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that is informational to you that you didn't know about yourself, just don't take it as gospel.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: In our last pop, we spoke to Lori Masen about, and uh, she's a um certified coach and actually's written a great book on me.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um, is now the um chief coaching officer of Sounding Board.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: And um, she has this phrase that she uses um in her book.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um it sounds like it's a spice girl.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it is a spice girl's lyric.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: She talks about how you know, tell me what you really, really want, right?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's so interesting how long it can take to kind of break through to that.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I guess one of my last questions.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me tell me about the kind of traps that you've seen people fall into when they're not using this kind of like more disciplined approach.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously, as a coach, you're intervening in many cases when people have trump been trying to figure this out for themselves, right?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: So what's the what do what do you see when people aren't aren't being more structured about this?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um taking the first job that comes along that isn't where they are, right?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: So running away versus running towards something.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um not learning how to talk to yourself, going back to the saboteur concept, to actually give yourself that mental space to think about something, even if it's not using design thinking and but just to break free from the I have to, I have to, I got it, I gotta, right?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do you counter that voice just to soothe yourself and even allow other ideas to come in?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, people don't ask for help.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: That is one of the key things from design your life.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or people get very fixed, like um, kind of like your medical school example, but you know, like I've always been this thing.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do anything else.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people say, I can't do anything else.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so they won't even go and do the idea generation.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the techniques I also have people do if they want to is something called reflected best self.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: It has nothing to do with design thinking.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's another, I got it from somewhere else.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: You go and ask five to ten family members, colleagues, or whatever, like, what are you really good at?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you collect the themes and you do some affinity mapping, which is just organizing the themes together.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it really gives you an out, it kind of breaks through that maybe fixed position or opinion you have of yourself.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe you can go back to something that's more structured, like what we're talking about.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, have you encountered um people that well, I'll use a couple of examples, right?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: People number one that are making like every job-related decision based on just the dimension of money.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, as in like this job pays more than that job, so therefore I must go.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then kind of related to that, um, have you encountered people that are looking at their entire career as a res as a resume?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, as in I got this, I what you know, I I did Apple and Google and Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase and whatever, and they're literally looking at like building brand names on their resume because all they can think of is the better the resume looks, the better the future path is.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, have you encountered people that sort of are in that and and does that help them or hurt them?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um those the people I've encountered don't end up following through on coaching, I think, because they're so fixed.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of an interesting observation.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: The person that comes to mind is someone I talked to who uh was an MBA student at one of the best MBA programs in the country.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, I have to get into finance something, something.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'm not a finance person, right?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: But he was absolutely like utterly like this just dead set on the goal, regardless of whether that met his values or not.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he had actually had kind of worn out the staff of the uh career center at this school.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: I happen to be my one of my old college buddies, runs it.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: So she sent him to me.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I couldn't make much dent there either.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like he didn't want to ask himself any of the questions that we've been talking about.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: He just wanted someone to call him and say, Did you do that thing?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Did you call, did you send that resume?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did you talk to that guy?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: It is interesting.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting how people can they think they're being so I don't know, design.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: They think they're designing it.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: But they are, but they're not, uh ironically, they're not using a human-centered design process or a design thinking process.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're using this very rigid, very structured design of if this, then that.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then also they're kind of ignoring in some cases the and will put up with extraordinary things sometimes, like as in you know, almost where we studied, like these toxic work environments.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, this is number two on my checklist of the things that I need to do in order to be able to be this future entity of myself.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll put up with total crap in order to be able to uh in order to be able to get that kind of thing.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Horrible treatment.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a cultural lens here too.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned uh Minal that you had um interviewed with before, and she had such great things to say about this.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: How um, so you and I are talking through, you know, our particular culture of like, oh, isn't that we're kind of saying underneath it, isn't that kind of bad that people don't do that or they think they have to put up with it?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, some cultures, there's no other way to think.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's definitely something worth thinking about as we uh as as we sort of go through all of this stuff.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: I often feel on this podcast there's a lot of first world problem conversations that we need to be very conscious of.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um all right, so but despite that, um let me let me let me finish off here and uh just ask you one more question.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know that you've been coaching people for some time now, even before you've you've adopted this this specific approach.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: But um I'd love to hear like a really great example of some where you've worked through this sort of stuff with somebody and what changes it results in in for them.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of my favorite stories.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: So my client, we'll call her KP, came to me uh a very powerful woman, someone who, you know, hadn't talked to her about these things.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you would never know she's struggling at work or any of these sort of things.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she was in a situation where she literally thought the company's values, because they were so into like, here's our values, we're gonna interview through our values, but then the behavior, this is a really difficult situation for all of us.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: But the behavior by her leaders and others was so opposite, where there's gaslighting, there was micromanaging, there was uh this manager happened to be a new manager who had her own issues, but was taking them out on this person.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the this KP, who was so dynamic and confident, ended up feeling the complete opposite and just really demoralized.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And where do I go from here?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we did a lot of the exercises I've talked to you about.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: We did a lot of work on saboteurs, we did a lot of reframing, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: One of the reframes was boy, if I quit, it'll get around my industry.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, really?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: No one pays any attention to anybody else, really, out in the world.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked about where might that come from.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's I'm not a therapist, I'll never say I am, but it is not uncommon for us for myself and my clients to have conversations about like, oh, now I see where that comes from.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course, saboteurs come from her family of origin, usually as a coping mechanism.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So to get to the good part, she finally decided to go.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And she planned it out very well and what she was gonna say, and she was very important for her to leave on a positive note.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she would give them whatever they needed for the transition.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then right after that, three weeks later, she was offered a job at a very high level in a startup, her dream job.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she sent me a text.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read it to you, that I've kept close because it inspires me too.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for giving me the courage to trust my gut that I would make the right decision if I was out of the environment I was in.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: So she has that self-trust now where she didn't before.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Powerful stuff and a great place to leave uh our conversation today.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Becky, thank you so much.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Really enjoyed the conversation today, and our audience will as well.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and good luck with all of your work going forward.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Paul.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite a pleasure.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us reach more people.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.