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Episodes
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Sustainable Future: African Startups - Featuring Yvonne Mose & Jeremiah Mabiria
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Yvonne Mose and Jeremiah Mabiria are two entrepreneurs passionate about sustainability, working towards environmental solutions, and creating positive change to protect the planet and foster developmental opportunities in Africa.
Yvonne and Jeremiah founded MOMA Renewable Energy (former SBIKE), a company that produces bioethanol cooking fuel from food waste to address energy and environmental issues in Kenya. Their business aims to reach rural Kenyan households and contribute to reforestation efforts.
Yvonne and Jeremiah represent the rising potential of African startups and the need for support in achieving a more sustainable and interconnected world.
Yvonne Mose is a three-month BARKAT Entrepreneur program graduate, an application-based 100% scholarship offering for Middle Eastern and African female entrepreneurs, and part of The Goddess Solution by Puneet Sachdev.
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#yvonnemose #jeremiahmabiria #MOMAReneaableEnergy #SBIKE #entrepreneurship #africa #kenya #sustainability #stephenmatini #podcast #pitypartyover #alygn #leadership #management
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: You, Jeremiah, you grew up in the US. And you Yvonne, you grew up in Kenya. But Jeremiah, you are also Kenyan descendant, correct?
Jeremiah Mabiria: Yes, we're actually from the same region, from the same community. It's just that I had to ate and relearn the language and do a lot of that when I came home. He just migrated when I was six years old.
Stephen Matini: Jeremiah, how was growing up in the States? You know, having parents from a different country?
Jeremiah Mabiria: It was interesting. It was interesting to be different. I came from a place here where I was like everyone else. We were very young, me and my brother, we were very quick to assimilate and become American. We kind of had to relearn being Kenyan I would say more so than learning to be American. It was natural.
Stephen Matini: When people ask you where do you feel home is, what do you answer?
Jeremiah Mabiria: Minnesota's home, that's where I grew up. But here Kisii (Kenya), is also home. There's a connection that I feel when I'm here. My easy answer would be that I have many homes. I'm lucky enough to have lived in many places and have many help.
Stephen Matini: Yvonne, how was for you instead to grow up in Kenya?
Yvonne Mose: For me growing up in Kenya is I think everything that I know, all that I know about life and it was really good growing around my people, my culture, my parents come from a very low income background.
That's why I got the motivation about who I am and what I want to work on. I think it has really formed the kind of person that I am right now. So yeah, but growing is really interesting. It has 47 tribes I believe. I didn't miss out on anything culturally.
Stephen Matini: How long ago both of you met?
Yvonne Mose: Yeah, about two years.
Stephen Matini: When you met, could you sense cultural differences between the two of you?
Yvonne Mose: For me, yes because Jeremiah talks different. He is very American in his ways, but it was a good surprise
Stephen Matini: Somehow. Both of you have developed over your life an interest, a passion for sustainability. How has that happened? Were there any specific people, any specific event in your past that has somehow made you sensitive to the sustainable agenda?
Yvonne Mose: For me, growing up in a poor background, especially in the rural areas in Kisii, I saw how it was hard for my family and even my neighbors to get access to clean cooking fields.
So for me that kinda shaped who I was because I saw how, how much time it took from me going out to play with my friends or even going to school to study. Growing up, that gave me an idea what I wanted to do. So I was very environmental focused and that's even what I pursued in my university for my degree.
And then getting to meet Jeremiah and through him getting to meet his dad who somehow convinced me that employment is not the way that I will want to go and if I wanted to make more impact I should start something by myself. Like create a startup, create a business that will make more impact in the community. And that's what made me who I am today.
Jeremiah Mabiria: For me, sustainability something that it came maybe from the education system. I remember the campaigns and we had the blue dumpster for the plastics and the green ones. It was taught in school but I think as I got older it became a lifestyle. That's when through the education system learning that the planet's coming to an end and we keep buying iPhones and new cars and we don't think about what the cost of that is.
If there's gonna be change, then I would have to be part of that. I have to be one piece in creating that change. Meeting with like-minded people along the way through groups at school and and college and campus groups. And that's what really sparked my interest.
We have the advantage of not having messed a lot of things up is in the West. It happened a long time ago. Here we have a chance to stop it from happening. We have a chance to create industries while thinking about what these industries do to the environment and mitigating some of the ill effects that they have. So that's what really drove me, especially when I came home to make sure that I was in sustainable energy.
Stephen Matini: Oftentimes the whole notion of sustainability and capitalism and growth, you know financial success, are seen as opposite. What is your view about it?
Yvonne Mose: I think when you think about impact, most people think about charity work and I think that's not what it is.
Google is a tech company that has so much impact on people without being a charity organization per se. So for me, when I think about impact, I think about the basic needs for the communities like housing, clean energy, water, health services.
Those are services that you can start and you can make sure that they are accessible to the low income households or or even to the low income communities. And at the end of the day, for as much as your organization is also get making profit, you are also thinking about the community at large impact and profits go hand in hand.
Stephen Matini: Do you foresee to be easier, you know, moving forward, having this company in Kenya or you think would be harder in the US?
Jeremiah Mabiria: I think it would be easier for sure. What we're doing, we're experimenting a lot, we're trying new things and what I've found is that the Kenyan government, when we have gone to ask for the regulations or to be certified, they kind of let you take the lead. We don't know what you're talking about, we've never seen this. You do it and then we will regulate you.
So it's very accommodating 'cause it's a smaller government and it's a government that is hungry for development, they're hungry for anything that moves a needle forward. So they're very willing to accept.
Whereas in the US it's a very regulation heavy system and so trying things that are outside of the box requires a lot of money because you have to do massive amounts of research, massive amounts of work to make sure you meet the regulations. Here the regulators work with you, they need you. The US the government is so large that I don't think they need any one.
Stephen Matini: Would you mind explaining the idea behind your company, SBIKE?
Yvonne Mose: Since SBIKE was born so that we can have the most social and environmental impact as we can. We currently produce boca biofuel, which is a bioethanol based cooking fuel out of food waste and food processing byproducts.
We make an environmental impact as much as we make a social impact and our product are priced solo, that it is accessible to the rural low income households who are actually our target customers.
So currently the households use charcoal and firewood to cook 'cause those are the fields that are affordable and accessible to them. And if you compare our biofuel to charcoal, which is even more efficient than firewood, one liter of biofuel burns as much as three kgs of charcoal and one liter of biofuel goes for about let's say 90 cents US dollars and one kg of charcoal goes for about a dollar.
Yvonne Mose: That also makes an impact. They get to save as they cook with our fuels. It has health benefits but only byproducts from it are water and CO2. And while we cook with the wood fields, the byproducts are so the smoke and this particulate matter which affects health.
So yes, our organization is mainly focused on the impact that we can make more than let's even profits. But we are also profitable because a little by field we produce it at about 60 cents a liter and we sell it at 90 cents, which makes our profit margin at about 50%. As much as we are making profits, we're also making so much social and environmental impacts.
Stephen Matini: How has been the reception of your consumers, your company?
Jeremiah Mabiria: Our problem currently is production. We have increased capacity twice since the first machine we fabricated and we have never been able to meet demand and this isn't an isolated area of Kisii county that we chose as our pilots area in the sub county.
We haven't even fully launched into the full county or the region, but we cannot meet the demand in just the area that we're in. And we have requests, we've had meetings with the county government where the request is how quickly can we spread it out and which is why we're we're busy fundraising to see if we can build a proper launch facility.
Stephen Matini: If someone is interested in helping you out, what could they do?
Yvonne Mose: Currently I think the thing that we need most is to scale up production. So we will need help in scaling our production, that's expanding our current facility, purchasing new production equipment and also product packaging. And even as we scale up we want to start branding and marketing.
Jeremiah Mabiria: I think it's just the fundraising in order to get the things that Yvan has mentioned, able to get us in more households and serving more people quicker than we would with the slow national growth.
Stephen Matini: For people to use ethanol, do they have to have a specific stove?
Jeremiah Mabiria: There is stoves available but for the rural low income households what we found is there's a company in Kenya that focuses on the urban areas called “cocoa networks” and they have a stove that they sell for about 15 dollars.
But in the rural markets where we serve, most people make a dollar or two a day day on average. $15 is what they need to save up to pay for school for you for one of their children. It is just too much money for them to invest in a stove.
But ethanol is combustible in any container. If you think of serving lines at buffets, they use ethanol to keep the full warm, it's just a container with fire. We have been reusing tins and we've been showing and training our agents to train the customers on how to reuse tins that are used for cooking fat and other things that they already have and to use those as the stove.
So they have a ELY ethanol stove that they get for nothing but the time that they invest in making the stove and they can just replace it whenever it rusts and it costs them nothing extra which allows them to actually buy the ethanol. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to reach them because the stoves that are manufactured are entirely too expensive.
Stephen Matini: Like a typical interview question <laugh>, ideally if everything went accordingly to your plans, where would you like to be five years from now?
Yvonne Mose: So ideally we would have reached all the rural households in Kenya. That's very ambitious. Currently we're only serving the Western region of Kenya with actually a smaller part, which is the Gossi region.
So ideally in five years we would've reached the whole of Kenya, we would've had more social impact and we would have started already producing biodiesel, which is actually the product that we are currently piloting.
And we would have gotten our production up so that we could supply of bio ethanol so that we could supply industries and also the cook stove companies that make the cook stoves because currently they actually import ethanol into Kenya. There's no company that produces ethanol at a large enough skill that they can support the demand in Kenya.
Stephen Matini: Just to make sure that I understand, you said it biodiesel?
Yvonne Mose: Oh yes, biodiesel. So currently we're piloting biodiesel which is made out of bio ethanol and waste working for, from companies that make foods using cooking oil, that deep fry foods.
Let's say like oil waste from KFC or even from trigger foods or even from tropical heat, the people who make the crisps. So yes, we are currently trying to pilot biodiesel, which is also we've, we have realized it's a niche in the market in Kenya.
Stephen Matini: Do you also have other sustainable projects in your pipeline?
Yvonne Mose: Our efforts to restore the environmental degradation count as a sustainable project. It doesn't bring in any profits but we as a company actually committed to donate 1% of our proceeds to land restoration. So that means reforestation.
So we support community-based organization, women, women organizations, youth organizations and even the local county government in their efforts to replant trees in the county.
We as a country have a 10% aim for mini forest cover marked to reach. So as a country we haven't reached it but the county that we are based in, which is KC County, we are current, we we're currently at 15% forest cover and 26% tree cover. So we are trying to maintain that or even grow that
Stephen Matini: As entrepreneurs, you could have taken so many different routes and I understand how your life experiences, as often happen with a lot of entrepreneurs, have influenced your choices. But the life of an entrepreneur can be difficult. Is there anything that both of you do to pick yourself up when things do not seem to go well?
Jeremiah Mabiria: Not just Yvonne, but having a good team around you, having a good group of people who see things the way you see things and are looking towards the same goals as you do like everyone else, I have low days, I have days where I don't wanna go to the office, I don't wanna find out that the machine is broken <laugh>.
But once you remind yourself of why you're doing it in the reason, it's easy to get up in the morning because the goal is much bigger than myself and whatever I want to accomplish personally, there's something much bigger that we are trying to attain in conjunction with other companies like ourselves all across, which is show that it is possible to make money while doing good I think is an important thing to highlight in
Stephen Matini: Yvonne. What, what do you do when you feel, ugh, this is so hard to bring your energy up?
Yvonne Mose: I remind myself that there's no one swooping in from out of nowhere to come and save me or to save the situation. So I just have to power through it.
And I think also having a team around me, especially the team that we're building, we don't have offices. Let's say no one is in charge of anything, particularly it's on paper, yes, but we all help each other out.
If I realize Jeremiah has a problem that he needs to solve and he needs somebody else to help him or a different I to look at it, that's what we focus on. That's what we work on.
So yes, having an A team around me that supports me and knowing that through me and through my work I'm supporting other women to come up. That's also what gets me outta bed in the morning.
Stephen Matini: Yvonne, one of the things that it's not easy is to find good people to select good people. How do you do that? How do you make sure that you find the right people for your team? Is anything that you do, anything you look for?
Yvonne Mose: For me, I think it's just gut feeling. Currently the only management team that we have are the co-founders. So we're in the management positions. The rest of our team are our, our production staff and maybe the people in our supply chain.
So when it comes to getting someone to work with us, what we go with is our gut feeling and also is before giving out a contract, we integrate someone into our organization and we work with them let's say on ... actually on a three month probation period. Seeing how it all goes, seeing how they interact with each other and how they work with each other. And then from then that's when we commit and give them our contract. You can't always get it tried all the time.
Stephen Matini: How is it to be the female CEO, in Kenya?
Yvonne Mose: Kenya as a whole is very accepting but Kenya has so many different regions, especially the Gossi region and I think we are also a patriarchal society.
Being a CEO and getting into rooms with people who don't take you at face value or people who don't take you seriously has become kind of a challenge. And I think actually that's what motivates me.
I try to like our production stuff that I've talked about, it's purely women. I try to integrate women into the workspace into my organization, putting them in positions whereby if they go to a room later on when they grow and they want to start their own startups or get into other or employment opportunities, they can actually be listened to and people will take them at face value. So as much as it's challenging, it's also a challenge to me trying to make sure that in future that doesn't happen to other women.
Stephen Matini: And also one of the challenges is the fact that both of you share a personal relationship and a professional relationship and that's not easy. Jeremiah, how do you keep these two important relationships in line?
Jeremiah Mabiria: They're very separate and they have a life of their own. We sat down and we were very intentional about how we created our work personal life balance. She's my boss when we're in the office, I take direction. That's our business relationship and I take that seriously and we have a separate relationship when we're at home and we make sure we give both those things equal time not equal time, but enough time to grow and each of them need to be nurtured in their own way.
Stephen Matini: You know, I get it a good vibe from both of you. Yvonne, you are strong but you are very kind and I love the fact that Jeremiah, you come across as some sort of guardian angel that support her. You know, it's really wonderful. So have a good vibe that this is gonna be wonderful moving forward.
Yvonne Mose: Thank you. That describes us actually.
Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you Yvonne, how did you come across the Barkat program? Because I think it's a wonderful social initiative. The founder Puneet, I also interviewed for the podcast and when he told me about the intention of the program to support female leaders, entrepreneurs, I thought, oh wow, this is incredible, you know, to support women in the Middle East and in Africa. How did you learn about the program?
Yvonne Mose: When we're talking about things that have made me who I am today, Punit and the Barkat program is a major part of it. Jeremiah and I had a discussion and I was working as a project manager and doubling with the organization, but then we realized it was time for me to focus full-time organization.
We as a team sat down and we decided I'll be better placed as the CEO. Jeremiah was going through some things online and then he saw the ban program and we realized that will be the perfect program to introduce me into the market, get me to be the best version of myself.
And we saw Puneet qualifications and credentials and it was so impressive. So yeah, we just came across it on the Internet and we decided to apply and through the program I have become stronger, I have become more confident, I have learned how to channel my energy into my work and in everything that I do and in have everyone that I interact with, especially my coworkers and my support staff and I'm really grateful to have met him.
Stephen Matini: Are you still part of the program or you completed it?
Yvonne Mose: I completed the program about two months ago but I am still part of the network. So once you have graduated from the program, you're not cast out completely. So we have a community, the Barkat community, we still interact with the ladies from my cohort.
So yeah, it's a community that keeps on growing. I was actually very lucky to be part of the first cohort. So the current cohort that's continued is the second cohort. We are community and we help each other out. He has has managed to bring women leaders from every part of Africa and made them into this group that supports each other in their daily lives.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that it could be a first step, based on your experience, for anyone to explore the entrepreneurial route? What could they do?
Yvonne Mose: For me it'll be just start. There's never going to be that perfect moment. There's never going to be enough money for you to do it.
If I was to wait until I was at the perfect position to start my company, I will have waited until I had a hundred million dollars in my account so that I could start off with a big company and make all the impact that I wanna make. So for me my, my advice would be to just start everything else will fall in place.
Do all the research that you need to do, get to know your strengths and your weaknesses and actually get people on your team. For as much as it's I dunno, people view it to be a good thing to be a solo founder, I found value in having co-founders, people who can compliment me because I realized I don't know everything. And I think that's a very important thing to know.
And also when you're talking about the energy people channeling the energy, I feel like most women feel like for them to be hard or for them to be taken seriously, they have to portray masculine energy. But if you channel who you are and you channel your energy into whatever it is that you're doing, it'll definitely be successful.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that are your strengths, which is your biggest strength? Yvonne? Which one is your biggest strength? Jeremiah?
Yvonne Mose: I'm empathetic. I tend to feel the people around me and I tend to try and make people the best versions of themselves.
Jeremiah Mabiria: I'm lucky enough to have, I can see things, I can be able to see the possibilities and not the impossibility.
So when we're talking about opening a factory in a rural village in Kisii, it's very easy for me to see how this is possible and why it would work and why this is a good thing and actually some steps to getting it to happen.
Even some of my co-founders were like, are you sure? Yeah, I would say that. Strength wise it's just being able to bring the team around, communicate to them what is possible.
Yvonne Mose: Today we were driving from Nakuru, we had a meeting in Nakuru so we're driving to Kisii and we saw a factory and Jeremiah told me all the cars in the world and all the money in the world, I don't want that. All I want is that. He sees possibilities where I don't see any. I think that's actually also what attracted me to him. He's someone who sees far and I think that's what I needed in my life.
Stephen Matini: For those listening to our episode, is there anything that would you like for people to take away from our conversation? Something that you deem to be really important for them to keep with themselves?
Yvonne Mose: Africa is coming up in the market and in Africa we have so many startups that are coming up and also youth who are driven to make the world a better place and we shouldn't be overlooked. I think we are coming up and we are going to be hard.
Jeremiah Mabiria: We have moved out of the dark ages that we were in and I see so much hope everywhere I look not just in our organization, but when we go for meetings and programs and you hear the interesting things that people are doing and the unique and innovative projects that they're starting. We just need a little bit of a push, a little bit of a help, big hand from the rest of the world. But I think we are ready. I think we are ready to finally join the rest of the world.
Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for your vision. Thank you so much for your empathy and I truly hope for all that you are seeing to come true because there's a desperate need for more sustainable and more balanced world. So thank you so much for spending time with me. I appreciate it.
Yvonne Mose: Thank you to you Stephen.
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Collaborative Relationships: Collabor(h)ate - Featuring Dr. Deb Mashek
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
We engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Deb Mashek, business advisor, professor, and author of the book Collabor(h)ate: how to build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you’d rather work alone.
Deb shares her unique perspective on collaboration, highlighting its importance in various settings and debunking common misconceptions. She believes that when people collaborate and learn from diverse perspectives, they can increase their effectiveness by embracing new resources, viewpoints, and identities.
In our conversation, we explore the key ingredients of a successful relationship and dig into seeking growth through connections with others.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
Subscribe to Pity Party Over
Sign up for a complimentary Live Session
Managerial & Leadership Development
Contact Stephen Matini
Connect with Stephen Matini
#debmashek #collaborhate #collaboration #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment
TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: Deb, I am going to the origins, sort of speak, of your life. And one thing that I read, I think it was in your book was that three factors, which included your parents, your PhD, and your upbringing in a trailer park, have been your inspiration to learn and focus on collaboration. And I thought that was really interesting.
Deb Mashek: Yeah, absolutely. So I call those my three great teachers of collaboration. So the trailer park piece is, I grew up in a double wide trailer in North Platte, Nebraska and there's some people like, Ooh, trailer Park, that sounds horrible.
Thought it was fantastic because what we had was this play mat, which was the trailer park. So we had a chain link fence that said we couldn't go beyond it. But other than that, the kids were really left to their own devices.
So I grew up in the seventies and in the trailer park would spill out at, you know, 9:00 AM and we had to figure out together how we were going to play, what we were going to play, what the rules of our play were going to be. And if somebody violated the rules, we figured out what those consequences were. And that person who violated those rules had to figure out how to make amends and words through play.
We learned the social skills necessary to live and work to do, to be with others. So that was the, the trailer park piece.
And then both of my parents throughout my life struggled with alcoholism. So it's kind of a, a perverse sort of teacher of collaboration. But one of the things kids who grow up in, you know, within these neglectful households or households that were had a lot of addiction and whatnot is you figure out, I mean you still have needs, but the parents in that environment are not particularly well equipped to be able to provide for your needs.
And so I figured out really early on how to form connection with other adults outside of my family who were then able to provide for needs. Whether that was fair enough friction, sometimes it was food, sometimes it was clothing. It was very often things like rides to school and things like that.
But it was through relationship and through being able to connect with others that I was able to get those needs met. And those are incredibly important skills when it comes to collaborating and figuring out what, what somebody else's needs and interests are and being able to monitor those and being able to state yours in a way your needs and interest in a way that is accessible and interesting and even palatable, I guess, to other, to other people. So that was important.
And then the third one you mentioned is the PhD. So it was never assumed that I would, you know, go to college, much less graduate school. And it was just by virtue of getting to interact with a lot of really positive teachers, great cheerleaders throughout my life. And when I got to graduate school at Stony Brook University out in Long Island, New York, very first seminar I enrolled in was the Psychology of Close Relationships.
It was taught by Arthur Aaron and I was the dork in the class who I read every single paper assigned I, my hand was raised for every discussion, I had things to say, and I just absolutely fell in love with this research, you know, that that, well first of all I had no idea that there was a research area dedicated to the psychology of close relationships. So that was really cool to discover.
And then to read this research, I totally fell in love with it. Like it was just really powerful. And I realized like, oh, there is knowledge out there about how to do relationships well. And I think I hadn't grown up with a ton of models of that. So there was also this personal void that I was able to fill in some way through the academic literature. And so I kind of came at that relationship development through the side door. And those, all three of those experiences I think were critical for how I ended up studying and thinking about and helping people do collaboration.
Stephen Matini: When you say relationship, are you thinking about any kind of relationship or are thinking about a specific type of relationship, like personal relationship, professional relationships?
Deb Mashek: The research area that I was in was about romantic relationships. So when I would teach the psychology of relationships, it was about picking up, breaking up, everything in between. That's what I had been researching.
But there's also research literature on everything like parent child relationships and friendship development and workplace relationships. So any time you have that sense of us notion that there's an us involved, that is relationship, there is a research literature out there about it.
But I started in romantic relationships and then it was in my research fellowship that I started to think about jail inmates. And then when I eventually became a professor out at Harvey Mudd College in California, I started to think about or the, the students' sense of connection and relationship with their dormitories, their residence halls and their sense of connection to the campus. And it wasn't too long later.
And then I started to think about how institutions can be in relationship with other institutions and that you can start to form collaborations. And it turns out to me one of the really big fabulous insights I had, and I'm so grateful that it dawned on me, is that those theories that govern a lot of the individual diadic relationships, the people are still involved at the institutional level.
So it's not really that the institutions are collaborating, it's that the people in the institutions are collaborating and those same people have hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties and needs and desires just like we do dally. And so figuring out how to leverage those exact same theoretical models in service to these collaborations that ended up being really valuable in terms of how I could be useful to people.
Stephen Matini: As of today, based on all your experiences, all your studies, when you think of the word relationship, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Deb Mashek: That's such a good question. I'm a mom, so right away i, I go to my relationship with my child. All relationships is that sense of mutuality, that sense of coming to care for and contribute to the wellbeing of somebody else. And also expecting that to happen in, in return that there's reciprocity, mutuality, care, concern.
When people look back at the end of life and they talk about their highest highs and their lowest lows, often they end up talking about relationships. That relationships are pain, relationships are exquisite and fulfilling and loving.
Thinking about our work histories too, it's, I remember the colleagues that I loved working with. The second thing that really popped for me is the role that expectations play in terms of that there are all these scripts out there about how relationships ought to be or should be.
We're like these are the good relationships and whether it's the Hollywood manifestations of those, there's like that one really good relationship. We all know and we're trying to have our relationship look like theirs. Oh my gosh, there's so many ways we can fall short of expectations, ours and others when it comes to interpersonal relationships.
Stephen Matini: So if I had to ask you what in your opinion are the ingredients of a good relationship, what comes to mind?
Deb Mashek: The theory that I do most of my research under would land on exactly the same two. So the idea is it's called the self expansion model. And the idea is that we're all seeking to increase our efficacy in the world, meaning our ability to achieve our goals, our dreams or whatnot.
And how we do that is by seeking out and taking on as our own, our new resources, new perspectives, new identities. And that relationship is one of the ways we do that. It's called including the other and the self.
So imagine you are and I are in a relationship over time I come to see the world through your eyes, your perception of the world starts to change and enhance. Because of our relationship, I start to take on new identities. Maybe that's the identity of the us or the we or that of the couple.
So relationship is a way of becoming more energetic in the world or being able to take on the challenges. You can imagine two circles, but this is me, this is you. And as those circles become closer together, that us that shared interstitial space of the Venn diagram, that's part of who I am.
But there are parts of my circle that are not you, and parts of your circle that are not me. And that's actually, that's how the wealth of other perspectives and what can come in.
My dissertation research many, many moons ago actually looked at this idea of feeling too close in the context of a relationship. So feeling smothered by closeness. And when I asked the circle question of the people who were in my study, people were saying, I feel suffocated by the other person. I don't know who I am.
You don't wanna do anything that takes away the autonomy and individuality and identity of the other. Likewise, if they start doing that to you, you feel less than you feel minimized, you don't feel yourself. That's a really yucky place to be.
Stephen Matini: Of all possible titles for your book. You chose a funky title, which I love, you know, Collabor(h)ate. How did you come up with it?
Deb Mashek: Yeah, so Collabor(h)ate. Some people love that title and some people hate it, but I figure at least we're talking about it.
I personally love collaboration. I think it really is this incredible tool, but having also been in a heck of a lot of collaboration, some of them that have absolutely vibrated with amazing energy and good effective outcomes and whatnot, others have been absolutely miserable.
As a psychologist, I think we have to talk about the hard stuff if we have any hope of making collaboration more bearable and more productive for more people. So I put the H in the title so it's, you know, instead of collaborate, it's Collabor(h)ate, thinking it's my way of giving voice to the hard stuff that's in there and it's by giving voice that we're able to make it better.
Stephen Matini: Is there something specific that as of now is dear to you that readers should pay attention to?
Deb Mashek: Yeah, so for me there are a couple parts, but I can say them quickly and I think they'll make sense. The first one is that collaboration is essential in the workplace.
The second one is that collaboration is actually really hard to do well there are a lot of moving parts, there are a lot of ways that we get it wrong and a lot of negative consequences if we don't get it right, it's hard to do well.
And the third one is that we don't teach it. So very few of us have received any formal professional development in how to be good collaborators. So what we have learned, we've picked up by osmosis or we've learned on the job trying to watch other people who don't necessarily know what they're doing. And so we pick up their bad habits. Some of us may have gone to business school where there were a lot of group work of people think back to their own experiences in doing that group work.
Was there formal instruction and how to do it? Well, most people say no and a fortunate few say yes. We I think have this cultural misunderstanding that relationships, you're either good at them or you're bad at them.
So for instance, we don't teach people how to be good parents. We don't teach people how to be good friends, how to be good romantic partners. Sometimes we find ourselves in the therapy room and think, God, we get some of that tutelage. At least in the United States, parents often go to prenatal classes where you learn how to do labor and delivery and then once the baby pops out, suddenly it's like you, you're supposed to just know how to parent, which of course we don't.
But I think the same is true of collaboration. We're not teaching people how to do it. And so that was the, the big thrust of the book. It's like, well here, here are some really concrete strategies and things that you can and should do to make these relationships better to take the H out. So you know, to make these collaborations less painful, more productive
Stephen Matini: Based on what you said, I’ve noticed there's a lot of common misconception about collaboration. You know, a lot of things people like to give an example, collaboration is great, but in organizational setting, if you want to be collaborative most of the time you must have time.
You know, the whole notion of collaboration is for us to discuss an option that does not exist in the present moment. And very often to get to the point you need time. And so if you're under a time crunch, well then very likely someone has to make a decision.
What would you say are some of the misconception that you've heard from people about collaboration that doesn't help them out?
Deb Mashek: The one that you're talking about elevates for me. So the idea that somehow collaboration is the right tool for everything and that we should always be collaborating and it's like collaboration, let's do it.
So that's a misconception 'cause it's not the right tool for everything. There are some situations where you need to move fast, you need to move within as an established structure and hierarchy. And so you go.
The other misconception is that collaboration just means working together as though any form of working together equals collaboration. That's actually not true. So there's a whole continuum of different ways that people work together, whether it's networking where you're just exchanging information or there are ways of taking a step up where you're both exchanging information and modifying your work in some way to achieve a shared goal.
And then eventually you can get to the level where you're also sharing resources, whether that's people power or knowledge or money or equipment or space.
And then there's this other level which is collaboration where you're truly learning from the others in that group so you can become better at your job. And so the magic of what you can create together is something that none of you could have actually done on your own.
And then there are all these mistaken beliefs and I'll just kind of rattle them off about collaboration. One is that you know, if you want a ton of collaboration in in your organization, all you have to do is hire collaborative people. It's actually not true.
Another one is if you want a lot of collaboration, all you have to do is have really great tools and processes. So really good project management, really good project management tools and then you'll get great collaboration, not true.
And then the third one, and this is at the organizational level, is this one that says, you know what, if you want tons of collaboration in your organization, just declare collaboration, a core value put out on your letterhead, paint it on the side of your wall in the office. You know, it takes way more than a a little bit of spirited energy around a keyword to create the conditions for that complex behavior to really manifest.
Stephen Matini: So if a client comes to you, and says my people don't collaborate, they're not accountable and I really want them to work together, what is the first step to move in the right direction?
Deb Mashek: I come at it as a social psychologist. So I'm a researcher at heart, that's really hard to shed that armor.
My first step is assessment. So whether it's go in and talk to as many people as possible and kind of a qualitative research way to figure out what really is governing up the works. I wanna talk one-on-one with people. I don't want anybody else to be in the room because I don't want the social dynamics and the power dynamics and the coded language to get in the way of what people really need to say.
You know, when possible, I love running a quick survey and figuring out is this a people issue? Is it a relationship issue, is it a tools and systems problem or is it a culture issue?
And on the culture side it can be anything from the boss says we're supposed to be collaborating. That collaboration is absolutely not possible or it's onerous.
They say everyone's doing it, I don't see it anywhere. Or they say they want collaborative behavior, but the only thing that's rewarded around here is individual performance. Individual effort. And what gets rewarded gets repeated. And so I'll start to look at, you know, what are the incentive structures actually in place and are those at odds with collaboration? Because typically they are, you can't say you want one thing and then reward another
Stephen Matini: Has it ever happened to you to work with a group of people, let's say a team. And somehow the team worked well together and was able to figure out how to be more collaborative. But the team is an organizational environment that is not collaborative, let's say with no cross-functional synergy. Is it possible to have pockets of collaboration within an organization whose culture is not collaborative?
Deb Mashek: And just the way you described it, so there can be these pockets or these isolated moments or where you might have a particularly charismatic connector. There's like a little synergy around this one charismatic person. Or it can be there's particular leader who's created the conditions within their division or within their department for this magic to happen.
And that's all great and then everybody else wants it on that team. But of course, you know, in most organizations you need those people to be moving back and forth across teams or looking forth across division. So people will tell you, they'll describe it to you, yeah, when I'm over here this is how we work, but outside of that bubble, this is what it really looks like.
And so organizationally, if you know, if you're driving for more collaboration, you wanna look inside under the hood of that group that's working well and figure out what's really happening in there to make that possible.
Stephen Matini: There are so many project management tool, there's a plethora of stuff that people can use from Slack. I mean you name it. What, what would you say that could be a first step in order to ensure that in terms of tools you foster the information sharing.
Deb Mashek: First part here would be to not confuse a good tool with just adoption of that's gonna create collaboration. So in other words, don't put too much stock in the tool itself being the thing that's gonna fix the collaboration.
Number two, I think it's valuable to have organization-wide decision around these are the subset of tools that we're going to use. Because otherwise what can happen is every individual team within the organization starts adopting their precious tool.
What that means is that any artifacts that they create will be locked within that tool and it will constrain any individual's ability to move over to other teams because like, oh well that's not the way we do it. Or I know what you're talking about with this new tool I've never used.
The third piece of advice would be think very carefully about what you're really asking that tool to do.
So I personally love the virtual whiteboards, like a mural or a mural. I use those every single day. I keep trying to adopt things like Asana and click up and Monday and it just doesn't work with my head.
But if I were on a team that required that I would of course have to learn it. But does it make sense for me as a a small business owner to adopt all of these tools? No, it might for a large corporation.
Another piece of advice, for instance, if you're using say Slack or even Google Drive or something like that, is create some structures around how those channels or how those storage places will be used.
So create some shared vocabulary, some shared naming conventions, shared folder structures, anything like that that are, that's gonna make it possible for your future self to find the relevant information or for the person forbid you get hit by a bus, for your other collaborators to be able to find that important work that you are doing.
Stephen Matini: And what I've noticed, I've noticed that every single group that tends to go towards whatever makes sense to them. And I've noticed that the simpler the tool, the more likely is going to be adopted. When something is overly complicated or it takes an extra step, people simply don't use it.
Deb Mashek: All of us are busy. And so when a new tool comes on board, it takes real activation energy to get us to the point where we can use it. And if we really, really want people to adopt a new collaboration tool, we have to give time, you know, figure out a way to give time for people could to be able to learn it and to integrate it into their workflows and some patience with ourselves and others. 'cause It is hard.
When I was at Heterodox Academy, we adopted Salesforce and oh my God, it took people like slapping my knuckles to get me to actually document emails and whatnot because I was out of the habit and it took forever. I don't even know if I ever really truly got up to speed on it. I had the best intentions, I was the executive director, I was the one who made the decision that we were adopting this dang thing.
And I struggled. I heard just this week a a guy who teaches people how to be effective on connecting through social media. He dislikes Calendly because it makes you appear lazy and that you're not, that you're trying to automate relationship building as opposed to truly being present with that other person and saying, you know, you let me know what can work for you.
Here are some options that that email back and forth or LinkedIn back and forth is actually part of the relationship building. So I thought that was a valuable perspective too. I dunno that I wanna forego in all situations, but I was thinking, well yeah, I could, I could see that.
Stephen Matini: You said something about intellectual humility. Would you mind telling me something more?
Deb Mashek: Yeah. So intellectual humility is this idea that knowing that we can't possibly know everything, and by virtue of my mere humanity, I am limited in my knowledge, I'm limited in my perspective. I can't know everything, nor should I know everything.
And for me it opens up then this possibility that it's through relationship and through doing and being and creating alongside other people who see the world differently. That's truly how we come up with the well-rounded perspective.
So if we were on video, I would show you, you know, a coffee mug and hold it in one direction and say, what is this? And you might say, oh, it's just the shadow of it. For instance, you would say, oh, it's a rectangle. Or you might say, oh, it's a circle or something like that.
And it's only by working alongside other people who have a different vantage point on the problem that we're truly able to weave together a holistic understanding of what the problem is and thus the solution that needs to be created to solve that problem.
And so to me, intellectual humility is one of the foundational cornerstones of effective problem solving, effective collaborating. Other pieces, there are curiosity, so wondering and being sincere when you ask somebody else how do you see it?
So from whether it's from your disciplinary lens or your cultural lens or your seniority lens or the division that you're in and thus the interest that you're advocating for, what really elevates for you about this problem? What are the key variables we need to be thinking about within this solution?
And there are so many stories of ego and the bravado where, you know, people assume they have the one right answer or they strong arm their perspective into the group and it shuts other people down. It shuts possibilities down. Like it really forecloses certain considerations before they've even been considered. And I think intellectual humility is the key to doing this all differently.
Stephen Matini: How do you keep that humility? Because it seems to me that a lot of people as they age, they become more convinced of knowing. they become even more black and white, somehow, instead of humility to me is a mixture of bunch of things, including curiosity, giving yourself a chance, you know, how do you keep that humbleness?
Deb Mashek: Here's something I do again, if we were on video, I would show you that in my notebook on the front page, I always write the question, how do you see it? So for me it's a reminder to ask other people or their perspective on something, scanning the environment and finding those things that tweak your intuition that you're not sure how in the heck can this reality or can what you just saw doesn't lap on or map on, or could it map onto some preexisting notion?
So this for instance, is why I love going to magic shows as a way of triggering the intellectual humility where the thing my brain is telling me, I just saw, I know for a fact it can't truly be true, which means I'm missing something.
So reminding myself that I, I don't know at all in that situation, letting that sense of awe come up.
And the third one that I love is when I encounter someone who sees the world really differently than I do, rather than turning away and distancing, I lean in closer and say, tell me more. How did you come to think of that? Where does that belief come from?
You know, that for me has been really important in my advocacy for viewpoint diversity on college campuses. It just this idea of we've gotta, we've gotta be surrounding ourselves with people who see complex issues, whether it's policy issues, political issues, how we're gonna solve social problems.
I need to hear from as many different people as I can and not, not necessarily so I can come up with the right answer, but so that I have a, a better hope of understanding the problem in the first place.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that truly is a simple step to people that cannot be more at the opposite, to somehow advance to a different level?
The story just quickly was that I previously was a, a full professor of social psychology out at Harvey Med College. I was tenured at the top of my career. And then the 2016 election happened in the United States presidential election.
And there were a lot of people who were so surprised that Donald Trump won and they couldn't believe anybody would've voted for this person. And this I think was especially true on college campuses and we saw a lot of people shutting down and be like, oh man.
And what I saw is, okay, as an educator we're not doing what we need to be doing to help our students encounter a diverse range of perspectives. And long story short, I ended up walking away from that tenured full professorship, moving cross country as a single mom.
My kiddo was eight at the time. I moved from California to New York to help launch this organization called Heterodox Academy, which was or is still focused on advancing viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement on college campuses.
And what I learned in that work is that the two simple things are ask other people how do you see it? And two, to ask how did you get there? Why do you believe what you believe? In other words, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. What I'm only exercise there is can I see through somebody else's eyes for even a microsecond in a way that opens up my understanding of the world.
Stephen Matini: As of now, professionally, you have so many projects, so many things. What would you say is the most important endeavor for you now that takes a lot of your time and attention? Is it something you're doing now, something you're building for the future?
Deb Mashek: Yeah, so what I'm doing now is I am a collaboration consultant, which is hysterical to say at dinner parties for two reasons. One, collaboration is kind of a fuzzy word and consultant is actually a really fuzzy word also. So people are like, I still have no idea what you do.
So what I do is I work with organizational leaders to deliver high stakes collaboration across silos and stakeholders. So you know, it, it includes things where you need people from different sectors coming together or you need people from that division in that division to work together or there's something involving a lot of money or other resources or there's a huge reputational hit at stake or some really big strategic advantage to be gained if we're able to work together well.
And I love being at the ground level when those are building up. I think people tend to underestimate the importance of some of that ground setting. So I often get called in when things start to fall apart. So I do both some of the crisis management of getting a collaboration back on track though I really love being there at the ground floor to help build it and to build it well.
Stephen Matini: Does it ever happen to you as a result of your commitment, of your work, that your energy gets depleted. If if that happens to you, when you feel down, is there anything you do in order to bring yourself up?
Deb Mashek: It really does get hard. I mean if it was easy, everybody would do it. And if it was easy, everybody would do it in a sustainable positive way. But they don't because it's hard. And I think it's worthy of that hardness because, and this is one of the things I do to bring myself back up is I, I ask, so why is it worth it?
Why is what we're trying to do worth this slog worth, this incredible activation energy that we're putting into it to get this thing rolling? And for me that's very uplifting because I can see like this thing we're trying to do together could not exist unless we were doing it together. It's worth it because it's gonna solve a big problem in the world. It's going to offer a really cool innovation that's gonna bring in a heck of a lot of money for the company.
If we can figure out how to work better together, we're gonna end up with staff who are more engaged and more constructive. They're gonna stick around longer. So there's like this more morale and wellbeing argument. So whether it's timelines or bottom lines or wellbeing or innovation, this collaboration thing really matters. And that to me is very uplifting.
The other thing I do when it really, really gets challenging is I go into my hidey hole and hide out and be alone for a little bit to re-energize. So as that whole together apart thing again too, where you need the separateness in order to do together well.
People are messy, we're all messy, we're inconsistent, we're unpredictable. Things trigger us, different needs will be activated at any particular time and it might change over the day or over the week or over the month. And so there are so many moving parts. And to to care enough about not just the individuals who are involved, but also the project or program or service, whatever it is you're trying to create, to be able to track all of that movement and then optimize your engagement.
Stephen Matini: We talked about so many different things. Is there anything that would be important in your opinion for our listeners to take away from this conversation? Out of all the things we talked about?
Deb Mashek: Ask for input on how you are as a collaborator. Ask your direct reports, ask your supervisor, ask your peers, what is it like to work with me and what would be helpful if I did differently or better would make it easier for us to work together. I think that's important.
And then along those same lines is take seriously your professional development and this whole collaboration thing. So whether you're a top executive or the brand new individual contributor, chances are you haven't learned as much as you could or will need to learn ultimately in this domain that that's gonna make you just even more of a rockstar than you already are.
So it's worth it to invest in in that development. So you benefit your team benefits your organization does. And I would say society as a whole does when we can work better together.
Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for sharing your ideas, your hard research, your experiences. This is really, really, really great. Thank you.
Deb Mashek: My pleasure.
Wednesday Dec 06, 2023
Conscious Creativity: Cut Loose from Perfectionism - Featuring Michael Sjostedt
Wednesday Dec 06, 2023
Wednesday Dec 06, 2023
Michael Sjostedt is a wellness facilitator who uses art-making for self-reflection, personal growth, and team dynamics.
Our conversation explores how engaging in creative activities can help individuals and teams better understand their thought patterns, deal with perfectionism, manage stress, and enhance communication.
Michael highlights the importance of self-awareness and the value of using creative exercises to improve our approach to work and life.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: What is your first memory of Art? Of Art making?
Michael Sjostedt: My very, very first memory of art making was in the early eighties elementary school. I don't remember the exact age, but I was drawing schematics of underground homes, 'cause I watched this show Omni, it was a science show and they were doing a piece on underground homes and how much better they are. And it was so modern and so cool.
And I would take huge sheets of paper and draw like a dome. And then I would draw a line as like, here's the ground. And then I would draw the house under it. So it was basically almost like a dollhouse. If you looked at a dollhouse and opened up. It's just got all the different rooms that you can see sliced up. And so that's what I would do. And the top dome was always like my sunroom. So I always have a lounger in there with me on it. But they were ridiculous. They were fun. And that was a very early sign that I was very into design, modernism, new ways of being.
So in the early nineties, clay beads were huge. Kids would wear 'em at concerts, buy 'em at bead shops were huge in the early nineties. So a friend of mine taught me how to make them. And at first I wasn't very good. Everyone else had kind of gotten the process down and I was a little sloppy. But the process itself was still very meditative. There was a start, a middle and an end. And yet within all of that timeframe you could be very creative, you could try all kinds of different designs.
And within a few months I showed the same friends what I had made. They're like, what have you been doing? They're like, are you working 24/7 on this? I'm like kind of, I was so into the , contemplative aspect of it. It was the most satisfying thing I'd I'd ever done at that point. And from there people are like, wow, that's incredible. I wanna buy one. I'm like, oh cool.
And at the high point, I was 19, I had no business training, I just had a natural instinct for this. And it happened at a good time because it was like the start of summer school break. So I would make these beads, mass produce them for like eight to 10 hours a day, listen to music and just pump 'em out.
And then I would take a day and hit the road and go to a town that was, had bead shops or other stuff going on. And I would get accounts. So at the high point I had 14 wholesale accounts. I had custom orders. I was teaching monthly classes at an art supply store. I was vending at fairs, I was smuggling necklaces into Lollapalooza and other concerts. I would pull out my necklaces, you know, from my cargo shorts, wave 'em around.
It was such a good overall learning experience. Something you can never learn in school. One thing I really took away from that too is that if you really want to learn something, you really have to do it yourself. You just have to mess around, give yourself time, give yourself space. And if you still love it, it's gonna improve.
Stephen Matini: I think that a lot of people are so afraid is, is this gonna work? It's not gonna work. That they simply do not think that it's a process. What have you witnessed working with people and helping them, using art making?
Michael Sjostedt: What I've seen in recent workshops, I've taught, I'll provide an exercise and people will just start messing around because to them it's low stakes. We're just cutting a paper, we're having a good time and we're experimenting.
And they're like, oh my god, what is this? If the combination of elements isn't what they're used to and they start messing around and they don't like it, they literally hold their heads. They're like, oh my God, I can't do this.
And that negative self-talk could have a perfectionistic voice to it or a tone to it, but it could also just be, I don't know how to start. This is so new to me, I don't know where to begin.
And so I often have to quickly identify that. And so I ask questions, I'm like, okay, tell me what's going on, what isn't working for you? And I, I stick with what's in front of them. I don't get into their head, you know, I'm like, what are you thinking? Because that comes out by what they're saying. So you really have to listen.
You kind of have to like bring people back down 'cause they're really in their head and it, it's a good reminder. Like these low stakes workshops are such an eye into how we operate into how we think and how we talk to ourselves, our narratives.
If you could examine this reaction that people are having, you know, if they can self-examine when they're in this moment, when they're feeling this build that self-awareness muscle up, then they take it into a higher stakes environment like their job or their work.
So if you can take this self-awareness into your other parts of your life and talk yourself off a ledge, you could make your life easier. You know, it doesn't have to be this fraught, I need to quit. This is terrible kind of stuff.
So workshops like this are so helpful. And I'm not saying you have a breakthrough with every workshop or you have a meltdown or any of that stuff, but they do happen.
Stephen Matini: Based on anything you say, it sounds that your workshops become some sort of a mirror in which people can see themselves. What makes you different compared to other facilitators?
Michael Sjostedt: First and foremost, the name of the workshop is called Cut Loose. And the whole concept is to come and have fun and to do something new, try something new.
The MoMA and the Mat are not gonna be calling you after the workshop, so lower your expectations. You know, it's really just an exercise to do something new and fun and to take a digital break, take a break from real life use art making as like a contemplative, meditative process. There's many ways to meditate.
When I work with the class, I give them exercises, but I let them, there's room for interpretation. Some people love that. Some people are like, wait, what are the rules? I need the rules. Working with those people are really interesting 'cause I could be that way too. I'm like, I need to know if you have an expectation, I need to, I need to know what the things are. It's interesting to work with so many different personalities and to be able to kind of accommodate the different personalities.
So what I do is after we we're done an exercise, I, I'll kind of eyeball a few students who have very interesting interpretations of the exercise and I'll show it to the class with their permission and talk about what I like about this and talk with the student about what they were thinking, how they feel about the outcome.
And to show the other students, here's another way to think about using these materials. Like I like how they use this design element. I liked how they use this face or this color and really talk about it.
So different things come up for different people, you know, other people have mentioned difficult things that they're going through. And one woman said in a, in a recent class, she goes, I'm gonna start collage journaling because she's navigating a complicated life transition right now and talk therapy is involved in in her transition.
But there was something about making without any heavy expectations of this needs to be presented in a certain way. It's really just using, making as a tool to work through whatever's going on, but also to take an active break for yourself.
Stephen Matini: I think it's wonderful and it's wonderful because I think it's quite applicable also working with organizations and teams and managers. You, you told me in the past that sometimes you do use this approach, you know, in a more work type of context. Do the same rules apply or have you noticed any other type of dynamics?
Michael Sjostedt: If you're burned out or if you're stressed or if you're under the gun or if you're dealing with difficult personalities, whether it be coworkers or clients or whatever, that combination can be very tricky. Talking about what, what you're dealing with, with whomever, you, your supervisor or a colleague or something.
Don't wait until you are telling yourself, this stinks, I quit, I hate them. If you jump right into the negative consequences a result or, or really attach yourself to the negative narratives around what you're feeling, it makes it that much harder to get out of the situation that you're in.
So really developing a practice that helps you shine a light on your negative narratives, especially if you take yourself out of the work environment and give yourself a, a creative exercise.
You know, this is where HR and wellness folks and activity directors and you know, anyone who's, who's working on morale on teams, this is a good exercise because yes, it's a, it's a chill break. You get to chill out but also things will come up and you, and you have to be ready to respond to that. And you're like, oh, that's interesting, that narrative, maybe write that down. You know? And that's something I do in my workshops too. I have people write down how they're feeling before, during, and after the workshop.
I really got to notice how I think about thinking or how your narrative is so deep and ingrained and not questioned. It's just habitual. These workshops are a speed bump. They're a pause because you're out of your element. The narrative is that much closer to the top. It's more conscious. It's not this subconscious thing. And so you're able to identify and hear it better and name it. And if you can do that, have more of these speed bumps and build up that habit and those and those exercises, your day-to-day can be a lot easier.
You really kind of have to really evaluate how you talk to yourself and what your narrative is. And if there's a certain slant of perfectionism or negative self-talk or passive aggressive or, or whatever it is that's gonna make your life that much easier. You're going to recognize the patterns and recognizing those patterns just allow you to then question or shift.
I was also thinking of how difficult feedback can be receiving feedback and receiving feedback. If you've already got a predilection of beating yourself up of perfectionism coupled with not knowing where to start, that's a deadly combo. And a blank page can be really deadly.
It's really hard to look at that and get what's in your head onto there. And that's why creative making and exercises is so helpful to tell yourself, okay, here's a blank piece of paper. I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes. I'm gonna cut up a bunch of images, I'm gonna put 'em together and just see what happens.
And then you kind of look at that experience and you're like, I did it. I got something down. And that's a starting point. You started, you didn't just sit and ruminate at a blank page. You weren't paralyzed by like all the flooding of things.
So a blank piece of paper will always be in front of you in life no matter what you're doing. Getting unstuck is tricky given all that else is going on in your life and your in your mind. So to give yourself some space, give yourself a break and go and go easy on yourself when you're starting, the experience will be that much better. You'll be able to develop that habit of going easy on yourself when you're doing something and hopefully the end result will be better than expected. You've got a different mindset, you've got a different energy that you, you put into these exercises.
And that's really what I'm starting to realize when I work with students is develop these speed bumps for yourself. Develop an awareness tool of how you talk to yourself.
You know, they're really sitting and meditating, you know, or listening to a guided of meditation or, or being by yourself is great too. Having a contemplative practice is great, exercising is great, taking a break, whatever that means is great. But a, a form of creative rest, which I like to call this ,making with a clear start, middle and end without any big expectations other than the joy of the process. And to really kind of examine before, during, and after of what's been going on, what's been the shift.
And if you don't take time to stop and question how am I talking to myself, you're not really gonna change. You're not really gonna evolve. But it really does come down to how you notice what you're saying to yourself and what you do with that information.
Stephen Matini: When you facilitate these workshops, you know, you are basically their catalyst, you know you are their Dumbledore. What would you say that a manager could learn from your experience as a facilitator of these workshops?
Michael Sjostedt: Switch up the questions that you ask, especially if you're working with someone that you're frustrated with. If what you're communicating isn't clicking, think about the questions you ask yourself. Switch that around and listen for any questions that are accusatory. Why didn't you do this? Why isn't this happening? Blah blah blah. That will shut the other person down.
Really question your own narrative around what's going on. Question the questions that you're coming up with in your head and try to take the person out of the project. If they deliver something that isn't what was to spec or on the brief or what was needed, et cetera, et cetera. Just look at the work. Don't look at the person at first.
There may be a time where you do have to look at the person and that's another story. But even that can be done in a more human way.
But look at the work and be like, tell me about the start, the middle, the finish. What were the elements? What were the components? What was going on? Interesting how we landed here, could we talk about that? It's really how you communicate about the project versus, there you go again, I told you blah, blah. You know, getting into bad parent accusatory thing.
And so how exercises like making like a workshop with your team can be helpful because it can kind of spotlight team dynamics and it can spotlight how people think.
You know, it can, because when people are at work, they're also performing.
And so these workshops can kind of make people more real. They're not performing, they're just being themselves having fun.
So questions will come up, narratives will come up, habits will come up, things will just come up as you talk about things. You get to know the person better.
Our dynamic and energy is very interesting. I wonder if we did this instead moving forward for our work projects and what could change and what could shift, you know? So it's kind of like a, it's play, but it's also role playing in a way of what an ideal state could be.
And that's gotta shift in the workplace because how you treat yourself and others makes a huge difference. You get better work out of people, you get better work outta yourself. It's the more enjoyable, the morale's higher, et cetera.
And other things will come up, you know, other things like, oh wow, your energy around this collaboration is kind of interesting. What's the point? What is everyone's bandwidth? What's everyone's mental state? Because you don't want to come in with any expectation that this is the a panacea that this is gonna fix whatever's going on. No, it's just a tool to kind of, it's a speed bump.
Stephen Matini: We talked about so many angles, so many important things. Is there any specific key takeaway, something that you deem for listeners to be really important they should pay attention to?
Michael Sjostedt: When you're embarking on a new creative endeavor, be conscious of how you talk to yourself. Write it down, say it out loud, record it because it's a very interesting view into yourself. It's something you don't do for yourself. It's habitual. And if you're stressed out, if you're burned out, if you're frustrated, how you talk to yourself is gonna affect your energy. It's gonna affect how you think about anything.
It's gonna affect how you communicate with other people. It's gonna affect how you talk to yourself or how you talk about yourself or how you think about a project. But also how making can just kind of help you get unstuck from either habits of perfectionism, habits of not knowing where to start task paralysis, how you manage a creative team or how you manage a project. There's just so many applications. So be conscious and have an intention about here's what I wanna learn about myself when I start this project.
And also be honest with how you feel during and after. And also, collage is just one of many tools. It's just one of many vehicles to do this.
You could do a group cooking class, we're gonna make a loaf of bread together. Take everyday activities. 'cause If you go into an activity already stressed out with this intention of like, this is gonna relax me, you're gonna end up with this burned and then you're like, oh, I suck. I knew it. I'm bad at this. I can't do this. I'm not creative, I, I can't, blah, blah, blah.
You gotta go easy on yourself. Realize that you're stressed out and burned out. Don't put so much weight on the exercise to kind of solve whatever it is is going on. It's a way for you to kind of just take a break and notice what's going on. Again, I don't wanna put too much heaviness onto the act of making or whatever it is you're making, cause again, that can add more stress to someone. But really going with an intention, a light intention to start with. Even of just, I just wanna mess around. I don't care what it looks like after, I just wanna have a good time. But still notice like how you're talking to yourself and what the difference is before, during, and after.
Stephen Matini: Michael, Thank you for our conversation because for me it's a speed bump today.
Michael Sjostedt: Great.
Stephen Matini: It is, thank you. I've learned a lot.
Wednesday Nov 29, 2023
Negotiation: Turn the Tide - Featuring Seth Freeman
Wednesday Nov 29, 2023
Wednesday Nov 29, 2023
Seth Freeman is an award-winning negotiation and conflict management professor at New York University and Columbia University.
In his book, "15 Tools to Turn the Tide- A Step-by-Step Playbook for Empowered Negotiating," Seth provides practical tools to navigate conflicts effectively, guiding individuals to create value, strengthen relationships, and approach negotiations with empathy.
In the episode, Seth emphasizes "winning warmly," ensuring that negotiators can achieve their goals while considering the other party's needs. Seth believes combining strength and kindness can lead to better outcomes in conflict resolution, even when disagreements remain.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: When did you decide what you wanted to pursue professionally? Is that something you've always known or unfolded over your time?
Seth Freeman: Well, as I often say, I used to practice corporate law. Now I enjoy my life. I was a very unhappy corporate lawyer for six years, and through a series of life events, I found myself trying just as an experiment to teach a class to paralegals on securities regulation.
Nobody wants to learn securities regulation, so I made it a little fun and they loved it and I loved it. And that was a revelation. I said, well, all right, I'll do it again. And ditto. And then I said, well, maybe I could teach corporate law and ditto. And now I've got a stack of reviews of students who said this was really great. So I started to pursue it, and that led me to Fordham Business School and I taught there.
And along the way I became pa interested in mediation, which led me to teaching negotiation. And that led me to teach at New York University, and that led me to teach at Columbia, and that led me to teach around the world.
Stephen Matini: So what, what do you think that was missing, like at the time that you were not having fun?
Seth Freeman: Well, I think I had to unlearn some things. I think I had understood that the purpose of work is to work more, and that you can get interested in anything. And so just find whatever's enjoyable about it and find something that you're reasonably okay with and just, you know, do it and don't, you know, don't worry about trying to find your calling or anything like that. And all of that proved to be in my hands, very unhelpful. And I was chronically miserable and I felt very bad about that.
I said, there must be something wrong with me because I just find this work so boring and stressful and I'm not very good at it. So there must be something wrong with me. And what I now realize is that Albert Einstein's remark is right, you know, he said, if you ask a fish to climb a tree, it's not gonna do very well, but if you put him in the water, it'll swim brilliantly.
That was me. I was definitely doing work that I really wasn't called to do. And this idea of calling became a critical realization. What am I called to do? And that takes some real introspection. It takes some prayer, it takes some, some, some exploration. But what do you know, 30 years later I rejoice in this. The idea of retiring to me sounds awful because I just love doing this.
Stephen Matini: You know, in hindsight it's so much easier to see what happened. So if you had to do it all over again, would you say that could have been possible for you as a younger professional to find out earlier on what your direction could potentially be?
Seth Freeman: Well, I'll answer for myself and separately. For others, for myself, I'm very grateful. I did not know, because what that would've probably meant was I would've sought a PhD and I would've found myself doing some rather obscure scholarship and some rather obscure place and perhaps getting into this work to some degree.
But I wouldn't have been primarily teaching, I would've been mostly focused on scholarship, which I love as an avocation, but I would not want that to be my primary focus. And that is what it is, what it means to be a, a tenure track academic. So it was a, a real mercy for me to discover this indirectly to first get a law degree in practice and discover what I don't enjoy doing. But it turns out that printed on the back of every law degree is a stamp that says good for a second career in academia.
For others, what I would recommend is make little bets, try different things, information interview. And those ultimately proved to be very valuable for me, along with understanding what it means to have a vocation if possible. All that I think would be my advice to others.
Stephen Matini: And then you focus on an area which is not necessarily something that a lot of people love, which is conflict management, negotiation. What was about that area that spoke to you?
Seth Freeman: You know, I took a vocational test when I was a corporate lawyer just to see if somebody had any perspective for me that I had missed. And they said, you have too many interests and abilities, so there's not gonna be one subject or field that will work for you. You're gonna need to basically build a three-legged stool and try to do several different things or take on a an enormous task. And that might occupy your interests and skills better, like say world peace. That was kind of a throwaway line. But here I am 30 years later and it's a term of art that I try to avoid whenever possible.
Cuz world peace can be such a cliche. But how do we get along is such a remarkably rich and varied question. It, you can bring any field of study to bear on it. It's the richness of it, the depth of it, the practical usefulness of it.
I can walk into a kindergarten or I can walk into the United Nations and I have or anything in between and talk with them about what I'm working on, what there is to learn. And they go, yeah, this is useful, this is interesting. Let me tell you my situation.
And as a result, what I'm learning is that it opens almost every door. If you want. If you're interested in psychology, you've got this history, politics, law, economics. This subject covers all bases. So that I think is why it remains so fascinating for me.
And most importantly of all, the sheer joy of seeing people go from being afraid or on the other hand, very arrogant and finding a way to work together with others that's powerful and gentle at the same time is just delicious, to be able to see people create more peace and prosperity and harmony, I never thought I could do that and I could do it. And what a difference that makes.
Stephen Matini: You know, one thing that I've noticed speaking to different guests for the podcast is how, for so many of them, what they decided to pursue was either a response to a problem they had an issue, something that they struggled with, that somehow became their life calling. Do you think that we are better off or what in terms of how we get along as people?
Seth Freeman: Well, there's several ways to answer that. One is that one of the least well known and most astounding developments in your life and mine, is that the world is doing better than we have ever done in our lives.
In 1961, John Kennedy talked about a global alliance north and so east and west that can secure a better life for all mankind against the common enemies of man, tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Now, this is no observation about John Kennedy, it just notes that those goals seem completely unreachable and lofty.
But fast forward to today, and what we discover is that tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself, not withstanding some of the headlines we dread, are actually in better conditions than at any time in human history.
Two billion people have left extreme poverty in the last 20 years. It's unbelievable. Deaths due to disease have fallen off. Literacy rates around the world are way higher than they've ever been. Many diseases have been cured. It just goes on and on and on, and it's just not widely known.
And if you think of all of those as part of what the larger definition of peace is, then things are actually in a better place than you would've ever dreamed. And yes, there's less war and deaths due to war than there've ever been notwithstanding Ukraine, notwithstanding in the Middle East and all and and such, not to trivialize that at all, but in general, we are doing better.
Now, does that mean everything's hunky dory and that I'm out of a job? Absolutely not. Could it change tomorrow? Absolutely. And there are all kinds of interesting questions about why this is so, and you might be familiar with a book by Steven Pinker, “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” And he talks about how the violence has declined for the last 500 years. And just to the point in the Middle Ages in Europe, the murder rate in most villages with something like 70 per hundred thousand, today it's two per hundred thousand. It's unbelievable how violent our ancestors' lives were, and we're not living that way.
Stephen Matini: Why do you think there's so much emphasis on the negative? It's impossible to read the news that all that we hear is just a celebration of negativity.
Seth Freeman: You know, my grandmother used to say, if it makes you happy to be unhappy, you should only be happy. And there can be a tendency for us to court that which makes us unhappy. It may have something to do with story mastery. We feel the need to master something that's disturbing or distressing. We run to it to learn it. And so we don't have to feel the fear anymore. Whereas if something is good, we're kind of almost programmed to go, okay, I don't need to worry about that anymore. And we don't discuss it.
Now that's just one brief level of discussion. It's also the nature of news itself. Not to say anything politically, but the nature of news is something happened that was big and noteworthy and the changed things. And typically it's negative and often explosive things that answered that description.
How did we cure polio? Well, it took years. There were certain people who were key to doing it and they eradicated it around the world over the course of several years or smallpox, but there was no one moment where that happened. And so it's much harder to craft that into a news story.
And so each year I curate a list. I, I usually find it online, something called 99 Good News stories that you didn't hear about. And some of it's a little political, but some of it's really wonderful like science breakthroughs and discoveries and the decline of tyranny, poverty, disease, and war.
And you go, oh my God, why didn't I hear about any of this? Hans Rowling is a demographer from Sweden. He passed away a couple of years ago, but he had a whole thing called the greatest PowerPoint presentation of all time and even wrote a book about it. And it shows how remarkably the world has advanced in the last 20 years. But he found that most western audiences, including journalists and scholars, had no awareness of this. And often when you tested them, they would score worse than chimpanzees.
And the reason is because they're reading the news. So for example, if you read the New York Times, and then I ask you, what's the likelihood if you catch Covid that you will be hospitalized?
The average New York Times reader would say 50%. Turns out the answer is 1.5%. So here's even the New York Times, and yet readers are kind of being led to believe their problem. And I, this is not a comment on how serious or unserious Covid, this is an order of magnitude difference in understanding of what the, the risks are. And it's not specific to the New York Times, it's not specific to that issue.
There are lots of issues I can name where almost every time you have a percentage in the headline, there's some misleading quality to it. And so you have to read with great care and you wanna check the footnotes, you gotta check other voices who has the time for that? And so as a result, we wind up hearing the negative and just assuming it's true,
Stephen Matini: How do you overcome polarization? What could it be a one first, a super small step?
Seth Freeman: If you're asking on a macro level, what can I, or what can you do to change the tenor of the times that we live in, in a great nation like Italy or the United States? I don't think there's a lot, at least in the moment. Although we can certainly plant seeds and we can live a life that looking back we feel glad and and hopeful.
But on a one-to-one basis, I do think there are things one can do. And indeed, I've been teaching one vein of this to my students for the last three or four semesters. And I teach them a very simple method. It's quite counterintuitive. And then send them out and I invite them as an optional assignment to try it to have a, what I call a hot topics conversation about a political issue that they're an eight, nine or ten about.
And that someone in their life is a one, two or three about, you know, opposite sides. They care about it. So there's a lot, there's, there's something at stake. Somebody they very much disagree with, can they talk about it?
I would guess 60 to 80% of the time they come back and say, that went way better than I expected. And it went way better than my counterpart expected. We both enjoyed it. We felt closer to each other afterwards. We didn't necessarily change either's mind, but my counterpart said he was energized, he enjoyed this, he wants to do more of it. And in the process they sometimes say, I learned things. I thought there was no possible thing they could say that would make a difference. And they go, oh my gosh, I learned something. I hear that. And I go, what a delight, what a joy.
And I've seen students do this, literally the world from New York to Pakistan, to Korea, to Haiti, to China. It doesn't matter what the culture is, it doesn't matter what the issue is. They've talked about everything and they've still had these experiences. So it's kinda a test of concept. You can do this and it's not that hard to learn.
Stephen Matini: So basically what is it they did? And they made it possible was about listening? Was about not trying to convince the other person that they should change their mind?
Seth Freeman: Very good. Each of those is part of it. But it really comes down to just three little words. And just as a side note, this is my next book, not the current book or it's part of it, but the three little words that they're using are paraphrase, praise, probe. Lemme say that again. Paraphrase, praise probe.
And the idea is you get onto a hot topic and you start by just listening when the other one is finished talking about his view on the issue, you see, lemme make sure I understand that. And you say back what the other one says, so well that the other one goes exactly.
And then you praise, you actually intentionally highlight something non-obvious that you can truthfully say you learned or appreciate about what the other is saying. Does that mean you're agreeing with them? No, but almost invariably there's something, in fact probably several things that this person has shared that is worthy of praise and that takes a little discipline.
And if there's absolutely nothing, then you go back and say, say more. And eventually you discover, I don't agree with this person, but this person is really caring, really cares about children's safety here. Or this person really cares about justice or this person really cares about the free speech and these are worthy things to care about. Now their conclusion may be opposite line, but those are worthy things to praise so you can praise them.
Then you ask a question, not a prosecutor's question. Isn't it true? But a question that a child would best ask, like, can you help me understand this? Or when you use this word, what do you mean? Or Can you gimme an example? Or how would we falsify that? Or how could we test that in really simple questions? And then you just repeat the process.
Now, eventually you do share your view. By the time you do, you have built such goodwill, such trust, such validation. The other one is interested in reciprocating and you've modeled for them the very kind of conversation that you would like.
And the conversation turns out to be delicious and you can go anywhere you want with it, but it's a lot better than the arguing. And I can speak with some confidence about this cuz I went to argument school or law school and I know that's a great way to alienate people and bother them.
Stephen Matini: Anything you say is very kind and very positive. Would you say that kindness and being positive could be part of these formula on how to negotiate?
Seth Freeman: Paraphrase, praise probe gives you a tool, dare I say it, to structure intentional respect and kindness. The basic thing I teach my students is the goal here is not to change someone's mind, but to touch their heart and to be 3% more loving.
It turns out that that's often one of the best ways to change somebody's mind eventually. And a good example of this is Darryl Davis. Darryl Davis is a 50 something African-American jazz musician, rhythm and blues artist I should say living in southern Maryland. And over the course of about 10 years, he built relationships with a number of members of the Ku Klux Klan. And in one-on-one conversations with them, the way he was with them was such that they left the clan.
In fact, many left the clan. Hundreds left the clan because of the way he was talking with them and essentially doing what what I'm describing. And they would give him their clan outfits and he has a whole closet, dozens, dozens of clan outfits because they renounced their racism and apologized.
And he said, I never ever set out to get any of them to leave the clan. I just wanted to engage with them human being, the human being, and ask them, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And that gradually destroyed their misconceptions.
Stephen Matini: Seth, how do you preserve your energy? Because it's not easy what you do. So how do you stay positive? How do you stay kind, particularly when things get tough?
Seth Freeman: The truth is I'm not up against a lot of toxicity. I'm not up against a lot of animosity. I'm not putting myself onto social media in situations where people are prone to act like snipers. I'm actually in a very fortunate place and I have to speak with respect and humility about those who aren't so fortunate. But I can tell you that there are people who I've had the privilege of getting to know, who are dealing with incredible toxicity and they're succeeding.
That's hostage negotiators. I've had the privilege of getting to know the leaders of the New York Police Department hostage negotiation team, and they've come to my classes, we've had interviews, they're kind of become friends.
They'll tell you that there are specific learnable skills that make a difference. And it can be horrible to be talking to somebody who's got a gunpoint at the head of a 10 year old boy. And yet they succeed. Not always, but they succeed. And how do they cope with it?
Well, they have a team with them. Partly they have training, partly they're doing a lot of the same things that I would, I was just talking about paraphrasing, very big part of it.
And one of the things that's crucial in this work is taking a break. When you're overwhelmed, getting out of there, finding a way to detox is very important. There's an old misquote, never go to bed angry, terrible advice because what's the chance that drunk and exhausted at two in the morning? You and your significant other are gonna work it out. You know, if you're just take a break and you might do much better.
So there's no one thing that can protect one from toxicity, but that's one of the reasons having an array of treatment options is such a big deal.
Stephen Matini: What would it be in your experience the best way to approach that, when you know that you have something that could potentially change things for the better, but you are afraid of voicing them out?
Seth Freeman: In a sense you've just framed the thesis of the book or the challenge that the book seeks to speak to. Sometimes I refer to this as Godzilla. How do you negotiate with Godzilla?
So it may not be somebody who's mean, but somebody who is so powerful that it feels like I'm Bambi and he's just gonna crush me. How do I actually engage with this person in a way that's gonna be at least have a chance of being constructive and successful.
In a sense, every tool in the book is designed to help with that. I'll start with the very first one. I had a student who got a phone call from her client, biggest client of her, of her company, represented by a woman named Brenda.
And Brenda said, hi Janice, how's the project going? Oh, it's going great. We're gonna have it for you when you asked in 60 days. Yeah, that's what we're calling about. We need it in 30 days.
And she says, I really don't think that's gonna be possible. Would you please check cuz we really need it checks? No chance comes back, says, I checked, there's really no way she's not happy. Brenda's not happy. She says, all right. She hangs up. Long story short, her boss calls and says, if you don't give us this project in 30 days, you're gonna lose us. And with that, the company would die itself and the boss has no idea what to do. And Janice is with him when that call comes in and she says, tell him you'll call him back. Okay, but you're gonna have to come back in 20 minutes.
Okay, so now we've got Janice and her boss and the boss calls everyone else in and says, we've gotta do this, we've gotta get this done in 30 days. And everyone, but Janice says, we can't.
The boss says, you've got to can't got to, can't got to. They're in a classic impasse and the clock is running. Now what would you do in a situation like this? That's the very question you're asking me, Stephen, what would you say to your boss? Your boss is clearly freaked out and essentially his boss is freaked out what to do?
Well, what Janice did was to deploy the first tool of the book and it transformed the problem from an impasse to a dare I say it, a negotiation that allowed them to develop a counter offer. And the counter offer was so satisfying to the client that the client said, you guys are rock stars.
You're gonna get more business from us a lot more cuz you're fantastic. And the calls ended happily. Janice was a hero. How do you do that? Well, I couldn't do that in a crisis by myself. But what Janice used essentially was the first tool of the book. And the first tool of the book is the key to solving that kind of a problem.
Stephen Matini: When I looked at your book, how did you come up with such a great name for every single chapter? Because none of them is what you would think a book on negotiation is, you know. How did you come up with these great names?
Seth Freeman: Well, it's very, very kind of you and I'm pleased to hear you feel that way. That was not what I came up with. My editors said come up with something short, pithy and catchy. And I said all right, so, I came up with these things. Yes, he said, that’s what I want.
Stephen Matini: ”Decide with three birds in the bush;” What is that about?
Seth Freeman: That is a tool that's designed to answer the biggest, the most frequent question I get from students during interview season. And that is, professor, I've got one job offer. It's not very good. I have till Friday to get back to them. I don't expect to have another offer anytime soon, but I really don't think it's a good offer. What should I do? Do I have to take it?
And that reveals a real flaw in what we negotiation instructors teach. What we teach is that when you're in a situation like that, you should develop your BATNA and that means your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. The only problem with that, although it's good advice on its face, you do research, you get creative, you come up with something that makes you stronger, that's great, but I don't have time for that.
I've got till Friday and I've been looking and I haven't gotten, you know, maybe in a, in, you know, a month or two, but I got nothing right now. So what that implies is that you should take any darn offer if you got nothing else. Cuz the conventional wisdom is you walk away if and when your BATNA is better. But here your BATNA is zero. Does that mean you should take an offer for a dollar a year? Obviously not. But what do you do?
So the tool you're asking about is designed to help better answer that question. And in essence what it's asking is, alright, you have a bird in the hand, right? But what if it's reasonably likely that in the next two, three or four months you could very well get three birds in the bush, should you let go of that first bird?
And the answer is, well, very possibly yes. And the tool walks you through a systematic way to wisely discern what your likely near future prospects are and to discount them in a way that recognizes both logic and the human heart and the practical wisdom of somebody older, wiser, and smarter than you.
And you put those together and you come up with a good estimate of what I call your notional BATNA. You don't have it now, but in 2, 3, 4 months you may very well. And that's the logic that most business people use to make critical business decisions.
How does a game designer design a game? Very often what they have to do is assume that a microchip will be powerful enough in 18 months to do what it right now can't do. And they build toward that. Now that takes a certain burden of hand three in the bush way of thinking. And there's a lot of decision science that's designed to help you think this way too. And what I've done is adapt all that into this tool.
Stephen Matini: Do you think it's possible to negotiate anything if the other person doesn't sense some sort of humanity on your side?
Seth Freeman: Oh, it's absolutely possible. And one of the reasons why we need to know how to cope is because a highly aggressive or obnoxious or manipulative negotiation practice or conflict management practice is a high risk, high return bet.
It's very risky. It can cripple your reputation, it can alienate people, it can blow up, it can really, I don't recommend it at all. And it's tempting and that's why people do it.
So one of the most scary examples of this is Soviet style bargaining tactics. For example, in June, 1961, John Kennedy goes to meet for the first and only time with his opposite number from the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. And 90 minutes after they first met Kennedy walked out of the room shaking like this, and his, his his aide went, what, what, what?
And he gets into the car and he melts down and he later said this was the worst thing that ever happened to him. John Kennedy, a man who, who nearly died twice in the hospital, a man who was nearly killed in World War II, a man, his brother was killed, his his sister was institutionalized. This was the worst thing. Why?
Cuz Nikita Khrushchev practiced the most aggressive and severe and menacing kind of negotiating practice there is. And it harrowed Kennedy and it can work at least in some ways. So that's why you can't just assume that everyone's gonna be nice. Our goal is to be strong and kind. If you're just kind, you can wind up like Kennedy shaking and ruined. If you're just strong, you can wind up like a, a Soviet premier, you know, just all the strength and and awfulness that comes with that.
But if you know how to combine these seeming opposites, you can be hard on the problems, soft on the person. And that's one of my aspirations for the book. It's certainly not original, but my op my goal is to make that much more operational, to make much more accessible in real time when you most need it.
Stephen Matini: Is there a word to point out what you just said? The strong and the kind.
Seth Freeman: There are people who embody this quality. I'm not sure there's a single word for it, but you know, the people who I find who are most able to bring these qualities together are people like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. They had this, this remarkable capacity to do both and it seems impossible, but they literally changed the course of history, saved entire nations saved millions of people.
And so it can feel like, well I'm not Martin Luther King, I'm not Nelson Mandela. No, actually you can do what they did on a more local scale. Very much this in the same way, because these are not lofty tasks, these are very accessible tasks, but it takes just a, a little training or a little, you know, some tools to help you do it.
Stephen Matini: Is there any specific hope that you have for readers, for anyone who decides to read your book? Is there anything you would like them to take away?
Seth Freeman: Oh, I'm very ambitious for my readers. Well, as for my students, I end with this, go make me proud. And my intention is for them to do wonderful things. As I often say to my students, and as I might say to my readers, when you win the Nobel Peace Prize, remember me in your speech.
Even that is just a small ambition, truly because I want them to create more peace, prosperity, justice and success for themselves and others in every walk of life. This is something that literally an 11 year old child can, has learned to do and demonstrate remarkable maturity, wisdom, and graciousness in the process.
And I've also seen companies create literally a hundred million dollars in savings in the course of a year, and yet do it in a way that left their suppliers saying, you guys are great. We love you, we wanna work with you more. Seems impossible, right? But there's a word for those sorts of results. And the word is shalom, which is, you know, is a Hebrew word. And it doesn't just mean what we usually think it means that often is translated as peace, but it really means “wholeness” or the full flowering of human potential and the nourishing of human aspiration, harmony, understanding, prosperity, justice.
Seth Freeman: All these things are daily longings. And if you take those lofty words and put 'em aside and you listen for other words that we find in business life, in political life, everyone is longing for these things. They just have different language for it.
But my aspirations for my readers to actually be able to speak to a boss in this way, in a way that might help the day or help the company survive and thrive that can help them talk to friends more lovingly and still nudge them toward a wise and different outcome to discover hidden paths to opportunity that people think are nowhere to be seen.
Stephen Matini: Maybe based on what you said, the word wholeness could be the word that could put together the kindness and the strength. I always had this sense that when two sides are battling, it does require a much larger, holistic vision, you know, to get somewhere else. Because as long as you stay in the little confined space, nothing is gonna happen. So that's a word that somehow really resonates strongly with me.
Seth Freeman: When we're most in conflict, we're most seeing things through a pinhole and we're seeing ourselves and not seeing the other or seeing the other as an adversary and an implacable flow. It was Stalin who famously said, get rid of the person. You get rid of the problem. And so we can usually think of the other person as roadkill. And there's a lot of negotiation advice or wisdom out there that basically nurtures that view. And I wanna be careful here because it's certainly important to advocate for yourself and to claim a goodly portion of the wealth.
And the book very much talks about how to do that. It it actually gives you specific tools so that you can do what I call winning warmly. You can create a lot of wealth and claim a favorable portion of it. That's a wonderful ability too.
And isn't it fantastic that not always, but more often than you might think, we can actually care for the other well as we care for our own people really well. And that's a state of affairs that never ceases to delight me and my, those who I know who do it go, everyone is so much better off.
Stephen Matini: Do you think is it just so happened that your book came out this year? Or is there reason why this year and not two years ago, three years ago, five years ago?
Seth Freeman: The funny thing is that I started writing it as recession was starting up. And this was about three years ago and it was originally titled “Negotiating Recession.” And my agent and editor said, this is a bigger book than that. This is a perennial, this is much more to offer than just in the narrow circumstances where times are tight.
And so we expanded it. So you know, it's not just an economic tide that you wanna turn. There are all kinds of others as well. As long as they're human beings, they'll be, I'll have full employment because conflict is just part of human nature and it really is like fire.
If it's out on your rug, it can burn your house down. But if it's in your fireplace and your stove, it can heat you and, and feed you and help you live. So the question is how do you tend it?
And the tools are probably very timely because certainly people are distressed about all sorts of things right now. And the book can speak directly and immediately to that. But 5, 10, 20 years from now, I have every confidence these tools could still be very useful.
Stephen Matini: So Seth, we talked about different things and there are so many different components, important components about negotiation and conflict management. What would you say that it is the one thing that would be important for our listeners to pay attention to in order to better handle their own conflicts?
Seth Freeman: I’ll run through a few basics that I think you don't need the book by itself to learn. I think many books will tell you there's some key principles. One of course is what you're doing so well and that's listening. There's ways to do it and there are ways to really do it. Actively listening. Preparation, knowing your all, your BATNA. These are principles that you'll find in, in many, many books.
My fascination and what animates the book is not nearly giving people the principles, but doing what you got when you were in school. When you're, when you were in school, your teacher didn't just tell you the alphabet, she didn't just tell you how to read.
She covered the wall with tools, little templates, little mnemonics, little reminders, little charts, little graphs, little things that could remind you to that, that what teachers call scaffold your learning so that you have a structure, a framework that you can take with you that can make it much easier to retain and use this work.
I would say it's those principles, but also crystallized in the form of usable tools or sayings. But that said, I think just transcending any one book, I would say it's a little mind shift from the idea that we are necessarily adversaries to the idea that we actually might just be able to collaborate in ways that we are both happier with. And I'll give you one very specific example.
Consider the supply chain or purchasing agents and suppliers. I was talking with Abe Ashkenazi, who is the head of the Association for Supply Chain Managers and he said, for the last 50 years, purchasing agents have lived by the motto, I gotta get it for a dollar less.
And he said, that method simply won't work today because the supply chain is too complex, it's too fragile, witness Covid and all the upheaval that that's led to. And there are so many ways that that can cripple you, that purchasing agents and suppliers have got to learn a different way.
Well, I actually know consulting firms and my own clients who have learned to do that. They've learned this more, better, different way. And it's literally created billions and billions of dollars in value and much better relations, but it's still a secret.
So in a sense, this idea who cares about nicey nice, this is actually a competitive advantage as well as something that can make you more humane. And I leave it to my listeners and readers to decide, which is more important. But the good news is that you can have both. You can actually thrive and grow more humane in the process.
Stephen Matini: Seth, thank you so much. Conflict is such a, a big part of our lives. That's how we learned. That's how inevitably springs from relationships. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talking to me and to share some bits of, of your book and much more. So my wish for you is for this book to be still relevant 20, 30, 50 years from now.
Seth Freeman: Thank you so much, Stephen. You've been a wonderful interviewer. You've, you've made this a conversation and a delightful one. You've brought out insights that don't usually come out in these sorts of conversations, so I credit you with all that. I you know, blame me for any deficiencies and thank you so much. I've so enjoyed it.
Wednesday Nov 22, 2023
Career Development: What’s Next 4 You? Featuring Frank O’Halloran & Judith Asher
Wednesday Nov 22, 2023
Wednesday Nov 22, 2023
Frank O'Halloran & Judith Asher are executive coaches and trainers with over 25 years of experience in leadership and communication.
Their podcast ‘What's Next 4 You, launching in early 2024, is a testament to their dedication to helping people perform at their best and to helping younger professionals discover their talents and calling.
Judith and Frank point out that the traditional educational system often neglects essential life skills, such as communication and relationship building, maintaining a positive mindset, cultivating gratitude, and embracing challenges with optimism.
For Judith and Frank, developing good habits that boost productivity, seeking help, learning from mentors, and embracing continuous feedback are essential for constant growth and success.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: I want to ask you how, when, the two of you met?
Frank O'Halloran: Judith, how did we meet? I think it was with our babies.
Judith Asher: Yeah. We met as parents, not as professionals.
Stephen Matini: And when did you start working together as professionals instead?
Frank O'Halloran: Judith's husband, George runs a University of Human Rights on the Lido and he asked if I would come and give three lectures on communicating to the master degree students. I did and Judith came along and listened to each one of the three lectures.
My client needed me to bring another trainer with me for one of the sessions that I was doing for them in a little town near Barcelona. Judith and I were taking our babies in their carriages over a bridge and she just happened to say, “Hey, how's work going?” And I said, I'm a little upset because I can't find someone to bring with me to do this training in Barcelona.
And I looked at her and I said, but you could come and do it with me. We have 30 days. You just have to do exactly what I say. And of course, Judith was a natural at this, so she did really well on her first time out. Then the rest is history. We've been working together ever since and now the babies are 20 years old.
Stephen Matini: Oh wow. So it's been a while now.
Frank O'Halloran: A long time, like 19 years we've been working together.
Stephen Matini: Oh wow. That's a long time. So, and now your last project together, it's the podcast. When is it gonna come out?
Judith Asher: The plan is to have it launched sometime in the early autumn. We are working actively on setting up a bank of interviews, getting things all lined up. So we've started actually producing it, but we're not going to have it go live for another couple of months.
Stephen Matini: So the name is “What's next for you?” Was it hard to find this name?
Judith Asher: Oh yeah. It's hard to find a good name. For us, we were first inclined to go for something that involved the word career, you know, like looking for a new career, how to find your best career. That was a big part of the idea. But then after talking to some various friends and thinking it over between the two of us, we realized that actually people don't have careers like they used to.
And just the idea of a career is this notion of like the “posto fisso,” as we would say in Italy, you know, that you find one thing and that's the thing you do and you're gonna do it forever. Just find that one job you can do and repeat for 50 years.
But now it's not about that. It's actually more what's next for you. Like what are you doing now and what could it be? And you have to be adaptable. And it clicked that it made more sense really for the point we wanted to make.
Stephen Matini: Of all possible topics that you could focus on, why did you choose as your target 18, 33-35 years old, young professionals?
Frank O'Halloran: In our training business. Judith and I work doing soft skills training, mostly communication with corporations that you would know the name of if we mentioned them. And lately we've been working with a lot of young individuals, all right, people in university and people starting their career.
And they get very attached to Judith and I and they ask us very basic questions about, you know, how do I know what careers are out there? How do I know what to say if I go to a networking event, how can I ask somebody to help me out or how do I find a mentor? And if I find one, what do I say to the mentor?
We kept getting all of these questions and to be honest, even our first idea was we should write a book for young people. Then we thought maybe a podcast would be better for them than a book. That's how we switched over to doing a podcast.
Stephen Matini: When both of you were younger, when you were in that situation of not knowing exactly where to go, did you have anyone that somehow was able, was important, someone to look up to that guided you?
Judith Asher: You know, I'll answer for myself that like you Stephen. No, not really. I would've loved it. And you don't know what you don't know, right? So I didn't know that I should even seek that out. The idea of finding a mentor or talking to people, asking what they do, speaking to my friend, you know, my friends' parents or my parents' friends, you know, like sort of just using my own little network.
Just the idea that I even had a network that wasn't the era we lived in. Just kind of feel your way forward. I did an internship when I was in graduate school and the head of the NGO I was working with, she ended up being my mentor, but I was so clueless at the time that I don't think I really even realized she was my mentor. But that's what she was doing and she helped me set me up for what was my first career, which was in the area of public health, which I worked in for many, many years.
Frank O'Halloran: I am a little fortunate because I had lots of people helping me out. I think maybe I just came across as so clueless that all these people I came in contact with said, Frank, let me give you some advice here. Or Frank, did you think about this or did you think about that?
I have been blessed my whole life with people helping me, pointing me in a direction, encouraging me, supporting me. I saved my whole life. It really started when I went to university.
I just, professors and other people I had to work during universities. It was easy. I went to school in Manhattan, in New York City, I worked uptown in an office and I must say everybody just took me under their wing. I wish that kind of thing for everyone.
Stephen Matini: For someone who's clueless, what would you say that could be the first step to take?
Frank O'Halloran: Because I was totally clueless. I grew up in a very poor, in a very poor neighborhood, in a very provincial town. So I was really clueless when I got to New York. And I think for me the thing that helped me the be the most was just to be positive. I would always ask people about what they did and show like a real positive energy towards finding out more.
Stephen Matini: Judy, how would you answer the same question that I asked, you know, to Frank?
Judith Asher: If I go back to that internship, which for me was a turning point in my life, I grew up in Montreal. I did some graduate work in Toronto and then I did an internship in New York City again. And when I got there, this was done unconsciously. I mean, I wasn't planning on doing this. This wasn't a strategy.
We had the first meeting at this NGO for women's reproductive health and rights, which was what was my interest area and what I was studying at the time. And I was in this NGO that I thought was really doing amazing work in the world. I was just so happy to be there. And at the first meeting when they had like the Monday meeting and they introduced the new intern, I said, Hey everyone, you know, I'm Judith. I just want everyone to know I don't know anybody in New York.
Judith Asher: I have no friends, I have no social life, which means I'm pretty well free all the time.
So what I wanted to say was, I'm available to help anybody who needs help with anything. Like here are the few things I'm good at. Like I'm good at editing, I can speak French and English, I can help to pour coffee. I'm, it's no problem.
I'm happy to be the person to show up on a weekend when there's a press conference. You know, get the coffee, get the sandwiches, put the chairs out and like anything really. And then after that I went and I reminded people, oh by the way, do you need help? Or I'd hear someone complaining of being overworked. And I just always continued to say that. And what happened in the end was this was the start of my whole career. I got to know everybody there.
Judith Asher: I got to know what they did. I found it really fun. I got to do a lot of things that were sort of interesting and fun that I otherwise wouldn't have done.
And then eventually the UN called one day and ask the CEO of this organization, listen, we need somebody to come to London, like ASAP, we're shorthanded for a global conference and we just need someone who's flexible, who's willing to do anything. And that's what happened.
I flew to London and that was the start of my international public health career, you know, so really it did come from that giving out of the energy. And also, and this is something Frank likes to talk about and I think he's really right about this, it was also a focus not only on, oh I'm here and I'd like to learn this and I'd like to do that and this is what I wanna suck from all of you.
You know, Frank often talks about like don't only put out in the world what you wanna get from others but what you can give. And even though I sort of had nothing to give cuz I was just very young without any experience, that energy of here, I'm willing to give anything I possibly can. It did come back to give me some good karma.
Stephen Matini: Do you think you can teach energy to people?
Judith Asher: I mean I think you can teach mindset. I think you can give a lot of guidance on what's a good mindset and what's a bad mindset. So if your mindset is everything sucks, there's no opportunities. I'm from a generation that lost two years in Covid and I'm just doomed. If you have that kind of mindset, you give off that energy.
Frank O'Halloran: Yeah, I think you can teach it. And in fact, in all of our classes that we design, we start with the mindset, all right, what's your mindset for negotiating or selling or presenting to people? And I think you can give examples to people of what would be a negative vibration or a positive vibration in certain interactions.
Judith Asher: I'll add just a little comment about all our young clients, the ones in college, the ones in their first stages of their careers, the ones in their twenties. Often when we talk about mindset, people will say after like why didn't nobody ever point this out to me? I have been thinking wrong. Like nobody taught me this. Why are they trying to teach me algebra? This is much more important.
Stephen Matini: People in the future who are going to listen to what's next for you, your podcast, we would you like them to take away?
Frank O'Halloran: We'd like them to take away a few things is one, don't despair. Things work out. And you can control that, to a certain extent by what you do, what you say. And we'd like them to walk away with their mind a little bit expanded about what's out there, what possibilities exist, and real practical examples of how people did it.
Stephen Matini: You think it's harder now for younger professionals to find their way in the world compared to the way it was before, particularly now after Covid?
Judith Asher: I mean a couple of things to say on that. One is, you know, yes, because Covid did put a kind of cork in people's development. So for two years a lot of people who were at the prime of their young lives missed out on some very important experiences. And I don't mean just like the problem with homeschooling and remote learning, I mean those kinds of relational experiences interacting with adults, with professors or you know, in internships or volunteer activities, interacting with peers.
Just so that lack of emotional development has probably set people back in terms of emotional intelligence as well. So that's something to be compensated for. I think young people would do very well to not feel stressed about checking every box as they move forward. You know, I've gotta get to university, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that. But actually to take a little more time for the kind of thing you talked about, Stephen, figuring out what brings you joy, figuring out where you show up at your best.
Judith Asher: So I think that's one point.
And the second point, and then Frank, you can add, it's kind of counterintuitive in a way. You'd think wow, you know, the world is open to me, there's a globalized workforce I can find work anywhere that's amazing. I can work in any time zone, I can go live where I want with remote work.
But as most of us know who are a little older, you know, that much choice is not necessarily a blessing, right? This is for many people, even more complicated because on the one hand I can start thinking people from all over the world can apply for every job on top of it. So there's global competition, they have other skillsets, maybe it's overwhelming the number of possibilities someone can be anything and do anything. It can be even harder than a much more simpler time where you just needed to figure out the thing that could help you make the money you wanted to make to do the things you wanted to do.
Frank O'Halloran: You know, it's like going into a store to buy a bag of potato chips and there's 50 different flavors. <Laugh>, you just sit there for an hour trying to figure out which one you want. That's true. Judith what you said.
I also think that Covid produced the kind of work from home environment that most companies find themselves in. I was just in this big office building in Boston and there was no one there. A friend of mine's son lives alone and in apartment in Brooklyn, he wanted to go back to the office like he wanted to work with his colleagues. So now he goes into the office and nobody's there.
Stephen Matini: The thing is the gap between what colleges teach and what people actually need in order to have a career, it seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of what else can be done in order to make the transition more seamless?
Frank O'Halloran: Stephen, I think there's a lot of things that could be done. I think some universities are really trying to do those things and put people out in work, experience programs, things like that. They set people up for internships.
The thing is that if for, for a university to do that, they have to put a lot of effort into it. It's a big job to do it well. And I know here in Venice where we live, the kids who study “Economia e Commercio” (business), they have to spend, I think it's three or four months or 150 hours working in a company.
So the school will get them an internship doing that. But if they don't take charge of it, the university gets them a job like carrying suitcases in a hotel. They have the program, they have the idea, but they don't put the effort into it. I think more effort could, could be done like that.
And also with companies could benefit more from the internships if they put more effort into really providing the interns with good work experience.
Judith Asher: You know, I, I'll add one thing in. I think those are all important ideas. I'm married to a university professor so I'm <laugh> keenly aware of some of these things.
I think one of the things that could be done in a positive way is for professors or anyone teaching to take a little bit of time, it probably doesn't require that much time. I mean, I'm thinking about this as I'm saying it, but if there could be some conversation about how what we have learned in this class are transferable skills, what could you do?
Let's just have a big open conversation, a brainstorm activity even. It could be, you know, a kind of lab outside of the normal class time, but explicitly helping people pull out what they've learned, the soft skills, the hard skills, how they could transfer it. Because I think this is what really seems to Frank and I what's missing cuz even young people who have all sorts of talents and skills and abilities, they don't know that their skills and abilities.
Judith Asher: If I was the person who was the one who on my own organized the ski trip at Christmas time, you know the “Settimana Bianca,” do I know that in the work world that's called stakeholder management, you know that I'm happen to be good at that. That I, I love pulling people together, finding a, something that everybody can agree on and executing a project that's called project management.
There are a lot of things that young people are doing both in school and in their extracurricular activities that they don't understand how they can market them, but they are marketable. So I think there's like a little wedge that needs to be placed. So people like you, Stephen, who are teaching of course, maybe the more forward thinking ones can start doing that and then that can rise from above where students say, actually this really worked in this class. Could we have that in every class?
Frank O'Halloran: Well usually what happens in academia is you ha you're being taught by academics now you, you Stephen have business experience and all of that. And then you go in and you teach part-time at a university.
But most professors studied their whole life and then they taught for the rest of their life, right? So they don't have that practical experience and I guess find it challenging or maybe it doesn't even occur to them to try to help the students close that gap.
Stephen Matini: Both of you, you had a lot of experiences with underprivileged kids and communities, throughout your life. Would you say that maybe some of those experiences have been the, the inspiration to what you're doing right now?
Judith Asher: I'll say something first on that. I'd say for myself when I was doing my graduate field work, I lived in Uganda for a year and I did field work like out in the jungle on adolescent reproductive health and rights. And that was a life-changing experience for me to see how questions that are asked everywhere around the world.
And I knew how they were asked in Canada cuz that's where I came from, how they get asked and answered in different cultures and access to information and the lack thereof changes everyone's lives. So that I think has been a big part of everything I've done in both my public health career and my coaching and training career is knowing the value of information and then also knowing the value of the information one has. I'd say that, and then Frank and I, we we take part in a charity project together.
Frank O'Halloran: Student and I and a bunch of our friends put on an English pantomime, which is a musical comedy, which is based on a fairy tale. It's always good versus evil good always wins. The audience participates. There's a sing along, it's full of local jokes. It's about the lowest form of entertainment available to the public.
We put that on every other year in Venice for the babies who have to live with their mothers in prison. Because in Italy, if your mother is a criminal and you're up to seven years old, you have to go live with her because you can't separate the baby from the mother even though the mother is in prison.
So the kids have to live in prison and we have three women on our, my island here, the Giudecca island in Venice, who help these kids to have a normal life. So they take 'em to football, they take 'em to ballet lessons, they take them to school because the government system just doesn't provide that.
Frank O'Halloran: And they get better furniture, better toys, better equipment for them in the school. And we have all of our friends working to put on this show to raise money to help these women.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that is your main drive to start this podcast? Why this podcast? Why this podcast with this soul?
Frank O'Halloran: The main reason is that Judith and I have always had a big affinity for young people. Even though we're parents, we're both very good friends with our children's friends, you know, they come to us, they call us, they ask us for help with this or they talk to us about that. So I think just naturally we have an affinity for young people.
Judith Asher: Now at this point in our careers, after having worked with business leaders and companies of all sorts around the world and really having a global viewpoint on this, we would like to spread some of the information we have, some of the knowledge we have because meeting these young people, hearing how they feel, they're kind of on the sidelines and they don't know how to step into their lives and no one around them is able to help them.
And we feel, oh, like actually we have all kinds of things we can add and we can contribute. And a podcast seemed like a good venue for that. You know, I sometimes think of it as what if I could hold a cocktail party like an “aperitivo” with all the most interesting people that we've had the occasion to meet. Cuz we've heard everybody's career stories along the way.
Judith Asher: What if I could hold that huge cocktail party and invite a whole bunch of young people to just mingle and get to know them and feel in the know that's the image of our podcast to me.
I mean, being happy should be the goal, but I don't think a lot of young people are exposed to that idea. Like, what gives me energy? What do I really love doing? What does bring me a feeling of happiness and then how can I translate that? That is not the criteria most people are thinking they're supposed to apply to themselves.
So it's good to have it. And it doesn't take that much for a young person. I mean, I was young, you know, you guys were young, it's sometimes one person and just their energy, their attitude can spark something in you that you hadn't explored before. So it doesn't take that much to truly change something for somebody.
Frank O'Halloran: Well, no, I was just saying about one of our guests who was sort of stressing out about her career. She was in university and one of her mom's friends said to her, think about something you're interested in that you think you would be happy doing for two years or a year and a half and do that. And she said that took so much weight off her shoulders, it gave her a new way to think about things. I thought that was brilliant, that advice.
Stephen Matini: Is there anything specific that you do to get over your misery? You know, that's the notion of Pity Party Over.
Frank O'Halloran: One is I just read the newspaper and I find out all the horrible things that are going on in the world and these people who are suffering so much. So I just say, all right, knock it off.
And the second thing I do, I, I'm a big meditator. I've been meditating for about 18 years now and part of my meditation has to do with gratitude. And I'll tell you, it makes a huge difference. It doesn't, if you can just list 10 things you're happy about, it changes your whole outlook.
Judith Asher: I agree a hundred percent about the gratitude part. This is a very important life skill. Again, that's not really being taught anywhere unless you happen to listen to some podcasts or seek it out.
You don't hear that that is a life skill. So I'd say gratitude is one, and for me at least, exercise is another one because we talk about that getting into a state of flow, finding yourself just completely present in the moment because anxiety and worry, this is about thinking about something you'd screwed up in the past or something that you fear in the future.
And I think that exercise is like meditation. It's another way to just get outta yourself and be in the moment and then you feel better and you benefit from all those hormones and chemicals in your body on top of it. So I'd say that's probably a big one for most people.
Stephen Matini: So we talked about different important things, for younger people. We talked about the mindset, we talked about positivity, the energy, gaining practical experience and such and such. If I had to ask you, what would you say that there are the five main competencies that now younger people should focus on?
Frank O'Halloran: I would say start with the soft skills and in particular your ability to express yourself. That is something that can serve you in so many different jobs, so many different careers.
Judith Asher: Number two I'll add on are what we would call relational skills. Again, in the soft skills, rap, rapport building, feeling comfortable communicating with other people. And back to your earlier questions, Stephen, I mean post Covid and with the smartphone taking over everyone's lives and how, I mean, young people often they've lost the art of conversation.
It's been a long time that they have been exposed to that. So really learning that it's not just the art of conversation in terms of those, those skills that Frank just mentioned, but also how to build relationships, how to show up and get people to like you and bring your best self forward.
Stephen Matini: I loved when you said gratitude and happiness, which people will not think about, but those are massive skills to have, you know, connected to so many other things and so little we talk about those, but they're imperative, they're really, really, really important.
Frank O'Halloran: Yeah. And you can be grateful for a very simple thing, you know, <laugh>, it doesn't have to be that you won 18 million euros in the lottery.
The other thing that I would say is to do a little reading. One interesting thing to read about is developing good habits. A habit is not something that's tough for you to do, it's something that's easy for you to do.
So if you put in a little effort, develop good habits, be a little disciplined about it, then that can get you through a lot of difficult times because you can fall back on those good habits of, you know, getting up, being focused, answering the emails when they come, you know, whatever it is that's important for your job.
Judith Asher: Now that I'm hearing us talk about it, you know, some of these things kind of go in conjunction with the others because the most popular course at Yale University is called the Science of Happiness.
It's the most popular course in the history of the entire university. It's so popular that they've done spinoffs online. The teacher, the professor who's this incredible psychologist, she teaches this for high school students now, but there's a reason people are seeking this out if they're exposed to it.
So I think that's just the first point. And my second point was thinking about how things move together. Gratitude, relationship building, happiness. I mean if you get into the habit of telling people that you appreciate something very specific about what they did for you, be that someone in your close circle or someone in your professional circle or student circle, you will see that that boomerangs back to you, right?
Judith Asher: Cuz that helps build relationships. So just being in the right mindset and then, you know, mindset leads to gratitude, leads to learning how to express that.
And that actually you should say those things out loud because they also will help you in the end. They'll help that other person and then that makes you feel happier and then you'll see doors open for you.
So that kind of cycle, again, these are to me the most crucial life skills. I'm trying to teach these to my own children and we're trying to give this off in whatever way we can in the more formal trainings that we do.
And if you, Stephen can give this to your NYU students, again, you know, once they receive it, maybe they'll realize they should get that more as well. And there can be those ripple effects.
Frank O'Halloran: Don't be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes young people think, oh, I'm supposed to know this or I'm supposed to know how to do this. But if you go up to someone and you say, Stephen, I know you've had some experience with this, could I have a coffee with you and could you explain how I should approach this one for, you're probably gonna be very happy to have that coffee. And I think that's a big lesson for kids to learn that you can ask.
Judith Asher: That has something to do also with whatever school system they've grown up in. Cuz as the three of us know, you know, some school systems are a little more authoritarian and young people are not brought up in that system to think, hey, I can approach an adult and say, I don't know something.
Actually it's exact opposite. They think they have to know everything before they can in fact approach an adult. So there is some unlearning that has to be done for some people to be able to feel comfortable even doing that.
Cuz I think, Frank, you're totally right. You know, most people will feel perfectly happy if they're asked for advice and if they don't have time, they'll tell you that I don't have time. And then the la next skill, and the last one I'll add in is learn to not take things personally.
Judith Asher: If you can learn that most things people say to you that are hurtful actually are a them thing and not a you thing. You know, that lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago, and again, that's something I'm trying to teach my kids now because it's, it is a life skill to know that you should not take things personally and even the hate you get online and all of this really, most of it has nothing to do with you.
And if it does have something to do with you, it won't hurt you and upset you. It'll inspire you to change something. So when someone tells you something useful, it should feel bad, good or good, bad rather than just bad.
Stephen Matini: Your podcast, it sounds like a place where people are going to hear a lot of things, they're not conventional. Both of you have had this big career with leaders, you know, training leaders, coaching leaders and such and such. If I had to ask you what is it one thing that you have heard more frequently from leaders, one observation that you have made working alongside so many leaders, what comes to mind?
Frank O'Halloran: For me working with them and one thing that's always impressed me is that when I show up, they want to learn something. Now I can't tell them how to run their companies, but I can help them with different areas of running the company. They have to take care of the whole thing. But when they're very interested and want to learn and realize there are things that they don't know and could learn from me, that I think is a great characteristic.
Judith Asher: I'm gonna add something completely different. I agree Frank with what you say. One thing I hear leaders say is that there is a generation gap between the, like speaking of young people, that there are always going to be generation gaps, but there truly is a generation gap with the post Covid, post smartphone online reality.
That is something that needs to be addressed, not from the top down, but in all directions. So young people themselves have to enter and get into the workforce ready to dialogue with the leaders, to find how can companies be most successful? How can we all be successful in a way that manages that generation gap?
Stephen Matini: My last question to you is for anyone who's gonna listen to this episode, is anything specific that you would like people to take away from our conversation? Something that you think it is important other than listening to your fabulous, “What's next for you” podcast?
Frank O'Halloran: You have the ability to do this and it's not as difficult as you think.
Judith Asher: It's exactly that. And do things, be productive. Do the things you love and don't worry what it's gonna add up to. If you are active with the things that activate you, that is where it will lead you to what you want.
Stephen Matini: No, I'm, I'm really excited about your podcast because it comes from seasoned professionals and a lot of the fact that you're taking really different types of routes. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Frank O'Halloran: Thank you Stephen.
Judith Asher: Thank you Stephen.
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
Teamwork: The Improv Approach - Featuring Caitlin Drago
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
Caitlin Drago is an executive coach who uses improvisation to get people to communicate and work effectively as a team.
Caitlin highlights how the principles of improv, such as yes and..., making each other look good, and building trust, can be applied in business, team dynamics, conflict resolution, and personal interactions.
Caitlin is the founder of Inspire Improv & Coaching Inc. In her book, "Approaching Improv: Communication and Connection in Business and Beyond," Caitlin shares that the principles of improv aren't just for the stage; they have a remarkable impact on improving communication, teamwork, and conflict resolution within organizations.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
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Do you have questions about this episode? Say HI to Stephen Matini via email or LinkedIn.
This episode is brought to you by ALYGN learning and organizational consulting firm specializing in leadership and management development. Sign up for a free Live Session.
#caitlindrago #improv #communication #trust #teamwork #pitypartyover #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment
TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: When did you develop your interest in acting?
Caitlin Drago: Ooh, that's a good question. The first thing that came to my mind is when I was little, I remember when my mom would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I honestly don't know if I did this out loud or just imagined it in my brain, but I would go through like a commercial for this peanut butter and jelly sandwich and like the different components of it and why it was so great. I should probably ask my parents and Zoom, this all happened in my mind or was I acting this out? So I think that's like the first time that I can pinpoint to where I started acting theater bug.
Stephen Matini: How did your parents react to your desire of pursuing acting? Were they supportive or what?
Caitlin Drago: So my parents were very supportive of my interest in theater and acting when I was in school, in elementary school and high school, I didn't do a lot of theater in school. I was more involved in the Odyssey of the Mind program.
There is a world competition, so it does exist internationally, but basically you have a small group of kids, maybe seven or eight, and you get a problem that you have to quote unquote solve and you make a skit about it and you have different parameters that you have to solve this problem with it and timeframes and budgets and all of that.
So you're making your own eight minute play and then bringing that to competition. And then in high school I did do some more theater in school and did some community theater and things like that. When I was deciding what I wanted to go to college for, my initial thought was to go for music therapy because I was really into music and also really into psychology and human behavior.
And so I thought that was a nice combination. So there was a lot of support around that. And then when I ended up auditioning for different colleges, I got accepted into a lot of the music programs.
But there was one school where they had a music theater program and a music therapy program. And so I thought, Ooh, I'll do a double major. At that particular school I, that was the one place that I didn't get accepted on the music side, but I did get accepted for acting. And so it was one of those, I'll always wonder if I don't try and see what could have been.
And there was a lot of support from my parents there. When I graduated I did a couple of contracts with some children's theaters and then I wanted to be able to, you know, go somewhere, set down some roots and California was it for me.
And I remember my mom <laugh> saying, you're looking at this through Rose Cut Glasses. Glasses. She's a kindergarten teacher. So she's got those things. And there was still support, but it was just that concern for, you know, I just want my kid to be okay because I didn't have a job lined up or anything like that. I just had a couple of friends who I was getting an apartment with <laugh> that was understandable. But overall there has always been a lot of support for my different endeavors.
And when I decided to leave my full-time job to start my own business, which was a similar feeling, I'm sure as a parent to your kid saying, Hey, I'm gonna move to la I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but this is what I wanna do. I knew enough about myself and enough about communication at that point where I knew what the natural reaction from a parent would be.
I was a parent at the time, I had a 10 month old and I said right at the top of the conversation, what I need from you is your support and encouragement. And I could feel my mom swallow back all of the things that I'm sure she wanted to say and instead gave me that support and encouragement, which I am ever so grateful for.
Stephen Matini: And so if your kids decided to pursue acting, would you react like your mom?
Caitlin Drago: I hope that I can react like my mom in the second iteration. I also know what it's like to be a mom <laugh>, so I'm sure that there would be some of that. Yes, I want you to do what makes you happy. I also want you to understand the risk that you are taking.
Stephen Matini: In hindsight, the only route that I believe matters for all of us is the one that once you embark, you will be able to be driven and determined enough to continue despite challenges. And any, any path is challenging. I think it's much harder when you push in a direction that doesn't feel like yours. That's what I had to learn the hard way. So do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?
Caitlin Drago: I think that as I've grown older, I am an introverted extrovert. I do get a lot of energy from talking to people. And if I am working from home all day and don't talk to anyone at the end of the day, do you feel a bit drained? However, if I go out and I'm around a bunch of people or if I'm facilitating something for a full day, I absolutely need to have that recharge time. Nobody talked to me, let me just decompress and be by myself.
Stephen Matini: My surprise when I did a theater was to see how many people, how many actors are very, very shy, very introvert. The stereotype would be, oh, you must love the attention. What has been your experience working with other professionals, other actors?
Caitlin Drago: I would say the majority are probably on that extroverted side. At the same time there are introverts in there and I think part of it is because the real skill that's required of actors is being able to be present and zoning in on the person in front of you. And that's something that both the introverts and extroverts can be capable of and really thrive in.
Stephen Matini: When did you start doing improvisation?
Caitlin Drago: I probably did a workshop somewhere in high school, or you know, even growing up in the summer I went to a camp, it was called Theatrics. And so we would play different theater games and, and so I'm sure that improv was in there just wasn't labeled as such. 'cause We were kids.
Where I really got into improv more in a formal sense was when I lived in Los Angeles and I knew those basics of we say yes and we accept what's put out there and we add onto it. We stay away from no and we try to look for what can work.
When I was at an audition for an improv character at the Universal Studios theme park where we were auditioning and someone yelled out, make each other look good because on stage there were a couple of people who were, you know, just trying to vie for the spotlight 'cause we were auditioning for a job and in doing so they were kind of throwing the other person under the bus.
That idea of make each other look good really clicked because it's like, well of course we can't both be up here fighting for the spotlight. That's not gonna work. It's just gonna make everyone feel uncomfortable. But if we both agree to try to set each other up for success, try to set each other up for a laugh, then we both end up looking really awesome in the end.
And so that was reiterated when I started taking classes at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. And what was interesting was there's four levels and they're like main curriculum. And the first level is fun, you're learning yes. And you're learning how to make each other look good.
And then the second level, you start learning the structure of the Herald, which if you think about it, is kind of like the structure of a sitcom where there's three different stories and they all kind of interconnect.
So you're trying to do all of this with a team and somehow without like having a huddle to the side and figuring out what you're going to do. And that felt like a math class every time I went because there was a formula to it and it felt like your brain was going to explode by the time you left.
But for someone like me who, although I am creative, I do really enjoy having a structure and some parameters to work within, that's where I really thrive. Tell me where the box is, tell me what the rules are and then I can go,
Stephen Matini: If someone feels a super anxious about the idea of trying improvisation, what would you tell them?
Caitlin Drago: I would tell them that it's not about being funny, it's just going to happen because of the rules of improv. And hopefully if you have a great partner, they're gonna be there to support you again, it's not up to you. We're there to make each other look good.
So the more we put our focus on the other person, the less self-conscious we are about ourselves. The other thing is that they're already doing improv all day every day. No one woke up with a script this morning. I don't think, you know, I always say it's just you're sharpening a tool that you already have.
Stephen Matini: So what are the rules of improv? You already mentioned a couple of them, but if you don't mind provide an an overview.
Caitlin Drago: The two main rules are first that you always say yes. And so what that means is if somebody throws out an idea or a concept, you accept that as the idea of the moment and you build on that. So if I were to say, Hey Stephen, I love your red hat, you would say, yes, you love my red hat and I am going to wear it to the picnic this afternoon.
So that's, you know, accepting that that yes, yep, I'm wearing a red hat Now what our natural tendency is as humans is not always to say yes to, especially if it's unexpected or if it's an an idea that's uncomfortable or we're just not really sure how it's going to pan out. We say no and we reason why it's not going to work. Or maybe we don't even listen to the whole thought the other person is putting out there before we squash it.
And so within the world of improv, what that would look like is if I said, oh Stephen, I love your red hat. And you said, I'm not wearing a red hat, I'm not wearing a hat at all. And now you are uncomfortable and I'm uncomfortable. And probably the audience that is watching us is uncomfortable.
And so what improv does is it challenges us to skip over that no reflex and go to yes and at least look for what can work versus what can't work. When we translate that into how that can look in regular conversation, it doesn't have to mean that I'm going to say yes or agree to everything that yes can mean.
Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm present. Yes, I'm listening to you and I'm going to maybe reflect back or validate what you are saying and then I'm going to add on to that conversation instead of trying to push the other agenda that I came into the conversation with or the idea that I'm trying to get through.
The other big rule is that, like we mentioned, we, it's, we're always looking to make each other look good. So when I go out on stage, I'm not thinking, what's the funny thing I'm going to say? Everyone's gonna think I'm hilarious.
And the best improviser here, what we're doing is understanding the strengths of the other people on our team and looking for ways to set them up for a laugh. And so if you've seen an improv show and you see the person who's getting all the laughs, they're a good improviser, but the person who's setting them up for the laughs is the really, really great improviser and that's the kind of person that we wanna be when we're on a team.
Sometimes we think that we have to take on everything ourselves, especially if it's a leader <laugh>, when there's probably people around us who have special skills and talents and passions that they would love to be able to use.
So it's about being mindful and again, understanding what the strengths are of the people who are around you and what they wanna try and what are the things that they wanna get better at, and giving them opportunities to do that and letting them step into the spotlight and being willing to play a supportive role when necessary.
Again, understanding that if we all do that we can all use our talents and our creativity and our passions and grow and learn. We do it with a little less pressure and a lot more creativity and a bit more fun.
Stephen Matini: Why do you think people so often seem to be so oppositional? You know, it's all about box and divisiveness. Why do you think that is?
Caitlin Drago: I think it's from our survival brain, especially when we are under stress, which the world is a stressful place. And so when we're in that state, especially if our brains are triggered into that fight flight fawn mode, we're built to look for the threat and to see anything, even if it is objectively neutral as a threat or as something that is scary.
And so it's a lot easier to see what's not going to work and to say, no, I'm not comfortable with this. It takes intention to skip over that, no, or acknowledge it and then you know, let it pass.
And to instead choose to look for what could work and to be curious about something rather than squashing it right off the bat. And in doing so, what's really interesting is that by being the person who you know, that if you go to them, they're going to listen to you.
Maybe they're not gonna go along with your idea, but they might ask questions about it, they might help you to find the holes they might, you know, see where what could work there. Through that you're building trust with that person and they know that they can come to you with their great ideas and also with their awful ideas.
And the bonus there is that they're likely going to come to you sooner if there's a problem and sooner like when you can actually do something about it versus being afraid of what your reaction might be. And so putting it off and putting it off until it's gone way too far and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I
Stephen Matini: Think what you do is brilliant because you're describing what any team in any organization should function. You know, when they innovate, when they try to collaborate, when they try to do whatever. What has been your experience about improvisation and using it with managers? How do people react to this amazing tool?
Caitlin Drago: Well, at first when I come in and say, Hey, we're doing improv, people aren't usually, you know, standing on their cheers and cheering. And so it requires that I first start by being really explicit about the purpose and letting everyone know what those guardrails are.
We are here to learn <laugh>, we're here to connect, we're here to be better communicators. It's something they're already doing. It's not about being funny and there are rules. It's not just going to be a free for all. I'm not going to say, hey, go up there and go.
I also make it a rule that unless I'm asking someone to volunteer to help me show how a game is going to be played or how an exercise is going to work, I don't ask anyone to come up and perform on the spot. We do everything simultaneously in small groups or in pairs.
So nobody has to be worried that, oh no, when am I gonna get called on and I'm gonna have to go up without a script and do this <laugh>.
Once we put that into practice, once everyone knows what to expect and knows what the rules are and what our purpose is here, then my next order of business is to get people laughing because that's going to help to bring people, you know, if they still are in that fight or flight mode where we can't take in information and everything is a threat, including me as a person in the front of the room, what laughter is going to do is it's going to help to reduce that cortisol, get people connected, activate that part of the brain that allows us to learn and try something new and actually take in new information.
And that's the wonderful, that's the other wonderful piece about improv is that that laughter doesn't end after an initial warmup exercise or whatever.
You know, it continues throughout just because of the nature of improv. Even if we are using situations that hit very close to home that are, you know, so that it's really something that's applicable, they're going to get to practice these concepts to an extreme. And because it's to an extreme, there is probably going to be some silliness in there.
They're also going to be able to decide what they wanna take away and be able to scale that back in a way that makes sense for them. But that laughter is woven throughout so it's keeping our brains open and it's allowing us to learn and connect and build trust and all of those wonderful side effects that laughter can bring to the learning space.
Stephen Matini: Well you train and you work as an actress for a long time, so you are a master in emotional intelligence, you know. Of all professions. I've always seen actors at people, they are such a a people connoisseur because you have to embody a person, you know, more than really any other profession in my opinion. So if someone seems not to be that great in terms of emotional intelligence, you know, for whatever the reason they don't have the great self-awareness or that ability to connect to people, can they still do an improv exercise successfully?
Caitlin Drago: I think so. The improv exercises are a way to gain self-awareness without having it be so pointed or feeling like they're being singled out or attacked. You know, I like using the example of the one word story 'cause it's really simple. It's really easy to envision.
So if you imagine a group of people, they're standing in a circle and they're telling a story going around the circle, each contributing one word at a time. Pretty simple, easy game. They can have fun with it, hopefully things kind of go off the rails a little bit.
Something silly happens, they laugh and at the end we can ask, what did you notice about that experience? What was interesting, what was fun? What was challenging about it? And it's a way for them to notice, oh you know what? I was kind of thinking ahead or I was not paying attention so much to the person before me 'cause I was figuring out what I wanted to put through.
It's a way for them to notice things about themselves. It's an inroad to that empathy and through that to that emotional intelligence without it being something that is so direct, you know, they get to learn through an experience and pull that out themselves.
Stephen Matini: What about using improv, let's say with a team of people that needs to improve a teamwork, let's say, and they have a huge trust issue. Can you still do improv with someone that you don't trust?
Caitlin Drago: Within the confines of a workshop? Yes, because I'm going to make sure that everyone's following the rules so we practice everything to an extreme so they can see what it's like. You know, I really hold everyone to those rules of we're here to make each other look good, we're here to say yes. And they can try that out and see what that looks like, even if it's with someone who they don't feel a lot of trust with.
And maybe through that experience of both of them having to connect with each other, having to be present with one another, and really being held to that idea that I have to listen to what you say, I have to accept it and then I have to add my own idea to what you said that gives them that training ground to maybe start to build some of that trust. I
Stephen Matini: Think everyone should do this thing seriously. I mean, I cannot think of a single person that who would not benefit from it. Have you ever used it with kids?
Caitlin Drago: Oh yeah, <laugh>, I have two kids. My son asked, what do you do <laugh>? And I told, and we played one word story and he really enjoyed it. And you know, when we're in the car, like, mom, can we play one word story? And so, you know, we'll play, but just in terms of some of those practices that aren't so overt, kids come up with lots of ideas.
And especially my eight year old, he's a big ideas kid. I want to foster that creativity and that wonder and that problem solving within him. There are times where he throws out an idea and my initial reaction is absolutely not <laugh>. But in that moment I have to kind of take a step back and say, okay, what about this might work? Is there a little piece of this that we could agree on and build from?
How can I challenge myself to instead of defaulting to no and making him feel like, oh well anytime I ask mom about anything, she's gonna say no. So I'm just gonna stop eventually. And that's gonna, you know, erode our own trust and our relationship. Where can I look for where the possibilities might be so that we can work together to come up with something that we can both agree upon.
Stephen Matini: Is it possible to improv on a specific issue the team is having? Let's say the team has a dynamic they they cannot quite resolve. It can even be an interpersonal conflict or whatever they might be. Can they use improv as a way to explore possibilities, alternatives, different endings?
Caitlin Drago: I think so. So I have a full program where, you know, we start with the basics of improv and then on top of that we can add on some of those skills that people might already have a basic understanding of like having difficult conversations or giving and receiving feedback and looking at how we can infuse the improv approach in there and make those conversations even more effective.
When it comes to the conflict resolution, I will ask ahead of time for what are some experiences that you've had either with other people on your team or with the people that you serve, either you know, internally or externally.
And let's play with that and see what it looks like if we are defining that mutual goal and then trying to say yes and throughout that conversation. And what is really fun about when those conflicts come up is because people are being forced to say yes and repeat back what they heard and really understand the other person's argument or perspective and then add on their own to that.
A lot of times we skip right over the finger pointing and get right to getting on the same page and trying to have a collaborative conversation to work towards a solution. So that's one answer to the question. I think the other answer to the question is, I like to play a game called worst idea.
And so sometimes when there is an interpersonal conflict or something that people are struggling with, when you ask, okay, well what do we wanna do about this? We have that pressure to come up with the best idea right away. If I say, what is the worst idea that you can come up with?
It gets them so far outside of the box, it's no, I don't want this to be the thing that you're gonna end up doing. Like tell me something that would get us kicked out of the company <laugh>, you know, what is the worst thing you can think of?
And then from there the challenge is to look for like what's that little piece in there? What is that little spark of maybe an idea that might work? And how do we build on that little spark so that we can gradually work it back to something that might be something that is feasible, but we didn't have to start by coming up with something that was brilliant, we could take that pressure off. And so that's another way to use improv to find out, you know, what those other outside of the box solutions could be to something that feels extra sticky. I
Stephen Matini: Love it because it seems to me that you help people stop being boring adults and to go back to be playful and resourceful and open, which is beautiful, you know, and then somehow at some point we seem to lose it. But for the reason that you pointed out, everything gets so complicated and boring. I wanna ask you, the title of your book is Approaching Improv Communication and Connection in Business And Beyond How the Idea came about.
Caitlin Drago: So I knew that I wanted to write a book for a while. I wasn't exactly sure what, and for a long time I put pressure on myself because I know there's the other books about using improv for communication and its application and business.
And so I thought, okay, I have to come up with something completely different. I was talking to a friend about book writing and you know, shared that the reason that I was feeling stuck was that I thought that it had to be something completely new and novel and you know, I can't write the same book that someone else did and that friend gave me the permission to go for it because it was going to be from my perspective with my stories, with my insights, and specifically for the people who are drawn to me and the way that I teach and speak and relate.
Once I had that permission to, it's okay if it's in a similar vein of other things, it's still yours. I was able to kind of go and ended up really enjoying the process. I, I know that when, when people say like writing about, oh, it's such a drag and it's just, I liked it. Well
Stephen Matini: Probably because you, you were in the process, you were more about enjoying the, the process of learning how to do this rather than the final outcome and whether or not this would've been something amazing, which I think it's the best way to approach any project, you know?
Caitlin Drago: Exactly. Yeah. And I think once, once that lens was put on in terms of think about the person that this is for, who are you trying to help and having it be through that lens of, oh, is this going to be helpful or versus is this going to be brilliant?
Stephen Matini: So let's say I read your book, what do you hope for me to take away from your book?
Caitlin Drago: I hope that you can take away an understanding of those basics of improv. What does it mean to communicate and lead with that yes and mindset and this idea of making each other look good. What are the ramifications of that? How do you exactly do that? Because there's a lot of ripple effects that come from putting that into practice.
And then I want you to, like I mentioned before, to be able to take what you already know about certain communication skills, like giving and receiving feedback, having difficult conversations, communicating through change, and being able to apply the improv approach to those conversations to make them even more effective. And finally, I want you to be able to understand the cultural ramifications of this. What can this look like if it is something that is shared culture wide or you know, company-wide?
And for you to also have some of that encouragement because I know that this is not something that is easy and so I want you to have some encouragement there too. In improv we have this concept called follow the fear. And so it's that idea that, you know, if you have an idea that's a little scary, instead of letting that keep you from doing anything, you step into it anyway and you share it because you need to.
And the reason that I titled it approaching improv is because again, I know that it's not the easiest thing to do <laugh>, and I wanted to make it something that can be approachable, something that anyone can pick up and take something away from and implement right away.
Stephen Matini: When we talk about improvisation, I assume that always entail to have at least two people that go back and forth, back and forth. Can improvisation be used also with the dialogue that I have with myself?
Caitlin Drago: I think the answer is yes. There's some statistic where if you have an idea or an inspiration and you don't act on it in some way within five seconds it goes.
Stephen Matini: Well, I I experience it every single day because I share with you that I'm writing a book.
Caitlin Drago: Yeah. So in that moment, if you got one of those inspirations and you used this improv approach and said like, yes to this and what, what in this can work and how can I take just a moment to try to build on that idea? What might that look like for your writing process? That can be rhetorical or you can share. It's such
Stephen Matini: A wonderful thing because interestingly enough, in the business world, we love to think in terms of processes and systems and we come up with all sorts of different rules. But life these days moves us so fast that they oftentimes all these systems and the structures are too heavy.
They simply do not react to changes super quickly. And I love what you bring, you really are the Tinkerbell of the corporate world, <laugh> because everything you say is so applicable to such a wide number of scenarios, you know, from team dynamics to innovation, you name it.
But yeah, I love it. It's a simple structure and then understanding that all of us together bouncing back and forth, we can create something that you know, does not exist, did not exist before. So it's beautiful. So we talked about a lot of different things. If you have to point out to our listeners something that is really dear to you that you hope for them to take away from our improv podcast episode <laugh>, what would you say?
Caitlin Drago: I think that, you know, especially if you're, if I'm thinking about something that's dear to me, underneath all of this is people connecting through listening. If we could all slow down just a little bit enough to really take in what someone else is saying, again, it doesn't have to be that you agree with everything that person is saying, it's that we look for the humanity in it.
We use our empathy to try to understand what they're saying and to look for some of that common ground, even if it's underneath what they're saying and underneath that, to be able to build connection through listening. And one way to do that is so you can't say yes to something that you didn't hear. And so throughout someone's day, if they were to, you know, go off and take a listen to this and then say, oh, okay, what's something that I can do today?
I would say to look for something that you can say yes to or say yes to a part of. Even if you don't end up doing it, your brain is now focused on the positive and looking for what can work in looking for where you can connect with somebody else. So that would be the, the more practical piece of what they could actually do. Today
Stephen Matini: I'm a huge fan and I hope your book to be a smashing success for everybody to read it. <Laugh>, thank you so much for sharing with me this important conversation. Thank you.
Caitlin Drago: Thank you for having me.
Wednesday Nov 08, 2023
Delegation: Scaling for Success - Featuring Zahra & Nourhan Sbeih
Wednesday Nov 08, 2023
Wednesday Nov 08, 2023
Delegation is one of the most critical skills for managers, as it creates time for strategic thinking while empowering others to grow.
This episode's guests are Zahra Sbeih and Nourhan Sbeih, SVA Agency's founders, providing professionals with highly skilled virtual assistants to save time, increase productivity, and focus on strategic tasks.
Zahra and Nourhan discuss the struggles when delegating tasks, such as perfectionism, control, and difficulty differentiating between short-term time investment and long-term time-saving benefits.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: So in terms of your interest, in general, have you had the same interest growing up or not, or were you that different?
Zahra Sbeih: Oh no. Way different.
Nourhan Sbeih: We still don't have the same interests.
Zahra Sbeih: Yeah, we have the same values and sometimes people would tell us that we like talk very similarly to each other because we spend a lot of time together. But in terms of like hobbies and like personality wise, not much similarities there.
Stephen Matini: Where did you get your work ethic from?
Nourhan Sbeih: I've always been very sensitive to consequences and my impact on other people. Taking that into consideration means I'm always kind of sensitive or aware of how my output is being perceived, how I'm making other people's life easier. I know that this is leaning more towards people pleasing, but it's served me well.
I'm setting boundaries in some places, but in terms of performance, I was always aware that I need to be putting out the best image of me, what I feel is the right thing to do.
And so when I got my first job opportunity, I was like I don't need to know what the rules are, all I know is that this output I feel is good. I wanna be perceived as 1, 2, 3. And so I just oriented myself towards that end goal of how I wanna be perceived and it's served me well so far.
Zahra Sbeih: I agree with you but I think there is like also a playing factor when it came to our dad. Our dad is also a business owner. We are amazed by his, like how hardworking he is and his work ethic towards his employees and towards his company and he's just been like a role model to us throughout our lives. I would say I got a bit of her work ethic also.
He's very disciplined and he used to say, if you expect your employees to come to the office early and you're not even that, what are you doing? He was saying you can't preach to them about punctuality or work ethic and you stay in bed till 12:00 pm. So he's always that person that's like you need to kind of match the work that you're preaching.
Stephen Matini: The same thing happened to me. I believe that I'm a combination of my mom and my dad. My father was also a small entrepreneur, you know, he used to import silk from India and from the north of Italy, so it was a distributor.
And my mom, she became eventually basically an HR Director. You know, she studied as a nurse and then she ended up managing a bunch of doctors and nurses, and both of them, the example, their work ethic, you know, how strict and kind they worked with people, you know, still resonate with me every single day. You know? When did your professional path merge into this venture that you have together?
Nourhan Sbeih:: We didn't know at any point that this was going to happen, that this is where we were going to lead a virtual assistance agency. We just knew at a very young age that we wanted to go into business together in the future. We wanted to build something on our own and somehow life ended up here in this career path.
Zahra Sbeih: Although Nourhan has studied law and I've studied economics, it's a bit different than what we currently do in our business. But yeah, funny how life is.
Nourhan Sbeih: You know, this is why we, I think the general advice is don't get too hung up on labors, but I studied a marketing degree. I have to do something with marketing, or I studied law so I have to be a lawyer or I have to do something with my law degree because that would've really shut us off from opportunities.
What helped is that we weren't expecting much when we first started. We were like, well this is a gap in the market that we can possibly adjust with our skills. Should we like try it out, we'll continue on our usual path and we'll see what happens there.
I guess the return was surprising. It, it was really needed. There was a lot of demand in the market and it took over, and keeping yourself flexible in that way to what comes up and where your passion is taking you, where your skillset suddenly that you's also important.
Stephen Matini: That's a good point that I wish more people knew about because a lot of people think in terms of roles as you said, career path rather than focusing on their talents and what resonate with them.
Like myself actually I found it out really later on in my life. You know, I made a lot of I wouldn't say safe choices but very logical choices and only later on I finally said that no, I want to capitalize on something that truly resonate in my heart.
You are an agency that focuses on helping people that really struggle with delegation. What have you learned so far about the struggles that managers go through as far as delegating?
Zahra Sbeih: There are several that come to mind. One of which could be the fact that they feel like they can do it themselves and it's takes a lot of time for them to give it to someone else and teach that person and give them the explicit instruction. They could have done it in that time.
You know, this is one of the things that we hear sometimes. Also like having the sense of like perfectionism and like control. They have a way of doing something and they wanted to, they're just so focused on that process.
So when they do delegate it to a virtual assistant and they see her or him doing it in a different way than they would, they kind of like, no do it in my ways. They're like kind of focused on that.
That's exactly it. Just to elaborate a little bit that the two major issues is they don't differentiate between the time that it took to do this task when they delegate versus how much time they're gonna save later on.
And this is something that early on I tried to explain that delegation is not about on this task right from the start you are saving time, it's a long term investment in your time. It's I'm going to spend more time now explaining my preferences, my workload, but later on I don't have to do this again. So that's the first thing.
And the second is exactly what Zahra said is that they forget that I need to give them the goal, or I need to give them the context. For effective delegation, you're bringing someone in, especially when it comes to SVH, we give them a lot of training and they're, we try to add value. We can't add value if you are also dictating the process because then I won't be able to identify gaps for or opportunities, for optimizing, for streamlining. I'll be able to do it because now I'm following a manual.
That way they're really missing out on what delegation can do for you and your business because that person has a unique perspective and they're creative in their own way and they're a third party so they're not biased to a particular process yet.
And that's why when when they're delegating, tell them don't delegate a task, delegate a responsibility, empower them, give them your goal. So tell them the end result that I want is this. See what you can do with that. And this usually yields best results, gets them to really achieve things. But that takes trust and this is why we focus a lot on building trust with our partners and with our clients.
Stephen Matini: After we record this episode, I'm going to send the audio to Jack, Jack who's my editor and he's fabulous. And we started working recently because I had been editing most episodes myself and then at some point I said, I just cannot continue doing this. I love editing, so much fun, but really it's time consuming. And then you know, I'm not an editor.
I found Jack and when we talked and Jack is gonna listen to this, he's gonna <laugh>, he's gonna laugh, we discussed about how we're gonna do this and he said, well you can tell me what you want to cut, the edits to be or I can do it. And he said in a way that was so nice, he said, well I would imagine if you're trying to delegate this, you don't want to be the one that tells the editor exactly what to do.
And I said absolutely. And you know what? I don't want this to be exactly the way that I want. I want anyone who contributes to bring some flavors. It doesn't have to be my way. And I have to say the most freeing thing obviously, you know, you have to communicate well, you have to let go.
The control freak in me had to let go, but now you know, I feel fine, you know, I feel I can give it to him and it's something is off and we can discuss it quickly, but it's such a relief. And also I don't feel as lonely, you know, because sometimes the entrepreneurial path can be very lonesome.
Nourhan Sbeih: That's true because a, what we do is also psychological support that emotional support that know, you know with this scope, with your work, with your business, a lot of things come up. Make sure you know, challenges, problems.
Knowing someone is there to give you a hand is super important. There is a flip side to that because there is delegation and that's good and effective and leads to growth. But there is also something that we've also noticed as a problem, which is delegation by abdication and abdication is different from delegation.
You have the flip side of a manager who's controlling and wants to control the entire process and so he's not getting as much result, which is a manager who's telling them, there you go, I'm not gonna look again up until things start falling apart. Why? It's not because that person was not trustworthy, is not skilled or anything of that sort.
But because abdication kind of implies that the manager did not give enough context, is not empowering them, giving them enough accountability and so they're kind of doing it in a non-constructive way. They're removing themselves from the equation and that also does not end well.
So I would say these are like the top three problems that we face when it comes to delegation and that managers usually we give them a heads up like watch out for this, we're optimizing our processes internally but we want you to trust the process and these are the things that we look out for.
Stephen Matini: I love what you said. It's such a good point. It's a crucial point and I call this concept the right distance. It's like you know, you're not too close, so that you micromanage people, you're not too far and you abdicate and it's completely lack of management.
One word that we, we said a bunch of times, we talked about control, you know control, control, control. So if someone is used to do everything herself, whatever for whatever the reason, what would you say that is the first step in order to relinquish some of that control without having a panic attack?
Nourhan Sbeih: Usually what I do, what we do is we tell them no pressure. Tell me what kind of tasks usually are time consuming for you. And we do that audit and then I take one or two that we know that we do really perfectly and that are very deliverable based. So they're not like kind of a recurring task or anything of sort.
So that would be anything from particular design, a particular research data, a video edit, something of that sort. We take this deliverable that we know we do really, really well and we tell her before we start, how about we do this just so that we break this preconceived idea that no one can do it as well as I.
Particularly when it comes to like a creative task, that's where we find the most hesitation because it's so subjective. So with these tasks I like to start with them to break that barrier because I check what they used to do, just so I get a sense of their preference and then we assign a VA (Virtual Assistant), we're so blessed, we've doing amazing.
And that usually does the trick, and then later on the things that are recurring, representing them in communication, so, community management, email handling, these are also always the most stressful things to delegate.
And what we start with is, hey, how about we do a guide for you, as if this guide based on our conversations with you and what you want and previous emails that you have, lemme create a guide that has your total standardization of recurring messages, recurring emails, so that we prep templates for you.
And that also gets them more warmed up to the idea of delegating because they already approved a scenario.
This is a like don't overwhelm I guess the client or the manager by taking everything in one go and jumping into it, because then psychologically, even if the output is good, there's resistance to accepting it, we take it slow and we take deliverable base first. Things that are recurring and subjective and personal, sorry. We create some standardization, some templates, some guidelines and that also warms them up to the idea.
Stephen Matini: So basically you are a psychologists of some sort.
Nourhan Sbeih: I swear I used to say this all the time because it really does matter a lot. We're working with humans not only internally with our VAs, but we're also working with humans who are stressed out, who are overwhelmed, who are super ambitious and overachievers.
They have a lot to deal with, not just externally but internally that they're struggling with. So all these different dynamics we've had to learn over time how to navigate all of it. You know, you were talking about empathy earlier, that was the key, that was like the aha moment that we just need to understand that they're going through something and try to fit our support within these circumstances.
Stephen Matini: How do you find the two of you, the right distance between the two of you so that you don't step on each other's feet?
Zahra Sbeih: Well, when we first started we each like assigned responsibility. We knew what our strengths, key strengths are. So for me, for example, it's my people skills. I love to work in a team, I love to work with people. So naturally operations was like my scope, dealing with internally the team and all of that. That was my part.
Nourhan is like a great negotiator, she's a strategist. She comes up with ideas and plans and all of that. So she's the Managing Director. She gets us, the clients, she get comes up with ideas for the growth of the company and all of that.
We manage to like each separate our roles in a way, handle our own responsibilities and consult with each other when needed. And it has worked very smoothly since the start. It's been amazing.
Like we can't step on each other's scopes because our hands run with our own scope. We had to jump into this trust because we're sisters that was very easy. I would say if it's founders that are strangers or even if it's friends, I'd say a contract, a founder's agreement, codifying these things, putting a third like an objective accountability system will do miracles for you and it has nothing to do with your trust to your partner. But starting on that will take into consideration all scenarios that you may face in the future.
Stephen Matini: In Italy, a lot of businesses are family based and then eventually grow, grow, grow, become this big monster. And I've always wondered how people strike a balance, you know, and it must be beautiful to know that someone of your family's right there with you. But at the same time, two different level of relationship.
Zahra Sbeih: Nourhan and I have learned to separate like the personnel from the business. So when we're working, we're business partners, we're not sisters and that has helped us like along the way I would say.
Nourhan Sbeih: It wasn't instantaneous, I was over time trial and error and vocalizing our boundaries. Sometimes we're driving back home in the car and Zahra wants to me, she wants to tell me something work related. I'm like, Zahra, my school requires making a lot of big decisions. Like I'm not making a single other decision and Zahra's the same.
Sometimes I'm like discussing to her something that I'm worried about and she's like, I'm outta the office, sorry <laugh>, check in with me tomorrow morning. So I think your partnership with your team also expressing boundaries and vocalizing those things and not being afraid to do so.
Stephen Matini: Has it always been easy for the two of you vocalizing your boundaries? Because that's something that I had to learn. I mean really I had to learn because I was a mess. Has it always been easy for you?
Zahra Sbeih: To be honest, no, not for me. It takes a type of personality to be able to be that confrontational and to express your boundaries.
Well Nourhan was a natural, like she's very verbal with how she's feeling with how like she communicates. Whereas I not so much, Nourhan has to get the talk out of me at times I'm not very good at it, but I was very lucky and blessed to have like such a partner and sister because she really, she helps me become better to express my boundaries more. She encourages communication, which is always helpful from a partner.
Nourhan Sbeih: Totally right. I've always been the kind of person who doesn't mind confrontation and so I've never ever had an issue with expressing boundaries because I would think whatever reaction they have I'm ready to face. But also what helps if you're on the other side of that spectrum and Zahra is one of them, she's aware of that and she expresses that that hey, I'm not very confrontational.
So we also set up systems for that, which is some recurring check-ins, I've learned and maybe this will help someone who's in a partnership with someone that's not as confrontational. I've learned that when it comes to Zahra, don't ask the big question first, break it down simpler of of cooks her outta her, shell slowly <laugh>.
So I wouldn't come to Zahra and say, what's upsetting you? Did it bother you that I did this? I would say, how it's your day, how did this thing go? What happened when this person told you this? And so it's like micro questions that add up to her coming outta her shell and then she like just expresses herself. Yeah, but it started with self-awareness. You can't help someone if they're not aware like what the problem is.
Stephen Matini: The one thing I wanna ask you about the whole notion of upskilling, you know, learning within organizations, because oftentimes people get so busy with operational staff that they literally have no time for learning for themselves. Very often they say, yeah, I would love to be more strategic, I would love to be to have more time for this and that, but I, I'm the only dude here. There's nothing I can do. And I believe that one of the most incredible advantages of an agency like yours could be helping people you know. With that, would you mind explaining a little bit more?
Nourhan Sbeih: Actually this is exactly what we put the whole agency on. What happens is, and this is something that we fell into Zahra and I, which is that we have a concept for a business. We start the business and we end up doing the day-to-day tasks, right? We become the technician and our own business.
When we first started, Zahra and I, we got super sucked into this dynamic where we're doing, let's say VA, we were the first VAs in our VA agency and so we're taking on clients until we figure out that this model is working and we're doing the thoughts and we got lost in this for a year and a half.
We were stuck there because then when we were trying to expand on hiring people, we were doing both and we felt like we're too in it to accept. Again, remember when we were talking about the process versus the end result, we were stuck kind of holding onto the process and wanting people to do it.
Just as we have done why we evolved and how our evolution impacted the service that we provide. We try to explain to the entrepreneur that you, what you're contributing to your business is that innovation, that entrepreneurial spirit, your managerial skills. So you'll creating systems, organizing things and your creativity.
Now those three things actually require some space. You require some time to recharge, you require some time to reflect, you require an eagle eye view of things and you're not so in it. And so what we say, Hey, have you been doing enough of this?
What's a time audit like? Like what is your day like? And most of the time it's not. And they freak out when we tell them, hey, schedule some free time. Relax because it's important for your work because there's this culture of if you're not busy all the time, then you're not actually successful in this hustle culture.
So we tell them the VA, you as the entrepreneur and manager of your business, create a system, create an order, that's fine. Focus on that and that will allow your VA the operations of the day-to-day things without any issue. And it will run.
Let's take our business as an example. I know all businesses in the backend kind of look the same. So imagine that Zahra and I were doing the customer service as well as the marketing, that's digital marketing for our agency as well as actually handling client accounts.
When would we have time to network? Think of strategic partners if we need to expand to a new department. And all this requires, you need some space from the day to day because if I'm replying to emails all day, I'm gonna get this false sense of satisfaction that I did something in the long term. I didn't do anything for my business, it wasn't helpful, I did not serve its best interest in the long term.
Zahra Sbeih: This is the difference between like working in the business versus on the business. So in the business is the technician work, it's the day-to-day tasks that are not really contributing to the growth of the company, but whereas working on the business, you're being strategic, you're having a moment to reflect on everything and coming up with the ideas for the growth of the company.
Nourhan Sbeih: And no business can scale by the way or growth. If it relies on your presence, that means you have a job. It's a coincidence that the job, like you're your own boss but then you still have a boss don’t you? Then this is the dynamic that you want. It's probably more stable to go to find yourself a corporate job, right? That shift in our mindset after a year of struggling because it really sucks the passion outta you. That really made all the difference because then we were able to step back and create a business that runs smoothly even if we're not there.
Stephen Matini: You know, while you are talking about is something that I learned, God, after a lifetime of trying millions of different things. I'm kind of thick compared to where you are. But essentially now what I do that works incredibly well for me after trying Excel files, you name it, all kinds of fancy stuff. See this one there's a piece of paper, so it's green and red.
The red stuff is basically the operational stuff, the green stuff is the strategic stuff. And what I do, I do it the night before, literally for one minute and I take like the back of a printed sheet, you know, something that I, I don't want to throw out. So I, I take this sheet, I ripped in four different parts. So the size is this, it has to be this size, it has to contain some information but not that much.
And then a minute, you know, I write and allows me to, okay, tomorrow this is the stuff and this simple distinction red and green allows me to see there's enough strategic stuff where I'm drowning, you know, as you said into operational stuff. Honest to God it works wonders. It's not about managing my schedule, it's super simple a minute and then in my head everything is clear and the following day I go, you know?
Nourhan Sbeih: I love that, that is it. Lemme tell you something, this is it. And if you have a VA, you already did the hard part. Okay, you identified the things that potentially you can delegate later on to your team, to your VA. So yeah, good.
Our whole business is about delegation. Our way of thinking has been conditioned to be as such. So for example, when I'm planning a project, I now automatically plan it again. So I automatically, when I'm writing the project down, I don't get specific, I draw a general map and then later on I duplicate the template.
So there's a template now if I ever have to do this project again and then I get into specifics and delegate it. This takes over time training, but this is the right way to do it. And creating as a business owner systems that you can replicate.
So if your time is really precious and it's, it's especially as a business owner, if you're spending time on something, you have to make sure that you're not gonna do this again if you don't have to.
So if it's a email reply and it's something that you can standardize, save it for later. I love taking notes. If it's a project done, digitize it, replicate it as many times and you can customize later, that's fine. But still you're not starting from scratch.
If you're starting from scratch then you haven't been codifying enough, you haven't been digitizing your life enough these days. It's a waste of opportunity, it's a waste of time. Even if it's a notebook, you don't have to digitize it, but for searchability purposes, my only advice would be open your notes up, keep it digital so that one search button would just bring up whatever to do list that you had that day and maybe you forgot something or anything like that. So it helps. I use every note.
Stephen Matini: What advice would you give to anyone that has been postponing the idea of going after their dream? The dream of you know, being an independent professional, having a company, pursue whichever project, which advice would you give to that person?
Zahra Sbeih: You know, this is something that Nourhan mentioned earlier about overthinking. They should not overthink it, they should just go with it. Go for it because you are gonna like spend, I don't know, a year planning and focusing on the details and just time is running by while someone else is doing the same idea and perfecting it and growing while you're still thinking about the details.
Trial and error has served Nourhan and I along the way. We sometimes went with the flow and and figured things out as we go, but the most important part is that we started, we are trying, you know.
Nourhan Sbeih: And you're never gonna expect how it's going to be like you're never, no matter how many, how smart you're or how much you're prepared or how much advice you get, you are going to make mistakes that later on you're gonna look at and you're like, it was so obvious.
It was obvious. I shoulda done something else. And this is important because when I'm talking to younger entrepreneurs now, yes it's important to have a passion. Yes it's important that you love what you do, but it's also important to know that whether you're working on your own or you're self-employed or an employee, it's always gonna feel like work. Because it's work, it's hard work.
You're not gonna feel the same about it consistently all the time. Sometimes it's gonna bring so many challenges. You're gonna be like, why am I doing this? Why did I put myself in this position? That's fine. Even if you're following your dreams, you're gonna pass through these moments. And I wish that I knew this when I first started so that I'm not, I don't feel like maybe I'm in the wrong place.
I wasn't in the wrong place, I was just not aware that this is normal, that it doesn't feel good all the time. Especially the entrepreneurial journey. I mean the problems that we face, Zahra and I was just super unexpected way beyond what we thought we were able to handle and we handled them and it was okay.
Stephen Matini: It's a process, you know, it's a process that requires getting your hands dirty and trying stuff. I think when I was younger I was mortally afraid of making mistakes, you know, so I definitely, I overthought the whole thing now, you know, maybe because of the experience I not what the heck it is.
I try to approach it as rational as possible and then I think okay, you know, for today this is the best I can do it and maybe it's just stupidest thing as you said and one day I will look back but as of today, this is the best that I can do.
Having this bar, you know, super high, I have to get there and if I don't I'm going to be bad. Such a loser. You know? Now that, well hopefully I will get there. I have a dream, you know, I have a goal like all of us, but I'm more interested in the process and making sure that, am I really enjoying this with all the, you know, tribulations and difficulties? And then the answer is yes. Well then I continue, the answer is no. Well then you know, maybe there are some adjustments.
Nourhan Sbeih: I 1% agree with that, especially the part where you said reflect. If it's no you're not feeling the journey, although sometimes you're not gonna feel it, but if it's been consistently not being felt <laugh>,
Stephen Matini: The whole notion of gender and age and any other traits that make us different is something that really doesn't matter. For you considering the context where you grew up in everything, did any of these components matter? The fact that you're a woman, the fact that your age, the where you were born, I mean has any of these things somehow impacted the way you think, the way you are?
Zahra Sbeih: I don't think it directly affected like in a very straightforward way. The fact that we're women or our age played apart. But there were times where we kind of went through things and we had a thought, you know, if we were men, would it have been easier for us. If we were older, would it have been easier that situation? So we wonder at times. I wouldn't say it has a played a part like directly.
There was no roadblock in our way and we're very grateful for that because we live in a time where it's never gonna be a roadblock. There's always another way to make it happen. But something that wasn't very nice to go through. So when we first started we were 22, 23.
In our society it's not really that essential for women to be making something depends on every family. But we weren't raised on the idea that you have to be financially independent, and when we first started we weren't taken seriously whatsoever.
Nourhan Sbeih: I dunno what the reason is. Even from our families, we were like, okay, can we get like some advice or we want advice or anything of that. So we wouldn't even get advice because they'd say like, just go have fun. Instead of us pitching a business idea to capable women pitching a business idea, it was two little girls trying to play office.
That was kind of how we felt in the moment when we were getting this kind of input. Just go have fun, it's fine. So we wouldn't even get advice and that was a tough pill to swallow at the time. Now I think it's because our identity is in our business.
Some people might say that's not a good thing, but we felt like we built something that reflects our values, our work ethic, how we like to do things as well. It's very structured and we have to figure things out from scratch so we, it's not outdated because this is all new answers that we have to come up with, but there's a success story for every gender, for every age.
I wouldn't say that it was an issue, it's just it was a bummer. It was a bummer in some moments, especially when you go into a meeting with a client, they're like taken aback. Oh and you feel like it kind of brought the whole negotiation or the whole deal to a halt, but again, confidence focusing on your value makes you push through and it wasn't a roadblock in any way.
Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you something about the Barkat program because you're part of these fabulous program, which is a social initiative to support female entrepreneurs, you know, in Africa, in the Middle East. How did you come across the program? How did it happen?
Zahra Sbeih: We were in in a, like a WhatsApp group for women leader organization, I'm not sure. So they sent a broadcast about this coaching program called Barkat. It's focused on things that I would want to develop in myself, like leadership skills, also the networking opportunity that would come with it, getting to know other women entrepreneurs in the Lebanon.
So I thought of it as a really good opportunity to maybe apply and see if I get selected because I think they only accept six women. So I applied through the form, I got an interview, I did the interview with Puneet, who's amazing and then I got selected and I was really, really happy for the opportunity. It's going really well.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that has been the biggest contribution so far of the program to you as a female entrepreneur?
Zahra Sbeih: The support system that this program has provided, like getting us six women together in a cohort and getting to know one another, sharing our experience, it's been really enlightening. It makes you feel like you're not in this alone and people are going through the same things as you.
Even though the industries are different and the businesses are completely different, but somehow the core challenges are there for all of us and just having this support system where you could share and get advice has been incredibly helpful. I think this is the main thing that I really loved about the program.
Stephen Matini: When you need to center yourself. We were talking about that before, like you know, carve sometime for yourself. What do you do? Do you meditate? Do you pray? Do you walk in nature? What do you do? What do you need to center yourself and to replenish your energy?
Zahra Sbeih: At times of maybe stress or when I wanna just like take a step back, I would maybe go for a walk. I step away from whatever situation that is causing me any kind of negative feeling. I step away from it, I go, I leave the place, I go and think I sometimes I just listen to music. I like listening to something distracting myself. Could be a podcast, could be music, it could be whatever, an audio book that is usually my way of stepping out. Or alternatively I go to Nourhan <laugh> like Nourhan, I want to rant <laugh>, please, let's go have the ranting situation. <Laugh>
Nourhan Sbeih: Definitely us having a mini panic session helping <laugh> but also like it's relevant not to a particular like crisis moment. Having hobbies is important. Definitely it has kept me sane. So I would say I go to the gym regularly that helps. Exercise is super important. When I move I feel like whatever hormone neurotransmitter, I'm not very sciencey, but whatever is happening that's causing me stress, it's really like flushed out.
I enjoy my reading session so my, I don't have a particular time slot within my day for my reading session. It's more of an intuitive thing. So sometimes I just step aside with my book and I read and that also centers me because I've tried meditation. Have you been there, Stephen? Have you tried meditating?
Stephen Matini: I tried a bunch of them. I've done a lot of mindfulness. The one that I prefer the most are the dynamic meditations. Like, you know, walking in nature, I do it also the static one, but I noticed that eh, just after a while, God I have to stay still, you know, instead nature works wonders with me.
Like even last night I was so miserable, I've been working a bunch of hours, I was tired, I was cranky as hell. Something happened at the end of the day that really upset me. You know, there's this park, you know, close to my house where I go and I go there by myself when there are not many people around and somehow that really does the trick, you know, it just thoughts stop. I start breathing correctly and then my intuition kicks back and then by the end of the walk, all right, it's not that bad.
And the reason I'm asking you is because a lot people feel like meditation or that the classic meditation does not work for them. And I'm one of those people and I really gave it a shot because it's important to kind of declutter your mind in a way.
Nourhan Sbeih: And I found that reading for example, does that. Music does that for Zahra and forcing my brain to focus on this page. And so I am centering myself. People need to also, again, forget about labels, forget about what you're supposed to do, try a bunch of different things and see what works for you.
Stephen Matini: Is there anything that we haven't talked about so far that you feel would be important for our listeners to know?
Nourhan Sbeih: Two things. The first thing is when we started working and we work remotely and when you're working remotely with someone, it's way different from working with them in person when there is tone and there is body language and you're not imposing your own disposition onto their disposition.
We were like very put off by the people we're working with communication style. We were put off by their texting style. Maybe they as well felt like we're very remote from them. So we're not really human, we're someone behind the screen. It takes on a different psychology as well when you're dealing with something like that.
And I think what served us really, really well over time is to have that empathy there. That our clients are ambitious, perfectionists, stressed out, overwhelmed, overachievers. And this is a very difficult combination to have. And so sometimes they don't have to send emojis, they don't have to keep complimenting, they're trying to make things happen, they're trying to make mountains move.
Understanding that helped us a lot, especially 80% of our clients are women. And what we noticed is they don't get as much allowance when it comes to not being nice.
Although I swear <laugh> when it comes to our clients, the men do not even attempt to put on emoji, say a kind word, excessive compliments. Our female clients do that and I've noticed it as a pattern.
But even when they're overwhelmed and they don't do that and the VA might be like, wait, is she being mean? Is she upset? I'm like, listen, this is like kind of societal conditioning on, you have some empathy, she's busy, she's busy, it's remote work, it's normal.
And also on the other side, we also tell our clients there is a human behind the screen that we want you to connect with because support will be different if you connect with, and that's where our whole setup is based on have direct contact, know this person, name, background, preference, whatever, but also set recurring video calls that helps.
And you have direct call access whenever you wanna hear a human to talk to. That impacts overall the dynamic between you. So focusing on people, focusing on empathy, understanding what the other person is going through and how you're meeting them, where they're at at the moment. Circumstances are different, is important.
Zahra Sbeih: I do agree with what Nourhan is saying, it kind of made me think about our relationship or the VA's relationship with the client. Usually we do build a bond with them and the VA becomes kind of like the best friend of the client. And it has happened a few times where the client is like, let's like talk on a personal level, let's keep work aside. I feel like talking to you, getting to know you. So they do build that bond and it helps because sometimes you just want to talk to a human being and it's not all work, work, work.
Stephen Matini: Now, I understand why you talked even last time when we met about empathy, why it is so important. I completely understand it; it's true. It's something that comes up a lot with my job. The misconception people have – "oh, it's not in person." You know, digital is not empathetic. I said, you know, I could not disagree more. If someone doesn't want to be here, it's not, you know, I've had plenty of people in front of me sleeping, during a training to give you an example. Yeah, I think empathy is absolutely important.
Nourhan Sbeih: When it comes to digital work, it's more crucial because you're operating so many preconceived ideas and assumptions, so many that you need to like almost, you feel like you're physically suppressing these assumptions that are coming outta nowhere or she didn't send an emoji this time.
So I feel like she's being rude, when actually the sentences don't impose any assumptions on what you're breathing. And so empathy here is more important so that you give the other person that room to be human.
The second point is, it's okay to ask for help. I need entrepreneurs and ambitious people to hear this. You are not less of a success if you're coming up with ideas and someone is executing them with you. So you're not 24 hours in a day busy doing emails and writing emails and replying to messages and doing these operational things. That doesn't mean you're not successful as an entrepreneur reading your jobs to come up with innovative ideas.
So if you're sending emails all day, doing meetings all day, how are you coming up with these ideas? Don't relate your value to how much you're getting done on your own. And do ask for help. There's no shame in it. Rallying people, empowering them, working with them alongside them is the biggest determiner of success.
I got asked this a lot, which is, what's the key characteristic of your clients that you've seen that determines how successful this client is or ends up being? And I always say that they're a team player, they expect some kind of characteristic that is outside this like super disciplined or incredibly intelligent.
It's literally just someone who works so well with a team who such a good team player and it's very collaborative, she's very collaborative and this really makes all the difference and determines how successful their business ends up being. These are the two things.
Stephen Matini: I have to say that you must have a really great dad and I have to say I don't have kids, you know, but being twice your age, if I had kids, I would love to have two daughters like you. You are awesome.
Zahra Sbeih: That means a lot.
Stephen Matini: I love this conversation we had. I think it's gonna help a ton of people. And I listen to a lot of people and I want just to say that your wisdom is really ageless, you know, it really is. You know, you said a lot of things that will make even more sense with time being someone that talks with a lot of people. I'm really, really so pleased, you know, and I've learned a lot today. Thank you so much.
Nourhan Sbeih: You're gonna make me cry.
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Positivity: Overcome Limiting Beliefs - Featuring Keith Storace
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Keith Storace, an Australian psychologist and consultant, shares his experience helping clients overcome limiting beliefs and focusing on the positive to create meaningful lives.
Keith highlights the power of the poetic principle in shaping our reality and emphasizes the importance of authentic relationships in our personal and professional lives. In therapy and leadership, Keith emphasizes the importance of understanding others, embracing their strengths, and fostering meaningful connections.
Keith maintains a Psychology and Consulting Practice at kikuIMAGINATION® working with individuals, couples, families, and groups; conducts seminars and workshops; and consults on mental health, professional development, and leadership.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: Keith. We met at this stage of our lives, right? But as you look back, have you always been this way, the way that I see you? Compassionate, warm.
Keith Storace: I'm reluctant to say yes because it might make me sound as though I am big, noting myself in some way, maybe not in childhood. I dunno if I was as compassionate as I'm now as I was in childhood. 'cause I was too busy being a child and all the great things that come with that.
But I've always wondered about things from a compassionate perspective, and not that that's easy because I think compassion is when you remove yourself from the middle of your life and put someone else there, as temporary as that might be.
My perspective has really been shaped and molded by many wonderful people in my life. I just paid enough attention at the time. I don't know why or how, but I was paying attention to the heart of what they wanted to get across.
Stephen Matini: When did you decide the focus of your career? Did it happen early on? Later on?
Keith Storace: There are a number of things that happened, a sequence of things. It wasn't until I was in my mid to late twenties that I connected the dots and thought I need to pursue psychology.
One of the earliest memories was when I was 14, I read the book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet,, and there's one line in it where someone asks the prophet what is work? And his response, or at least the shrunken version of his response that I remember in my head was work is love made visible.
And I remember thinking at 14 when I read that line, wow, that's what I want. That's the kind of job I want. I had no idea what that looked like, but I love the line work is love made visible. And I wondered, is that possible to have a job where you can do that? What does that look like?
As I grew up, I realized, well, you can enter the religious life, you can work as a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist. You can even do it as a pastry cook. You know, it depends what you are passionate about. That was the beginning of me beginning to wonder about the kind of work I would do.
I wasn't aware of psychology at the time. I didn't know what psychology was. That didn't happen until a few years later when I was in high school. I have this wonderful teacher who asked us, or the assignment for class was we had to come up with a project that was about life. It could be anything. It could be trees, it could be whatever we wanted it to be, but it had to be about life.
And my usual approach to any project or homework was to leave till the last minute. I wasn't very good. I was too busy interested in what adolescents are interested in. So I left it and I realized on the Sunday the day before the project, the assignment was due that I hadn't done anything.
So it was close to midday on the Sunday and I rode my bicycle to the local library, which closed at midday, and I ran in, we didn't have computers back then. I went through the little index cards to try and find something.
And I remembered watching on television a few weeks earlier, a documentary by Jacques Cousteau on “pearls.” And I thought, pearls, that's life. That's about life. I'll write about Pearls. So I couldn't find what I was looking for. I went to the desk, the lady at the library desk announced that the library was closing. I was the only person left.
And I said, I need a book on pearls. And she said, oh, I think we've had one just returned. I got the book, she stamped the little card. I went to my bicycle, sat on retreat, started raining, the library closed, and I started to read this book on pearls. I thought, okay, I need to come up with something for handing in my assignment.
And the book wasn't about pearls as I thought it would be. It was about a man who was called Pearls, but he was the father of Gestalt therapy. So it wasn't a book about pearls, it was about Gestalt therapy. And I was so angry at myself. I had my own mini pity party <laugh> in my head. I went home, I threw my bike against the garage wall and, and I forgot I had the book in my bag, which was just a very sort of a hessian kind of bag.
It was very soft material bag. And it started raining. And early evening I realized that I'd left the book in the bag and I ran out to get it. It was soaked. And I started crying and my mum overheard and she said, oh, you can use my hair dryer.
So I had this book opening up the book, drying every page. And as I'm drying it, I started reading it. I didn't understand most of what I read, but one thing that really came across the gestalt therapy was saying that we are parts of a whole, our behavior, how we feel isn't looked at in isolation.
So I ended up writing, I dunno how, but I ended up writing a project on people and Gestalt therapy for the assignment. I received an a triple plus, and I had the Gestalt prayer, what they call the Gestalt prayer on the front of the project.
And the teacher had written just underneath the A plus, she wrote a couple of words from the Gestalt prayer, which was, I am me and you are you. If we happen to meet and get along, that's great. If not, that's great as well. And she happened to be of the hippie era. So she really understood what I was trying to get across in my assignment.
But it did a lot for my confidence and the way that I understood community and people. And that was my first inkling that there was something that was called psychology that existed that was in the back of my head and it kept brewing.
You know, there were other incidents that brought me to that conclusion that I really needed to study psychology which I really feared because of the statistics. I was never good at math, but I quickly realized statistics is not mathematics. It's a language. Once you understand it, you can really bring some wonderful information together to make sense of the world.
Stephen Matini: And how did you get closer to positive psychology? Last time when we met, you talked about your reluctance for the word abnormal, which is something that in the industry, in the field is not longer used, you know, in many instances. Did it happen earlier on and later on af after a while that you worked?
Keith Storace: I'd heard about positive psychology, but it really came into being in my own understanding, I guess when I was studying psychology, that early stage of studying psychology where everything was labeled as abnormal, abnormal psychology.
There's a place for that in the scientific world, but we had humanistic psychology. And I didn't really come across positive psychology until I was introduced to appreciative inquiry, because that really focuses on the positive core, the difficulty I had with the term abnormal.
I remember speaking with my supervisor at the time, what happens if a client feels as though they're being labeled as abnormal? You know, they might come across the term. And she challenged me to come up with another term.
And I was sitting in the student cafeteria at university and I overheard one of the students talk about her appreciation for what she's learning. And it dawned on me at that point that appreciation psychology rather than abnormal psychology was a better fit for what i I was concerned about.
And that was way before I came across appreciative inquiry. But when I did come across appreciative inquiry, it was via the five core principles. And that's when I started to understand more about positive psychology. You know, because a lot of people ask me, well, I hear about positive psychology, but where's the therapy?
What's the therapy associated with positive psychology? And I struggled with that as well. You can look at what positive psychology offers, which is people often understand it as well. It's about feeling good and being grateful and looking at the good in things.
And a challenge isn't a problem, it's a challenge or a problem isn't a problem, it's a challenge, all of that. But how do you engage with that in therapy? And that's why the five core principles or the classic principles, that's why I think they're really powerful because that's when I started to, to use those principles in particular in leadership, I began to question whether I couldn't use those somehow in one-on-one therapy.
And that's how I, I started to develop the appreciative Dialogue therapy program with positive psychology. I came to know it because of my question around how do I use positive psychology in therapy? And the answer really came through appreciative inquiry.
Stephen Matini: So for those listeners who do not know, appreciative inquiry belongs to positive psychology. And it's a whole approach that focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses in rather than deficits. What you were mentioning, the five principles, and if I remember correctly, they are constructionist, anticipatory, poetic, simul, <inaudible>, and positive. Are you attached to all five of them? Or, or there's one of the five, the somehow speaks volumes to you.
Keith Storace: They're all fantastic, they're all brilliant and they're all powerful. When they're used together, they're amazing. But the one that stands out for me as a psychologist and as what I learned growing up is the poetic principle.
I often, in my early days of inquiry, I used to say to people, I even wrote this in one, in an article I wrote, what was David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, who, who developed appreciative inquiry back in the eighties, what were they thinking? How did they come up with this? This is exceptionally wonderful. I didn't learn this in psychology.
The poetic principle in particular says that what we focus on becomes our reality. In simple terms, that's, I mean, you can really extrapolate it more than that as a psychologist. More importantly, as a human, I see that at work every day. If you are thinking of something that is on your mind the whole time, if you are working on a dream, that dream is working on you, even when you're asleep, when you move, move deliberately to bring that to life in the world, it's just brilliant.
And for me, the poetic principle stands out because it's really what the Appreciative Dialogue program is about. It's bringing to life in the world. What matters most to individuals. I mean, we've seen it big time post Covid, and we're still feeling the ripple effects of post covid and especially in Melbourne where we had such a long lockdown. In total it was nine months.
But I saw clients through that time, and I always came back to the poetic principle because during Covid and post Covid, what people are talking about is, I don't want to go back to my pre covid life. I, I need to do something different. We've heard about the great resignation globally. I don't think it's about the great resignation, it's about the great personal revolution or evolution. It's really wanting to move forward with who I truly am. Again, I probably sound really passionate about the poetic principle, but that's why, you know, what we focus on becomes our reality.
Listen to anyone who's achieved what they've really wanted to achieve in their lives, and they will tell you, I can't believe I get paid for doing what I love doing for doing what defines who I am. And they quickly say, that's my purpose in life. And I say, well, yes, at the moment it's your purpose in life, but I think that's your bliss. Our purpose over time changes, but that's your bliss.
That's where you are in the moment. I mean, there are 10 principles for people who are listening. There were the emergent principles, which are valuable as well. I certainly don't want to minimize those, but it's the classic ones, the five core ones that drew me to a appreciative inquiry that shaped my behavior as a leader and certainly crafted my approach to therapy, which is all about relationship as Irvin Yalom that wonderful American therapist says that the relationship is the therapy. And that's so true. You can't fake a genuine relationship. How do you ensure that that's going to happen? Not just as a psychologist in therapy, but as a leader in leadership?
Stephen Matini: It seems so complicated for a lot of people. Business is made of a lot, a lot of different things, it's a very complex type of thing, but really it boils down to relationship with a lot of different stakeholders. You know, one thing that you said when you're talking about poetic, you said that what you focus on, essentially you manifest. And yet a lot of people have such a difficulty understanding what is important to them to get the clarity.
Even myself, I would say I've always kind of known what I like or what I did not like, but for the longest time, it was so difficult either to have the courage, maybe greater clarity about what I want to pursue, which is something that I have right now, you know, in my fifties, and I never had it before this clear. And then last time, you and I talked about limiting beliefs. Are the limiting beliefs that do not allow us to see it or, or anything else.
Keith Storace: Limiting beliefs are a good way to start because limiting beliefs are the result of how we've somehow interpreted the world around us and believe the world sees us. It may not be true. The thing about limiting beliefs or negative core beliefs is that they're there for a reason. I really try and get the client to understand the importance of what they believe their core belief is.
So we do this exercise, I've developed a, a series of cards. I used to have it as a questionnaire, but it's much more fun having a series of cards and I have words on them. And, and the client will say, look at the card and say, I am. And if it says unworthy, it's a bit like a Likert scale in the either almost always or almost never. And there are a couple in between. So eventually we filter down to seven core beliefs and then eventually filter down to one.
And I make it my task. When we do that exercise, I make it my task to make sure that I don't end up taking the card with me. So I have to somehow convince through the narrative that emerges between us. I have to think of a way of a client agreeing that they are not a hundred percent unworthy once they agree to that, and they usually do, because, you know, I mean coming to therapy first and foremost, well, if you're a hundred percent unworthy, you wouldn't have believed that you had a right to come to counseling <laugh>.
But once we establish their core belief, and look, I I have to say this point, I always say this in therapy, a belief by its very nature is something that is not true. If it was true, then it would be a fact. People don't say, I fact I am unworthy.
I get them to look at the importance of the power behind the belief. We often hear how powerful a thought is, and yes it is, but I say a belief is far more powerful because quite often we dunno what we believe it's there in the background, but we dunno what it is getting at least some sense of what a client's core belief is.
Then I ask 'em three questions and again, consider the five core principles of appreciative inquiry. But the three questions are, I look at a person's energy their relationships and their sense of future. I know it's not a feta complain, but I say to people, these are the three things that make us who we are. They're the three things that make us human and deal with experiences in the way that we do. So by energy, I asked the client, and you can ask this yourself about the life you are living.
And I did this through covid during the pandemic, but in terms of core beliefs and limiting beliefs, I asked the person, does your core belief energize you or does it exhaust you? He or she will think about that. And then I ask them, does your core belief build relationships or does it isolate you?
And the third one, does your core belief reveal a welcomed future or an unwanted one? Now, usually if the first two are negative or what I call negative, which is I'm exhausted and I'm isolated, they're not gonna have a good response to the future one. Now, it is frightening for some people when they do this exercise because when someone is deeply suffering from self-doubt, they don't see a way out in many ways, and this is why a lot of my work focuses on limiting beliefs and self-doubt.
So once a person has answered those three questions, I then get them to contemplate a time when they were doing something that was good for them. And I call this the create change exercise.
So I asked 'em to think about a time in their life where they created a change that in turn created them. At that point, they don't necessarily see a connection between what's going on on for them in terms of, of self-doubt. But they do come to understand that we get there eventually.
And sometimes there's hope happens over several sessions. So it's certainly not immediate, but I'll ask 'em to create a change. Think of a time where they created a change that in turn created them. And then I asked them three questions. Who or what inspired you to make that change? What did that change look like in your mind before you even began to move toward making that change? And who is involved in helping you bring that change to life?
Everyone has a story as little or as big as, as it is. Everyone has a story. What I'm really doing is looking at how they allow themselves, how they enable themselves to be inspired, how they enable themselves to imagine, and how they enable themselves to collaborate, especially with imagination. That goes a long way to build resilience. Once we have this story, I then go to talk about what I refer to as the seven positive stimulus statements. I call them stimulus statements, because for me, that's positive psychology.
Stephen Matini: Like a mantra.
Keith Storace: Yeah, each statement becomes a mantra. And, and usually as you asked me, and so rightly so, which of the five core principles stands out for me? And, and the poetic principle, again, it stands out for me because what we focus on becomes our reality. So the seven stimulus statements is to inspire that in the client. And then we've moved into the three questions, you know about inspiration, imagination, collaboration, and then the five, the, sorry, the seven stimulus statements.
They're about belief, imagination, perseverance, success, possibility, foresight, and action. And each one says, belief says belief influences choice. Three words, simple idea, but it's true. And we discuss that by unraveling a story that the client has. And we usually go back to the story, but the create change exercise, you know, okay, you told me that you decided you wanted to have a life change or see change.
You were working as an engineer, for example, you decided you wanted to do something completely different. We look at how belief influences choice in the light of whatever story they've, they've given me with imagination. We are who we imagine ourselves to be. That again, leans into limiting beliefs and core beliefs. So self-doubt is that preoccupation, you know, having that fear of failure and self-doubt on its own won't stop you.
Self-Denial, on the other hand, will, because self-denial is an action. And I don't mean self-denial in the way that psychologists talk about denial. You know, where someone who is grieving is denying what's happened or what life's gonna be like. Now it's self-denial where you stop yourself from moving toward how you want your life to be. And that's an action. So self-doubt is a belief, and self-denial is an action. So how we imagine ourselves to be the second positive stimulus statement and which is about imagination.
If we are steeped in self-doubt, if we are steeped in the limiting beliefs, then that's how we see ourselves and we won't progress. I often use the image of someone who has a basketball and there's a basketball hoop. If the person who doesn't believe in themselves thinks, well, there's no point in me trying to get this basketball in the hoop because I'm hopeless, I'm not worthy, it's not going to work, then they'll have a half-hearted approach to getting the ball in the hoop. And of course, because of that half-hearted approach, it won't go in.
And then they'll say, you see, I was right. Perseverance there is no failure, only frustration. Now, a lot of people disagree with me about that. Oh gosh, you know, you should embrace failure because you learn from it. And I'm saying, I'm not saying not not embrace failure, but someone who's suffering from the fear of failure, then they need to reframe what failure is.
And the way I help them reframe it is to say it's not a failure, it's a frustration. I do this a lot with university students. You failed an exam, okay, that's gonna frustrate you moving forward because you have to reset it or you may need to do redo the semester. It doesn't mean you failed your intention of eventually working in this field. It just means it's frustrated the process a little bit.
You know, we talk that through and they generally understand what I'm getting at when I talk about that. Success is not limited to natural ability. You don't have to be naturally gifted to do what you want to do. If you really want to do it, then it's going to take a lot of hard work and some people will have to work harder than others. But that's the, the notion of success possibility.
You know, with positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, the positive emerges through the possible. People often think it's the other way around. We begin to see possibilities when we are in a positive state. And that's true, but where does it begin if someone is not in a positive state? So let's look at what's possible.
And we've already started looking at what's possible because we've done the create change exercise, <laugh>, and then foresight, which is a little arithmetic. I give them H plus I equals F. That's from my statistics days. And I made up that little formula. Basically it's asking, or it's saying that hindsight plus insight equals foresight and people do ooh, when they hear that, when I actually write what it means on the board.
But hindsight plus insight equals foresight. If you can get that right, then you're on the way. And I, and I highlight for the client how they've already told me that because in their story, the create change story, they've given me the positive call.
The client might not think they have a positive call, but there it is. And action. Our goals are only as achievable as the actions we take toward them. So those seven stimulus statements are to stimulate the kind of conversation that the client will believe. Again, going back to belief, the client will believe what those statements are really wanting the client to grasp because the client has told me their their create change story.
When I give talks about this people, their first question usually is, but what if a person doesn't have a create change story? What if a person truly can't think back to a time where they created a change that in turn created them? And my response is, well, firstly, I've never encountered that There have been clients who have struggled and they've struggled because they try to think big. You know, what's a big change that I created in my life?
And that's not about a big change. It's a tiny, it's a tiny change. It can be big if you've got one. Sure. The reason I call it appreciative dialogue, which is really an offshoot of of appreciative inquiry, is that it's an intentional conversation with a positive direction. And that in itself gives me my answer to how is positive psychology,
Stephen Matini: How long does it take to someone to change a limiting belief?
Keith Storace: Look, it really varies. The program that I use, depending on the nature of the client situation, it can take between six and 12 weeks to, I wouldn't say completely change their beliefs. Some people are really stuck with their beliefs. So I try and get them to understand, let's not focus too much on moving on from your belief. Let's focus on moving on with your belief, which really suggests managing it and controlling it. You know, you've heard that saying, we teach what we need to learn.
For me, that's my life lesson, how to really deal with my own self-doubt. So sometimes people can't move on, sort of leave it in the background. So it's about controlling it and understanding what it actually is. It's not hard, but it does take patience. As I started out saying, the relationship is the therapy. You have to really wanna be there with this client.
You really want to be able to walk in their shoes, you know, and understand what it is like for them. Because I haven't experienced everything a client has experienced. I've got my own experience of life. So I probably make it sound simpler than it is. I, I have to say too that I do use evidence-based, I call it my therapy triangle. There are three approaches to therapy that I use that underpins everything I've talked about.
And that is existential therapy, solution focused and cognitive behavioral. I now embed those three therapies because, and it's a really strong triangle because existential, the existential approach says individuals create their own meaning. Solution focus says elements of the desired solution are usually already present in the person's life, hence the create change story.
And cognitive behavioral therapy says behavior change is the result of a change in one's thoughts and beliefs. Again, we're looking at core beliefs now for the client. I don't talk about that with the client. I don't say I'm using this triangle of therapy, but I do say to them, there are three things that, that we're gonna look at that will eventually manifest in your life in a way that you'll be able to move forward and use this whole approach in all sorts of situations in life.
Stephen Matini: It's very subjective. Also, the, as you said, you know, how long it takes. Is it, it depends. It varies. You covered a lot of really important things and thank you so much, first of all, for being so generous with this conversation. If you had to highlight one main takeaway for a listener, something that, based on anything you said that you deemed to be really, really, really important as a starting point, what would you say that is?
Keith Storace: I would love for listeners to spend a good amount of time if they can, whenever they can immersed in the things that matter most to them. Because the gratitude that emerges from that kind of experience is an affirmation of who they are. When who you are is brought to life in the world.
In this way, the people around you will not only come to know you for who you truly are, they will also in one way or another be infected by you, <laugh> in a beautiful way and benefit from the good in it all. So the more you become your true self, which is what we're all meant to be, the more others will benefit from that.
And if I had to talk in leadership speak, I would say that when people are encouraged and supported to engage in work or study that resonates with their strengths, values, and what they enjoy, they in turn feel strong, valued, and motivated to produce good work. You know? And this ultimately benefits who they are and their mental health and social relationships. What matters mostly is who you are. And that's what we all want to know.
Stephen Matini: Thank you, Keith. This has been wonderful.
Keith Storace: Good conversations. Appreciate with time and this has certainly been one of them. Thank you.
Monday Oct 23, 2023
Resilience: Bouncing Forward from Adversity - Featuring Sara Truebridge
Monday Oct 23, 2023
Monday Oct 23, 2023
Sara Truebridge EdD, is a researcher and author specializing in resilience.
Sara is the Founder of EDLINKS, an organization whose mission is to educate, support, and sustain a global community by embracing the resilience of humanity.
By recognizing the whole person, encompassing the cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our being, Sara emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to growth and development.
Sara encourages us to follow our hearts. When we align our actions with our passions and values, we unlock our true potential and contribute to the oneness of humanity.
Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to boost resilience and the significance of humor in difficult situations.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: So Miss Sara, for those who are going to listen to this episode, would you mind sharing where you grew up?
Sara Truebridge: I grew up in upstate New York. A lot of times when you say New York, people think of New York City, but I grew up outside of Albany, the capital of New York. And so it was very suburban.
Stephen Matini: And when you and I met, you talked to me about your upbringing and also how early experiences have inspired you to dedicate your life to others. So were there any special people, any special events that somehow contributed to the way you are?
Sara Truebridge: Yeah. thank you for asking about that Stephen. It's so funny cuz people say, where did you get interested in contributing or being of service? My answer to people is I came out of the womb that way.
My mother and father, I grew up in a home that dedicated themselves to service. And so it is very cellular to me.
So my mom especially, I would come home and never know who would be in my home because very often my mother would find someone who needs a bed to sleep in at night. Sometimes it would be someone who needs food or needs a meal. So it wasn't something out of the ordinary for me. Like I said, service is ingrained. It's who I am. It's part of my being.
Stephen Matini: What was one of the, one of the biggest bombs that you dropped to your parents growing up?
Sara Truebridge: <Laugh>. Oh my god. Shall we start with the A’s, we’ll go through the alphabet <laugh>. Oh my god. One of the later ones was when I was a young adult and I took time off of work to travel the world. I, you know, donned a backpack and traveled world. That didn't surprise anybody in my family. That was normal. That was like, oh, okay. But what did surprise, it took me a while to share this with my family is that I did a lot of hitchhiking and the hitchhiking that I did was in areas that normally women traveling alone probably don't hitchhike. And so yeah, that was a bomb. And I don't know, yeah, I waited quite a while to share that. Why worry, why have them worry?
Stephen Matini: I was a good kid. I was very obedient until I reached 18 years old and out of the blue I said, hey, I'm gay and I'm going to live with my boyfriend. That was downhill from there.
Sara Truebridge: <Laugh>. I love it. Did your parents accept that?
Stephen Matini: The answer is yes. And my whole life, I've never really experienced any form of discrimination, believe it or not. I mean, I've seen it around myself.
Like, to give you an example, it has been difficult with the families of former boyfriends. You know, those families were not super accepting or they were half accepting. So I've seen that, but I've always been a firm believer that the biggest probably battle that you combat is within yourself.
You have to be okay with yourself. And if you're okay with yourself, that sends a very positive message out there. And so my philosophy approach has always been, this is who I am. I did not decide to be this way. If you have a problem with this, if you wanna talk about it, we can, but it's your problem.
Because my problem so to speak, is I have to live life this way. You know? And with that in mind, that's how I have approached everyone.
Well, you know, and it's really beautiful that your parents that had to come from somewhere. And so I'm sure your parents infused you with a sense of pride and you know, strength and resilience. It's funny because I often tell this story, which is very interesting. You know, my work is in resilience, that's where my doctorate was. That's a book I wrote about blah blah blah, resilience.
I had a fascinating experience where when I first started teaching, my first teaching experience was in a high school teaching English as a second language. These were the days where there were chalkboards, they weren't whiteboards. So that kind of dates me. When I first came in to this classroom, I walked up to the chalkboard and I wrote, you know, the typical, my name, my maiden name was Brownstein.
So I wrote on the chalkboard, Ms. Brownstein, and I introduced myself, you know, and with that, a young student, the young man stood up, he was very tall. He walked into my face and spit right on my face and said, I'm not going to be taught by a Jew.
That was my day one on teaching day one, first day on the job teaching, I realized I had 28 other students in the classroom. This one student came up spit on me.
And so, you know, what I did was he goes, I'm not gonna be taught by a Jew. And first I wiped spinoff and I said, oh, I guess you're not gonna be taught by anyone. And then I calmly went over, those are the days they had intercoms and phones in the classroom. And I went over and I just called the office and I said, someone has to be escorted out of the room. But to my point of discrimination, and it comes outta nowhere, right? I mean, and then you think deeper and oh no, there's always a story, you know, somewhere. But it's how we react in the moment. Right?
Stephen Matini: How did you keep your love for teaching after that incident?
Sara Truebridge: It's interesting, I haven't thought about this in a while, but when that incident happened, it wasn't about me and it wasn't about the student who did that to me. It was about the other students in the class who witnessed that.
They were the ones who I had empathy for. Like it was all about them. And I wanted to make sure they were okay with what happened, that they didn't worry about me. You know, I'll be okay. When that incident happened, it didn't turn me away from teaching. It showed me how much I needed to be a teacher.
To me it's not about reading, writing, arithmetic. It's, are you a good person? Do you have a good heart? Is service going to be a part of who you are? That's education to me. It's funny because although I started with high school, I primarily ended up teaching the primary grades, kindergarten, first, second, you know, third. And that's where my niche was with teaching. And it's so funny because every single year at the last day of school, I'd have my little second graders sitting on the rug at my feet, right? And I'd say to them through my tears, I don't want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you reading. I don't want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you math. I want you to remember me as the teacher who taught you how to love yourself and others. That to me is the biggest part of teaching and learning.
Stephen Matini: My elementary school teacher, Ms. Lombardi, still lives in the neighborhood where I live. And when was it? Like a few years back I went to see her after many, many, many, many years. And she was exactly the way that I remembered her. She was not like a teacher “mom”. She was professional. She was very assertive. But you could sense that she was always on your side, but she was demanding. When I saw her said that, I truly have to tell you that you are very likely one of the most important people of my life because the way that I think, the way that I am has been so deeply ingrained in me by you. You know?
Sara Truebridge: Oh, I love that. You know, it's so funny you should say that because we as teachers don't always know the impact that we have on our students. What you just described, I still get from students, they track me down and they'll say, oh, you have no idea. And I won't, I won't. I'll be like, oh my gosh.
I have a student for instance, who went into teaching and I have her in kindergarten and first and second grade I looped with students where you stay with them. She had a personality, she was a pistol when she was little and then she's like, I'm a teacher now because of you. So I love that you went back and visited your teacher and that probably meant the world to her too.
Stephen Matini: It's a tough job. I think teaching. You know, I've been teaching for what now for 13 years. You know, I teach second year college students and I love teaching, but as you said it, very often you are not quite aware of the impact that you have on people.
It did happen a few times that people actually, several times the students from, you know, years before, they reached out through emails, some of them I met them in person and they shared with me how those moments together have impacted their lives. You know, and that's really the, I think the biggest gift that anyone can give you.
Sara Truebridge: In the work that I do, and in the research, it's so interesting because in many ways the research that I do, I call it “the,” "the” research, you know, because the research bears out the importance of caring relationships. The research bears out one person can make a difference in your life.
Stephen Matini: What is your definition of resilience after so many years studying it, you know, working with resilience?
Sara Truebridge: One of the things like the most simplest definition that I used to say is bouncing back from adversity. I have changed what I say now. I say bouncing forward from adversity because I want to express that it's not only bouncing back, but it's thriving, bouncing forward and thriving.
And I think with being a strength-based practitioner that I am and researcher bouncing forward is what I want people to think about the healing process, the bouncing forward. Now that's the simple definition. Then there's a very formal definition about the external strengths, the systems, the internal strengths that we have within ourselves.
So there's a very formal definition that I use, but for the simple definition I'm sticking with bouncing forward from adversity. And you know, another interesting thing in the academic world in the definition of resilience, there are academic researchers who will say that resilience is about bouncing what they say back from significant adversity.
I do not use the word significant because I have a strong belief. Everything is a matter of perspective. Who am I to say what was significant to you? You have your own life story. What's significant to you may not be significant to me. So that's where I sometimes differ from other resilience researchers.
Where I will recognize adversity being what the individual identifies as adversity. I don't say it has to be every day. It could be something that a daily stress experience you have to deal with tapping into your resilience.
I always say if you take anything away from when I talk about resilience, I want people to understand it is not a trait. Resilience is a process. It is not a trait. In other words, everyone has the capacity for resilience. It's not a matter of do you have resilience, it's a matter of what can I do to help support you to tap into your resilience cuz it's in there.
And the question is, has it been tapped? And we don't want to say that you have to tap your own resilience. There are so many systemic and environmental factors that are barriers to one's resilience. So we have to look at systemic issues as well. There's the researcher in me, right?
Stephen Matini: The one thing that somehow I don't think I've ever read much about is the notion of courage based on your infinite knowledge and wisdom way more than mine. Have you ever researched or studied the notion of courage, of being courageous?
Sara Truebridge: You know, it's so interesting that you should bring that up because you know, I just wrote something and in my book I have a section where I talk about words matter. And when we hear words, a word can elicit a feeling or a behavior and courage.
We talk about in resilience, what are some of one's inner strengths that they draw upon to support their resilience. And courage is definitely one of those inner strengths that one draws upon to support one's resilience, it helps to support it.
And also by engaging in your resilience, you develop courage. So it goes both ways. It's not only something you have that supports your resilience, but the resilience can support your courage.
I think it's really important for me to encourage others to create and sustain an environment that allows people to be courageous and to stand up for who they are. Stand up for others and express their acts of courage, words of courage.
Stephen Matini: If I understood correctly, there is an element of practicing all this, the more that I do it, the more I become resilient, the more I become courageous. So it's something that you have to actively do.
Sara Truebridge: Exactly. I love that. It's a process. And it's not even linear. You know, we all have experienced times where we can tap into our resilience easier in this time than last time when whatever. So again, it's a very dynamic process.
Stephen Matini: You said the resilience is bouncing forward and I love that. And so sometimes I look at myself, but I, I see scars, you know, I do see some scars here and there that I dragged from the past experiences and those scars, yes, they're dear to me. They're important experiences, memories. So as I look at my scars, what would it be the best attitude to look at scars?
Sara Truebridge: The scars, you know, in a resilience framework, it's like multiple scars. They can build up you. It's like calcium, you know when you have a break and it builds up and you know the break builds up stronger.
So sometimes when something happens it can strengthen one's resilience. Cause you are able to look back and say, wow, I made it through that experience. And you focus on what did you draw upon that helped you get through that experience as opposed to, oh poor me. You know, that type of thing.
Now in that same vein of talking about, as you call them scars, I don't know if I would necessarily use that as the word because, again, I identify as a strengths-based practitioner.
I recognize trauma. We all have experienced trauma.I am not discounting trauma. But what I like to focus on, part of resilience, the work in resilience is reframing. And I like to reframe words. And so instead of focusing on trauma, I encourage people to focus on healing.
Trauma is such a deficit based word. At the same time, I do not want anyone to misinterpret me in negating trauma. Yes, trauma exists. It's not putting on rose colored glasses. It's not saying, oh you'll be fine. It's saying no, you know what, that sucks. Now it's validating the trauma. But moving forward towards healing.
Stephen Matini: I have been a seeing a therapist for more than a year now. And one of the thing that I come to learn through this experience is to, I don't know if it's the right definition, normalize my trauma. Which means not to downplay them, not to label them, but still see them as part of life and to create this space to see them and to learn from them, which has been so simple but so crucial.
Sara Truebridge: I love that you're saying that because so often, and I said it before, people think resilience is oh, everything's gonna be dandy, unicorns, cotton, candy, and you know all the fun, you know things and let's be super positive.
Well no, resilience is being able to validate. Yeah, you know what? That sucked! Or validate. You know what? Yep, you have gone through a very difficult time. But you know what, you didn't kill yourself. You're alive, you're here today. What made you wake up the next day? What did you draw upon? And it is dark, it's not forgetting, it's remembering so that you remember and you engage and validate and move forward.
Stephen Matini: You have such a strong energy and you said it, I was born that way. <Laugh>. How do you preserve your energy, particularly when things may get extra tough? Is there anything you do?
Sara Truebridge: I know for one thing, my humor. My humor gets me through a lot. And it has come up in times where I don't even expect my humor to come out. But I know that humor comes out naturally as a way to support my resilience.
I was in a really, really, really bad car accident, a head-on collision. I was airlifted and they didn't think I was gonna make it. And I was airlifted to the hospital. And when I got to the hospital, they put me on the, you know, stainless steel table in the emergency room and all these doctors came in and huddled, the car was wrapped and I was wrecked. I was a mess. And so they have me on this stainless steel table, they start cutting my clothes, they start at the pants, you know, and they start cutting my clothes cuz I was a wreck. They start cutting my clothes and through the strength that I have, I say, “My mother would be so proud of me!” I said, “I have on good underwear.”
Stephen Matini: <Laugh>.
Sara Truebridge: Well the doctors, they started laughing, but they're saying to me, you've gotta stop cracking jokes. You need your energy. You have to stop cracking jokes. And so there I am close to my deathbed and I'm making jokes, you know.
Stephen Matini: I have this thing, I've always had it. When a situation becomes tough, I have to make fun of it. I don't know what it is, you know? But I have to, it's not really downplaying it, it's not that I'm trying to make it into something that it's not, but it just irreverence that I have.
You know, you hear the stories of newsrooms and hospitals and dark humor, you know that people like just what you said in order to every day deal with things. How do you deal with trauma? Day in, day out, day in, day out? Humor does have a role.
Stephen Matini: Last time where you and I met, you talked about something that I kind of resonated with me, which is the, the whole notion of the whole child. Would you mind telling me more about it?
Sara Truebridge: Here's the thing, the whole child, there's cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual. Those are the components that we all have. When we recognize all those elements, then we are recognizing the whole person. When I talk about the whole child, it's recognizing all those components in a child.
And in education people are throwing around just like they're throwing around the word resilience without really understanding it. They're throwing around the term, oh, we recognize the whole child.
However, traditionally in education, they recognize the cognitive, physical and we're getting really good with the social and emotional. But we're petrified of the spiritual because people still equate spiritual with religious. And it's not, it can be, but it's not. We all know the four year old that has awe and wonder and curiosity. We know that those should be within us always, but for some reason we lose that.
And I really say that unless we embrace the spiritual aspect of our being and we as educators incorporate that into who we are as teachers and look at that, then if we are not incorporating the spiritual component, then don't tell me you're working with the whole child.
Do not be afraid of that component. That component, if you leave it out, you're not recognizing the whole child. I do a lot of work and you know, I'm grateful that the social emotional components have become so prominent and you know, center stage in education.
A lot of times in education we talk about passion and the heart. It's touching the heart as much as the head. As a matter of fact, I often say the heart is the portal to the head. It's so interesting. So the whole child, I feel the whole child has to, you recognize the cognitive, physical, social, emotional and spiritual. You know, that's the head, the heart, the body and the social and emotional.
You know, some people will say, well, isn't social emotional enough? And I say no, because social emotional deals with the outside. It's relational. Spiritual, it's looking in and it's recognizing the unity of the globe, the unity of our being, the connections we have with each other, the connection to something greater.
Stephen Matini: As you said, the words can be divisive. You know, they have different meaning to different people. And so yes, some people may have a different interpretation of what being spiritual means.
Sara Truebridge: I really want people to recognize that when we talk about spirituality, we are not talking about religion. And again, that's not to say religion can embrace spirituality, but spirituality does not have to embrace and talk about religion.
Stephen Matini: No, it's interesting because in my job, this conversation happens, you know, all the time. I work often with people with different cultural backgrounds, I never know what word to use, you know? So I do use that word, soulfulness, spirituality, spiritual. And I try to emphasize the fact that my approach is very secular. You know, I'm not pinpointing to any specific philosophy and religion. Yeah.
Sara Truebridge: I think personally that this movement that we have seen and I was part of for social, emotional, learning, to get integrated more into education and to become more of a more, we're on the cusp of doing that with spirituality.
We are going to see, cuz it started already, that people are becoming more accepting and like you said, you know, whether it's soulful, whether it's spirituality, you know, whatever word you use, it's finding that component that is part of who we are that we cannot dismiss.
Stephen Matini: I have one last question, which is to anyone who is thinking maybe a younger person dedicating their lives to servicing other people, to be helpful to other people, either as a teacher, whichever capacity, what would it be an advice that you would give to them?
Sara Truebridge: The advice I would give is follow your heart. Listen to you. You know, I have another TED talk and in that TED talk I mention, you know, people who are older listen to them. They have wisdom. There are a lot of times people will say, oh you should do this, or oh you shouldn't do that. And I say, listen to them. They have wisdom. But at the end of the day, follow your heart. That's sometimes is the most difficult thing for anyone to do, is to take the time to listen. What is it that your heart and soul are saying to you that makes you be the whole person?
Stephen Matini: This is wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with me.
Sara Truebridge: Thank you.
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Our guest today is Stephen (Shed) Shedletzky. Shed is a Speaker, Leadership Coach, and advisor. In the episode, we will discuss the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment where individuals feel comfortable speaking up, sharing their thoughts, and being vulnerable.
In his book “Speak-Up Culture: When Leaders Truly Listen, People Step Up,” Shed Shedletzky explores psychological safety, employee voice, and the benefits of fostering a culture where everyone feels safe contributing.
Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn the transformative power of psychological safety and its impact on productivity, creativity, and innovation.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: When did you decide somehow or when did you get a sense that what you're doing now is what you wanted to do? Have you been doing this for a long time?
Stephen Shedletzky: For me, it really began back in university. So I took a number of courses with a particular professor who I loved. He's a Kiwi from New Zealand by the name of Dennis Shackle. And he was a professor on leadership, on organizational behavior, on public speaking.
There was distinctively one class I took of his called “Advanced Presentation Skills” and at the end of the first class he showed a clip of Martin Luther King Jr. Giving his eye of a dream speech and he said, okay, class, your assignment for next class is to prepare a five minute talk and attempt to match Dr. King's passion. No small request.
So I was at school in a Canadian university, so there were people who spoke of their love of their favorite hockey team or of curling. There was one person who spoke of their love for mid chocolate chip ice cream.
Stephen Shedletzky: And so I knew that if I really wanted to speak with passion, there was only, there were only a few things I could speak about and one of them was overcoming my fear of public speaking.
So I grew up with a stutter, I still have a speech impediment, I married a speech pathologist, good choice more so for my kids than for me personally. I gave a five minute talk on this universal fear that you know everyone, you know, it's the good old Jerry Seinfeld joke of the number one fear in North America is public speaking and number two is death. So we'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, which makes no sense whatsoever. And so I gave this five minute talk on my experience of failing as a public speaker.
There was a moment in French class in grade two when I couldn't say the word “très," which is like the third fricking word you learn in French. And that was sort of a low point. And from there I got the help that I needed to feel more confident speaking publicly, whether it's this one-on-one, a small group or in front of a large group.
I gave that talk and that was sort of the itch for me of, ooh, I wanna do more of this because it was the first time in my life I gave a talk and it actually felt that it impacted others in a positive way. It wasn't promoting something, it wasn't about me, it was about service.
And so from that point I was hooked in terms of the speaking piece. And then I got into coaching and organizational behavior just from connecting with people who shared similar values and and beliefs and sort of figured out my career path by looking at the people that I admired and wanting to emulate them. One of them being Leanne Davey who introduced us as well.
Stephen Matini: You know, when I went to Emerson College in, in Boston, it's a communication school, I believe it's the oldest one. The first class that I took was “Advanced Professional Communication” and I decided to take it with a bunch of people, they were just unbelievable. And this professor would give us like this bandaid you would put in your arm and it would change color depending on how nervous you were.
It was a temperature sensitive type of thing and everyone had it black, you know, pitch black and terrified by this class. So it was really, really hard. And the first thing that I did it, I felt really nervous, but somehow there was a moment that I screwed up and people laughed but we're not laughing because I screwed up but they were laughing at something I said and there was something in my head that went, you know what?
This maybe is not supposed to be as hard as I thought it was, you know, anyhow. So it was the click that made the whole difference. And from the moment on I learned that I don't feel a hundred percent comfortable but I can still connect with people, you know, generally authentically speak from a place that feels real to me. And when I do that, you know, the nervousness goes down.
So when you did your speech, you know, in the moment was anything that clicked in your head somehow it was any, anything that somehow you learned?
Stephen Shedletzky: So a couple things come to mind. I mean one, I very distinctively remember that talk and where I was standing in the class and where a few students were. I had one of those, there's like the part of your brain that just does and then a part of your brain that thinks.
I sort of had one of those like outer body experiences where I was doing the thing and also reflecting on like, wow, this is fun and I think I might be effective. I attempted to like hush that cuz it was getting in the way of performing and doing and giving and serving.
The other thing that just came to mind, Stephen, from what you just shared is, I don't know the stats or the science on this, but I believe it to be true and it's from our own experience. I think that's so often we are so concerned about what others think of us, that everyone is just wasting time thinking about what other people are thinking of them.
Stephen Shedletzky: So when giving a talk or doing work or working on your craft, whatever it might be to work on focusing on service and giving rather than what are other people thinking of you.
Because everyone's busy thinking of themselves. Like a quintessential example of this is you walk into a meeting late, and you walk in and you're so mindful and you're so quiet and you're like, oh, what are people thinking of me?
But if you notice the body language of others when you walk in late, they'll often sit up straighter themselves because they're thinking about, ooh, what's this new person thinking of me? So everyone is wasting time thinking about what others are thinking of them focus on giving, focus on serving, focus on being effective for yourself and for others.
Stephen Matini: Now is it better when you have to give a speech, do you feel, or do you still feel nervous?
Stephen Shedletzky: Of course for me though, that's just data. You know, if I don't feel nervous, it means I might be lazy or don't care. And so for me, nerves or anxiousness or excitement, that active energy for me is just data for me that this matters.
I want to do as good of a job as I can. And for me, when I'm giving a a talk, I mean my rule, which I learned from a mentor, Simon Sinek, which is only talk about things that you care about and only talk about things that you know and care is more important than know.
You can say, hey, I care about this. I don't know everything but I want to give it a whirl, you know, and work with me here. And so I only wanna speak about things that I care about and I only wanna speak about things that I know at least something about.
And so the nervousness is also around there is something that I've experienced or that I know that I want to attempt to transmit and help others have a similar experience. So for me, the nerves are around being the most effective that I can be and giving what I feel that I know about and care about so that others might care about it and know about it more as well.
Stephen Matini: One thing that stood out was the fact that if I understood correctly, part of your, let's say mission is to help people feel safe. And I thought it was such a nice thing. Tell me more.
Stephen Shedletzky: One, I'm flattered and thank you. It's such a basic human need and when we feel safe we are more likely to flourish. I've reflected on experiences in my life when I've been in rooms or environments or in relationships or in a company or a culture or in a congregation or in any sort of form of community where it feels safe and where it doesn’t.
When it doesn't feel safe, we waste energy on protecting ourselves from each other, from other people. And it is such a waste. It's a waste in productivity, it's a waste in energy, it's a waste in what could be creativity and and innovation.
And then I've also reflected upon moments in relationships, one-on-one groups, communities where I do feel safe, where I have permission to potentially even say an unpopular or a hard or vulnerable thing to share or raise a concern. And it is met with curiosity and openness and a desire to learn and improve and it just feels healthier and better.
And I'm not talking about communities that are homogeneous, I'm talking about diverse communities where as many people as possible from all different walks of life are valued as human beings and are treated as if their voices do matter because they do. I prefer those environments not just for the benefits to our mental and physical wellbeing, but also from a business perspective. It just creates better results.
Stephen Matini: You mentioned about the speech impediment. Was any other event or people that somehow were really important for the way you think today?
Stephen Shedletzky: There's one individual and I write a bit about him in in the book that I have coming up this fall called “Speak Up Culture.” His name is Dr. Robert Kroll and he just passed away a couple years ago unfortunately.
So there are a couple of pivotal moments in my journey with my speech impediment three come to mind right now. So one was that French class when I couldn't say “très” in front of the class and for me that was, that was a low, I don't know what it was, but I went home that day from school and I said to my mom, we need to get help.
I first became aware that I had a starter in around grade two. It wasn't that bad. We tried some interventions, they didn't go so well and so we just kind of ignored it for four years. And then I had this moment where I'm like, hmm, this is gonna get in my way for my future.
Stephen Shedletzky: You know, I just knew that for some reason. And so I shared with my mom, we need to actually get on this, I need help. And so that summer, it was a summer of grade six, I was a 13 year old kid and I went to, I think it was a two or three week, maybe even longer sort of intensive stuttering camp with an organization that is still around today called the Speech and Stuttering Institute.
I remember I took the subway to downtown Toronto for the first time on my own, like it was a big sort of coming of age thing. And then I joined this class, I was the youngest there. There was one other young man who was 14 years old from Ottawa. And then everyone else was older. There were a couple people, one was probably in his mid twenties, couldn't land a job because he couldn't speak in an interview.
Stephen Shedletzky: There was another gentleman, his first name was George. His last name was very complicated because he was Sri Lankan. I remember in one of the classes, Dr. Kroll took him bit by bit and again, we need safety in order for this to happen cuz it was hard work.
He took him syllable by syllable to help him pronounce his own last name. It probably took 15 minutes, but it was the first time George ever said his own last name. And like his pride and joy and relief was palpable. Like it was amazing.
A few things happened in that stutters program. One was a bit of a relief and even sorta guilt or survivorship shame or guilt in the sense that I realized my stutter wasn't as bad as some others. I was thankful that I was getting early intervention. I saw how Dr. Kroll facilitated and created a really safe space for experimentation, for failure, for trying, for innovation.
Stephen Shedletzky: And then I began to mentor and serve others that one 25 year old guy who couldn't land a job even though he was well educated, it was a bit of a big brother, little brother relationship, and we would sort of trade crib notes on some things that we would both try to better manage our stutter. And it was a really special relationship. I don't remember his name. If you put in front of me in a lineup, I probably wouldn't be able to to pick him. It was, you know, that was a a really big thing.
The last thing I'll share is, so a year later, the next summer I resumed my regularly scheduled programming, if you will, and didn't go back to this stutter camp. Not that I was healed, but I had some strategies to work with as well as I had more confidence and I had an opportunity to take part in a summer camps theatrical production.
It was kind of like Saturday Night Live. There were skits and improv. It was a lot of fun. And so I had a fairly big role in this production. So much so that the staff picked me and I believe two or three other campers and performers to go down to the dining hall where the entire camp, all campers and staff, about 450 people were eating dinner.
And we created this little skit and commercial to invite them up to this mandatory evening program to watch our performance. And we made this little ditty, this little skit on the lawn outside of the dining hall. And my character had a complicated last name and I couldn't pronounce my character's last name in this skit. And the other campers and the staff member who brought us down were like, they called me “Shed” back then, they still do today.
And I was like, Shed like, what's getting into you? And I was nervous and I was stuttering. I couldn't say a complicated word. Time ran out. We had to go and do this skit and my worst nightmare happened.
I stuttered in front of 450 people, like I failed abysmally. And the thing with the stutter is kind of like a finger trap that the harder you try to force a word out, the harder it is to do it. And so I tried, I tried, I tried, I finally pushed out this word, this last name, and it was as if either nobody noticed or nobody cared.
And so it was the best thing because I took a modest reasonable test and my worst fear ever happened. And I didn't die right? I didn't die, you know, I was totally relieved after that little skit. We went up and performed that night and I performed without a hitch and had a blast and it was fantastic.
And I remember that feeling of elation and joy after the fact. It was just an amazing moment of the awful thing happening and didn't matter. So those are sort of a few pivotal moments and from then on I kind of didn't look back and I still do stutter. I still stammer over some words, but it is what it is and I embrace it.
Stephen Matini: You know, I am completely ignorant about stuttering.
Stephen Shedletzky: So this is my understanding of it. So we don't completely know there is a hereditary link, more males stutter than females typically. So I'm very proud of my heritage and I come from a long line of stutterers. My dad overcame a stutter when he was a kid, my uncle, my grandfather. I'm sure if we keep going back, you know, there is a hereditary component.
You can treat it, you can work with it. There are strategies that you can employ to make it better. Also, we know that a stutter does get worse the longer you leave it untreated. And if a child becomes aware that they have a stutter, it can impact their confidence even more. So that's what we know about it.
Stephen Matini: For me it shows up mostly when singing. I don't know what the heck it is. Your voice going out is something that I love. I love singing, I love sharing, but it also evokes this tremendous amount of fears. This story that you're telling me, have all these experiences, have somehow made their way into your book?
Stephen Shedletzky: Yes. So first, a couple things just to double click on. One, one of the hacks to beat a stutter is to sing. So one of the therapies is you sing because when you do sing miraculously, the stutter just disappears and you can actually treat the way that you speak as if you're singing. Cuz oftentimes speaking can be very melodic.
So anyway, but one of the fun things that you can do is to sing, to be the stutter. But I think Stephen, you're also speaking of the vulnerability of sharing one's self, the vulnerability of sharing your gift, or your art, or your emotions, or your feeling.
It's also the vulnerability of leadership to step up and stand for something. This definitely has come into my book, it's one of the inspirations of my book, which is, you know, I've called this book SpeakUp Culture and the two sort of main inspirations are one, growing up with a stutter.
Stephen Shedletzky: I know what it feels like to be voiceless and as well being in relationships, whether it's in work or outside of work, where there is a speak up culture and how marvelous it is and how great it is for relationships and results, as well as being in cultures where there isn't a speak up culture and how stifling it is both to health and results.
And the other thing that I think really from this conversation is infused and highlighted in the book as well, is that I am not a fan of the term fearless leader because it doesn't exist. Everyone has fear. Fear is normal, fear is biological. Fear is actually designed to keep us safe. Fear is a risk modulator. When we feel fear, it's our body saying, look out, something's going on. Whether real or perceived. Rich Diviney, who's a retired US Navy Seal wrote this book, “The Attributes,” which is a brilliant book.
Rich taught me that if you come across a fearless leader, that's the one who's gonna get you killed. So I harp against this term fearless leader. And for me it's all around how do you feel the fear? Use the fear as data and then choose how to progress, which could be lean in and keep going. It could be get out of there, it's you know, fight, flight, freeze.
But for you, when you feel that fear and you're like, no, breathe into it, I want to communicate, I want a voice, I want to sing, it's worth it. It's worth that connection. It's worth that it expression. We find something either internal or external to us that is worth that risk of fear, worth that risk of vulnerability.
Stephen Matini: Vulnerability is such an important word and somehow it's not that popular in the business world. With leaders oftentimes there's this misconception that you got to be fearless, you have to be perfect, you have to be, you know, sturdy or whatever, whatever.
So in your book, you could have taken so many directions, when leaders truly listen, people step up. But then the critical point is once my voice is out, is the leader going to listen to it? And that very often, you know, is a problem. So of all possible directions that you could take with your book, why this one?
Stephen Shedletzky: So I've been on the speaking circuit for many years working with Simon Sinek and sharing his work, start with why, infinite game, leaders eat last. And so I have been asked many times over the 15 or so years that I've been speaking, when are you gonna write your book? Because I guess keynote speakers write books. And my response was always if and when I ever come across something worth writing about.
I never wanted to write something for the purpose of being a keynote speaker. We've all, you know, seen those books that are written not cuz it's a message that really needs to be shared. It's just something to stay relevant or sell at the back of the room. And I never wanted to do one of those or do that.
So at the beginning of 2021, I decided to say yes more. I just made, you know, based on just some things that were happening in my career and my life, I just said, you know what I'm gonna say yes to more opportunities that come my way and just see what happens.
And so one such opportunity, a guy by the name of Barry Engelhardt who's become a friend, he's at a St. Louis and he's involved with the Local Society of Human Resources Management chapter there, SHRM. And he reached out to me, it must have been spring of 2021, saying, Hey, we're doing a virtual conference in the fall, do you wanna speak?
And I said, yeah, well I'll do my content even though I didn't really have content. And so that summer, so a few months later I got an email from the organizing committee saying, we're so excited for your talk. You know, please click on this link and fill out your talk title and description. And I went, oh snap. And so I remember sitting on the couch, this would've been just about two years ago, being like, what can I do and what can I talk about?
And I had already become fascinated in past years and really leaning into psychological safety. I'd listened to one of Adam Grant's podcasts on Speak Up Culture, and I'm like, I think there's something here. And sort of my introduction or my access point to the topic was the Boeing 737 Max tragedy, which is one of many, I mean we saw it again with the Titan submersible most recently time and time and time again, so many of these disasters or tragedies could have been avoided with healthier internal cultures.
Ones that actually encouraged and rewarded, made it safe and worth it for people to share their ideas, their concerns, their disagreements, and even their mistakes. And both in these two instances of the 737 Max, with Ed Pearson being the most vocal person who spoke up and eventually became a whistleblower at US Congress and in the Titan submersible, both of those whistleblowers are people who spoke up were punished and fired.
Or in the case of Pearson, he retired early cuz it was just too hard to keep going in that culture. And so that was sort of my, my access point. And the more I learned about it, the more I began to form a point of view on it.
So when I first started writing, I fully thought that I was rebranding psychological safety. For me, I'm a huge fan of Amy Edmondson and her work. I'm a huge fan of employee voice of psychological safety. For me, some of the terms were a little bit too academic and I felt as though they were putting sort of a white lab coat on a very human experience and emotion.
And so I leaned into good old Zig Ziglar's quote of, people don't buy drills that buy holes. And so I'm like, if psychological safety is the drill, a SpeakUp culture is the whole, so let's talk about what you get as a result.
Now, as I dug in and begin forming my own point of view on it and researched more and leaned into an amazing team who helped me with that, we realized that psychological safety is one piece of a SpeakUp culture.
It's not just psychological safety, it's also a perception of impact that before we speak up, we consciously or subconsciously ask two questions. Is it safe to speak up then? Is it worth it? And what's really interesting is if you have psychological safety, but it isn't worth it, like you might speak up, but that's like telling a friend who is an alcoholic, you know, you should really stop drinking. It's like, yeah, of course you might feel safe, but do you feel like it's gonna lead to any meaningful change? So there's this interesting dynamic of, obviously we want it to be both a perception of safety and a perception of impact, that it's worth it, right?
We don't want it to be that bottom left corner of the quadrant where it isn't safe and it isn't worth it. That's an unhappy marriage of both fear and apathy. I've been there, it's debilitating and it's no fun. I've seen others there, right?
That high safety, low impact is really interesting. It might speak up, but it's not gonna lead to any meaningful change either because a habit that's too hard to change bureaucracy or a systemic issue.
But the really interesting one to me is low safety, but high impact. It's really hard for me to speak up, if I speak up, it's at personal risk to my job, my reputation and my relationships. But I feel connected to stakes that are too important for me to remain silent. And that's when you get courageous leadership.
And so I learned that it isn't only about psychological safety that leads to a speak up culture. It's also about a perception of impact. And sometimes if you have a perception of impact that it's worth it to speak up, you feel that it will lead to some positive change or result. You're willing to take the risk even if it isn't safe to do so. And that to me is really fascinating and interesting. I highlight a few of these people, ed Pearson, Kimberly Young-McLear, who's a retired US Coast Guard, both of whom spoke up as courageous leaders to their own personal risk.
Stephen Matini: Like a lot of people, I had to learn to speak up a little bit more, you know, to be more assertive, to say what I had to say. For many, many years I practiced what I thought was speaking up, like being assertive, telling you no, not to this, not to that.
But only recently I'm learning what we talked about before. It's not just saying no, but also you have to make yourself vulnerable and to tell the other person what is that you want. At least let's have a, a discussion about something else.
So it's not to that, but for this to this and that, yes, I'm completely open and it's just weird combination of being, you know, sturdy to say no, but also to be vulnerable, to say, hey, but maybe we can go that way. Maybe we can create something more beautiful and more representative of both of us.
Stephen Shedletzky: It's both though a willingness to be open to the fact that you are worth it and that it matters to you. It's also connecting to the stakes of it will lead to more fulfillment, healthier, better relationships.
So there's a fun example I use in the book. So the strength of a culture is determined by the clarity of its values and then the degree to which those values are behaved. We have a little bit of a culture and maybe more than a little bit, we have an organizational culture in this home.
My wife and I are the partners. We have two subordinates, our children who are seven and four, and we have a few values that are really fundamental that make the relationship between my wife and I strong. Perfect? No, strong. And my wife and I, I described in our wedding speech that we're different where it compliments and similar, where it counts, right?
We have shared common values and beliefs, but we're different people with different strengths and perspectives. But the things that we agree upon are we are helper people, we can always help others and we can always find other helper people.
The second value and cultural pillar is we treat other people as the human beings that they are. Even if we don't like them, we still treat people with respect. That's a second one. And we're willing to prove to our kids we do that, we have to model that behavior ourselves as well.
And then third is we are allowed to talk about our emotions, especially the hardest ones. Those are our three values. Now, if I invited a guest into our home, regardless of if those values are posted on the wall or not, which they aren't, but I've put in the book. So now they're at least written somewhere.
And that guest, let's say they're a prospective client, and if that dinner goes well, I will have a new contract, more food on the table. Hooray, right?
If that guest comes into the home and disrespects treats my children and my wife as lesser than, I have a choice, do I have a meaningful and hard intervention with that guest, even though they're a prospective client in the moment or thereafter? And essentially say that behavior isn't tolerated. And if we're gonna do this, I need to see a shift in behavior.
Which by the way, if I let them walk all over my children and my wife, what does that say about these cultural values that I've put out? I'll only live them when they're convenient to me, regardless of if they're convenient to you or not. I'm putting profit ahead of my values and my people and my purpose, right?
But if I take the risk to speak up because something matters, like the health of our relationships matter, I'm proving to my subordinates and to my partner that these values aren't just nice to have as they're imperative and I'm willing to have them cost me money or cost me something valuable to have a sacrifice with them.
And then that prospective client will either walk out and we have more leftovers and they're like, you know what? You're totally right. And display some humility and they're a fit.
And so I think you know, what you're pointing to is when we display the courage to actually set boundaries, share what matters to us, try to invest in relationships, right? The definition of a toxic relationship is the more you invest in it, the worse it gets. And the only person responsible for that negative outcome is you. That's a toxic relationship.
A healthy thriving relationship is one in which both parties take responsibility for the health and maintenance of that relationship. And the more you lean in and the more you share hardships or opportunities, the more that relationship improves, which means it could evolve and change, you know what, we should shift or end this relationship or this job isn't the right job for you. Those are all can be healthy, progressive outcomes. So just a few things that come to mind there that is it worth it? And do you have enough value in yourself and value in the relationship to actually go there?
Stephen Matini: Based on where you are now in your own personal journey, what is still difficult for you in relationships?
Stephen Shedletzky: Oh my God. I mean, speaking up is never easy. It's funny, I dedicated the book to my wife and at first the dedication was to Julie who makes it easy to speak up. And then I went, no. And I changed it to, for Julie, who makes it safe and worth it to speak up because it is never easy, you know?
And to walk around in this human experience thinking that you never have to have difficult or hard conversations or conversations that take courage would be foolish. And so speaking up is not about fearlessness, it's about us creating less fear in our relationships. So, you know, I'm definitely, definitely imperfect <laugh>, you know, I definitely have a gap between what I say and what I do.
I just had one yesterday, I let a partner down, I told them that I was gonna do some research and do some work on some things and have it ready for our next meeting.
And I totally didn't do it. And she said, Hey, have you done that? And I'm like, nope. And that is on me, I'm sorry. And they were like, all good, let's do it now. And we did it in the moment and now I have work assigned for me to do for our next meeting, and you sure as hell, I'm gonna do that work.
And so if I was holier than now and didn't apologize and made it their problem, what does that do? I apologized twice. I apologized in the moment and by the end of the call I said, you know what, like again, I'm really sorry I gave you my word that I would do something and I didn't do it. That's on me and I'm gonna be better.
And now I have a choice of do I actually close that say do gap and do the work that I said I'm gonna do next time. So, you know, being human is not about being perfect, which is a faux-topia and boring. Being human is about embracing our imperfections and working to improve all the time.
Stephen Matini: When I did the episode with Leanne, we were talking about something similar and essentially she said, you know, this whole relationship, this whole conflict, it's a messy business and it's supposed to be messy and you're supposed to screw up, you know, meaning it's not about perfection.
Stephen Shedletzky: And the dynamic changes, you know? So my wife and I will have, you know, a hard conversation around how to better parent our kids. And then our kids aren't static <laugh>, they grow, they evolve, they change the world around us changes. So it takes constant maintenance, it's dynamic as well.
Stephen Matini: When your book is gonna come out. So let's say I buy your book, I read it. Ideally, what would you like for people to feel once they close the book?
Stephen Shedletzky: So for me, I wrote the book specifically for leaders, not necessarily by title, but by behavior. So the book is written for either a very senior leader who has the title and who has the authority, and quite frankly, the expectation to behave as leaders for leaders in the middle, and I often think we bash quote unquote managers, but managers are essential and we need them.
There's a lot of sort of conversation in the zeitgeist of like management bad, leadership good. And it's like, no, no, no, we need leaders to behave as leaders and we need managers to behave as leaders. And managers are essential. They're the only layer in an organization that has multi-directional influence. They can influence up to peer side to side and to subordinates down. And so it's also for managers who have either had great, or let's be honest, probably mostly awful experiences with leaders and who want to lead better.
And then it's also for people who may not have a role or title of leadership in the moment, they're committed to the practice of learning how to behave as a leader. And I want this book to help when people close the book, I also want them to know the truth and the fact that how they show up and how they behave has influence on others. That a SpeakUp culture isn't relevant only for lines of work where it's a life or death line of business, like aerospace, healthcare, military law enforcement, or making submarines, that if you are in a role of leadership, we know this from UKG and the National Institute of Health, that our relationship with our direct supervisor has more of an impact on our health than that of our relationship with our family doctor or our therapist if we have one. And it's at par with our relationship with our life partner.
For any leader who's like, yeah, but like I don't work in a life or death line of work you do because you have either a life feeding or a life depleting impact on the people around you. And so none of us are allowed to say, I'm a great leader. Like if I say to you, Stephen, I'm a really great leader, I invite you to run away from me. No one can claim themselves to be a great listener, a great leader, a great teammate that is bestowed upon by the group.
If others describe you as a great leader or a great listener or whatever it might be, it's because of how your behavior makes them feel. And so I want leaders by title and behavior that when they close the book at the end for them to realize, huh, how I show up, what I say, what I do really matters and I'm gonna work to be better. That's really it. And when you work to be better, the people around you are healthier and are more likely to thrive. And so are your results.
Stephen Matini: Based on anything you said, I would not be surprised if your book somehow found its way with the niche, a target that you haven't even thought about. You wrote it for very specific people, but what you're talking about, you're talking about voice really, you know, and all the beautiful things we covered. So that's something that I guess all of us can relate to it for sure. We talked about a bunch of stuff, for people who are going to listen to us, what would you like for them to take away? Is anything that is dear to you that you would like for them to pay attention to?
Stephen Shedletzky: I really just admire and love the vulnerability in this conversation. You know, we showed up, there was a tech issue to start, you know, there's nervousness. It's like, it's all good. Like, I didn't care. We're here, we're here to do the thing. You know, Leanne, my dear friend, spoke so highly of you and said that, you know, you do great research and prepare great questions. So, we had a chance to meet and do a pre-meeting where we couldn't help but fill a complete 30 minutes and it's like, we should have recorded this conversation. This was, you know, and so for me, I just, I love it when people show up as they are and own it and show up with vulnerability because vulnerability is positively contagious. Vulnerability to me is, is showing up, wearing both our strengths and our weaknesses on our sleeves. And vulnerability is essential for teamwork.
For you and I, we're a team, we're trying to create what we hope will be a valuable conversation for others. This is team. It's a group of two or more people working toward a common goal or objective, goal or objective, a conversation that adds value to others. For us to be most effective, we need to be aware of what are each other's strengths, what are each other's weaknesses, because we know who should step up and who should step back in certain moments.
So yeah, I hope listeners will realize that vulnerability is actually a source of power if used appropriately. And vulnerability doesn't mean sharing all the things all the time to all people that could be oversharing or not suitable for work. Vulnerability is about context.
Stephen Matini: Shed thank you so much for doing this with me. I, I've learned a lot and I feel that it was the best time for my Friday. Thank you, thank you, thank you
Stephen Shedletzky: <Laugh>, my total pleasure such a joy and I look forward to this coming out and serving and helping your audience and look forward to sharing it with mine as well.
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Entrepreneurship: Ideas Bigger Than Fear - Featuring Mona Makkawi
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Monday Oct 09, 2023
The fight for gender equality still has a long way to go, with half of the world’s population facing cultural biases sedimenting over centuries.
Our guest for this episode is Mona Makkawi, founder of Konsult, a consulting, advisory, training, and coaching firm based in Beirut, Lebanon.
Mona highlights the importance of entrepreneurial ideas greater than fear and limiting beliefs. With a persistent, stubborn, and culturally aware attitude, Mona has successfully positioned herself as a kind and strategic voice in a male-dominated consulting world.
Mona Makkawi is a three-month Barkat Entrepreneur program graduate, an application-based 100% scholarship offering for Middle Eastern and African female entrepreneurs, and part of The Goddess Solution by Puneet Sachdev.
Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams despite limiting beliefs and societal expectations.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: So I'm very happy to be here with a female leader from Lebanon.
Mona Makkawi: It's my pleasure.
Stephen Matini: Mona. For the listeners, for people that do not know you, so would you mind telling me a little bit about your background, where you grew up?
Mona Makkawi: I grew up in Beirut, and I grew up during the Civil War. My parents used to move us a lot from either within Beirut or to the mountains where it's safer. This is why I had to change a lot of schools. This is why I became so good with people because I, every time I needed to meet new people and get to know them. And the downside was that I didn't hold onto my friendships a lot. But the good side was the diversity gave me this skill that I used later in my career.
Stephen Matini: To connect with people.
Mona Makkawi: Yes.
Stephen Matini: When you were young, is this the future that you envisioned for yourself? Were you thinking something else for yourself?
Mona Makkawi: I've always thought that I would be a doctor, a surgeon, but I wasn't interested in science when I, when I grew up. So I shifted. I've never imagined that I will have a, an office job, but I knew I would do something to be of service for people.
Stephen Matini: Were there any people or events in the past that made you understand it, that you wanted your life to be of service to people?
Mona Makkawi: I'm the eldest among my siblings. And you know when I was little, my mom always told me to take care of my brothers and sister. I think I used to do it well. I used to like it. So maybe this was and for what I will become later, because later I was involved in HR throughout my career for almost 20 years. So it was rooted somewhere in my past.
Stephen Matini: Were you aware about any gender discrepancies? I mean, in being a woman versus being an a men professional? Did you understand, did you sense any difference?
Mona Makkawi: To be very honest, I've never tasted it. And in my house we've been raised very equal because my mom or my dad never asked us to do anything for our brothers, such as prepare food or do anything. No, it's, it was, you do it yourself. So I grew up never having to deal with this kind of differentiation. And even when I joined the workforce or the workplace, I never felt that because I'm a woman, I've been treated or, or getting paid less. It never happened to me.
Stephen Matini: Would you say this is something that is the result of the way your family brought you up or is something that women in your country experience?
Mona Makkawi: Specifically in my house, because my dad and mom, they believe in equality. But to be fair to my country, we have our labor law that indicates that the women should be paid not less than a man. I mean, there might be certain practices here and there, but the common knowledge is you get what you deserve.
Stephen Matini: In Italy. In terms of laws, in terms of gender, yes, the law protects both genders the same. However, I would define this culture to be very masculine, in many different ways. There is space for both men and women, but still, you know, in the corporate world, somehow female professionals and then female leaders seem to have to put three times the effort of the male counterparts. How was your experience working in the corporate world?
Mona Makkawi: Going back to the subject of breaking the glass ceiling, because I hear it from my colleagues or from my friends, they've been facing so many struggles, especially when they, when they want to reach a higher position. But I've never faced this maybe because my choices were so defined and maybe because in my head I was strongly a believer that I deserve this much. So when I negotiated, let's say my packages or so, I always knew what I want and I always asked for it. So maybe this is something that influenced the way how people treated me at work.
Stephen Matini: Have you ever felt somehow hesitant about having your voice heard? And the reason I'm asking this question is because oftentimes I see people feeling a bit fearful. You know, what is it gonna happen to me if I say exactly what you think? I don't know. Have you ever felt hesitant?
Mona Makkawi: Actually, no, because I always go prepared and I always say what I want when I see an opportunity to help someone or an opportunity to, to develop people around me. So I never had this hesitation or fear towards my managers. I always prepared myself, and I always was so structured about how I ask for what I want.
Stephen Matini: How do you prepare yourself? Is there anything specific that you do to make sure that you enter the conversation structured and prepared?
Mona Makkawi: I'm a big planner. I mean, I plan conversations in my head even. So I prepare myself for all scenarios. And I start to imagine if they say this thing, I would answer it this way. If they reject in a way, I will have another argument. So I always prepare my, in my brain, all the scenarios.
Stephen Matini: This is huge deal for a lot of people because what I see with my job, I see a lot of people, as I mentioned, they're really afraid of saying what they think. They always are fearful about the potential consequences. And it's a such a tricky thing to live, because if you don't say anything, you're going to end up feeling that you are in some sort of a jail. You know, you feel like a pressure cooker, and if you say something, the question is what is it gonna happen? How am I going to be perceived?
But as a colleague pointed out, actually, this is someone that I interviewed for this podcast. Her name is Linda Hoopes, and Linda focuses on resilience. She made a comment that I love that she says, you always say no to something even when you don't say anything, even when you don't make your voice heard, you always make a choice. And when you don't say anything, you say no to all those opportunities that could have happened if you had said something.
Mona Makkawi: Sometimes our fear of being judged is what stands in the way of us asking or saying what we want to say. Yeah, I guess I trained myself not to listen to this part of the brain that's telling me you are being judged.
Stephen Matini: How did you decide to start your own business? You were in corporate and then at some point you decided to start your business. How that happened?
Mona Makkawi: The idea started in 2008. I was in a job that I hated. I was so frustrated all the time. I had a very tough manager back then I decided I should pursue a higher degree in HR to develop you know, my knowledge, my skills and all that. And I joined a program to study HR at the university. The moment I started this course, I felt that my life is changing and I have to do something about it. I've met a group of amazing people, trainers and HR people, and even my teacher who was a doctor in HR, I said to myself, I need to benefit from this God sent gift. And I started to structure my, my first business, which was Management Solutions Lebanon, an HR consultancy to provide solutions for small to medium side businesses in all HR related topics.
Mona Makkawi: And because I needed help, so I asked my colleagues and my teacher if they could help me in this endeavor. Of course, they were very, very kind. And it started just like that. I remember my first project came from someone who doesn't know me. We were in a friends dinner. He heard me talking about it, and he had a friend who needed this service, and, it happened. So it was amazing how it started.
Back in 2009, I had my own business for like couple of years. And then I went back to the corporate because I had been head hunted by, by a Canadian company to handle the Middle East, and everything related to people development. And I thought it was big opportunity for me to learn and develop my skills even further. And it took me like 12 years to, to get back to reopen my own business again. But this time I developed the concept. I recreated the name. I mean, it's now it's consult and we work on developing people through consulting, coaching, and training.
Stephen Matini: Desire, your energy, the second time that you decided to start your business was different compared to the first time?
Mona Makkawi: I've never felt that I'm the perfect employee throughout my whole career, although I've been really enjoying my time and working from all of my heart. But I always had this idea of doing things my way, you know, working for someone else. It's very different from having your own practice, and I'm sure you know that.
Stephen Matini: Yes, I do. <Laugh> If someone had the desire to start a home business or his own business and whoever the person is, what is a practical advice you would give to them?
Mona Makkawi: Being very persistent and being very stubborn about not quitting, not stubborn about the process because sometimes we have to change course, we have to adjust, we have to be agile. Being persistent and not taking no for an answer. And challenging the economy and the financial situation of the country and everything. So the idea needs to be bigger than the fear.
Stephen Matini: That should be written as a tagline. When you and I met, you said that as a female entrepreneur, you have to work as super, super extra hard in a field that is more male dominated. Can you tell me something about what that is?
Mona Makkawi: It's known in Lebanon or in the region that consulting is a male dominated profession. You can work in a consulting company, but it's hard to own a consulting company and getting big projects. I had to really prove myself in this area. And because, you know, sometimes you work with the Gulf and they are more comfortable working with a man than dealing with the women they used to be. I mean, now they are getting really much better on this area, and I can acknowledge this very well. I had to work very hard and be very attentive to details. And because, you know, any mistake would have cost me a lot. And you know, building a reputation in this field, it takes time. I mean, it's hard.
Prepare yourself and lobbying and having lots of friends and in order for you to be known and to get projects, and I had to join, you know, all the organizations that foster and empower women led businesses here just for me to be known and to be heard.
Stephen Matini: You know, there's a lot of talk in general about differences between gender, you know, if a female leader is different compared to the male leader. Being a woman, does it give you any advantage compared to your male counterparts?
Mona Makkawi: To be very honest and objective, I had bad female managers and bad male managers. So, you know, I used to work in recruitment for the companies I never recruited or never have been biased for gender towards another gender. I mean, what everyone needs in the, in the workplace is someone to do the job and to be good at it and to excel in it and to differentiate themselves in a way. I don't think gender when I work. So I'm really neutral about it and people can feel that. I am a human being who's equipped in this area and who's very knowledgeable in certain area and who can help. This is how I think of myself as a contributor to any solution I give to my clients.
Stephen Matini: Based on what you say, it seems that when we are faced with any sort of potential discrimination, which could happen for a bunch of reasons, including gender, it seems that maybe the biggest step is work that we need to do within ourselves.
Mona Makkawi: It's a matter of culture, because I would not be a hundred percent correct if I said we have to work on ourselves and everything will be okay and all the doors will open. I mean, it's a matter of culture as well. I mean, there are certain cultures in the region that still think less of a women. I mean, even worldwide, the glass ceiling is not broken yet and women still face the same discrimination that they've been facing ages ago. I mean, I've been working with family businesses a lot during my career and I know that they favor their sons more than their daughters in the workplace. So how I react to it is that I don't consider it, but how the society and the environment reflects it on me. This is their issue. I do what's mine in this area, or I change what I have the ability to change.
Stephen Matini: Have you noticed any differences throughout your career when you coach one or the other gender? You know, when you help a female executive compared to a male executive?
Mona Makkawi: Sometimes women know what they want more than men, maybe because they have fewer options, so they know what they want and they work harder to get it.
Stephen Matini: And what about male leaders? Because last time when you and I talked, you talked about that throughout your work, you got to understand some of the distinctive traits about coaching and, and consulting and training male leaders, you know, in South Arabia. What are some of the features that you noticed?
Mona Makkawi: Perceptions are changing, especially now I'm working on a project with young Saudi leaders and you can see that they have totally different views about everything. They are more diverse, more inclined to the concept of diversity and inclusion. They are more welcoming to the idea of having women working with them. They started to even include women in decision making. Some of them, they have no problem being led by a woman, which was surprising for me because being led by a woman creates ego battle <laugh> inside the head of some man, yeah, you know?
Stephen Matini: To your daughter, based on anything and everything that you have learned as a woman and as a leader, what are some of the biggest lessons that you pass to her?
Mona Makkawi: She's even stronger. Her character have been developed in the past couple of years, very surprisingly. I always tell her to be kind to herself first and to others. We, we've never been taught to be kind to ourselves. We've always been taught to be strong, to be competitive. Maybe they taught us to have this, the traits of men in order for us to survive. And this is very tiring for a woman because it conflicts with our divine feminine nature. I always tell her to be kind to herself, to love herself, to appreciate that she's a woman and she's different and she'll always be different. And this is ok.
Stephen Matini: I could not agree more. Kindness is such a, an underestimated quality because maybe in, in the eyes of some people could be seen as naïveté. To be kind to ourselves and to be kind to others requires a lot of strength. You know, a lot of strength when things get difficult, you know, really, really difficult for whatever the reason. How do you stay kind to yourself and others?
Mona Makkawi: Things that I do that help me stay grounded are, you know, meditation and I pray and I always try to not to lose it. <Laugh> meditation helps a lot. It makes you detaching from whatever's happened. And I journal also, ao whatever is bothering me, I I learn to write it down, process it and letting it go.
Stephen Matini: And what's gonna be next for Mona?
Mona Makkawi: I'm also a dreamer. I have lots of dreams and lots of aspirations. So I hope that I can help as much people as I can. Well, you know, whatever I'm doing, either through coaching or training or you know, or even companies as, as a consultant, I really want to deliver value to people because this is what impacts people's lives.
Stephen Matini: For those who are going to listen to this episode, for people that somehow feel that they may not have a voice or they will like to have a voice or maybe they would like to start their own business, what would it be a first step in your opinion, based on your experience, to move forward?
Mona Makkawi: First to know what you want and to really do the research. Cuz sometimes we have crazy ideas and we start to go after them, and then we do not do our homework really well and we fall short. So you have to be prepared in terms of knowing everything, seeing, trying to see the full picture, being prepared will help you not to overcome all the obstacles, but you will be prepared.
I mean, you will, you will anticipate what's coming and maybe you change course or do something else. So knowing what you want and being very consistent and persistent, you know, and this is what makes any difference in whatever you do.
People told me that I will never make it. People told me that I will never be a good trainer. People told me that I will never deliver anything and if I were to listen to all the voices that were saying anything negative to me, I wouldn't have done anything in my life. Always listen to your gut. Your gut is very supportive to you and it guides you. Listen to your intuition. Try to shut the noise because you know, sometimes we are very concerned about the noise and we tend to forget our voice. So this is very important. And always be true to yourself. Whatever you want to do. Be true to yourself. Know your weaknesses and work on your strength.
Stephen Matini: Mona, have you ever doubted your instinct? Because that's something that me personally, I did it for the longest part of my life. Have you ever trusted your instinct?
Mona Makkawi: I've always trusted my instinct because I'm a very intuitive person, but sometimes I used to fear a lot and I don't know from where this fear is coming until I learned about limiting beliefs. So I started to identify if this is the limiting belief that is giving me this fear and is stopping me, or is it something else? And this made all the difference.
Stephen Matini: What do you do to identify your limiting beliefs and understand that it is a limiting belief and not just the truth?
Mona Makkawi: I start to ask myself from where this coming? Is there anything that supports this idea or thought that I'm having? If things were different, what would be my reaction or my response to it? All these questions, you know, will help you dig more or more information in your head and inside of you. And nobody knows you the way you know yourself, and all the answers are inside of us. We just have to ask the question and they told us something in the coaching school that is, you don't know what you know until you say it.
Stephen Matini: I believe that we all have a different interpretation of reality. You know, we all have a different understanding of what reality is and what is good for us. I tend to agree with you that probably the person that can know us the best is ourselves. You know, nobody else will ever experience ourselves the way we do, at least for people like me. That took a long time to gain self-confidence. Sometimes as I, you know, pointed out, it's difficult to have the trust, you know, to listen to that intuition. So if someone is not particularly intuitive or maybe doesn't have the much self-confidence, what would it be? A first step to feel more in touch with yourself? What would you suggest to do?
Mona Makkawi: Of course, to see a coach, A coach can help you a lot. Certainly for people who are not into it or who don't know how to structure their thinking in a way, or if they have, let's say, limiting belief or obstacles or if they are facing anything. I mean, coaching is an amazing tool to make this shift inside of your head. You know, everyone has capabilities and areas inside of them that they just need to tap on them in order to discover them.
Stephen Matini: In my coaching career, I had different people that have been super, super important in helping me out. Mona, we talked about different things. From your perspective, what would you say that is something really important that would you suggest to our listeners to pay attention to?
Mona Makkawi: The voices inside their heads and the intuition, of course, the patterns in our lives are very important, but we tend to forget about them.
Stephen Matini: Do you think, is it possible for anyone to become more aware of those voices and in making some shifts? Because some people seem to be really resistant to it.
Mona Makkawi: Yes, because even if it is tough on others, it's, it's our comfort zone and people are resistant to leave their comfort zone. I mean, through coaching, I believe that any shift can happen because through the questions that the the coach ask, they can tap into areas in your inside of any person that the person doesn't know exists, not having the willingness to change it's rooted somewhere else in their subconscious mind. It's their defense mechanism towards something. Maybe this is how they've been raised. So they developed this throughout many incidents and this is where the coach interferes and trying help the clients to decode what's happening inside of them.
Stephen Matini: I don't know if I should call it competency or simply quality, but I'm talking about courage. If someone is not particularly courageous, as some people seem to hesitate, you know, to leave the comfort zone. What can they do to take a first step to feel a little bit braver?
Mona Makkawi: I believe they need to redefine courage inside of them because sometimes we have different definitions for, for things because what courage mean to you, it's different than what it means to me and or what it means to somebody else. So I believe that maybe defining or tapping into this definition will help the person understand it more and maybe either embrace it or overcome it.
Stephen Matini: I love that because the notion of courage is often associated with, you know, being fierce. You just keep moving, you move forward. But it's not necessarily what a courageous act is.
Mona Makkawi: Exactly, because you can be courage, but when you will not throw yourself to lions, this will not be courage. This would be something else. You know. Even in the corporate world, I mean, being courage, it doesn't mean that you have to face the CEO or saying something against someone, you know, this is not smart. Being courageous is something that will help you maybe maneuver.
Stephen Matini: I believe exactly what you said before, it is a mix about assessing the situation, be well-prepared about the dynamics, and at the same time to have a, a good understanding of yourself. A big chunk of me, me personally, becoming more courageous involved, to give myself permission to feel all that I felt, to experience all my contradictions and to be okay with different parts of myself that somehow I was running away from, you know, to understand that there's this space and time for, for everything, even to feel fearful and somehow being more okay with all those parts of myself have made me braver. Also, it gave me the ability to understand the situation better and to understand people a little bit better.
Mona Makkawi: And here is not necessarily a very bad thing. It makes you prepare more, it makes you more vigilant and more, you know, aware of whatever you might face.
Stephen Matini: Mona, you have seen a lot of things in your life. You know, you were telling me about your upbringing and what it means to be a woman and to continue to believe in yourself and building what was important to you. As of today, what is the one thing that it makes you feel fearful?
Mona Makkawi: The unknown. The fast pace that the world is shifting into, because everything is moving very fast and, and this is maybe something that sometimes I feel uncertain about what's next? Maybe because of that.
Stephen Matini: When I met you said I think the whole point is to leave this place better. The way that, that we found it. Actually very often when I feel uncertain, what gives me courage and gives me hope is just my contribution. You know, I focus on what I can do today and then what value I can bring today. And of course, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or what can possibly happen five years from now. You know, I simply tend to focus on how I can contribute and somehow that gives me a lot of peace.
Mona Makkawi: Yes, living the moment, I mean, this is very important. Yes. When you live in the moment, you don't pre occupy your mind with the future, which not happened yet, or the past, which you cannot change. Being present and being in the moment, this is what we have to focus on.
Stephen Matini: Do you think that your daughter is going to pursue your same career or something else?
Mona Makkawi: I don't know. She's very influenced by me, <laugh>. I mean, she's studying business now in the university. I would love for her to pick whatever she likes, you know, it doesn't necessarily that she follows my steps. Of course, she will be welcome to to join <laugh> if she wants to, to do anything else, I would support her. Of course, she has this ability to coach people even though she doesn't, she doesn't do anything about coaching.
Stephen Matini: Mona, you joined the BARKAT Entrepreneur program created by Puneet Sadchev, who had the pleasure of interviewing for the podcast. The barca program is a social initiative to support female entrepreneurs in Africa and in the Middle East. What motivated you to apply for the BARKAT program?
Mona Makkawi: Actually, it was through an organization, it's called L L W B, Lebanese Meet for Women in Business. So it was through them. They send usually their members any opportunities for either development, training gatherings and so on. I read about the Bar project and I found it very interesting because first it wasn't local, and second, it was, it was the first time for me to, to be coached on the business level. The concept is to connect women leaders, I mean women business owners, SMEs, owners in Lebanon together. So it was for me, great opportunity on all levels.
Stephen Matini: How has participating in the BARKAT program influenced your personal growth and leadership skills as a female entrepreneur? What's been the biggest takeaway for you?
Mona Makkawi: The group coaching is something really different and it's beneficial on all levels because you, you are not only working on your issue that you have in mind, but you also can listen and learn from the group. It's a learning experience for for anybody that's listening and the work that we, that we do outside of the coaching sessions is, is what matters and what's making the, the, the biggest difference. Because we have assignments to do and we have to support each other, creating, supporting groups, creating morning gratitude message that we send on Slack. So we have like certain things to do that are helping us.
Stephen Matini: Mona, thank you so much for spending time with me.
Mona Makkawi: Thank you so much, Stephen, and I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Leadership Mindset: The Stories We Tell Ourselves - Featuring Tammy Heermann
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Today, we deep dive into the topic of reframing our thoughts. In this episode, leadership expert Tammy Heermann explores the power of mindset and its influence on behaviors and outcomes.
Tammy openly discusses her path to mastering discernment and conquering perfectionism, advising that we begin by clarifying our vision and the impact we aim to make.
Women in leadership can effectively challenge biases and shift perceptions by employing strategic questioning and adjusting their communication approaches.
Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to acquire a positive, successful mindset by crafting our internal narratives.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: You are an author. When that idea came to you, how did it happen?
Tammy Heermann: It was more like when I worked in the consulting company. And so part of my job was to write and to blog and to speak. And because I had two authors that were, you know, on the team, Leanne and, and someone else, Vince, I kind of saw how it worked. And so I think the difference between, you know, fiction, I believe you need so much creativity, you do need that inspiration for business books or self-help books is more like how do I get everything out of my brain that I've learned in the last however many years in a way that is digestible, entertaining, relevant, credible, all of that. So I think it's a very different process than a fiction where, you know, you are literally inventing characters. And for me it was like, okay, you know, this'll be an important tool for my business. It's something I thought, can I do this? But I think it's a bit different than fiction.
Stephen Matini: Was it harder or easier than you anticipated?
Tammy Heermann: Oh, way harder. And I think it's not just the intellectual, like it's hard, you know, it's hard to, to actually write. It was more the emotional challenge that surprised me, the ups and downs and as you're kind of reliving all your own stories and you know, you dig deep in like, why do I think this way wasn't my childhood, what bad bosses have I had? What critical moments have I had? So it was very, very emotional. And then it happened during the pandemic. So that was a whole time in life for everyone. That was tough.
Stephen Matini: Do you feel that you have become somehow a different person, a different professional as a result of going through the process or writing your book?
Tammy Heermann: I think it just solidified for me, you know, I have some insights to share, some wisdom. I, I think it just gave me confidence that, you know, my experience is valuable.
Stephen Matini: You know, a lot of people would love to write a book. A lot of people would like to start businesses. A lot of people have all kinds of dreams, you know, in the drawer. And somehow for whatever the reason they, they stay there for the longest time. What made you finally hop and do it?
Tammy Heermann: <Laugh>. I think it was a challenge. So Leanne and my other boss, they really believed in me. So apparently I can write, well, I don't enjoy it, but you know, it was something that I was fairly good at. And she said, I'm taking one of your articles and I'm gonna give it to publisher. She was working with. She said, can I do that? I said, sure. And they gave it and they said, do you think there's something here? And they're like, absolutely. And then, then it was just up to me to say yes or no, okay, am I doing this or not? She kept saying, Tammy, you have things to share with the world. Like, like you kind of owe it to people to share it. And, and so I was like, okay, I'm doing this.
Stephen Matini: How did you come up with a title? Because the title is such an important thing.
Tammy Heermann: Yeah. And so that's where it really helped to work with an editor. And so part of my process was with the editor, my whole philosophy on learning and, and everything is about our mindset first and we have to dig into that. And so I knew it was always going to be something around mindset or reframing or rethinking or rewriting our story, whatever it is. So, you know, we had the, what the concept was, but then landing on it is just a whole lot of brainstorming, trial and error, living with it, testing it out with people saying it, here's my book I'm writing, here's what it's called. How does it feel? Do they get it? So you kind of almost do a lot of testing as well. I think in the nonfiction space, that's an important thing to do. I think in, in fiction it's probably less relevant to test it with other people.
Stephen Matini: I have the same thoughts that you have only God knows if I can write. The process is enjoyable for the vast majority. And it, and it gets really enjoyable when I stop thinking about it has to work, you know, someone has to like it, it has to be perfect because that would dampen the whole thing will really ruin the whole thing. And so I learned that this is my journey, you know, for this to be anything, it has to be something that I personally enjoy. And then we'll see.
Tammy Heermann: Yes, I'm an author but I'm not a writer. I wouldn't, I don't get up and love and write and love to write. They who are writers would say is just get it out, start writing. Don't edit yourself. Don't like just go with with the flow. That's exactly what what they say to do. And the most prolific famous authors, they have editors like that's their job. Like no one writes something perfectly and it's ready to go. You get your brain on paper and then there's other experts who help shape it. That's their job, right? That's their expertise. So you're doing exactly the right thing and just get it out.
Stephen Matini: Have you always known that at some point you would've written a book?
Tammy Heermann: No, definitely. It was never a goal of mine. You know, I grew up in a, a rural part of Canada. I wasn't that kid who said I always wanna do this or be this and I experimented with a lot of things. I wanted to do something creative, hairdressing, makeup, fashion. And then I was playing working in a bank and a teacher. And as you know a lot of kids do. Now that I reflect back is I love learning, I love new, I love change. Like literally I love throwing myself as we were talking about in the middle of a random country or area and just going, okay, let's figure this out. So I think I was kind of destined to work in terms of helping others learn and accept change and growth. And I'd say some pivotal moments. The first time I had been to Italy and it was in grade 12 and high school, my senior year of high school.
Tammy Heermann: And I remembered not just being blown away with being in Europe but with just seeing that there was this vast world, it opened my eyes cuz you know, so many people don't leave their areas <laugh> and I come from a very large family and very few people have kind of left the area and I was just in intrigued by this wide, wide world. And so that was certainly an event. And then later on in graduate school, again I returned to the UK and and did my graduate studies and I was just surrounded by people from all over the world learning. When I think about what shaped me and when I was destined, it's like how do I help other people love learning and growth and change and do that with a global lens.
Stephen Matini: When you say learning and learning, curiosity, those are words that resonate very, very strongly with me. And so I would say that's my personal mindset. And hearing you, it seems to be your case as well. You talked about before the importance of mindset. When you say mindset, do you mean a specific mindset or the mindset changes from person to person?
Tammy Heermann: So I think it changes. So, so here's how I think about it and it even goes before mindset. And this is, you know, well documented with psychologists. And so our values and our beliefs, those things that we're kind of indoctrinated with shape our mindsets kind of how we walk into situations and then it shapes the behaviors that we engage in. And then of course that reinforces the values. You know, beliefs, mindsets, there's this cycle and sometimes that cycle helps us and sometimes it doesn't. So I grew up in this family very hardworking with a, you know, the strong work ethic of a farmer and that is fantastic. Like who would say that's a bad thing? And and I remember hearing my dad say, okay, you know, if you're gonna do something, do it once and do it right. And I remember him spending hours on things and perfecting it and it sounds great, doesn't it?
Tammy Heermann: And you probably know where this is going until I get into this office environment and you're leading these huge teams and you have 80 projects happening simultaneously, <laugh>. And you can't do that. You can't have that mindset of touch, everything, make it perfect, touch it once, you know, do the the best you can on everything. You just can't. And I remember a critical moment where my boss at the time took me and he said, Tammy, he said, you can't keep going like this. You can't do everything perfect. You have to understand when good is good enough. And he said, by the way, your good is most people's excellent. So he, he taught me that I really had to learn discernment when to kind of give a hundred percent, when to give 110 and when to give 60 because it's so in that, in that moment.
Tammy Heermann: And so that gets back to, you know, my values and beliefs kind of shaped this hardworking ethic which got me very far in life. But that mindset of always doing it perfect, I had to say, okay, when does that serve me and when does it not? And how do I adjust those behaviors? So that's kind of the loop. And I think what most training and development and leadership and learning does today is we put people in a classroom and we give them these skills training and we check the box and we think it's all good. Meanwhile people are sitting there going, I'd never do that, I'd never do it like that. I could never do that. And all these stories are going around in their brains and they leave the classroom and they check the box cuz they did the training. They'll do nothing different with it. And, and so for me the approach is always we have to start with the mindset first.
Stephen Matini: It seems that discernment is the recipe to defeat perfectionism.
Tammy Heermann: I think so, yeah. And of course perfectionism comes in various flavors. There's people who you know, again will just give a hundred percent and over invest when it's not required. There's people who won't start something and unless they can do it perfectly. So sometimes I tease my husband, he's like, well I'm not doing this workout cuz if I can't get in, you know, my warmup, the actual workout and then the cool down, then it's not worth it cuz I don't have two hours to do this. Versus any health expert would tell you 20 minutes a day is better than not doing it at all. But to get the, you know, so that that notion of if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do it at all. So again, discernment comes in, in all these places is how do I calculate where do I spend my time? What's the payoff, what's the value to me and others? Absolutely.
Stephen Matini: How did you develop your discernment? Because as I think of this word, it makes total sense and as I stay with the word, I think in order for me to discern, I will need to be more mindful. I need to take a step back to maybe to have a better analytical skill. So for you, how did you develop that so you knew how far to push yourself? 60%, 80% or whatever there was.
Tammy Heermann: The first thing is to understand what's the vision for yourself. And so that's what I do with all leaders, especially women. What's the impact I wanna have? What's the legacy I wanna leave? What does my best self look like? And that's different than setting goals cuz every organization will say, oh, set your goals for the year, right? And this is the higher level than that.
And then once I have that criteria and I have sure my organization makes me have some development goals, then I can sit in that situation and exactly to your point and say, okay, is that helping me get closer to these things or is it distracting and taking me farther apart? And I think most people know the answer to that question, Stephen. I think they're too scared to have the conversation that says, I don't think I should be doing this. That's the thing they, they know they shouldn't be. They know they don't want to be. It's the conversation I think that scares most people.
Stephen Matini: I think you said that your soft spot is to work with people, leadership potential that is on the cusp of making the big jump, right? A lot of women. What are some of the biases, conscious or unconscious that you have seen more frequently working with people?
Tammy Heermann: Yeah, well there is with that group, and I'll tell you why I love it so much, is because it's usually an age and stage conversation. Meaning if they're just on the cusp of whether it's like director or you know, beginning of executive or partner in a firm, whatever the structure is, they're usually at that age where they're either starting to have a family, you know, got little ones at home or maybe decide not to or cannot. And so they're in this really sticky stage of life where there is added pressure, I mean really, really added pressure, especially if you've got little ones at home or you're, you know, getting pregnant in between you're trying to get promoted, all of that.
And what also happens simultaneously is a lot of organizations aren't supportive of that. A lot of countries don't have a lot of support for families and they start to question, am I good enough? Can I really do this? Does it make sense? And it's really hard to just get beyond the hours of day-to-day and kind of look out into the long-term. It's this time where they just, they need a big, and then say, okay, what are you gonna do about this? And so I just love working with this stage because they're on the cusp of greatness in their career these moments. But it can go downhill very fast because they're, they're just questioning everything.
Stephen Matini: When you say that, you mean both regardless of gender or do you see them more prominent in certain type of people?
Tammy Heermann: Definitely more prominent with females and that's where I spend a lot of my time working now with women because you know, for the most part women still do have primary caretaking responsibilities in the home. And then I'd say more generally, cuz you asked, and again I've worked with a lot of high potentials, it's that shift between moving from tactical to strategic. It's how do I get known for not doing everything but to kind of seeing the more strategic picture and leading. And there's that moment where it's so hard you have to work so hard to both build your team and gain your own visibility so that you can let go and kind of move into that more strategic realm. That is a tough, tough jump for anyone. And again, if you layer on kind of the age and stage with women, that tends to be right in the childbearing years.
Stephen Matini: Working with women, what has been in your experience as some of the most effective ways for new female leaders to legitimize their position in a company, to be seen a more as a strategic contributor, better than being a doer?
Tammy Heermann: Yeah, and and gosh, the word, so I'm, I'm triggered by the word when you said legitimize because I'm like, oh they shouldn't have to, and yet you're onto something Stephen. So in my research what I found is when I looked at 360 research, women tend to score higher on most leadership competencies except for one.
And it's that strategic, they are perceived, so to your legitimize, I talk about changing perceptions of our strategic capability. So it's not that I don't think women don't have those skills or can't have those skills, it's that we get so mired in the execution and doing and not carving the boundaries and checking off the to-do list at home and at work and we just get stuck and there's a pride in execution, give it to me, I'll get it done. There's the multitasking that that women are, you know, so great at.
Tammy Heermann: All of these things keep us stuck in the weeds. For me it's about helping them understand, okay, how do you change perceptions of this skillset I know you have and get out of that kind of doing trap and, and more into that strategic realm. And it's how you communicate, it's how you say yes and no to things. It's how you, you know, where you spend your time, how you kind of beef up your team so you can kind of get up into the higher level. It's, it's a whole bunch of things but I'll tell you, when I started working on all of that stuff Stephen, I was promoted four times in six years when I made the deliberate decision to say I gotta get out of the weeds.
Stephen Matini: So which one was the first skill that you started doing differently? Were you more assertive? Was communication, what was it?
Tammy Heermann: I think I wrote this in the book and I had done my own 360 and that's what I had gotten back is my feedback as well. That's what made me curious to kind of look into it. The coach I was working with said, I want you to start by asking different questions and meetings.
And I laughed. I said, how can something so simple like are you kidding me <laugh>? And of course all these things are little simple steps that you have to put into place. And so I started by showing up differently by asking strategic questions. So first of all, I'm getting my voice in the room to your point, but second I was showing my strategic capabilities. So for example, rather than just saying why don't we do this or why aren't we doing this? I said something like, given what we know about the environment and our current customers, you know, if they're asking about new solutions in this new place, how about we look at this solution and its impact on X, Y, and Z?
Tammy Heermann: So all of a sudden now they're seeing, oh my gosh, she's thinking about environment, she's taking trends into account, she knows our customers and she's proposing a solution, but understanding that it's gonna have various impacts. That's a very strategic question that shows how my brain works. And I remember the first time I did it, the room just looked at me and stared, there was like silence for a few seconds and I was so uncomfortable. And I think it's because they're like, well A, she's talking and B wow, that was very astute of her right? And guess what I was asked back to the next meeting and the next meeting. And so that's where I started was just showing people I had that capability and bringing my voice into the conversations.
Stephen Matini: I love that. When I said the word legitimate is a word that comes out a lot, particularly with professionals that belong to specific functions. You know, if you're in finance, it's if you're in sales, that's something, you know, if you are into marketing much, much harder to prove that the budget that you are asking is going to produce those results. You know, if you're in human resources. So I think there are some functions that sometimes seem to struggle a little bit more to have that to be seen, you know, as strategic partner, you know, HR being a, a typical thing. I love what you said about asking questions and I was thinking probably feeling comfortable with silence to stay there, to be silent and to listen and to make people feel their presence. When people have to learn how to be more assertive. If I don't say no, then I'm going to continue being this busy, be in operational doing a million things. But if I start saying no to things, how am I going to be perceived? Will I be perceived as someone who doesn't collaborate? You know, am I going to upset someone? What would you suggest to someone that wants to say no, that wants to set boundaries but still struggles with them?
Tammy Heermann: Yeah, absolutely. And I agree it, I think so many people struggle with this. So a couple things going through my mind is first of all we can't just say no. We have to talk about, you know, what it is that that we're saying yes to. And so most people will just say, I'm too busy. I can't take that on my plate, cell overflowing, whatever analogy you use. And that's more of a help me prioritize sometimes even a mental health conversation around overwhelm versus saying, here's what I'm on the hook for with my boss for example. Here's what you're, you know, evaluating me on, here's the new thing that have come. Here's where I plan to spend my time to accomplish X, y and Z. Here's what's coming in. And really think about it as influencing and negotiation to say this isn't possible and, and if you're telling me I can't work, we'll then know that, you know, what are the implications of that Quality's gonna slip here.
Tammy Heermann: This person's on the verge of quitting, da da da da da da. So we have to make these conversations a business conversation. I was also very appointed when I said at that time, you're telling me that I need to be more strategic and then be seen as a, as a broader leader. So expect that I'm going to have these conversations with you. I'm gonna come to you from time to time and I'm gonna say no, I need you to hear me. And then we need to talk it out. And I know I'm not gonna win every time, but I also know that if I lose every time there's gonna be an impact to that. These are the things that I had to dial up to make it known. I, I think we have all these conversations inside our brains and we get so overwhelmed and we don't have them outward with other people and then they just explode as an overwhelmed conversation.
Tammy Heermann: And then the other thing I think we, we go back to kind of having that vision for yourself is, is so for me if at one point I was the global practice leader for women in leadership, so that's a big role and part of my vision for it was that I wanted to be a role model because how could I go out and tell women carved boundaries, but I'm not carving them myself. I'm not trying to say no myself. Like I couldn't do that. I couldn't be a hypocrite. And so I would state that, I would say part of my role is to be a role model and lead the way. So I'm not gonna jump on a plane tomorrow to go there. I will come over by Zoom because it's important for me to da da da da da. And so I think part of it is goes back to that you know, what's the vision for ourselves and how do we have a business conversation.
Stephen Matini: Do you have a sense of where this leadership development is going to? Do you have a sense of patterns or what may be relevant in five years or even longer than that?
Tammy Heermann: So not really. It's so funny because when I did work in a big consulting firm and we'd talk about this and most people would equate, you know, innovation or or advancement and it's always technology driven. That's great. But really like does anyone even do the self-paced learning anymore? Like it's been relegated to the closet where people have to do their compliance training every year in organizations or their health and safety. Like that's where that's ended up. It's good for that. And that's it. For me, it always comes back to instead of getting more distributed, how do we get more human and more together and intense? And so I am seeing a lot more organizations invest in coaching thankfully. And I think a lot of the big firms have kind of tried to democratize coaching through different platforms, but we'll still having, you know, a human on the other end.
Tammy Heermann: So, you know, I guess that's kind of good. And I have seen organizations say, okay, we do realize that being in person together, creating community, like I joke I say like it is not a good workshop of mine unless someone cries because, cause we know that we've hit something really important to them and the room and you just, you can't do that in other ways. So I think it's a long way of saying, you know, I don't know where the industry is headed, but I hope it's less to how do we use technology <laugh>, you know, and more about how do we start talking about the things that make us human because of the last few years have brought anything to us. It's, it's, we know that we can't separate work and home and that what drives us at work is the very human things that drive us anywhere. And so really understanding that I think is important and, and I think we'll continue on the diversity, inclusion and equity and belonging and, and the name keeps getting longer and longer, which is good. I am seeing a lot more organizations realize that that's something that they have to pay attention to. So that's good.
Stephen Matini: Funny that we have to remind ourselves of the basic way of being a human <laugh>. We spend so much time anything else, you know, we talking about conversations, being a person, treat people like a person, you know, which you would think, you know, that should come pretty easy to us, you know, but we have to constantly remind ourselves to do the things that make us deliciously human, you know?
Tammy Heermann: Just think back to, you know, when work started coming in all the office jobs, I mean, what was it? It was you typically the man left the home and it was a very separate, like we learned, even I was told to separate and I'm not that old <laugh> to separate myself, to not bring my home crap into the office. I was told that. And so we were conditioned to separate ourselves to be, you know, one person here and another person there. And we just know thankfully that that just doesn't work.
Stephen Matini: It does not. One thing that I read that you use, but we didn't talk about it before. You use mantras. I love that. So I don't use mantras, but I use mindfulness, you know, in my trainings and the way that I introduce is always okay, can we breathe? And then people usually are open to it, you know, most people are open to it, but it's a bit odd, you know, so I have to be careful how I introduce it. How do you bring such an important piece, you know, to a training, to anything, to any learning experience?
Tammy Heermann: It took me a long time to really accept the word even mantra cuz to your part, and I don't care what people call it, whether it's a talk track or a phrase or a slogan for themselves, whatever. What I want them to think about is, what is the word or phrase usually pretty short that you can repeat over and over to stalk or reverse that cycle I talked about, you know, when we get into those situations where we start saying really horrible things to ourselves and so we create them and you can have as many as you need for whatever situation. But the, you know, ones that I talk about as an example is I remember speaking on a stage and too was a couple thousand people and there were really famous people speaking, like everyone knew who those four people were. And then there was me, it's like, who's that?
Tammy Heermann: You know, who's that person? So of course I'm standing backstage and I'm like telling myself all like, what am I doing here? No one's gonna listen to me. And then I brought out my mantra, you belong here, you belong here, you belong here. Because what did anyone else on stage know about my topic? Like either nothing or very little. I don't know anything about their topic. Why would they know anything about my topic? Right? <Laugh>. And so you belong here, you belong here, you have an important message and it just kind of buoys you and stops that horrible voice in your head. And so that's my example. So it's amazing. I've had women who post them on the screen or I'm actually hearing a lot more about this. So in Michelle Obama's recent book, the Light We Carry and I just saw an interview on TV this week with Mary J. Blige and both of them talked about in the mornings, you know, when conventionally you kind of look your worst, you're just outta bed looking in the mirror and saying, hello, gorgeous, or hello beautiful or whatever it is because it helps rewire our brain because what do we do?
Tammy Heermann: We go in and we go, oh my God, I look, I didn't get any sleep, those bags or wrinkles or blah blah, my hair's a desire. It's like, hello, gorgeous. And I love that. So that's a, a mantra again to rewire our brain to see the beauty within and the strength and, and that's why I think it's so powerful.
Stephen Matini: When you teach people how to use mantra, you let them pick the word or are there words that you suggest to them? How does it work?
Tammy Heermann: No, it has to come from them. It has to, if I tell them to say something and it might not mean anything to them and it'll be very unique to their situation. So for some it's yes, when I'm in that meeting with that person who just, no, you, we all know that that person, right? Okay, how do I walk in? What do I need to say to myself in those moments where I know they're gonna say something that riles me up? That could be one situation. Another is before I give a presentation or before I do this or that. And so it is for them very specific for their context.
Stephen Matini: Which one was more stressful to you release your baby, your book to the world, or given a presentation to you know, 2000 people knowing that other famous speakers, which one was more nerve wracking?
Tammy Heermann: Oh, a hundred percent. The book, I've done a lot of kind of being on stage my whole life. I used to remember I'd played the saxophone at the concert or the organ in church or whatever. So I've always enjoyed being in front of an audience, so that's fine. But once you release that book into the world and there's no taking it back, at least those other things, it ends, it ends in 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it's done with putting your thoughts. And I think for most people they're really personal stories in there. It's very vulnerable.
Stephen Matini: When you have really difficult time for whatever the reason and you find yourself in an odd spot. Is there anything that you normally do to get out of it or it depends. What do you do?
Tammy Heermann: Oh God. And this is so hard, isn't it? And I have a teenage daughter, so of course there's lots of times where you're just like, oh my God, I don't dunno what to do. Yeah, I'd say there's kinda three steps. So one is I remind myself that it's a point in time because of course we've all gone through difficult things many times and we will continue to. So if my first is deep breath, this is the point in time, this is a point in time, I will get through it. So I think that's one thing. The next is kind of perspective taking. So whether it involves another person or myself is like how do I either put in perspective what I'm thinking or I think they're where they're coming from. So I try to do perspective taking. And then the third, I call it learn and let go. But I think your tagline for your podcast is pause, learn, and move on. So that's exactly it. The the third is like, okay, what am I learning? And let go learn, let go, learn, let go.
Stephen Matini: One of mine, one of the many, it is pity party over. I mean, it has become some sort of personal mantra. When I am stuck in the place, there's always a moment that that comes in my mind, you know, like, okay, enough is enough pity party over, you cannot stay here forever. There's just, it's unproductive. It's, it's boring. It's pointless. So one question that like to ask at the end of our chitchat is this one we talked about different things, but there had to be something, some sort of takeaway that you would like listeners to focus on based on anything that we said. What would you highlight?
Tammy Heermann: We know the importance of stories, right? They, they're literally everywhere and they're the main way we communicate in the world, but we don't pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And for me, that is the most important thing to pay attention to. And so many studies have shown, you know, self-compassion and, and what we say to ourselves is the biggest tip for relieving stress, for building resilience. It really is, right? That, that piece. And so I would say for, for anyone who hasn't kind of done that type of reflection before that, it's, it's life changing in the world of sports and performance, they've known that forever. They know their head game is what actually makes them win, not their physical performance. And yet why do we not think that all the rest of us and in our offices and homes and wherever we work. So yeah, I'd say the, the stories we tell ourselves are critical.
Stephen Matini: Is this something that you learned as a musician?
Tammy Heermann: No, I've always kind of played with this notion of, of mindset early days in working in training and development and leadership. But where it really struck me is I was watching a marathon and where I live, I'm right at the turnaround point for the runners. And so I get to see the runners twice because they go by me and then they turn around and they come back. And so I always, I watch it and in the paper I remember seeing an interview the next day with the winner of the marathon. And when they said, you know, how do you do that to the winner? Like, he was like, just over two hours I think was his, his race. And he said, it's easy. He said, I only have to run for two hours and whatever. He said, I don't know how those other runners do it that are there for four hours, six hours, eight hours.
Tammy Heermann: He goes, how did they do it? And I thought, wow, what an interesting mindset shift. And it just, it blew my head because we're all so in awe of him and he is like, we run for two hours. That's it. That really got me seeing the parallels between this whole world of sports and performing arts. Like they get it, they get it led to performance coaches and thankfully psychologists being put with all of these high performing people. Why do we think we're any different? That was kinda when it really hit me that we can borrow from this world that really understands the nature of mindset.
Stephen Matini: It's all about the story that we tell ourselves. True. Ms. Tammy, thank you so much for these important insights. That was really a lovely conversation. I've learned a lot from you today.
Tammy Heermann: Thank you. I've enjoyed it so much too. Stephen.