PITY PARTY OVER

This episode of Pity Party Over couldn't be more timely following the US presidential election results, which have left voters and the world feeling equally joyful and hurt. This pivotal moment highlights the importance of listening to bridge divides and overcome polarization, which destroys relationships and the opportunity to create a system that accommodates everyone's needs.  Dov Baron, a leadership consultant, author and speaker, helps leaders find more profound meaning and fulfillment in their work. Our conversation centers on the transformative power of authenticity and curiosity in creating genuine connections in our polarized world. Cultivating curiosity means actively seeking to understand others' perspectives, fostering compassion, and reducing divisiveness. By focusing on the broader context rather than just content, we can gain empathy for others and build meaningful relationships that transcend division. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #Belonging #Curiosity #Authenticity #Purpose #Integrity #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipDevelopment #SelfAwareness #PersonalGrowth #Mindfulness #Kindness #PainAndGrowth #Transformation #Innovation #ContextOverContent TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Since you and I met, there's one word that is really dear to me, but I also know that is dear to you that I would like to ask you why it is dear to you, which is belonging. Dov Baron: Belonging is a really important thing for me. And at a very real level, it's real to me and important to me because I never did belong. I didn't feel like I belonged when I was a kid. Coming from that to the present tense, I think belonging is really important because we, particularly since COVID, since the lockdown, people had a lot of problems. I remember calling the CEOs that I work with and saying, "When pandemic happened and you're going to lock down, you're going to want to fire me. You're going to want to take me off your regular paycheck, and it's the last thing you should do." And they're like, "Why?" And I said, "Because you're going to have way more problems after than you have now." And they were like, "Well, why?" And well, it'll soon get back to normal. Well, A, normal is never coming back. That's over. And B, when you come back, you're going to see human beings are tribal. We need interconnection with other human beings. So whatever this does, we can talk about how it impacts our nervous system, our limbic system, how it affects the gut biome, and all the other things that it's going to affect. But psychologically, we are going to be hungry for community because we're being removed from communities. And we've all set up our own communities. If we're not ready for that, when they come back, people will find themselves drifting into communities that they don't really belong into. And they go, "What do you mean?" Well, they're going to find communities where they can distort themselves and they can make themselves fit in. And let's face it, you and I both understand this. In the corporate world, everything was about fitting in. Yeah The whole thing that everybody was excited about is get the right people on the right bus in the right seat. Yeah, well, that means distort yourself to be in that seat. Belonging means I can show up with all of me. Gay, straight, wearing a dress and a mustache, artistic, creative, highly intellectual. You know Any flavor, shade of context that person wants to bring is where you belong. But in a fitting in culture, we have to disenfranchise parts of ourselves. We have to remove parts of ourselves. We have to distort parts of ourselves in order to fit in. So belonging is very important now more than ever. It's always been important because we're tribal, and it's important to me because I never felt like I fit in when I belonged when I was a kid. Stephen Matini: When did you start feeling that you belonged?  Dov Baron: Probably not until my early to mid-40s. Stephen Matini: And what happened?  Dov Baron: I got married to my bride, who I've been with for 27 years when I was 39. We've been together 27 years. And she was the first person I felt like I belonged with. I remember asking, I say to my friend, we went for a drink and he said, "How's it going with Ranuka?" And I said, "Magnificent." And I said, "I think I'm going to ask her to marry me." And my friend's like, "Oh, you can't do that." And I said, "Why not?" He goes, "Well, you're the last dying breed of Bachelor." And I'm like, "Yeah." And he said, "But you can't ask her to marry you." And I said, "Why?" He says, "I know your highest maxim." And I said, "Yeah, so do I." And he goes, "Well, has it changed?" And I said, "No." He goes, "Is still freedom?" I go, "Yeah." He goes, "Well, how can you get married?" And I said, "Because freedom for you is your accessibility to different vaginas." That's not what freedom is to me. Freedom to me is access to more of myself. The more free I feel to be me, then the more free I am. And in this relationship with this woman, I have another area I didn't even know I'm allowed to express or I give myself permission to express. So that was the beginning of it was freedom of being with her. She was so powerfully in her own space that it gave me permission to stop doing my shit that I did in relationships. And so I started to feel like I belonged. But it was also at that point in time that after at 39, it was 20 years of work. So I'd been working on myself personally with therapists and mentors and all the rest of it for 20 years that I suddenly got comfortable with the fact that I was a polymath. I wasn't specialized and I didn't know enough in a particular area, but I knew vast amounts in a lot of different areas. And I started to surround myself with other polymaths. Belonging my tribe or a tribe of polymaths. People who have incredible specialties, but you don't know. They also have these other 18 things that they're so deeply embedded in. And being around them made me feel like I belonged. So that was the beginning of it. And that's where I live now. I live in that place of being surrounded by them. Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly what you're saying, you start belonging when you have license to be yourself or someone gives you that opportunity to be yourself. Dov Baron: I don't know that anybody gives it to you. I think that you give yourself permission to not distort or disenfranchise and allow people or groups to fall away that you thought you wanted to be in. So this is the challenge we're seeing with the very polarized partisan political system and political followers. You have people who used to hang out together who can't talk to each other anymore because they're polarized politically. The question is, can I be all of me and can I allow you to be all of you? So if it's not okay for me to be all of me or I feel like I have to put you in your place, then that's not my tribe. You know My religion, I tell everybody, my religion is curiosity. So if I'm going to live in the blood of that curiosity, I'm going to eat, sleep, breathe that, then I have to be willing to show up. Now, that's me showing up to them. On the other side of that, they may want to shove me in some box, and that's not where I belong. So I know where I belong, which is where you where I don't have to disenfranchise or repress or deny some part of myself in order to be with you. And at the same time, be respectful, of course. Stephen Matini: Some people, maybe you heard this, may say, "you know Dov, that's easy for you to say this because you are an independent professional. You don't work for anyone you know so you're not actually in an organization. But me, I am part of this thing, so I have to be extra careful. So I don't know if someone ever made the comment to you, but if they did, how do you respond? Dov Baron: I respond with, "If you don't feel like you belong, you should be somewhere else." Sorry. I mean, I know that that sounds like an easy solution, but it is an easy solution because there are companies that you have access to, whoever you are. So for me, the key is not in, "Well, I can't leave." You've not taken ownership of your specialization. You've not taken ownership of your power yet. When you take ownership of that, then you can go anywhere, anywhere at all. So if you're in a place where you have to disenfranchise yourself, that's too high a cost for a salary because it means you have to take off your personal head and put on your professional head in order to be there. It's fascinating. I'm often asked this question, "How is this possible? Many of your friends are your clients." Yes. Because they're not paying me to be their friend. I can make the separation between those two things. So I am going to work with you and I'm not going to change anything. So in fact, you still get the same guy. I'm just not coming at you from the same position as a friend. Yeah So I speak to you the way I speak to my friends. I speak to you the way I speak to my clients. I speak to you the way I speak to anybody. And if that works for you, that's fantastic. And if it doesn't, that's also fantastic. So if you're working somewhere where you feel like you have to disenfranchise yourself and you have to take off your personal head and put on your professional head, then there's two things to look at there. One, the environment, which I just said, if it is someplace that forces you to disenfranchise, that's something to look at. But there's also the other side, which is you have to look at yourself. And you have to look at yourself, A, why am I so willing to disenfranchise? Why am I so willing to distort myself? That's a question in and of itself. And B, if I'm pissed off with this place that makes me disenfranchised, what is it in me that I'm not bringing forward? What is my own discomfort? What am I not examining that I need to bring forward? Because I'm facilitating this. Like What's magnificent about you that you're facilitating being shoved in the corner? Stephen Matini: Maybe one of the reason why that happens is because all of us, to a different extent, we are afraid that if we set the boundaries, if we said the no, we would not belong.  Dov Baron: If you don't do those things, you won't fit in. You will belong, but you won't fit in. And you've got to get the distinction. Particularly you know English is a difficult language because we use so many alternates of the same thing. But fitting in and belonging are vastly different. I love beautiful clothes, and I love beautiful shoes, and I have pretty exotic shoes. But if I'm going to find some nice shoes and I buy them, I'm not going to force them into the closet. I either have to get rid of some and make some space for it, or are they going to get damaged? So if you think about anything that you shove into something to make it fit, it has to distort. If I buy a nice new shirt and I put it in there and the shirts are full, and I've not emptied some out, then the shirt's getting all creased and crinkled and doesn't get to shine. So it's the same thing. We make things fit in rather than belonging. This is your place. When I met my bride, I felt like I'd come home. I didn't have to go, "Oh, you know should I minimize this or maximize that?" It was like I was over that before I met her. It was like, "No." I mean, when we met, we went on a blind date and spent five hours on a blind date. And halfway through the blind date, she said, "I feel like I'm being interviewed." And I said, "That's because you are." And she said, "Really?" And I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Well, can I ask you anything?" I said, "Anything at all because I'm not going to hide anything from you, and I don't want you to hide anything from me." And I realized that socially in the world, you've been trained to say the right thing or do the right thing. We're all trained that way. It wasn't a criticism to her. And I said, "And this may be your first experience of not having to do that, but I'm not going to do that." So I'm going to say things that you might think are sexually inappropriate or politically incorrect or whatever it is. I'm not going to hide any of it because I'm not politically correct. I say things that some people will find offensive. All you have to know is my heart and soul are deeply embedded in love and kindness and generosity and curiosity. But that doesn't mean I won't piss you off or say things that are in a or you have been conditioned to be inappropriate. And this is how we're living our lives. And this is what's really important in my work around the emotional source code. It's called the anatomy of meaning. You have to look at the meaning you give everything because it has anatomy to it. You have to go below it and see, okay, well, where did this connect with that? And how is that part of this? Because these words that you're holding don't mean anything except to you. And part of the problem with our society today is we're imposing meaning. So when they, whoever they are, whether it's your boss, whether it's an employee, whoever it is, when they use a term, your only response is, "Tell me what you mean by that." Because you may discover that they do have horrible intent, and you may discover they have playful intent. But you don't want to write people off based on the intent that you're making up because nothing has any meaning but the meaning you are giving it. And this is what's so vastly important for us to understand that. Nothing has any meaning but the meaning we give it. So question that meaning because it's not truth because the meaning you give it, you hold as truth. And if you don't question it, you won't know if it's real or not. Stephen Matini: How do you deal with a tribe of people, a tribe meaning could be an organization, could be whatever that is in which somehow there are certain words that have a specific meaning for that tribe and they consider it to be appropriate or not to use them? How do you face the situation if you want to belong to the group of people?  Dov Baron: Well, again, you're talking about fitting in versus belonging. So my tribe, where I belong, we all know that we're all going to say things that out in the world would be, quote, “inappropriate." It doesn't mean we're not discerning. So please be clear here. I'm not going to say to my friends those things that I might say on a CNN, right? Or I might say on another national I'm not going to say those words because I'm not an idiot. And by that, I don't mean that I'm afraid of being canceled. I don't care about being canceled. It means I understand that people are going to associate a meaning. So here's the thing. My wife and I teach speakers how to speak, the Speaker's Academy for Authentic Leadership. And one of the things we'll talk about in that is if you're going to use a piece of jargon and by the way, almost everything is jargon, right? But you're going to use jargon, right? Or you're going to use a word that is not part of the lexicon of the language. So for instance, I was born in Britain, so my vocabulary tends to be much larger than the average North American. There are words that I use that are French in heritage, that are part of the English language. I just can't use them here. Not because people are dumb, it's just because it's not used. But one of my words that is just part of my lexicon is the word ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. Now, ubiquitous is part of my I say it all the time in a reference point. I cannot say that in America or North America without giving a short explanation because then what I'm doing is I'm giving meaning. So I say, you know it seems like polarization is ubiquitous these days. If I stop there, I'm as smart as using a big word. There's nothing good about that. For a lot of people, yeah. Right? That's all I am. But if I say it seems like polarization is ubiquitous, meaning everywhere you look, people are on either one side or the other. They're fighting against some kind of polarization. Now that person has learned the word ubiquitous. So now instead of feeling distressed or disrespected or talked down to, they now feel smarter. What if we do that with politically incorrect statements, which is what I do? So we get this understanding. What we're doing there is transferring meaning so that you can still be offended. And by the way, if you're committed to being offended by something, that's something for you to really consider having a look at. Just as I would tell you this, and just so you understand, if you're committed to anything, have a look at it. If you're committed to being a Christian and you've never thought about it, if I say to you, "you know, what faith are you?" And you say, "I'm a Christian." And I say, "Why? Because I am. That's what I've always been. Then question it, please. Not because I'm anti-Christian, but because I'm pro-curiosity, because I'm pro-consciousness, because I'm pro-expensiveness, because I'm pro-human being. And I want you to understand that there are other ways to see things. And the only way we can grow as human beings is by looking at things from different perspectives. So what if it doesn't mean this? So this is how we develop ourselves. This is how we grow as leaders is by putting aside our assumptions of meaning and embracing curiosity to discover meaning that may have nothing. Like you may be blown away to discover these other purposes. And that meaning might be insane. That's fine. But at least you know they're not coming at it from the way you're coming at it. And that allows you to grow. And that allows you to find where you actually belong rather than where to distort yourself to fit in. Stephen Matini: You know As you're talking, I'm thinking other words that seem to be important to you. One is integrity and purpose. Integrity and purpose, you know I'm thinking out loud, do they come before what we're talking about?  Dov Baron: If you and I walk around your city center and ask people, are you integral? Do you have integrity? I guarantee you that 99.9% of people say yes. So integrity is a complete waste of time if you don't understand it. So that's the proviso. Integrity is something that you have to understand. What are you integral to? So if I ask you, was Adolf Hitler integral? 100%. So integrity is not a good or a bad thing. It just means your commitment to what it is you say you're committed to. So for me, if you don't know your purpose, then what are you integral to? You know most people will say, "Well, I do what I say and I say what I do." Okay. Why do you say what you say? Well, I thought about that. Well, then I don't know what you're integral to because you don't. So that's a harder question, a much harder question. This is why you know my clients work with me is because they are highly intelligent people. They are highly successful people. They've done amazing things, but they've not received the kind of pushback at a deep curiosity. Not to be argumentative, but to allow them to expand, allow them to explore deeper parts of themselves so they can have a deeper relationship with life. So from that integrity, we come back further, which is into purpose. But here's the thing, we can't get into purpose because even I say people, "What's your purpose?" Most people in the business world will say, "Yeah, they know what their purpose is. They read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.” I know my purpose." And then I tell them to tell me what it is, and I go, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" And they go, "The good news." And I go, "You read the book, and the book is called Starts With Why?" And they go, "Okay. What's the bad news?" “The first word of that book title is what?" And they go, "Starts?" And I go, "Yep, you've started. You're not there." And they go, "What do you mean?" You have constructed purpose out of mission. It's a construct. It's a manufactured thing. You can't find purpose unless you self-examine at a very deep level. Purpose actually comes from pain. It's the thing that you are pained about. I'll give you an example. I had a conversation with someone who is insanely highly respected about being mindful. And deservably so, this person has done insane amounts of research, written books that are magnificent on it. I have spent time with this person on several occasions, and this person speaks mindlessly. And this is not once. This is always. Now, I get being a quick thinker. I'm a quick thinker, but that's different. No room for anybody to breathe because it's just like, "I'm going to suck all the air out of the room." It's like, "Oh, that's interesting." So why is this person's mission, purpose, around mindfulness? What I know about this person that they never told me, but I know by observing is there was a primary caregiver or somebody of incredible importance who never let this person speak, who spoke to them mindlessly and never gave them room to speak. So this person has made their life's purpose about being mindful, including making sure that you think about what you're saying and letting other people have space to say it and be aware of your own thoughts. But this person is still living in the wound. Your purpose is always connected to your pain. If you're not willing to look into the dark shadows, you'll never find your purpose. In the words of Joseph Campbell, "The treasure you seek can only be found in the cave you fear to enter. And most of us intellectually go there, but we don't emotionally and spiritually go there. That's why they work with me because they've been to all the top coaches. They've been to the top therapists. They've been to you know the Tony Robbins weekends in Fiji or whatever it is. And like how come it's still not there? Because this is the deep work. If you don't want to do that, that's great. You shouldn't do it. And I taught people out of working with me more than I talked them into it. But if you want to take that on, the majesty of that journey is so beautiful, so fulfilling. But you should know this. If you're in a company and you want innovation or you're an individual who wants enlightenment, the path is the same. And they go, "Well, what's that?" Destruction. You know We think about enlightenment as being, "Oh, the angels are singing." We think about innovation as, "Oh, you know we're going to develop this new technology." But the truth is that all innovation and all enlightenment burns everything down because otherwise you just cling to what you knew. And so most people you know don't want to burn anything down, so they go to Tony Robbins or whatever it is, and that's great. Nothing wrong with it. And when I say burn it down, I'm not talking about, "Oh, well, now I'm going to destroy my business when you work with me." No, you're actually going to be more successful. I always tell people, "I have no interest in making you more successful, but I know it's going to happen." It's a bonus. You will be more successful, but you'll be far more deeply fulfilled, and that's more important. You'll be on purpose with your life, which is more important. But you have to burn down beliefs that you've clung to that you actually think are you. We've all been there. I was certainly there. I was like, "I'm certain this is who I am. I'm the savior. I'm the superhero." That was my shit that I carried around for 32 years. That was a hell of a burden to put down. But imagine it like you know it's like you're atlas. You're carrying this weight on your back. And somebody says, "You can put it down now." And you're like, "Well, who will I be? If I put down the world and stop carrying the world, who will I be? Who's going to even recognize me in the marketplace if I'm not this identity that I've clung to?" Guess we'll find out. So we cling to our identity. We manufacture purpose out of that identity. So you can't have purpose without dealing with identity. And then as we manufacture purpose, we then say we're integral to purpose, but it's a purpose that was manufactured that is rooted in a false identity. So now you see how it's flipped back into your question. Stephen Matini: What is the best way to experience that pain that you were talking about? Because the pain can be really scary for a lot of people. You know.  Dov Baron: Of course! Stephen Matini: Last time you said, well, you just said it. Enlightenment is a destructive process, which I love that. But what is, I don't know, a healthy way to stay in that pain? Dov Baron: So let me be clear. Nobody wants to stay in the pain. I didn't want to stay in it when I was in it, and I've been in it several times. If you put your hand on a hot plate, you're going to pull your hand away. It's another form of pain. You're going to pull away. The answer is to become anti-fragile. It's not my word. But to become anti-fragile. So let me give you an example. You work out at lunchtime. Yeah Do you lift weights or what do you do? Stephen Matini: A little bit. A little bit of everything. Yeah. Dob Baron: Okay. So you lift weights? Stephen Matini: Yeah.  Dov Baron: So I've been a bodybuilder for many, many, many years. I used to do these videos from the gym that were called “sweaty leadership tips.” I'd be all sweaty. There's a bunch of them on YouTube somewhere. And you know I would hold my phone, but every now and then, I would flip the phone just a little bit off angles over my shoulder, looking at gym equipment or looking at other people. And so I did it this time, and I said, "See that guy there?" There's a guy working out. And I said, "That guy's been here every day that I've been here and I'm here dedicatedly five days a week for at least two hours every morning. He's here five days a week for at least maybe he's here more, I don't know. But he's definitely here the five days I'm here, and he's here for at least as long as I'm here. He's usually here before me, and he sometimes leaves just before me, but mostly he's sometimes often after. Now, you've seen me in a semi-clothed state and you know that I'm muscular, right? I'm not trying to show that off. You know That's my form. Okay. Now, if you look at him, I realize he's far away. You probably can see that he's not particularly muscular. What's the difference? And you might say, "Well, maybe he doesn't want to be muscular." And I can say, "Sure, of course. Everybody has that choice." But let's remember he's here as long as I'm here as often as I'm here. What's the difference? You don't know. Like It would be kind of puzzling, right? And the reason it's puzzling is because he kind of looks out of shape. In fact, he looked like he was in the same shape as he was two years before when I first and I'd gotten to meet him and said hello. And, you know, I, I actually have an enormous amount of respect that he'd show up every morning for two hours. But what I noticed was he never increased the weight. He did his four sets of 10 for everything over and over again. So his body had adapted and never gotten any better. He was doing all the right things, but he wasn't willing to embrace the pain. When you go to the gym, you know that's enough for me to stay the same. And you know that you have to enter into the discomfort in order to grow. You have to run for 10 seconds longer than you feel like you're capable of. You have to hold the pose for 10 seconds longer than you think you can in yoga. You have to 10% more weight on. You have to do all of those things. You have to do that in order for it to work. The way to understand embracing the pain is anti-fragile rather than resilient. So resilient means that you get knocked down nine times eight times and you get up nine. That's stupid. That means you're not learning. I know I used to be the king of that. That's dumb. Be anti-fragile, which means you get knocked down once and you go, "How can I get up stronger?" Your muscles are anti-fragile. They have to be torn and broken in order for them to grow. That pain that you're in in your growth process is celebratory. Wow, I'm growing. If you go to the gym and the next morning you wake up and you're kind of like, "Ooh, ow, ooh, ooh, ow." And your friend says, "What's going on?" He goes, "I worked out yesterday. Are you okay? Oh, yeah. I had a great workout. I'm just sore. You celebrate that. Celebrate the pain because it's taking you to an outcome that you can't get to unless you embrace being anti-fragile until you embrace being stronger. Stephen Matini: It feels like you are giving me a recipe with all these different ingredients. And so while you mentioned this ingredient, but I would like to know where does kindness go in your recipe, as I call it? Dov Baron: If you want to insult me, call me nice. If you want to compliment me, call me kind. Stephen Matini: You are so kind.  Dov Baron: Right. Thank you. Nice is an insult, NICE, neurotic, insecure, controlling emotions. Kindness is something we're talked out of. I believe with every fiber of my being that our nature is kindness, but most of us will mix kindness up with niceness. So I'm just being kind. No, you're not. You're lying. I didn't want to be unkind. No, that's not being unkind. Tell the truth. If you have a big decision in front of you and you have a friend over here who will always be nice, and you have a friend over here who loves you and cares about you, but will always tell you the truth, and you got a major decision. Who are you going to? You're not going to the nice person. You know, they're going to just say something nice. This is a major decision of your life. You're going to go to the person who's kind and truthful. I used to call myself in my 20s. I was brutally honest. No, I was brutal. I was brutal. That's what I was. Because it lacked kindness. Kindness is compassion. It's caring. It's loving. But I will not lie to you. Does my ass look fat in these pants? That's a question that every man who's ever been in a relationship has heard. Let's just say the answer is yes, right? So is that kind? Not really. If I'm nice, I say, "No, love it. It looks great." Ugh. I'm lying, but if I have kindness, I will say, "The fact that you ask me means you feel like it is. I would suggest you change. No, I want your opinion. Okay. I love your ass. But those are not the most flattering pants in the world. I don't have to deliver it with a hammer. I can deliver it with kindness. And kindness to me, if you sort of boil it down, where I go to is this. I need to remember that everybody I meet, no matter how deliriously happy they seem or how miserable they seem, everybody I meet is in some kind of pain. They may have a magnificent mask. They may have a mask they don't even know they have. But everybody's in some kind of pain. Everybody wants to feel better about something. So I can approach them from that place of, "I'm not here to make you feel miserable. I'm not here to rub salt in any wound. I'm here to have compassion for you. And how do I have compassion for you? I become deeply curious and discover what's going on for you. Why are you this way? Because you're in pain. The person attacking you isn't attacking you because they're an asshole. They're attacking you because they're in pain. And you look like somebody who might cause them more pain, so they're attacking you. And you go, "But I was being really, really nice to them. Yeah, well, I might attack you if you'd be nice to me too because nice is shit. They're lying." So it's really important to realize that everybody's in some kind of pain. Have compassion for that. Ask yourself, "I wonder what kind of pain this person's in. I wonder why they're being that way." Again, curiosity is my religion. Become deeply curious about them. When you do that, people will open up to you. People will not be as offended. Remember, attack is defense and defense is attack. If somebody's attacking you, it's a defensive move. They feel like you're attacking them. And you go, "But I wasn’t... I understand that you weren't. And I understand that that was not your intent. That's not relevant. What's relevant is that's how they feel. All little children are kind and they're caring and they're loving and they're cuddly and they're deeply curious. They want to know why the sky is blue and why the grass is green. They don't have all these assumptions. So if that's inherent, then everything else that's showing up that isn't that is showing up because that person had to fit in somewhere in order to not feel alone in the world. Okay. Maybe that somewhere was their own family. That happens a lot. Stephen Matini: I have one last question for you, because it's beautiful how all these ingredients come together. And you have explained them to me very clearly. So I'm very grateful, and very peaceful, you know because a lot of things that you said make total sense to you. But the way you say it, it helped me reconciling some discrepancies that I may have on how I connect them. But I was wondering ...  Dov Baron: You know what I just want to say before you go any further, that's really important. Like I want the listener to understand that. The challenge with today a lot of the time is we deal in content, not context. And in order to deal in context, which gives us a deeper understanding, we have to look at all the pieces of the puzzle. All this puzzle is one big sky, right? Well, you're holding one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has blue on it. That's just one piece of the puzzle. There's so much more. And so when you like listening to this conversation that we've had, if somebody started at the beginning and kicked out after 10 minutes because I said a certain word that offended them, they have no context. But even if you have discrepancies in your head as I'm speaking, by the time we get to the end, you can then look at, well, what came together? What made sense? Am I in the same place? Again, as you said Stephen before, it's that willingness to change and not be so rigid and fixed. So I sincerely appreciate you saying that, that it brought the discrepancies together and, "Oh, now I see how this connects to this." But if you take it out of context, everything's lost. So this is why it's important to listen to the full conversation. And moreover, listen twice. And you suddenly hear what you know because now the second time you're not listening with your own biases. So thank you for bringing it up. It's really important. Stephen Matini: Maybe it's also the combination of my own curiosity. I'm also very curious. And the fact that anything you say to me comes from a place of kindness, you know including the jokes or anything you said. You know For those who are going to listen to this episode, you pointed out all these amazing ingredients, you know integrity, purpose, meaning, belonging, and kindness. You talked about context, assumption, pain, loving, love. If you had to tell to our listeners, what could it be a starting point? Where should they start with all these ingredients? Which one is the first one to tackle? Dov Baron: Without doubt, it's curiosity. I sign off everything I do with stay curious, my friends. Stay curious. I'm very philosophical and very spiritual in my background before I became a psychologist, before I became somebody involved in neuroscience and quantum physics and geopolitics and all the other stuff. There is a philosophical understanding that life is in quest of knowing itself. I believe that if there is a force in the world that you or in the universe that we call God, that intelligence is expansive. And if God is the ultimate in intelligence, then it is the ultimate in expansion. If it has to expand, then it has to constantly experience and learn. And the only way to do that is curiosity. Of course, I don't have that power, but if I was to say, "What are the exhibits of the presence of God," it would be love and curiosity. But curiosity still comes first. I love that. Because if I love without curiosity, I lack discernment. If I'm curious, I'm constantly learning and I'm willing to constantly change. And it means I'm willing to constantly let go of my biases. So all the things I talked about, get curious about, get curious about what pain might be underneath that fake smile. What pain might be underneath my need to fit in rather than belong? What is the pain that stops me from being curious? What is the pain that stops me from being loving or kind in a situation? Because if I wasn't in pain, if I wasn't protecting, I'd probably be kind here. Yeah. You probably would. What is the pain that stops me from experiencing my purpose? What is

Michelle Kuei is a visibility marketing coach. At age 11, a car accident left Michelle permanently disabled. She shares her journey, highlighting how growth and transformation stem from shifting our mindset, embracing personal responsibility, and allowing ourselves the permission to be vulnerable. Michelle highlights about the importance of recognizing when we’re stuck in a negative space, allowing ourselves to feel those emotions, and then consciously choosing to move beyond them by focusing on our strengths and making deliberate decisions. In our conversation, we explore the importance of taking agency over our journey, learning from life's patterns, and showing up authentically while giving ourselves grace along the way. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #VisibilityMarketing #Resilience #MindsetShift #PersonalGrowth #Empowerment #OvercomingChallenges #EnergyShift #Vulnerability #PermissionToReset #SelfCompassion #MentalHealth #TransformYourLife #PositiveChange #LeadershipMindset #WomenEmpowerment #Authenticity #PityPartyOver #StephenMatini #MichelleKuei #NewPodcastEpisode TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: When you feel the way I do now a little bit overwhelmed, what do you do?  Michelle Kuei: There’s so many things I do. But first of all, what comes up to my mind is when my energy is down, I actually do quite the opposite. I go onto a treadmill, I start working. If I'm feeling stressed, there's a lot of things on my plate. I've learned to drop everything and just go into a physical activity. So a lot of times, you know, when we think about mental stress and burnout, we're in our mind, right? We're thinking about, oh my God, how am I going to take care of this? How am I going to process this? How am I going to tackle this? So we're doing a lot of thinking. So when we're thinking, our mind is working, but our body is not. And so what I have learned, and that really worked well for me, is if I were to just stop the thinking, stop the thinking mind, and just drop it and go do something that involves my body, activity, running, jogging, walking, whatever it is that you get into that physical mode, then you start taking your mental processing into, OK, I need to make sure that I step at the right place so I don't fall down. So your mind starts to think about something else other than the things that you're feeling stressed about. And when you start doing that, you're making room and making space for what needs to come. And the creativity comes when you make room for it. And how do we make room for it? When you shift from a mental stress to a physical activity, you allow your energy to flow. And everything is energy in this world, right? So if you shift one energy from one place to another, then things start to shift as well. When I was overcoming that physical disability, I realized that you know my muscle groups, muscles, they need to learn and get used to the activity I'm giving them. So every single muscle in our body has a job. Just like we have a purpose in this world, they also have a purpose in our body. And so when you give that purpose to the muscle that you're working on, sometimes you need to give it a break, right? Because when we overwork, the muscle will snap, the muscle will break. And same thing with ourselves, you know if you don't start taking a break or realizing that I need to try something else that will relax me, that will keep me into a calm state. I need to take some vacation. I need to make sure that's in my schedule before I snap and break. And so I feel that a lot of us don't realize that, you know yes, resilience is great. Resilience is powerful. Being able to bounce back and getting back on your feet and staying strong is important. But it is also important to allow yourself, giving yourself the permission to say, you know what, I'm going to take a day off. I just need a day off, or I just need a week off. And we were talking about this earlier. I took a week off because I needed a week off. Stephen Matini: My ideal world would be probably work for three months and then take a break, or maybe three, four months, you know, every three, four months, I think it should be a stop, you know, somehow. And I guess it depends also how you work. But I'm one of those people that tend to go, you know, full force. I mean, seriously, there's no a second during the day that is empty. And so after a few months, I do feel it. So you mentioned disability. And in the past, when we talked about it, you mentioned that disability is one of the ingredients that are part of your life. You know, your life is ginormous. What does disability mean to you today? Michelle Kuei: It means that there's something that I am not gifted. I am not talented to do. And I use the word gifted and talented because we have a lot of talents within ourselves, right? And talent is something that you develop. It's something that you train yourself to recognize that this is what I can do, and this is what I can do well in. And there's other areas where I might not be interested in performing or doing at all. I am not interested to become the next athlete who's running a 10K marathon. That's not my interest, but someone else is. Someone is really happy to do that as a profession. For me, disability, it just means that there's part of us that we're just not trained and we're not passionate to do. Now I don't see it as a limitation. Rather, it's just like my hair, my finger. It's just a natural part of me of who I am. And it may be a disability, physical disability on me, but it may be an emotional disability on someone else I cannot see. But that person doesn't mean that that person is not doing well or not performing well. It's just that there's something else that person is so good at that I don't need to see the limitation on that person. It's a change of mindset. It's a change of feeling about what we choose to see, what we choose to embrace this whole entire self and recognizing that there is something that I'm really good at and nobody can beat me to that. And I'm very proud of it. I'm taking ownership of it. And I can do Christmas countdown whenever I want to. But there's also a part of me that, you know what? Someone else can do that. Someone else has the purpose of doing it. So I'm just going to let them serve. I'm just going to let them do it. For example, in the past, I go to grocery and there's always stuff on the very top shelf. And the most important item, like your toilet paper, is always on the top shelf. And that is the most essential thing that people need. And so every time I go to a grocery, I'm looking on the top of the shelf and I can't reach it. So in the past, when I felt my limitation, it was a limited ability to me, I hesitated to ask for help. I hesitated because I was looking at the perspective of I'm not good enough. I'm not normal. I'm too short to reach to the shelf. But then there is a shift. There's a moment where I started to recognize and realize that, hey, yeah, I am short, but this is why we have tall people. Right? This is why we have tall people. The universe makes tall people for a reason. So that's put them to use, right? Because the universe created everybody. And so we're all equal. Stephen Matini: You make it sound so flowy and real beautiful, you know, when you're talking. And one thing that I always wonder is how is it that some people are able to change their mindset as you did, you know, and to really overcome it and others instead get stuck there, you know? So what did you do? How did you make that humongous shift in yourself?  Michelle Kuei: Before I answer that question, sometimes I joke about myself that I have this young looking Asian body, but my soul is really old. I have a very ancient soul. And so to answer your question is that you have to be ready. And there's no rush into getting ready for that mindset shift. And so this is something that I observed, also something that I experienced is no matter how I know the podcast is called Pity Party. A lot of us are staying in that pity party for a very, very long time. But it's not because we don't want to get out of that pity party, or we don't want to, you know, advance ourselves or better ourselves. We don't want to look at the positive aspects of things. It's just that we're not ready. And I think the universe by design has a lesson plan, a giant project plan for everybody. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what the agenda is, but there is a universal big plan for everybody. And each lesson on that universal plan, it's teaching you a lesson, right? So maybe the lesson I need to learn during this stage of my life is gratitude. I need to learn how to appreciate. Or the next stage in my life, I need to learn forgiveness. I need to learn how to forgive to people. And so we're going to see evidence and lessons or teaching moments where we continue to experience the emotional triggers or external trigger that teaches the lesson of forgiveness. I want you to forgive this person. I want you to forgive that person. I want you to let go of yourself. And so we continue to find ourselves learning those lessons repeatedly until we can master it. And once you master it, then you can move on to the next lesson. But how does that agenda look? I have no idea. I don't know, but I trust it. I trust there's a universal plan. And so the people who are stuck in the pity party still in that pity party have, we have everything, the ice cream, the chocolate, everything full on. We're not ready yet. We're not ready to move on to the next stage of life. And so for me, that stage of life, I felt it was evolutional. It was ever evolving. And when I finally got out of my pity party, I was gifted a book and it was from Eckart Tolle, The Power Now. And he made me realize that there's two thinking mind, right? There's an unconscious mind and there's mind that's just in our everyday evolution, the conscious mind. And so it made me realize that I have this dual identity of myself. One is who I believe I am, and one who I truly am. And it is the one that I truly am that overrules everything else I experienced in this life. And so I was on a journey to discover who I truly am. And that was the moment that made me realize that, huh, pity party is something I can choose to attend or to choose to thank you very much for the invitation. I am not here to party, right? So you started to see the options of making that choice and making a decision for yourself. And I think the roots from decision come from a Latin roots of you need to sever, right? You need to decide. It means that you have to pick, choose between the two. You have to make a sever between the choices that you have. And so to me, that was the moment where I realized that, oh, I don't have to feel and think and look at this way about my life, how sorry I am, how small I am. I can choose to see the other way. And that was a pivotal moment for me because everything else changed when I started to recognize the fact that I can choose to see my life differently. Stephen Matini: Do you ever have sleep ups moments that somehow you may go back to the old behavior? Michelle Kuei: All the time. I think it's a constant thing because we're living in a real life and there's a lot of things that whether it's causing by ourselves or triggered by someone else, when I see someone else's success, it makes me think about, hmm, what am I not doing to be that person, to be that successful, right? And so I go into this comparison mode very quickly in comparing myself and how poorly I am doing in my life, how much less money I'm making, how much less title I have and how slow I'm moving. So I'm constantly comparing myself to others. Stephen Matini: You're describing me? (laughing) Michelle Kuei: I think I'm describing a lot of people, you know, I would love for people to if you're listening to the podcast, you know, just drop a comment in Stephen’s feed if you resonate with this, because that comparison mind is just never quiet. And one of the good things about comparison is this is how we improve. This is how we become better. And so we can choose to see comparison as, oh, it's something negative. You should never compare. I would encourage people to actually compare yourself. Use someone else to be your aspiration, right? Compare yourself to that person. But what you want to think about is how can you better yourself to be even better than that person is? And this is how we continue to master our skills, master our knowledge, mastering everything that we do so that we can be better than that person. I can be a lot more creative. And then that successful person who's making a lot of money, I can outgrow that person. And only if you believe that your ability and your strength and your superpower is within you, nothing else is going to matter. Stephen Matini: But when you feel that the moment of whatever, you know, self-doubt that you may go back to, you know, to the whole posture, the whole behavior is about to happen. Is there anything specifically you do? You mentioned that you are very physical, you know, is there also other tools that you use in order to make sure, nope, I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to choose, you know, this one, this path, which is more, you know, which is better for me. Michelle Kuei: I keep a judgment journal. So I have like journals in the back. I have books and everything. I keep judgment journal. And judgment journal, basically, it's very simple, very easy to do. And listeners can do this at home. You take out a sheet of paper and what you do is you write down the things that you're judging. You're judging whether you're judging someone else, you're judging yourself. What is it that you're saying to yourself right now? And usually it's very negative. It carries a lot of like, I need to be better than this. I should do this. I have to do this. So it's very negative. So you write down that phrase that you're telling yourself that you're judging yourself or others. And then what you do is your next step is to come up with three different ways of how you're going to say that same thing, but you're going to look at it in a more positive way. So let's say I'm too short. Stephen is too tall. And that's a judgment statement. That's a fact, but it's also a judgment. I'm too short. I wish I can be I can be taller. You know I asked for this for every Christmas, but never, I never got it. And during the Christmas, I don't believe in Santa. No, that's another story. But so I would write down, I am too short and I feel too short, too small. And I would come up with three different ways of saying this again in a positive way. So I am too short, but I am very gifted in public speaking, for example. I am small, but you know great thing comes in small packages anyway. Like the Tiffany, the Tiffany rings. Everybody wants. It comes in the tiniest, smallest package. So I'm OK with that. So you come up with three different ways of saying the same thing, but in a positive tone of voice. When you start building a habit in doing that, you'll notice the next time you judge someone or judging yourself, you're very quickly, it's like the muscle that we train in going to the gym, right? So you're very quickly, you're going to come up with an alternative perspective of, eh, yeah, this is what I'm thinking, but this is what I can think. And so now I have choices. Which one do I want to choose? So you're allowing yourself to giving yourself an option to choose. If you do it regularly and it becomes a habit, it becomes second nature to us. The moment that you judge, you're going to choose the one that's more positive because it makes you feel good. Stephen Matini: So it's a mental gymnastics, basically.  Michelle Kuei: Mm-hmm. Yep. Stephen Matini: And by the way, while you're talking, I'm comparing myself to you and I feel a bit of a loser. If I have to be honest, no, I don't do this. I'm not doing that. Not all the time, but you know. Michelle Kuei: You see, we're all equal. You know, our feeling is all mutual. You know, for me, it was my height. My height was driving me nuts. It was like, I wish I could be taller. I wish I could be prettier. You know, I wish I could be sexier. I wish I could wear this. You know, I can wear that. But, you know, at the end of the day, we all have some similar thoughts and idea around that. Oh, I wish I can talk like her. I wish I have her. Yeah, it's always like that. Stephen Matini: Last time, there was another, when we talked, there was another word that goes to my head that you mentioned, which is the notion of visibility. And I love the word. So what does visibility mean to you?  Michelle Kuei: Visibility means that you're showing up and being an authentic self. I know it's an overused word, but you know it's about showing up and just genuinely being who you are. And you know what's interesting is a lot of people think that visibility, whether it's on social media or in person, it's about making yourself high up being perceived as someone who has the authority, someone who is celebrity. But in reality, visibility means that when you have an opinion or when you want to say something, you say it, what's on your mind without thinking that, you know, I'm going to make people feel offended. I'm going to you know making sure that I side with the popularity of the people pleasing side. Visibility is about being truly who you are, saying what's on your mind, telling people what you truly believe in. So you show up with value, authenticity, you show up with character, your voice, and your opinion. And you do it in a way that is going to elevate everybody. When I speak, whether it's in person or on social media, I always ask myself, what is the purpose of me talking? And if there's no purpose, then why am I still talking? I'm not teaching anybody. I'm not elevating people's consciousness or mindset, or it makes them feel better for their day, making their day, then why am I still talking? It sends off a message to me that when I'm visible, I'm going to show up with my character. I'm going to show up with my value. I'm going to show up with my belief. And all this becomes so loud and clear that you don't have to do anything else. People see you, people hear you, people recognize you for who you are. And it's just a natural thing for people who are just attracted to you. And so how do we use this is a lot of time, if you're a business owner, you can use the visibility of what I talked about, the character, the value, and how you're showing up, your voice, your opinion, your beliefs. This becomes your natural attraction, your client attraction mode. People attract to the people who they resonate with character, values, and beliefs. And so you become this natural attraction magnet that people just draw into you. It doesn't need to have any reason. People will just come to you. And if it's in a everyday activity and interaction, visibility becomes something that you simply living in your purpose. You're living with the intention of today, this is me. This is how I am. I am true to myself. This is what I believe in. And when everybody starts doing that, our whole world become a better world. And that is my goal. Stephen Matini: What if someone somehow did not have much of an understanding of her authentic self? You know, just I'm not sure who I am authentically. What could it be the first step to take to go in that direction? Michelle Kuei: The first step would be to hire a coach. What to start working with, Stephen .. Stephen: Who’s clueless!  Michelle Kuei: Who’s a little more advanced. The reason why people are not seeing their true authentic self or they don't know who they are is because there's a lot of that beliefs, that unconscious world that we have been conditioned to. We've been training schools to believe that we need to behave. We need to follow the agenda. We need to follow the classroom. We need to follow the society rule. We need to follow everybody else's rule. But underneath all the rules, the rules are created by people for people. But we're more than just the people. We have the soul. We have the body. We have the thinking. We have the superpower that's within that we don't even recognize that we have the superpower. And so if you take away all the conditioning, all the teaching, all the rules that we had to follow, it is up to you to decide who are you globally. I think the reason why we have so many different disasters and things and conflicts is because we forget our true identity. And so we find ourselves in this identity crisis. We have no idea why we're doing things for what we do. I really love Simon Sinek, his book, Start With Why. And when you find yourself in that identity crisis, I call it a crisis. If you don't know who you truly are, then you're in this identity crisis. You're just following everybody else's rule and that you believe that this is who you are. But in reality, you're so much powerful than what you believe in. And in order to recognize what you're capable of, you have to understand your why. Why are we here? Why are you here? What is your big mission? What is your big purpose? And some people are like, wait, what? You mean I have other purpose than going to a job? Yeah, you have bigger purpose than going to a job. Can you believe that? Yes. You have better, bigger purpose than going to be a husband, a wife, you know, a teenager who take your school bag and go into the school, you have bigger purpose. But you also have to do the lessons that the universe is showing you and teaching you. Because each time you learn those lessons, it's showing you a piece of who you are. We learn our values. We learn our characters. We learn all these from our life experiences. Stephen Matini: Michelle, how do you find out what lesson or lessons you're supposed to learn?  Michelle Kuei: I saw patterns in all the things that I have experienced. There was a period of time where I was in my 20s and you know in my twenties and thirties, I was like ready to be in the dating world, right? So I was trying out different dating apps. I went out a couple of dates with guys. And each time I go and I got rejected, I felt bad. I felt terrible. I felt miserable. I felt like there's something wrong with me. And this is why they don't want me. This is why they don't want to be with me. And initially, that was my thought. That was my idea. But when I started to see the reputation, repetition of people are rejecting because they're going after the physical, the physical appearance, the physical attraction. And what they made me realize was, OK, I don't have that. So that's what you want. Goodbye. That's not me. What I do have, I started to recognize what I do have. I have big heart. I'm always willing to give. Generosity was one of my big gifts to a lot of people, even in my business today. Generosity is something that I'm very proud of. And so I started to recognize the pattern of what people are showing me by rejection, by telling me that, oh, this is what I'm looking for. And this is what you're presenting. And this is what you don't have. I'm not going to say that at that moment, it was not hurtful. It was pretty hurtful. And I took a while. I was in my pity party. I had balloons. I had party hats on. I was in the full mode pity party. But then after that pity party, I started to recognize the fact that that may not be something that I have, but I have something else that others don't. And that's okay. So I'm going to embrace what I have and I'm going to stand proud of what I have. Stephen Matini: So it's about being mindful of patterns and things that repeat patterns and what they're trying to teach you. I agree. I call them whispers because they are all over the place. They are all around us, but you have to be aware of them. You know If you go too fast, if you're not that present, it's very difficult to see them because they're not super loud. They happen all the time, but I always sense they're kind of, you know, whispers, like very subtle sounds, you know, I believe that in your business, you specifically focus on empowering women. Why you decided to the women was your thing? Michelle Kuei: First of all, I'm a woman. And there's certain things that in a society as that we live today, there's still the community of women who do not get the same equality, who does not get the same treatment compared to the men, compared to all these other people on the top as a leadership. It's a very unfortunate and very sad moment for us to continue to work on, because the women's history has been over 100, I believe by now it's 105, 105 years, right? So we celebrated women's history. But over the last 100 years, women still remain to be somewhat, I know I'm going to say this and men are not going to like it. We still remain to be the minority in decision-making. So a lot of the important things that's being made on the top, women are still kind of like, here's your job, you do more, but this is what you're getting paid for, right? And so women, when they come home, not only do they have to do the job, they have to go home and take care of the family, there's still a lot of expectation out of women. But a lot of these women are very, very gifted and talented. Only if the society and the world give them an opportunity, a stage to show their expertise, to show their talent, the world would be a much better place. Coming from women, you know of course I'm going to say that. But I do believe that if we give women an equal opportunity with pay, with the opportunity, with the leadership, with the expertise that they're capable, they're demonstrating. If we treat everybody the same, then these women are going to move the world. They're going to change the world. So I have this vision in my business where I am that someone who may be a few steps before them, and I'm reaching to the top, almost to the top, I'm turning around and I'm holding on a chain, a woman. I'm holding on to one woman, and that woman is holding on to the next woman. So we create this human chain one person at a time. And I'm about lifting one woman up so that that woman can go out and create that ripple effect to make a change for anyone who's coming to her world. And so I chose women community because, first of all, I'm one of them. And when I was building my business, when I was in the world, I wanted to have a community of women where I share the same vision. I share the same energy. You know When we talk, it's like, you know we're having a pajama party. I know yours is pity party, but you know we're having a pajama party. And so it's a very different dynamic when we have a group of women together. I would say that a lot of men nowadays has become the minority on the contrary because the woman empowerment is like all over, right? So now people are looking at to the equality and diversity. But I think personally, I still have that affinity. It's my sisterhood. And we just need to find our tribe that we feel comfortable in supporting. And sisterhood is where I find my passion. It's where it lights me up, just thinking about them. It brings a smile to my face on a daily basis when I work with them. And so it's in the community that I chose to serve. Stephen Matini: So does your chain of women have space for a feminist guy like me?  Michelle Kuei: Absolutely. You are invited to our pajama party. You do have to put on your pajama. Stephen Matini: You know, I'm not a woman and I will never know what it feels to be a woman. So I can only, you know, listen. But I agree with you 100%. And I also do believe, and I sense that the future really needs female leadership for a bunch of different reasons. And you covered a lot of them. But yeah, there's something very distinct about being a woman that I believe the world needs right now. So I agree with you, you know, full heartedly.  Michelle Kuei: I believe the world needs everybody. And so earlier, I talked about the purpose, right? So every single one of us has a purpose. And no matter what gender you are or what identity you choose for yourself, the world needs everybody and everybody has a role in it. There's no exclusion. There's no inclusion. There's just us. There's just we, right? We're all in this together. And however that you decide to serve in this world, it's good because it's a purpose. You're serving your purpose. And that in itself, it's the ultimate goal of what the world needs to be. So no matter what identity that you choose, the world appreciate you. And that's more important. That's the belief that we need in this world. Stephen Matini: Yeah, and probably it's a way of being that we need. I know I call it feminist. I don't know what it is, but gender for sure historically has a huge weight. But it's a more distinctive way of being and showing up in the world with the people, you know, and all that. You know, of all possible directions that your career has taken, you have developed such a fond passion for marketing. Why marketing?  Michelle Kuei: Marketing makes me alive. I think I've been, my personality has always been, I'd like to be with people. I'd like to have conversation with people. So people are my people. And I find all ways to be with people in conversation. And marketing in the core of it is about having conversation. It's about building a relationship. It's about serving that person to exactly what that person needs. And you do that by understanding what that person is going through. And one of the things, I can't remember, it was this week or last week, I was talking about the core of what makes a good marketer or good coach being a good coach. And one of the essence of being a good coach is that you have to have empathy. Empathy is your superpower, both in coaching and both in marketing. Marketing relies on a lot of your empathy. You have to understand what your client is going through or your customer is going through in order to understand and meet what is it that they're looking for, what their need is so that you can create product, you can create services for that person. And so empathy is really your superpower. And I think empathy has been a big lesson for me to learn from my journey when I was very young. After the accident, I spent five years within a rehab center and I was exposed to a lot of different other children, other teenagers who experienced a similar trauma. And back then, we had a group of people who are experiencing polio. Back then in the '70s, there was an outbreak of polio in Taiwan, in Asia country. So a lot of these children, they're having polio. And so when I was exposed and saw what they have to go through, it taught me how to empathize with them. I may not look the same way, but I knew their struggle. I knew that, you know, being, bound on a wheelchair, you cannot reach to the top. And I knew just by interacting with them, I knew what it feels like. And so it was teaching me how to empathize with people who may look different, who feel different. And it taught me to recognize their emotion, their feelings, their limitation, and how I can help them to serve them, to make it easier for them, right? So I learned that skills at a very young age without recognizing that this is empathy. And so I took that lesson later on in life, and I was still practicing empathy along the way. And when I finally got into marketing, I was like, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I need in order to understand what my client is going through. In order to help them to see that your client is experiencing this, how can you position your service to help your clients? And so in other words, I wasn't just teaching them about marketing. I was teaching them how to empathize so that they can create the product and services that they can help their clients. Stephen Matini: We covered so many different things. All of them are really super, super important. If you have to point out, one, that somehow you believe a listeners should pay attention to, what would you say that is? Michelle Kuei: Permission. I think from what we have talked about today, it's really that permission to be vulnerable in a position or a permission to allow yourself, there's going to be days that totally doesn't make your day look great and you feel miserable. So the permission is to give yourself to have that moment, to OK, to put the balloon up, put your potty hat on, and have that pity party, but give you permission also to get into that moment of, I feel bad about myself, but I'm going to put on the time clock. I'm going to allow in the next five minutes to feel miserable. But after that five minutes, I'm going to take off my party hat and move on and think about what is the opportunity here? What do I need to learn? But permission is important because it allows us to reset and it allows us to bounce back. So just like the coil, you need to stretch, but you also need to allow it to go back to its original state so you can stretch further. Stephen Matini: Michelle, you are, to me, you are gigantic. So you feel huge. You feel immense. Thank you so much for all these insights and for your energy. I absolutely love it. Thank you.  Michelle Kuei: Thank you so much for having me. Even though this is our second time meeting each other, but I feel like I know you forever. Stephen Matini: Me too.

When we constantly prioritize others' expectations over our needs, we become mentally and emotionally exhausted, leaving little room to focus on what truly matters to us. In this episode of Pity Party Over we explore how embracing authenticity and purpose can lead to both personal and professional freedom, even in the face of fear and uncertainty. Our guest today is Selena Blackmore, an intuitive life and transformation coach who helps individuals reconnect with their life purpose. Selena spent nearly 20 years in the corporate world, constantly seeking new challenges. However, she ultimately felt unfulfilled by the persistent politics and lack of connection to her values, realizing her calling lay elsewhere. Having a personal conversation about meaning, freedom, and legacy is crucial, whether we decide to be independent professionals or continue in the corporate world. Being true to ourselves is more than just a career move—it’s a lifelong path of growth that helps us stay aligned with who we truly are. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: My first question for you is actually something that I see in a lot of people's eyes when I talk to them, you know, to professionals. At some point, you decided to become an independent professional. So how was the transition for you? What inspired you to make the leap? Because that's something a lot of people would love to do, but somehow never bring themselves to the point of doing it.  Selena Blackmore: Because I spent almost 20 years in corporate and a great company, and I moved around a lot in that space. So I had, I call it a luxury of having a very big company where even within that company, I could almost sort of redefine myself. So I would purposely, every two to three years, would go out and look for something different, something new, something I hadn't done before. I have, I would call probably a fairly I don't have low attention spans the right way, but I get bored quite quickly. So I get someone that I like learning and I like doing new things. So I felt like if I was in a job for two, three years, and I kind of I feel like I'm there now, I wouldn't kind of stay with it and be like, OK, let's just, you know, let's just enjoy the ride. I'd be like, no, I need to go and push myself out somewhere else. And it wasn't really like a conscious decision, I'm now going to set up my own company. I always knew since, you know, very early on that at some point I wanted to be independent, self-employed, and go into that direction. But I'd always thought it would be later in life when my children were older, etc. And it was just things that happened. So my position basically was there was a reorg. My position didn't exist anymore. And I spent three years doing different things in the company. And again, I had a luxury. This was a very it's a very good company, right? So I was allowed to go and try out different things. Again, new areas. And I just felt the same things were coming out that just they weren't aligning with me. So it was just the same things that this thing is still bugging me. You know, it's still the politics, or it's still this, or it's still that. And there was just a moment when I was like, you know, why not just go for it? And when I decided to make the move, I didn't have a big plan. It wasn't like I had a detailed business plan. I hadn't got it all figured out. It was very much a hard decision of this is try. What's the worst that can happen? I guess I kind of went into it thinking, you know, worst case scenario, if it doesn't work out, I can just go get a job again. And I just knew I didn't want to stay in that company. So I just thought, well, let's go. Let's go try. And I have to admit that I am a bit of a risk taker, so I am someone that probably does take risks in life. I think I also just had a sense of trust. It will work itself out. Or even if it doesn't, that's also okay. So I kind of went in feeling kind of open to however it turns out. Stephen Matini: Back at the time, did you sense that there was something missing from your corporate life that you needed to find that somewhere else?  Selena Blackmore: Absolutely. I think someone said beautifully, becoming independent is like the biggest journey of personal growth disguised as work or disguised as a job. And I think that's really true. I think what I was missing in my corporate world was the connection to me. So I was very lucky towards the end of that time. I was working with leadership development, so I was getting more closer to the work, I think, that was more attuned to me naturally. But I think I was just missing where I could really feel my values connecting. So, you know, my purpose in life is to serve others and support others. And I was kind of missing that I didn't really feel I was being able to do that. Or it was it felt superficial. It didn't feel real. And I think what I was missing sometimes was, even though the purpose we were working towards was was a great purpose, a fantastic purpose, I felt people were losing sight of that. So there was a lot of, you know, people got lost in the politics and wanting and looking good and all that stuff that goes on in these big companies and kind of lost sight of the purpose of why are we here? And I think I just got to a point and said, no, I want to I really want to work with people and companies and businesses that are really aligned with their purpose and still have that clearly, clearly in front of them, because it just matches more with my my values as well. Stephen: You pointed out two things that sometimes don't go hand in hand, which is you have the politics, the organizational politics and the ability of people to live their values and purpose. In your opinion, if you had stayed, hypothetically, is there something that could have been done in order to create a more authentic, driven purpose environment? Or this is just a dream that is impossible in organizations?  Selena Blackmore: So for me personally, absolutely. I think where I am now, and this is actually also the kind of work that I'm now engaging in, that I think that when you are, you can be aligned with your purpose and kind of living your truth, it matters where you are, but you can do that in different environments. And I think at the time, I wasn't a space where I knew how to do that, or maybe I didn't, you know, have the right people around me there to kind of help me find how to do that. But I think, absolutely, I think finding your truth or finding your purpose may change where you're working, or it may shift, you know, exactly what you're doing, but it also may not. Because I think a lot of it's around really, when you feel that sense of being comfortable with what you do, and it's really like, you know, this is really me. This is why I wake up every morning, and I feel super excited about being me and going out there and doing work and helping others, whatever my purpose is, just that energy in itself when you're bringing it into the space you're going in, whatever that work looks like, or that job or that career, I think you can absolutely be in your purpose. From my experience with working with a lot of people and also my space of coaching, I think people feel, as you said, this is often a conflict. And I think it can be brought together. Obviously, you can only own you, right? So I think you can decide how much work you're going to put in into yourself and how you want to show up. You're going to have less control on what's going on outside. So I think you also have to be okay with you're not going to be able to maybe, you know, you can't change the other people. You're not going to necessarily change the organization. But I'm of course a big believer in like, you know, the ripple effect. So if you start showing up differently, if you start maybe bringing different energy into meetings or how you connect with people or how you lead, that will have a ripple effect on others as well. Stephen Matini: Have you ever seen the level of authenticity in your corporate experiences in someone that openness? Have you ever witnessed it? Selena Blackmore: Yes, I have. After a couple people there was so there was one person I was working in in leadership development. He was heading that group. It was so different to anything else I'd experienced in that organization. And I had moved a lot. And the organization had also transitioned a lot since when I started, also in terms of how, you know, people were being treated and how people, the expectation of how people should show up. But he just said what he thought and shared his truth. And what I specifically really respected, that he didn't care whether it was the CEO of the company, or it could have been the cleaning lady. So the way he showed up and shared his truth, he had no, he wasn't he was anti-political. So there was no like, Oh, you can't say that to that person. He was like, Well, I mean, why not? Why is that person worth more than this person? And he really lived that. He really lived that. It's hard to be like that. I think it's not easy. So I think, again, as a person to really show up like that, yeah, it takes a lot of inner strength and inner work. And I think also the awareness that, you know, you're not necessarily going to be liked by everyone. And I think it's letting go of the sense of, you know, this is going to be challenging for some people and being OK with that. And again, he wasn't he was quite open about I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to create change. I'm here to ask the difficult questions and to kind of, you know, put the elephant on the table and kind of be like, what are we talking about? And I really admire that. He's still one of my big inspirations in that company. Stephen Matini: What you just said, it must be probably the main reason why I am an independent professional, because of the luxury, the beauty of being able to create a space with people in which you can be yourself. In all these years, working with different so many people, thousands of people, from CEOs, managers, you name it, I haven't seen a single time, a moment in which people with me in that some sort of sacred space didn't feel comfortable to be themselves. And I love that because it's a space of possibilities in which people can really think. And fun enough, sometimes in that space, I have people that normally within the organization may have some difficulty of being transparent, but then when you create that bubble, people can be that. So I really wish that there was some easier way for everyone because people really suffer tremendously as a result of politics.  One thing that I often investigate with people as you do is their sense of purpose. So it seems to be a gigantic question, like, you know, the meaning of life. How would you make it simpler for people? What would it be a first step to get a sense of who the heck you are? What is your purpose?  Selena Blackmore: I'm actually going to share something that I just an experience I had yesterday. So I had a beautiful experience yesterday, where I was with a group of women, and it was kind of a mixed sort of art manifestation, sort of vision purpose workshop. So basically, you had you had a beautiful dinner, and then you kind of did a painting that represented just what you said, kind of what is your purpose? What's your goal for the year or your purpose? The lady that was running it, she the way she got us to introduce ourselves, which I found very profound, is she said, I want you to answer the question, Who are you? Sounds like a simple question. But then she said, but I don't want you to use your name. I don't want you to say, you know, how old you are, you know, how many kids do you have? Are you married? What is your job? What are your hobbies? Nothing that defines you kind of that we associate, we associate we create these associations, right? Well, I'm, you know, I'm single with three kids, I'm married with two, or, you know, I do this job. So leave that all away. And who are you as a person? Who are you? So who is who is Stephen? Who is Selena? And it was such a profound question and really made me sit back and I think I was like, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me to basically describe myself like that. And it's a very simple question. And I think starting with simplicity to really start thinking about who am I? Who am I as a person without all the external stuff going on is a fantastic way to really start doing exactly what you said, to really start checking into ... who am I? And then I think leading on to that is something also like, how do I want to show up for myself? I think again, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, particularly within kind of the coaching space, a lot of people, you know, want to focus up like, how do I show up as a partner? How do I show up as a parent? How do I show up as work, you know, to my family, to my friends? And these are all great questions, right? I think these are all good things to be thinking about. But I think a lot of us don't start with how do I want to show up for myself? And really kind of consciously kind of tapping into thinking about who am I? And then how do I want to show up for me? Because would you start starting from there, that's going to then automatically or the other spaces where you're going to show up, it's going to be much easier. That's going to be more in flow, because you're going to know who you are, what your essence is, you know what your purpose is. And then automatically, that will start flowing and also how you show up. It's actually a really hard question to answer, but it can be as simple as asking a question. And then, you know, you might not know. You might be like, actually, I have no idea who I am. And that's great, right? That's also good. Then, you know, but it started that process, you know, in your head and your heart. So you might then, you know, on that run or in the shower or drawing a paint, whatever you do to maybe connect in with yourself, you may then be thinking about that and then have an aha moment to be like, Oh, maybe it's not. I'm also a big fan of journaling. I don't know if you journal, Stephen? Stephen: I do.  Selena Blackmore: Oh, that's fantastic. I love journaling. I've made it really my morning, my morning ritual. And I think journaling is also a great way, right? So even just writing things down that come up to you can help you sort of really think about these kind of questions. Who am I? How do I want to show up? Even asking yourself that question every morning and writing it down. And again, no judgment. There's no right or wrong. It's just what feels right to you. And then maybe things come up that you never expected or never thought about. And that's the exciting part of getting to know yourself, right, and kind of transforming. And I mean, I'm 43 now. I'm turning 44 this year, and I feel like I'm only really starting to get to know who the real me is. And I spent a long part of my life thinking or pretending to be something maybe wasn't quite me. And now I'm like, oh, no, actually, this is actually what I think I really am. And I think it's a lifelong journey. I think until we our last breath, I think it's the journey of getting to know yourself is one of the best investments I think you can do in terms of relationships that I think will have huge impact on all the other relationships you have in your life. Stephen Matini: When you made this commitment of being really authentic with yourself and decided to go, you know, to be independent professionals, what was the reaction of people around you where they are supported, where they are critical? Did you get crap? Selena Blackmore: So there was a mix. And I should maybe add that when I made the choice to go independent, that the timing was really off, right? I was quite freshly divorced. I had I have three children, a single parent, and the divorce was financially not good for me. So I was kind of kind of financially starting against the timing really wasn't good. It wasn't like, this is a smart financial, smart decision to kind of go out there and kind of put your family into risk. So there were some people that were basically like, are you sure? I think I didn't get I didn't get crap from anyone. I think no one was anywhere to my face. I put it that way. I don't know what they said behind closed doors. There probably were quite a few stuff like, Oh my God, what is she doing? So I did have people that were just you could tell like, are you sure? Again, the company I left, it's a well known company. I've been there a long time. The pay is very good. You know, I have really good paid jobs. So I was losing leaving, in theory, something very secure to go to something completely not secure and quite random. And there was kind of no plan to that. So there are definitely people that were just like, what are you doing? People closest to me, and one of my oldest friends we've known since like 13, she was probably I always say she's my biggest cheerleader. So she was definitely like, Oh my God, this is fantastic. You've got this. This is so right.  And during all my time now, and I think as you know, any any person who's taken the leap to be independent, you know, it's not all fairy lights and sunshine, right? It's a bit of a rollercoaster. So you're going to have good times, you're going to have lots of good times. And she's a fantastic cheerleader. So there's been times when I've been like, oh, I'm not doing this anymore. This is too hard. And she's like, no, you've got this and hang in there. And I think having cheerleaders in your life is super important. You need to have those people. You don't need to have like a whole like a whole cheerleading team, but just having one or two is super critical. And Germany was interesting. So a lot of people were just kind of said, oh, you're very brave. So it's kind of like you're a little bit crazy, or you're very brave, or you're kind of both. But I was interested. A lot of people were actually quite positive in terms of like a bit of a sense of, as you mentioned before, like, oh, wow, I'd love to do that. Like, that's almost a little bit, I'd love to do that, but I don't feel safe enough to do that. Or people often share their ideas like what they'd like to do. But yeah, but, you know, the kids are small, or I'd be nervous about, you know, how it would work. So it was more positive than negative. Again, to my faith. What I've also learned is particularly when you're working on new ideas and they're not quite formed yet, to be a little bit careful with who you share them with as well. I think that's something I've learned, you know, sharing with your cheerleaders, right? Because they're going to be like, yeah, absolutely, you know, go for it. This sounds amazing, or it sounds great, but maybe adjust, they'll be honest with you. But be careful, you don't share with too many, because I think people can also pull you down energetically or also be kind of like, Oh, are you sure? And, you know, and yeah, if it's not going well, maybe just look for another job or, you know, do this. And that's not necessarily what you're needing to hear. So I've learned to be more careful with who I share certain things with. And yeah, definitely get make sure you have a couple of cheerleaders in there because we all need them and do it yourself as well, right? So I always then try and be a cheerleader for those around me too. Because I personally think anyone can set up their own business or become an entrepreneur or do their own thing. And interesting, if you look at it generationally, I think there are more and more younger people that are actually doing this, right? So I think it's the younger generations coming through seem to just have more of this sense of trust or like, you know, I'm going to try it and see what happens. And I think, yeah, maybe people more in my or our generation are still like quite risk adverse. But yeah, I mean, I think anyone can. I think you have the vision and you have the motivation and your hearts in it. I mean, why not? I think that's when we start going out, distracting ourselves, right? We start going out, finding external things to try and feel because it gives you that feeling of there's always something missing. And I think I mean, I did that, right? There's that sense of something missing, and then you'll distract yourself with working too much or, you know, doing excessive, like people that, you know, do excessive sport or whatever it is you do, you know, or, you know, change relationships a lot. You'll find your search for external ways of trying to fill that gap, because it's not a nice feeling, right? And at some point, you might realize that nothing's going to fill that gap, right? Because that gap has to be filled by you and you looking inwards and kind of connecting. When you lose a lot in a short space of time, it makes you realize, you know, everything is just so in the moment, right? What we have now could disappear very, very soon. I mean, I lost my dad when I was 25, so I lost him quite young. And then I had a period when I kind of, you know, separated with my husband, worked myself into a burnout, got divorced. And then I actually also lost my mom when I was five months pregnant with my daughter. And she was similarly she was my rock. Like, she was my she was my everything. I mean, my mom was literally like my best friend. She was in and out of my house all my time. You know, she was helping my kids. And I lost like this, this like rock in my life. While I was five months pregnant, she never got to meet my daughters. I have two boys and a girl. She never got to meet my daughter. And, you know, there's a point when you're like on your knees, you're just like, this is I can't, you know, and you can take it because I also believe that life puts obstacles in front of you that you can deal with. But and there are opportunities for growth. But at the moment, it's really hard. But when you get through that, when you grow through that, I do believe it takes away a lot of that sense of being scared of maybe smaller things, because when you've kind of lost everything that defines you, and I remember when I was in the burnout, and I felt like I failed on my marriage, I failed at my job, everything that I felt defined me as a person, and you're left with nothing. You're like stripped bare. It's very humbling. It's a humbling experience, right, where you really need to think about, okay, well, what am I then? I think that was really the first one of the first nudges when I had to start thinking about, well, who am I? You know, if I'm not, you know, this family unit that I wanted to be, I'm not the successful corporate person that I thought I was, and that kind of taking that step back or being forced to take that step back and reevaluate who am I is humbling. But it does, as you said, help you to maybe take more high risk decisions later on, because you're like, well, I've lost it all. So as you said, what's the worst that can happen? And I think, you know, I'm the most grateful every day for my health, because I think health is just the utmost thing we can have. And for the health of my children and my loved ones, and everything else is just cherry on the top, right? I mean, if we're healthy, if we can wake up every day and we're healthy, we can move our bodies, then everything else is, it's the sprinkles and the fairy dust that adds to our lives. Stephen Matini: And even now, when I think about what is the worst possible thing that it can possibly happen to me, whereas before, it was a lot of fear. And now I think, oh, wow, that would be really, really hard, but I'm going to live it. I'm going to experience it no matter what that is, you know, because that's really, that really is what makes me alive. So I think for me, it was a lot of trying to avoid, you know, that pain. And it's something you cannot avoid because inevitably life brings you that. So ... Selena Blackmore: yeah, and then it's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that because it just makes me think of when you said we're trying to avoid pain. And it's also a lot of it's what we have in our heads, right? So we create this, we create this. I'm going to say fake reality. And I know because I used to do this all the time. I mean, when I was a child, I was this huge worry. I'd worry about anything and everything that could ever happen. I had quite high anxiety as a child. And we create these like stories in our head about everything that's going to happen. And we tend to default to the negative, right? So, you know, you get an email from your boss that just said, oh, can we meet? You know, can we meet in half an hour? And you don't have a meeting plan. And automatically, I had to go, have I done something wrong? Why do they want to see me? Well, you know, oh my God, have I not done something? And you go to all the things instead of like, you know, my manager wants to check in with me. And I'm really looking forward to it. So I feel we default very quickly to the negative and create these stories about, you know, all these terrible things that can happen, I still catch myself doing this. And then after you're like, Oh, okay, you know, it wasn't. And I personally say, I find it's actually really hard work to consciously like stop yourself from doing that, to really work in, you know, being in the present and be like, No, I'm here now, because the future is not is not reality, right? Because it hasn't happened. It's just in our heads of what we've created. This avoidance of pain or, you know, being being left, you know, the sense of lack of something. Again, it's not real. It's just what we are telling ourselves with this story we're creating in our head. And I think we're finding ways of whether it's, you know, through mindfulness, meditation, or whatever, journaling, lots of different ways of really helping yourself to be more in the present. I'm a big believer in breath work. So you know, kind of like breathing. If you're feeling, as you said, you said beautifully, you learn to feel more in your body. Where am I feeling anxiety? Is it my chest, my heart, my stomach, and breathe into that? And that can that can have huge shifts. I mean, just it can be simple things. I think people sometimes think, Oh, I need to meditate every day for half an hour, and I don't have time for that. You don't, you don't. I don't have time to meditate every day for half an hour. But it can be just literally sitting and breathing for like a minute, 30 seconds, breathing into the ocean and then letting that go and then being like, OK, now I'm ready. And I'm going to go on. And as he said, I'm going to go forth into it. And I think releasing that sense of all that worry in your head, finding spaces where you can connect to you, I think is such a pivotal practice in embracing, you know, who you are. And as you said, going through the emotions, because they're all there for a reason. I mean, fear is a good thing, right? We have fear for a reason. I mean, fear, we have fear millions of years ago. We need to have fear to survive, right? We need to when we had to run away from the Sabertooth tigers and, you know, whatever else is trying to eat us, basically. So I've had to do a lot of work with embracing my fear and basically saying to my fear, thank you for being there. You've kept me safe in situations that could have been dangerous for me. You've kept me safe and I could have, you know, done stupid things or hurt myself. But there are going to be times when I just don't need you. So again, it's I think the sense of and I love how you describe it, letting all the emotions be a part of you, because as soon as you reject something, the way the universe usually works, it's going to throw it back in your face, right? I mean, it's like, even you drive, I don't want to have fear or I don't want to feel pain. It's like, yeah, okay, we know you don't, but you're going to get it. And then usually what happens is that you're going to attract more of it until you decide to have a look at it. So learning to love all your emotions goes back to what we discussed is, you know, who you are and showing up as yourself and loving yourself, right? I think falling in love with yourself more, which is, I think, again, something we're not used to doing. It's really hard for us to love ourselves, truly. And something, this is my lifelong mission. I think I will be doing until the end is really working on, you know, loving myself and loving me. Stephen Matini: You know, if you can be of any consolation, because you are still so young, bear in mind that when you pass 50, that feeling becomes even deeper. Yeah. Selena Blackmore: Oh, so I'm excited now. So now I can look forward to that. Thank you. Stephen Matini: Yeah, like, you know, when I when I turned 40, I thought, oh boy, I thought I knew something at 30 now, you know, and it was really in 40s, I think a wonderful. But now, you know, my 50s, it's almost like you tear apart another layer, another layer, another layer, like everything, anything you're saying, it becomes even much more so, you know, so you'll see.  Selena Blackmore: I'm excited now. Thank you. You've helped me look forward to me turning 50. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because if I think back when I turn 30, you kind of think, oh, I've got to all fit it out now, right? And you're just like, no, you don't. But it's funny how you go through those stages of thinking like, you know, you've got you have this image in your life, image of how you want your life to be, and you set it up that way. And then, yeah, you realize that it's maybe not. And that's good. I think it's good. It's part of your part of the learning curve, right, of experience yourself in different stages. Stephen Matini: It does. And for me, being free is such an important thing. Being free means a lot of stuff. It means exactly what you said, like, have a sense of who I am, enjoy my life. And as time goes by, I do see the freedom becoming more and more and more. So I think it's a beauty probably of aging. Certain things, unfortunately, you just do not know when you're younger. But as you age, you have that. It's difficult for all of us to age, but the understanding and the, I don't know, awareness that you have, it becomes so much richer for sure. As a result of all this transformation, how do you define success these days?  Selena Blackmore: Very differently to probably actually even five years ago or a couple of years ago, even actually no, even since to when I started my business, it's changed, evolved a lot. I think for me, success now is being able to really live my truth. So do follow my purpose, be able to live that, be able to do that every day, and kind of make that also how I earn my money. So kind of, you know, make that into also how I attract abundance into my life. And also, for me, success is, and you touched on it. I think having a having a clearer sense of what's really important to me in life, that makes sense. So I think when I was younger, I was probably I haven't been super driven by money. Money's not been super motivated for me, but I think I was much I was used to be more driven by kind of position and role. And I definitely have, you know, I was quite driven about where I wanted to go career wise. And I think now it's one of my I say my biggest luxury I have now is time, like time has become so important to me. You know, time I have with my children, time I have with my friends, time I have with me. It's like I spent a long time of my life where I put myself really far back behind everyone else. And I feel now I'm really starting to change that balance. There needs to be a balance, right? So just time is a huge definition of success for me. And as you said, you know, the sense of freedom. So I feel it's a huge luxury that I can have time for me. I'm not in this kind of nine to five space where I have to be somewhere and take part in seven hours of meetings a day. But I really can, you know, choose the people I want to work with, choose the spaces I want to work with, work in, and just be authentic. Yeah, be authentic to me, live my truth, be authentic to me. And in that also could follow my purpose to serve, to serve others. And time, yeah, time is a huge definition of success for me now, because it's a huge luxury. When you're in the hamster wheel of work, you underestimate it because you're just kind of in it. And once you step out, and I think that was a big thing also, when I have my burnout, is once you're out of it, all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, wow, oh, there's something else. This is also kind of cool. I think it's something that I still see, particularly from a lot of my friends and social circle there, a lot of them are both working parents and with children and, you know, jobs that take quite a lot out of them. And there's always this constant sense of stress and rush and this and that. And I feel really privileged that I've been able to step back out of that and just give myself more space, give my family more space, give those around me more space. Because again, it goes back to that, how do I want to show up? And if I want to show up as being true and present for people, and if I'm constantly stressed and constantly running from here and there and there, you know, I'm not going to show up with the best version of me. Stephen Matini: When people, our listeners are going to listen to this episode, if there's someone that feels not quite authentically herself, you know, feels a sense of misalignment. Where would you say they should pay attention to? Where should they start in order to create the better alignment? Selena Blackmore: I think it's a very individual journey. And I think that's what I find so kind of exciting about working with people is that people are very different stages or very different spaces. And I think it's also very important, as you know, with the coach, you know, you need to really pick them up where they're at, right? There's no point going out there and telling, "Okay, you need to do all this big stuff?" And they're just not there yet. I mean, as I said, you can start with simple things. If someone's already started asking themselves the question, or they've already noticed, you know, something doesn't feel right, and they've already started asking themselves the question, what is it? You know, what we talked about earlier, who am I? How do I want to show up? They've already kind of planted that seed. I don't, do you know, do you know Gabby Bernstein? Stephen Matini: No. She's written several books and a lot of work around manifestation, and she talks about the power of planting a seed. And I love this analogy. So it's almost the second you kind of start putting that out there, planting that seed in you, and again, as you mentioned, not just from in your head, but also in your heart, in your body, in your emotions, that's starting to create momentum. And I think it's like starting, if you spark that seed and start to create that momentum of energy, you're already doing it. And that's why I think a lot of people underestimate you're already starting to do the work. People often feel like they need to fill in a form, or they need to do something, or they need to like, you know, go to a workshop or do X, Y, Z to start the process. But the process starts from when you've actually started recognizing, I need to change something, or something doesn't feel right, or, you know, every time this happens, I feel this thing, or I'm getting sick all the time when I do this, for example, that's already putting momentum into the energy of your inner journey, right, to recognize, what do I need to do? And then I think to take it from there, it can be a variety of things, right? It can be array of beautiful, wonderful coaches, therapists, workshops. I'm a great believer in also when you sow the seed, kind of putting that energy out there and asking for what needs to come to me to come to me. So almost rather than worrying about, okay, but what coach should I take? And what will be the right therapy? Because again, we go back into that head of, what if I don't find the right person?

Dr. Fateme Banishoeib is a visionary in organizational development. She blends analytical prowess with poetic sensitivity to craft innovative work cultures through storytelling and creative methodologies. Dr. Banishoeib underscores the transformative power of cultivating empathy, care, and creativity within workplace environments. She highlights how facilitating open discussions enables teams to tap into diverse perspectives and insights, leading to more innovative solutions and inclusive decision-making processes. When leaders shift from focusing solely on metrics to considering employees' emotional and psychological needs, workplace satisfaction, resilience, and engagement improve. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Like me, you have two different cultures essentially that have inspired your life. And then both of us have moved around quite a bit. So when people ask you, where's home, what do you say? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't actually have an answer to that. And I have to tell you something. I have to confess a secret, which is not that of a secret. One of the reason why I have traveled so much I lived everywhere in the world is actually because I don't know where home is. I've come to the conclusion that home is a feeling is not a place. And when I find myself into that feeling or when I can recreate that feeling, then I know that I'm at home. I've been confused most of my life about where home is. I was interviewed. There is a video in which I actually talk about home and where home is, and on top of my bed actually have a, a beautiful painting of the world. And Maya Angelou said what she said something like, freedom is being at home everywhere. It is true. And it comes with a price. So I don't know where home is. Home is wherever my cat is. Stephen Matini: So in terms of your professional choices, you know, growing up kind of understanding where I should go with my professional career, how much these two backgrounds that you have have influenced the way you think? Fateme Banishoeib: Work or career wise is a similar journey. I've embraced the same journey as I embrace like traveling and looking for, for home everywhere till I made home for myself. The same happened for my career. I think in our first conversation I mentioned to you that I was born a highly artistic child, but of course art is not a job or is considered a frivolous hobby. So my parents were, every time I would say, I want to be a poet, I want to be a designer, they were like, no, no, no, no . As soon as I became a little bit, you know, older that I couldn't understand, they were like no, no, no, no, that's not really a job. What do you really want to do to earn a living? And another thing I would say is I want to be a crazy scientist. And I literally use those words, crazy scientist. So actually they convinced me that art is not a job and in some way they are right in the sense that to be an artist is a way of being. And this is what I do currently now, and I can talk about that a little bit more. So I became a scientist and I became a scientist really for the deep love have for science and understanding how we work as a human being. And also for the love of curing people that I've always been passionate about curing people since I was a little child. I mean, there are memories and stories in the family of me. Every time I would hear someone saying, oh, I haven't headache or whatever, I cut my finger. I would just run and I would make up something and I would create something to cure them. And I've said that. And I've also written about, in my first book in the Whisper, I literally wrote this word like I became a scientist to cure people and wrote poetry to save my life. And this has happened to me literally what saved my life as being really rediscovering poetry in my life. Once I have become aware of that artist within me again that was just there maybe dormant and and sleep as I was, you know, busy with my corporate career, I actually start seeing the world with very different highs. And I started wanting to be all I am and not just the scientist or just the artist actually I get equally upset or equally triggered when someone refers to me only as the scientist or you know, the executive, the mentor or the artist. I really want to be all of them because I am and all of them. And I've spent the past years in my life trying to bring harmony and an equilibrium between all of these facets. And that's how I redesigned my career. That's when I founded Renew Business. And when I decided that there was place for all of I am, I didn't need to, you know, take a break from my corporate job to paint or I didn't need to whatever. To me, there is no switch. We can only be all of who we are. And that has changed not only what I do, but also how I perceive life by that, how I can support or help others. For example, there are occasions in which someone calls for my help for very specific or technical tasks. However, I do not forget that I'm an artist. I do not forget there is border within me. I do not forget that sensitivity. I do not forget that way of seeing things. And one of the remark that people always make is like, do you see those things? How do you come? And to me it's surprising because it is like why isn't the same for you? And after all, I actually really think that the quality of what we do, whatever it is, that what we do depends on the quality of who we are. I'm trying to be everything I am. Stephen Matini: A lot of people can distinctively perceive it. There's more sides to themselves. They have multiple interests, multiple talent. And somehow so many people feel compelled that I have to choose, you know, whichever route. And that creates a lot of stress to people because it always feels, as you said, what about all the other parts of myself? When did you realize that your, who comprised the scientist and the artist? Fateme Banishoeib: Well, I've always known what I did not know and took me longer. Also because society and the su and education don't help us understand that we can have different interests and we, if we want, we can pursue all of them or some of them. I mean, we live in a society and an education that really pushes us to specialize in something. And there are people who are very happy with doing that. They only have a passion or something. So it's a, so-called like growing vertically or in a, or specializing, going deep into something. And there are people like me who can go deep in different sectors, in different areas, in different backgrounds. What I actually like to think is that we can act as a bridge between domains that apparently look like so separate and so different very often actually make this example which helps people understand especially when they ask me like, but what the chemist and the poet have in common. And I always say them, well, the seeking the, this love for seeking truth. When I was a chemist in the lab and now when I write poems, that's what I seek. And there is a peculiar, maybe a little bit pot poetic metaphor that is brilliant alchemy is combining the elements that could be material elements, molecules, atoms or experience feelings and making something that didn't exist before. And in that I only act as a bridge. So I've always known, I just had to unlearn what society, people or conditioning had told me that it was not possible and create it, make it possible for me. But I've always known Stephen Matini: Was there an event or something that happened in the past that this somehow pushed you to realize that meaning you have always known, but then a moment you made the decision to fully embrace this, who it was, was a result of something to happen. Fateme Banishoeib: My book, the Whisper knows exactly what I will be saying right now because I actually wrote it in the book. It was few years back out of the blue. I decided while I was still in my corporate job and I wasn't even thinking about writing or anything artistic at that moment, I decided out of the blue I wanted to go to a writing retreat. And that was a particularly challenging moment in my life. It was very tough. I'd moved to a new country. I didn't have any network. And there were several events in my life that actually had tested me quite a lot, really out of this desire of taking a break and just do not think about how crazy and chaotic my life was. I booked myself into a writing retreat. It was not too far from where I was, just out of the blue was a synchronicity. One of those synchronicity, even though, you know, Karl says, and even Julia Cameron said, the synchronicity do not exist. Coincidence do not exist. So I booked myself into that. And I remember this was very distinctive at the opening of the retreat, the facilitator asked us, write something nobody knows about you. And this became after the opening line of my book without thinking, I just came out of me without any talks or consciousness about it. And I wrote, I run a manufacturing plant and I hate it. But I had not realized that at that specific moment I wrote it. But it was like, okay, still foreign to me as a concept. And then the retreat facilitator asked us, can you please read out loud what you have written? I remember the face of everyone when I read what I had written and my realization at that moment of the shock, not only me or everyone because I had to read it out loud. And in the meantime we were sitting in circle. I saw the shock in everyone's face. Well, I think they were more shocked by the fact that I wasn't the writer in that moment. They learned what was my job. I mean, we had no time to, you know, to introduce one another. That line became an unstoppable flow of poem. So actually I've written 200 pages of poems in one go. It came out as a stream, as a flow. And it took me a while to process and understand what came out of me. But that was the distinctive moment in which things were somehow put in motion. Of course, it took me a few years first to understand what I had written second to decide what I was going to do after I came into that awareness and then create a word, create a space for me to contain that multitudes. Stephen Matini: And now you bring the poet, you bring the crazy scientist, you bring the healer, you bring it to organizations. And so when you work with organizations, how do they react to your approach? Fateme Banishoeib: Okay, first of all, I have to say that when I'm called in, people know exactly what to expect. So there is this openness. I wouldn't be able to do my job in the way I do it if there was resistance. Of course people are like curious, they still want to experiments and then try. But when they call me and say, can you come and I help us or or me they're open to try something that maybe they haven't tried before. What I notice all the time is that there is deep desire of finding a space where someone or a team or is truly listened. There is this deep desire and I understand why. I mean we don't listen to others because we are too busy checking our phone, answering 20 mail or in the meantime talking, I'm talking especially specifically in corporate environments. We are always in the middle of something. Even when we are having a one-on-one with someone that is the phone ringing, the, the the sound, the notification of email comes. So we are not really listening. We are missing clues. And there is this deep desire from everyone, every single one to be listened. So first of all, I create the condition, first of all for me to listen. Without me listening to everything, I wouldn't be able to propose anything. But then for the organization to listen to itself or themself, because that's really missing. There is another element that is always missing, expressing being free and being safe to express what's going on inside. I mean, and I say this very often, neuroscience tells us specifically that first we feel, then we think and only afterwards we act and we completely up and neglect the feeling aspect. In best case scenario, we notice what we are feeling and we dismiss it and we push it and we repress it. Most of the time we don't even have a word to express what we are feeling. So there is actually a thinking and an action or a decision making that is happening completely in the blind without knowing what we are feeling. And when we don't know what we are feeling and we don't have a way to express it, forget about it, knowing what everyone else's feelings. So it's literally impossible. It's literally impossible to think clearly and act effectively. First of all, there is no such a thing as act effectively. But anyway, that, that's my personal opinion. So it's like trying to keep an equilibrium on two legs rather than, so we have a three-legged stool and we are trying to sit and trying to keep, you know, the equilibrium without using one one of the legs. And then of course then we blame the overthinking, the action taken without knowing the background. Yes, but the, what we don't know is not data. We are over flooded by data. What we don't know is the feeling. And even when we know we don't have a way to express it, most of the time we go into shaming or oppressing or denying judging in a series of things. So that's the the second element I always bring. So is the listening, then the space to express, then it becomes clearer. And so I asked again as a bridge, as I said before, for people to walk that bridge and go in the direction they really want to go or an organization in direction, they really, they really want to go. But people will say in a more informed way, I would say in a more aligned way because it's about aligning. How do we align if we are blindsided by something? So this is what happens and it can happen in different contexts, in different modalities, but this is more or less what happens in, you know, in a generic way. Stephen Matini: What is it about feelings and emotions that when we finally let them be or at least listening to them, somehow everything becomes clear. Why does it work that way? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know why, but I have a feeling there is this thing, and I mentioned this word, there is truth coming in. Once we realize and we are free to express it or we even find a way to express, and when I say express, I don't say necessarily using words, but most of the time because it's not linear, it's not logic, it doesn't involve the logic side of the brain very often is an image, a sensation, a sound and something. So we find a way to use art and is not really used in the terms of exploiting. But really to tap into art, to be able to see, okay, what's the that, what's the fabric? What's the extension of whatever I'm feeling or whatever we are feeling, what's our, what are the boundaries? So once we have clarity what we are feeling, we find the courage, we really find the courage to look in the eyes. So we know for example, why tension is Avis. We cannot deny it anymore. And once we know it's very easy to, or maybe not easy, but simpler to talk about it, I've seen over and over again that's even in the worst conflict I had to deal with that when people had found the safety of expressing whatever they were feeling without any judgment and without anyone saying, no, you shouldn't feel that way or you should feel this way or that way is an expression. And when it is an artistic expression, no one can say, no , you can't feel well I feel this way. It's this color, it's this fabric is this shape. No one can say no, it's whatever I'm feeling. Then there is also more space to understand how others are feeling. And that puts us into a dialogue. This is my experience over time. That this possibility to look truth in the eyes and know the truth of why we are in a certain situation or why we are thinking in a certain way or why we are acting in a certain way opens us up to a dialogue. And when we can enter into that space of dialogue, things look very different. Stephen Matini: So feeling is speaking the truth and art is what allows me to speak the truth. Fateme Banishoeib: In a way, yes. But it's more than that. It's not just the ability to express whatever is going on, but it's also an opportunity to make sense of why that is also an opportunity to create with that raw material. 'cause When we can create then we are indeed in a creative mode rather than in a complaining mode. We are already creating without being told or be creative now with that raw material. So it's more than just speaking the truth is creating with it is making meaning, making sense and then transform it. Stephen Matini: So as of today, when you think of the word creativity, when you think of the word art artistry, what is your definition of that? Fateme Banishoeib: So to me, creativity and artistry are two different things. Creativity is really the act of creating words, whatever I have. So I create with what I have, I create with the emotions I create with the glass I create and is innate to all of us. We all have, it is actually being said. And biology say that that is distinctive characteristic of us as a species is creativity. So it's not something that we can associate only to creative professionals or artists. Art to me is the opposite. So creativity is from the inside out with the input or what is I create something I could, art is a little bit different to me is more of if you want also spiritual journey is entering into dialogue with that. And too often we associate art to a specific artwork. So to a specific outcome, I think differently. It's regardless, and this is actually what I'm devoted to, that's why I do the job that I do, is trying to evoke the artist within everyone. It doesn't depend if you write poems, if you paint or at all, it's a way of being and caring of being in that way is a sensitivity, is a capacity to look at the world and enter, participate in the dialogue with the world, with others. So as such is a very inclusive place. Stephen Matini: As you work with organizations using your approach, what have you observed over the years? Me personally, I think that everyone perceives that we are going through some sort of change of paradigm that we, we used to do business that is totally focused on performance, you know, in terms of numbers, results that doesn't no longer fit the purpose. And also we have new generations that that really, really sensitive to specific themes as, you know, work-life balance and diversity and such and such, which were introduced by previous generations, but somehow for them is super important. So yeah. The question to you is what have you observed over the years working with organizations? Fateme Banishoeib: First of all, and I can speak also for myself or what I've seen in myself, and this is similar, so it's not different. I think that what gets laid up, what gets awake is similar because at the end of the day we are all similar and organization is also composed by people. So we shouldn't ever forget that. So what happens is that our empathy gets expanded for different reasons when we pay attention, because to practice art, we need to pay attention. And as we pay attention, we start caring and care is the first thing that actually gets So through empathy, we expand caring, and when we care, things change. I think it was Peter Senge who said that the last space for innovation is care or the ultimate space of innovation is care. And I wrote, I think he said this in the forties or something like that. And it was absolutely right. When we care, everything that we do comes from a different place. So when we think about the reason for innovation, do we know, do we want to innovate for what, what reason? Because we care about whatever a, a problem, a solution or someone and a met needs or something. So care I think is the shift that enables other things to happen. And as a result people measure KPIs. I personally don't, but people who measure KPIs see when we care the metrics, you know, companies are really focused on engagement. Engagement also rises when we care, details don't become a burden. And when we care also we become more courageous. And courage allows us to practice other, you know, skills and virtues because we do have the courage to practice integrity or any of the other values that accompanies. So I think that the really the key element what shifts is care. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the opposite of care Fateme Banishoeib: Entitlement? Stephen Matini: I love that. Do you feel optimistic overall considered, you know, in this crazy world that is filled with this so much apparent negativity, everything you share with me, it feels really hopeful. So you optimistic? Fateme Banishoeib: I don't know what to answer in the sense that of course I have hopes for the world to become a better place for really organizations and workplaces to really care about the wellbeing of the people they work for them also their customer. I really do. And at the same time I also know that the current system is actually serving its purpose, its job. The system as it has been designed is doing its job. So I, there are a lot of people thinking and talking about a para game shift. I also believe that is about time and I see at least counting the number of interactions that I have and the type of talks and chats I have with other people. So I know that there is really so many of us wanting this shift and this paradigm at the same time. And that's why I can't say I'm optimistic or not optimistic. I know that whatever old is there, whatever old system or process there won't go that easily because it's designed this way. And we would also do the same if we were set to go. We wouldn't just say, okay, thank you, goodbye. We would resist that. So I think that before we really see a complete shift, I think tension will arise and which is normal is physiological and it is up to us not to fall backwards when that happens, but creating these spaces for dialogue and participation so that we can together come out of that whatever tension and whatever conflict is in a constructive way and not in a destructive way Stephen Matini: This evening when I go to sleep and also move forward with my life. Out of all the insights you shared with me, is there any concept that I should pay attention to? In particular? Fateme Banishoeib: There is something I always repeat to myself. So I don't know if you would consider in in pondering onto that, that, and I share this with you earlier, that the quality of what we do depends on the quality of who we are and the quality of our being. So maybe it's about time we all focus more on the being than on the doing. I probably doing is what got us into this situation. So maybe it's about time to shift our focus on on to the being. Stephen Matini: One thing that I tell myself, I don't know if it's connected to this, probably it is like anybody else, I have a busy life and it goes way too fast. And I try to remind myself why I do what I do, you know, about everything because everything can become so transactional can become so doing it. Just another thing to reach. And when you do that, you know, have the time to appreciate anything. So I really try to, even if it's super fast, is to stay in the moment as much as I can and to enjoy it as much as I can. And it's something that often becomes normal because I've done it for a while, but very often, particularly when I'm tired and stressed out, I have to make the conscious effort of remembering this is , you know, that's all is and so enjoy it because that's the the whole point. So I try. Fateme Banishoeib: I think that, and of course this is easy for us to say in this moment when we are upset or triggered is less so if we remember that everyone is facing a struggle or a challenge and that maybe we have been at that point in time and how it was the only thing maybe we wanted in that moment was someone listening to us. Maybe things change, but I'm the first one to snap when I'm super upset at something or when I get triggered. So don't take me as an angel. I'm actually quite the opposite . But this capacity of remembering that everyone is facing a struggle, I don't know anyone who is not facing this Stephen Matini: Well. I just wanna say thank you to the crazy scientist, A thank you to the poet for giving me a moment of relief today. Thank you so much for sharing these amazing insights.

Prof. Carolyn Goerner is a leadership and development expert and negotiation guru at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. Prof. Goerner suggests approaching conversations with a sense of curiosity. By being genuinely interested in people’s needs and perspectives rather than solely focusing on our agenda, we can create a more collaborative and less adversarial environment. Prof. Goerner emphasizes that authentic leadership requires ongoing learning and empathy, especially in understanding others' perspectives and needs. This empathy extends into negotiations, where it's crucial to balance our needs with those of others to maintain long-term, positive relationships. In a fast-paced world often dominated by transactions, Prof. Goerner advocates for authenticity. Simple gestures like offering sincere compliments or asking thoughtful questions can transform interactions from empty exchanges into meaningful connections. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So Miss Caroline, welcome to Pity Party Over!  Carolyn Goerner: That’s delightful to be here, Stephen. Thank you. Stephen Matini: It’s my joy. I've been waiting for months for this moment. I'm very, very happy. So listen, the first question that I have is the following and it comes straight from your LinkedIn profile. The first thing that I read is, “Leaders are learners.” So, which is pretty fabulous. It's very short to the point, but I would like to know why you chose that.  Carolyn Goerner: Well, honestly, there's a couple of reasons. The first is that leadership, I don't think, is something that you wake up and you say, I've mastered it. It instead is something that we try to get a little bit better at every day. And so for me, the idea that I don't need any more leadership insight, I don't need any more leadership training, that's just silly. We all do. Nobody ever reaches the point where they're done, right? And then second, I think there's also this point about, if I'm really going to be a good leader, I've got to figure out my context and I've got to figure out my followers. And so I've also got a learning curve around developing empathy for people, making sure that I'm really seeing things from multiple perspectives. And that's a really big piece of it too. So I think people absolutely need to continue to learn about leadership, but then they also need to learn about the people in the context. Stephen Matini: And how did you get into the whole world of negotiation, power, personal influence? Carolyn Goerner: It's interesting. John Lennon said life is what happens when you're making other plans. And that sort of is how my career trajectory went. I actually did my undergraduate degrees in philosophy and religion and went through college on a debate scholarship. So was just not really thinking about professionally what I might do. And I kind of stumbled my way into consulting. And then when I burned out on that, decided I was going to go to graduate school. And my parents are professors of communication. So I went to get my master's degree in rhetoric and communication. So all of that persuasion, influential language really was something I was interested in. But what I very quickly realized is that I am so glad there are people who do that study, but I didn't, it wasn't me. So I did my PhD in Management and Human Resources, and this is really the intersection of all of that coming together. It's my fascination with how we use language and how language affects people, also coupled with really interesting studies in organizational dynamics and organizational politics and how all that plays together. Stephen Matini: Was it an advantage or disadvantage to have two parents who focused on communication growing up? Carolyn Goerner: I think it was definitely an advantage, but I'm blessed to still have my parents living. And my goodness, they are two of my very favorite people. I think it was not the kind of thing where we always sat and scrutinized everybody, but instead there was a lot of very healthy, okay, you need to tell me about that. So I suppose it was a little bit like having parents who are psychologists being very conscious of having good, healthy conversations. Stephen Matini: Because your parents have been such an ... they are an important figure in your life. If they were here with us and I said to them, hey, what is the secret of communication? What would they say in your opinion?  Carolyn Goerner: Empathy. That's what they have taught me. And that's absolutely what I've seen them do with other folks. It's not about me and it's not about whether or not I'm right. It's about whether or not I'm connecting with the other person. And so true communication really comes down to figuring out what the other party is all about and how I can then be a part of the conversation with them in ways that they can understand. One of my favorite local leaders was a gentleman who was representative in Congress for my state for a long time. And he made a comment when he was talking to one of my classes that leaders are supposed to make everyone else in the room comfortable. And I thought, well, do you have to agree with them? That seems a little pandering and silly. And he said, no, my job is not to agree, but I need to make a space where it's comfortable for them to express what they're thinking, and it's comfortable for us to disagree without someone getting defensive. And that just really stayed with me. And it's very consistent with my parents' advice as well, that in order to make good communication happen, you kind of need to get out of your own way. Stephen Matini: Have you ever worked with a client, could be, you know, one-on-one with a team that somehow you noticed they really did not have that at all. They seem not to have that ability, that social awareness.  Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Where I see it a lot is when folks are coming from a technical background and they are making a proposal and they have worked so hard on the data. They have run their numbers 74 times. They have absolutely convinced themselves that this is the way to go. And so they get in front of the decision maker and all they do is discuss all of the reasons why they, the presenter, are convinced. They haven't taken into account anything that the other person might need to hear or how they might need to make the decision. Instead, they're just all in on convincing people that they're right. And that's the thing I see the most often. And I grind when you ask the question because it's actually very typical. I'm lucky enough to work with people who are really smart and really know what they're doing. And the issue is not that they can't justify or find data to justify what they're asking for. It's just the way in which they go about asking that gets them into trouble. Stephen Matini: The thing is a lot of people, particularly around the whole notion of conflict, confrontation, negotiation, they really have a lot of issues, you know, including myself. Like I've learned it to be comfortable, but I used to feel, oh my God, awful about it. Particularly when I was younger, like I would get this block in my throat. I couldn't even speak. So a lot of people, People have all kinds of things like, you know, fear rejections. Also, there are, you know, cultural factors, social factors that come into place. What would you say that is the first thing, the first step to make peace with this so that negotiation is not so scary? What would you do?  Carolyn Goerner: My first piece of advice is get curious. Start figuring out what it is that the other person is asking, where they might be coming from. There's this interesting thing that psychologists call the spotlight effect. And basically what it means is that if I'm feeling uncomfortable, I feel like there's a spotlight shining on me. And it's almost paralyzing, right? I can't move. I'm just hyper-focused on myself. And I feel like everybody else is hyper-focused on me too. And it's really paralyzing. And it's funny that you say the neck thing. My neck actually gets red when that happens. So I totally feel where you're coming from because you'll see the color just kind of start to move up into my face. And so the way around that is to do something that two folks who study negotiations, Yuri and Fisher, who wrote the book, Getting to Yes they call it going to the balcony. And it's the idea that I am somehow going to step back emotionally from the conversation and watch it and watch it unfold and see what I can learn from everything that's going on. And so it's trying to develop a genuine curiosity about where the other person is coming from. And the interesting thing about that is that the minute that I turn my attention on someone else, that spotlight effect starts to minimize. So I always tell people, like for example, if you hate networking, go find someone who looks more uncomfortable than you are and be with them. Because the idea that you're focusing on someone else besides yourself can really help lessen that tension. Stephen Matini: Is this the basis of what you say is empathetic negotiation?  Carolyn Goerner: Absolutely, yes. The whole notion of empathetic negotiation is I need to come in and not just be focused on what I want, but I also need to make sure that the deal allows the other person to walk away feeling good. And that may sound counterintuitive, but you know the times where we're just worried about price and we're never going to see each other again, that happens. You know haggling on the street, it happens when you're maybe buying a car or a moped or something. But it's not necessarily the way that most of our negotiations happen. Usually we'll make a deal and then we have to implement it together. And so the key is, can I understand what this deal means to you as well as to me so that when we're doing the implementation, there's no surprises. And you're not suddenly having buyers or sellers remorse and trying to sabotage the deal or we haven't thought of something. There's still a bridge for us to get back together and figure it out. And so the point of the empathic negotiation piece is that we're really not talking about a negotiation or a conflict resolution as a one-time thing. We're talking about it in the context of a larger relationship. And the focus is really on maintaining the larger and longer relationship. Stephen Matini: What do you do when you get the sense that the other part, your counterpart, doesn't care? Carolyn Goerner: That's the perfect question because that's the downside. And there are a couple of things that you hopefully will have the opportunity to do. The first is just to kind of, for lack of a better phrase, call it out. So you seem really focused on the outcome here and you know not to really care what that means to me. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Why is this so important to you? And sometimes just the direct question will be enough for people to say, oh, it's often the case that someone can be perceived as really being aggressive and really coming in to fight for something. And the reality is they're just scared. You know, they're just reacting defensively or they're coming across in a way that is not what they intend. So that question can call that out if it happens. It can also be the case that especially if you've put yourself in a situation where you're asking questions, you're really trying, and the other person isn't reciprocating, you can very honestly say, you know, I'm trying to do something here that's going to work for both of us. And if that's not something that you're interested in, maybe we shouldn't be talking. And it's not the threat to walk away, but it's legitimately, man, no. You know I just don't want to do business with this person. And so that's where having alternatives become so important. Making sure that when I go into a conversation, I've thought about what I'll do if this doesn't work out. So if I go into this conversation with this person, what happens if it doesn't work? And knowing what that alternative is for me is a real source of power because it tells me, all right, if I can't get something better than my walkaway alternative, well, I don't have to be here, right? The other question, and this one's harder. This is especially hard for entrepreneurs or people who are just kind of starting out their business, is asking yourself, is this going to be a client that I want to keep long term? And of course, generally the first answer is, well, yes, I need the money. But when we really start to think about it, is this the kind of person that you want to be making money with? And so it's kind of the opportunity cost question. What am I giving up by working with this person? Maybe the perfect client is still out there and I can wait for them. Now, again, that's the best possible world. And the real world is more pragmatic than that. I need to keep the lights on and pay the bills. But the idea is to really look at the other person in a longer-term perspective. And so, you know it's much like they say when you're dating, for example, can I see myself trapped in an airport with this person? You know. That's going to happen, trust me. And so it's that kind of thought, right? How am I going to feel a year from now when the phone rings and I look down and that's who's on my screen? How am I going to feel? And so that, you know again, that's a tough question. And so oftentimes people will say, if I've paced with someone who's really being aggressive, I am actually going to respond in a way in kind. I'm not going to offer them as much. If we do make a deal, I'm going to make sure it's pretty limited and it has parameters around it. Or maybe I make a deal, but it's only for a period of time and we give ourselves time to get to know each other and then we renegotiate. So there's other strategies, but fundamentally it comes down to if I view this as a relationship, is this somebody that I really want to be with? Stephen Matini: Based on what you said, I'm thinking out loud. Could it be that when people feel whether it's real or not, that they don't have an alternative, that's also when the negotiation gets really, really difficult? Carolyn Goerner: Yes. Oh, yes, right on the money. Because if I've got nothing but what's going on with this conversation right here, oh, exactly what you said. Then I feel like I've either got to do one or two things. I got to fight really, really hard, or I just have to give in and give you whatever you need. But if you're my only alternative, I have not got good options. Stephen Matini: So do you believe that people always have an option, an alternative option?  Carolyn Goerner: No, I wish they did. There are some things where we don't, and that's when we just have to really get into a mindset that says, I want you to win, but I want me to win too, and we're going to have to get collaborative and creative, which is really hard to do. It's scary to assert your interests and say, "No, I need this too," when you don't have an alternative. On the other hand, in the long term, if all I do is keep giving in and giving in and giving in, that's just a recipe for feeling bitter. That's a recipe for long-term, ooh, I hate this, right? And so, yeah... I think that looking for options is always a good idea, but it's not the case that we have them. Is that kind of where you were coming from with that question that maybe we don't? Stephen Matini: Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, as you were talking, millions of things flying in my head. And like one of the things that I hear very often when I do this kind of work with clients, because yeah, very often the notion of boundaries come up in all the time because it's a conflict, because a negotiation, whatever there might be. And one thing they say is, oh, you know, for you, it's easier because you're an independent professional, you have options to which I say, I understand where you're coming from. And it's true. You know, I've worked really hard to have a, a diversified portfolio, but keep in mind that I have no security whatsoever, as you are saying, but the answer that I often provide to them is this one. If I really feel that I'm stuck with the client, that I have no option for me, that is no longer a negotiation, but it falls under me having the right expectation.  Meaning for a certain time being, you know, I have to stay here. It's pointless to fight it. It's pointless to get all worked up about it because I lose energy. So I'm going to stay here as, as aware as possible. In the meantime, I'm going to seek options that somehow I'm representative. And it does the trick for me because it saves a lot of energy.  Carolyn Goerner: Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. So you're right. Not only does it save you from just kind of complaining about it in your mind all the time or to other people, right? But it also just puts it in perspective. A hundred percent. That makes all the sense. I love that. I will be stealing that, but I'll tell people it came from you. Stephen Matini: Yeah, because people complain, complain. Listen, are you going to stay here in this workplace with this boss and that? Well, then what is the point? You know, and then sometimes they vent to me. You can vent at me as much as you want. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. So I think a better question is how can you stay here as long as you have to stay here in the best possible way? And then maybe to have some sort of you know, awareness, calling, whatever, so that you can find the right situation for you. But I understand it's very difficult. You know, I'm thinking of four different types of scenarios, which is like super, super hard, which is when I have to deal with my boss, a difficult negotiation with my boss, or it could be with my teammates, or it could be with the client or a loved one. So these four, you know, so boss teammates, client and loved one. In your experience, which one is the hardest?  Carolyn Goerner: Oh, a loved one, of course. Because you, you, I don't have an option, right? In my mind, there is no option to the person that is my, my, my husband, my partner. And I'm lucky because he's amazing. But there is no option for him, right? So, yeah, so obviously that's when you have to just get really creative because that's just not the way it works for me. You know, and so I get it. I think people will often tell you that the negotiation with the boss would be next. And that's where I really would push folks to say, you got to do your homework first, right? And so what is the value that you bring to the relationship with your boss? In other words, how do you make her look good? How do you help him achieve his goals? How do you make them, at the end of the day, look better? And at that point, you know, it's kind of sitting back and reflecting on why your work is important to them. And so if I recognize, well, part of the reason that my work is, you know, that I'm important to my boss is that they use me as a sounding board to come bounce ideas off of, right? Pretty common. Well, I need to know that if I'm going to go in and ask for more time working remote, and I need to have thought about, look, this is how they need and view me. And so I need to go in with a solution that says, I will stay on a teams channel with you, or I will do whatever it takes. But my job, first of all, is to understand why I might get pushed back and what it is about what my boss wants that could make that tough. And so that's the homework that we've really got to do before then. With teammates, it tends to kind of be a lot of reciprocity. I'll do this for you, you do this for me, just kind of working back and forth. But the same with teammates and with clients, the one power that people often underestimate the most that they have is likability. And so, I mean, think about for a second. Think about the last three times you did a favor for someone. So somebody asked you to do a favor and you did a favor for them. Stephen Matini: Yeah. Carolyn Goerner: I'm going to bet that two of those three were just because you liked the person. Stephen Matini: Yes.  Carolyn Goerner: And that's not uncommon. I mean, yeah, we do things for people we like. And so the key to those is making sure that I'm not only talking to you when I need something, but that we've really worked on a relationship and we've worked to find things in common and that I've shown a real interest in you and I really do want to know what you do and what you're about. And if that is the context with teammates and with clients and with your boss too, I think to an extent, then we've got a very different kind of conversation. In context, we get each other. And so I realize how busy we all are. And believe me, I have to remind myself of this all the time, but that five minutes that I spend after a team's meeting or in the hallway or in a coffee shop, just actually having a conversation with how's your kids? How's your dogs? What'd you think of the last sporting event? That stuff matters. That stuff really matters because that makes it easier for us to then have a tougher conversation. Stephen Matini: I agree. In my head, I am aware of the principle of reciprocity. I'm aware of the impact of what I do for people. I think for me, mostly I do because I know that there have been key people in my life. And it is because of their generosity that I've been able to have the opportunities that I have. And I know how difficult it is. And I really, I owe them everything. So I try to do the same. The biggest recent experience has been really the podcast. And I've been so grateful to everyone who has given me help and decided to do this. It's just amazing. And all it does, it gives a sense of yeah, gratitude and you want to work harder. You want to work better. You want somehow to reciprocate. So I agree with you. It's a wonderful cycle. Absolutely, 100%. Carolyn Goerner: It's almost that paying it forward type of feeling. But all of the research that talks about the importance of gratitude and what a difference it makes in the way we view the world. Oh, exactly what you just said. That's, that's a big piece of it as well. Stephen Matini: Everything these days, though, seems to have become so transactional, to a point that we oftentimes because we're busy or whatever that is, people forget about, hey, I'm a human being, you’re a human being. At the end of all, none of this will matter other than really this moment that we shared together. What would you say that is the first step towards creating relationships that are more genuine and less transactional in a world that's super busy? Carolyn Goerner: Let me think about how to phrase this for a second. Do you remember the last time that someone said, "Hey, how are you?" or "How you doing?" And you were just like, "Fine." And it was like the question never got asked, which is very transactional, right? We do that all the time. So last night, my husband and I were out for dinner, and the server came up and said, "So hi, how you doing?" And was not expecting an answer. And when I just made eye contact and said, "We're good tonight. How are you?" She was almost startled. I think it's just taking being the person who reminds everybody, no, you know, this doesn't have to be transactional. This doesn't have to be that, right? It can be something where we have a little more of a connection than just saying, you know, asking questions that we don't really need the answer to. And she stopped and went, I'm good. You know, it was just kind of funny. I have a colleague who, whenever you see him, it'll never be just, "Hi, how are you?" But he asks a question like, "Caroline, what are you working on that you're really interested in?" Or, "What's the coolest thing that happened to you today?" And it's always a genuine interest asking that question. Now, does it take an extra 30 seconds to have the conversation? Absolutely, but it's worth that 30 seconds to get the feeling of the connection. The other thing that I make it a real practice to do is to give compliments to other people, particularly to other women, even when I don't know them. And so if we're just, you know, I see someone coming in for dinner at a table near me, and as I walk by the table, I'll just stop and say, "You look amazing. That dress is perfect." So a random compliment from a stranger. And I think the more that we just remind people that we're people and that I see you in a positive way, COVID didn't help this whole perception that we've got to stay safe. We've got to stay in our cocoon. We have to protect ourselves, right? And I think the more we model, let's just be open and let's just be vulnerable to one another, the more people kind of relax and go, Oh, that's right. I remember that. We used to do that, didn't we? Stephen Matini: In the world of humans! Carolyn Goerner: Exactly. And so it's just that sense of modeling it. And will it sometimes get misinterpreted or thrown back in 2% of the time? Sure. But for me, the 98% is worth it. Stephen Matini: Do you think the issue is what you said? Is it around vulnerability and the difficulty that some people have in being vulnerable? Maybe? Carolyn Goerner: Exactly Oh, of course. Yes. Absolutely. Actually, let me just kind of back up on that a little bit, because this is one of my thought questions. What does vulnerability mean to you? So when you're vulnerable, what does that mean? Stephen Matini: That I dare to be myself? Carolyn Goerner: That is such a great explanation. Because first of all, I dare. So I'm going to step outside my comfort zone. And I'm going to basically be transparent, right? I'm going to peel off the layer of the onion and sort of let you see. And so I'm taking a risk that says, all right. And it's almost like you preface everything in your head with, "They're going to think this is weird, but." And the irony is that we all have that same thought, right? We all go, "Oh, they're going to think this is weird, but, you know, and off we go." And so, as a colleague of mine says, "Revel in the absurd, just embrace the weird." And it becomes a mindset where again, you just kind of say, "I'm going to try." I'm not going to lie, there are times when it gets smacked back in my face hard. But most of the time, and a vast majority, like more than 90% of the time, it's met with, "Oh, I can be vulnerable too." And you can actually even see people's shoulders relax. And, you know, it's like, oh, oh, okay, this is cool. And it's nice. Stephen Matini: In this regard, have you, and not just about this, about the way, let's say you negotiate, you deal with this whole world of confrontation. Have you changed over the years? Have you always been this way? Carolyn Goerner: Oh, completely changed. Yeah, you've changed. Completely changed over the years. And I'm not sure what, well, it's been an evolution of a lot of different things. First was getting comfortable with, we all have a sense of imposter syndrome and getting comfortable with mine was a big part of that. It also has just kind of come down to, I've tried enough, I've dared enough, and I know that most of the time it's going to end up well, and I know I'm strong enough to handle the times that don't. And so that's just a little, you know, self-awareness and knowledge and confidence really comes from practice. And so that's what, but a big part of that is. But I think genuinely, maybe it's getting older. Maybe it's the white hair. I don't know. Stephen Matini: I have one last question for you. What keeps your mind busy these days? Is there any thought, any insight somehow that keeps your mind wandering these days? Carolyn Goerner: What a great question. And interestingly, it really is around the gender, the gender differences issue. There is a lot of, well, there are books about negotiation called Women Don't Ask. And so for a long time, we had this belief that women just didn't negotiate and that that was part of what explained the wage gap between men and women. And it was almost as if that was a slam on women, right? They're not asking. And newer research has said, first of all, anybody who's trained is more likely to negotiate. So that takes the gender difference down a bit. And so as long as someone's received training in negotiation, regardless of gender, they're more likely to ask, which is why I love what I teach. But, there's a big difference in the perception still. If people hold traditional stereotypes, then women are going to be perceived differently when they ask than are men. And so that's, I think, where my brain is trying to do, to play at that intersection of if the person that I'm talking to is coming to me and seeing me through the lens of really traditional gender stereotypes, how do I work with that and make it so that we can have a conversation without them automatically having a negative reaction because that stereotype violation? So that's the thing that kind of keeps me thinking in the car, is just trying to figure out how those traditional stereotypes that still exist play with the advice that I want to give people about how to move forward and succeed with any gender. Stephen Matini: Carolyn, I'm really happy that I got to spend this time with you. Carolyn: Oh, this was fabulous. Stephen, thank you so much.

Prof. Emily Balcetis at New York University is an award-winning social psychologist and author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. In the book, she highlights how the perception of our goals conditions our motivation and ultimate success. Prof. Balcetis views motivation as the difference between where we are and where we want to be, warning that limiting stereotypes or narrow definitions of success impact our motivation and ability to reach goals. When addressing the challenge of sustaining motivation, Prof. Balcetis suggests balancing short-term and long-term perspectives, allowing for incremental progress while maintaining a vision for the overall objective. During our conversation, Prof. Balcetis also points out the interplay between perception and leadership and how expanding mental representations of leadership can inspire more people to see themselves as capable leaders. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. Please check Prof. Emily Balcetis book, Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So listen, as I was thinking of you, there's a bunch of words such as, you know, perception and misperception, perceptual illusions, perceptual habits. How did you end up in this world? Emily Balcetis: Well, there's lots of ways I could answer that. But to be honest, I really like magicians. I love going to magic shows. So there's that. I think I was already probably predisposed. But honestly, it was because when I was in graduate school, I went to study with a fabulous, fantastic, wonderful mentor. But after the first year, I really wanted to go spend the summer in Europe. And I was a graduate student. I didn't have any money. So I needed to figure out how to afford it. So I was looking for like, well, what academic conferences are happening in Europe? And there weren't any in my field, but there was one that was in vision science. And I was like, well, I better do a quick study on something that has to do with vision so that I can get the data, put together a poster, submit to this conference, and then get my graduate school to offset the cost by $500 of this trip. And then I did all of that and then told my advisor, oh, by the way, I like did all this stuff, I'm going to go to Europe for two months. And that's not how grad school really works. But he's lovely and said, like, okay, fine, but like maybe we should start working on these projects together. And so that's what sort of became the intersection, honestly, of my interest in social psychology, motivation science, which I had gone to graduate school to study. And how did you end up roping in visual experience? To be honest, it was to afford a trip to Europe when I was really poor. Stephen Matini: When you work in organizations and you start talking about motivation, it is such a huge broad field. How do you make things simple for them to understand?  Emily Balcetis: To be honest, I really do think that the concept of motivation is quite simple. The definitions that are foundational definitions, they vary, but they do have a commonality, which is that they're quite simple. One definition is just motivation is a discrepancy between where you are and where you want to be. And that's a driving force, just to close that gap. That's motivation from one perspective. Another perspective that I find myself in my work relying on more often is a multiplicative function. So motivation can be like motivation equals value times expectancy. Value, what is it that you want times? Do you think that it's possible to get it? So there can be stuff that you really, really want, like, oh, I really wish that I was a billionaire. So like, what's my motivation to become a billionaire? None, right? Because you multiply anything by zero and the answer is zero. So you can have like the things that you care most about. But if you have no feeling of self-efficacy, no means to accomplish it, no belief that you can get there, it doesn't matter how much you want it. Because in some sense, you know that you can't achieve it and some motivation stays low. So the concept of motivation, I don't think is that challenging. What to do about it, how to harness it, how to sustain it, that's where the challenge comes in. But just knowing what it is in the first place, from my perspective, isn't the difficulty. Stephen Matini: Has your own motivation changed over the years as you got deeper into the subject that you researched, you work with people? Is it different today compared to the way it was?  Emily Balcetis: Yes. I mean, everything about life is different over those, like my life is just so different, right? When I started this work, like I was saying that first summer after graduate school, you know I was 24 years old, whatever I was, like early 20s and now I am much older and married with two kids. So yeah, everything about motivation has changed. But in what way? I mean, I guess what I value has shifted. And so again, if motivation is value times expectancy, what is it that is the value, that's shifted. And I don't think it's like that unusual of a story, looking for balance, wanting to, you know, find a fuller life than just how you get your salary in the door. Stephen Matini: Do you find it more easily to stay motivated now than it used to be? Emily Balcetis: I feel lucky in that I've always been fortunate to be able to do the stuff that I really love. When I was an undergraduate, I went to study music. I have a degree in music performance, and I was fortunate to get to be able to go and be a musician to really develop that. At the same time, I was studying research in psychology. And so then when life events happened and pushed music sort of out the door for me as a career path, I still play. In fact, just this morning, I was at my two-year-old daughter's preschool playing baby shark and row, row, row your boat and wheels on the bus on my flute for them all. That was a highlight of my morning so far before this. And yeah, but so I got to do music and I love music. And then when I couldn't really become a professional musician, then I was loving psychology and the psychology research. And then I just get to keep doing that here. So I get it how privileged I am to say that I've always gotten to do what I love. Now it's not to say that like, oh, every day is wonderful. And like, no, it has its challenges too, but at the heart of it, the motivation for me isn't the problem because I've always been in a place where I have the resources and freedom to do the stuff that I love. And I really love writing. That's a big part of my job. And I really love writing. So a lot of people say that they struggle with, how do you go from a blank page to writing a book or to writing a scientific article? It can just be overwhelming to see that blank page. But I've never experienced that. A lot of the students that I work with do. So I've been able to figure out how do you help people? How do you advise people through that? But the motivation has stayed high. Again, the challenge for me, and I think the challenge for a lot of people is what do you do with that motivation? How do you keep it high? How do you balance the fact that you have multiple goals that you might be highly motivated towards, but resources like time are limited? How do you manage that? How do you sustain the motivation when there isn't an outlet for it? 'Cause you just can't get to the things that you really are motivated to do.So that's where I feel like I personally reflect and struggle the most. Stephen Matini If I ask the same question to myself, and I don't know if this is part of motivation probably, but I noticed that when I was younger, I've always had entrepreneurial ideas. There was this humongous gap between what I wanted and sometimes I really felt super, super far. Sometimes I would get excited. And then today's, I guess the approach has changed because I focus for the most part of today. Today with you. We record the episode and I try to do my best. And I know that probably in six months, in a year time, you know, if I continue doing this, it's going to be better. And I just simply focus on today. And somehow I find that motivating. It kind of calms me down and let me keep going. What I'm saying is something has to do with motivation based on your studies. What is it?  Emily Balcetis: Well, there's a lot to unpack with what you were saying. So that phrase of like, just focus on today, just get through today, that comes up so often. People are starting out in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. That's like one of the slogans and the guiding values and principles and philosophies that can help them too, because it just feels so overwhelming to thinking about having to stick with the change for the rest of your life. And if you let your mind go there, then this goal feels impossible. So sometimes people use that phrase of like, I'm just going to focus on today because the alternative just makes it feel so overwhelming that it puts it into a definitional category of what is the goal that is in the perceived impossible. And that's when you just see efficacy, perceived efficacy, the belief that I can do this just drop. And so again, then you're multiplying against zero and motivation goes away. Other people say that, like focusing on today because they want to live in the moment and they find value and focusing on a singularity rather than trying to multitask. And there's value in that too. That is a valuable strategy. It's a mindfulness technique. And if people go through the effort of thinking about what are the benefits of multitasking, multitasking is not always bad. We can talk about that if that's of interest. Multitasking is not always good either. It's about knowing what multitasking can do and being intentional about when you use it. And so if people focus on today and what's happening today is a strategy to manage the negative consequences of multitasking, then it can be really effective. But there can be some cost to this focusing on today as well. And some of those costs can be that it can be challenging to make sacrifices today that need to happen in order to achieve a long-term goal. So if you think about in the realm of health, for example, what are you eating and how much are you exercising? If we think about today, I want to focus on today. I want to have today be a really good day. You might choose different foods to eat than if you're thinking about, okay, in six months' time, this is where I want to be with my health. That could require making harder choices, making sacrifices today for the long-term payoff. So that can be a downside is that people may have a more challenging time connecting today's choices with the future's outcomes, which might need to happen to change behaviors. The other thing, the last thing I'll say about this is that with my research team, we did study. What is the effectiveness? What's the impact of focusing on today versus taking what we were calling sort of a wider bracket, thinking about time in a wider bracket? So what we did was have people think about what's something that's really important, a goal that you care about. You're not going to accomplish it today. You're not going to accomplish it this week. Probably not even this month. It's a longer-term goal. What is that? For one week, they woke up. Each day, they thought about, what can I do today? They took that narrow focus on the day. What can I do today to make progress on that goal? They thought about the concrete actions that would help them make progress. At the end of the day, they reported how much time did they spend working on something for that goal? They did that every day for seven days. We counted up how much time did they spend. A different week, they took that wider bracket. They woke up on Sunday. They thought about the goal that really mattered to them. On Sunday, they made a list of bunches of things that they could accomplish. What are concrete tasks that would help advance the goal and bunches of them? And then thought about the next week and thought about, well, which one of these concrete actions can I put in on Monday? Schedule that another on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and Friday. So they scheduled out by six days. Still at the end of every day, they reported how much time did you spend working on this goal? And what we found is that doing that was helpful. Regardless of whether they took that day by day or the wider bracket, the week-by-week approach, they spent time working on their goal. But when they took a wider look at their calendar and planned out their week in advance, they spent two and a half more hours in the week working on goal relevant tasks than when they thought day by day and planned day by day. Strategy was effective for increasing the amount of time anybody spent on goal relevant activities for 66% of people. Two out of every three people found this to be a beneficial strategy for improving on how they spent their time. So lots to say about like, should you focus on the day? Should you take a wider frame? It's a strategy. It's a tool. And just like a hammer's great, but a hammer won't always work. You need to know what is the job here? What's the challenge? And is the hammer the right tool? So thinking about that, like, should I be narrowly focused on the day? Should I take a more expansive look at time? Just remember, both of those are tools. And if the tool isn't working for you right now, then try a different tool. Stephen Matini: Oh, wow. That's really interesting. You know, narrow and wide. Yeah, I do feel that way about a lot of stuff. Probably the latest project that require a lot of motivation is this very podcast. You know, in April will be two years that I've been doing in my podcast. And I never really worried about what is gonna happen with the podcast. Is it gonna work? People are gonna love it. I truly, genuinely loved every single interview working with colleagues, being out with you. But then, you know, it's a lot of work, particularly for a podcast when you have to publish every single week. And so as of late, maybe because I'm sick, I started thinking, dude, what are you doing? I mean, are you going somewhere with this? You know, is this worth it? Because it so far has been enjoyable. But once again, it's not something you can do five minutes a day. So with that said, should I go wider? Should, should I go narrower?  Emily Balcetis: I think this is a time for introspection and thinking about what your goal really is. Probably when you started, it was just, can I do this thing? And can I connect with people? And you answer that, yes, you can do this thing. Yes, you are connecting with people. So that goal has been met. And so now it's time just to think about, well, what's the goal now? What is the goal? And it's about resetting. So, you know, I talk about being our own mental accountant and your accountant doesn't go in with you and look at your books and just say, oh, let's just keep rolling. Hey, look, things are moving up. Things are moving down. Here you go. Here's a description of your finances. They take stockable. What is it that you're working towards? And are you on track to what you're working towards? And at least the ones I work with, they want you to check in at least once a year to talk about what those goals are. And are you on track for meeting those goals? So we do that with accountants. Why not we do that for ourselves and our own personal goals as well? At least once a year, take stock of what are the goals that I'm working towards and what's my progress like? And so maybe that's where you're at right now with this podcast is what's the next goal as it relates to this work? Stephen Matini: When you feel the way that I do, if you ever feel the way that I do, so that you need to take the time for yourself to understand, is there anything specific that you do to regroup?  Emily Balcetis: I mean, I literally just went through this myself. As I was working with the coach that I work with, and we were just thinking about how are you spending your time? And is this how you want to spend your time? Everybody needs more time. So let's take inventory of how you spend it. And so there was something that I, you know, similar to you, I've been working on a project for years and it's just, you know, the return on investment right now just feels like, I don't know. It's not there for me. Do I feel like, oh, I failed at that? Well, I'm personally struggling. Does it mean that I failed on meeting it if the return on investment hasn't continued to be high? No, I don't think so. I think I have done what's possible with this project. And now it's time to think about, well, why was I doing that project? So I'm not like, how can I keep iterating on this? But why was I doing it in the first place? When you ask why, why, why, why? You help yourself figure out what your value systems are. Why was I doing this thing? Why was I doing this for the years that I was doing it? Why doesn't it feel gratifying anymore? Why, why, why? And then you get up to, because this is the kind of work I want to be doing and this is no longer the vehicle for it. Okay, great. So no, I haven't failed at my goal. It's that I extinguished that trail, ran its course. And now I need to find another trail. And that was really beneficial for me because it made the idea of quitting something, which I plan to do in the near future easier. 'Cause it's not like quitting my goal. It's about finding a different trail to get me further along towards where I really want to be. Stephen Matini: You know, one thing that I was curious is your work is so focused around perception. And I love this is wonderful. And another focus of your interest is leadership and specifically leadership styles. So I was wondering, how does perception and leadership styles combine, if you don't mind sharing with me some thoughts? Emily Balcetis: Oh, of course. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think they are quite intertwined because leaders have to want it. They have to want to be leaders. But how do they get there? How do they want to be leaders? Well, how do people want to be leaders? How do they come to thinking like, I can do this? Again, thinking that they can, thinking we can do something isn't an integral part of what motivation is. If you don't think you can, motivation is zero. So what leads some people to think I can do this and I value it. I want to do this? Lots of reasons. But one of them that we've discovered, especially as we work with adults, but also with children, is when I just pose the question, think about what a leader looks like. What's the image that comes to your mind? If you were to see a profile, what's the image that comes to your mind? And you don't have to answer, actually, but like listeners can do that for themselves. What we find often is that it's somebody who's older, it's somebody who's male, and it's somebody who's white. And so that represents a lot of the population, but it doesn't represent all of the population. And what we find is that that is the majority view in people's minds, even people that don't identify with being older, with being white or with being male. And that mental image of like, well, what does a leader look like if it's discrepant from their own view of themselves because it is, because the demographics are different? Or when we start thinking about what are the values? What does it take to be a leader? What are the qualities of a leader? We think agentic, loud, controlling, assertive. And those are traits that also don't align with a lot of people's own self-definitions of what they think their strengths are, or even maybe what they want to be. So when they think about the visuals of what a leader looks like, or they think about the personal qualities of what a leader looks like, if there's not a lot of alignment, then that reduces motivation. This doesn't seem like a place for me. It doesn't seem like something that I could succeed in and or and/or a place that I want to succeed in. But we know both of those things aren't true, that there are lots of effective leaders who are older white men, but there are effective leaders who don't fit any of those demographic profiles. There are leaders who are agentic, assertive, who are domineering in that they can come in and control a room. But there are leaders that are quite effective that don't do that. Leadership can look in many different ways. It's just that we have this stereotype. We have pretty constrained mental representation about what a leader looks like and how a leader acts that could suppress people's motivation to try to join that space and do well in that space. So with the work we do, we try to expand that mental representation so that the image that comes to people's mind is more inclusive. It's broader. The set of visuals, the set of traits and qualities is more expansive. So there's room for more people of different varieties of people to see themselves in that space. Stephen Matini: The mental representation that people have of a leader, whatever leader you have in mind, does that depend on the figures, the important figures that you've met in your life?  Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. So the role models that we see or the way that we see the space filled out is not representative of all populations. What we see on TV also, you know, people who are portraying or who we see on social media who are portraying leadership, even if they aren't actually holding power. That's also not representative of the population. And so that can contribute to that narrow mental representation, that narrow definition of what constitutes a leader. But you can sever that. You can break that connection through role models and through who is it that you see, even if it's just one or two people that you connect strongly with, that's enough, that anecdotal experience of seeing a different type of leader is enough to help expand that mental representation as well, which is why role models are so important. The work that we've done in schools in particular shows us that the diversity of the teacher demographics within a school really matters for shaping kids' beliefs about kids' mental representations. Literally when we give kids a box of crayons and a piece of paper and we say like draw what a leader looks like to you, we see those drawings are extremely different among black teenagers specifically when they're in schools where there is a lot of white teachers and it's really different when they're in schools where there's far more non-white teachers. So when they see variety and the leadership within their own school, the drawings that they make with those boxes of crayons show a more diverse understanding or more diverse belief about who can and should be a leader. Stephen Matini: You have worked with a lot of different people. You work with athletes. You work with artists. If I may ask, is there anyone that somehow, for whatever the reason has a special place in your heart?  Emily Balcetis: Yes, absolutely. So there's disparity in who assumes leadership positions. Kids, I mean, yeah, it's probably you're just catching me at this point in my life where it's the kids that I get to work with. And I have a seven-year-old and a two-year-old. So they're just magical creatures, my children, but children in general. You just get to see their brain growing and moving and shaping in real time. It only takes one emotional experience to have an impact on their brain for the rest of their life. I don't know, maybe that's selfish, but just like all the power that you have, right? If you can just, if you can find a way to give them these experiences, it can really be transformative. But yeah, I've learned incredible things from some of the amazing people that I've gotten to work with. I got to work with the developer of one of the apps on the Apple Store that's been like the number one app for a long time. It's hit number one, you know, like every day it changes what's number one, but it's had its place, the top, the most downloaded app on the Apple Store. It's called “One Second Every Day.” And this is an incredible app. What it is, you know, it's an app that encourages you, if you want to use it this way, to take a video of something every day. And it's a one-second video. And then this is what I'm doing this year. I've had the app forever. I've worked with this guy for many years. But just like I saw a family doing this, which is for their New Year's Eve, they played their one second everyday video to just reflect on what was this year like? 365 days, one second each day. And I don't know, I just want that. I want that for our family too, to have this moment of reflection about what was this year for us. So that's sort of my New Year's resolution is to make sure that I do this one second every day. So when he talks about it, when the app developer talks about it, I asked him, like, what were some of those one-second clips that were most meaningful for you? And one that he shares is like, there's one, there's a one-second clip of a brick wall. And I was like, what? I've got a one-second clip of our wedding. I've got a one-second clip of an anniversary or like the first time I got to meet my daughter or my son, right? And it's like the brick wall. And he was like, yeah, that brick wall means so much to me because the moment that my sister-in-law was admitted to the hospital and we found out that her intestines were strangling themselves and she was on the brink of dying, that's the first thing that I saw after we got this news that she might die so unexpectedly, so oddly. She didn't die. But he said like that wall, when I see that one second clip of that wall, it just reminds me of this transformative moment that I had where all of his hustle and what he needed to do for his life and for his career, for developing this app. And it just felt like it doesn't matter, right? My family matters more than anything else to me. And so that brick wall is a reminder of that for him. And that is surprising in some sense. I mean, it's not surprising when you hear that, it's like, oh my God, how awful. And I totally understand how that could center and ground him to have that visual reminder. But also in some sense, like remembering bad stuff. Who wants to remember bad stuff? When you think about when you said something really embarrassing, when you hurt somebody's feelings, when you really messed up at work, if you got fired or all of our big, big mistakes, who wants to go back there in their mind? Nobody. Nobody wants to relive the worst days of their life. So it doesn't come as like intuition that like, yeah, let's capture the awful stuff in our life and let's reflect on it on New Year's Eve, and that'll be a good thing. But it actually can be. It can help us make better decisions, like it did for Caesar, the developer of this app, that, you know, remembering what restaurant gave you food poisoning, yeah, you should probably remember that. Remembering when you had a choice point, you chose this way, it didn't go as well, or you regretted that choice. Great, you should remember that so that you can make a different choice in the future. And that also makes sense. But our intuition probably says like, no, I don't want to remember. I don't want to take pictures. I don't want to post on social media. I don't want to put the negative stuff out there. And I'm not saying we should. I'm not saying tell people about how awful today was. Show them about, you know, show them your bet. I mean, whatever. How you manage social media is like outside of my sphere of expertise. But it is within my sphere of expertise to say like there are big benefits from having a more inclusive memory than what our memory wants to do. If you can remember the times when you did feel icky, when you made the wrong choice, that can help you make better choices in the future. Stephen Matini: Out of anything we said, is there anything that, in your opinion, those who will listen to us in the future should pay attention to?  Emily Balcetis: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that can be challenging is feeling like if you've been working hard at something, you're not making the progress that you want, sunk costs is a thing of just continuing to invest in something that might not be working out. It could be a relationship, it's not working out, or it could be a project, or it could be like working for a promotion within a company that isn't giving you the opportunity to grow. And it can feel really hard to let go of these things that aren't bringing you joy, bringing you the value, and helping you manage and satisfy your goals. And why don't people leave? Why don't people relieve the relationships that they shouldn't be in or the jobs that aren't satisfying? Because it can feel like a failure. There's lots of other reasons. People need jobs. They have responsibilities to others that doesn't allow them to just leave a job that isn't gratifying. I get that. But still, the idea is true that why do people hold on to a course of action that isn't paying off? Because we have such a stigma about failure. Because failing at something is, we try to avoid that at all costs. But leaving a relationship, leaving a job, giving up on a goal, changing a course doesn't have to be failure. It can be an important learning opportunity. Yeah, it's risky. And it's sometimes really challenging or maybe even impossible to take big risks. But if we think about quitting something as not quitting and not as failure, but as a pivot point for reflection, what did I learn? What am I going to take from this? The next thing is a chance to start new, start fresh. How beautiful is that? I would love it if I had a chance to just start some parts of my life over, but with all of the knowledge and expertise that I have now, God, that would be amazing if I could, you know, have a blank slate to reset, but being as informed as I am. And that's what it can do. So rather than it being a failure, a goal failure, or a quitting, which are stigmatizing words that we don't want to apply to ourselves, going through the work of mentally reframing as like a beautiful opportunity for rebirth, I think can help people make some of those tricky decisions to learn from them and to, you know, maybe find more happiness than what the current pursuits are offering. Stephen Matini: Emily, thank you so much for sharing this time with me. I've learned a lot and I think your work is beautiful. Please continue to spread the inspiration because your work is really important.  Emily Balcetis: Thank you for this conversation, for the opportunity. Thank you so much.

Paulinho Muzaliwa is a social entrepreneur passionate about regenerative agriculture and founder of the Unidos Social Innovation Center in Uganda, East Africa.  As a refugee facing personal setbacks and challenges, Paulinho’s dream is to transform refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can access clean water, abundant food, and quality education. He believes that change and progress come from within the community and demonstrates how refugees can become change-makers by leveraging their unique experiences and skills to develop innovative solutions.  In our conversation Paulinho emphasizes the importance of moving beyond reliance on humanitarian aid by fostering local leadership and sustainable practices.  Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #SocialEntrepreneurship #RegenerativeCulture #SustainableDevelopment #Permaculture #Sustainability #SocialImpact #RefugeeStories #Uganda #Africa #HumanitarianAid #WorldFoodProgram #UNHCR #ChangeMakers #Podcast #NewPodcastEpisode #PodcastInterview #PaulinhoMuzaliwa #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, I want to ask you just to get to know you a little bit. Growing up, were there any specific person, people, events that somehow have impacted who you are today? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really. I grew up in a memory, which is a little bit modest, not so much poor and not so much rich. My dream was to be a pilot. Once I was not being able to go to university, so I chose to being an accountant. I met in secondary school. I done business and demonstrative administration. After finish up, it was quite hard to push and walk him. And all my dream really disappeared. So I gave up to all my dream. Being a refugee is kind of starting a new life. Stephen Matini: Going through challenges, life in general, how do you keep your spirit positive? How do you keep the hope?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: How I keep the or stay positive is understand that all my life have been challenging. And in order to be successful or in order to have a decent life, I need to be satisfied of what I have and cherish, also connect to myself. And the most of it is if things are not good right now, as long as I work hard, so I expect something positive will come no matter the time that we spend on these things. So I try to be optimistic because the worst part of my life is what I have done. I just want to be more positive so that I cherish all the moments that I'm having right now. Stephen Matini: And this is something that you also share with entrepreneurs. You know, to be an entrepreneur, you must have a vision. You must constantly fight self-doubts, challenges, insecurities and problems. How did you get to social entrepreneurship? What attracted you to this?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, exactly. So I think there is so many facts that has motivated me to jump into this based on the challenges that are accounted in being a refugee. The first one was language barrier, which has been most affected young people here in refugee settlements to get access to employment. Four percentage of refugee are unemployed. And this due to language barrier, lack of experience, rigid education. So all this prevents people to get access. Job markets is quite also low in Uganda. So we have been able to at least, while learning entrepreneurship, instead of relying on the system, better creates our own system, better creates our own opportunities as refugees. So mostly from, especially from the country that I am. So the system, especially the education system, make us slaves of the system. You may be almost 100 people who are learning business and administration. And you are going to alert that the company in the city. So you are going to fund at only two companies. So if you are not really a non-person or your parent is not a non person, so you never get a job. So this has been the fact that has motivated me a lot to, okay, let's create our own opportunities instead of relying on the system. And then we jump into this and then I get an opportunity to learn entrepreneurship at idea for Africa and path through different centers here in refugee settlement to foster my experience. And then this is where I start found Unidos Social Innovation Center. Stephen Matini: How it is to live in a refugee community? Paulinho Muzaliwa: It's quite hard. Psychologically, it's really hard to let it go. The life that you had in your home country and start a new one here in refugee settlements. And this is something that's traumatized most of people and not able to let it go and start a new page. But economically, they're living in refugee settlements, especially where I am in Nakivale Valley refugee settlements, Uganda. As I've been saying, 44% of refugee are employed. So most of people are running small businesses to generate income and which is not really profitable enough to sustain their lives. So people are struggling currently due to humanitarian aid which I keep on decreasing every day. In 2018, when I reached here, so we used to get food from the World Food Program, but currently there is no food. So they fast in when reaching COVID, they transition from getting food to get money. And then this money is keep on decreasing. And currently they give $3, which is roughly a that can buy a two liter of oil, cooking oil as they provide this as a monthly rationed food. So can someone sustain with $3 a week or month? Quite hard. In term of education. So we have one secondary school and some private primary schools, which is not really provide the quality education. So for some parents who have at least some money, they take their children to go to learn out of refugee settlements. I think this is how life looks like in refugee settlements. So people have been relying so much on humanitarian aid, and when this has keep on decreasing, so life becomes keep on being harder. And the food on the market keep on increasing the price. And we are going to realize that life is becoming quite hard in refugee settlements. And some people decided maybe to go back to their countries and maybe starting hustling, no matter the insecurity that they are passing through there. Stephen Matini: When I read your LinkedIn profile, I really loved what I read. It says, I dream about transforming refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can have access to clean water, abandoned food, and quality education. Would you mind explaining what regenerated culture is? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, sure. I think regenerative culture, I define it in two ways. So first of all, is to have access to abundance food, being able to grow food in an environment friendly way while taking care of the soil, but also growing organic and abundant food. And of course, why food? Food is currently the first need for refugees since the humanitarian aid, as I've been saying, keep on decreasing. So we need to make sure that we sustain ourselves in growing food instead of keep on relying on humanitarian agencies. Access to clean water. I've seen people spending a week without having birth. I've seen people, young girls get raped while looking for water. And I've seen people not being able to cook. You may have a portion of food, but you don't have water to cook with it. I've seen people struggling with typhoid and malaria just because of not having access to clean water. I've seen also people when I say about education. So education is not about only learning, but being able to co-create something which will impact as at least two people from what you have been learning. Education is not about only learning, but it's to boost someone providing him resources that will enable these people to shift from the life that you reach or you have meet them. And when you will go and come back, you say, oh, there is a quiet difference. This person is no longer depending on someone. This is what I summarize about regenerative. Regenerative is to shift from humanitarian dependency and be able to sustain your life no matter the place where you are. Stephen Matini: You say that in the refugee camp, there's a tremendous problem with unemployment as a result of a lack of skills. So in your experience, what are the most important skills that refugees should have? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think vocational skills are the best things that I can shift or can help them to not only learn, but also starting co-creating something that will not only impact their life, but also impact the community as a whole. When I say vocational trainings, I see about handmade skills, for example, making soap. For example, teach people how to grow their own food. Teach people how he can make a dough or carpentry, for example, because when he will be able to do all with these skills, so he can generate money. For example, make soap making. So we empower women in terms of making and they're generating a lot of men to not only sustain their families, but also make saving for future needs. Stephen Matini: One thing also that I believe I've read it in your profile, I think, one thing that you said is this one. You talk about that you believe in horizontal leadership and decentralization. And before, you pointed out several times that you cannot rely on the system. You know, we have to move it from dependency to be more independent. So why do you believe that it's important to have an approach to leadership that is more flat and decentralized? Paulinho Muzaliwa: Everyone needs to have the opportunity to lead. Everyone has the opportunity to feel like, yes, I'm responsible on something that can impact the whole community. And everyone could have, we always look on inclusion and not, for example, when we go in the field, so we're not trying to think on behalf of people that are surrounding us, but let them own. I mean, a project, for example, that we are bringing to them, being feeling, being part of that project or being part of that solution that will change their lives. Instead of being just beneficiaries, for example, just because we believe in everyone's uniqueness. So I may have this approach, but when I involve someone else and give the responsibility to lead, it can innovate something greater than what I've been thinking and contribute to a positive impact of our community. Stephen Matini: Do you think that everyone could be a good leader?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really, but everyone can learn to be a good leader. The opportunity to provide this space is there. It's a transformation process, and it's always take time to become one. And this passion is what most of people are lacking with. And reason why is not a good leader, but everyone needs time to become one if he's really open to learn. Stephen Matini: Would you mind telling me a little bit more about your project at Unidos projects, how that happened? Where did you get the first spark for that idea?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, so I think what we need to start just as an English club. Most of us came from countries which English is not a first language. And reaching in Uganda, you must speak English so that at least you have, if you go to the market, you know what you need to buy. We start as an English club. And then after an English club, so we start sharing stories which can get us connected. So Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlement is a host of almost five community, different communities, Congolese, Burundians, Somalian, Ethiopians, South Sudanese. So in order to be connected, we need to learn from each other, background and belief, culture so that we cohabit, so that we speak, we really know about, we practice well, the nonviolence communication. And this was a way to get it together when learning together. So sharing story, sharing what is your culture, what's your belief? And so this help us. Oh, so if I do this to, for example, for Stephen, so he will get angry. If I do this, he will be happy. This has been really a great approach. So when I finished to learn about entrepreneurship, so I added about some session about entrepreneurs, so how we can turn a problem into solution, how we can create our own opportunities, how we can start seeing a problem as an opportunity for us to bring a solution that will not only will benefit us as a group, but the entire community. So this is where we have started  Unidos. And then in COVID, we had a challenge in terms of accessing food. So this is where the World Food Program decided, okay, so we are running out of funds and then we are going to start diminish the food ration for refugee. And remember that in that day, there was lockdown. So most of people didn't go to their field to collect food. So it was quite terrible moment. We get a mini grant of $200. And the one who gave us, he told us to buy a toolkit that will help us to prevent ourselves from COVID. And I told him, so, OK, buy toolkits. It's quite fine. But hunger will kill people here before the COVID. So and they say, OK, do whatever you want. Once I decided with my team, so we bought some maize, flour, sugar, soap and distribute to the most vulnerable people in the refugee settlement. And after this process, we have a lot that most of people start coming to the center, and it was quite a dilemma. So the money that's being sent to us was finished. But then people came and requests for food. And we sit together and say, OK, instead of providing food, how not to start teaching people how to grow their own food. Because if in case that we get another extra are found and we buy food and distribute to these people, we are making them beggars. But if we're teaching them skills on how to grow food, we will make them being sustainable for their families, for the community, and for themselves as well. In the group, we didn't know about there is no one who was experienced about agriculture, honestly. And so how are we going to do this? We are not experienced. Let's start looking for someone who can teach us first and then after teaching us so we can spread the message. So I was connected to Morag Gamble. She's a permacultureist and has a lot of experience in regenerative agriculture and she won out. She's really an inspiration. So she trained me and I was also connected to a community, which is called Warm Data. I was connected to introduced the Permaculture Design Course in Nakivale Valley Refugee Settlements in 2021. I trained the first courts and it gives a great outcomes seeing how people have started growing in a regenerative way. They are gardens and produce enough food on a small space because in refugee settlements, there is no big space. This has motivated me again to train in other cohorts and keep this sustaining until now. But from this, we have also generated more projects. We started focusing on solid regeneration because we realized that no matter the different approaches that we have implemented, so the soul was not healthy enough to grow more food. So most of people or most of refugee have been using chemicals to grow their own food. Of course, at the first time, the first time you get food, but at the second one, so the production keep on decreasing. And most of people have reported this to us. We get challenged in terms of growing food. We do this and this and this, but it is not really sustaining. We sit with the community and say, so what shall we do so that we come up with a innovative solution? So we then started, okay, let's try about applying organic fertilizer instead of chemicals. And the organic fertilizer that we opt on, we started producing organic fertilizer through the vemi compost. This is a process of collecting food waste from different markets around the community. And then we decompose it with the help of worms and to get organic fertilizer. So this organic fertilizer help us to, when applying in the soil, it's regenerate the soil and balance the pH and add more microorganisms in the soil to make the crop being more resistant in term of climate change, especially along droughts and give you nutritious and organic food in return. So we tried this and we have already built two vermicompost sites alongside with a community regenerative demonstration sites where we demonstrate the effect of this organic fertilizer. This will be will play as an inspiration for most of the community to see how regenerative this can transform the way that we have been compared to the way that we have been applying chemicals. This was our first project. So another project was mushroom growing. So we have realized that mushroom is a nutritious and a regenerative food that can play a great role in a refugee settlement in terms of providing food in a short period of time, not only providing food, but also it gives it another way that could help women to generate income or selling the mushroom and generate income that can respond on the basics needs. So we have also several projects in terms of soap making, so just organic soap. All this is just to empower women to be financially self-dependent in refugee settlements because women and children are the most vulnerable people in refugee tournament. We come up with all these incentives to help them being sustainable and to contribute also on the change that they want to see in the refugee settlement. Stephen Matini: You know what's interesting? The fact that the word sustainability, I believe, for a lot of people is something that evokes something that I do now to make sure that the future will be better. So sustainability for a lot of people has this dimension of let's create something that has the ability to endure. And the way that you are living and breathing sustainability through your business is actually something that addresses an emergency in the present moment by creating the conditions also for the future, but it really provides a solution in the present. And I love the fact that you mentioned several times the importance of networks and communities, working with different people that bring different experiences using each other's background and what we know together we can create solutions that nurture the soil and creates the background in which life can actually prosper. I really love that. On your website, one thing that I read, which I love is this one. You wrote, "Our goal is to transform these young refugees into change makers who will drive the community and make sure that everyone will be heard when it comes to creating a better tomorrow for all of us." So for you, who is a change maker? What are some of the attributes of someone who becomes a change maker? Paulinho Muzaliwa: A change maker for me is someone who, when people see problem, it's take an opportunity to come up with a solution that will transform this problem of how people have been seeing it as an impact driving. I've been thinking that, so if at least we get our 100 changemaker in refugee settlements coming with a diversity of innovation that will impact people. I think we now need to depend on humanitarian aid or beg people to support us if we have really this commitment to reach that level of how I'm envisioning it. Stephen Matini: You use a lot of interesting words, you know, including begging. And then you mentioned several times being independent. But anything you say is about taking responsibilities, is about not feeling that I need to beg someone to help me. I'm going to create my own opportunities, which is incredible. It's so remarkable. Paulinho Muzaliwa: In reality, the fact that you are a refugee, you are directly or indirectly a victim of so many things. So you're going to realize that the time that we have been getting food, of course, it was not real enough or the time that we get this $3. And you need to spend all the day under the sun on a line to make sure that you get this portion of food. And if you don't, you'll not get. Another thing is this dependency. Being dependent is quite really something terrible because everyone can treat you the way they want, just because you are dependent, dependent on them. Being dependent is being out of control of your own life, because all the decision will be made, maybe for your benefit, but without your concern. And this can affect you positively or negatively. And people, they don't mind how you will feel about this. They will just, oh, it's a help and they will be excited about the help. But will this be the first things that you need before? We have seen so many ridiculous scenarios of local organization. And I think this has been the things also that has opened eyes for refugee in starting their own incentives. So local organization always came in the refugee campus. Okay, we come up with clauses and yet they didn't ask you is something that you need, but someone gave you a soap, yet you didn't eat in your home and then take your pictures and go and report. So this is what we have done. So we discovered this. We have all the fact that, okay, so these people get incredible amount of money. Just they say, okay, we want to advocate for refugee, but the reality which is happening in the field is quite different from the concepts, not that they submit. So this has motivated us. And we are going to allow that so most of sustainable incentives are coming from and within the community, the refugee communities, just because we understand the struggle that we are passing through. We understand the problem in deep of the community. And we come together with a solution that will benefit everyone. Not think on behalf of a group. Just because you see myself having so much bear or air on my head and say, oh, this place needs a salon. Maybe it's not something that I need. So for this big organization, like for example, World Food Program to work directly with refugee service. But I think these people also understand that we can also trust refugees in making decisions on their lives. So last year, we have a partner with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and in term of trained people in regenerative agriculture and ecological aspects. And this, we have made a great progress through this partnership. I believe that there are also so many incentives that are now supported by UN Syria from within refugee settlements. Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, we talked about many different things. And hopefully a lot of people are going to hear through this important conversation because you do live and breathe sustainability. You show how applicable this is and how important it is to have a sustainable mindset. So I want to ask you, for those who are going to listen to us, to this episode, what would you say that is an important point they should focus on on our conversation?  Paulinho Muzaliwa: Normally, I would say on a perspective of refugees settlement and how people are seeing refugees. There's so many incredible people, incentives, and courageous community here in refugee settlement, doing things which are really exceptional, worth to be supported or worth to be charmed. And unfortunately, this work is not seen anywhere. And I would recommend people, if they really want to support amazing calls, it is in refugee where they should more focus, because these people are really doing things in a way that it's matter because the challenges or problem that they're explaining to or pitching in different audience of people. So these people are being victim of this problem directly. And then when I talk about hunger, I know what mean hunger. I know that most of people, they advocate about, okay, we advocate about hunger, but have you felt before this feeling of just saying to your children that we today, my children, so we I didn't been lucky to get food for you. So you should go to sleep and see what tomorrow will look like. As a parent, you sleep and figure out, spend all the nights figure out what the possibilities that I need to do so that these people or these children eat tomorrow. And this is how change makers, entrepreneurs from within the refuge when they talk about the problem that they are advocating for. And for us, as Unidos, we are more specially focusing on soil regeneration with the goal of prevent hunger crisis in refugee settlements in time of growing ambient food and organic, empower women to be self-reliant through different entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to experience or being part of the change that they want to see and feel being empowered or having a word in terms of contributing on the economy of not only the refugee community, but also of the country that hosts us as a refugee. Stephen Matini: Paulino, I think you are a phenomenal entrepreneur. You're a great leader. You're a fantastic change maker. And I believe your message is going to resonate and to be a shiny example for a lot of people, because everything and anything you said is something that is so relevant these days and is so needed. So thank you so much for your efforts. Thank you. And thank you for giving me your time. I've learned a lot today. Paulinho Muzaliwa: Thank you as well for providing this space, it’s really meant a lot for us in terms of representing our community.

How can we make our common road lead to a world of hope and joy? Our guest today is Gunnar George, author of the book Aha... Wow! Yes, and leadership development expert. Gunnar George believes that the most effective leaders are those who are compassionate, inspirational, and have a vision that promotes hope, joy, and sustainability. He challenges the notion of transactional communication in business and personal interactions, advocating instead for authentic and emotionally engaging exchanges. By developing others and maintaining a vision that encompasses societal and global impacts, compassionate leaders can play a significant role in creating a better world. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #TransformationalLeadership #GlobalImpact #Sustainability #CompassionateLeadership #BusinessTransformation #AuthorInterview #NewBookRelease #PodcastEpisode ... TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: The first question that I have for you, being someone who wrote a book, is how is the whole experience of writing a book? How your idea for “Aha... Wow! Yes.” came by? Gunnar George: Oh, the whole experience. It's a long experience, actually. It started many years ago. I thought I wanted to write a book. And I also worked in a company that had a different way of leading. We were consultants working with strategy and big transformations. And we had a different way of leading change that most of the traditional consulting companies had in those days. So we said to ourselves that we need to write this down sometime. And I had that in the back of my mind for many years. And then I've worked a lot with leadership development programs lately. And one of the things that I realized is that the more you share, the more you get and sharing is sort of the sharing of knowledge and experiences and views and so on. It's really what that is the core of leadership development. I met so many fantastic people and been part of extraordinary things in meetings with companies and transformations in big companies and so on. So I thought I need to share myself what I've experienced and what I've noticed and observed. But I didn't want to share it sort of to give advice, more to sort of to share my observations and my reflections on that. But it is a fantastic experience to see it grow and to see it take form. And then also, another thing is that the people you have around you and the people you meet, as soon as you start to talk about it a little bit, people want to contribute. And I have a friend who likes Paulo Coelho and he often quotes him and says that you have to be careful what you dream of because universe will conspire to make it happen. And that is sort of joked a little bit about it sometimes. But when you write a book, you see that almost like this is true because people come from suddenly from nowhere and say, I can help you or I can do that. So it's an amazing experience in that way. Stephen Matini:When you thought about writing a book, what was your initial biggest wish for the book? Gunnar George: I wrote it in English, in a simple kind of easy to read English. So I wanted to reach out to as many as possible in the world, not only to English native speaking countries. That was one of the thoughts I had. And then one of my wishes also that people start to think more about, “Aha... Wow! Yes,” which is the title of the book. That is sort of if we need more emotions in business, we need more emotions in society and positive emotions. And often when we structure things or do strategy work or communication work, whatever, we use why, what how as a structure that is sort of, you check that you have covered, why, what, how? And my thing thought with it, my wish with this was that “Aha... Wow! Yes,” would be the new why, what, how. So that is also a wish that I had. So I have in the book, I had sort of this “Aha... Wow! Yes,”, circular that I spoke about many times in the book. Stephen Matini: One thing that struck me when you and I met, you were talking about the importance of contributing to create a world of hope and joy, which, you know, these days, it seems to be so important to do, considering all that is happening, all the negativity. How do you keep that hope and joy within yourself? Gunnar George: I try to find it in the people I meet. I see sort of the positive things and heard an interview with the previous foreign minister of Sweden the other day. And he said that he had hope for, he saw hope in the world because we haven't done the transformation with women. Women has sort of, that is still a big transformation for the world. And he saw a lot of hope in that sort of, because it is a man's world. And this transformation is to make it a balanced world with both men and women is, he saw a lot of hope in that. And I agree totally with that. And I see that type of messages and people who think like that, that just brings me hope. And also the young generation. Every time I talk to them, I get amazed a little bit because I think back when we were young, were we that clever and that did we see so much? Did we see the world with that clear? Do we have this engagement or not when we were young? Stephen Matini: And to keep that youthful approach to things, I believe is really important. You know, like I believe for you, one of the key points is learning. And learning for me is one of the components that probably keep me positive, but keep me wanting to keep going. Absolutely. You said a few times the word transformation, which seems to be such an important word to you. What does transformation mean to you?  Gunnar George: For me, transformation. A lot of people talk about change and transformation and it's sort of, and everybody have their different definitions about it. I see transformation as a bigger type of change than just improvements. So transformation for me is a radical change. And you often start from the future and look back. What type of future do we want? And then you look back and say, what do we need to make happen in order for this division to happen, so say. And transformation is also more, it covers both the mindset and the system and the culture of a company or a society. So it's a very thorough change. That is the way I see it. And I think you mentioned learning and learning, I see, is the big way to get there, learning and seeing different perspectives. And I have in my book, I have one of the longest chapters about learning, actually, how to learn faster, faster than the speed of change. Stephen Matini: A lot of people say around learning, oh, I don't have time. I'm busy. I don't have time. I don't have time. So how can you keep what they say? A growth mindset, you know, a learning mindset, despite the fact that so many of us are super busy. How do you carve that time in your opinion? Gunnar George: Yeah, that's the biggest challenge, I guess. I think we need to add the inspiration part to the learning. We need to talk much more about inspiration. And if we are inspired and curious, we will learn much more. And we will create the time. You can see yourself. You have a lot of mails and messages coming all over. And then suddenly one of them, you can spend quite a long time on that. And then you can also say, why do you do that? And I think it has to do with you get inspired or you get, this is something that attracts you. And suddenly you create time. You don't have time, but maybe you spend half an hour or something, you didn't think that you were going to spend half an hour. And there was something that triggered that. And then to learn for half an hour just because it's really interesting. We have a limited amount of time during the day. So I think also we need to set aside learning as part of our work. So we have you answer a lot of emails. That does a chunk in your daily work. But you also need to put in maybe one hour or two hours a day just for learning. I mean, if you take a writer, for example, many writers, they read a lot. And so they have before lunch, they read or after lunch they write or vice versa. And that is about learning and getting new inspiration, new perspectives on things. In business, we have forgotten to take this time to learn. So we need to book it in our agendas, I think. I have a lot of examples and stuff in the book that how to speed it up. Stephen Matini: You said what we find inspirational, and I have to say during the day, a few things are inspirational, but a lot of stuff is boring. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Emails are God ... such a boring thing. You know, emails, I started writing less and less email. And I'm definitely using more and more of chats because they're faster. But the emails, God is still. I mean, emails have been around for what, 25 years? And still, people complain, oh, I get put in CC and so much stuff. Hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. And you think, yeah, but I mean, what does it do anyway? You know For sure, it's not inspirational.  Gunnar George: But you can ask yourself, what is that really gets your attention? What type of headlines is it? What type of pictures is it that you sort of stop for a moment and give it a chance? Stephen Matini: I have to say that a lot of stuff that I see in business, I find it very transactional. You're trying to get something out of me. And I think that all of us can spot that in a second. And what I'm thriving and what I try to seek is something that feels more simple, simpler and more authentic. Because when everything becomes transactional, then the energy doesn't flow, you know? Gunnar George:  So that is also why I have this “Aha ... Wow! Yes.” When you see a title or something, you see a picture and they say, aha, I didn't realize that. Or you say, wow, that was new or something. Or yes, I would like to try that. Then those type of emotional expressions are also, you see it everywhere, this aha, wow, yes. These are the things that we're focusing on. Stephen Matini: So it is an emotional book. It's supposed to evoke emotions.  Gunnar George:  Yes, I put in a lot of stories in it and a lot of quotes and stuff like that. Because many books on leadership and change and transformation, they are written in a very transactional way, in a sort of square mechanistic engineering type of books. I don't believe that you can explain leadership to leaders. You cannot, but many do. Many think that if you explain a model or something, then people will say, okay, and then they will sort of get it. But I think you need to go the whole circle. Aah, that is the learning and wow is the inspiration. And yes, it's sort of the action. So you have to go do all the whole circle in either way. Stephen Matini: In your book, there are three, I guess, ingredients that are so talked about these days. One is the notion of sustainability, which means a lot of different things for people. Another one is technology, new technology, and how technology is speeding things up. And the other one is this whole global political discourse, that is becoming apparently dark and dark and darker. And so these three components seem to be as part of this transformation. So from your perspective, what would you say that is a healthy, positive approach to the three of them? Gunnar George: The way I see it is that the more you learn about it, the more you understand. So you sort of feel that you are not maybe on top of it, but you feel that you are following what's happening. So that is one way. And the next thing is that I think you need some sort of vision as inspiration. If you don't have a positive future vision, then you will just do a lot of problem solving and you will run around and feeling stressed and so on. But if you have a vision, then that will sort of color the things that you do. I heard one person once talked about visions as memories of the future. And the reasoning was that memories that forms the way we sort of select information and the way we think our memories. If you have a vision, then you have sort of that is part, then that is your memories. You start to see new things just because you have this vision. If you have a vision to go to the moon or to Mars, for example, nowadays, suddenly you start to see all things that can help that. If you have a vision about the sustainable future, then you pick up all the things that are positive and that can add to that vision. You also see the barriers, of course. But yeah, I think you need to see these positive things to be able to cope with all the stress in a society today. Because I think it's sustainability, new technology and geopolitics. These are the three major forces. It's like a perfect storm now with three storms just enforcing each other. And they are connected, of course. Stephen Matini: How do you build a vision when you don't have a vision?  Gunnar George: It is to paint a picture of what kind of future you want to see. If it is in business, for example, if you take that, then most companies, they are not used to painting visions that are sort of something else than their own company. Because in today's world, it's so much focused on the shareholder value, for example, and there's a lot of companies looking at their valuation because they want to become unicorns and so many visions is about we are going to be the leader in the world or the leader in our industry. But the real vision is they go, they leave their own company and look at the customer or the society. What is the future customer experience? What is the future society we want to live in? Who are the future leaders? That type of vision is something more than yourself. Most companies start with the wrong question. They start with, what do we want to be in five years from now? And then they start talking about their own company and market shares or whatever, profitability. Instead of talking, what kind of customer experience do we want to see? What type of society do we want to see in the future? So I think when you have bigger visions like that, then you need to go outside of yourself, connected to the purpose of the company or the organization. If you look at yourself as an individual, if you can do the same there, you can come up with a wonderful vision, which is not only about yourself, it is about your network or the whole world, if you want to have a really, really big vision. And in the book, I try to connect the three levels. It's the individual level, the organizational level, and the world, the global level. And most books are about one of these levels. But I try to connect them all because now if you take sustainability, for example, you actually can do a lot as a responsible person as an individual, but it also can make even more as a company. And it's all connected to what's happening in the world. So all this, you have to cover all three today in many of the big challenges we have. It's not enough just to look at the individual or to look at the team or the organization. You have to go all the way. It is a time for big visions, I think, that we live in right now. Stephen Matini: You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about vision and whether or not I've had the vision in my life, but everything you are saying, that sort of vision that goes beyond myself, I think it's something that I have developed only in recent years. And a lot of that, I think it has to be with age, and the understanding that I will not be here forever. So the question to you is, do you think would you have written this book earlier? Gunnar George: Maybe not, because I think you have a point there. There are many young people with strong visions, but it's also when you get older, you have a broader perspective and you have more experience. Since part of the book is a big reason for the book is sharing experiences and observations is I needed to collect a lot, of course, before you can do it. But I think it's an interesting question you have. But there are young people with a very fantastic visions, of course, that I think is amazing when you see them. Stephen Matini: In your life, were there any experiences, any people that somehow, you know, looking in hindsight, were responsible for the way you think today? Gunnar George: Well, there are many, actually, maybe a thousand. But actually, in my book, I wrote down, I did an exercise. I was doing a presentation at the conference. And after the presentation, two persons from China came up to me and they thanked me a lot for, and they said that they had learned a lot. And I didn't realize it. I said, I said, yes, thank you, thank you. But then they said, we learned a lot. And then I said, one more time, we learned a lot. I thought about what was so, why did they say that? But then I realized that that is one of the best things you can say to someone, especially in Asia. So then I thought about it. Who has I learned a lot from? Who could I say that to? So when I wrote the book in the beginning of the book, the introduction, I wrote down the people I learned a lot from. And then I was thinking, when I've done that, I put them in the right order. And then I realized that that was a very interesting thing to do. But I also developed it into an exercise because if you do that, then you can start to think, who did I put on a list and who did I not put on a list? And why did I not put them there? Because the list cannot be too long. And then you can ask yourself, who could I have put there that I didn't put there? And why did I not take that opportunity to learn from that person more? I've developed maybe 10 questions. I think it was that was that you can connect to this list that really says a lot about how you think and how you can start to learn faster and learn more. If I should pick one or two persons from that list, I learned a lot from this guy that I told you about earlier. He was an Irish guy, was an expert on cross-cultural communication. Sean Gaffney was his name. And I learned a lot from him. And that thing I said, I love people. That summarizes a lot of his view on things. I learned a lot from Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer that I had the opportunity to talk to. And his view of life, I take him as an example a couple of times in the book, also things that he said and one thing that he shared was that he had traveled around the world as an explorer, looking at digging out this ancient pyramids, whatever. And then when we talked to a group of people, he told us that I have learned what is a good society or not. There's an easy measure of that, he said, and everybody was curious. And then he said, you can just count the number of smiles on the streets. That is my, from all the travels are done all over the world. If you count the smiles you see on the street, that is the best indication for how good a society is. And I thought that was a really strong message in that. But I learned a lot more from him also. And then I learned a lot from my wife that I'm very thankful for having met. And there are many others also that I work together with. And you learn every day when you work with the curious people. And if you work in situations that are really stretched, so really challenging situations. So I learned a lot. I can go on forever, talk about people. Stephen Matini: And sometimes you learn from people that they teach you stuff unintentionally. It may not necessarily be someone that you know super well. It could be someone that you met very briefly, but somehow the person says something that you really need at the moment.  Gunnar George: Yeah, exactly. Small things. I learned a lot from one of my sons. When he was about five years old, he was, every time the doorbell rang, he was just running as crazy to get first to the door because he wanted to stand there and shake hands and see who it was on the other side of the door. And it was so curious. His eyes were just glowing when it was a new person coming, ringing on the door. When I saw that, I thought, what a fantastic curiosity. That is something I need to develop even more also myself. So you learn all the time from all kinds of sources, of course. Stephen Matini: You know, you've been working in leadership development for such a long time. If you had a leader in front of you, and if you had to share with such a leader a very important point that you think should know, what would you say that is? What I seem to say the most now is people always look at you and they seek a consistency. So you may ask people whatever you want, but they don't see that behavior in you, they're not going to follow you. So be mindful that people always look at you. They always seek for consistency. Gunnar George: For me, if I say something to you, it's to take initiatives and develop your people. It's not about yourself. It's about your people. If you as a leader can develop really good leaders, that is the ultimate sign of good leadership. And I think one of the key questions in the book that I've written is about sort of what type of leaders? How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? I think that is one of the core questions we need to ask ourselves now. How do we get leaders who care for the whole world? If you as a leader can develop that, that would be fantastic. And there are many more things to say, of course, in that. But I try to think a lot in the book about what, you know, this famous quote from Einstein. So if I had one hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would just spend 55 minutes on finding the right question. Then I had five minutes to find the answer. So I was thinking about that quote. I said, "What is the right question in a book about leadership?" So I thought a lot about it. And then what I came up with is that the question is, how do you develop, how do we ensure leaders that we have leaders that care for the whole world? That is the key question for me when we go forward now. That is part also of a vision, of course, if we can have that. Because what we see now is the opposite in many cases. Stephen Matini: Is this also the reason why you name your consultancy Compassion? Gunnar George: Yeah, it is. Because I think that is one of the keys to the future. It was actually my wife who suggested the name for the company. She has done a lot of yoga, and that is a key element in yoga. And when the yogis talk about the future, they talk a lot about the compassion. And also compassion as a word is sort of passion, it's passion for communication, which I work with. And it's also compass is part of compassion. And I work a lot with strategy visions and values. So that is sort of the compass. So it's a lot of things that come together in that name, compassion. Stephen Matini: So it's more passion and a vision, basically. Gunnar George: Yeah. There are so many different definitions on compassion. I did one myself in the book. I will just look it up and see if I say the right thing. So the way I usually define is to listen with your heart and do good. Stephen Matini: We talked about different things, a lot of different things. For those who are going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would like for them to pay attention to? Gunnar George: What we talked about with the compassion, I think, is the key. That is the last chapter in my book is called compassion as the cornerstone. And so we talked about compassion. And I think that is the key for the future. And if we can determine how we interact, how we communicate, and how we lead. It comes down a lot to that single word, actually. So I think if they find out more about compassion and they try to behave more compassionate and see the effect that it has on your surrounding and the boomerang effect that you get back. Like when you inspire people, you get so much inspiration back yourself. Stephen Matini: From your perspective, compassion starts with the relationship with me. Does it start with people? Gunnar George: What it starts with, I think it starts with yourself that you want to see the positive, that you're curious, want to see the positive, like what I said, to listen with your heart and your good. And so you listen a lot. And then in all your meetings, you're trying to find these positive things and create this positive feeling in the relationship. I think that is the core of that. Stephen Matini: This listen with the heart and do good. I’m going to write it down. Thank you so much for sharing this moment with me. I learned a lot of important things. Thank you. Gunnar George: Thank you. This has been fantastic to talk to you. You are very good at talking to people, you know. Stephen Matini: You too, you too.

Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe serves as the Vice President of the PlungeSmile Foundation, which provides education, health, nutrition, and infrastructure programs to support rural communities in Nigeria, Africa. PlungeSmile exemplifies how corporations can forge impactful partnerships to tackle pressing societal challenges. Our conversation explores how authentic corporate social responsibility drives sustained business success and why it should be central to every company's mission. Corporations elevate their brand reputation through these collaborations and showcase a solid dedication to social causes. Additionally, these alliances offer valuable insights into pressing societal issues, empowering companies to gather data for refining future product development or service enhancements. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube,  Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #AndyEberechukwuAkukwe #PlungeSmile #RelianceInfosystems  #CorporateSocialResponsibility #Sustainability #SocialImpact #Leadership #CommunityDevelopment #PityPartyOver #Alygn #Stephen Matini ... TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: What I love about your background is the fact that you are a business person, you are an entrepreneur, but at the same time, you also have a tremendous sensitivity for sustainability and sustainable development. So how did this come about? You know, how did you join these two things?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Okay, splendid. Plunge Smile is a foundation established by the group managing director of Reliance Info Systems, Olayemi Popoola, who I happen to be a member of his team. And then over the years, he's personalized to help to assist people, develop even on a career level as well. He took this out to the public to salvage the problem that we have in the Nigerian society, which was mainly centered on education. Marrying his passion was not a thing of difficulty for him. And then getting members of like mind onto the team was not much of a hard work as well. I love social impact. I love to see people smile. So joining the team of Plunge Smile and see that it's all about making this social impact is our dreams actually or fully attained, gives me that confidence to move with the team. So it's a seamless flow because it's a mixture of career and passion. Stephen Matini: I’ve had the pleasure of talking to other business people in Africa. And one thing that all of you have in common is your sensitivity towards corporate social responsibility. And CSR is a huge topic in the Western world. But then oftentimes the need for profits, you know, to make money seems to get ahead. Why do you think in Africa this theme seems to be so important to a lot of people?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: The African society is built for interdependence. When you talk of the traditional family system, we majorly operate an extended family system here unlike what you have in Europe. So here, when you are concerned with your spouse and your children, you still need to think about your uncles, your aunts, their families, your in-laws and all whatnot. These actually traditionally make up for the unique African family system. Corporate social responsibility is a huge thing here in that in a local community, you would always find people who are not as privileged as others. You would always find people who actually need a helping hand. So it's such a big one because we call it giving back, right? It's such a big one that many business founders and of course giants in different fields, including sports, where actually people who depended on others to survive, people who depended on others to rise. So some survived on the streets, some survived through certain tissue-free schemes, scholarships and all that. So the first thing anyone wants to do when they succeed is to think of how to give back to the society. And so that's why CSR is a big thing for us here, tying it to our traditional family system. Stephen Matini: When did you hear about CSR for the first time? Do you remember?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. That was when I had my first corporate job in the early 2000s. I joined Diageo at the time. It was a big thing. And of course, for many other corporates all over the world, CSR is high because you want to give back to your host community. You want to give back to those that actually form your mass markets. Stephen Matini: In the Western world, oftentimes a big debate is about, should I manage my business for shareholders? Should I manage my business for stakeholders? Oftentimes, CEOs, they really focus on short-term returns rather than long-term investments. In your opinion, how can we find balance between making sure that a business is profitable, but having a long-term goal?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: So business deals with numbers, right? It all comes to approach. So there has to be the quick approach of making money, carrying out your research, finding out what it is that the market needs, curating products or services that the market needs, curating your routes to market, positioning your brand, activating all your strategies and tactics in the marketplace to be at the winning edge. All of these, of course, make sure that revenue, profits, and of course, growth structures almost immediately attained. But then again, likening these to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals ), which talks about sustainability, you don't just want to build for today. The shareholders primarily wait for, say, half a year, end of the year to take some shares, those who would sell off, those who will liquidate and all that, they do that. But of course, the stakeholders are beautiful tomorrow because many of these employees would want to work for decades, for perennial years. So they want to see that the business succeeds. So it's just an approach knowing that, okay, we need to get the numbers. And then we have to develop a culture, a sustainability culture building on the long term, where we are not just looking at numbers, we are looking at goodwill in the market. And you can't all but attend this with marketing, selling campaigns. This is where CSR comes, because when the people are on your side, you have good will with them, then in fact, your stay in that market is almost all even guaranteed. Stephen Matini: Do you think that this approach can be applied to any industry, to any company?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Definitely, yes. So it depends on what the vision is, what the mission is. Of course, the vision is that big picture, and then the mission are those tiny pieces that actually lead us to the big picture. How we are going to achieve or how any organization would achieve this would be fundamentally assembling the right team. And so this is where HR professionals come to play. For instance, in Reliance Group here, we've got a robust HR professionals or HR team made up of professionals who actually bring a whole lot of experienced wealth into their field. So what that would mean is you have to make sure that the team are of like mind with you. So if I am the CEO, I am the founder and I have these long-term goals, I need to make sure that I get the right people by my side. Of course, over the years, there will be churn, right? There will be staff churn and all that. But those who share the same vision with you will remain. And then you build something with them, you know, progressively and make sure that they are rewarded and that they keep staying with you. Stephen Matini: So Andy, me personally, I agree with you 100%. So everything you say resonates very deeply with me and what is dear to me. But let's say hypothetically, I were someone who said, Andy, that's beautiful, but that's not applicable. That's not realistic because you have to make sure that your company runs and to make your shareholders happy. So I don't think what you're saying is possible. How would you respond to the type of criticism?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Irrespective of the size of the corporate, that's why you have Plunge Smile. That's why we are here. So there are B2B partnerships that you can enter into with NGOs, Punge Smile referentially here. While you're doing your business, you could make financial contributions. You could have employee volunteering. You could do pro bono services. You could actually do some skill-based volunteering where you identify certain people who bring certain skills to play, for instance, you identify people who could actually help these schoolchildren with, say, coding and then free coding services or free coding aptitude is actually a provision to them. There could be cause marketing or advocacy and public influence where you use your marketing campaigns, you highlight social mis-norms, crime for advocating actually for social reforms, for policy reforms and all that. You could actually partner with Plunge Smile in the area of supply chain integration. So let's assume that yes, you want to deliver on education or you want to deliver on free school feeding or you want to deliver on certain piece of your corporate social responsibility. So we have the leg, we have the guys on the field, we have all the mercenaries and tools. So when we integrate our supply chain, we get to deliver this. Then of course, impact investing is that tranche where, for instance, you are trying to say cure a water challenge in a society. And at the same time, that company actually sells water. So while solving for water problem, you are still positioning your brand as maybe the supreme or superior brand over others. So these are more even research and data sharing as well. So how do people actually gain insights into what could be called real time societal problems that they could solve for? That's when they actually partner with NGOs, when they partner with serious NGOs like Plunge Smile, get on the field, see what these schoolchildren are going through, see what community residents are going through, and then of course, begin to solve them. And they have rich data to form whatever product or whatever service that they want to create in the future. It's a win-win. You can't just say, I'm here to do business and I want to look out a corporate social responsibility. And that's why we are seeing here at Plunge Smile. As an individual, you can go about your daily activities where we help you run this other aspect of your corporate social responsibility. We have dashboards that gives you real time visibility into your donations, your resources, where they are going, how they be used, what impact they've made. And of course, you can celebrate your success, even on your website, on your page, and all that. So I see it as a collaborative effort where you just get to identify who you're going to collaborate with, then focus more on your business while we focus more on your social impact. Stephen Matini: I love that. It's such a systemic collaborative view of the world and what the world could be, you know, in the future. Of all possible directions, what attracted you to Plunge Smile, why you decided to join this initiative?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: At a time that age, I presented my school in a quiz competition. I got to state level. In fact, I was in certain quiz competitions even at national level. So I found out firsthand that certain people would actually want to fly, but they don't have means to fly. Certain children were deprived of the rights to education because of poverty, of low appreciation of the impact of education by their parents or any other factor. It could be peer pressure, it could be violence in the community, whatever it is. So collectively seeing that the world could actually be a better place, even especially the less privileged children get access to college education, have the right funding, have the right tools. And Plunge Smile is already playing in this space over the years. Why not? So you could see that the marriage is something that came seamlessly and effortlessly. Stephen Matini: Where do you hope a Plunge Smile to be let's say 10 years from now, what do you see?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Before I answer that question, I want to give it a two-leg approach. So Plunge Smile actually have a flagship initiative called Educa. And this Educa was better as a result of our years of interventions in educational sector of Nigeria. And our plan is actually to scale this across to Africa. So Educa gets to see that children who don't have school fees to pay are being funded. Children whose school buildings are dilapidated. These buildings could be repaired. Children who stay out of school because of hunger, they could be fed in school. And then most importantly, many children who stay out of school because they don't have uniforms. They don't have the screen. They don't have bags. They don't have shoes. Neither do they have the full skill kits, right? So they stay out of school. And what we found in interventions is we saw it at 5% response increments in the attendance of schoolchildren when you kick them up. And that's why the scent of education is kid up a child. So we have “Kit Up A Child” program. So Kit Up A Child program actually highlights making sure that the child goes back to school and stays in school, having the full kits, which are the uniforms, the bags, the shoes or sandals, as the case may be. And then of course, there are different ways by which any organization or individual can actually key into the program of London, which is educated. So you could donate, you could volunteer your skills, you could sponsor a child with an amount, you could sponsor 50 children, you could sponsor 100 children. So those details we could actually share with you, it depends on the school, depends on the popularity of what you want to do. And then you could partner with us on a long term, you know, a while ago we talked about partnership and the different trends of partnership. Partnership goes to see that these solutions are scaled. And of course, there's a long-term retention in our schemes. So we actually have people that we work with along these trenches. So educate proper, what's the workings of educator? So in Educa, we build, we have rather interactive maps, we have dashboards, all the APIs, and of course, the user-friendly experience that anyone would have on the app. So here you explore the map, you choose a school, you select a project. I've mentioned a whole lot of projects. You select a project, then of course, you donate towards this project. You track the progress through the dashboard, you have real-time tracking of the project. And then, of course, you celebrate success. You celebrate impact made. We help you do this on social media. We collaborate with you. There are badges. There are so many other things that we've come up with to actually help you touch like this, because we are not doing this in our name. So we are doing this in the name of the corporates, but because we have the experience, we have the wherewithal, we know what the problems are. And we have over 112,000 public primary schools in Nigeria already in the system. So we could actually help you navigate. It could be your alma mater, it could be any school that you know that actually has a problem. And with this, your go-to social impact is made easy and you achieve your dreams. So where I see Plunge Smile in the next few years is scaling across, you know, out of Nigeria, you know, scaling across Africa, because the plan to actually do this is already in place. And I see 2024 being that year, where all of these will begin to unfold. And so that's why we actually need collaborators, we need individuals, we need corporates and all. We have, of course, Plunge Smile is riding on the back of a technological giant, which is Reliance Ecosystems Group. So all the tech driven solutions, all the tech enablements, all the functionalities that will actually help you have visibility into your project and actually make sure you know there is accountability there. So on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, depending on how we agree or however you want to do it, we could actually have some reviews. We could actually have some performance reviews. We could actually celebrate your donations, whatever resources you would see them live. And if there are leftovers, of course, they will be reimbursed. Stephen Matini: Has education always been central in your life? Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. A man informed will make informed decisions, while a man uninformed will make deformed decisions. So he could think that he's smart. He could think that, oh, I've met the market women. I've met the market people. I know the pain points. But he doesn't know what we call research. He doesn't know what we call inferential analysis, right? So if he cannot actually do that, then his decisions will always be deformed. So education is central to anyone's life. And that is why through the Educa Initiative of Plunge Smile, we are drumming on education. We are asking individuals, we're asking corporates, come join us in what we've done over the years. We have a whole lot of achievements. We've donated thousands of textbooks and notebooks. We have school teachers in some committees that we hired. And under bureau, we have buildings renovated. We have several schools where children don't bother about what to eat. They just come to school. There's always a free school feeding. Even in a unit like this, a Plunge Smile still goes out to communities, you know, share some staples, some foods, materials, and even some drugs to make sure that, you know, residents are safe, they are healthy, and of course, they are welfare. So over the years, and of course talking about technology, we have an ICT center where children actually just come. There are laptops, there are gadgets, they just come to up their skills in computer proficiency. There are several programs for them to do across fields. They get to see the outer world. They get to understand Internet, cloud computing, coding, graphics design, data analysis, at least at that basic level. And all of these will form their mindsets to say, you know what? I have to continue this. I have to get to the top. It's just beyond what I'm taught in English mathematics and some other general science subjects. So yes, it's central to everyone and it's central to me. Stephen Matini: You know, these days, a lot of people feel scared and afraid what the future might hold. You know, we listen to the news and it's just this constant polarization, bickering, fighting and wars and such and such. So a lot of people feel not that optimistic about the future. How do you stay positive? You have so much strength. There's so much energy. How do you keep your energy up?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Man, who is a tripartite being, spiritual and body, has to always draw strength from God. Personally, I'm a believer of Jesus Christ. That is my key strength and how I draw energy fundamentally. Then I draw energy, of course, from happenings around. The problems of others get to inspire me and get to make me know that I need to find solutions to their problems. 'Cause I told you I grew up seeing people with diverse problems. I had some of my challenges myself. So problem in the African society is an ending. And then keeping your head above the waters, navigating through those challenges and getting to the top, you just need to be focused because it's only through being focused that you can help others. So one from God and then two, being inspired by helping people get out of their problems. Stephen Matini: What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who are interested in pursuing your similar route, a route that is filled with sustainable development?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: All right. So according to a UN, we have 17 SDGs. Three may be very much pronounced, which has to do with health and well-being, quality education, and of course, industry innovation and infrastructure. First and foremost, across the 17 divides or 17 goals, any venture need to tie their vision to the actualization of some of these goals, because trying to achieve all of these goals may be a tall order for any corporate, right? Because it's a very broad space. So when you need to identify your key strengths, marry that with what you would want to solve in the society business wise, then of course, you have the social impact that actually inspires you from seeing people with similar problems. It could be people with nutrition problems, it could be people with shelter problems, it could be people with water problems. And then maybe you are working on any of these or a sinister solution area. So that inspires you to even go out there to get solutions to their problems. So this could be viewed in the form of impact investing, which I said a while ago, which is where you're actually making this impact. There'll be financial returns. But in addition to financial returns, of course, there is this corporate or social impact made at the corporate level. So my advice would be, when you research, you find out what the problems are, you know what your key strengths are, you position yourself to take advantage of your key strengths and then bring the solution to the social space. Then of course, you need partners. And being that one smile is that foundation that has been on the ground, that has actually worked in these key areas. You need to partner with an organization like Plunge Smile. So that is very, very important because you actually need a helping hand. You need one to actually serve as a compass to help you have a soft landing and then make sure that your resources or the resources you're deploying are well utilized. So this is the advice I'll give them. Stephen Matini: Growing up, was there any person or any event that somehow contributed to help you realize who you wanted to be?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Oh, yes. Okay. So growing up, I've had challenges, right? My upbringing was settled with certain challenges. I needed certain things and they were not readily available. And then I had to be determined as the first of four children, just calling it straight. So I lost my parents at an early age. I needed to make sure that, of course, my younger ones would actually get to where I was. So at the time, still in secondary school, there were certain luxury that were available to others that were not available to me. And I knew one thing that the only way for me to access this luxury was actually to study. So I was a bookworm. So the only thing I knew was how to study. I never really kept friends. You wouldn't believe that the first time in my life that I played PS, that's PlayStation was actually years after marriage when I bought it for my children. So many of my mates would play those games, would indulge in so many activities, even in primary school and secondary school. But hey, I didn't have that luxury. I just knew that the only thing that would actually get me above the waters was to study and then believing in my God. So I did this and that has been my main state. Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like our listeners of our episode to focus on in particular?  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: I want to speak across life, without any industry, without any solution area in mind. So fundamentally, you need to be socially aware of who you are. You need to understand that as a man, we are not just elevated animals, we are created to solve problems. So you need to start out early enough to find out the problems that exist and those problems that resonate with your inbuilt capacity. Now, the capacity may not be well enough. You could have 20% of what you need to solve those problems. So the one lies on you to make sure that you build for the 80% capacity while trying out solutions. So what do I mean? I can't say I want to take care of 100 households if I didn't have the resources to do that. But I could actually start with a household while taking up courses, learning how people do it, building my business, to have the full capacity where I could even achieve beyond the 100 households. Then two, you need to be tenacious. You need to be consistent in whatever it is that you do. Because there will always be storms, there will always be criticisms. Even in this social impact, even as London actually delivers the social impact to communities, you see here a few people doubting, suspecting, why are they doing it? Is there anything in need for them? Is there anything hidden? They are not telling us stuff like that, right? But you need to be considered what you do and find a way to navigate through those criticisms and those challenges, because they will always be there and they should not put you down. Then of course, finally, you need to have your eye on the ball. What is the ball as a corporate want to make X revenue? Y profits and employees get to Z countries, make T social impact. This should form your daily watch, right? So every day you get to review how close am I to achieving these call-out points? How close am I to getting to my destination? And then whatever it is that you need to adjust, you adjust. Not forgetting that you have to study some people that have gone ahead of you. They are always models, so get to find out how they did it, how they built their businesses, how they built their social impact, how they actually built their nonprofits for a long term, how they actually delivered and they were trusted. Just as we do the Plunge Smile, we built a trust system where I'll call it a trust foundation, where as you join us as a partner, as you come in, everything is clear to you. So we need to make sure that this is maintained because this is what actually gives everyone confidence at the end of the day. So even in an organization, your employees, your co-C level staff need to have visibility into what you do, ideas will just come up. And then, of course, achieving your dreams will be a walk in the park. Stephen Matini Well, Andy, I feel energized after listening to you. So thank you so much for your vision, for your leadership, for your energy, for all the things that I've learned today. Because oftentimes I talk about corporate social responsibility, but you are the embodiment of concepts that sometimes are just, you know, very academic. You really live and breathe this. So thank you so much.  Andy Eberechukwu Akukwe: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Stephen. You have a lovely day.

Chris Marshall is a futurist, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Playfulness Institute. Futurism is not about predicting the future, but it involves looking beneath surface-level events to identify trends that drive seismic changes.  Chris's journey as a futurist highlights the importance of curiosity. In his experience, being multi-passionate and embracing diverse interests is advantageous in a world of rapid change and disruption. A curious mindset fosters resilience and creativity, allowing entrepreneurs to adapt more effectively to uncertain environments. Our conversation revolves around adapting to change and embracing a multi-dimensional perspective in navigating disruptive environments.  Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Check Chris Marshall’s Decoding Change: Understanding what the heck is going on, and why we should be optimistic about our future, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #Futurism, #BehavioralScience, #ChrisMarshall, #PlayfulnessInstitute, #AdaptingToChange, #MultiDimensionalPerspective, #DisruptiveEnvironments, #Curiosity, #Entrepreneurship, #Resilience, #Creativity, #Innovation, #FutureTrends, #RapidChange, #DiverseInterests, #CuriousMindset, #Adaptability, #SeismicChanges, #MultiPassionate, #PodcastEpisode #StephenMatini #PityPartyOver #Alygn #MikaelaSchiffrin #TaylorSwift TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: My first question for you, which probably would serve a lot of people listening to this episode, is who is a futurist?  Chris Marhsall: So what's a futurist? A futurist basically, it's not sci-fi. It's not predicting the future even, because that's what a lot of people do think it's about. It's kind of we have a crystal ball somehow and go, oh, well, this is going to happen at this date and this time. The way I approach it is I look at the big drivers, the big trends and megatrends, which are just kind of bringing about seismic change, but often under the surface. So I guess for me, the definition I like to use is that a futurist looks below the surface level events and look to what is happening beneath the surface, which might not be being picked up by mass media and things like that. And really, when we start to understand that, we start to see that everything is always in flux. Everything's always changing. You know, this isn't new thinking. In fact, Eastern philosophies have talked about this kind of natural law of impermanence for millennia. Being a futurist, the way I try to look at it is, well, what's the current trend? What's currently powering society? If we're looking at kind of societal philosophy or we're looking at business technology, what's the current trend? What's the one which is potentially coming in because that's the one that's then maybe going to take over? And then we can build out scenarios around that crossover. And you can also go further out and go, well, actually, what's right at the fringes, what's being developed right at the fringes today? And this has less probability, has less certainty around it. It makes you aware of what's happening, what might change the world, what might move this market or this group of people or this business or organization. It's a far more scenario-based way of looking at things rather than the typical, let's go back to business and the business plan, which typically has one scenario, and it's normally very, very positive, and I'm going to get 1% of this market share. And hey, Presto, it's an amazing business. Futures thinking really just tries to bring in the different scenarios and then paint kind of, well, what are the pros and cons? What are the things we need to be aware of in each of those? Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I was also wondering when you realized in your life this passion of yours, because for me happened really, really early on, and I could express it as a passion for patterns. You know I could see patterns in everything. How did you find out this attitude of yours? Chris Marshall: So I lived in North Wales. I still live in North Wales. Obviously, a few hundred years ago, 1,000 years ago now, the Romans came and kind of conquered Britain. And Welsh roads, they weave in and out. They have a corner every about 30 centimeters. The joke is that there used to be sheep paths. And the Roman roads in contrast are pinned straight. Now, whether this is true or not, my parents told me that this would kind of save travel time and it would stop bandits lurking around a corner and all these kind of things. And for me, I was always interested in these big shifts that we had these kind of, I'm going to call them scars on the landscape from eras gone by that no longer exist, but they're still visible to us. And so I was fascinated by these big moments of change, kind of pivotal moments or paradigm shifts. That kind of like lay dormant in me for decades. Obviously, just curious. And I think that's probably the key is I'm a highly curious person. And that sent me down an awful lot of rabbit holes of, you know, kind of if I list the titles of things that I've done. I'm a master distiller. I'm a psychotherapist. I'm a performance coach, a behavioral scientist, a futurist, an investment manager. What's happened in the last few years is really, I think it was when I was researching for the book "Decoding Change," I realized that all of this life experience, this kind of life of being a multi-passioned person, this highly curious person, actually, they do have crossovers. They have transferable skills and transferable insights. So for me, it was really just a life of being highly curious and often getting stuck into things which fascinated me, which I found interesting. Some people would just call them distractions from what I was meant to be focusing on. But essentially, over that time, I just found all these different avenues. And then eventually it all came together. This is maybe going back only maybe seven, eight years into this field that, okay, if we actually add all these together in this kind of beautiful Venn diagram almost, then right at the center is the overlap between all of these things. So that's for me, and I constantly draw on all of those different experiences and skills I've built. Stephen Matini: Basically, based on what you're saying, you need to have so many different tools to navigate in a way that makes sense. I don't think you were unfocused. You were building your resilience, probably.  Chris Marshall: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, most of my work now not only draws on all those different skills, but helps people promote it in their own lives. And this isn't to say that if you are a highly focused person with one focus, one job, one project, that that's bad. You know, the world needs both types. But what we've done, I think, in the modern world is promote this kind of idea that we go through school and we continually specialize until we come out with this hyper-focused specialization in this niche area. And that's all we do and all we look at. But as you'll know from your teaching in your own life and seeing this in businesses, when we kind of look for creative solutions, they tend to come from spillovers. So I think Einstein described it as creativity being combinational play. So this idea of knocking two molecules together which have never met before. And you don't get that very easily when it's just one molecule. It's got nothing to bounce off. So you can get it in a committee, you can get it in a team, you can get it in an organization, but you can also get it in individuals. And the world we've promoted, I mean, if you even think about how you promote yourself individually, if you're a multi-passion person, the question I hate the most is, what do you do? I struggle to answer that one because it's like, well, what's your interest? And I'll tell you what's relevant. But the way we've promoted the world, these kind of 30 second, 60-second elevator pitches that we're all told to have, they don't allow for multi-passion people to kind of promote themselves and thrive. In fact, all too often, they're hit back with these ideas of, "You're not focused," or, "You're a jack of all trades," which is kind of this derogatory term for you're not really a master of anything. But in a world of disruption and change, I actually believe having that multi-passioned mindset, that highly curious one, is a distinct advantage. We haven't had to have it in the last 250 years, and we can dig into why, but we're moving to an era of radical social change, radical disruption. And if you can't see things from different perspectives, not only do those situations become stress-inducing, anxiety-provoking, you're engulfed in that situation, but you haven't got the skill set and experience to see it from different perspectives. So actually, the multi-passion mindset is extraordinarily important as we move into a disruption, disruptive era, which I believe we are. Stephen Matini: And I think probably of all people, what you're saying is something that may resonate very deeply with entrepreneurs. They have to wear so many different hats. And sometimes your budget is just nothing, and you have to make the best out of nothing. Is that maybe the reason that you enjoy working with entrepreneurs?  Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's creatives in general. So I've kind of founded two different companies around, not specifically entrepreneurs, but multi-passioned people, curious people, creatives, whatever label people want to kind of give themselves. And the first was a company called the PPM method or “pause play move” method. It's a decision-making framework that allows people to pause more, be more playful, and we can dig into why those two things are kind of highly relevant. But yeah, it teaches people to deal with this constant bombardment of wearing multiple hats, being pulled in different directions. And if you look at kind of stress levels, burnout rates, then entrepreneurs are normally pretty high on the top of the table. So there's a downside to being multi-passionate as well. And that's why also as a psychotherapist, I set up a company called The Refuel Clinic. So it's a small psychotherapy practice specifically for multi-passioned and creative people, because we experience different sets of burnout and stress and anxiety because we're constantly flicking between tasks, we're constantly wearing different hats, we're constantly being pulled in different directions. We're normally behind because we're not that well organized. And so firefighting as we go. But yeah, absolutely. I find it an incredible group of people to work amongst and with because it's my tribe of other people who are creative and insightful and innovative in their nature. Stephen Matini: You know what I just realized? You said past play a move. I did not realize this, but the tagline of my podcast, you know pity party over is a pause, learn and move on. You know So maybe I'm a little bit of Chris, but I love yours more, I have to say. I love the word “play.” Why you picked that word of all possible words? Chris Marshall: This was kind of, again, some research into what makes us resilient. At the time, one of the avenues I'd kind of dive down, I'd set up a micro distillery in the UK. This was 2014. The reason being was essentially, I was working in an investment management space. I wanted to do something a little bit more creative. There is quite a lot of creativity within investment management, but I wanted something more tangible. And I was starting to notice this trend of people wanting things which were authentic, that they were artisan, that they were small batch, you know all these kind of things. I nearly opened a brewery and then I found out I was gluten intolerant, so I can't drink beer. And I thought, well, that's not the best company really to own, is it? So I set up a distillery because they start in similar ways. And I've always loved chemistry. And it's really just a big boy's chemistry set with a nice ending. You get to drink the product. And at the same time, I was obviously still head of investment strategy, a fund manager. I was doing research into behavioral science, particularly around resiliency. And this is where it becomes a little bit embarrassing, because while I was doing academic research on resiliency and mental toughness, I actually burnt out. And the irony for those who don't really understand those concepts is that those mindsets, states, personality types, however you want to construct them, they are meant to protect you from the very thing I was experiencing. I realized kind of lying on my back in hospital for three days, you know I did a pretty good job of burnout because you know that's if you're driven and you're committed, that's what you do. And I'd come from a world of professional sport as a young child. So I raced on the British ski team up until about age 17, 18. Within there, we talk about mental toughness a lot, but the construct of mental toughness and resiliency within elite sport is very different to within a business and an organization. But the mistake we've done is we've just transported it from elite sport and gone, this is what entrepreneurs need to do. But with an elite sport or any sport, you tend to have both short timeframes of when you're competing. So you might be mentally tough for a day and then you can chill out or let's extend this. You might have to show resiliency for a season and then you have an off-season. Being an entrepreneur, you don't get that. Often you don't even get that while you sleep. I was kind of looking at this and going, "Okay, I think we've actually got things wrong here. There's a lot that we can take from the mental toughness research and resiliency research into entrepreneurship and organization psychology and things like that. There's a missing piece. And the missing piece is within organizations. And as an entrepreneur, it's constant. It becomes chronic rather than these more acute periods where we have to be mentally strong. So I was then looking for what's the missing piece. And for me, I stumbled across research on adult playfulness. And adult playfulness is so under-researched, so underrepresented. I mean, it's overlooked. When you kind of tell somebody as an adult to be playful, particularly if they're in a professional setting, they tend to kind of look at you as if you've lost your head a little bit. You can see what they're thinking. They're thinking, yeah, kids play. I'm a professional. I make the joke that as kids, we're second nature and we're very playful and creative. And then when we become an adult, somewhere along the lines, who knows quite what happens, but there's a defining moment when we go, okay, well, I'm going to be a professional and that means I need to be stressed and serious. When we actually look at playfulness, what it brings us is incredible. I mean, the benefits of cognition, of thought, of creativity, of curiosity, of collaboration, we can keep going and adding on all these things that happen when we're playful. And I'd actually go further and say, if we even draw on lessons from the animal kingdom, playfulness is not only an adaptive response. So if we meet a situation where we're failing or it's not going our way, play is a way of exploring new options without being too hung up on the outcome. It's actually when we consider it, it's, I believe, the optimal state of being human. When we're playful, we can think with like this swiftness and clarity. We can collaborate with others. We're not rigid. We're not closed-minded. We're open-minded. We're happy to kind of be adaptable and flexible. And so the challenge for us all is how do we cultivate playfulness? And that was really what led me to both the poorest play move and the play part as a middle pillar in the PPM method. It was stumbling across this research and it was really just trying to find out what was lacking. Why was I burning out? Why was I lying in hospital when I was a researcher on mental toughness and resiliency? I mean, it was ridiculous. And it was finding that missing part because if you take the mental toughness or hardiness construct, you have commitment challenge as kind of these two big pillars. But really, as an entrepreneur, if you're very high in those kind of if you're self-challenged, high commitment, then essentially what you do is you just bury yourself in the ground eventually. You need something to break that and to actually make it more fluid and fun and be prepared to ports. So for me, you know again, how I typically describe this is we have to go back to kind of our stress response. And when we start looking at stress, we start understanding stress isn't just about a situation we find ourselves in. Stress is the total load, if you like, on our body from our behaviors, what we consume, the environment we're in, you know all of these different things. And our stress response is incredible. So when we meet a situation that we detect as threat, we're not detecting safety and comfort anymore. If we go back far enough, it would have been a lion at the cave door. It would have been an angry tribesman from the tribe in the next valley across. What happens is our body goes through this incredible shift to prepare us for what might be imminent physical danger. Now, what's happening in our modern society is the email that comes in with the angry tone, the message that goes, "Where's this report?" Or, "That report you sent was rubbish," or whatever it might be. It's also triggering our stress response. And our body is reacting the same way as it would have when we were cave-dwelling Neolithic men, but we don't require the same physical change. We don't need for our cortisol to spike and cut off our prefrontal cortex or limit access to it. We don't need our heart rate to increase and digestion to actually kind of take a pause so that we're physically ready to tackle a line. But that's still what's happening. And the issue in our modern society is it's happening so frequently that this stress response, which is amazing if it only goes on and off very quickly, is we're keeping that stress buzzer jammed on. The link with playfulness is built into this whole stress response is when we see stress increase, and I want you to think about stress not as either on or off, but as a scale. So level five might be that you're actually past fight flight at level five. You're completely depressed, immobilized. It's freeze response, an animal playing dead, essentially, that we can link this with things like depression. That's a highly stressed state, but low energy. At four, this is where you're ready just to punch anybody. 'Cause it's just like, they've got in your way and they've just said something, which is really annoying. You hopefully don't act out on that, but within you, you are ready to fight or run away. And so I want you to think about it as a scale, 'cause most people don't live at level one, which is joy and calm. They live probably at like level two and a half, sometimes three, and they're easily spiked to level four. So you see this in road rage because they're detecting all these threats and they're easily just moving up that stress scale, but harder to actually move back down to level one. And again, kind of bringing this back to playfulness. When you're in the higher stages, you can't be playful, because being at the highest stages, your body is now hyper-focused on the threat. It's hyper-focused on the outcome. It's hyper-focused on understanding everything about that single situation and it becomes completely engrossed in it. Engulfed is probably a better word. This is where emotions can completely consume us. Playfulness happens at the lower stress levels. Stress levels one, maybe just as we come into level two. As soon as you go two and a half, three, you can't access it. And it's got evolutionary properties. If a lion was coming at you at the cave, the last thing you want to be is playful. You don't want to be curious. You don't want to be wondering, oh, well, I wonder what it had for breakfast, or I wonder what shampoo it uses in its mane. You want to just be either kind of preparing for this run of your life or tackling it if you're protecting other people. Those are the choices and your body completely prepares you for that. So playfulness has to do with stress. Now, as I said, the issue in our modern society, we can look at data on this from stress and anxiety and burnout and everything else. Since the '80s, something has been going fundamentally wrong in society. The rising level of stress, the rising level of anxiety shows that collectively, we are no longer coping with the environment that we're in for whatever reason. And actually there's a whole myriad of reasons and sometimes it's very individual. But on aggregate, the collective is no longer coping as well. And I believe that we just need a new way to actually navigate highly disruptive environments.  Since the '80s, the world's been disruptive. And I think from this point on, it's going to become even more disruptive. If we're not coping already, then we need something drastically new in the way that we think, the way that we compose ourselves, the way that we deal with our stress response, the way that we actually come to behaviors and relationships and everything else so that we can manage ourselves so much better. But nothing is being presented. That was the whole reason why I developed this PPM method, because I could see there was something. Even me who understood all this stuff, I was still falling foul of the environment I was in. So playfulness, yeah, has so much to do with stress levels. And unfortunately, the environment we're in and the ways that we've been taught to think and behave and calm ourselves, coping strategies, they aren't good enough anymore. They aren't strong enough. Stephen Matini: I think that what happens probably to everyone, but for sure to entrepreneurs and definitely to small entrepreneurs is that you are ambitious. You want to achieve things, you have all kinds of different stuff, and it's very easy to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And our environment is loaded with information. It's going way too fast. In the meantime, as you know, way better than I do, our brain has not evolved as rapidly. And so we are in overload. You pointed out these many, many important things, playfulness. You pointed out the importance of being aware that we are in this particular moment in time of great, great, great change. And then you talked about the fact that there are so many stimuli that we are constantly in this state of alertness.  And to me, you are a positive person. And I would say most people these days feel very scared. So the question to you is, why are you positive despite everything? Chris Mashall: I am a positive person. You know I have my own doubts. I think that's the important thing is when you're looking out to the future, there is a lot of fear and anxiety. And I think we need to bring this back. Let's join this up to the conversation we've just had, because what you're doing with your body in your kind of exercise regime is what we need to also do cognitively. We need to shift how we're cognitively looking after ourselves. The physical body can help cognition, absolutely, but also the way that we think helps cognition. And coming back to this environment of increasing stress. Now, one of the key things that your brain and my brain hates and everybody else listening to this podcast, we all have different windows of tolerance, we can cope with, some people can cope with a lot, some people can cope with a little bit. But the fundamental thing that our brains hate is uncertainty. In fact, our brains will do almost anything, even lie to ourselves, to create certainty because uncertainty is the biggest threat to this organism. And if we really think about what the brain's job is, it's not to perform amazing kind of calculations to put rockets into space. It's to keep this organism alive. That's fundamentally what it's there for. We've used it for other things and it's amazing. But fundamentally, it's to keep us alive. And it can't do that job if it doesn't understand what the environment is, if there's a lot of uncertainty around it. So when we have disruptive change, we have tons of uncertainty. We have tons of different scenarios and everything else. And as that stress level increases, because that's essentially one of the roles of that stress response is to give our body energy, our brain energy, to go find more information, to solve this problem of uncertainty, to find, well, what is the outcome? Because I need to know the outcome. Even if it's terrible, we'd rather have an outcome which is terribly bad in our head than sit with no outcome at all. Now, also what happens with the stress response, and I promise I will come back to optimism. What happens with the stress response is as we become more stressed, we become more pessimistic. And that's quite obvious why, because we're detecting threat. We're not looking for optimism. We're looking for things which are going to hurt us. That's what the stress response is. It's an energized, mobilized state of finding the things which are dangerous. So if we add together all of these things, higher disruption, higher levels of stress, higher levels of uncertainty, is it really too surprising that we see rising levels of anxiety and fear about the future? Absolutely not. Add in that, we really do have some hurdles to overcome. I completely agree with that. But we've got this additional layer of fear on top. And that additional layer, I believe, is psychological. And you can actually trace this back to other time periods through history where it's been radical change. And actually, there's been an equal fear within society. I mean, let's take the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites, the group of bandit-like people who were reasonably in their own head, kind of burning down factories because it was taking away their livelihoods. And whenever we kind of have these massive moments, that there's always this additional fear and anxiety. So we have that. Yes, we have hurdles to overcome, but I think the biggest lesson I learned from writing “Decoding Change” was in the research, one of the things that stood out, and perhaps even the prominent thing which stood out is us humans, when we're at our best, when we learn to pause and play, actually, when we're at our best, we are the most incredible, creative, innovative creatures to have ever walked this earth. We are adaptable, we are flexible, we are collaborative, we're cooperative. When we're not at our best, we're rigid, closed-minded. And so my optimism comes from seeing through history how humans as a species have walked out of situations that we should never have walked out of. And if you bring that forward, and there is a kind of a hope that, you know, some of the, me and a very, very small part of this, helping people basically find their best decision making to reduce their stress, to unblock emotional blockages and everything else, that hopefully, collectively, if we can get towards our best, our optimal state, that we can embrace those human qualities. And what happens when we do that is just stunning. We can't even forecast what might be. I mean, again, come back to the Industrial Revolution. All the Luddites could see was that their industry was being taken away. Let's fast forward this to AI. Countless careers and jobs are on the line. If AI manages to do half of what it is supposed to be able to do, we're looking at that from, oh my word, 50% of the world's going to be unemployed. And if there wasn't any progress or innovation or creativity, absolutely. But what happens is we are innovative. Whole new industries pop up. I mean, just look at some of the industries which have kind of gone by the wayside. There used to be people with a long stick who used to come, they were called tapper uppers, used to walk along the streets to wake people up in the morning because there weren't clocks, there weren't alarm clocks. And it was a big career. You could have that as a lifelong career. And there are countless other careers and industries like that. Every wave of technological progress, every paradigm shift in cultural philosophy or natural environment absolutely changes the status quo. But as we said right at the start of this podcast, there is no such thing as the status quo. It's always constantly in flux. And what we're trying to do when we're stressed is go, we want to keep this piece of ground we're standing on exactly the same. We can't do it anyway, even if we wanted to. That's where my optimism comes from, is seeing what humans can be and do when they're at their best. It's not a naive optimism. I completely agree we have lots of things to sort out. The shifting natural environment will certainly be one of the biggest things, which makes many, many changes to how humans live and where we live and how we migrate. Technology will change the industrial and career landscape, no doubt about it. We also have the shift in cultural philosophy, which is stunning at the moment. Normally, if you look at kind of tribes and communities, elders pass down their wisdom to the younger generations. What we're actually seeing for the first time in human history, as far as I can see anyway, is that the younger generation is influencing the older generation just as much as the older generation is influencing the younger. And we have this kind of collective wisdom of different perspectives. And it's bringing friction. Absolutely. It's bringing friction at the moment because it's different. But if we can embrace collective wisdom, then all of a sudden we start to bring in so many different perspectives. And this is where the diversity piece, you know diversity and inclusion piece is so important. It's not about box ticking at a company. It's about making your organization or your team the most collaborative and creative and innovative group of people you possibly can. You can't do that if you select just from one type or group of person. Stephen Matini: By listening to you, your insights, your energy, my stress level is going down. You do have this soothing feeling that, okay, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. I'm not as weird as I thought I was. If we could have in this moment, you and I talking, if we could invite a couple of people from the past, a couple of great minds from the past, who would you invite? Who would you like to have here with us? Chris Marshall: I think I'd have to go with the physicist, Richard Feynman, to start. That's probably a controversial one because he was fundamental behind the hydrogen bomb. But where Feynman for me gets things right is in this idea, what we should be looking at from learning is how everything is connected. And when you start to actually see things clearly, you start to see how things move together and how you can transfer skills from one to another. And it's a far more kind of nothing is thrown out in his way of thinking. Everything is kind of brought in as a kind of, oh, well, let's kind of it was actually a very playful way of thinking that, oh, well, okay, that's new to me. How does that fit with the current model rather than I have to be very defensive and throw it out because it doesn't conform to my understanding right now? Stephen Matini: Well, you know there's a lot of people that I really admire, and it saddens me to think that I would never meet them. They're no longer here. But one person that I've always been so curious because it's so veneered would be Leonardo, you know Da Vinci.  Talking about someone who could multitask! But it would be amazing to hear his point of view. It's like, hey, look at all this. What do you think? He was such a disruptor for your time. That would be one that I would love to.  Chris Marshall: I had like three in my head. One would be definitely Sir Ernest Shackleton. So actually in the TEDx Talk, which I know you've watched, he kind of features as my kind of the person I've put up there as having this playful attitude in the most ridiculous of situations. And for those who don't know his story, Sir Ernest Shackleton was the captain of the Endurance. He set out on a mission to basically cross Antarctica, thousands miles of pack ice. I mean, we're going back to like wooden boats here. It's a ridiculous feat, thousands miles of sailing through pack ice. And they were one day's landing away from their kind of intended landing and disaster struck and the temperatures dropped and the ship became pinned in the ice. And what people don't realize is not only was there the world's most incredible rescue mission, 800 miles in a small lifeboat that isn't designed to go ocean going travel. But they spent 10 months on the ice before this. It's incredible. And he embodied this idea of playfulness, even in that situation. In fact, when he was talking about how he selected his crew, there's this incredible quote from him that talks about withstanding the agonies of thirst with laughter and song. Now, he used the word optimism. And in the TEDx talk, I argued that if he was living in our modern day, that would have been playfulness. Withstanding agonies of thirst with laughter and song, that's not optimism. That's not you looking going, "Oh, isn't it a nice day?" That's completely framing and reframing a situation, which is terrible, which is life-threatening in its literal sense. Stephen Matini: Have you seen any video of Mikaela Schiffrin?  Chris Marshall: Yes. Stephen Matini: She has a series on YouTube, “Moving Along,” I love her and I love her attitude. I love how hardworking she is, and at the same time, humble and always curious. You know What a phenomenal athlete.  Chris Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And interestingly, I saw reading a piece the other week on her, because obviously I kind of keep up to date with the World Cup Circuit. And she said she found inspiration from Taylor Swift's playbook. And I found this really interesting because if you look at Taylor Swift's playbook, whatever your view of her music and her as a person doesn't really matter, is she's been able to consistently generate music, which resonates with the zeitgeist of the time and just get this incredible following. You know, I would put her up there in the likes of kind of other artists who've managed to do this over multi-decade careers like Elton John. And Schiffrin kind of was citing this, just saying how not only Taylor Swift has been this inspiration and her albums always seem to get her through whatever emotional crisis is unfolding in her life, but also just this constant adaptability and flexibility. And that's really what we're talking about. If you want to remain relevant in a changing environment, you can't just go, okay, well, I'm charting a course from A to B and I'm going in a straight line. It's got to constantly have this awareness of what's going on and adaptability and flexibility. But we don't often talk about this or even teach it. And so yeah, I kind of bringing it back to what we were talking about. Absolutely incredible career that Schiffrin's had. But I just found it fascinating how she was finding inspiration from another artist. They're very similar ages. I think they're both about 33. And so kind of going through these life-changing moments almost together in a virtual way, almost, but also just this whole adaptability and flexibility piece that Taylor Swift has shown. Stephen Matini: Now, because of the podcast, I interview a lot of colleagues, but I would say that I get most of my inspirations from completely different industries, not necessarily my industry. Like I watch a lot of interviews and Taylor, you know Taylor Swift, I'm not a Swiftie in a sense that I don't listen to her music, but I watch a lot of interviews of her. I love her as a director. I love how incredibly kind and eloquent and precise she is, how gracious she is. I get inspired by all kinds of stuff, and kind of what we said before. You must have that cross-pollination. I was sharing this yesterday with the guest. You know I did another episode that the idea of doing this podcast with a lot of colleagues of mine came because for years and years and years, I watched a lot of makeup videos.  How incredibly

In the evolving post-COVID word, the leadership paradigm is changing to keep up with the evolving requirements of the new generations and a fast changing technology. In Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s lastest book, Leadership for Current Times, empathy emerges as a crucial trait for effective leadership, which requires a genuine willingness to understand and connect with others’ perspectives.  Dr. Goldvarg also underscores the practical benefits of strategic thinking and foresight in leadership. By developing skills in anticipating future trends and challenges, leaders can make informed decisions and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Please check Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s Liderazgo Para Los Tiempos Actuales: Nuevos Paradigmas Y Habilidades De Coaching, soon available in English. Use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #AdaptingtoChange, #Alygn, #BusinessPodcast, #ChangeManagement, #CoachingSkills, #COVID-19, #DamianGoldvarg, #Emotional Intelligence, #Empathy, #HybridWork, #Leadership, #LeadershipDevelopment, #LeadershipPodcast, #LeadershipTrends, #MentalHealth, #OrganizationalPsychology, #PityPartyOver, #PodcastInterview, #Post-COVID, #StephenMatini, #TeamCollaboration, #Work-LifeBalance TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: As a collective society, we've been talking about COVID and all the ramifications of COVID. And I think we are definitely realizing that the post COVID is probably just as harsh as the actual pandemic. There are a lot, a lot of different ramifications. And you decided to write a book about it. So I was wondering how the idea came about. Damian Goldvarg: Well, I started working in a book on leadership. So I have been training leaders for more than 30 years. And I wanted to write one on coaching skills for leaders. So I wrote already eight books, was author of books on coaching skills for coaches, mentor coaching, supervision in English and Spanish, nd this time, I wanted to write a book on coaching skills that I could use in my trainings; When I train coaching skills, I can use that book as a manual, but also my colleagues who benefit from it. I thought they can use that also with their clients when they are coaching leaders because they had all exercises and activities. So I thought I would be sharing that. I started writing the book and then COVID hit. And then I kept working with the book. And then I was thinking, well, things are changing now. So I think what about working on how COVID is affecting the work and the leadership? I started looking at working in a hybrid environment, working virtually, talking about the mental health sequels from that, how people are affecting the level of stress that they had during COVID and after COVID. I think that there were a lot of emotional experiences that leaders needed to deal with and being overwhelmed by their own experiences, but experiences of their teams. The idea with this book was to answer, okay, how leadership is changing and what leaders need to pay attention to. And I think that the leaders need to be more focused on these formative relationships and also developing coaching skills, being more coaches. Some are already doing that. The ones that are not doing that needs to look at it because you know they're going to get behind in terms of their requirements for the new generations. And then it's interestingly because when I was getting ready to send the book to the publisher, I sent the book to a few people to give me feedback. And several of them from medium don't have the word COVID or post-COVID in the title of the book, because people are tired of it, are burned out. They don't want to hear anything about it too cold. So I said, OK, so let's go for the third name, Because first at the beginning, we have a leadership coaching skill for leaders. The second title was post COVID leadership. And now the final title is in Spanish, and the book is totally translated, and I am working on the edition of that. It's called “Leadership in Current Times,” What is required right now, what is right now in this moment, what is required for leaders. I decided to take from the name post-COVID because out of the reaction of people were telling me, "That's it." I said, "Okay." But it's interesting, Stephen, because I hear from some people that they like it to be reminded that it's post-COVID, et cetera. But you know what? I had COVID for a second time last month. So it's not gone. It's still around. I have a friend of mine that I was talking to him yesterday. He has been very sick, even though he had vaccines. And he was one of the most careful persons that I have ever met around COVID and finally took for him too once. And there is a lot of more cases now in LA County where I live. Stephen Matini: So when you introduce these concepts to your own clients, usually, how do they react?  Damian Goldvarg: It makes sense to them. I work globally, and because I am originally from Argentina, I work in Spanish a lot. And the Latino cultures tends to be compared to the American culture or the European cultures, a little bit more authoritative in terms of having more distance, power distance between leaders and their reports. It's more like, and also have a tradition from Italy, Spain, the father figure, and this parental, and the resistance, and the disrespect to the authority. It's a different kind of relationship. And many times, these leaders are not very collaborative in their approach. They feel responsible. They feel responsible when they want to take care of things, and they may not engage as much as the colleagues, as peers. There is this distance in hierarchies that we see that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So sometimes that for leaders who feel that it's their responsibility that they need to make their decisions, they don't engage and include people in decision-making. They have, I think, the hardest time to listen to these ideas. And sometimes it's really, really in their system. So it's not easy to change the mindset. So I try not to force anything. As a coach, part of my job is to challenge mindsets and being patient because different people need different time to look at things from different angles. And at the end of the day, everybody has the right to look at reality the way that they want. I have an invitation and the metaphor that I use is the glasses. I said, okay, you know, your sunglasses are blue, you see everything blue, are you willing to take your sunglasses for a minute and put one that are green and see if you're willing to look differently with different color things. And sometimes people are willing and sometimes they are not, but it's their decision. Stephen Matini: What usually does the trick, meaning those who actually shift, you know, or somehow they start wearing a different pair of sunglasses, you know, tinted differently, what helps them making the shift? Damian Goldvarg: Sometimes if everything is going very well and they're being very successful, and they do not have any reason to think, why aren't we going to change? We're very successful. We have done things like that. If people have a challenge and suddenly they have not been as successful, they are not selling as much and there are a lot of complaints or there is conflict crisis. Then when people are realizing, okay, we are not going to keep being successful with past practices. So we need to look new ways of doing things. So they've been forced by the market or the circumstances, you know, because of economy and the changes. There are some jobs because of AI. Some jobs are being redundant. And I'm telling my colleagues and they don't like to listen to it. But they said, you know, eventually in the future, I also will replace some of the work of some cultures. And so you need to be prepared. You cannot be saying, no, I don't want to listen about it. I don't want to say. No, it's like, okay, we are supposed to be open to what's happening in the world, and we need to have a dubious responsibility. Being on top of technology advances, trends. So I do believe that we can also show the trends to the leaders, and they may choose not to pay attention. Stephen Matini: In your opinion, if someone is not that empathetic, can the person actually transition and to become more empathic, which is one of the key features of the post-COVID leadership?  Damian Goldvarg: Definitely. I do believe it's possible, but the person needs to be willing to go there. Like, for example, what I do in my work with my clients is I start with the 360, where people receive feedback from the boss or other people in the organization, peers, and deliver reports, sometimes also customers, other third parties. So I collected data and I shared with them the perceptions that people have about them. And sometimes the perception may be that they are not empathic enough, that they are not showing that they're understanding. And sometimes leaders say, okay, I want to work on that. So they make a commitment, intentionally, decide to do it. And sometimes everybody feels like they are not being empathic and it's too bad, their problem. They can still not be empathic, but still they care in their heart. They do care about people, not that they do not care, but it's difficult for them to put themselves in the shoes of other people, but they may not, they don't have the ability to even realize that they are doing that. And when you point it out, and when you share that with them, not everybody is willing to accept it and integrate it and work on it. It's also different levels of maturity. At the end of the day, I don't think any of them, in my experience, mean bad. I don't think, if not, they are bad people. If not, they are bad. Is that some people may or may not have been able to develop over life these skills? So they may have good intentions. And I do believe also what in my experience is based on generational issues, the older, the more difficulties they have to adapt to the new trends and the new tendencies and being willing to listen because they have a lot of experience and they have been successful and they know what they've done, they know what they know. When I train coaches, you know part of my job is to train coaches and supervisors and team coaches, I use a model where I tell them that there are things that we know that we know, things we know that we don't know, but there are things that we don't know that we don't know. I got a PhD in Organizational Psychology, so I know a lot about organizations because that's my area of expertise. I don't know, for example, Chinese. If I want, I can go and learn. There are things that may be very difficult for me to learn, but I still can put effort. But then there are areas in our life that we do not know that we don't know. So in this area, when I ask, what do you think is there? What do you think is there, Stephen, in the area that you don't know that you don't know? You're going to answer the question. In the area that you don't know that you don't know, the way that you may answer is nothing yet, because there is not something there that you don't know that you don't know. But because there is nothing there is a lot of opportunities there. But the first element is to ask yourself, what I may not know that I don't know. So how do I get there with my clients in coaching? It's like, okay, what do you think is going on? And they answer to you. And then I ask, what else? And they answered. And then what else? And then the client said, I don't know. And I said, okay, take your time. And what else? So suddenly, something that is not in that awareness, they start going and exploring and going deeper. And I use a metaphor of the iceberg, whatever people coaching to explore that are underlying beliefs, emotion. So you start going deeper and deeper and to say, OK, what else? And what else? And then you can start making new connections. So that is one of the ways to be aware that there are things that you don't know that you don't know that you want to discover. But usually the paradigm that we live, we don't do that. In our paradigm, usually we have things we know and things we don't know. We don't even realize that there are things we don't know that we don't know. And that worked really well for my father, who for many years, he knew everything. And I was able to convince him to go for coaching training. And I follow him and my mother, both of them are psychologists. So I follow them to become a psychologist like them. And then I convinced them that they followed me to become coaches. And it did change the way that my father communicated. In my perspective, this is what I see, what is very difficult to say things are like this, like many people say, OK, things are like this, because it's for them like this, but they don't realize that it's their perspective. And there are other perspectives that can be valid. You may not agree with them, but there are other possibilities, and there are other perspectives on our perspective, and it's just ours. So that's really changed and transformed the relationships. So why I'm going to that, why I give you this answer, because we are going back to your question, really, how do you work with people who don't want to or are willing or open to go to the empathy? So with this model, you can invite them to see what they are not seeing. So maybe what they're not seeing is how much pain they may be causing to people because they are not being empathetic. They may not be aware of that. Stephen Matini: As you were talking, another thing that came to mind is the notion that the importance of having people, it could be a coach, it could be sometimes a psychotherapist, people that help you making the transition.  Somehow I have this distinctive perception that the whole area of mental well-being is not just a nice thing to say or something you should give to employees. It really is a thing. You know, it should not be underestimated. If it's not dealt correctly, it can have disastrous consequences.  And I think that everyone is slowly realizing how difficult this moment is. You know, it's super difficult on youngsters. It's difficult on everyone.  Sometimes you find out about what you don't know through the help of someone who can gently guiding you there. Damian Goldvarg: Yeah, that's a reason why it's so important to have somebody to work in your life, a therapist, a coach, the professional who can help you to see what you're not seeing and to support you in your endeavors. So I believe that we may have good partners or friends who can also be supportive on that, but it's not the same because they also have their own agendas. But when you work with a professional therapist or coach or mentor that helped you to, I would say, develop that well-being and also to have clarity in terms of your goals. It provides support too. I believe at the end of the day is to have a life that you enjoy, that you love your life. And what do you need to do to really love your life? I do work with two supervisors. So I use supervision as my work. And I also have a mastermind group. So in this mastermind group is a group of colleagues that we meet and we support each other with our goals and activities. And I have friends and I have my partner, but I also look for spaces just to look at the work. And when you spend the time dealing with your therapist or with a coach, looking at your work, looking at your life, and that allows you to stop, analyze things, and make some decisions that you may not do if you keep going on and on and on and on without stopping and reflecting. So I do believe that this is part of when I train coaches to talk about how we live our life in a mechanistic way, like work in the morning, special tea, have breakfast, have a routine. And then at the end of the day, you brush your teeth again. I say, oh, I can't believe it. It went so fast. And then the weekend comes and you say, okay, it's Monday again. How is that possible? You remember when the weekend? And then the holidays come and say, oh my God, it's Christmas, unbelievable. So you leave your lesson in the way that we live with so much going on and so many routines, we may sometimes lose track of breathing, spending time in the here and now, enjoying the present, looking at our dissociating ourselves. And this is what I do in supervision when I train supervisors in coaching is you separate yourself and you look at the work you're doing as a coach in supervision. And I use that idea in life in coaching too and in our work, in different places where it's super vision, you disassociate yourself, you look at yourself. And what do you see? Are you enjoying what you are seeing? Do you think it's what you want? But there is a mismatch and not alignment between what you want for your life and how you are living your life. And that's, as you know, one of the key elements in coaching is people coming to coaching because they are not happy with their lives. There is no alignment between their values, what is important to them and how they are working or where they are working. So these are areas and opportunities. And I do believe that to have a better world, just being a little bit more idealistic, having a better world for everybody, to the extent that we have more level of satisfaction. Satisfaction means you are meeting your needs and your needs are not only we can go with the hierarchy of Maslow categories of what I will need. But after you have your basics covered, full room, job to pay everything that you need after you cover your basic needs, them belonging, self-realization, the opportunity to grow and learn and maximize your potential and have dreams. And so I do believe that it's important that we also stop and spend time looking at that. Stephen Matini: In terms of needs, relationships really take center stage in this moment. You were referring the importance of really nurturing the relationship that you have with yourself. And this is something that I see a lot of people acknowledging the importance of coming together in a world that seems to have become so transactional, you know, mechanistic, as you said, instead of to find out how it is important to be human with other humans. When people, I don't know if it ever happened to you, but people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, the relationship with myself is important, but I don't have time. You know, it's so difficult to have all these things to do. How do you respond to them?  Damian Goldvarg: I tell people that we do have choices. So we choose. I was talking to my friend yesterday and he has COVID and he was pretty sick, even though he had the vaccines and everything. And I was telling him, "Okay, as a friend, just take care of yourself. Just focus on your healing, focus on yourself." And he said, "No, I cannot do that because I have so much work that if I don't do the work that I need to do, it's going to pile up. And then when I get to do the work, I'm going to be so stressed out that I would rather don't let that to happen." And I didn't argue with him. As I let go, that was his mindset. He was more worried about not having too much work later. That was more important to him than taking full care of his health. So at the end, that was his choice. But I was thinking when I got COVID, I stopped everything. I just let everything go. It's just time for me. It's time for healing. Time to get better. So then later, when I am better, I will take care of everything that needs to be taken care of. So this is what I wanted to tell him, but I don't think he was interested. So we also need to listen and be prepared. I cannot impose my idea on him. He was telling me that, and he's very convinced about that. So that was not my time to challenge him. And he had told me in the past that he really didn't want to be challenged. So, you know, you know the kind of client would say, okay, challenge me. I want to see what I am not seeing. He has taught me in the path that he would rather, when he makes decisions, he doesn't want to be challenged. So okay, I let go. But I do believe that sometimes, again, we don't know what we don't know. So the way that I see it, what you're not seeing is that he needs to take care of himself first, be completely healthy. And then when he's healthy, he do whatever he needs to do. And he's late with some of his work in not the end of the world. What I like to do is ask my clients, if you look at the situation from five years from now, how will you see it? Because it will give perspective, like fulfilling yourself, looking yourself in the future. Sometimes we realize that what is so important now, if we're looking from here in five years, it will not be as important. It's like I used to have a partner who never, ever went absent to his job. He was always going to work. He was a teacher. So he didn't want to let his students down. So no matter what, he would go to work every day, and he was very, very committed. And sometimes I would tell him, "Okay, you're too tired. You're not feeling great. Just take care of yourself, you know, calling sick today. They will find another replacement for you." And he was not willing to do it. And then one day, when they had to make cuts in the district, because he was newer compared to other teachers, even though he was much more committed, doing much better work, he will let go. And all of his work and all of his commitment, all of that, they didn't care about it. So I was saying, you know, look at that. You know, you work harder. You were a much better teacher than other people, and you still want to let go. Now you look everything, the whole thing at the distance. Will you still do what you did? And now that is a personal decision. Some people may tell you, yes, I was still the same because these are my values. Some people may tell you, you know what? I didn't realize at the end of the day, they didn't care much about if I would have known that they would let me go as soon as I may not live my life there. Have you seen that before? And you see that particularly working, people working in big companies where they really work really, really hard. And one day, they say, okay, goodbye. That's a generational issue too. Before people work in company for many years, nowadays, the average job is two, three years, but it's also different loyalty that companies have with employees and employee companies to work rights. Stephen Matini: It's interesting when you talk about as coaches, we can challenge people, you can provide an observations, you can gently invite them. But then how people react is completely personal. And I still haven't figured out why some people seem to make that leap super quickly, some people never do that.  But I do know that all I can do is just to be the right distance from them, to be there, and then you always have to give them the space to maneuver and to decide what to do. You have been working in leadership for such a long time. So over the years, you probably may have seen some shifts on paradigm, the way, you know, leadership is. And now, even with your book, you're talking about what is the type of leadership that is needed at this time.  It is impossible to predict the future. But if you had to kind of sense what leadership it will be five years from now, even further ahead, what do you see?  Damian Goldvarg: Well, my, I would say, prediction is that there is going to be much more technology in place. So I think that leaders will need to learn how to integrate technology, AI to their work more and more. It's necessary right now, and more and more in the future. Some of the functions and some of the work will be done by artificial intelligence. And I believe that leader would need to integrate that and collaborate, be more collaborative. I think organizations are going to be much more horizontal in the future. I believe that you already see an organization that are lowering all of these hierarchies and all of these flat organizations. So I see flat organizations where leaders are more like here, working as collaborators, where authority would change the authority. That for one part. Also the networking, the collaboration with networking integrating networks of people working in different parts of the world at different levels. So learning how to integrate different groups of people, colleagues. So in all of this, as you are saying, one of the key elements is relationships, this building relationship, this empathy. If you cannot collaborate as a leader, you will be in trouble. Stephen Matini: It would be really hard to survive in the long run.  Damian Goldvarg: Yeah, and also inspiration. Always leaders are going to be role models. So it's what kind of role model are you being? So it's what you are doing and how you've been, where you're coming from. And I do believe that people really appreciate leaders who care about other people, who really genuinely care. And we're talking here that many times people are seeing, and this is a little bit more philosophical and sounds harsh, but some people see other people as objects and objects. I mean, okay, you are here to do your work, so I can do my work so I can be successful. And we know in leadership, an effective leader is a leader that gets people who are working for them being effective. So to the extent that the people under the leader are effective, the leader is effective. So the effectiveness of the leader depends on the effectiveness of his or her team. You have an element where the leader is a role model and wants to inspiration and want to inspire people to want to do their best. That has been always like that. And I will continue to be that way. We want leaders who inspire us, who treat us people and not as objects. We're talking about objects is easily looking at the reports as people who are going to accomplish for his or her success, or as they see in the reports as human beings, we need the flexibility to walk to work and deal with different needs. At the same time, aligning the overall vision of the company with the vision of the team and his own vision of their own vision. Stephen Matini: A huge, a huge element that is going to, it is changing everything. It's really the new generations that just simply think differently. I mean, you really have no choice. In a matter of five years, ten years that the workplace would be heavily dominated by Gen Z. And it's just that different way, you know, that they operate and exactly the way you describe it. Out of everything we talked about, is there anything that you would say that would be important for our listeners to focus on as a starting point to start thinking about this new leadership? Damian Goldvarg: Well, there is a field of study that is called foresight, foresight in the studies of the future. And when I worked with leaders in organizations for many years, and I did assessment centers. Assessment Center is where you assess a leader and see what are the strength and development needs. So I work for a company, a big company that they send me all over the world to do this assessment center. So part of my job was to evaluate what were the strength and weaknesses of the leaders and then coach them, reach the strength, and overcome any obstacles that may be the way development meets. And there were two areas where most leaders worldwide were weak. One was coaching and the other one was foresight or strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is about not just paying attention to the present and here and now, but looking at the future. It's what you're asking me, okay, what do you need to pay attention to the future? Okay, that is a skill. And the strategic thinking is also looking at the future. So looking at the future and developing their people were two areas where leaders were not effective worldwide in all different industries. So because of that, I was very interested in that. And that's the reason why I started doing more trainings on coaching skills, meeting that need. But the other area is foresight for the study of the future, paying attention to trends, paying attention to what's coming, and working not only for what you have in front of you right now, but looking at the future. Success today, not success in the future. So understanding that and being prepared for that and looking at trends. And yes, you were right. We cannot predict the future, but we can pay attention to what's coming so we can be better prepared. So I went and I took two certifications in foresight in two different places that leaders in the marketing, training foresight practitioners. So I went to receive foresight training because I wanted to build the skills and the muscles to do that kind of work with the leader that was working. So I do believe that in the foresight, looking at places where you can look at trends, for example, one particular resource can be the Wall Street Journal. Every Friday, a section called Just About the Future is everything about the future. I don't remember the name exactly right now. Also, you always help us to meet Harvard Business Review, looking at trends, just looking what their sense of we need to be proactive in paying attention to what's coming and we can go to different places. These are two key places where I look at. Also I receive emails. This is for free. McKinsey reports, singular university, they report that they send also a weekly newsletter from them. So it's about looking for places where we can learn about trends and paying attention to that in the world. Stephen Matini: Damien, thank you so much for spending time with me. I have a lot to think about.  Damian Goldvarg:Thank you for inviting me. I hope that this conversation inspires people to learn about these topics. And if they want to reach, if you want to follow up on the conversation, I don't know if you can share also my email. If people have any questions or comments, I have also YouTube, like 400 videos on coaching and Spanish and English, what is free, and it's a resource. And the books also, you can find them in Amazon. People may be interested in the books on Coaching for the Spanish speakers, bilingual people who are listening, the book on “Leadership in Currect Times” is coming up in Spanish next month. And the English one, I am working on it. I'm still looking for a publisher for that. So I am working on that. Stephen Matini: Well, then I wish for your book to do super well and to inspire a lot of people.  Damian Goldvarg: Thank you very much.

This episode of Pity Party Over revolves around the importance of intentional leadership and its impact on team dynamics, especially in the context of diverse generational workforces. Kathryn Landis, Executive and Team Coach and Professor of C-Suite Leadership at New York University, emphasizes the need for leaders to understand and address the unique needs and values of different generations, particularly Gen Z. She highlights the importance of aligning these needs with organizational goals while creating a culture of psychological safety and transparency. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to navigate generational differences and understand the significance of transparency and purpose-driven work for engaging Gen Z employees. How do you leverage a multi-generational workplace? Share your story! Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #KathrynLandis #Stephen Matini #PityPartyOver #Alygn #WorkplaceCulture #GenerationalDifferences #GenZ #EmployeeEngagement #PsychologicalSafety #LeadershipDevelopment #PurposeDrivenWork #IntentionalLeadership TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini - I'm curious to ask you, how did you get to human development?  Kathryn Landis: You know, I was first exposed to this thing called coaching, when I was in business school. I went to Northwestern University in Chicago and I took a class around personal leadership and coaching, and I really enjoyed it, but I was already on this track to go into marketing. And fast forward 10, 15 years, I had a boss at a large Fortune 500 company that was not supportive of the company's parental leave policy. And so when I had my son, this leader made my life miserable. I thought to myself, and I thought back to that class, had this leader had coaching, had this leader had support, I'm sure she didn't want to show up the way that she was showing up. I got into this because I don't want anyone to ever have the same experience that I had. I want to help leaders get to the next level of greatness. And I want them to empower and inspire their teams and become the best versions of themselves and work in life. Stephen Matini: Do you have a favorite client? Like, do you prefer to work with teams? Do you prefer to coach people one-on-one? Kathryn Landis: I think where I'm at my best is when I'm coaching the leader one-on-one and their team. So we're doing both. So with the leader, helping that person think about, you know, how do they want to show up as a leader? How do they want to create followership? How do they want to communicate their vision? And then with the team, helping them to really operate most effectively and make agreements amongst each other and really think about how they want to create those working norms to be the best team they can be. Because everyone has to go to work. Everyone's been on bad teams. Think about the worst team ever been on. I mean, I'm getting like negative feelings right now just thinking about that. It could be at work, it could be at school, you know, it could be your softball league versus the best team you've been on. Wow, being a part of that best team really just changes your outlook, changes how you show up, what you're able to accomplish. And so if I can really help the leader as long with their team, that's where I think really making major progress and really able to make a major impact. Stephen Matini: So I have a theory about teams, and it's not based on any theory. I believe that the team leader is vital, you're like the orchestra director, you set the tone. However, the team and the chemistry within the team seems to have a life on its own. Sometimes you are lucky, you get teams that for whatever the reason, things flow. It's fun. And sometimes no matter how hard you try, the team seems to really feel heavy. So the question to you is, is it always possible to turn things around in a team?  Kathryn Landis: I would say it's always possible, but you also have to think about, do you have the right people on the team? Do you have people that have the right skill sets? And are they able to work together? So you can have diverse perspectives, but they can't work together, then it's not useful. Is their work interdependent in a way that motivates them to collaborate effectively? And is there a compelling purpose for the team? Do people know why the team exists, what their priorities are, and what the impact is to the customer or to the organization. I find that a lot of teams that are dysfunctional, there's not a compelling purpose for the team. People don't know why the team exists. There's maybe not the right people on the bus, or their work is not interdependent. There's just a group of people that are reporting to the same leader. So you really need those essential conditions in order to have an effective team. Stephen Matini: You know, “the right people on the bus” should be the title of this episode. Kathryn Landis: Yeah, something like that. Stephen Matini: As if it happened to you that often team members say, we do not know where we are going. Why do you think that happens? How can it be? Kathryn Landis: I haven't observed that as much. Maybe it's by virtue of my work. But for sure, an organization would have a more engaged and motivated workforce that they had a vision for the organization of where they want to be in three to five years, if it was motivational, if it was inspiring. And then that trickles down to what each team or department does. And then from each team or department, it trickles down to each individual. Why are you showing up to work? You know What's the contribution? It doesn't matter if you're in the accounting department or in sales, you're all driving towards this goal that hopefully is something that ladders up to something bigger than oneself. It has purpose. Because even if you think, hey, I'm working in an accounting firm, you're still helping a customer. Maybe you're helping small business owners making better decisions. So how can you take that mission and make it compelling and purposeful for your employees? So they're not just showing up for a paycheck, they're showing up to really change lives. Stephen Matini: Have you ever seen within an organization that has a specific culture that may necessarily foster transparency or full trust, have you ever noticed the existence of what I call islands of happiness? I mean, somehow there's one team that seems to work more efficiently than others.  Kathryn Landis: Well, a lot of your happiness, as much research would suggest, is based on your immediate boss. So if your immediate boss is able to create those conditions for what Amy Edmondson would call psychological safety, if they're able to motivate and inspire other team members, yes, there can absolutely be islands of happiness. But I think that at a more senior level, whoever is looking after the organization, that certainly is areas for concern. So is there someone who's being mindful of the discrepancy or the variance between the teams? Stephen Matini: You have been working with a lot of teams and different leaders. As of today, teams are very diverse, you know, often comprise different generations. Based on what you have observed, what would you say they are the main competencies that a good leader should have to lead the team effectively?  Kathryn Landis: So I think that we're in a unique time where you can have five generations at work. And I'm in a unique position where a lot of my clients are baby boomers or Gen X, as we call it in the US, or Gen Z or younger millennials. And there are very different expectations in terms of how one should show up in the workplace and that makes them work in life. A lot of it having to do with their own life experiences. And, you know, the Gen X and boomers do not understand the Gen Z and the younger millennials and vice versa. I see it with my students. I also teach at NYU. So a lot of my master's students are Gen Z. And it's very different. I had a student say to me, I just want to find a job where I can be there for six months and really contribute. You know As myself being an older millennial thinking, six months, after six months, you just know where the bathroom is. You haven't made a contribution. You're just training on boarding, but that's the longevity that folks are looking for. I think making ... one is creating shared values for that department or team, creating agreements of working norms and how you're all going to show up and communicate at work is so important. When I say agreements, a lot of people live in the land of expectations, meaning they want someone else to do something. Maybe they tell them what they want them to do, but people inherently wrestle with and they rebuff expectations. But if you can get an agreement with them, so you're both bought in, you ask them, how can I help you to meet this agreement? They're exponentially more likely to do it. So I think for leaders, what agreements can you make with your team members so that you're all aligned on the critical elements that will support a productive workforce? Stephen Matini: So if I understood correctly, the difference between expectations and agreements is that agreements are negotiated expectations? Kathryn Landis: Expectations are one way. It says expectation is, Stephen, I want you to show up at 9:00 a.m. of this podcast. And agreement would be, Stephen, I'd like you to show up at 9:00 a.m. this podcast because this is when it'll be most effectively recorded. How can I help you do that? What's going to keep you from doing that? Nothing. I'm going to be here. Okay. Can we have an agreement that that's what we're going to be doing? Yes, perfect. Now that's like a very simple example, but it's two way conversation and getting someone to say yes, and also as a leader, asking them what help they need from you in order to accomplish it. Stephen Matini: So it's more collaborative.  Kathryn Landis: 100% versus just having an expectation in your mind that you either don't communicate or you communicate, but then don't ask the other person what they need from you in order to achieve it. Stephen Matini: One of the things that I like to use in order to understand different generations is to see all these people, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z as humans that have the same needs. The human brain doesn't evolve as rapidly as our technology, but they come to life facing a different political scenario, different economy, different social situation, and such and such, and so they have to respond to a specific situation. In your opinion, and this is just in your observation, do you think it's harder for a Gen Z to deal with life than it was, let's say, for me, that I'm Generation Y?  Kathryn Landis: I don't know if I can say harder or less hard, but I will say that research states that Gen Z is as a cohort in a mental health crisis. There's lots of research that indicates that Gen Z is overall depressed, that Gen Z, you know, went through very formative years in a pandemic and are very isolated, the first true digitally native cohorts and haven't had that in-person interaction that a lot of the other generations grew up with and were accustomed to. So I think harder is difficult to define and to measure, but certainly as it relates to mental health, Gen Z is very much struggling. And that puts the leaders in a difficult position where they're being asked to play multiple roles outside of, you know, strictly that of the supervisor. Stephen Matini: What would you say that could be the kindest gesture that you could provide to Gen Z? Kathryn Landis: I don't know about kindest gesture, but I wrote a co-wrote a Harvard Business Review article about helping Gen Z find their place at work. And what we do know is that Gen Z really cares about transparency. This is a generation that has always had information at the fingertips. So to the extent that you can be transparent and explain to them rationale and reasons why, it's very useful. Also, expecting them to even be open with some formerly taboo topics, such as, you know, salary and compensation, they're talking about it. Transparency is really critically important to them. Perhaps that's the most, the kindest thing, but I also would say vital thing is transparency. Stephen Matini: Very often in organizations, it's not possible to have the level of transparency. Like from my perspective, it seems that a lot of people struggle a lot with organizational politics, which is this invisible thing happening all the time, you know, understanding who's who, who has power, what you can say, what you cannot say. How do you see Gen Z fitting into this web of politics?  Kathryn Landis: I think Gen Z is really struggling to figure that out. And I think it's amplified by the fact that a lot of them, a lot of folks are remote working or hybrid working. So you're not getting that, quote unquote, water cooler talk that you would if you're in the office, and you're not getting the mentorship of some of the more seasoned colleagues that you might overhear if you're just, you know, walking by. It's more difficult for Gen Z to find out. What I've seen organizations do do that ineffective is maybe have like an ERG (Employee Resource Group) for Gen Z so that they group folks can get together and talk about issues that are important to them or topics that are important to them, pairing them up with a mentor that can help them navigate the organization, for example, and bringing folks together in a way that's meaningful. There's lots of talk about how folks don't want to go back to work. Well, they don't want to go back to work and do the same job that they can do at home. You have to think about what is the purpose of bringing people in the office? How can you make it more intentional? And how can you create relationships, collaboration, moments for interaction that can't be done virtually or online? Stephen Matini One of the things that my clients struggle the most right now is to be ready in five years from now, 10 years from now, to a demographics within their companies that would be completely different. And one thing they realize is, how can I keep these people? How do I attract the Gen Z? How are they going to be here? So for anyone who has that issue, you've already pointed out a lot of wonderful things, including on mentoring and such and such. What would you say that are some of the things companies should be really aware of and to be proactive so that they can really create an environment that is ready for Gen Z in the future?  Kathryn Landis: Well, first and foremost, accepting the fact that employer loyalty has changed. Most Gen Z, I was reading some research this past week that upwards of 70% of Gen Z are already thinking about their next job and planning to move the next two years. So accepting the fact that there is not that loyalty and that you have to earn that retention every day. It's a different mindset than that feeling that you're going to be with an employer for five years because that's what you're supposed to be on your resume. Also, majority of Gen Z want to be their own boss. They want to be entrepreneurs. 90% of Gen Z has either their own business or they have a side hustle or a side gig. So thinking about ways that you can align incentives, understanding what their career goals and aspirations are and how you can keep them engaged and doing it in a very intentional way will be very important. Stephen Matini: I saw an interview with Jodie Foster, the actress. She's promoting a new, what is it? TV show now? I can't remember the name, anyhow. And at some point, she was joking with the host that she said, Oh, my God, working with Gen Z is so hard. You tell them to show up at nine and they show up at 10. Do you think this is a fair statement?  Kathryn Landis: I think that is based on different people's perspective. And I can't speak for Jodie Foster, but for many people, it's table stakes to say, if your boss tells you to come in at nine, you come in at nine. For Gen Z, you have had different life experiences than someone of, I'm not sure the age of Jodie Foster, but you know someone else who's grown up in the workforce where you just did what your boss told you to do and it was more an authoritarian style, you know it can be quite shocking. But I would say, you know, to that Gen Z employee, this is why we need to be here in nine. Can we make an agreement about this so that we can achieve X, Y, Z? And it might seem like you're going out of your way or maybe even a little bit ridiculous, but it'll go a long way to getting that buy-in and creating a more fruitful relationship. Stephen Matini: So one of the things that I read about you and your experience with Gen Z, you said it that it seems to me that Gen Z are a generation that is a purpose-driven. Would you mind explaining more this concept? Because it seems to me to be very central. Kathryn Landis: What I mean by purpose-driven is that they want their work to have meaning, to make an impact. You know, they've had a huge impact on politics in the U.S., huge socioeconomic issues. I think Black Lives Matter, you know, gun control. And, you know, they are becoming accustomed to having their voice heard as this up and coming cohort and actually looking to work for and buy from companies that put their money where their mouths at. Are you actually sustainable? Do you actually promote diversity and inclusion? Are you living the values that you put on your website? And so they're voting with their feet. And I think that that is quite admirable, but also puts maybe some of the other generations under the microscope to really do a lot of the things that they said they would like to do or would do. You know, a fun fact that early 2024, Gen Z is going to eclipse baby boomers in the workplace. They're only here to stay. So for all those employers out there that are thinking, oh my goodness, how am I going to manage this? You got to start trying. And you know I'm happy to share more information around that. I have a talk around age diversity at work, a talk around how to lead Gen Z is kind of teasers into helping managers and leaders think about how they can most effectively support Gen Z, but also, you know, the more mature workers in there who in their workforce who might be facing ageism or feeling like there might be left out as well. So you have this dichotomy of both ends of the spectrum. Stephen Matini: Something happened to me recently. I started a program with the company and it was about making everyone more sensitive about age differences, ageism. You know, that was really the topic. And then as we started working with the managers, basically they put together cross-functional teams, you know, and I would facilitate the conversation. But it came out, it came out, well, it doesn't seem to us that it seems to be such a big issue here. You know, we don't think so, although we understand the importance of preparing and to have a culture that is welcoming that type of generation. But anyhow, reasoning with them, what it came out is this one, that every single time they're able to be more functional in terms of organizational synergy, when that is really strong, that's when they're able to really leverage the strengths of every single generation. Whereas when there's no cross-functional synergy, all these generations, all groups, they become separate. They have difficulty communicating. Have you ever observed something like this in your projects? Kathryn Landis: Well, I think that there's no cross-functional synergy, as you put it. There's a lot of problems, and it's not just age-related. So things just aren't going well and kind of goes back to my worst team scenario. So when things are going well, maybe the tip of the, you only see the tip of the iceberg, but you don't notice what's going on underneath, right? But you know once you know maybe the company's not going so well, all that stuff that was underneath the water is there. And that's when, you know, the truth comes out about what's really been happening. Stephen Matini: You work with people and you help them out. How do you preserve your energy? Kathryn Landis: So actually, I get energized by working with people. I really enjoy helping and supporting people because that's what I feel like is my purpose. You know, that being said, I have to do my own self-care. For me, that means eating real food, because I have a tendency to get off on and let myself go with, you know, protein bars and protein shakes, which is not good, you know, drinking water and exercising. So I think all those things, if I can be physically healthy, you know, really impacts my mental health so that I can show up to my fullest for my clients. Stephen Matini: So we talked about a bunch of stuff, you know, a lot of different angles and ideas. Out of everything we said, is there anything in particular that you would say our listeners should be pay attention to?  Kathryn Landis: The first thing that comes to mind is intentionality. So getting clear on how you want to show up as a leader, how you want people to perceive you, and then doing self-reflection to say, am I behaving? Am I showing up in the way that I intend? And I'd also encourage you to solicit feedback. So do you have what's called a personal board of directors in your personal life, in your colleagues at work that you could get feedback to find out how you are showing up? And then asking for suggestions or advice about how you could improve to become that leader that you envision yourself to be. Stephen Matini: If someone asked you, what is intentionality to you? How would you define it? Kathryn Landis: For me, it's being self-aware, you know, being really focused on your behavior, on your mindset, on the way that you are engaging in the world, particularly when you're stressed, right, and all things go by the wayside. That's the moment of truth. Stephen Matini: And going back to we're talking about Gen Z, as a leader, how can it be intentional about my Gen Z employees? Kathryn Landis: Yeah, I think it starts from the moment that you're in the interview, you know, to really share what the values are of your team and of the organization, and ensuring that there is, you know, a good fit there, that there are shared values and alignment. It's important during their onboarding process that Gen Z is connected with the right people and the right tools and resources to feel like they're getting the support that they need, and they're making the agreements that will foster a productive relationship. The more you can do upfront to invest in that relationship, you're paving the way and it will benefit tremendously later on. Stephen Matini: So maybe to those listeners of this episode who are Gen Z, what would you like to tell them?  Kathryn Landis: Keep it up. Be curious. You know, absolutely. Listen. Know that you can learn from all different people. You can learn what you want, how you want to show up and how you don't want to show up. And, you know, look for opportunities to find mentors and sponsors. And if you're not sure what that is, Google it. And I am excited for you and your career and what life has in store for you. Stephen Matini: Oh, thank you, Catherine. I think people are going to feel really good about this. Thank you so much.  Kathryn Landis: Thank you, Stephen. Take good care.

My guest today is Frederic Neus, Founder of JK7 Consulting. Frederic is known for simplifying financial management for his clients so they can confidently focus on growing their businesses. In our conversation, we explore the crucial role of financial management in fostering cross-functional synergy.  For Frederic Neus, cross-functional synergy starts with the CEO's clear strategic vision, with goals cascading down through different functions to foster collaboration among departments. Many professionals, even those with business backgrounds, need more financial literacy. For Frederic, this is a significant gap in our educational system, leaving many entrepreneurs and CEOs guessing the real story behind numbers.  For this reason, Frederic advocates the critical need for entrepreneurs to proactively seek professional financial assistance to navigate complexities and ensure the long-term sustainability of their ventures. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. How do you unveil "the story" behind your company's financials to make strategic decisions? Share your story! Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn. #fredericneus #CFO #financials #JK7Consutling #simplifyingnumbers #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: I was thinking about a conversation, and the one thing that was really curious is; after working for so many years as a CFO, what have you learned to be a successful approach as a CFO to interface correctly with all the other functions within an organization?  Frederic Neus: You need this ability to interconnect with the people and to really interest in what the other are doing.  As a finance person that is always seen as the serious guy and a number, a cruncher, if you don't go to them and get interest in what they do, you are not going to make happen. That's the best way to return and to make them understand, that you will share with as information as numbers, or to open their eyes in order to grow the company at the end. Stephen Matini: You shared with me last time that you tend to be very people-oriented and also you have a certain commercial understanding of a business. Would you say that these two components helped you communicate with other functions better?  Frederic Neus: Yes. There is a difference between a good CFO and a great CFO. A good CFO will be the one that's very technical. He knows his number and he's doing the right business sense and all the technical. To me, the great CFO is the one that has a good understanding of all technical part, but the greatest is a leader with a commercial approach, business understanding people-oriented approach. These two are what is making the difference between a good and a great CFO, that's for sure. From my part, what has made me different in terms of people has always been an increase in the performance of the company because you make people work better in a nice atmosphere. You were speaking before but was collaboration with the other department, that is a key, because if are not business-oriented or people-oriented, you will not get the others participating in all this, which the company overall suffer. And also being people-oriented helps the company overall to have a better people retention, of course in the company and not only in the financial department, but overall. Stephen Matini: Sometimes there's a cultural element within organizations that impacts what it's called the organizational synergy, meaning the ability of all the functions to talk and to work together. Somehow some companies seem to give priority to some function. So to give you an example, lots of companies are commercially driven. So the sales function is seen as “The King” of the company, those are the ones who bring the money.  So in your opinion, when you work in a company in which cross-functional synergy doesn't happen, what would you say that could be a first step that anyone could take to go more in that direction? Frederic Neus: It’s a difficult question. I would say. I don't think there is recipe for that. To me it starts from the strategy. If you have a great CEO, we have clearly defining our goals, our strategic goals, and that there is a cascade of these goals between the different functions of the companies, that clearly defining those goals by the pillars of the company and without forgetting the interconnection between these pillars. All depends on each other's for sure. It all start from the strategy and then you state the objectives and this allows you to have this interdependence between the different pillars, functions of the company as you say. But yeah, obviously I agree with you, “The Kings” are always commercial. Stephen Matini: Why do you think people become so tribal with their function and somehow struggle with interconnectedness?  Frederic Neus: This is a lack of and alignment from the start. Again, you don't that CEO which has that vision and the team spirit of connecting everybody, you have big chance for non-success. If you don't manage as a CEO or as a management team to play as a team, you will keep the silos in the company and everybody will sit there in his silo and do whatever he thinks is good for him, which means that is not good for the company. You have some entrepreneurs, so the CEOs of the company, they are doing it on purpose. You know?  They are keep the people separate. In order for him to have got this link with control with everybody, he is sure that everybody had passed by him, which at the end of the day to me show a lack of confidence in himself rather than anything else. Stephen Matini: I love when you said that you have to be able to tell the story through the numbers. Do you think it's because you experienced both working as a CFO within a company and now as an external consultant providing SCFO services to companies. Would you say that it's easier as an outsider or an insider to tell this story through numbers?  Frederic Neus: There is no black and white. As an inside for sure you already know the company because you have this time of you go to good companies or big companies. You've got this onboarding where you go through knowing everything, starting your job, well most of the time saying that it's everywhere, but you have more time. And from that perspective, I think it's easy. So what we do now as an external, we've got onboarding process, which at the end of the day it's rather technical because you need to get the data, you need to ask questions and everything. But the main purpose of this onboarding process is really to get feel and to ask right question in order to understand what's going on in their company in order to provide them good value as quick as possible. You've got to understand very well the company and the business they are in order to provide the right support and the right value as a CFO, being internal or external, at the end of the day, it's the same. But then if one is easier than the others, I would say that being internal is easier, but we are trying to be as effective as an internal by having this perfect onboarding process. Stephen Matini: How did you choose this slogan, “Making the Invisible Visible” for JK7 Consulting, which is so simple but so great? Frederic Neus: We were in a session in order to get to the right sentence for our vision and mission, we came up with different possibilities and two of us more or less arrived with the same thing. We're trying to bring to our customers that understanding of what is happening in their company, because 95%of the time, they don't know half of what's going on in their company. They don't know all the interesting element that is in their numbers because they don't know how to get there. And so this is our first job. Let's create the right visibility and the right understanding of what is going on. And it's not easy, but with simplicity. Because I mean I already told you about that, but if you, yeah, I'm a great CFO and I'm the best, and then you come up with ratios of liquidity, assets, whatever. I mean your customer which doesn't understand already his number, if you come with that, they will understand even less. If you don't speak their language, you're going to lose them even more. So we create visibility to the past, and then we are going to create another set of visibility, but to the future, a more strategic one. In this scenario, 1, 2, 3, this is what is going to happen with your company if you do that, this is from a number perspective, this is what will happen. This is a nice element because it allows that CEO that we were talking before to start to realize the impact that he can make by doing that that that in this company. And the first element to that, the first consequence to that, is an intangible element, which is the peace of mind. I will never stop mentioning that the peace of mind of the entrepreneur, the boss of the company, this has no price and we cannot forget that. So these are things that are very key in our job and therefore making the invisible visible is to meet the differentiation of what we do. Stephen Matini: A lot of people, well, you would assume people that do business, they must have gone to business school or study business. And yet I'm always amazed to see how little people understand of numbers. And I'm one of those people, I'm definitely by no stretch of the imagination, someone who's just so savvy, but somehow I guess because I've always worked for the most part as a small entrepreneur, I need to make sense of this entire world.  So the question for you is this one, why would you say that a lot of people that come from business backgrounds, somehow they seem to have such a hard time with numbers and to navigate through this complexity of numbers?  Frederic Neus: Finance is complex. It is complex, it's a difficult subject, but if you look at the economy in general, there are people that are making masters and for five years to understand that, then you can expect that these guys, they understand what they do and what they talk about. So yes, economy is complex tax regulations. I mean you go all over the world. I mean it's different everywhere. You understand nothing about that, even the tax guys, they understand nothing about that to be honest. And you've got the financial jargon. You go to big companies for example, and you go to listen to a financial presentation and you are not a financial guy, you would understand 20% of it because most of the words that they are saying in there doesn't exist even in any dictionary. So to me, this is something I always say to my kids as well, the education, the financial education. You go to school, they don't teach about finance, whatever type of finance, even personal finance or how to manage your money properly, nobody speaks about it at school. On top of that, there is indeed, as you said in the business in general, there is a lack of financial background. The basics of the financials for the entrepreneurs, they are not there. But I can tell you that most of the CEOs of these small entities, of that big company, they were not, I would say at ease with financials neither. This is a fact also in the big companies, OK? There is also something which is bad is that a lot of these guys, they don't realize the importance of it. So they don't get the point that numbers are there and needs to be, we need to do something with it. But until the time that you will not have somebody that will explain that properly with your word, you will not realize. Stephen Matini: So let's say hypothetically you are with the leadership team, and you do realize that the people working with you have a little understanding of numbers and they have in front of them in financial statement with millions of different numbers. Where do you bring the attention to? I mean, is there any specific figure on a financial statement that somehow you tend to emphasize first, to simplify the matter? Frederic Neus: We always try to demystify the financial, because at the end of the day, we are the guys, as the CFO ,or a financial team. We are the guys that need to absorb the complexity, which I was telling you before. Well, it looks simple, but it's not. We need to absorb the complexity of the numbers and tell a story to the guy that is in front of you, whomever it is, that he will understand from his own point of view with his own filter in order for him to understand. So it is quite difficult. It's complex because one is different than another and it takes time, but the quicker you get there, the better it is for the company. And this is not black or white because it can be different from the company to another depending on the industry they are in. But most of the time we have a five or six element that we are trying to speak is always about revenue for sure, because it's an important element. It's not the most important. I want to be clear on that. You have the gross margin, which is really, I take an example. If you are selling goods, so you've got your revenue, so how much your customer is paying for that, and the cost of it, what you are paying to your supplier to buy these goods, if you are distributing these goods. One minus the other is the gross margin. So it's really the business, what it costs you for that business. The percentage that go with it, so gross margin as a percentage of the revenue, this is always a relationship that you're trying to do. Then you've got the net profit, which is important because below between that net profit and between the gross margin, there are a lot of elements like the remuneration, you know, whatever costs you've got in there. And then cash, cash is important. So we are tracking cash obviously, and mainly in SMEs is even more important. And then we've got the working capital aspect. So we keep it as important because that's the balance sheet element and you're tracking the day-to-day of the company. When you look at working capital. Stephen Matini: As you said, it's about telling a story. So in any story, an element that is super, super important is the conflict. And so in the story of an entrepreneur, based on numbers, who would you say usually is the villain of your story?  Frederic Neus: We are trying to avoid any bad guy I would say, because at the end of the day, the story that we are telling to our audience. If the numbers are good, there will be no bad guy. I would say if the numbers are bad, there will be different bad guys all the time. So at the end of the day, we are always trying to share the story in the more positive approach as we can, because otherwise we are already perceived as the bad guys, us as financials, because we are always pointing the finger to something bad that doesn't work. You have to always approach it in a positive way and explain to your counterpart with bringing solution on the plate, and do you agree with this solution? What elements you can bring on the table that will help us to find more solutions? You always need to position yourself as a coach, basically. Stephen Matini: As an entrepreneur, what would you say are the signs that would make me understand that I need someone like Frederic to come in and to help me out, so I need a professional financial management assistance?  Frederic Neus: Whatever the size of the company you have, you need financial assistance from the start. I have the feeling that we are at pivotal points where more and more people are getting to entrepreneurs rather than employees. And to me, we are at a point where the SMEs will need to last longer than the human generation. To make it clear, we'll need to build companies which will last for longer. Because now when you look at the bankruptcy rates, it's crazy. I mean, it's increasing year on year and you had a lower peak at Covid because I mean the States stopped putting bankruptcies. So this is an element which for us, it's our vision, this will happen. What we are playing in this is that we want to play a role in that by doing what? By bringing the clarity, which I told you, and creating that strategic visibility to the entrepreneurs in order for them to play along the game with a sustainable growth. And of course with the peace of mind, which we cannot forget, I told you before. When you look at that, generally speaking, you've got two to three different type. The first time is the company which are reading in trouble. When you are sick, you feel bad and you go to the doctor, most of the time it's already late because you didn't anticipate and do something about that. So we have this type of persons, which are already in a very bad situation, sometimes close to bankruptcy. You've got the other one, which is also in a bad situation, but already not that bad. And then he needs to start thinking about that because he sees really signals that he's entering into a turbulence. And then the third one is the one that are growing. I mean the one that has this company and it's booming. And then it start to see, am I doing the right thing? Am I going into the right direction and everything? So most of the time we've got these three scenarios, but I need to tell you that the first one is the one that is coming. The question that they have most of the time is simple. I have profit, but I don't have cash. So how come what's going on? I don't see my family. I'm working like hell and I am going nowhere. We are in June and I don't even have the numbers from the last year. I want to do an investment, but can I do it? I don't know. I would like to hire people, but can I afford it? I mean, I'm doing everything. I'm doing my invoice, I'm doing this, I'm everywhere. I need to meet my clients. So that's really the situation where the people are in a complete mess to not to say something else. And then I have a rapid growth, a big expansion, and I'm not in control of the thing anymore. So this is a point where you need to realize that you need to be backed up with somebody that has the right knowledge to put to implement the thing. You enter into complex financials transactions. You are thinking of raising capital, for example, because you need to get either loan or you need to have a new owner on board, or ... I mean these are signs also, or you do a mergers for example. These are signs that you need somebody that is going to support you in this. I mean, I was saying sometimes you've got numbers, but you're not sure they're right. And this is always something that happen. You've got big debts and you don't know how to manage them. So there you come back to the cashflow. Where am I going with my cashflow? What's going on to happen? You have your costs which are not under control, so you are spending to hell and you don't know where and you don't know why, and you are not negotiating properly with your suppliers or you are in doubt about that. Business valuation needs for example. I mean, this is also another element which is important. I mean, people are always looking at today, okay, what is my profit? So also you need to understand that your company has a value. And more organized your company will be, more you build a system that is working alone, without you no dependence on yourself, more the value of your company will be obviously. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is maybe one thing that you would like our listeners to focus on based on everything we said?  Frederic Neus: The point is that you cannot do it alone, it's impossible. I mean, you are the pilot of a company, but any plane, there is a copilot. You need to be challenged by somebody. You need to be supported by somebody, and this can be done with a person that is going to help you, to bring you all this experience and to be this day-to-day challenger. And most of the time, finance is the topic that is not under control. I have my accountant, but the accountant is doing the accounting most of the time on an external basis, and they do a great job these guys, you need to be honest. But what we bring to the companies is not accounting, we are really giving them strategic advice on the day-to-day of the companies in order for them to grow, and to gain that peace of mind. So what I would say is that the people cannot do it alone, and they need to be challenged on a daily basis and to have an eye opener in order for them to have this peace of mind and that grow mindset. Stephen Matini: So you help them write their story. Frederic Neus: Yeah. Bringing clarity to their day-to-day and to what they do, et cetera. I mean, that is not that difficult, even though it is if you want to do it properly and with the right point and to put your finger where it's really painful for you to understand. But again, the story you will explain, it's key. Most of them what they do now, they receive a financial statement from their external accountant, which has been done on a yearly basis. We do that, but on a monthly basis because there needs to be that recurrence of the numbers because that's the only way that they need to be. It would be in their head. So the recurrence is very important, it's very key. They will start to fix their objective by looking forward rather than backwards. So when we do our monthly calls with our clients or our monthly meeting with our clients, we spend, I would say, fifteen minutes to the past, and I would say one hour and a half to the future because that's what you need to talk about. I mean, what am I going to do now that I know what happened in order for that to not happen anymore or for that to happen? So you have to shift your mindset to the future and to the solution rather than the past. Stephen Matini: It's all about having someone who has experience to support you, and I love the fact that your approach is positive, is about simplifying, is about looking forward. So I love it. Thank you, Frederick, for everything you taught me today. Thank you.  Frederic Neus: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Paolo Gallo, author of, The Seven Games of Leadership and The Compass and the Radar, brings a wealth of experience from his leadership positions at the International Finance Corporation, The World Bank, and The World Economic Forum.  Paolo stresses the significance of aligning our decisions with our genuine passions and skills. He also underscores the importance of clarity in discerning our priorities and recommends embracing confusion as a regular aspect of self-discovery. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform. Please check Paolo Gallo’s books The Seven Games of Leadership and The Compass and the Radar, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. How do you navigate life transitions while maintaining a sense of direction and purpose? Share your story! Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen or send him a message on LinkedIn. #paologallo #thesevengamesofleadership #careerdevelopment #pitypartyover #podcast #alygn #stephenmatini #leadershipdevelopment #managementdevelopment TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Have you always had clarity about the trajectory, what you wanted to do? How did  it work for you? Because for a lot of people, they find out who they are and what they want to be later on in life. Even myself, I take all kinds of detours and turns and I learned about myself as I went, but your career seems to be so very clear, very almost like if you knew where you were going, at least that's the impression that I got. Paolo Gallo: I believe I had, but not because I'm particularly clever, but because I had clarity in what I wanted to do in my life since my early twenties and without tending to many things. But I started to study economics mainly by default because they said, oh, law, I think it's too boring, medicine, I faint if I see a drop of blood engineering. No freaking way. I don't understand mathematics. So I chose economics mainly by default. So it wasn't really totally convinced choice when I started university, but as I was studying this subject, all of a sudden things start to make a lot of sense. You study economics, finance, strategy, marketing, accounting, human resources and law and sociology, and all of a sudden I start to see a puzzle that fit together quite well. And then in the third year, I studied human resources and organizational behavior and bingo, I said that's exactly what I wanted to do. And I haven't changed my mind since then because I've always been passionate about developing people and organizations. And you may see that the last 30 years, that's pretty much what I've been doing in different contexts, in different organizations. But I have this clarity of thoughts and clarity of feelings about what would be my trajectory since my early twenties. And now that I'm in just turned 60 recently, I like to think that I've been doing what I loved for the last 35 years and I've not regretted. Stephen Matini: Amongst many different experiences, and that you work in human resources really a super high level, you work for the World Economic Forum, for the World Bank. What is your fondest memory of the time, something that you may have accomplished that somehow is really dear to your heart?  Paolo Gallo: Listen, more than accomplishment, perhaps, there is a story that I also quoted in some of my speeches now because I start working for the World Bank. And yeah, I was happy, but I wasn't a hundred percent yet into the role. And a few months into the role, my boss asked me to go to Africa and been to Ghana and then to Senegal. Our first trip to Africa, I remember the driver said to me, listen, I'll take you to a village where I come from. And so we went to this village and then he showed me, said many years ago in this village we didn't have a well, and my mother used to walk seven kilometers each way just to get two buckets of water. And it was polluted water and it was a dangerous journey because it's full of a wild beast. And then the UN War bank came the build this well and for extra stuff and the life of our village changed. So it took me to see his mother. Of course, they I speak the local language and she couldn't speak English, look at each other and the mother hug me. And I have to say that's the moment which I realized why I joined World Bank, why I was doing what I was doing. So more than an accomplishment, I like to think that the moment in which I realized the purpose of that organization was exactly there. So it didn't come rationally, it didn't come, cognitively came from my guts and my heart, and I found it was a very important moment in my career to build this sense of purpose that perhaps I didn't have so strongly when I was working for Citibank. Stephen Matini: As you're talking, I'm thinking of the word success, which means the different things to different people. For you, success is connected to purpose?  Paolo Gallo: Yes. My first book, I start with a story. The name of the book is called The Compass and the Radar. And I kept on telling the story to myself and also to people that listened to me, including now because my father once, when I was at the beginning of my school, literally I was six years old, he told me, Paolo, please remember every day you go to school if you learn something new, if you helped all the people and if you love what you're doing. And that's the reason why I call the compass of success because to me, my own compass has been quite clear my own mind to see do I learn something new every day? Did I help somebody or at least did I do something helpful and do I still love what I do? If you have clarity about these three questions, then the rest, I don't want to say it's marginal, but it's not so essential because I think the motivation comes when you are linked with a purpose that is probably bigger than you when you love doing what you're doing, so you are able to deal with some of the difficult moments that you are having in whatever journey you're taking in your life and the helping others are dominion a condescending way, but in terms of building relationship of trust with individuals, that is going to last forever. So relationship cannot be only transactional, which I refer to you only because I need you to be based on trust. So you have the clarity about the learning, the helping and the loving. I think you have a clear definition of success. Stephen Matini: Everything you say sounds so wonderful to me and these are also values that inspire my own career. In your career, have you always met people that welcome this way of thinking or were you some sort of a weird ball?  Paolo Gallo: I wish I could tell you absolutely yes, and in which case I would be on delusional or on the drugs. So once I told my daughter, everybody loves 007 movies because there is a villain in the movie. Now without a villain, you must think that the movie is quite boring. So you meet villains in your journey, you meet people that are, let's be English more than Italian, not particularly pleasant or helpful. And this is a moment where you have to verify the solidity of your values. You confront yourself with what I'm prepared to do. Oh, you're not prepared to do in a given situations. So the answer to your question absolutely no, but I think that overall, if you look at my 30 plus years experience, the number of good guys are overwhelmed, the number of bad guys, some of the big guys are really bad. There are one or two in particular that were absolutely awful as human beings, but these people pushed me to confront my values and to stand on my feet and once it cost me my job because it was fired by one of them. But what I consider at that time shameful, I now realize that it's actually probably my biggest achievement inside professional life. Stephen Matini: The concept of staying true to oneself is really central to your thinking, to your approach to life. What is the difference between a compass and a radar?  Paolo Gallo: The compass is remembering what you stand for. No, it is a value and I'm referring to, it is the definition of success, which is not about visibility or fame or money or power, but it's about meaning. It is about helping and it's about learning. And the radar is the capacity to open the window to see what's happening outside. Because one of the features that I realized in my own life, I met a lot of phenomenal people, incredibly good in doing what they were doing, but for some reason they lacked the intellectual curiosity to go one step further, to stand the effect of whatever technology that is an impact in their job or demographic or whatever. So the radar is the capacity to maintain this intellectual curiosity to keep on learning and also in psychology called contextual intelligence, the capacity connect the dots and to know how a given topic will have an impact in whatever activity you perform in your role or sector or position that you have in a company. So I think that if you have a clarity about compass and intellectual curiosity about the radar and you keep it open all the time, you may end up in a good place if you're exclusively focused in doing very well what you've been doing, you become a prisoner of what I call the better game. In my second book about The Seven Games of Leadership, the better game is great, you improving, doing what you're doing, but there is a moment where perhaps it becomes a trap it because if you keep on doing well what you've been doing, maybe you'll miss that something else that is happening. The example they provide is VE were produced in the best type machine in the world and then one day they that nobody was buying them anymore, but they didn't focus in developing computers and the thought were to business literally in 36 months after 60 years of a successful journey. The same happened with individuals. So I always encourage people to say, listen, you may be credibly good in doing what you're doing, but please try to anticipate what is coming next because if you are non reactive move, then you may end up in a difficult spot. Stephen Matini: Would you say that someone can balance the inner dialogue with all the stimuli that comes from the outside? How do you think that you can find the balance?  Paolo Gallo: In my second book, the first chapter is called “What the Fact Moments” because there are a lot of events that derail our attention to and our focus, and sadly we had a lot of these moments in the last few years from Covid to the world in Ukraine, and what's happening right now in Gaza, is a continuous derailed of our tension and our focus. Not to say that what's happening is not important, but to say that most of the time we spend time in focusing on something that is not relevant or we cannot change. Okay, or a very limited the first time is to say, are you focused in what really matters to you? And focus doesn't mean obsess and you ignore everything, but being aware of what's happening around you doesn't mean that you are not focusing on what you should be doing. That's one element. The second element is I ask also my clients in coaching and conferences, two very simple questions. One is from 0 to 10, how proud are you of what you've achieved? And most of the time people say nine, eight, they look with pride with what they have achieved and rightly so. And then ask another question, which is from 0 to 10, how proud are you of what you've become? It really is a powerful question. And when I ask this question, usually people immediately stop and they visualize the delta, the difference between the effort that they put in achievement and the unfocused of becoming. And sometimes ago, I will not tell the name of the person obviously, but I'm coaching several CEOs, people that are running huge organizations, thousands of people, billions of revenues, and one of them probably the most powerful that I'm coaching, and you remain silent for a few seconds and they started to cry and I didn't expect this reaction and I said, what's happening? And I said, yeah, listen, my salary, my compensation, you know that I'm on newspaper every other day, but what you don't know that I have three failed marriages and three of my four kids that don’t want to talk to me anymore and therefore I failed completely as a human being, as a father, as a husband, even if you see the image of a very powerful rich individual. I don't want to have a psychological analysis of the individual, but it's really to be mindful that it's like the two muscles that you have in both arms. You have to develop the achievement side, you have to get stuff done, you have to apply the knowledge in so concrete, but you also have to grow as an individual. And that's the focus of my book, The Seven Games of Leadership. They tried to explain the seven phases of personal development that are a prerequisite to become a credible leader in whatever organization, contest, community, operating. One question that ask people, and funny enough, I mean it's not funny because it's a bit of a sad example. He came up today on a Italian newspaper. There is a former soccer coach called Ericsson that used to be the coach over the English national team and also some Italian teams here. And they said, oh, I have cancer. I have one year to leave. So I asked question, to myself and other people, if you are given one year to leave, would you still continue doing what you're doing? If the answer is yes, that is great. And if the answer is absolutely not, I would leave it tomorrow morning. Then my question is, do you need to have cancer to reflect about this question? And here, of course it's not because I wish people anything bad, but it's simply to say, okay, can you think that if what you're doing right now makes sense to you as an individual? I'm trying to push people with my coaching session and with my speeches and with my book to think about essential questions, not about when can I get my next other increase or maybe next promotion. Stephen Matini: One of the question that I ask myself that allows me to understand whether or not I am aligned with myself is would I want to be somewhere else in this moment? Quite frankly, I'm very happy to be here. This is exactly where I am. I'm enjoying myself, I'm doing exactly what I want and I know that this is time well spent. Sometimes I don't have the kind of luxury we all have to work and do things that we don't enjoy as much. But knowing the difference, knowing when I feel that way and when I don't feel that way, I think it makes a huge difference, particularly moving forward and making choices. They are as much as possible, they resonate with me. Paolo Gallo: This is actually a very good point, and just to provide another practical example, yesterday I just opened the May because I wanted to read. I was contacted by one head and to say, dear Mr. Gallo, I hope you're doing well. Please let me know when I can call you because I have a very interesting role that I'm sure you may be interested in considering. Can you give me your phone number, I’ll call you ideally by the end of the week. And I said, thank you, Mary, but I'm really not interested in any role because I'm too much fun in doing what I'm doing right now. And she said, okay, thanks for letting me know. I didn't want to sound arrogant, but just the idea that all a sudden I have to go back to nine to five, it's never been nine to five, it's been nine to eight maybe with a boss and maybe if I'm lucky, I can take a week off at Christmas and maybe two weeks in August. That's not the life that I've for me. So I think it's important from time to time to take stock of what you're doing and also to understand in my book, there's a concept which is called congruence. If you're congruent with who you are, if you are in the right place, and as you said, if you feel like you want to be there, it's the same with people, and I work with your wife, with your husband, with your kids, if you'd rather be somewhere else, then you're in the wrong place. If you're so happy, maybe to have a soup with your wife and you prefer soup with your wife and then maybe being alone in the Maldive, then you are in a good marriage. Sometimes time is important to have a taken stock and to reflect rather than just being moved by actions and getting stuff done. Stephen Matini: In hindsight, everything is so much clearer, in general, but if you could do it all over again, I mean your professional career, and if you could have known back at the time one of the insights of your book, The Compass and the Radar, which one would you use? Paolo Gallo: I tend to trust people. And in few occasions, I have given trust to the wrong people, and this is a mistake that I've done more than once in my life by falling in love with people, situations and professional of course, and then being deeply disappointed at the end of the journey. But at the same time I feel like, okay, should I become paranoid and distrust everybody? I prefer to be disappointed 10% of the time that never be disappointed, but never to enjoy any conversations. So that's perhaps one on one point. The second one is probably I got worried too much about situations and people and perhaps now that I'm different age, I could have taken more likely situation that were maybe difficult, but not necessarily life-threatening or dramatic. But when I was in that moment, the entire world was evolving, relating to these quota problems I was trying to solve inside of human resources. So in retrospect, perhaps I should have not slept, lose a lot of sleep over our performance management process or our pension system or the recruitment of somebody that I did in the past. Stephen Matini: Are you still an adjunct professor? Are you still teaching or you don't?  Paolo Gallo: Yeah, I do. I do is part of my activity and I think that what I do is that in terms of coaching, writing or magazine or books, giving speeches or seminar or workshop and teaching is part of the same debate because everything feeds everything else. So when you give a speech, you have to get prepared. When you get prepared, you have to study. When you study, you become a better professor. When you become a professor, you get better feedback when you get better feedback. So I think everything is correlated. So I like to think that whatever I do is part of a cohesive puzzle that makes sense to me and that's what matters to me. Stephen Matini: How old are your students on average? Which age group do you teach to?  Paolo Gallo: I do executive education. So I used to do undergraduates, I now do executive education, executive education, it really depends, but probably people between late thirties to early fifties. So people between, I dunno, let's say 12, 15, 20 years experience, they want to go to the next phase, they want to go deeper in certain topics and I kind of enjoy because these people already had a significant portion of their professional life behind their back and saw the very deep and meaningful conversation about problem. I've learned all the time by talking to them, next time actually be on Tuesday when I will be talking to 270 people in Milan and I have two hours, but I always say two people I want to have half of the time for questions. Anytime I give a speech, I say, I don't mind if you give me three hours. I'm not going to talk for three hours. That's a long one. But I want to have a list time of half of the time are located for my contribution for questions because question is a way to reflect and to also understand if whatever you said has an impact on the people that are listening. Stephen Matini: What is the question that you hear more frequently from your audience about career, career alignment and such?  Paolo Gallo: Well, listen, several of won, but if I go back to the book that's been just released, The Seven Games of Leadership, it has been released in October and I've done so far about 22 or 23 presentations now this book and quite lot of people, they were quite well prepared and already read the book. And what I love is when somebody believes that what is written is being meaningful to him or to her, not because they fell in love with the line with a quote or with the lyrics, but because bingo, that's exactly where I am right now. To give us specific example in The Seven Games (of Leadership), that is what I believe is the most difficult game of all, which is a crisis game. And the crisis game is a moment that usually occurs in your mid forties, but it could be a little bit earlier, a little bit later where you scratch your head and you're thinking, do I want to do the next 20 years of my life the way I did the last 20? So in soccer terms, do I want to play the second half the way I played first? Usually the answer is no, I don't. I want to do something different, but I still have not figured it out what it is. So what really gives me joy is when people read the book or maybe listen one of my speeches or read one of my articles and come back to me, say what was written is exactly the way I feel and therefore there is a validation not about the validity of my book, but the validity of the instruments that offer to the readers. And this is a moment where I feel that whatever I'm doing makes sense not only to me but also to other people. Stephen Matini: Do you remember the time when you got the first spark about this book, The Seven Games of Leadership?  Paolo Gallo: Yes. I mean, of course. I shared the story at the beginning of the book where I always asked my daughter, she's now 18, what have you learned in your school. Two years ago over Christmas holidays? She said, daddy, but you've been asking me this question for many, many years now it's my turn. What have you learned.  And I said, shit, that's a powerful question. So I asked a little bit of time to reflect, and then I told her the story and she said, daddy, I love your story. Why don't you write a book about it? And that's why I wrote this book. What I told her is to say, listen, I met thousands of people in my life now in my professional life, in interviews, seminars, workshops, coaching webinars or whatever, and that's been wonderful. But what I realized that I did not meet a thousand of people. I had the same conversation a thousand of times because certain topics, certain challenges comes regardless of any of the variable, okay? So you can be a banker in Switzerland, you can be agriculture specialist in Washington, DCO, you can be an engineer or consultant in whatever company. There are issues that comes up regardless of the job that you're doing. And as reflecting about the conversation, the topics, I realized that were seven clusters of issues that came up. And I noticed that there was a sequence in these conversations, and rather than call them phases, which is a kind of a Jung definition, I call them “games,” because every game implies the understanding of the rules and the capacity to go from one to the other because you cannot get stuck in one game from all the entire life. So I was triggered by a conversation with my daughter and then the rest followed up based on my reflection and some hard work to come up with that book. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the biggest difference in terms of leadership, what we need today from a leader, compared to what the need for leadership used to be, I don't know, 20 years ago?  Paolo Gallo: When I proposed my book to Bloomsbury, they asked a very good question and the question was, Paolo, do we need another book about leadership? And the answer is no, probably not, because there are thousand of them every year, millions. If you write leadership on Google, you have a 15 million century and definition, the stories are so different. So should I add another one to the very crowded and intense topic? But I also realize as I've been working and studying leadership for many years, and I think I've worked with a lot of leaders and them, you have three school of thoughts when it comes to leadership. One school of thoughts is tell you what the leader should be doing. And so it is a focus on the deliverables, and this books are very technical. They focus on KPIs and business models and this kind of stuff. The second school of thought is to say, actually this is what the leader should be. And so you described some ideal behavior, probably more meaningful to me than the former one, but at times is a bit aspirational. And at times also they indicate stuff that very difficult to reconcile and quote an article, let’s say a leader should be somebody with 30 years of eyes on, but being able to get a profit every quarter, which is kind of difficult to being able to reconcile. The third school of thoughts that I saw is you take a leader and you describe what he or she has been doing, and they say, just do what Steve Jobs has been doing and you'll be fine. That's very interesting to read, but the contest is completely different, your brain is completely different and it's very difficult to say you can be the new Michael Jordan, if I'm telling you about the life of Michael Jordan. I mean it's difficult to get there. But what we realize that there are very little, if nothing, except in other disciplines like psychology or other discipline, they said, how do you grow as a leader? What I mean by as you grow as a leader is not how you become from manager to director to director to vice president to vice president to managing director. Now it's how you grow as an individual, which is a prerequisite for you to be a leader. And I haven't found a lot on that topic. So I wanted to fill this gap by saying, listen, if you want to have a to do list, it's not my book. If you want to be list, maybe there's some element of it, but it's not there. If you want to see the autobiography of the story of a very famous individual, there are plenty up there. I'm trying to help you out in understanding what could be or would be your journey for you to understand where you are and for you to reflect and perhaps to continue your journey with your own thinking legs and critical thinking. That's the overall purpose of this book. Stephen Matini: Is it connected to what we said at the very beginning of our conversation, the meaning and the importance of knowing your purpose?  Paolo Gallo: Yeah, I mean that to me is very important because I'm a very simple guy. I mean in a very humble and genuine way. When I say simple, it means stupid. It means I've clarity about what is essential. And to me, I always ask myself, when a nice people, when are you at your best and which activity when you perform, you lose track of the time, when you are in the zone, and you see with kids, kids when they play, they even forgot to eat and they even forgot to go to the toilet because they're so focused in the device, doesn't matter. And it's a beautiful things to watch because they're so into the game, they don't care about everything that is around them. Okay, why? Because they're freaking focused. And let's go back to the beginning of this conversation. So then when you ask the question about when are you at your best, I realize that I'm going to be best when I have a total autonomy of my time. And two, when am I helping organization teams of people to grow. So I realized that if I were to do an activity where I can do this with autonomy, then I will be at my best. And why not your best? You produce wonderful results, and when you produce wonderful results, people come to you and you don't have to worry about money. But if you start by thinking, oh, I want to make a list of 10,000 per month, and you start to devise a way of tricking people, it just doesn't work. I'm pushing people to think, when are you at your best? When you lose track of time, when you find the energy to do it? And equally, what are the sort of activity just thinking about makes you sick, tired, disgusted, bored, annoyed or disengaged? Because focus on the stuff that gives you energy and then you probably have a direction of your personal and professional life. Stephen Matini: I really do believe that if we focus a hundred percent on our truest talent, what makes us happy, that's usually where you find all the solutions. It's just that for myself, that happened later on in life. If I'd known that at twenty, probably I would've made different types of decisions I think. Paolo Gallo: The day before yesterday spent one hour with the daughter of very d friend of ours that is struggling on that decision, and I realized that was a huge amount of anxiety and pressure related to her decision about her professional life. What I found helpful is to remove elements that pollute in your decision making because they're not essential in your final decision. Let me give you an example. This is a person that has brilliant, severe, she's speak three languages. She worked for six or seven years. She's now in her early thirties and she doesn't know what to do next. And one question is maybe another MBA or maybe completely change sector. So there were a lot of stuff, and she has an element about logistic, about should I be stay in England or go to another place? One element about what's about my boyfriend, we love each other and I don't want to be distanced. One element about finance to say, well, some of the MBA are very expensive and I can't really afford or maybe ask for more money to my family. Some element about should I been able to do maybe work? And B, at the same time, there was a lot of stuff that is very difficult to reconcile. So I'm asking people to say, remove what is not essential. I'm not saying the money is not essential, but you should not get married with somebody because maybe he has available by the sea. No, you should be married with the person because you love it. No, if there is also available by the sea, even better, but should not be the decision that drives your final outcome. So when something creates anxiety, usually is because there are too much stuff to handle at the same time and you have to remove stuff from, it's like when you put things in order in your bedroom on your dining, no, you have to remove stuff and then all of a sudden you have clarity when you focus on something that is very meaningful. And one it exercise that I ask people to do is exercise or visualization. So close your eyes and you open your eyes and you have a day in front of you, which day do you want to have? And if the answer is, I hate thinking about going to university, then issue is not the money. You don't want to go there. But if the answer is Jesus, I mean I really would love to learn more about artificial intelligence and I dunno anything and I'm fascinated by this topic, et cetera, then you have an indication that perhaps this is a good avenue. So in decision making, most of the time we feel blocked because the decision is, I'm going to say a funny word, is constipated by too many staff, the blocking the fluidity of your thinking. So remove stuff that are important to consider but not essential on the first place. And then step by step, you can end up having a much better decision making if you have a methodology that allows you to drive a decision in a meaningful way. Stephen Matini: So as of today, what is your definition of clarity? How would you define what clarity is?  Paolo Gallo: Perhaps by understanding what is not essential? And what I mean by this is I just been to a restaurant with a friend and you go through the list, they say, no, no, no, no, and then you realize what you like. To me, it's also clarity about what you're not good at. It's clarity about what you're not interested in doing, in the capacity, as I wrote in my book also to let go certain things that are perhaps not relevant anymore. Let me provide an example because again, I always love giving examples. When I was a in human resources at the EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction Development, I set up a group for the head of human resources of international organizations. And so in 2004, I organized the first meeting of head of human resources and there was a success and there were about 60 of them coming from all over the globe, head of human resources for international organization like ... , the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nation, the NATO, et cetera, et cetera, WTO, WHO and ILO, and this kind organization. Great. And the second year I was the keynote speaker. I was at the board and for about 16 or 17 years, I've been participating as a founder with another guy called Pierre of that group. Then I left, stopped being head of human resources in 2018. And on LinkedIn I saw that these former colleagues of mine were organizing a meeting and I wasn't invited. And part of me was very disappointed and very hurt by the fact that, look, I've been the founder, I created this group and now they don't even acknowledge that I created and I don't even invite me. So I was upset for a good couple of weeks. Then one day I thought, but I'm going to say Palo, you have decided to do something else in life. You have decided to be an independent thinker, to be a writer or a professor, author, et cetera, et cetera. You have removed your T-shirt with head of your resources, why you even care? And so this clarity of what is not essential helps to be focused on what it is. But if you don't have that clarity, you may regret that, oh my God, I'm not part of the group, but part of the group was part of our role that I decided not to have anymore. And therefore, clarity about what is not essential usually helps in understanding what you're to focus on. Stephen Matini: Do you ever get confused or fuzzy about what to do next? Or are you always clear?  Paolo Gallo: I’m clear after the confusion. What I mean by this is, and I'll give you maybe another example, mindful that you are close to the end of this conversation now. When I stopped being an HR director and I became an independent consultant, coach, also a professor, whatever you want to say, I use this analogy, which is I felt that I opened an ice cream shop with 50 flavors because I was able to do many things following 30 years of experience and studies and MBAs and blah, blah. I made available a lot of services to a lot of people, but then ended up doing coaching with one person, the revision of a performance management process to another organization, developing a leadership development for another one, doing a workshop for somebody else and teaching the university. There was a lot of stuff going on. So it was a bit of a confusing moment for me. But then at the end I said, okay, if I were to have an ice cream shop and now summer is over and I closing the ice cream shop, what did I learn by looking at the clients that came to my shop? And I realized that most of the clients wanted to have three or four flavors. I mean, nobody want to have a banana ice cream, but everybody want to have a chocolate ice cream. So what does it mean to me? It mean that clarity about what the clients wants to have first point. The second one is interested in developing the best chocolate ice cream in the world. If the answer do it and dismantle and stop producing banana cream in, the answer is no. Maybe you suggest somebody else for the chocolate ice cream, but you produce something that is still relevant for the client. So what I'm trying to say is confusion is part of the creativity process, but you need to have a methodology for you to say, what did I learn by listening, by working and by being in different debates with different people. And then you can have clarity about what did I learn at the end of the season? So what did I learn by listening these people? And if 80% of the clients asking three things, then preparing 47 dishes makes no sense. I think it's much better to prepare four dishes and do it brilliantly well. And that's pretty much part of the learning process that I've learned when I became an independent consultant by say, I don't want to have a menu with a 75 items. I want to do four things, but incredibly well. And if somebody called me to say, Paolo, can you do a performance management or bonus system? I know how to do it, but I'm not interested in do it, and I have people that can do better than me. And so I call this guy, I need to sell this and call our, call this company. They can do better what I can do, but from the average plus. But these people will do a super job. But if you want to have a super job, please ask me these three things and I'll deliver it to you. So confusion is a necessary part of the creative process provided that you have a process perhaps to provide clarity at the end of this confusion, Stephen Matini: This conversation is a delight Paolo, I really love it.

Our guest today is Dr. Marcia Reynolds, one of the most influential figures in the coaching world. She has contributed to the industry through groundbreaking books Breakthrough Coaching and Coach the Person, Not the Problem. How do you make time for learning and growth with a jam-packed schedule? When we stop learning, challenges feel like giant puzzles. To succeed in the many facets of life, Dr. Reynolds encourages us to make learning a core value. Lifelong learning is not about seeking perfection but the journey of a lifetime. Dr. Marcia Reynolds suggests “wandering” as the mindset of curiosity where we ask questions, challenge assumptions, and remain open to learning from others. Despite years of experience or expertise, it’s vital to maintain a humble attitude and acknowledge that mastery is an ongoing journey that unlocks endless potential. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or your favorite pocast platform. Please check Dr. Marcia Reynolds' groundbreaking books Breakthrough Coaching and Coach the Person, Not the Problem and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you. How have you carved time for learning in your busy schedule? Leave your comments, thank you! Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen or send him a message on LinkedIn. #MarciaReynolds #Covisioning #Coaching #Curiosity #GrowthMindset #Learning #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: Have you always been this way? Has it gotten easier to be a learner as you mature? Are you more of a wanderer today compared to the way it used to be? I mean, how does this work? Marcia Reynolds: Those are kind of two separate questions and as you ask the question about learning, it's almost like for different purposes at different times in my life. But I do have a value for learning and I don't know if that's an inherent value or inherited value you because it was, you know, a very important part of my culture that we get educated and we learn things and we question, which I really love that I was taught very young to question not just accept always. I can remember that wanting to just hunger to learn more about this. If I hear something I wanna know more. I don't wanna just take it at face value. But the look of learning, you know, has changed over the years. I mean younger, you know, is pursuing lots of degrees and I think if I was independently wealthy, I would continue to do that. I was blessed with liking school, not all the teachers, but, liking to be there and have access to things that I wouldn't normally have for myself for learning now, you know, it's very focused because I really want to, I'm so focused on coaching and understanding how coaching works so we can do it better and better that the learning is down a lane, but it's still there. I'm still like hungry to learn, but just for different purposes. I think though the, the important thing is that it is a true value, not just something I have to do, I need to do. I like it. So to really commit to learning, even if you don't quite like researching, what is it that would be most fascinating to you that you'd just like to know a little bit more? You know? So go down a path like I've now narrowed my path. It's not learning in general, but learning for purpose. Stephen Matini: When people, sometimes that happens to me. When people tell you, I don't have time to learn, I'm so busy, what would you tell them? Marcia Reynolds: Well, first I would ask them, so what does learning mean to you? You know, because obviously you have a picture in your head of what learning is, is maybe like sitting somewhere and reading books and maybe you don't have time for that or going to school. But if learning is just going places and listening, like last night I went to just an hour class, you know, that I wouldn't normally do. I usually would sit and watch TV. But I went to this and it was fascinating. It was an area that I would not even have normally thought about, but it sounded interesting. Last week I attended a discussion group. It was a dinner meetup discussion group, and we ate and, and talked about certain topics and I got to meet people. So you can combine learning with networking, even in a meeting at work to sit there and to question what has led them to believe that help me to understand and maybe ask to meet with them later. Could you tell me what were the things that led for you to believe that that decision was most correct? I'm just really interested in your perspective. So being interested in a perspective is even learning. So what is it that would be useful for you to know a little bit more about and you know, how could you then engage people in a way that you could learn without, you know, having to go somewhere to get it? Stephen Matini: Have you noticed over the years a change in the way people approach learning? Marcia Reynolds: Well, as you were saying that it, it sounds to me there's a connection with, I think I don't have time, so whatever it is you give me make sure that I can use it right away. Although I'm not so sure that's new. Being that I was, you know, used to run training departments and my second master's is an instructional design, it was always how can you make this applicable? That's nice if they enjoy just sitting and listening to you talk. But if it doesn't change what they do is there an ROI? But I know that over the years, like even yesterday, coaching.com is changing their summits and she says, we decided we need to do it more workshop. You know, where people are engaged and they're doing things and they know then how to use it when they leave. I think there's more of a demand to interact. We've always known that was important to learning, but I think there's more of a demand for interaction so I can apply it now. So it's just an evolution. I don't see it as a change. Even my book that's coming out in a few weeks, it's kind of like the next version of coach the person, but there's far more resource tools and exercises and you know, it's an interactive guide. It's something that you work with. That's how people get the concepts of what I'm trying to teach, you know? So even I went that way with writing the book to make sure that there was more things that they could actually engage in and do mostly with others, but even with themselves. And there's questions all through it. Not just to ask when you're coaching, but to ask yourself, am I willing to give up being the expert in this situation in order to engage and coach people in a different way no matter what. Whether it's, you know, being a leader or part of a family, I think the who are you is really important. So I do see engaging people's minds and their doing as becoming more and more forefront in how we teach. Stephen Matini: Because you've been around coaching for such a long time and you're still so deeply passionate about it. What is coaching to you today compared to, I don't know, maybe five, 10 or 15 years ago? Marcia Reynolds: I signed up for a coaching school in 1995. And so I've been learning and coaching for quite some time. In working with coaching.com or taking my foundational breakthrough coaching program and making it self-study, I had to sit and watch 32 coaching demos that I did since 2020. It was torture. But what was fascinating to me to see even my evolution from 2020 to now, so, you know, and I've been coaching over two decades that I'm still, you know, learning and growing and that I went from coaching 40 minutes to now I 15 minutes and we're like, breakthrough and done, you know? But I found that the real shift was when I really stepped into that being that I'm totally curious about this person's way of seeing and the questions that come from me is, is my being of being with them as a thinking partner of fully stepping into that and not being the expert and not being the person who needs to lead them in any direction, but really, really, really, I'm gonna help you think. And so every reflection and question I use comes out of this interaction. We have to explore their thinking and as they explore their thinking, it expands. You know? And the more that I believed in that and, and was just that, you know, just blended into that being the more profound the coaching was, you know, it went deeper faster and it created insights that changed their minds and how they were gonna do things in a much quicker, memorable, sustainable way. You know? And so I think as in anything we learn, you know, the foundational skills you have to do that. And then we're much more deliberate and conscious, consciously aware of what we're doing. And as we get better at it, it starts to sink in and we don't have to think about it. And to the point where I can finally create a collective space with this person, that what shows up in between us in our conversation is what's incredible to both of us. It takes belief, it takes trust, and it takes practice. And I fortunately have been around long enough that I've been able to really get that into my bones. But I in the process, continue to learn what that means. You know, what exactly is am I doing? I'm not sure, but let me see if I can parse it out so I can then write about it and share it with other coaches so they get it, you know, in service of what, it's been a an incredible journey and I'm, I can't wait to see three years from now how different I'm coaching than even now. Stephen Matini: When you look back to your career as a coach, is there one specific contribution or client or something that you are super, super proud of? Marcia Reynolds: There's always this one woman that comes to mind that she was tough. You know, she was resistant. She'd get angry with me, but I just stayed in in that what I did was just ask her a question. And I knew that the question I was asking, I wasn't leading, but I knew it would challenge, but I had the courage to ask it anyway. She needed to explore this, you know, if we were gonna go any deeper, this was a block. It was interesting because the day we started, she was like, and she worked for a global pharmaceutical and I'm like, so what is it that that you really want to that create from our relationship? She goes, I need to change positions. I should be CEO of this company and they don't get it. And then she was like, I think I need to leave because they don't understand me. And I just said, we've got six months here. Could you gimme that that we could explore this? 'cause I would really like you to, to absolutely choose where you're going based on your needs instead of leaving behind what you don't like. And she did and we explored what, who she was as a leader and what was really possible and what she wanted to create. And after that she ended up running a medical clinic and then ended up being the head of health and human services for one of our states here. And the next time I saw her, she had her limo pick me up at the airport. So I would say that that was a great, great thing 'cause she would've just leaped to some other job. You know, this comes back way back to when you mentioned about wandering. You know, you can wander with intention to the next challenge or you wander because you can't stand what's going on right now. But you know, when you first asked me the question I'm like, wow, there's so many, you know, like the woman that was a general manager that they were divesting her division, she wanted to be CEO of, of the new company and she ended up getting the position. They hadn't weren't looking at her that way when we started. So there's been quite a few shifts. Many of them been women I've, you know, coached men into seeing themselves as the leader that's going to really create a difference, you know, which is different than what they thought they were going to be. I've done a lot of that too. So there's a lot of moments I'm proud of, you know, but there have been some profound accomplishments, I, promotions, accomplishments, being that people have done, even the ones that have decided that it was time to move on. I coached a bank president for eight years that now runs a stitchery shop and she's happy as can be. So I think that's why I'm so passionate about coaching is that there's all these ways that we affect people's lives without telling them what to do. You know, or giving them our best advice that they discover, created, have the courage to go there is just always so delightful to observe, you know? And to have the privilege to be a part of that process is just amazing. Stephen Matini: Delightful and privilege are beautiful words to describe that feeling. Do you still, probably not, but do you still ever get anxious about, okay, I have to be present, but I need to perform? Or at this point you just are? Marcia Reynolds: For the most part, I don't think when I'm coaching, so it's not really there, you know, when I'm working with coaches, doing demos, teaching, and even when I'm hired by companies, it seems to be not a problem anymore. I don't question it sometimes when I've had individuals hire me, you know, and there seems to be an expectation. I just had a request just this week and the person he described is like incredible. And, and I really thought, am I gonna be able to just let go of being in awe of this person and challenging when the challenge needs to happen? Am I gonna be able to do that? And I'm glad I'm asking the question because if I don't feel I can do that, then I can't coach the person. But it is interesting when it does , it's like, okay, so what about this intimidates me that normally, you know, anything else wouldn't, but it still comes up Stephen Matini: What's mastery to you? Because we love to learn, learn. So do you ever reach mastery or it's just this thing that you try to achieve and never get? Marcia Reynolds: Well, you know, it's interesting in, I think it was 1999, the ICF pulled together who they thought were the hundred top thought leaders in coaching at the time, but it was, so it was quite a while ago. And we met in Vancouver and they broke into tables. And my table had that got that question, is there a destination? What is mastery to coaching? And what we all agreed to was that it's not a destination. You're always on a path of mastery. It's not a path to mastery. One of the people, Richard Heckler, is a multiple black belt Aikido. And I took Aikido for five years and we talked about, you know, in martial arts you never are the master. It's always a path of mastery. There's always more to embed and to develop and to be that. Maybe there are a few masters, but even they will tell you that they're still learning. And so I think that when you look at that concept, that's the same with coaching. If you feel you've made it, I mean, it's like the, the whole thing. There's no such thing as a comfort zone. You're either moving forward or you fall backwards. So, you know, I think that's the same thing and that I get a lot of comments from experienced coaches on my demos and LinkedIn and you know, that attend my classes and they say, wow, I had forgotten. You know, I got to a a a bit of complacency thinking, okay, I am a great coach now. And then watching you going, oh my , there's so much more. And people always say to me, I mean, they may call me a master. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm on the path too. And I have the, the great honor to teach it, which keeps me learning and growing as I have to learn more. Like I said, I, I'm doing this mastery program, it's gotta be different. When I first did this, a man who's become a friend of mine, his name is Alan Briskin, and he wrote a book in 1990 called The Stirring of the Soul in the Workplace. And that was pretty out there for 1990. And I remember I was running a training department for semiconductor company and I remember finding that book and like, oh my, that's what happens often in the corporate world, is the soul gets degraded or lost. I followed his work and then when I first published with my publisher, we had a retreat and there he was because he worked with my publisher and we've become friends. He's written a number of books on collective wisdom. It was at the beginning of the pandemic. I hired him. I said, Alan, I really wanna bring collective wisdom to coaching, so I wanna hire you. And he says, well, I'm not gonna consult with you. We're gonna have 90 minute dialogues. And what comes out of the dialogue is going to be whatever it is you learn. Exactly. You know, it's like coaching. Yeah. You know, I'm not gonna tell you what to do, so let's just have this conversation and see what emerges. It was fascinating. We did this like twice a week for three months. I mean, I so look forward to it of what came out of it.   And he said too, how much he learned. 'cause He didn't know that much about coaching and everything that we'd talk about. I'd say, okay, so let me put this in a coaching context. He was just so fascinated about that. So I didn't go to a coach, guru master, I went to someone else who I saw had mastery in something that we could use in coaching. There's so much of that that exists, you know, I mean even like there's that one coaching school that uses a lot of Buddhist thought. You know, there's so much more in disciplines and modalities that we can take from and integrate to deepen the impact we have in coaching. Obviously I'm fascinated by, you know, okay, so what's next? There's never an end point. I think we'd get bored if there was. Stephen Matini: At the beginning you said that being a learner and a wonderer, those are two different separate questions. So who is the wonderer then? Marcia Reynolds: So when I was getting my doctorate and it came time to do my dissertation, you know, I went in to learn the whole neuroscience of learning and leading. But everything I wanted to do, I thought, I'll never finish this in, in this lifetime, you know, and I understand why a lot of people are a, b, D that never finished their dissertations, you know? And I was sitting and listening to this man speak and he was talking about the difference of men and women in the workplace. And he was so wrong. You know, as he described women, I'm like, that's not me and that's not the women I coach. I you don't have a clue. Then I went out and I started researching and you know, they were defining women and their challenges all the same. We don't speak up, we don't lean in, blah blah. Which is, you know, some women don't, but a lot of them do way too much. So I chose to research smart, strong women in the workplace. And what I found with the hundred women in my research study, the most common thing was that they wandered, they'd go into a job and within a couple years, you know, they were excited. A couple years they were bored, not enough challenges, not enough places to move unless it was a huge global company and they could maybe do some lateral moves, weren't that interested in climbing a ladder. They were interested in movement and learning and growth and that it had to be significant, it had to be meaningful. And I was talking to a man that works with archetypes and he said, oh, they're wanders, you know? And I'm like, oh my, I'm a wander. I did the same thing. I would go only stay with a company five years, you know, went from this to this to this jumped industries. I didn't care. If I had no idea what, what the company did, I'd figure it out, you know? And then I wrote the book Wander Woman, based on my research and from the book, a lot of people came to me and even, you know, a lot of the younger generation of men saying we do that too, you know, like maybe our fathers would stay with with organizations for a very long time. So there wasn't a stereotype that it was just women. But I think women still do it more when I'm finding my coaching, that they're more willing to leave and trust that they'll find something that they're not going to like, not have anything. And so wandering, it isn't just a learning and and wandering in my mind being me, it's actual physical wandering, you know, the whole been there, done that, what's next for me to learn and to grow. Yeah, learning has something to do with it. But again, because learning is a little bit more, you know, mental, where the wandering is physical. It's so funny because when I talk to people and in my mind I'm like, oh, you're a wanderer. And I remember him making the distinction. There are settlers that will go in and create amazing things and then stay, you know, like some of your major CEOs and then they stay, they settle. So there are settlers instead of wanderers. And not that they settle, you know, but that they settle in to what they have created and they wanna stay with that. More wanderers is like, I go there, I create great things and now it's time for me to move on. I did until I found coaching. But even with coaching, I couldn't sit and just coach all day, like some people do. I do a lot of training. For many years I did a, before the pandemic, I did a lot of speaking at conferences, writing and there's many times where I'm just sitting and writing. So there's a lot of wandering to what I do within this business that I've created. So it keeps me going and I'm creating new programs this year, you know, and it's like, okay, so you said you're in your fifties, I'm 68, you know, it's like, well is there gonna be a time I slow down? And I keep thinking, yeah, I think there will be, but I don't know when , you know, because it's still so fascinating. There's so much to learn. Stephen Matini: Do you prefer coaching over other tools or you like them all? You like training just as much as coaching, just as much as writing, speaking, or do you have a preference? Marcia Reynolds: I do like writing. For many, many years I was a writer, teacher when I first came into coaching, when people would ask me, it was very difficult for me to say I'm a coach. I do like coaching, but I think I like writing and teaching. Writing to me is sharing. It's not like just sitting down and writing a fiction book. It's what I see is needed. When I teach, let me write about it. To me, they kind of go together. I do not like sitting and doing all my teaching by Zoom. So the pandemic like killed some of that. Oh yeah. I love to teach, well not 3, 4, 5 hours by Zoom, you know, at some point that's gonna be done with either, you know, I do it live 'cause I prefer to do it live. I'm fine with tr People are like, oh, you can stay home now. It's like, no, I don't wanna stay home . I wanna be out in the world with people. So I prefer, you know, live training, writing and live training. But then I'm always doing a coaching demo in every program that I do pretty much. And so I guess you'd still say I coach, you know, when I teach, so it kind of blends together, you know, a lot of times when I speak and they're like, so tell us something that people wouldn't know about you. Well, most people wouldn't know this, actually, I think the last 10 years of my corporate life was, I wrote Fiction, you know, I've got like three books up on a shelf, maybe one day I'll pull 'em out and fix 'em up, update 'em in a little bit. That was the way I dealt with my stress level of, of working and primarily male tech companies where I was often the only woman in the room and I'm not a big person. I had to be loud and annoying and all of that , you know, so I get it. It was like such a a, a nice escape to write the fiction. Stephen Matini: You think it's possible for an executive, let's say CEO, to be a learner and a wonderer? Because those people to me, I work with, a lot of them are big loners oftentimes, you know, very much misunderstood. Oftentimes they cannot share a lot of stuff, a lot of pressure, and they have to produce results. So is it possible for them to really have a learning and, and a wonder, a mindset. Marcia Reynolds: Under mindset? Well, you know, it's interesting 'cause a lot of it was over the pandemic. I was coaching a number of executives in this company and the CEO I wasn't coaching him, but every now and then he reached out to me and said, you know, I've just been reading this book and I it could we just talk about it? You know, and he was all over the place and what he would read and you know, but you're right, he didn't have anyone to talk about it. But what often would happen was his exploration then would create a little bit of conflict of values with what had to be done in, in the company. And so part of it was having to resolve that I cannot live by the values that seem to be developing and coming through me and work with these people. So again, it comes back to the concept of what is learning. In my last company, one of the reasons I, I attribute my success to is to this champion I had when I started. We had a program together, he was like the head of quality and he quickly moved into being a director and then in our time together a vp and now he's like the senior vp and you know, he to the CEO and a huge company, we would argue a lot. But in the service of learning what he loved, to really dig deep into what it was I was teaching. I remember this one other VP said to me, I think I wanna support what you're talking about, but honestly I have no idea what you mean. This other guy would like, I'm not sure what you mean, like, can we like explore this? And so it was like two different ways of looking at it. I don't know what that means. So I'm not gonna spend time with it or I dunno what that means, you know, help me understand, you know. So it's a different thing that I even think when le leaders really get into a coaching approach with people that what they're doing is an active learning process. See, I see coaching as a learning technology. I do not see it as productivity, problem solving therapy. I don't see it. I see it as a learning technology, you know, and that was what my research has been since the late eighties is on learning the creative insights that we spark. It's a middle band process. It changes perspective and creates sustainable change. And in learning, that's what we're looking for is how do we create sustainable change? That's what companies want. But it comes a a a lot out of curiosity just to start there for a leader to turn to someone and say, you know, that's interesting that you're saying that you don't think that this has a long-term sustainability. So tell me what sustainability means to you. That's a coaching approach to get the person starting to think about what they just said. But it also gives the leader a chance to look at maybe there's a different way this person is seeing this than I do. So we kind of learn together. So just asking, what do you mean by that helps us both to learn in that moment that we can possibly expand our perspective or at least understand what's going on in a different way. You know? And then getting into, so what are the things that you considered that led you to believe this, you know, would be a second question, which again makes them think about it. You know, maybe they haven't considered everything. And also for you to see as a leader, what are some things maybe I didn't see, you know? So again, we learned together just by those two questions, what do you mean by that? What did you consider to bring you to this point, to this belief, to this decision? Powerful stuff in just two questions. Stephen Matini: So you say coaching, it's a learning technology for sustainable change. So of all the possible words that you could have chosen, why did you choose technology and sustainability and sustainable? Marcia Reynolds: Well, again, remember that I come out of 11 years of working in the tech world. So it's part of my language. So as a technology, I like it better than a methodology. 'cause The word method then is very limiting. Where I think a technology is really an overall process and that I see it as a part of learning. And that the technology of learning sustainability is because that's the word, you know, again, in in especially in the tech world, they're looking for sustainable change. Sustainable change, what creates sustainable change. And in learning, that's what we're looking for. You know, people can come into my class and at the end give me all the happy faces and say, oh this was so fabulous, I love this. They try a new communication technique or something and it feels awkward. They go back to old behavior. So what's going to jump over that block that it feels weird. I'm not going to do it, you know, because I'm the leader and I should be perfect or whatever that is. And so I find that coaching bypasses that and gives them a little bit even more courage and confidence to stick with what they've learned until it becomes a part of who they are. In that sense, it creates a sustainable change. 'cause I'm working with who you are, not just what you do, which is what creates the change. Now I'm not talking about skill-based learning, you know? 'cause That's a different thing. I, I see you do it, I try it and then I do it myself. That's, you know, a standard. See, do try, do whatever. Talking about like leadership and personal growth, Stephen Matini: You published several books and now in a few weeks a new book is gonna come out. Do you feel as excited as other times? Is it different this time? How do you feel? Marcia Reynolds: It's different in the sense that coach the person is such a huge success. My previous books have done well and they still sell, but coach the person was off the charts. One of my is now one of my publishers bestsellers, you know, and so I, it there's both the, okay, so most of the people that bought that, it's gonna buy the next one. So it should do well. But there's also, what if they don't like it as much as this one ? So there's always the comparison. What if it's not as good as, and I've never met an author that didn't go through the process of while they're writing the book thinking who's gonna read this? Or you know, they're gonna judge this is not good. Or they're gonna see this as it's just replicated what I said before, you know, and all the negative things that people can say about it. You spend a year of your Saturdays sitting in front of a computer creating something and you're like, is it really worth it? You know? Which is just normal process that I think authors always go through. So I'm sitting here now like a few weeks away from the book launch and going, what if it flops not likely to based on the success of Coach the Person. But there's always that question and you know what, so what if it did? The people who will benefit from it will find it. Stephen Matini: What is your biggest hope for this book? Meaning let's say I get your book, I read it. What would you hope for me to get out of the book? What is your hope, your biggest wish? Marcia Reynolds: Well, you know, I think that's what coach the person taught me was that even to this day, every day I get people from around the world connecting with me on LinkedIn saying, I found your book. Oh my God, thank you. I really, really understand coaching now and I've gotten so much better because of your book. And then you know, all the other things that you put out there. I want the same thing that, oh wow, you know, I was really getting it and now I have an even deeper understanding of what it is I'm trying to create and how to do it. I want them to just feel more confident and believe in the coaching process that if we stay in coaching, you know, really being their thinking partner and not revert to, you know, 'cause I always get the question, but what if they really, you know, need me to tell them? What is it that led you to believe that? Most of the time I find people do have the answers inside of them. They're just afraid to apply what they know. That's what we're doing. If somebody had absolutely no, no experience or idea of what something is, then probably they need a little bit more guidance. But even that, I've had like people who were brand new leaders and said, but I've never been a leader before. And I always say, yeah, but have you worked for leaders? Yeah, well what did you like about them? Or what did you hate about some of these leaders? Boom. We get into the conversation. I don't have to tell them what a good leader does. You know, they know, they come from the, I've never done this before. I don't know how, but they do have perspective. You know, can I pull that out first before I assume that they need my brilliant advice, changing their mind, really shift the connections and the neurons is what we're aiming for and telling them, pacifies the brain, you know, we coaching activates the brain. Can I activate their brain? That's what I'm aiming for. Stephen Matini: You know, after an hour of listening to you, now I know why. I have heard about you so many times. You are a goddess. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation and for, for giving me your time because I've learned a lot and even probably more important, I feel peaceful that it is something really valuable when you have the privilege of talking to someone still so young and so curious, but with this amazing experience that you have. And so thank you so much. Marcia Reynolds: Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you. This was really enjoyable for me as well.

Our guest is Prof. Peter Hawkins, a well-known figure recognized for his work in systemic coaching and developing coaching cultures in organizations. Professor Hawkins presents beauty as a transformative force, urging individuals and organizations to align with their core values for a sustainable and harmonious future. Beauty is found in authentic, vulnerable moments and genuine connections between people, emerging through acts of kindness, compassion, and service. Advocating for a move away from transactional leadership, Professor Hawkins calls for a model that recognizes each person's inherent beauty, fostering belonging and mutual respect. Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform. Contact Prof. Peter Hawkins Subscribe to Pity Party Over Sign up for Live Session Managerial & Leadership Development Contact Stephen Matini Connect with Stephen Matini #PeterHawkins #BeautyinLeadershipandCoaching #SystemicCoaching #Purpose #Beauty #SustainableFuture #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: You are such a prolific author, how did you end up writing so many books? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I started off by writing chapters for books where people said that, well, I write a chapter on this one, the other. And then since then, each of the books that, that I've written is because a real need for a new approach. So my first book, which was around supervision, was because, you know, I'd become a supervisor and discovered there was no real guidance for supervisors and that every supervisor did something different. Thought, well, you know, we need something that kind of puts this together. And then, you know, when I got on to writing about, uh, coaching and systemic team coaching and leadership, it's always because I got to the edge and can't find what I want to learn next. So end up writing it, and by writing I discover what I know, but also I discover what I don't yet know. Writing is a just a lovely practice, as always, discovering. And, and I suppose I've always been an integrationist, wanted to work across disciplines. And so by writing I'm, I'm able to kind of integrate stuff that has come from very different traditions. Stephen Matini: And it's interesting because you are such a big, big, big name in coaching, but your books are infused with, um, so many different ingredients. So they're not just your typical coaching book. And then, um, I remember last time when we talked about your latest book, which I think is, is still has to come out, right? The beauty in leadership and coaching, the way you explain it to me, it seems to be the last discovery in your journey and somehow it puts together all the ingredients that you have found along the way. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, it kind of tries to set coaching, leadership, organizational development in, in a larger context, where in that larger context is both on the one hand about evolution and about epistemology, and it's another level about spirituality and ecology. Basically, in that book, I am very much looking at the great challenges that we face as a civilization and saying at root, they are all interconnected and at root, they are all symptoms of the fact that we haven't been able to evolve human consciousness at the speed of which we have changed the earth. So beauty, I am using as energetic force as a guide to help us on the return journey from how we've shrunken our, our consciousness, our way of engaging with the world, from participatory consciousness to collective consciousness. And then the white European world, we, we, in American world, we've, we treated further into from the embodied consciousness to brain consciousness. And then we've retreated even further into left hemisphere. And I'm seeing beauty as a force that awakens us to that which is beyond us, that which comes knocking our door and takes us by surprise. And so the notion of following beauty is awakening, if you like the taking us out of our left hemisphere into our whole brain and add our brain into our, our hearts and our guts and our embodied knowing and back into relationship. Stephen Matini: One thing that I often see particularly business people doing, they tend to focus on business. You know, they're just business. And instead of most of my motivation, most of my creativity, I get it from stepping out the whole realm of, uh, business. And my background is in humanities. So for me, humanities, literature, theater, music, steel, is a huge, huge source of inspiration. And I believe that you and I share some people that are really dear to our hearts. You talked to me about William Blake, you talked about Dante, uh, Rumi. Why are these people so important to you? Prof. Peter Hawkins: First of all, I'm fascinated by you saying about business or busyness. What is business? I'm just interested, what what do we mean by business or what do we mean by organizations? An organization exists because there is a purpose or something that needs doing that requires collaboration. And that collaboration requires organizing. Actually we could say that business is a mode of responding to what's needed and necessary, but it's become an end in itself. So the purpose of the organization is to feed the organization so it can feed the organization so it can feed the shareholders so it can, so there's something wrong with business. We've all got business to do, but the business should never be an end in itself, which is why I also in my books around teams say we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. The goal is not to be a, a successful organization or a high performing team. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Those are a means to an end. And the end is to create beneficial value for all the people your work serves. So trying to get us away from means to purpose is important. And we don't create our purpose. We discover it. And I think that people, you mentioned Dante Mena Ian, Rumi ha real, William Blake Ridge, Shakespeare, , let's bring in some of the great, uh, w Wang Wei, the Great Tang Chinese per they go to Essence, they go to the heart of purpose, and they go beyond the restrictive separating individualism of the modernist western world. They reconnect us. Nna Jin Rumi says, why in the plenitude of God's universe have you chosen to fall asleep in such a small dark prison? And beauty is, if you like, what are the keys to unlock the prison? Stephen Matini: Do you find it hard, easy possible when you work with um, clients, let them enter beauty. Prof. Peter Hawkins: I put it the way around that my job isn't to let them into beauty. My job is to discover the beauty and what they are in them and what they're doing to uncover the beauty. This is there rather than believe that I know where I need to take them. Stephen Matini: It is true when the organization tap into the purpose, the soul, the beauty, that's when magic happens. But in my personal experience, it's not always possible, you know, to unveil it with clients. So when you experience that resistance to change, whichever you want to call it, what do you do? Prof. Peter Hawkins: If a client says to me, uh, but what matters is the bottom line, I would say, so Steven, what is the bottom line? Tell me about the bottom line. If they say, well, it's the, the amount of profit we make at the bottom of the page, I'd say, and, and what is the purpose of that profit? So we can reinvest and what's the purpose of re well so we can make more? They've stopped. At a full bottom, my job is just to Dr. Open the windows to what is beneath that bottom Stephen Matini: With this latest book, what do you hope that readers will take away? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I just received an amazing email this morning from a beautiful black woman in, in in America who just talked about how just reading the first chapter, 'cause I'd used it as a handout on the program, had let her whole body shaking and just brought up so much for her and inspired her to write a poem that she sent me. And honestly, it, it brought me to tears. I just thought if more people have that reaction, it just opened up so much for her in terms of what was buried within her that needed to surface. And if I can help people just open a window to a, to, to a wider perspective, I can help them see beyond our own imprisonment and break out some of the constriction. 'cause if it helps them, then they can help others. If it helps the coaching profession move from being expensive, personal development for the already highly privileged. And it's not about self-improvement, but it's about what is the world knocking on our door asking us to step up to. It can move us from a, a individualistic self-orientation to a service orientation. And not just service of humanity, but service of the more than human world than, than I feel I will have achieved a small part of my business, of the work I'm being asked to do. Stephen Matini: You will have to stay on this planet forever because , there's a terrible need. Prof. Peter Hawkins: All, all our job to do is to do what is responsibility of our generation then to pass the torch on. But you know, the reality is that my generation is passing on a much more depleted and challenged world than we inherited. And that weighs quite large. And I wasn't say on my shoulders, it weighs large in front of me. What is our responsibility in terms of at least doing what we can, what little we can to help the generations that come after us face the bigger challenges that come after us? You know, I spend a lot of time saying to leaders, you know, what are your major jobs as leaders? I I was in South Africa in a very big gathering of MBA alumni from across Southern Africa. And I started my talk 'cause I'd followed a very inspirational South African politician. I just stood up and I said, please stand up. Prof. Peter Hawkins: All those of you in the audience who are responsible for developing the next generation of leaders across Southern Africa. Of the 400, probably about 50 stood up. They were the HR folk. And I said, I don't think you understood my question. Please stand up if you are responsible for, for supporting the next generation of leadership across Southern Africa. I had to ask it three times. And eventually everyone stood up, look around the room. These are the people who are gonna help you and you are gonna help them develop the next generation. So please turn to the person next to you and ask them what do they most need to learn this evening to step up to that responsibility. The phrase I often come back to, and I'm also a lover of Michelangelo and the beauty he liberates. Yes. Although as Warren Bennis points out, we have to remember that the Sistine Chapel was not just done by Michelangelo. Prof. Peter Hawkins: He had a team of 30 people. So he was a great team leader. He was a, a great orchestrator of, of others. It wasn't the work of one genius and he was part of an extraordinary time in community of artists in in Florence. And the line that I often come back to and use with individuals and teams and organizations and communities is what can you uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs? They don't try and be anyone else because all other places are taken. What is it that can only be done by you? Because nobody occupies the place in the wider interconnected universe that you occupy. There'll never be a another. Stephen, that's one the just things that got me so excited writing this book in the whole billions of years of creation that we know about. That's only what we know about. There's never been a repetition. No, no organism has ever been created the same as a previous one. And when we have children, every child is a surprise. It's not 50% of the father and 50% of the mother is a, it's a unique never having been created being, it's never existed in the whole history of creation. Isn't that a miracle? Stephen Matini: It's an impossible statistical weird thing that happened somehow. Prof. Peter Hawkins: The the line that came to me when I was writing the book is that creation is in love with becoming. So I said that, it goes back to your question about why do I write books? I don't write books to tell people what I know. I write books to take myself to my learning edge and to discover between me and what I'm writing about, what is trying to struggle into consciousness at my best. I don't write them. Stephen Matini: Have you ever felt in your entire life as you were trying to discover something could have been the brand of a book or whichever something you want to achieve. Have you ever felt, God, what if I don't get there? You know, kinda self-doubt. So maybe you didn't feel that the beauty within yourself or somehow at some point you felt, God, I'm lost. I don't know if you ever felt it that way, but if you did, how did you overcome it. Prof. Peter Hawkins: At the end of writing this book? I thought, but I haven't got to what's needed. And then I remind myself that if I stayed with that, I'd never put the book out. I've had my book on leadership team coaching and my book on supervision going to fifth editions, fourth editions. And, and I end up apologizing for what I've written in the earlier editions. You know, because at some point we have to say, well, it's not enough, but is it good enough? Because who said all, all the way to heaven is heaven. And at some level we just have to, to stop trying to be perfect and put out share where we've got to, uh, in the hope that will help other people on the path behind us, but also people alongside us to go further on the path. A lot of our doubts are just ego contortions. Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, they just take us back into, am I good enough? Or all the internal chat. And I think somewhere to do what we need to do, we just have to say that doesn't really, all that doesn't really matter. Yeah, we, we have to have doubts because that's what leads us into furthering inquiry. And I think certainty is more dangerous than doubt, but doubt can be a interruption when it starts to catches an internal hesitancy and self-doubt. And rather than to say, well actually I need to get on and do what is showing up in front of me is necessary to do Stephen Matini: For me. Probably the one thing that I guess I've learned only later on in my life is the fact that simply because the process is sometimes is not pleasant or doesn't feel pleasant, does not mean it's wrong. Whereas before, you know, when I was much younger, I was all, oh, I should not be feeling this way. You know, if I were really, really good at this, I should not be going down this route. And now I really believe it is a process. And in the process there's space for everything. There's space for moments in which I feel great for, for great, great doubts for sure. Prof. Peter Hawkins: You see, I think the thing that helps me in the moments of doubt weigh down, depressed, is at that moment you can either go into grumble or into gratitude. And if you can, and I can't, I didn't say I can, but if I, I can hold to the path of treating everything that happens, absolutely everything that happens, however awful as a generous lesson from life, I may not like it. I may feel burdened by it, I may feel inadequate to respond. But if it's a generous lesson from life, then it is a gift as well as a burden. Stephen Matini: I do gratitude it, but I also do a lot or feeding myself. Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think it's a deep trust, not my trust in life. Constantly becoming my trust in that is greater than the trust in my own emotional reactiveness. So I always believe life knows better than I do. I think this shouldn't have happened to me, but that's not I gonna achieve anything. Life's decided. That's the next thing I have to deal with. And it's a generous lesson. So the choice I have is do I see it as a generous lesson and learn from it or I do. I see it as some awful thing I'm a victim of. But, but I do have a choice saver. Stephen Matini: Last time when we talked, I asked you what is the opposite of beauty for you? You remember what you said? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think I probably said, well, at one level it's ugliness. Stephen Matini: Yes. You said, um, it's solipsistic narcissism, you know, dualism you talked about, but ugliness, I think it wraps it up better. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Um, well, well solipsistic narcissism is, is ugly because it fragments us and divides us from that which we are a part of. You know, the the image that came to me just then was, um, Philip Pullman's novels where everybody has an animal Damon that is part of them. And, and they do these experiments to, to s children from their animal being self. It's alongside them, which is what we've all done in the modernist western world. Solipsism is ugly because it is, it's a severing of that which lives in connection and great poetry that we talked about is if you like, sewing us back into connection, it's opening the windows to, to a world beyond. Stephen Matini: Sometimes it does feel that this ugliness is getting more and more and more. And sometimes I do wonder is this because of the fact that we are so hyper connected? Is so we are constantly exposed to a lot of negative type of information. How do you feel about it? I mean, you know, o over the years being someone who has experienced it so much, do you see this ugliness more prevalent today, more dangerous today than it used to be? Or just simply has always been there? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I feel in myself that it is growing the openness that we're talking about, but we need to balance it with, we live in a world where actually a, a smaller percentage of people are dying from wars and murder than ever probably in human history. Number may be greater, but percentages more. And there are ways in which we have become more, more moral. But at the same time, I think over the last 500 years, the modernist revolution of science, secularism, individualism, colonization, capitalists, the trying to control the world around us and the human search for control has created enormous ugliness at the moral level and a world which we have greater mental distress and mentally honest than than ever. And yet we are richer, more affluent, more educated, more educated in knowing about the world and far, far less educated in being in and connected within the world. Stephen Matini: If a young person, let's say someone, a young professionals, you know, 19, 20, 21. So let's say if someone around that age that is kind of trying to figure it out where to go, um, asked you what practical steps can I take, you know, to somehow handle this ugliness, you know, because it is so depressing. What would you say that are steps, you know, some first steps that, that the person can take? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I have people around that age come as wolfers worldwide opportunities on our organic farms and they come and stay with us. And, um, I would say go out and wander through the garden. They wander through the woodlands and just be open to whatever speaks to you. Just listen to the more than human world. Let it be your teacher. Don't try and just master everything. I'd ask 'em about who inspires them and what inspires them. I might ask them. And what do you really love in your life to try and reconnect them to source and away from knowing about? I jokingly say I have wolfers come and stay with us because they fill in the gap between my children and my grandchildren. My children are all in their forties and my grandchildren are between nine and 15. So I just love talking to young people in their twenties. Mind you, I love talking to two year olds, but, uh, or listening to two year olds, Stephen Matini: I am so grateful that I was born in a moment that did not have all these connectivity, didn't have the internet, you know, so it was very much analog. Not because I don't like it, I use it plenty, but I'm glad that I have the perspective. And so I use it a lot. But then there are always moments, usually it towards, at the end of the day, like it, let's say I'm done with computer phone, I mean bye, you know, and for me it's quite easy because I've always done it, but younger people don't have that. I mean, they, they can do exactly what you said, but they grew up in a world in which everything is filtered through technology and that lack of perspective, it must be a little bit difficult sometimes to overcome. Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, like right now, can we find a, a heart connection even with the, the screen between us? We have to be able to, to hold the imaginal in the digitalized world. Stephen Matini: I agree. It's mostly for me at least, making the effort to drop anything and to really be present with that person and listen, you know, to really to to sense it, to find it, you know? Instead, if I get sidetracked by whatever it might be, you know, I need to get there. I need to reach the goal, I need to do that one. Even now talking to you, I can always make the choice. I'm either, I wanna be feeling grateful of being here with you to enjoy this or be somewhere else, you know? But if I do that, I know that I feel exactly the way you're describing it. Prof. Peter Hawkins: I was looking at, um, the work that Steve March is doing with Athia coaching because I really like the way he talks about the difference between self-improvement and self unfoldment. You know, with young people, we can ask them, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Which is such an unhelpful question. Stephen Matini: I still don't know. Prof. Peter Hawkins: But it is playing to like the words you used earlier. Ambition is unfoldment, is, you know, what, what in you is struggling to come into flowering? Where do you see life asking you to become more than you currently are? These are so much ritual ways of engaging, then goal centered. What do you want to achieve? You know, if I ask my grandchildren when they're nine or 10, if they're boys, they'll say, I wanna, I wanna play in the premiership as a footballer. If they're girls, they'll say, I want to be a pop singer. We can guarantee that uh, 990,000 of a million or whatever will, will be disappointed. , how can we get back to the love of playing? And if you do end up playing professionally or you know, that's fine, but actually the love is for the craft. Stephen Matini: So it's about discovering and as you are discovering, enjoying the process. Prof. Peter Hawkins: It's more than that, isn't it? It's about loving the work. It's about loving not just the person you are coaching, but loving all the, all the people that their work serves, their community and the world beyond them. And loving what shows up through all of that, which is beyond the people. It's, that's why I go to beauty. It's about loving what shines through the team, the organization, the which is what, what, what, what's beyond the top level? Stephen Matini: It just, the beauty is a word that I don't think I've ever heard in the world of, uh, how you say busyness, usually. But it's a beautiful world. I mean, I cannot think of a better word to express what you're saying. Prof. Peter Hawkins: In one part of the book, I quote Samuel Taylor Ridge's, perm of the Ancient Mariner. And this perhaps ties up a number of things we've talked about because the ugliness of narcissistic solipsism, you know, the ancient mariner, you know, he shoots the albatross. He destroys this beautiful bird that hangs around his neck and one by one all, all the other sailors die of, of plague. And they, they look at him that his shooting of the bird has caused it. And he is left totally alone and cursed and weighed down in this solipsistic narcissistic world. And then he sees the sea snakes under the boat. He talks about all, all alone from the wide seas. And then he sees the sea snakes and there's this lovely line where he says about their colors and their, the light on them. And, and I blessed them unawares. He didn't choose to see their beauty. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Their beauty suddenly breaks through his aloneness and his, and in that moment, the arbitrages falls from his neck. At that moment, he is kind of released from this small dark prison that he's fallen asleep in. And it's that, can we see beyond our self concern, can we see beyond the bottom line, can we see beyond the goal, the ambition? To what, what does it serve? And, and you may know in another of my books, i I I get very taken by the ful storyful or sur ful who goes to search for the holy grail. And when he first sees it, this magnificent grail procession, um, he wakes up in the morning in a empty field. 'cause he hasn't asked the question. Years, years later, after much journey, he comes back and he asked the question he has to ask in order to be able to stay there, which is who and what does the grail serve? You see, he's learned to see that the beauty is not in the object. One other story about my oldest son, when he was about seven or eight said, daddy, why, why aren't we born knowing everything? Because then we wouldn't have to go to school. . And I said, but Adam, if you knew everything, why would you bother to get bomb? Stephen Matini: What did he say? Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think he just looked at me slightly old , he didn't quite know how to respond. So, you know, he went back to school, which is what we all have to do, isn't it? Is it, is it beautiful that we get it wrong? You know, on my courses, I get people to even compete on who has the most quality failures, right? That we can all learn from what a gift that we fail over and over again because our failure takes us to our learning edge. Mea shall Rumi says, leadership is a poison. Unless we have the antidote in our hearts, success is a poison unless we have the antidote. Aren't aren't you blessed to have failed many times? Stephen Matini: I didn't get it completely wrong. I would say that you are a very precious reminder. So I'm going to listen to this a lot of times . So maybe the, the right word is not success, but, um, it is a good success. What would it be? The definition for you? Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, a, a good success is one that I I recognize doesn't belong to me. One, one of my blogs, I talk about why we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. And I tell an imaginary story of Zoom in 2021, the top team all celebrating. 'cause they've had their biggest growth in in customers, their biggest growth in revenue and their biggest growth in bottom line in inverted commas. What they think is the bottom line and that they're all drinking champagne and saying hump, we've done well. And, and one of the team members says, but we should do a special call out for the, the team member that's contributed the most. I said, well, who are you talking about? And she says, not only did they contribute the most, but they only joined us last year. I said, well, who are you talking about? She said, isn't it obvious Coronavirus, she is the one who's made the biggest contribution to our success. And I just tell that story on success has always co-created. So good success is to know that my Sufi teacher used to say, make sure that when you die, your candle wax has all been burnt up. And that's how you give light to the world. That's good success when you die, having given yourself away. Stephen Matini: That's a beautiful thing, what you just said. Prof. Peter Hawkins: I've been blessed with extraordinary teachers. Do any of us say anything that's original or do we find ways of framing eternal truth just in new forms? Stephen Matini: There's one question that, uh, came up to mind a bunch of times, but I haven't asked you of all the possible tools, routes that you could have taken, why coaching? Prof. Peter Hawkins: That's what came knocking on my door. But another way of answering that would be to say, well, you know, I started in a love for literature, which turned into a love of drama, which turned to a love for theater, which turned into a love for what was happening in the whole creative unfoldment of a more in the process and the production. And that took me to mental health and becoming a psychotherapist. And then I started to realize that many mental health organizations were more, uh, disturbed than the people they were treating. And that took me into a love for how do you heal organizations? And that's taken me into how do we together heal humanity and how do we heal the split between the human and the more than human world? So there's an unfoldment there. And, and, and I suppose my real interest is, is I don't think that either coaching, as we know it, executive coaching or consultancy are fit for the 21st century. And, and I'm just having been privileged to be involved in leadership development, consultancy, coaching, leading. I'm constantly looking for the what is needed beyond those. You see coaching because I was more interested in not people just sort of themselves out, but helping people make a bigger difference to the world beyond them. That took me from psychotherapy to coaching, to team coaching, to systemic team coaching, to providing partnership to organizations as they try and transform the difference they can make in the world. But it's all one. Stephen Matini: Well, I have one last question, which is, we have talked about wonderful things. For anyone who's going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would suggest them to focus on. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Focus on? Well, if there's, as a lot of your audience, uh, in one of my favorite countries, Italy, I am coming to Milan in May, so please do put the de dates, um, on the information about the podcast, I'm running a three day experiential training in systemic team coaching through renewal associates. And I hope some people may be, um, encouraged to at least go and dip into my new book when it's out in the autumn. Beauty and leadership and coaching. I suppose the other encouragement is beyond both of those would be to say, you know, remember we have one shared holy book, which is all around us, which is the more than human world and beyond. You know, what I teach or any of my teachers teach, the more than human world is, is trying to teach us all the time, but we're not very good at listening or paying attention. Please take some time and go and walk to the hills around lakes, through the woods, but walk in a way of humility to and, and let them teach you and see how beauty will surprise you. Stephen Matini: Maestro Hawkins, thank you so much for this wonderful time, which I will always cherish. Thank you so much. Prof. Peter Hawkins: Thank you Stephen. And it is the questionnaire that opens the door to what needs to flow.

Financial advisors, attorneys, doctors, and fiscal consultants are essential professionals who help us navigate an ocean of information to make sound decisions. How do you choose a good one when the language they speak is a nebulous lingo few people fully understand? Riccardo Grabbio is a seasoned financial consultant known for his pragmatic approach and extensive experience as Chief Financial Officer. In this episode, Riccardo helps clarify some common financial lingo so you can build trustworthy and clear communication with your financial advisor or find the perfect one you understand. Listen to how to keep financial strategies simple on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over Sign up for Live Session Managerial & Leadership Development Contact Stephen Connect with Stephen #RiccardoGrabbio #WealthBuilding #Investing #Savings #FinancialEducation #MoneyManagement #FinancialWellness #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini   TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So I represent your typical moron who doesn't know anything about finance. And let's say that I'm seeking for a financial advisor, where should I start? Riccardo Grabbio: When we take a look at finance actually is not something very small, very narrow, something. There are thousands of aspects that we need to take a look at. So first question to me is asking yourself, what do I need? Because when you talk at about finance, it might be have your own personal budget, for instance, because your expenses are not under control. Can be or maybe can be having a finance advisor because my company must improve, must improve for whatever reason because the balance between revenues are and cost are not enough or simply because I'm not managing well enough, my working capital for instance, or maybe because my cash flow is not coming, even though I'm making revenues, I, I do not understand why this is the second one. Or maybe it can be for instance because I have a lot of cash, but I'm not capable of leverage that cash well enough to make my company grow better or how it should, or maybe simply because I have a personal heritage that I want to have a battery yield. Riccardo Grabbio: And at the moment I don't have this is let me say very typical situation that Italian families has. For instance, just to give an idea because you need to know that the GDP of Italy is not satisfactory, is not a country that is growing a lot for several reasons. We are not efficient enough. Our industries are weak, must improve, we have tax issues and all those stuff. But you need to know that Italian families are rather rich and what they have, they have a lot of cash because of generation and so on. And they have a lot of properties. And the big issues that I have seen, for instance in Italy is that what the Americans say is asset rich and income board, to me a financial advisor, this is the first rule of financial advisor, try to change this status because when you are asset rich and income board means that you are not efficient or better, you can't manage your asset. And in this specific situation, for instance, the financial advisor can create tremendous value to, to a family for instance, try to think very rich family that has a good family office and exactly the same very rich family without the family office handling the money for them, the result would be completely different. Stephen Matini: Based on everything you said so far, it seems to me that you, I think you mentioned like probably several things, they're important, but three are really important. One is that you don't need to have a big assets in order to start to be more financially savvy. That's one. Then you mentioned several times the importance of cashflow and the other one you emphasized the importance of time because from a financial investment standpoint, time is crucial more than the actual percentage you get paid in the moment. Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, exactly. I can tell you talking about the time, which is the most important of one. There are several studies that I have read over the years from JP Morgan, but also from some other sources like banger and so on. And what they say is that in a period of at least 20 years in a bunch of 100% investors in the stock market, there was not one that lose one penny over or the 20 years. It means that if you invest, if you buy and hold for 20 years, you're not going to lose money. If instead you try to, what, what we technically say, time the market. So you buy and sell, you buy and sell, then things get tricky. I can tell you one thing, I dunno if you have ever heard about Peter Lynch, I think in seven years in which he managed the found Magellan, he doubled the s and p 500 each and every year. Riccardo Grabbio: So try to think a, a result what we are still talking now about his performance and the funny thing is that 90% of the investors that invest in his fund, they lose money over the year. And you can ask me how it can be possible that in 20 years a fund had a performance huge and the investors lose the money because they were not buying and holding, they were buying and then selling, buying and selling try to keep the best moment in which you to enter and to exit from the fund and doing that 90% of those, they lose the best return of the market. So buying a whole is a good advice. Stephen Matini: So I I wanna ask you to define some key terms, you know that maybe could be useful for the people who are going to listen to the episode. How would you explain assets in the simplest way? Riccardo Grabbio: An asset is something that brings you money in your pocket and on the other side you have liabilities. That is something that takes out money from your pocket. Why is tell you that? Because for instance, try to think to have a new big car, an expensive new car. Actually from the accounting standpoint, this is an asset. Then you, you, you d it in your, in your balance sheet, this is an asset then you will depreciate in 10 years and so on. This is technically an asset, but to me this is not financially an asset. Why not? Because it's not bringing you value any kind, it's not bringing you money in your pocket, it's draining money from your pocket. So keeping it in very simple. For our listeners, asset is something when you buy something that will bring you further money in your pocket than you are buying an asset. Riccardo Grabbio: If it doesn't, then it's not an asset. Then we have some asset that intrinsically they produce something, they produce a value. Let me give you an an an example. A stock index or a single stock for instance, you have a company, you have an organization. Those people, they are all working together with a common purpose, which is to create earnings and so on. So it doesn't matter the price in the short term, in the long run it'll increase in value. Why? Because those companies are making earnings, they're paying dividends and so on. So there will be a good result in the, in in the future. But then there are some other asset that those, they have a value fine, but they don't produce anything. Let me give you an example. If we talk about precious metals, I dunno, gold for instance and so on in this one here is just a simple piece of metal, right? Riccardo Grabbio: It has big value. Yes it does. The market is valuing is up and low value, it does a function in investment portfolio but is not producing anything. I mean, so in this case we are a bit more speculating. The price can go up or down. We don't know in the future can be be a function in the portfolio, but it's not creating anything. But this is another different kind of asset. Another kind of asset are bonds for instance. The returns typically is low, but you lend money to someone, to a government, to a private company, to a corporation, whatever, and they pay you the interest in in your return. This is another asset. It bring you money in your, in your pocket. Then there are also real estate. You can buy flats for, for instance you can buy apartments and so on. Rent it and as a return you have the pay that the people are paying to you. This is another, another example. For instance, those are assets. Stephen Matini: How would you explain? Same question in super simple terms, P&L? Riccardo Grabbio: Very simple difference between revenues and cost difference between what you from your business or from in your private light and the cost that you have to bear to stay alive or if you're talking about a company that you need to pay to keep your company alive. Difference between revenues and cost. And what I'm surprised that several organizations, several entrepreneurs and also private people, sometimes they do not understand why they are not making earnings and they don't arrive to a very simple conclusion. Either you increase your revenues or you reduce your cost or you do them both. And again, I go back to the first concept and and statement that we said keep it simple. You can have a p and l, okay, which is long one kilometer for ista with 1000, 2000 different lines detailed and so on. But in the end, if you take a look at things from 1000 kilometers from from the moon, if you take a look at things from the moon, from a very high distance, in the end you will see two things. You will see revenues and costs. Either you increase revenues or you reduce cost. I know it's very simple, looks trivial, but trust me that nine out of 10 of dozen per they look at the tree but they don't look at the wood because if you take a look at from things from the from the moon, this is what you will see. And you either you are just one or you are just the other. Stephen Matini: How would you define super simple cashflow? Riccardo Grabbio: Cashflow is the difference from the money that you have in the first day of the year and the money that you have in the last day of the year. The difference between the two is the cash that you have generated and beware because the cash that you have generated is not perfectly linked with the earning that you made in that years because it might happen that in the year you made good earnings but you didn't generate good cash flow because you didn't manage while you are working capital on the things that we said before can happen or the other way around might happen that in one year for instance you have a good cash flow but your earnings are not satisfactory enough. It might happen for instance because in one year you dismiss a big asset or something and so on and you find a lot of cash in your bank account, yes, looks good. But then if you take a look at p and l, which is your business, you see it's not profitable enough. So beware, we have just defined what cash flow is, but it's not one-to-one with your earnings with your business. Stephen Matini: If I said, and this is just how I personally define it, which is very trivial. Cashflow is the money that I need to run my business. It is essentially what is in my banking account after I pay all my expenses, after paying all, all taxes, what is left in my banking account? Would this be a good definition of cashflow? Riccardo Grabbio: No, it is not the money that you need to run your business. This is something that we definitely call the short term debt. This is your financial position. Keep it very simple. Even here if you are a class, your balance sheet Steven, you need to know that your business must be financed simply. It is a bit more tricky, but very simply can be financed only in two ways, either with the equity which the owner puts in in his company or borrowing money from the banks, meaning from the financial institution. There are several other ways, but keeping simple, those two things. So on the right side of your balance sheet, you only have those two things, your financial debts and your equity, nothing else now. So those are the ways in which you support your business, but this is not the cash flow. The cash flow is the difference in your cash from one moment and in another one, let me give you an example. If the beginning of 2024, first day you have 10 K in your bank account and at the end of the year you have 20 k, your cash flow of the year is 10 k, which is the difference between the end and the beginning. This is what you generated, this is the cash flow, okay? While instead your financial position, what you need to let me say keeping your business alive is something that is your short-term debt is your position that you have in your balance sheet. Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you one thing. What'd you think? Would you say the cashflow is the star? Riccardo Grabbio: It is and I have a specific example that I bring that is a company for which i, I do consulting also now, and they came to me because they could not understand why the cashflow was not coming. And I will tell you more if you take a look at this p and l for instance, right? The revenues last cost is, is very profitable. I mean they are making a lot of earnings, margin are very high volumes are growing, but the cashflow is not coming and they did not understand why actually the, the reply was rather simple, okay? And the cashflow is not simply coming from the p and l revenues less cost, but then there is the balance sheet, there is the working capital. Let me give you a very simple example. If you do a lot of earning each and every year, but then you can't collect money from your customers simply because you did not a good credit management and, and you sold a lot of stuff, a lot of items, your products or whatever to a customer that actually is in, in trouble is financially weak and is not capable of paying you, I know for one year or even more, then you have a problem of cash. This is an example or another example can be if you have a very good p and l but you inventory is growing and growing, the terms of your items that are in your stock are staying there and they don't go to the customer, then you need to finance those stuff that you have and also in this case you are absorbing cash and this, this is the second one or the third one can be for instance because your p and l is very good but you pay your vendors very quickly too quickly, okay? Compared on the timing in which you collect cash and you keep your items in in stock. Also in that, in that case you have issues of cash and then there might be also some other reason for instance investment. Try to think at investments they don't hit your p and l but you can do big huge investment that turn out to be in the future not good enough. They don't have a good payback, they don't have a good return. And also in that case you have a problem of cash. This is another thing then this is the last thing that we call when your balance sheet is not robust enough. If you have working capital right of 10 and you have your short term debt which is 12, so you have an issue of two because it means that in a short term you have to pay 12 to someone to the banks or investors, but your cash that will come will be only 10 and you will be short of cash. So your balance sheet must boost enough. So there might might be several reasons, but the tricky thing for a non-finance people is try to link and bridge the earnings, right, the result of your p and l to the cash and make them to understand that from your earning to the cash flow that you generate, there are several, a lot of stuff that you need to make otherwise you can be very profitable but not generating cash. Stephen Matini: And it's important not to keep your money under the mattress by actually invest them. Riccardo Grabbio: Exactly. This is the second one now is a bit different because actually the interest rate are rather high. They are more than 4% are recording now in December, 2023. So they are rather high. And I would say that in this situation might be sensible also to pay someone that you have to do so if you have cash if you have liquidity you can pay something. But try to think for instance till two years ago when interest rates were zero and the market was returning six or 7%, I'm talking about stocks for instance. In that case it would've make sense to borrow a lot of money because you borrow for free and the money who you have is returning 7%. So on depends from the market situation for sure. It's not so wise to keep your money under your mattress. Stephen Matini: You know, to me as you talk, I understand what you're saying because I've been doing this for little bit. Once again, I'm not super financially savvy but I made a lot of mistakes in the past. So inevitably I learned but not, not knowing who's going to listen to this episode. That could be some people they may feel unfamiliar with this whole territory. If they had to choose a financial advisor, what would you say they are three features they should look for in a financial advisor? Riccardo Grabbio: To me, first thing a financial advisor must have a good track record. Let me say that the market is something that, I mean we have been studying that for 120 years and what we have seen that nobody has still completely understood it. There are always new situation and so on. So to me the more the financial advisor is experience, the more he has spend time on the market, the more he is trustworthy. I mean it is not the only rule but you need to know the market very well. So a long time and in the market with a good track record is one feature that you need to take a look at. Then there is a second feature that of course is very important is having a good feeling with that person seems not fundamental but it is because that person will help you on very sensitive topics. It'll help you on things that are rather dear to you in the and because they are talking about your finances and so on. And so if you don't have a good feeling, if you don't have a full trustworthy of that person, I think is not the the person good enough for you. Stephen Matini: You know, the rule that I gave myself when I was trying to select the right one was if I cannot understand what he or she says, then it's not the right person for me. Truly. I mean you can be the most incredible person and I'm not questioning your, you know, education, your experience, but I'm the client and I need to understand. Riccardo Grabbio: I will. I will tell you one thing. Over the past 15 years I have seen a lot of portfolio and there is a feature that all the beginners investor that then will have some troubles for sure, which is mathematically they try to seek things very complicated and one rule that the investors and beginners investors they need to take a look at or better to search in a financial advisor to keep things simple, what they have seen in life that the more the investors are beginners and the more they look for complicated stuff, this is a big mistake but it's very natural. For instance, if you happen to have an investor that has either know a big quantity of cash to be invested, but he doesn't know anything about that and you talk to him about very complex fund, fund of fund robot advisors or structured product derivatives and some other things, very technical and very complex product with leverage and so on, they immediately fall in love about that because they think that that we all exotic products, new products with artificial intelligence and so on, they completely fall in love them thinking that will be very cutting edge and that will beat the market. You know what will happen in that case that you will create a mass, you will create a portfolio with huge costs and the result will be for sure far below the market. Stephen Matini: Again, I understand what you're saying, but I feel my head getting dizzy a little bit like because also, you know, money is something that is so connected to our survival. I mean it's not just status or I can buy this, I can buy that, but it's connected to so many things such as, you know, when people say money does not give you happiness and always say that's the biggest someone has ever said, because you know when my money's fine, I'm so glad I can think of all the things that I love in a way that's more peaceful. You know? Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, the said that you just mentioned can be truth or not, I dunno, but there is one thing to tell you when a family and a person goes under financial stress, in that case you need to talk to them about that saying, because financial stress I think is one of the worst situation ever. And I can tell you one thing be because of that you need to have also a good financial planner because what he will help you to do is not only to deal with the markets properly, but also to manage the psychological impacts that you have from the up and downs of the market. If you are very expert, you know how the market works and so on, you don't have the impacts. But if you are a beginner, if you don't trust the situation or if you don't trust the financial advisor when the market is down 30% because from time to time it happens, then you start to have some bad feelings maybe not to sleep at night and so on. So the financial advisor for this situation is fundamental Stephen Matini: And that to me goes back to what you were saying about the relationship. You know, particularly these days of artificial intelligence, everything being automatic and such and such, that is such a key relationship to have in a life that is so uncertain. You know, you read the news and millions of different things, so it's very easy, you know, in this situation to fall for trends and the stupid things that you hear everywhere. But a good financial advisor, that relationship in my opinion informs you and really helps you to stay grounded. Riccardo Grabbio: I agree with you. You must stay the course. The Americans say, and this is a really valuable advice. You need to stay the course and stay the course being not being trapped into the new fashion stuff, new fashion things, the new hot stock that might come on the market and so on because they, they were not going to help you, they'll harm you. Stephen Matini: How do you feel about anything that has to do with ESG investing, anything pertaining sustainability? Riccardo Grabbio: First point is the tactical situation about that. I have some portfolios that I'm managing where the, the clients is asking me to invest in those specific companies. We, which has a good status for being very ethical, being very keen on environment and so on because they are interesting in that. And I think that from that standpoint, it makes you feel better because you feel that you are doing something good for the environment and so on. Then we need to see what is the reality under those companies because we don't know 100% because when we buy an ESG for instance, found, we don't know if all the companies that there are inside, those are all the features that they should have because sometimes working in the companies, I have seen that sometimes, okay, they are ESG, fine, they have white certificates and so on, but then let me say energy must have been used better was not managed well enough. So there were some inefficiencies from the environmental standpoints. So I would say that okay, this is a good thing to do good for the environment, which I'm very keen on as well. But we don't know exactly if all those are the best choices that we could have made. We don't know, we hope, but we don't know. This is the first thing. Then we don't need to forget that when we invest we are looking at returns. The first reason of course why we invest is having a return. And what I can tell you that I have compared the s and p 500 with the SGN funds for 10 years and so on. And what I have seen that in the long run, the returns that I have is very, very close so far we don't know in the future, but so far is is more or less the same. So from the pure yield standpoint, right, the return in that case, I would say that there is not much difference in that. What drives the difference in the return in the long run is the asset allocation. Stephen Matini: What have you learned about yourself throughout this whole thing, working with people in different situations? Riccardo Grabbio: Well it, it's difficult to answer for different reasons. The first one is we need to take a look at if we are taking a look at finance from the company standpoints or from the financial advisor standpoints, which is very different. And the second one is because you need to know the finance has been changing so much over the years. I remember Steven when, when I started working in finance, the value added for the organization and for, for the people who was perceived and basically also what the companies were asking to the finance people were things completely different from the things that there are now. So over the year things have changed and as a result also the finance people, people that work in finance must change and see things in different ways because the market is asking to go to the finance people different stuff. In the past it was much more mathematically the mathemat result they were asking about preciseness they were asking about and so on. But as the time goes by, as the artificial intelligence goes by, the technologies is growing and so on. What I see that now what the partner, the CEO, the stakeholder are asking to the finance community is being a tremendous business partner, not being extremely technical and so on. So what they want is having a support that translate their view, okay in finance language or better to translate the finance language to them so that they can understand what they can do and they cannot do. And of course help supporting them in having the right strategy in getting their result doesn't matter if you are looking about a private person or if we're looking about a corporation from that standpoint is exactly the same. What they are asking now today is to support them to understand what are their goals, their needs and so on and to set kind of strategy in order to get their targets. This is what they want. Now, just to make it an example, and this is a bit sad also to me to say that nowadays people for instance that do finance me say rather low level. So for instance, booking invoices, booking transaction, general ledger journals and so on, those are profiles that are not interesting for the market anymore because there are the emerging markets where there are people doing that for an extremely low cost or there is with a new tech iTech and so on, there are computer that are doing those transaction automatically themselves. Those were profiles very helpful in the past or better indispensable, but today it's not like that. Today they are not needed any, any almost needed anymore. So it has changed a lot. So if you want to work nowadays in this field, you need to be a good financial strategist and you need to support and give direction to investors, to entrepreneurs and so on. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the right posture that a good finance person should have to enter this job? Riccardo Grabbio: Well I would say more than possible, I would say the, the right mindset in finance, you do need to have a good mindset. This is key from a several standpoint and I believe that if you want to be a good finance person, finance manager, finance advisor or whatever, you need to have good background. This is a commodity. Without that you cannot go ahead, but you need to have also a good mindset because having the good mindset meaning is to trust what is your view? To stay steady, to stay the course, to stay consistent with with your choices, not to change the strategies, being methodical and not to lose the focus on your goals. Straighten your way because you know what happens in finance? Finance is like the seasons that we have in the year, right? We have summer, winter, spring, autumn and so on, and things change and like things change in the day and in the season, in the years they change exactly in the same way also in finance because no matter what after winter, spring will come and in finance it's exactly the same after resection. Sooner or later you don't know exactly when the new grow will come. And that's why he said you need to have the right mindset, trust your knowledge and staying the course and not changing strategies and so on. Because if you try instead to change strategies because of the season you are in and you don't know when the decision will will change, you run the risk to take an umbrella and after two minutes to have the sun shining and your your umbrella, you don't need it anymore. Stephen Matini: Riccardo, out of anything we have covered so far, what would you say that is something that those who will listen to this episode that should pay close attention to? Riccardo Grabbio: If we are talking, for instance, to private investors, they need to keep things simple, try to understand what they are doing because as you said before, for instance, if you are not understanding what you are investing in, this is not a good investment or better, they should be very careful. So if they don't understand what they are investing in, no matter what, they don't have to invest. Stephen Matini: I've heard that a famous investor does that. Warren Buffett, you know, he only invest in things he understands, you know, and if he doesn't, he doesn't. Riccardo Grabbio: Yes, wow you are mentioning is, is not a new kid on the block. I think that the S&P 500 for 50 years in a row about either, I don't know, 10 or 8 points per year. Average per year. So yeah, an outstanding result. And what it does is something like, like you said before, what it does, he, he stays in his circle of competence. He does not diversify a lot. So he stay focused on a bunch of share that he knows very well and he stay on those for a long time. What his strategies is by and old forever it is an extreme strategy his but the reward is very remarkable given the facts. Stephen Matini: Riccardo, thank you for keep it simple. I've learned a lot today. Thank you.

Historian Suzanne Harman Munson discusses her book Jefferson's Godfather: The Man Behind the Man, revealing the significance of servant leadership exemplified by George Wythe, a lesser-known Founding Father. Throughout the conversation, Suzanne offers valuable insights essential for navigating contemporary challenges, emphasizing the importance of individual impact, critical thinking, kindness, and humility. Listen to this episode of Pity Party over and discover how servant leadership and humility can transform lives on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to Pity Party Over Sign up for Live Session Managerial & Leadership Development Contact Stephen Matini Connect with Stephen Matini #SuzanneHarmanMunson #JeffersonsGodfather #GeorgeWythe #ServantLeadership #PityPartyOver #Podcast #Alygn #StephenMatini TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: You essentially got into writing and history after you retired? Did I get that right? Suzanne Munson: That's correct. Uh, I didn't have time to write books when I was working. And, um, I had a lot of responsibilities at home as well, raising children and so on. After my husband died and after I retired, I went on kind of a journey in a lot of different directions, and I've written books in different genres. Stephen Matini: Why do you think you chose writing and you chose history of all possible directions? Suzanne Munson: Well, my parents loved history, particularly my father. He would go to bed reading history. Well, he was interested in the Civil War, and he would read detailed accounts of the battles, which not my cup of tea by any means, but we always told stories of our ancestors who came to this country and why they came. So I've always been interested in history, but I, I majored in English, which was very helpful to me as the writer. Stephen Matini: Writer. And your family goes back generations? Suzanne Munson: Yes. They go back to the earliest days of the United States. Stephen Matini: As far as the Founding Fathers, one of your interests is the Founding Fathers. Did you investigate, did you study them all or specific ones, because you focus specifically on Jefferson, but did you have any interest in one of the other ones? Suzanne Munson: Well, yes, I have. I'm reading, um, pretty big book about, um, Benjamin Franklin now who really deserves more credit for helping us win the Revolutionary War. I really like following John Adams and Abigail Adams. But the two Founding Fathers that I focus on in my writing are Thomas Jefferson and his wonderful mentor George with, who is called the forgotten founding father, because hardly anybody knows anything about him today. And I uncovered him and some reading and I said, why don't we know more about this man who was very instrumental in the early success of this country? And his story needs to be told in the 21st century. And I wanted to tell it, but I couldn't because I was working. But as soon as I decided to, uh, to leave the office world, I said light bulb went off. And I said, well, I can finally do this book. But it took about five years to write that book because for some reason I couldn't focus at home. So I would go away to various retreats, writers retreats, spiritual retreats for 48 hours at a time or a week at a time, and really focus intensely on it. Stephen Matini: The process of writing. It's a spiritual experience, and you spend so much time within yourself. What have you learned about yourself when you started digging into this, this whole world or writing? Suzanne Munson: I sort of think of myself as a light giver. You know, the things that I'm learning, I like to share with other people, the integrity of this founding father. I think that we need greater integrity in our government. I've given more than three dozen lectures and online interviews about integrity and government that are need for, for that. Now. Also, after my husband died 10 years ago, I, uh, went on a spiritual journey to find out where he went and what he was doing, if that was knowable, and where we all go and what we do after we leave our physical form. So that was a separate journey. So I was really on two journeys. I was on a traditional journey, uh, with the traditional history, and then I was on a metaphysical journey trying to learn more about the afterlife. So two parallel journeys. And I've written books in both of those genres. Stephen Matini: Was it clear from the very beginning what you were looking for, or were you just aimed by curiosity and openness? Suzanne Munson: Well, with the first book that I wrote, which is called Jefferson's Godfather, uh, that was the biography of George with, it was very clear that I wanted to tell his story, that I felt his story was needed today in the 21st century. Now, my latest book, which is called of Loss and love, a Journey of the Heart that took 10 years to write the book has a happy ending. I did actually do the modern thing. I went online at the encouragement of friends and found my current husband. So it's a memoir of, of my three years between my husband's death and my marriage. Stephen Matini: What is the solace that you received from history? Suzanne Munson: Well, I'm very much inspired by what our Founding Fathers did to create the United States of America. Uh, they were very brave men. They were inspired. I believe what they did was unheard of in the history of the world. Now, we had a Roman Republic, briefly. We had a Greek democracy briefly. They went away fairly quickly. And so what these individuals wanted to do was totally revolutionary, not just on the battlefield, but in the battlefield of ideas. And that was to give power to the people and to create a democratic republic for the first time ever in history, that people were free from kings and queens and popes and aristocracy. Well, the hope was that we would have a meritocracy, that only the best people would rise to be leaders, and that the people would choose those leaders, choose them periodically, and if they weren't satisfactory, bo vote them out of office without killing them throughout the history of mankind, you had to kill somebody to get rid of him if he was in power. And so the peaceful transition of power was very, very strong ideal of these Founding Fathers. That's why they would've been appalled at what happened on January 6th. That would've been their worst nightmare. So this is a time when we need to visit the ideals of these Founding Fathers. And what happened in America in the late 18th century, what we came up with a government by the people of the people, for the people and our constitution that spread all across the world. Our constitution was, um, adopted by many, many, many countries after that took a while. And democracy is still an ideal, a worldwide ideal. It's not in place in, uh, most countries, uh, to the extent that we'd like to have it in place, but it's still an ideal. People still are searching for freedom. They want their freedom. Stephen Matini: I believe that democracy is a huge responsibility for all of us. Some of the worst nightmares in history, were democratically elected. If the Founding Founders came back today, what would you say they would say about democracy and what is the right approach for all of us in terms of, you know, living this responsibility? Suzanne Munson: This is outlined in my book called The metaphysical Thomas Jefferson, what Thomas Jefferson might say today about our government, our higher education, our news, media, religion, the use of military foreign policy, all those institutions. And I believe what he would say is that we as a people have become apathetic. We've allowed our freedoms to be taken away gradually, like the frog in the kettle of water as it heats up what is said in that book, the metaphysical Thomas Jefferson. What he might say if he were observing us today, is that he would crave most of all critical thinking. He didn't use these terms, but TikTok, Facebook, all those social media things where we're totally absorbed by ourselves and our little circle of friends and what they think of us, and we're not paying much attention to what our government officials are doing. Jefferson, above all wanted an educated popula populace and wanted, um, universal education for everyone, rich and poor. That was a revolutionary concept at the time. Only the, um, wealthy, they were educated. And so he would want critical thinking. Uh, he would want us to demand integrity of our, uh, leaders. He would want the leaders in Washington to form circles of integrity. Not all representatives in Washington are corrupt or deal in self-dealing, but enough of them are. But some of them really are striving to be good public servants. And we have one here in Virginia, Abigail Berger, who is admired for being a true public servant. And so there are some like her who were fairly new to the game and haven't gotten corrupted and haven't really started feathering their nests with all the large s that's available. So I think he would want leaders in government to form circles of integrity so that there's a mass of individuals and not just a handful who want the best for the people and not just for themselves or for special interests for the powerful. So some of this is going on. I, I think sometimes things have to get so bad that, uh, you know, people will say enough of this, which we've hit the bottom here, and we, we need to do things differently. We need better leaders. And so the hope is that more people of integrity will offer themselves for a public office. It's not easy. It's a dirty business. There's a lot of dirt thrown around, and it would be nice if that weren't necessary, weren't considered necessary. We do need more leaders with integrity, interest for the public rather than pure self-interest and ego ego's gone wild right now in, in some quarters in Washington. And what's right for the people is secondary. Another thing that he would be very concerned about is freedom of the press. Of course, that's in our first amendment, and we do have more freedom of the press than most countries have, but our press is declining. Uh, our newspapers don't have the staffs that they did 10 years ago to do investigative reporting and TV stations. And they've all kind of acquiesced to these feel-good stories or covering murders and accidents and things like that. And there's not enough coverage of what's going on in our government. And you could make that interesting. It doesn't have to be dull, but the decline of investigative reporting would be of great concern to our Founding Fathers, because you can't have a government without clarification, without people knowing what's really going on behind the scenes. Because if we don't know those things, it's an open door to corruption. And here in my town, we need to analyze just at the local level, who's getting the contracts for the, you know, multimillion dollar deals here. Are they cronies? Was there open bidding for these big dollar items? Those things need to be open, and they're being hidden, not just here, but all over. So cronyism will run rampant if you don't expose it. That's just one, one aspect of government, not to speak of just out and out corruption. Stephen Matini: In your experience, in your studies, researching and writing about the Founding Founders, you mentioned the word integrity many times. And to me, when I think about the moment in history was one of those exceptional time, like, you know, Florence doing Renaissance somehow for whatever the reason, there were this huge concentration of amazing people why that happened. Who knows? But it's really bizarre to think about it. Why do you think integrity seemed to be such a distinctive feature of these, these amazing people who laid the foundation for us? And today we struggle with integrity. Suzanne Munson: In my book, Jefferson's Godfather, which is a biography of his mentor George, with, I make the case that about the power of one, the ability of just one individual for, uh, great, good or a great evil. And in his case, he had a lot to do with the early success of this country because he trained not only Thomas Jefferson, but Chief Justice John Marshall, the revered statesman, Henry Clay and 200 other future leaders in government, and also in the court system to very important agencies for the success of a country. And so he had an enormous influence. And because he had such great integrity himself, uh, he was a role model for the servant leader. He influenced either directly or indirectly, all five of our first five presidents. He was a friend of each of them, or a role model for each of them. And that was the first, oh, three decades of this country, very consequential, three decades. I think that their sense of integrity, he was a big part of that because he had so much of it himself. I attribute a lot of that to George West's Quaker background. Most of his contemporaries were of the Anglican faith, and they were very arrogant. People in Virginia, particularly Virginians at that time, were known to be arrogant. The aristocracy, uh, because they fashioned themselves, uh, after the House of Lords in, uh, England, large landowners, and they did not oppose slavery. They accepted that as a way of life. He was outta step with his contemporaries. He was ardently opposed to slavery. And I attribute that to one of his Quaker ancestors who came to this country a hundred years before and preached about the evils of slavery and taught that the Bible did make references to this stealing being one, stealing another person's life. So I, I think he had a big influence. A lot of his students never freed their slaves, but he made them feel very guilty about it. And then he just was a very honest person. Contemporary of his said. Well, he was the only honest lawyer I ever knew. He made a good living. But he could have made much bigger living if he had accepted liars and cheats as clients. But he would never defend a, uh, a liar and a cheat. Everyone had to have a good case if he were to accept it and be more or less on the right, or if they weren't on the right, be repentant for their sins. So the Founding Fathers had a wonderful opportunity to change history for the better. George Beth being one of the revered leaders at the time, his legacy has been lost to time, but he was enormously influential at, in his day, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Constitution leader in the Continental Congress, speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia. Those were the early days when everything was new and fresh and we were reinventing the, our world. Hundreds of years later, we have what we have in Washington because big money has been allowed in as a mighty power in our government, and it's very easy to feather one's nest. So there's really more temptations now, I think, uh, than there were at the beginning of the country. Eventually corruption did and self-dealing did creep in, and partisanship did emerge fairly early. George with was not part of that, but it emerged very much so during Jefferson's time. Stephen Matini: When you say servant leadership, so servant leadership is something that we hear a lot these days. It's also the many leadership programs that had their name. What would it be? Your own definition of servant leadership? Suzanne Munson: Putting the public's interest before your own, or at least having a balance, just not being totally self-interested and not letting your ego run wild as we see right now in Washington. Now in writing this book, uh, my first book called Jefferson's Godfather, the Man Behind the Man, I can come up with at least seven leadership qualities that George with this founding father had and that he shared as a role model, as a servant leader for others. Number one, a strong ethical foundation, the only honest lawyer I ever knew. Number two, mentorship, the ability to mentor generously. He influenced the futures of approximately 200 future state and national leaders. Number three, advisorship, if that's a word, uh, couldn't come up with a better word, but George with advised those in higher authority. He was a role model for the colonial governors of Virginia who needed advice about how to interact with this unruly group over here. He did influence the first five American Founding Fathers, either directly or indirectly. Number four, scholarship and preparation. George West did not have much of a formal education. He learned Greek and Latin at the knee of his mother, and then I think the money ran out and he couldn't go to college. And then when he was a legal apprentice to his uncle, he didn't learn much. And so he found that he, if he were to succeed in life, he would have to teach himself. And he became a self-taught scholar preparation. He never went into court unprepared, and he was an excellent lawyer, and he served those in the highest circles in Virginia. Number five, and this should be probably number one, along with ethics, is, um, emotional intelligence, people skills. Now we know about iq, but EQ is equally important. George With's IQ was probably not as high as Jefferson's. George with was very smart, but he also had to work hard. Um, he studied and he was prepared. So he had an IQ that was sufficient for leadership, but he also had the eq, the emotional quotient. He was a friend to those in the highest circles as well as to the low born. He freed his slaves as soon as he was legally able to do so. He was a friend of children. They said a a surly dog would wag his tail when George with walked by. Uh, so he had had those both skills. Um, EQ and IQ. Number six, humanitarian values. Unlike his contemporaries, he reviled slavery. Uh, and, and he was a humanitarian in many other ways. He and the one of the colonial governors started the first hospital for the mentally ill in Williamsburg. It was the first in North America, number seven, although that really shouldn't be seven, but humility. And he was modest in dress and speech reflecting his Quaker background. The best leaders like I can think of, Mahatma Gandhi is the major figure here. Uh, they were very wise people, but they were very humble in their wisdom. So a case in point with taught Chief Justice, John Marshall, who was one of the most consequential chief justices in American history. And so when Marshall became Chief Justice, he walked in to meet his, his group in a plain black robe. Well, they were astonished because they had adorned themselves in Irman and red velvet because they wanted to be like the justices in England. He set the example, and I think he got the idea of the plain black robe, the robe of a servant from George with who dressed very modestly. And I think in some of his role roles as clerk of the house delegates, uh, he probably wore the plain black robe. And so that changed, you know, the whole demeanor of the United States Supreme Court. It gave them a more humble approach to their job. So the only deviation from that that we've seen recently is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who added a little lace collar to her robe. But that can be forgiven. So, uh, those are, there's seven of the qualities that I found in doing research for George with, for the book Jefferson's Godfather, Stephen Matini: As you were talking then, you said it, the word that kept coming to my head was, um, humble humbleness. Suzanne Munson: Yes, we all need to learn humility. And it's not the same thing as being humiliated. I've learned that one myself. So we all must try to be servants or helpful to our fellow man in one way or another. That requires a little bit of humility in trying to let go of our ego so much. Stephen Matini: One thing that helps me tremendously to keep my attitude, uh, humble, hopefully, is the awareness that I will not be here forever. What would you say that could be a first step for someone to learn a more humble perspective? Suzanne Munson: Sometimes you have to be brought low by adversity or a great tragedy, or just realizing that you have too much ego, you need to knock it down a peg or two. I can't say when, when I started thinking about that, seriously, it was probably, probably after my husband died. I had time to think about myself. Also, I think we need to realize that our later years can be time for enormous growth. I said when I reached 70, that my seventies were gonna be the best decade of my life, that I was gonna solid fly in my seventies, but I didn't know what I was gonna do, had no idea. Just let things flow. So a certain degree of humility is important there. I ask for guidance. I get little nudges, I think from the other side about nice things to do or good things to do. I always answer my nudge, nudges, otherwise I'd feel kind of bad about something, you know, even if it's just to call somebody or answer a call from an irritating person or take an irritating person to the doctor, you know, that's pushed my limits a little bit. I try to do a lot of volunteer work. I think that's extremely important in living a fulfilling life. And so I work with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. I do a lot of work with them, and I teach classes that they have in their recovery program. I teach a class on love and forgiveness. Forgiveness is very important. I teach a la a class on emotional intelligence, and they are hungry for this because in their addiction they become stunned as individuals. If you start drinking and drugging when you're 19, you have arrested development. So a lot of these people are just discovering themselves in sobriety. So that is, uh, very rewarding for me to try to help these people. And I enter the classroom, uh, with a degree of humbleness, of humility and, uh, try to relate to them on their level. I've had my issues as well, and so I relate to them. But, uh, meaningful volunteer work, even if you're just working in a soup kitchen, you know, labeling soup out, it's better than sitting home watching TV all day. And a lot of people who retire just go out to the golf course or play bridge. And nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with playing games. We should amuse ourselves. We should have a good time. But you have to balance that with giving to others. And that also includes giving financially if you're able to do so. There's a lot of want in this world. There's refugees all over the world who are literally starving right now. And so we must give generously if we can afford to, to do that to doctors without Borders and all of the good agencies that are trying to help the helpless. So all of that is part of, you know, living more humbly, trying to get out of your ego, trying to think of other people. And that's really part of the secret to to being happy. Stephen Matini: Our society seems to emphasize so much a specific moment in time in your, your twenties when you're super young, it is a shame because life is so much more bigger. And what you said as you age, you, you get a different understanding about everything, a different appreciation about everything that you cannot possibly have. You know, when you are, when you're younger. There's something I wanna ask you that you mentioned before when you were talking about leadership and has to do with the notion of freedom. Because the word freedom is super important. And today, freedom. The word freedom is everywhere. Freedom of speech or freedom, this and that. And people get really confused about what freedom it really is. Some people feel it's a license to do or, or say whatever they want. And for me, it's not at all freedom. If anything is accountability, freedom is responsibility. What is your definition of freedom and what is the, the responsibility of, of people if they really want to be free? Suzanne Munson: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of hate speech. Certain forms of hate speech are being punished. I mean, media, people are being fired if they do that, but other people are getting by with it on social media and so on. So we need not just a revolution of integrity, but a revolution of kindness, I guess is, is a word I'm thinking of. We need to be kinder to one another. We need to watch that hateful speech, that judgmental speech. Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should say it. So I think that's one freedom that we, we need to really think about what is harmful speech, harmful writing, harmful speaking? Do we really need to say those things? Do we really need to think those things? Can't we teach ourselves to be more thoughtful, more kind, more considerate? So I'm hoping that we'll have better role models in the future and that a lot of this hate speech will, will go away. It's very unhealthy and it's caused a lot of us to turn off the news. Not just because of the hate speech, but because it just seems that all the worst kinds of behavior are presented in the news. And what is our local news? Murders, robberies, car wrecks, whatever. After a while, it gets painful. I listened to the news just enough to be well-informed. I used to listen to it morning, noon, and night. 'cause I wanted to be super well informed. But I can't do that anymore. I don't listen to it until evening. And then a small dose of it just to be informed. Stephen Matini: I feel the same way, , I am informed, but I notice that the more time I spend reading that negative molasses, it doesn't really add any value to my life. So I want to know, of course, what's happening, but I'm more preoccupied about spending my time with you than feeling upset, you know, well, what is the point? You know? But Susan, we talked about so many things and all of them are so important. But out of all the things that we said, is there anything that you deem really important impressions for our listeners to focus on? Suzanne Munson: Well, this is what Thomas Jefferson would want. And George, with these two Founding Fathers, they would want more critical thinking. We need to watch our head time, what I call head time. And I wrote a reflection about that. We are what we think, literally, we are what we think. And if we're dwelling in negativity all the time, it's like a, well, particularly if we have a resentment against somebody or several people, that's a boomerang. It comes back to bite us. Try to think positively, try to live positively, live healthy, think healthy, but also be critical thinkers. Now, I'm very irritated with a lot of my friends who listen to one particular TV channel that tends to slant things and present only one side of an argument that is just wrong. You need to sort through all of the trash and all of the good ideas, and we need to read better books. Get back to reading books or pick better tv. There's, there's some very good things you can look at on tv. Be a critical thinker and try to live. Kindly learn forgiveness Stephen Matini: And kindness shall be. Susan, thank you so much for spending time with me. I've learned a lot of stuff. I have something to think about this weekend and many days to come. Thank you. Suzanne Munson: I've enjoyed it. Stephen.

Dr. Petros Oratis, a leadership and organization development consultant, team facilitator, and executive coach, believes modern organizational success hinges on embracing lateral leadership and fostering collaboration across hierarchical boundaries. Lateral leadership refers to a leadership style that emphasizes collaboration, teamwork, and the ability to lead without relying on a formal position of authority. Dr. Oratis advocates for leaders to address these interdependencies by creating spaces for dialogue and understanding, particularly in environments where power dynamics and competition may exist. 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 Live Session Managerial & Leadership Development Contact Stephen Connect with Stephen #petrosoratis #lateraldialogues #lateralleadership #pitypartyover #alygn #stephenmatini #podcast #leadershipdevelopment #teamwork TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: I'm really happy to be here with you, we share the same passion and so I have a lot of questions for you, which are questions that I try to answer myself. I got into organizational development, you know, later on in my life. Previously I had a career in marketing, which I thought it was my thing. And then at some point out of pure coincidence I learned that I loved to work on organizational functions and to help people to perform better. How did it happen to you? Is this something that you have always known, but how did you get into this? Petros Oratis: Yeah, that's a very good question on reconnecting with origins and the course of life. I think because I studied in Greece and our system there is quite specific as to how you end up in university. But I think maybe also globally at that age you might not really know what to study. So I studied economics as an undergraduate, not necessarily by choice, but because I wanted to end up in organizations sort of in management. On one hand, when studying economics is very interesting because you learned from very early on in life about systems and about interdependencies and the complexity of the world, which I think it's very helpful as a mindset to be grown from early on. But it's also quite of a positive is science. So it has some sort of predictability in a way. Or you learn very quickly this idea of predictability and control and with knowledge and with models, if you apply them properly, you know you will get good results. But human behavior is extremely complex and even if you get it a little bit in courses around psychology, organizational psychology, still, there is this idea that if we study it and we can predict it, we would know what to do about it. And then of course you probably know from your practice and our profession, that's not how it works with large systems, with human behavior, even with us personally we might think in certain ways. So I started developing this curiosity of could I study human behavior more and differently from conventional studies? I wanted to seek something else and that's how I ended up studying differently organizations. So systemically, I mean the discipline is called system psychodynamics, but the idea is that you also take the more unconscious processes that operate within us and in working relations and then in bigger systems. Still the goal and the principle behind it is how can we understand human behavior so that we can actually address it differently but not, not from also I would say almost god-like thinking that if I were to control it fully, then that's how it would work. Stephen Matini: And eventually you learned that there's something that escapes analysis, you know, that you cannot quite frame. I think there's a huge element of craftsmanship in any job. Early on you started to become really interested in the whole notion of flat structures, bottom up, top down and then it even your own podcast, you know, it's the whole notion of lateral leadership is such a central component. How did you get there? Why? Why is this specific angle so important to you? Petros Oratis: I would say both the hard data, the intuition are, are what working jointly. So you can't, you can't split either or right? And I think that's what you exactly said. And the same thing I would apply to this idea of this very organic one could say type of leadership that you need to discover your role and you need to work through how you are going to lead with others. But at the same time that happens in a explicit structure. This tension, I think it's something that I discovered throughout practice that it is relevant for all of us and it becomes part of leadership. I think the interest on studying that more was when I started my doctorate I didn't know what I would research and I didn't know that would be the topic. I knew that I wanted to study something related to collaboration on that high level. And one of the early findings that was guiding me is this idea that when you get sort of senior leaders that are part of a team even together, they would actually do many very meaningful work together. But to get them actually in a room usually would be very tough, very difficult. And then to take them properly in a room, not just physically but really committed so, and to commit to their interdependency, that was also very difficult. So peeling a little bit the onion around that. So what is it that we understand logically that we need to collaborate, we do want to collaborate, but there is something also that is quite scary that in pulls us away, especially when we grow in hierarchy was the first starting point of that, which made me then understand this is not just about collegial relationships. The group of executives that are part of a team, they are also independent leaders that are trying to lead their own stuff. And that's what becomes quite challenging when you want to approach teamwork is those two roles that they conflict with each other and they require a little bit more understanding Stephen Matini: Based on your studies. There's a cultural component that has a huge weight. So it really depends on the culture, it depends where with the organization is located. But as human beings, do we tend and naturally to favor top down organizations, is that just how we operate? Petros Oratis: Our relation to hierarchy is something that is part of our human nature and I think it very much starts from the idea that we are brought into this world in absolute dependency on parent and caretakers on adults who we can only survive at these sort of early steps of our life actually based on those figures that they will take care of us very practically but also emotionally even to make sense. So that's part of our psyche that cannot go away. This idea that we sort of move from complete dependency into autonomy as we are building our own strength and our own self-reliance, we become less dependent on those individuals and that sort of continuum that I'm sort of painting here also continues in careers. So very early life we may have that mentality. We need to learn from our superiors, we need to depend on their judgment, we need to be guided by them and sort of we develop in careers so that we can actually become more autonomous and more powerful perhaps. And then we'll become more autonomous. And maybe this idea or what we tell ourselves is that then we should lead others and so forth. And while this is of course the nature of life, we are forgetting the lateral dimension of all of this may not come to mind so clearly because we do all of that with other peers, whether that's our siblings or our classmates or later on in in groups, our education, also the career development is giving us enough stimulation to be able to collaborate with others. But we forget completely that this collaboration and maybe this competition will at some point entail also dependency, again. I said early life will depend on parents and that's what we think dependency is about or we depend on bosses but we are actually depending on each other because we are part of systems. When the structure is clear that interdependency is no issue. I come to you when I need to come to you, you come to me when you need to and so forth and we will find each other.  But as this clarity goes more and more away, it also means that it's very difficult to basically understand what these interdependencies are and then later on we have to negotiate on those ourselves. From this idea that we were developing our own strength in order to become autonomous and not to rely on authority figures now comes into a conflict that as we become autonomous we are actually depending on others who may not be so, you know, in a different level than we are or they may not actually even care about us as maybe our bosses cared about us doing a good job, if you see what I mean. They felt responsibility maybe over whether that's a good or a bad boss, but they felt some responsibility over us performing or delivering good work to them. Now we are dependent on others and others depend on us that maybe, you know, it's more on an adult to adult level and they don't have responsibility of our wellbeing. So a different access or a different value needs to come to play that can guide us about how do we negotiate, how do we learn to care for each other or how do we take responsibility of the total outcome. This doesn't answer your question on culture predisposition because you know some cultures are very hierarchical in that sense and some others are very egalitarian. But regardless of those nuances, I think it's also helpful to understand that from a psyche point of view, we already have that programming in our lives. Maybe more than other species even who have a very short period of being dependent then they're spend the rest of their lives being autonomous. Stephen Matini: The answer that I've given myself so far, of the reason why so many organizations are so much top down probably is around the notion of power. Human beings seem to lose their mind around power and around money. What, what do you think of power as a factor? Does it play any weight? Petros Oratis: Absolutely, it's was central to my research. Maybe it's helpful to distinguish what we mean by power and what do we mean by authority, right? So when we talk about formal authority, we're talking about the right that I have to exercise decision or to make decisions over others, and that right has been given to me also because I also hold ultimate responsibility. So authority often is a dirty word, especially nowadays and we can even talk about that. The idea that a leader will exercise authority is a little bit of a turnoff, it's a bit of a, this is not a good leader, it's a very traditional old fashioned type of leader. But we also need to understand that there is a part of authority which is absolutely required and needed. Some roles have a even legal responsibility over something and we are decreasing the idea of your basically ability to, or your right to make decisions, at least in current discourse about leadership we're saying you should not be just doing it in a authoritarian way, but with that sometimes we are almost implying you should not do it at all, which is not helpful. So there, there is something about how do we exercise authority. But there are also very good reasons why authorities completely going down because complexity one person doesn't have the answer, they need to involve a lot of people. There are a lot of interdependencies, there are different organizational models and so forth. So there is a very good reason why authorities not being exercised directly. So, but if you, if you decrease authority, how do roles begin to differentiate, right? And that's where power comes. The idea of power I think is more related to what do I have in terms of resources, internal or external whether that's skills or that can be binding to someone else similarly to authority, right? So whereas authority is very explicit and it comes with a role and it's power is more related to the person related to their skills and how they're using those skills resources to bind others to do something. And that is positive and it's negative. So usually we are saying well we don't wanna be vulnerable, we don't want to be again in this early stages where we were depending on others. So we have to increase our power and that may also get into the negative connotations of we are power hungry so if only I would be at the top of the world, I don't care about titles unless they give me power or that's where we start getting, we might, some of us might get actually power hungry in that sense. But in my research that was not so much. So what is so fascinating in this topic is that we believe it's about egocentric type of leaders that are driven to accumulate power and money and so forth. I'm sure that there is a percentage of those leaders out there and that's a big driver for leadership. But the way I have experienced in my practice, in my research, the power dynamics that get at play is not simply because people are power hungry, is because the lack of clarity and the lack of formal authority enters a dynamic that even though you don't want it to be and you deny it and you try to avoid it to be competitive or being about a power struggle, it automatically becomes a such. So that's also a lot of in misinterpretation about the other occurs. And the two interacting leaders is suddenly become opponents that they need to engage in a power fight even though that's not explicitly mentioned and that's not what they talk about. The felt experience of the dynamic is as such. So then I become more guarded in opening up and I perceive the other perhaps as being power hungry or on a mission to get me or to sort of dominate me, but actually that may not be their agenda. Stephen Matini: When did the notional lateral leadership begin? How far back does it go in terms of studies? Petros Oratis: So lateral leadership has existed for, i I would say as long as organizations have existed, but it has been taken different forms and we mean different things based on sort of the contemporary reality that that we are part of. So there is a field of studies that that actually are focused completely on leaderless groups, actually leaderless movements. And that's not what I necessarily focus on because I focus on that dimension within hierarchal systems, which majority of our systems are. There is a big trend that started that that related to self authorized or self-manage groups that are leaderless and there you need to see how leadership gets exercised beyond roles or people it's exchanged. So in my field it also started very early on because the group dynamics as they were being studied psychoanalytically that started in Second World War and already there there were studies by a famous psych named Bion who are actually, and others I should say, but they studied also groups from this idea that authority and leadership are shared and you need to understand how they get sort of fluctuated within groups. In the mid two thousands, the notion of lateral leadership and lateral collaboration begin to take more traction in being studied also in my discipline, because a lot of changes in organizational structures were pushing that dimension. So what was before maybe a multidisciplinary or cross-functional collaboration where it needed to be studied there it became more relevant for also top leadership for executive level leadership to be studied, because of this idea that even if you have a vertical accountability, you still need to operate on an enterprise level. And a lot of what we are designing on paper, a lot of organizational design also approaches would amplify this idea that as a leader you absolutely need to learn to collaborate laterally. And that doesn't mean just on people on your level, on your equals, it means simply being on a lateral level with multiple leaders or role holders of different parts of the organization where momentarily you don't have formal authority over and you either have to lead or you have to follow them. So it's not so clear. Stephen Matini: Who would you consider to be a great example of lateral leadership these days? Petros Oratis: I don't want to go into a situation where I call out the particular individual. I could describe some of the characteristics that I found out from my research even though it's all helpful to find role models. So sometimes, you know, I am more in, in this idea that we need to acknowledge the challenges that come from a in our human nature or certain type of behaviors and understand them as opposed to say, you know, underdeveloped leaders or very inspiring leaders. Stephen Matini: I have a a brilliant example and I'm being very humble. I think a good example would be you and I. Who are we? We are competitors. I mean feasibly I may provide some of your services to the same clients, you know on a technical level, you and I competitor, but we are here working together. I love the fact that we can create something together that makes sense. Something that hopefully is going to provide a lot of opportunities and wonderful things to you and to me, you know, rather than competing with other agencies, can we all come together and really support each other and to provide to clients is something that is the cumulative combination of our experiences. So maybe I'm completely off with this, but I think that in some small way I try to be a non-authoritative type of leader. Petros Oratis: What you say resonates a lot and of course I recognize the principles of of what you're saying. My challenge maybe to this and the view of the world in general is that we reflect on this behavior, our value or our ability to engage with that. What we might be forgetting the context. So what you and I have done in our roles is that we sought out an independent practice, right in that sense and in our interaction. Now we might have competitiveness or elements where we might, we could look at them in a competitive or a reserved way. Yes. But we are coming in a collaboration together out of very autonomous roles and we can actually, protect is not the right word, but our independence will not be heavily impacted in our collaboration. That doesn't discount any of what you describe around values or the fact that somebody else could approach something in a very competitive way. Like so it doesn't discount our personal values around that. But the difference, I think we need to remember what may shift the dynamic is either the actual interdependency or the idea of interdependency. So for example, if I forget what you just said and I go on LinkedIn, everyone is a competitor and everyone is a potential client and therefore I might get into a mode that I'm suffocating myself and I need to, you know, I need to become very assertive and very authoritative and so forth. Now organizations completely expose you to that experience all the time. Even if your values are as such, you will never forget that you have to compete. There are limited resources. When you started the question one individual leader came to mind who was actually driven a lot by impact, was inspired to actually take on big roles but without becoming competitive or not being driven by ego or by money and so forth. But of course was also struggling with that. So, and I think that a role model doesn't necessarily mean they don't struggle with exercising that leadership, but in one of the cases that was brought in, there was basically a funding for a research that was given to someone else in another department that he thought should actually had come to him because he was advocating for that role. So, and in that moment was sharing this was starting doubting shouldn't I be more competitive? Shouldn't I be more hierarchical? Why did it went somewhere else? Am I not playing the game right and so forth. And then whilst talking I didn't do much in that interaction, I was just listening. But whilst talking to it, he was saying well maybe this other person, their role was most suited to get the grant done in my case. So he started contextualizing what was happening so that he could step out of this power dynamic that was already imposed. Because it brings up a lot of good questions like who am I? If I'm bypassed in my organization, who am I? Am I, if I'm too collaborative, does it mean that I will be seen for my individual contribution, could maybe later on somebody else speak of my work but they get the credits. All of those aspects that are far in an organization that are far more, I would say even suffocating or impactful than being independent. So starting my research, I was thinking, you know, you have people who are more inclined to be power hungry or they're driven by hierarchy and there are others who are more based on purpose and so forth, but I cannot really say that I can draw the lines so clearly and I am more of an optimist in that sense in a full spectrum where sometimes they're triggered to be in a certain way and sometimes they're triggered to be seen differently. Stephen Matini: It seems that we're going through a massive shift and whether leaders want it or not, you have to start collaborating. You will not be able to survive in such a super complex and fast environment in which we are in. It is virtually impossible. Petros Oratis: I think that younger generations but also the contemporary state is all about purpose and vision more so than you know, the promise of career development, what is a good purpose of an organization that also is shifting quite a lot in a positive way. But that I think also creates maybe a challenge for different generations of leaders, including also the new generation of leaders, right? So not just older generations I think for all is this idea of combining the two different styles. It's very difficult if you think about that. I have experienced even, you know, moments where roles that are more supportive that are from more junior staff as part of a, for example executive team. Sometimes they find it very difficult also to say, oh hold on, this is not actually for me to decide or I need to accept that somebody else ultimately decides. Not everything is about consensus. There are moments that we are lateral and it has to be that way that's enriching the process. And then there are moments actually that we are quite hierarchical. We're quite vertical because some others have those, you know, you are the owner at the end of the day you carry the risks of your business and so forth and it could not be seen as that risk then has to be shared laterally if you, if you see what I mean. Even if you could do that Stephen Matini: In your job, in my job it is such an important thing to have the strength and to be optimistic. So when you work with the client and you provide your point of view, which is beautiful and they are skeptical in, they say, seriously, I understand all of this but I don't see how we can apply here, we have shareholders, we have to produce money, produce results. What is the first step you take in order for them to start getting into this whole lateral type of thinking? Petros Oratis: I think actually that the work with a client is never of the same format as we do now that we analyze something in such a cognitive way. I need to clarify that I'm not advocating for a certain organizational model whether that should be hierarchical or not, right? So, so I would never go in an organization or work with a leader by already holding in mind what the right answer is. All I'm trying to do in that work with a leader is to understand how the lateral dimension, which is always there even in the army, so, so even in a very hierarchical structure and the actual organizational structure with its rules, how they interact for them and for their team. But that's also not necessarily the my beginning and my stop of of this work. So it's just a very informative dimension, what is at the back of the mind and if it requires and it helps the leader to explore that further, we work specifically on that. If not some of those principles will be offering some guiding questions so that we can resolve some of the tensions that they're experiencing with different awareness. So I would never advocate for them to become less authoritative or to let go of control immediately. I would try to understand what are the drivers behind a certain type of behavior, whether that style is supportive of the role and what are the limitations and work with that. That's why I would be very reluctant, for example, to put people in a spectrum of hierarchical versus lateral because these are also contextual. What we often do also is to understand how is my personal predisposition on authority and hierarchy and what is also of more fluid leadership. So what are my predisposition and what are also some of my unconscious relationship models that I carry with me in those roles. So do I experience an thought figure as by default someone who is there to get me or to maybe restrict my autonomy or have I learned to effectively challenge those figures playfully maybe or am I rebellious Again, they can be very resourceful, those models that we all carry, but they could also have limitations. So how far am I conscious of how I'm basically using them? And the same is when I interact with others on a more lateral level. Stephen Matini: What would you say that is the one aspect of your job that makes you the happiest? Petros Oratis: The highlight of this work and what actually is a fuel for doing more of it is when when you have seen that when you work with individuals or with teams, they have actually accomplished an understanding and insights that inspires change, which before was completely out of reach to them. Not because they don't have the skills or because I am might be more intellectual as such, but because the space was not there. So it was through the work, there was space created to experience insights about own behavior and about understanding the system we operate in that before was completely out of reach and that really gives me a high after, after doing such work. I'm not saying that it always has sustainable change if you do it one off and then you that it has, but those moments can never be forgotten either. So even when sometimes the team or an individual defaults into previous behavior, that moment is not forgotten. So it's a, it's a touch point of saying, hold on a second, why am I back into a certain type of behavior? And sometimes, you know, you cannot change a system alone or even can change fully a system. Like you learn how to tweak a little bit or change somewhat of a balance. But I think this is what absolutely gives me a high. Maybe to seek some sort of understanding of different perspectives. That's something also that I was missing in my early life also because of divorce of parents. So I could see that one household had a different storyline, the other household had, they were not fighting necessarily the storylines, but I could see the differences and I, I always was in this experience, but why do I get to be in between and not be able to share the experience of being in between? And that's a little bit what you do often with consulting and coaching is that you are coming across very different storylines, sometimes competitive storylines and we you're trying to actually engage into some sort of dialogue. Also what I've learned is that sometimes my drive to see a certain type of harmony or a certain type of understanding or collaborative moving forward may not be what's needed or what's helpful to others or it may not be as painful to them as I maybe once experienced that. So I think by doing a lot of that work also that desire goes a little bit down in me. The more and more I do this work I process a little bit those experiences that I thought, you know, maybe also they should be better now then I'm thinking okay, maybe they were not so bad in the end. Stephen Matini: Petros we talked about so many different things and I still have so many questions, but I wanna ask you, is there anything that you deem to be really, really important that our listeners, the listeners of this episode that should pay attention to? Petros Oratis: Maybe I already referred to it a little bit, but I think one of my biggest insights is when coming across competitive or power dynamics that are challenging to experience emotionally, I think it is also very important to find a space to process them and not to draw judgments right away to perceive that an organization is not maybe healthy or safe because of those dynamics. It's an unfair thing to be stated. There is no way for organizations to find their equilibrium without a lot of those power dynamics that are at play. When we are in situations that are completely harmonious and everyone is very friendly, we will quickly find out that those dynamics are under the table, which can make it even harder than in highly, let's just say competitive environments where competition is what you see is what you get. So in other words, it's something that we need to learn to play with a little bit more without it being so daunting, without also thinking that it's for the ones who are highly political and they are on a power trick. That's also not what I'm actually advocating, But it's to say we need to come more comfortable with negotiating authorities all the time with each other to wrestle a little bit with our dynamics, especially in highly interdependent roles, and not to judge others when they are on that mode, but to find ways to make that dialogue a little bit richer and that process a little bit richer. Stephen Matini: Petros I've learned a ton of things today. I really appreciate the time you gave me and your kindness. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Kali Patrick is a Sleep, Health, & Well-Being Coach whose book Mastering Your Sleep Puzzle helps busy people who struggle with sleep due to stress and overactive minds. Kali highlights the importance of letting go, creating personal space, and making positive lifestyle changes for better sleep. Our interview revolves around understanding and addressing individualized sleep challenges through a comprehensive, mindful, and personalized approach. 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 Live Session Managerial & Leadership Development Contact Stephen Matini Connect with Stephen Matini #KaliPatrick #SleepCoach #MasteringYourSleepPuzzle #Well-Being #LettingGo #Burnout #Work-LifeBalance #Podcast #PityPartyOver #Alygn #StephenMatini #LeadershipDevelopment TRANSCRIPT Stephen Matini: So I think maybe as a first question that I should ask you to an expert in sleep is, how did you sleep last night? Kali Patrick: I was doing mixed and you know, a lot of people think that because I'm a sleep coach, that I get something like whatever perfect sleep would be that that happens every night. It's almost like if you were a, a nutrition person, people think that you never eat anything that's not healthy. As a woman of a certain age, I wake up hot and then cold and then hot and then cold. So some nights are better than others. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.   Stephen Matini: When did you start getting interested in sleep? I know you mentioned last time also that, you know, as it happened to so many of us as somehow a trouble or something that upset us becomes the inspiration for a job. How did it start for you? Kali Patrick: Well, my big problems are rooted back in childhood. I think they really started bothering me and becoming an issue in, in college I was under a lot of stress. I was studying for a degree that did not match what I was truly, naturally good at and wanted to do. So I had a lot of stress around making sure I got good grades and making sure I kept my financial support, et cetera. And I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I started this with grinding of the teeth with bro them. So had a lot of pain in my mouth and was going to dentist. They finally gave me the guards for my feet. So that took away some of the pain. But I was still tired. I was still very stressed and struggling and that went on and I graduated and everything was fine and I got a job and then the stress became the job, which, which was in high tech. And I was developing websites back when they were new. So I'm on my way, I something to do in fact that, that I enjoyed, which was helpful. But it was still a very stressful environment. Things were always changing. As you might know, things are never static. You always, always behind, always busy. And so I was having trouble sleeping then and again. I knew it was because of the stress. So I explored things like yoga and meditation and I would take a class here and there and try, okay, I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna stop my mind and I'm gonna do all the things. And that didn't work. And finally I'd say it was probably 15 years later, I did a sleep study. 'cause I thought, well maybe there's something wrong. And going to a doctor and, and telling them, Hey, I'm having trouble sleeping. I don't know what else to do. They had me sleep in the room with the wires attached to my head. And I thought, how in the world am I gonna sleep in a cold, sterile environment with people behind a, a mirror watching me and monitoring me? And turns out I fell asleep. And he said, I woke up in the morning and they said, well, there's nothing wrong with you. You slept great. Here's a prescription. And in hindsight, I really questioned why I got a prescription if there was nothing wrong. I was happy. I was great. Okay, nothing's wrong with me. I have a prescription, I'll take this medication and I'll sleep. I must be taking it for about a week. And that was it because I noticed that I was groggy when I woke up, more so than had I not slept. And I didn't remember my dream. I was a, a pretty vivid dreamer at that time and I was interested in my dream. And when I woke up after taking medication, I couldn't remember them anymore. And I said, well, so I'm gonna wake up broadly. At least I want the benefit of remembering my dream. So I stopped doing that and went to all the natural things, right? The valerian and the melatonin, the teeth, anything that was sort of more natural that I could try. And none of that worked. I eventually thought from burnout in 2010 with my job, I had risen up through the ranks manager, et cetera, all the fun that comes with that as a sort of new job in a tech environment. So I left everything. I just said, I can't do this anymore. I had the benefit of being able to do that. So I went into a yoga teacher training program just saying, I don't wanna teach yoga. I just want to do something completely different and do something that's going to be good for me and I know that this is going to be good for me. And so I did a really intensive teacher training and it was life changing. It was just one of those moments where, wow, my life could be different, I could be different. So I came back from that saying, I do wanna teach yoga. I do wanna be that person who's less stressed and has that calm be yoga voice and just as relaxed. And that created a lot of turmoil in my existing life because the two things didn't fit at all. So there was a lot of, of shedding of my career, my relationship, and it was a very difficult time actually. But what came out of that was this practice that I now have where I am helping people learn how to sleep better, how to do it without all of that stuff that clearly, well, it didn't work for me. That doesn't mean it doesn't work for other people, but most of the people I coach have been in that situation, right where they have tried all the things, I've done, all the stuff I've seen my doctor, nothing's wrong, but I'm not sleeping. And so it's really a pleasure to be able to work with people and to help them find their way through that and do it in a way that works for them, right? Just because I did it in a certain way, you know, you mentioned I'm a sleep expert. I don't call myself a sleep expert. I call myself a sleep coach because I don't initially have all the answers. What we do in a coaching situation is we work together and we navigate it together and we figure out, well, what's going to work best for each person? And that could be completely different than how I did it, but it's that learning how to reconnect to your own natural ability to sleep and see all these other things as distraction, as more stressors, as more to do and to really peel the things away that are preventing sleep versus trying to do things to make sleep happen.   Stephen Matini: Where do you start when you want to be more aware? Kali Patrick: I do usually have people do an assessment. So let's lay out all the problems. Let's just get it all on the table. What are the issues people are having? A lot of my clients suffer from multiple sleep concerns. The main bucket being trouble falling asleep initially when you go to bed, trouble staying asleep throughout the night. Some people wake up too early and some people have all of those problems and still others sometimes feel that the sleep at night is interrupted in some way, or not quality sleep because in the daytime they feel, well, I get tired right in the afternoon, for example. I get tired, I don't have the energy that I want. So we lay all that out. Generally speaking, people have an idea of what might be contributing positively or negatively to their space. What's something you do, for example, that you know you sleep better when you do it? You know, a lot of people will say, well I wanna go for a walk. I know when I exercise or when I go for a walk in the daylight, I sleep better that night. Okay, great. So then that's one in the column of this helps. Okay, what's one thing you're doing that is probably not the best thing for your sleep? And out of 10 people say using technology, I'm on my phone, I'm on my iPad, I'm watching television, I'm, you know, too late in the evening before bed. That's the number one answer. We do that, we go back and forth. We look at what are the contributors, what are the things that are influencing sleep? And the other thing that I think is really important is to step back from all that and say, well what do we want six months from now, a year from now? What do you want your life to be like? And people usually start out by saying, well, I'd like to sleep better. I'd like to have more energy. Great. Let's imagine that you have that now. What do you want? What will you do with all that energy that you have as a result of sleeping better? What will you do with all the extra time and money and effort that you're putting into trying to solve this problem? Where will that go? That becomes the motivating factor. So I've had people say all sorts of wonderful things and people wanna start a business. People want to create art or music. People want to be better in their relationship. There's no right or wrong answer there, but what is the vision for somebody who tweaks better and is more energetic? And that is a real important part of the process because we have to keep that in mind when we make choices and all those little choices that make or break someone's sleep on a daily basis, on a nightly basis.   Stephen Matini: If I understood correctly, it seems that sleep is the manifestation or something else. It is something that gets affected when other parts of our life do not quite align or work the way they do. While you were talking, obviously I'm not a sleep expert, probably my expertise, I would say lies more in the, in the communication realm. And for me, communication is always the indicator, depending how that is or things flowing or flowing and such and such. So oftentimes when people want to work on communication, they feel that, okay, let's address communication, miscommunication in reality, the problem usually is always elsewhere. Sure, you know, there's certain technicalities you want to learn about communication, but once all the other stuff is taken care of, then usually communication flows. And as they were talking, you know, it seems to me it might be a similar dynamic. Kali Patrick: Absolutely. And and a lot of it, like I I mentioned is, is removing barriers. So clearing the path. And yes, once people start to make different choices, and particularly around rest and recovery, sleep happen. You don't create sleep, you don't make sleep happen. It does happen when you get out of the way of it and a different mindset, it's different view into the problem and therefore a different solution.   Stephen Matini: One thing you said last time when you and I talked that really got stuck in my head is sleeping, is learning to let go. And I think it's beautiful because falling asleep it is, you know, letting it go. But it's such a simple thing, but it seems to be so hard sometimes to do. Would you mind explaining more this concept? Kali Patrick: I often say sleep is about letting go or sleep is a surrender as a way to contrast with how we typically look at sleep and how we look at solving sleep struggle, right? Which is to try to control the problem, to put practices in place. Not to say that having a great bedtime routine isn't a wonderful thing, but when we start to get rigid about it, right, okay, I have to do this and I have to do this and I have to do this. Or we get stressed and anxious about it, okay, I'm not sleeping, so let me run through all the things I could possibly do to help myself, right? Which I see a lot of people doing as well, right? So that's all in service of how do I make sleep happen? How do I control my sleep? How do I fix this problem? Which I work with fixers, I work with managers, I work with project managers, program managers, people who are used to looking at a problem saying, okay, I can fix this. How do I do that? What are my options? And that works great in a lot of situations and we get praised for our ability to do that in a lot of different situations. But when it, where it comes to sleep, that actually usually backfires. So what we need to do, as you said, is to say, okay, what do I need to let go of? How do I let myself surrender to this? And that is not easy. It is a simple idea. It makes sense to most people, but it's not necessarily easy. And in part that's because of the training that we've had, right? Again, the training we've had to say, okay, here's a problem. What are my options? How do I solve it? And to some extent we do bring that to the sleep struggle, but it is less about doing and more about undoing. So in terms of really looking to surrender and let go, I think the best way to practice that, and it is a practice, doesn't just, we don't just suddenly be able to let go, right? We have to practice that is by having moments during the day where we can practice rest and practice receiving and practice recovery, which most people don't do. And even if they do try to do that, a lot of times we're so conditioned to be doing and moving and productive that sitting down, for example, for 15 minutes without some sort of stimulation, just sitting and being with ourselves and you know, yeah, letting the mind do its thing. It's going to think, it's going to be busy, but can we try to be built and give that space for the mind to kind of process and the heart and the emotion. Certainly we're consuming a lot of things during the day, right? We're consuming information, we're consuming other people's energy and we might have difficult conversations, et cetera. So we need to sort of process that and we give ourselves these small rest breaks during the day. It might not be sort of the then meditation experience, but those things can wash through our brains and wash through our body. During the daytime, people usually complain that, Hey, I'm up at three in the morning and I'm thinking about what happened during the day and I'm worrying about this and I'm worrying about that. Oh, that's because that's when you're finally quiet. That's when you're finally still, we need to practice that during the daytime, like make an appointment with ourselves to say, okay, I'm gonna just sit and say, okay, what's happened so far today? Let me process that. Let me see what do I think? What do I feel about that? And then get up and move on. But that does require some change to how the daytime is.   Stephen Matini: Are you deliberate with the quiet moments during the day minute? Do you plan them somehow or you let them happen organically? Spontaneously? Kali Patrick: Personally or for my client?   Stephen Matini: Both. Kali Patrick: Personally I plan for them, for me in particular, the morning is a sacred time. I have a good two to three hours from the time that I get up to the time that I start, you know, my day where I'm quote unquote working on something, right? Where I, and it's not that I'm sitting here quiet, right? I have things that I'm doing, but I have a process. I'm maybe sitting down reading something that I wanna read. I drink coffee. Yes, I do have, I enjoy my hot cup of coffee in a cold morning, right? So I take that time to kind of ease into my day. And I do also have an appointment with myself around three in the afternoon because I know that's when I tend to get a little bit of low energy, which many people do. And so that's a great time also to take care of yourself and to have that appointment with yourself. My clients sometimes do that as well where, where they know, oh, well, you know, lunchtime I have a break, I can sit with my food, et cetera. Or if they have children or depending on their schedule, they need to figure out where, when that works best for them. I find that most people, unless they're highly exceptional and have a really flexible schedule, most people do benefit from having some sort of routine and rhythm to it. So it's a consistent, every day at this time, I do this. And the body and the mind start to expect that it becomes part of the training of the rhythm of the day, which also does all contribute to having a better night. So, but it's, it's completely up to what works for each person.   Stephen Matini: As I was going through your website and learning as much as possible so I could be well-informed. I read one thing that I, I thought I'm gonna ask her, which is revenge bedtime procrastination is, I wanna ask you, I used to have such a busy schedule, you know, go, go, go, go, go out of the, I don't know, guilt or whatever the hell it was. And then in the evening I would procrastinate going to bed because it was like, screw it. Now I need some time for myself. I need to carve with some times that I can actually exist and live. Is this an example of revenge, bedtime procrastination? Kali Patrick: 100%. Exactly. It's that not having time for yourself during the daytime, that pushes me further away because, oh, you know, maybe the house is quiet or you finally feel as though you've done all the things you need to do that day. It's a scheduling problem to some extent, right? If there are too many things that are not for me happening during my day, too much of me giving myself to other people. We talk a lot about boundaries and coaching because oftentimes people struggle with saying no at work, saying no to family friends, to asking for help, for receiving help, for taking that time without feeling guilty. And that that is really important, you know, and we know from, I mean from the work side, the to-do list is endless. It never goes away. And I mean, it's the same in personal life really. Everything's a project, right? You can't go do anything quickly. I'm finding that, you know, I put something on my list of something to do personally, and I think it's gonna take 15 minutes and I'm on, you know, I'm on in traffic, I'm on the phone, whatever, for an hour. Everything takes longer than we think. And we don't, we don't necessarily budget for that. And we don't necessarily give ourselves those moments of quiet, like I mentioned. So of course we're gonna create, that's, that's basically moving that moment of rest and quiet and time for you taking it away from your sleep time. And that's a choice. Is that time to yourself more important than the quality of your suite? It might be, but at some point the what you're taking away from your suite is going to catch up with you and then you'll make a difference with it.   Stephen Matini: And it, and it's also so cultural particularly, yeah, I would say for the western world, you know, which is so focused on doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. And the notion that if you carve some space for yourself, it's not that you're being unproductive, you're just recouping your energy so you can be even more efficient. You know, that's something that is definitely not part of the mindset of, of a lot of people. And so when we talk about work-life balance and all these programs within organizations for work-life balance, is that just a big lie ? Because I mean, we're getting this whole thing so wrong. I mean, what is a healthy way to really approach work-life balance, you know, from an organizational standpoint? Kali Patrick: Well, the thing that IHP and I'm often a provider for company. I come in and I do webinars. I talk about sleep, I talk about meditation, I do meditation classes, I teach yoga. These are benefits that a lot of companies give to try to help people with their mental health and their physical health and have some balance. What I see unfortunately is that many people don't take advantage of those programs. And the main thing that I see as to why is there's that permission. There's not an environment of safety that says, well, you're gonna take this hour and for yourself and go to a yoga class. We're gonna offer it to you, but we're going to make you feel really bad if you go take it because it's work to do. So for me, it comes down to that permission and that security, right? That it's an acceptable choice to say, yes, I'm gonna take advantage of that. And it doesn't have to be a company provided yoga class, it could be a, Hey, I'm gonna go out for my run in the afternoon because I want some daylight before the sun goes away and I know it's going to help me sleep better. But if it feels bad or like the person's going to get punished for taking that time, then they're not gonna take that time. And that's the, the shingle biggest thing I think is the problem. And it has been a problem for many years, is that people don't feel comfortable doing it. I have done some consulting work in the past couple years just to kind of stay connected to the culture. I did a consulting job probably several years ago now, but I had to be in an all day meeting with the, the customers and my boss. And I said, great. It was, it was in Boston. I said, I'll be there at nine o'clock. So I show up at, he said, no problem. I show up at nine o'clock. They've been there since seven. Okay, fine. I'm here at nine, fully participatory, well rested. We get it to about 12 o'clock noon. I'm thinking, my stomach's growling, I'm ready for a break, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, et cetera. No one's making any movement to leave. I can feel my blood sugar going down, right? So I said, excuse me, I'm going to get up and take a break now. And I got up and I left the room and I was the only one who did this. And it took so much courage, it really was hard. And I know everything I know about burning out and, and not doing this and having that experience and having recovered from that experience, I knew I had to do it. I mean, it, it was so difficult to do that. I thought, you know, on all the things in the minds, right? Oh my gosh, what are they gonna think of me? That I left on top of that I was the only female in the room at the time. There's that, there's a little bit of that concern going on. But it took a half an hour lunch, I just left, I ate my lunch, I, I drank some water, I went to the restroom, walked around a little bit, came back, they're all still there, right? And they brought some things in, you know, some bad coffee, some pizza, whatever. And you know, people ate and continued the meeting. So three o'clock in the afternoon, now we're still all trapped in this room. No oxygen, excuse me, I'm just gonna step out for a moment. I get up, I walk around, get some water, et cetera, et cetera, come back in. It got a little easier that second time because I had done it already by five o'clock the meeting was over, the client left, my boss looks at me and he says, oh my God, I need a scotch. I am wiped. I am like so drained. Well of course you've been here since seven, you haven't left the room, you haven't moved around, you haven't really eaten anything. Well you haven't had a drink of anything hydrating, right? And I actually kind of sat there for a moment. I thought, I'm okay, I feel okay. And that's because I made different choices. But it's really hard when you're the only one doing this. And in another situation, what I did might've inspired others to say, Hey, yeah, let's take a break. And sometimes that does happen, but I, I like this example. 'cause It, it was a bit extreme where no one else left the room . I think it's a good illustration of how it does require courage. We are in many cases working against the culture, which is largely unhealthy.   Stephen Matini: I wanna ask you something about your book, you know, mastering your sleep puzzle. When I got familiar with your background, it's kind of interesting your approach because if I got it right, you almost like, I rejected everything that people usually do around sleep, but you're going really to the most interesting, smart way to do it. You know, which is a way to approach it that, that I find it more, let's say more strategic. Let all the stuff that gets in the way away so that it, the sleeper can happen naturally. So if I had to ask you what makes your book, you know, different compared to similar books, I mean, what would you say? Kali Patrick: Well, I'm not sure there is a similar book, the book that I read about sleep are the more sleep science books. And certainly those are interesting for somebody who has a sleep struggle, although I don't, I'm not sure that it's absolutely necessary. I do see a lot of people reading the, the very deep sleep science and, and, and details about insomnia and that just creates more anxiety around the fact that they're not sleeping. So my book is really a marriage of the coaching process, the health and wellbeing coaching process with a lot of concepts from yoga and meditation, but more of the philosophy around energy and how stimulation is a root cause of many people sleep struggles these days and how to reduce the stimulation through various practices. So the 12 weeks is really a step by step. How do I do this for myself without being a plan, if that makes sense, right? It's not a 12 week plan. I don't say, okay, here's what you do exactly in week one, you must do X, Y, and Z. It's not prescriptive, it's here are the things that I want you to think about and you put your own plan in place. So I think it has the potential to, to help a lot more people because it is not something that's rigid and formulaic, but it does follow a style a, a again, a a method that I have seen work in many stressed out, particularly busy people. You have this problem of being overstimulated and, and not necessarily having a sleep disorder, a medical problem, but having disorder sleep through behaviors and patterns and, and training of life.   Stephen Matini: Before we we're talking about electronics, you know, we all know some people more than others that it would be great to give ourselves some space and time without any sort of digital stuff because that interferes with our sleep. In terms of diet, what to eat in the evening, like I understand your approach is so much more holistic and comprehensive, but is it, is anything like really practical that people could be right away mindful of what to eat or not to eat in the evening based on your experience? Kali Patrick: Well there is a whole chapter in the book about eating. It is certainly related just to stress is related to sleep, so is eating, so was exercise, so was light, so was so many different things, which is part of why I called the book Mastering Your Sleep Puzzle, right? 'cause There's so many small components of things that influence our sleep, again, positively or negatively. So being aware of that and knowing that is part of the solution and most people have that sense of, of what's going on for themselves. But caffeine is something that lasts in your system for a lot longer than, you know, people think sugar is often a problem for people, especially as they age In the evening, for example, I used to be able to eat to drink coffee with dinner or to have a chocolate cake for dessert, whatever. But now not so much where you learn to adapt. We learn to pay attention and see the connection and then to where the gap and say, okay, so now when I have my chocolate cake, it's at lunch because I want my chocolate cake, right? and I want my sleep. So I make an adjustment. Then I have everything that I want if I have a light dinner because I often eat more for lunch than I do for dinner. Sometimes I don't eat enough and then I find that, well I'm hungry before bed. You don't wanna go to bed hungry because a stomach growling is going to keep you awake. You're not gonna be able to relax. So then I eat a little something just enough to take away that feeling of hunger. I think I do say in the book, what's interesting about food and sleep I think is that you probably have experienced that when you're hungry, when you're ready to eat, you feel a little tired, right? The energy goes down because the fuel is gone. So it's almost like you wanna time the bedtime with that feeling of the energy going down. And digestion of course is an active process. So the, the more that is in the stomach to be digestive, the more active and stimulated your system's going to be. So there is that balance. And again, for every person, we don't wanna be going to bed and having blood sugar crashes or wake up at two in the morning when blood sugar often does funny things too. So again, it's learning what works for your system and then making those, those changes to adapt. And it will change throughout a person's life for sure.   Stephen Matini: And sometimes it gets so tough because of the, also the culture. Like, you know, I live in Italy and Italians for the most part eat around 8:00 PM and I think they have lunch probably 1:00 PM Of course it changes from person to person, but roughly, but what happens, a lot of people enjoy to go, you know, to dinner like at nine o'clock, at nine 30. And it's something that I love the social component, but I just cannot do it. I mean, that means that if I do that, either I don't eat a thing or if I eat, then I'm gonna be super, you know, harshly punished, you know, doing my sleep. So, and, and it's difficult sometimes with some people, you know, explaining that, that you're not trying to be finicky or difficult. It just really, you know, I cannot afford and not to sleep because then tomorrow is a million different things that I need to do, you know, for sure. We talked about different things from different angles about sleep and so much more. Is there anything in particular that you think would be helpful for the people listening to this episode to focus on as a starting point? Kali Patrick: What I see a lot and hear a lot from people is all the things that haven't worked. I think we, we started off with this, right? I've tried this, I've done that, I've done this. But yet many people are still doing those things. And again, this is an example of where if you're not sure if it's working for you and especially if it's creating stress, then drop it. I see people who have 12 step bedtime routine too much and they're still not sleeping 'cause they're seeing me, right? They're coming for a consultation. So why do it? It's not helping you let it go, start fresh, right? When you wake up in the middle of the night, people go through that file drawer of, well I can breathe like this or I can do this meditation, or I could do this visitation, or I can count sleep or I can do this, or I can get up and have a da da da da da. And then you can hear the busyness, the stress coming in the mind, right? So there's all these options. Choose one thing when I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm going to do this and then do that thing for a month. At least don't worry about whatever other options you see. You go on, you go on social media, you find, oh there's this new technique, right? There's a new app, there's a new this, there's a new net, forget it, you're doing your thing. There's so many things that can work, but it's like digging a bunch of shallow wells. You're never gonna hit water. You have to focus in on something that sounds like it's going to be enjoyable. That sounds like you think it's going to help, that maybe you feel in your gut, you know, it's going to help me, right? Just focus in on that and let all the other stuff drop away for a time and see what happens. Because again, for a lot of people, there's this increased focus on getting better sleep, which on the one hand is great. Yes, we need to pay attention to this area that we've perhaps neglected for a time, but there can be a hyper focus on it that does more harm than good. Again, this whole conversation really has been about how do we narrow the focus? How do we create some space for ourselves and let what's not helping and what's not the focus drop away? I think that's really the theme of what we've been saying in so many different way.   Stephen Matini: I love it because it seems to me a positive strength approach essentially. Like rather than seeking some solution, you know, there's already a bunch of stuff that if you just pay attention to it, you can tap into it and just to get the whole sleep pattern perfecting a better. Kali Patrick: Yes. And many people need help with that, right? Because we are so conditioned. I mean that's, that's how I'd partner with people. I help them shift their focus and sometimes shift their mindset or shift how they're thinking about making healthy choices, right? How do I talk to my partner about sleeping separately? How do I tell my friends, I'm not trying to be antisocial. How do I know what's the best thing we can, we can talk about that and we can figure that out together and then approach the method with some curiosity. Well, what happened when I tried that? Right? Let's pay attention and let's really see what worked, what didn't? How do we do more of what does work? How do we rely on what you already know? And your strengths And your abilities and what you have been able to accomplish? There are so many people sometimes who say, well I haven't had an experience of good night's sleep in a really long time. And then we have a conversation and I find out, well, a week ago, yeah, I had a great night's sleep. Okay, well, so you're capable. Your body and your mind are capable of doing that. You've had that experience. It might not be a week ago, it might be two weeks ago or or three months ago, but you've done it. So it's possible people lose that hope sometimes when they're struggling that it's even possible for them to do it again. So we really reconnect with the positive and start to shift the mindset around what can I do and what is working and how do I just do more of that?   Stephen Matini: Well, Kali, this evening, I think inevitably I will think about you for sure and all the wonderful things that you shared with me. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I've learned a lot. Kali Patrick: Oh great. Thank you. It's been my pleasure speaking with you.