Coaching Executive Mindsets

I can’t believe it’s taken me SO long to share this conversation with the Amazing Elise Foster.

Elise is a powerful coach, an accomplished author, and a friend. She’s the co-author of The Multiplier Effect with Liz Wiseman and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom with Warren Berger (who’s written several bestselling books on powerful questions).

She was a thinking partner for me when I was in the early stages of writing my second book, and I was shocked and honored when she decided to come to my Facilitation Masterclass and even more shocked and honored when she actually got something out of it - proving that it really is more about what they practice and the container I create than what I teach!

I’m also honored that she’s been a great member of the Conversation Factory Insiders’ group - we started 2 years ago with alums of the masterclass meeting monthly for experiments and intentional practice, and 2 years and 22 sessions later, we’ve all learned a tremendous amount about leading groups online. Elise was kind enough to lead a session for the community on the QFT, a Question Formulation Technique from the Right Question Institute which has shifted how I think about Powerful Questions and how I coach teams on them, too.

In this conversation, I wanted Elise to unpack not just some of her favorite “Eye Opener” warmup exercises to help get teams to think differently, but also how she thinks about bringing them into sessions with teams, and why they matter.

Lots of folks talk about icebreakers - and they can be helpful to help us connect to each other from afar…but they are such a broad class of activities - they can include games like “Two truths and lie” which are just about connecting people as humans or “three things”, a classic improv game which helps folks just warm up their brains.

Priya Parker asks folks to check into the chat with where they are and what actual substance is beneath their feet, to help ground and connect us.

Eye-openers are both about what we do, as leaders and coaches of people in the moment, in order to create an experience for people…and eye-openers are also about how we help people reflect and unpack that experience and how to connect it to a larger idea about transformation and development.

Elise kicks our conversation off by talking about the “Hand Clasping Game”, a classic exercise that you can try now since we talk about it, but don’t give it enough time to “breathe” in the conversation.

Just clasp your hands together naturally. Of course, this assumes you have two hands. If this doesn’t apply to you, I hope you can imagine the process.

Now, unclasp your hands and “reclasp them” but shift hands - whatever hand was “pinky out” let the other hand be the “pinky out” hand. Elise calls this “reversing the weave” of your hands.

What do you feel?

Discomfort. Oddness. Weirdness.

That is a raw, visceral experience. Now, the magic happens when Elise unpacks this experience, and applies it to the context she works in - Leadership Transformation. 

Having a toolbox or a mental “file” of these exercises can be great…in fact, I have a whole online course about them. But as Elise and I discuss, having the wherewithal to bring one of these out in a session also takes some guts and some faith.

You take some trust the team has in you and burn it…risk it on an edgy experience…and hopefully you earn that trust back, with dividends, at the end of the unpacking.

Also worth noting is that this is the second episode on the theme of “An experience is worth a thousand slides” when it comes to coaching executive mindset shifts. The first conversation was with Jeff Gothelf, most notably the co-author of Lean UX, where we talked about the Vase and Flowers exercise, another powerful eye-opener that I love very much.

This episode is short and sweet, so without further delay, enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Elise Foster

Online Icebreakers Course

Coaching Executive Mindsets Part One

Minute 1

Daniel Stillman:

You said the stock and trade of your work is getting people to lean into discomfort. The clasping hands game is like what I would almost call a micro eye-opener. When and how do you bring that exercise into your work to unlock a shift for people?

Elise Foster:

There are times when I started with it, where it's a new team and they've already talked about their current discomfort and they've said, "I want to make some changes." Then I'll bring it in at the start and have them clasp their hands naturally and then reverse the weave. The look on their face is almost this quizzical look of, "Why am I doing this?" And then I ask for their reflections. "What was that like for you?" And they talk about how unnatural it is and it's easy to go into and that's what you're likely to experience as you try on any new leadership behavior, is you try to engage with people on your team differently. You're going to experience that unnaturalness and you're going to want to back to your natural state. What does that mean for you and your team and your team's effectiveness if you keep reverting back to the natural state?

And I think the other moment of insight, though, that I'm just thinking through is most people know changing leadership behavior is really hard. And I think the biggest aha is even when you walk into something knowing it's really hard and prepared for that level of difficulty, we don't recognize how easy it is to revert back.

Minute 4

Daniel Stillman:

It's a cycle of concrete experience, reflection, and then connection and forward thinking. I think all of those components are required to have a complete cycle of what I would call eye opening or aha-ing.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, and I think what's coming to mind for me when you say that is the slides are the contents and a lot of training experiences and developing experiences tend to sit squarely in the put more information in and you'll get better results out. And they don't focus enough on, "Wait a minute, the shape of the container might just need to change." And that's really what has to happen in leadership change is, "I have to start thinking about it differently. It's not just adding more stuff in, it's about how do I make sense of that stuff in new ways."

Minute 17

Daniel Stillman:

So, I'm wondering what you do that the line from Henry V is, "How do you screw up your courage to the sticking place?" What do you do to make you, yourself, feel like you can get away with whatever thing you're going to pull out of your hat?

Elise Foster:

Some of it's just being bold and trying it but I think some of it's in the set up. As I set up the session and letting people know, setting up the tone that it's going to be experiential. So, part of leadership is a thing you do and a set of instructions, if you will, that you try to implement each time, but it's also how you feel when you're doing it. And so we're going to weave those two together. There's going to be a little bit of an idea that we're going to play with. And notice I used the word play because there's going to be some experience that goes along with that and a lot of leadership, in my mind, is really about experimenting because even if you have a playbook that has worked reasonably well for you, when you add on a new team member or a new challenge that your team is facing, that playbook, exactly as you ran it before, may not work tomorrow.

Elise Foster:

So, as a leader, you have to start to be able to sense into and notice, "Oh, well this thing was working. Why is it no longer working and what's the little experiments I can run to see what's going on and how I might rewrite that play?"

More About Elise

Early in her career, Elise Foster was happy as an engineer, managing high-profile global projects to solve complicated problems. But, it wasn’t long before she realized she wanted to solve different types of problems. Today, Elise is a leadership coach who enables education and business executives to unlock their potential and achieve even greater success. She is well-versed in the field of leadership and collective intelligence within education systems and is the co-author of The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, which hit shelves in March 2013. As a Multipliers Master Practitioner for the Wiseman Group in Silicon Valley, Elise guides leaders on using their intelligence to make everyone around them smarter and more capable. Her clients include leading educational institutions and corporations such as the Chicago Public Schools and Abbott Labs. She is passionate about working with early career and seasoned professionals and she delivers effective workshops and coaching.

Elise wasn’t always this passionate about her work. She took a chance and changed from a life in engineering to one in training and development, becoming a management fellow at Harvard University where she worked with faculty, staff, and students. Later she made her way to Indiana University (Kelley School of Business) where she coached more than 200 MBA students. Her path also includes a stop as an adjunct faculty member, teaching and mentoring local college students.

She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in education from Harvard University. She is a wife and mother of one school-aged daughter; she and her family enjoy traveling and exploring new cultures together. In her spare time, Elise volunteers with the Lilly Foundation Scholarship and Youth Leadership Bartholomew County where she works to uncover the genius in each high school student she encounters.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

This computer, okay. Elise, thanks for making the time to have this little conversation with me. So, where we just ended is where we're going to start. You said the stock and trade of your work is getting people to lean into discomfort. The clasping hands game is like what I would almost call a micro eye-opener. When and how do you bring that exercise into your work to unlock a shift for people?

Elise Foster:

So, it's a great question and I think it's one of the things I'm trying to lean more into is the emergence of things. And so instead of building it into an agenda, I'm looking for the opportunities to take a pause. There are times when I started with it, where it's a new team and they've already talked about their current discomfort and they've said, "I want to make some changes." Then I'll bring it in at the start and have them clasp their hands naturally and then reverse the weave. The look on their face is almost this quizzical look of, "Why am I doing this?" And then I ask for their reflections. "What was that like for you?" And they talk about how unnatural it is and it's easy to go into and that's what you're likely to experience as you try on any new leadership behavior, is you try to engage with people on your team differently. You're going to experience that unnaturalness and you're going to want to back to your natural state. What does that mean for you and your team and your team's effectiveness if you keep reverting back to the natural state?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So that gives them a burst of energy from insight, I presume. There's this moment of insight where your skills in peeling the onion, unpacking, and letting them just sit with that experience gets them to an aha moment.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, most people, they reflect and they're like, "Wow, I didn't think something so small could be so hard." And I think the other moment of insight, though, that I'm just thinking through is most people know changing leadership behavior is really hard. And I think the biggest aha is even when you walk into something knowing it's really hard and prepared for that level of difficulty, we don't recognize how easy it is to revert back.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah. So the thing that we were talking about right before that thing was the idea of what I call underselling and over delivering versus overselling and under delivering. Always a better position to be in. There's not a giant lead-in. There's not a huge drum roll into this activity. You're looking for a moment to sort of insert that pause, that opening of thought. It's not like it's specifically in an agenda for you.

Elise Foster:

Exactly. It's one of the things that I'll have... I haven't thought of it in this way, but I'll have a list of things that I could do in a session just to tickle my brain before I go into it. So they can pop into my awareness more readily than if I didn't have this set of things available to me and the clasping of the hands is one that I do have available and when I hear people start talking about their difficulty changing and how easy is it to revert back. To use the overused term these days, the somatic experience of feeling that...

Daniel Stillman:

Is it overused? I feel it could be used more by more people, but...

Elise Foster:

I guess it depends on what circles you run in. In the circles I run in, everything is about the somatic experience.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Let's use a better word. You're giving them a visceral experience of an idea. This brings in my new favorite watercolor that an experience is worth a thousand slides. Right, because you could give them a whole slide on that and I'm sure there's somebody who's got... No offense to anybody who's listening. It's like, you could explain that in a slide deck but people have to do it and then they have to have you ask them a question and have some silence while they kind of struggle and think about it and then they need you to connect it. It's a cycle of concrete experience, reflection, and then connection and forward thinking. I think all of those components are required to have a complete cycle of what I would call eye opening or aha-ing.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, and I think what's coming to mind for me when you say that is the slides are the contents and a lot of training experiences and developing experiences tend to sit squarely in the put more information in and you'll get better results out. And they don't focus enough on, "Wait a minute, the shape of the container might just need to change." And that's really what has to happen in leadership change is, "I have to start thinking about it differently. It's not just adding more stuff in, it's about how do I make sense of that stuff in new ways."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah. So, let's connect this back to 1713 because I remember your aha when you went through that game for the first time. You're like, "Wait a minute. I can use this." And I think you're still on your journey of bringing it into... It's not in your tickler file, where you're like, "Oh, I can definitely bring this in." So, I'm wondering if you can talk about your arc of the aha you got trying it out in a low stakes way and then maybe we can go deeper into the mechanics of the thing, potentially.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, the two things that I remember most vividly from that experience was how little I know about the year 1713 and virtually everyone else knew about the year 1713 in that session, but how much that lack of knowledge kind of put us on equal playing ground. Just to set the stage of it, you brought together a group of people who didn't know each other at all. There might have been one or two people who knew each other, but the vast majority of us didn't know each other and it was a nice entry point to come in where we're all on this unstable footing and kind of feeling uncomfortable. So I think it created safety for people not to know and it created an awareness for me that there's a whole host of things we think we know a lot about but we don't.

Daniel Stillman:

In that we can't explain it perfectly to someone who has no knowledge of it.

Elise Foster:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

So, I'm curious. I mean, so, the way I think of 1713. One of the things I love about it is... For those of you listening, it's an improv game where one person has to explain a thing to someone else who pretends to be from 1713, which is super fun because I think there's this idea that explain it to your mom, explain it to your grandma. And I'm like, "That's kind of sexist and ageist." So, let's be chronoist. There's nothing particularly controversial about just pretending to be from several hundred years ago and not understanding an iPhone. Which, by the way, I think I've seen one of the perfect introductions to it which is like explain an iPhone to someone from 1713. But I'm curious. You found an opportunity to bring it into your work in a low stakes way and you had some learnings and insights from it.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, so from the day we did that session, I'm like, "Where can I use this?" And one of the challenges is and I think part of it is I'm probably making it too big a thing. Like, "Okay, I need to insert this thing." And maybe if I did have it in that tickler file it might be easier. I didn't have, and I still haven't quite found what is the direct connection to this particular team effectiveness program or this particular leadership development program to use it, but I did have an opportunity. I was part of a three-day virtual conference and they were looking for people to host 90-minute sessions and then people to host 30-minute kind of in-between sessions. And I thought, "This is a great opportunity to play with some of these icebreakers." It's a super safe space and it's with other people who do a lot of online facilitation but are still in that transition phase of, "Well, I used to do all this in person, so I'll just take my slides and bring them up onscreen and do it that way." And so I thought it'd be a fun exercise. So, it was super fun. People had a lot of fun playing 1713 and then my all-time favorite game that I changed the name of to make it Seven-Second Animals.

Daniel Stillman:

Hey, just for the record, it was taught to me as Three-Second Animal and I changed it to Five-Second Animal because I thought that was too cruel. I think you're being way soft on your participants by making it Seven Second Animal. If I can go on record.

Elise Foster:

I am fully aware of that and I have a feeling the people that I shared it with will make it Nine- or Fifteen-Second Animal because-

Daniel Stillman:

Slippery slope.

Elise Foster:

But the couple things that I learned. One, people experienced this experience of not knowing in two ways. One, I have no idea what happens in the year 1713. And two, I don't know how to explain something that I do every day. And some people really leaned into it an got super creative and had a lot of fun with that piece of, "How do I get really creative about talking about these Zoom screen windows?" And the learning that I had, though, is... I had people and we did two rounds and it was as much an eye opener as it was a way to get to know and have a familiar face on the screen. So in between the two rounds, somebody said, "Oh, are we going in with the same topic?" And I thought, "Well, here's an opportunity and if they wait, it'd be emergent. And oh, well I had planned the same topic but what if we try a new topic? What topic would you like?" And the topic that they went with had to do more with the pandemic and this global reach of the pandemic.

Elise Foster:

When people came back, you noticed a different tenor in the conversation because people could relate back to understanding plagues and different things like that in the year 1713. And so the content area, the topical thing that you have people explain, I think, is really important. If there's any way to connect it back to a time when we didn't have the kinds of technology we have now. I think you'll have an experience, it won't, maybe, be the eye opening experience you want it to be.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so there's so many things that that lights up for me and one is my own preference for... There's what I would call a pure icebreaker. Which is like, "Hey, name, rank, and serial number." Classic and it's barely even an icebreaker or like two truths and a lie. No offense, but it just doesn't do anything for me, as you know. I've said this before. To me, something like 1713 does warm people up. It does break ice but it is doing it about, potentially, content. And it's especially valuable. When I think about the finger clasping exercise, it's about discomfort and leaning into transformation. 1713, for me, is about connecting people to universal human needs and experiences, which in the product innovation and product design world, the idea of jobs to be done or user goals or personas.

Daniel Stillman:

Actually, the first time I used this, and this is super relevant to what you're going do for a facilitation Friday. It was at a hybrid meeting. An unintentionally hybrid gathering where there were like four or five people in person and maybe five or six people remotely because they didn't realize they were supposed to come in for this meeting. It was part of a 5G innovation lab that I was helping Verizon run and 1713 is the perfect game for a startup founder who's trying to design some internet of things sensor array for them to try to explain that in the most basic fundamental human components. It is grounding. And it worked fairly well for them to share their own insights after they're paired up experiences. I can pair up the remote people and the physical people and the remote and the physical people can still tell the story of their insights to each other.

Daniel Stillman:

That, to me, is the function of leaning into discomfort. You have that connected to a group need and from an innovation transformation perspective. That's what I connect 1713 to. It's like, "Oh, these people need to understand jobs to be done because their ideas are way out here and they need to get them right back down on the ground level of a person with a goal." And those things, the whole idea of jobs to be done is that it is durable. Like you said, with the pandemic, people have had that need, "How do I manage myself and my family when I can't go out and when I can't talk to people?" Like, that's something that happened and has happened and will, unfortunately, keep happening.

Daniel Stillman:

So I think it's like, when people say, "Oh, I need an icebreaker or a warmup for our gathering," I'm like, "Well, what do you want to do? What is your goal? What is the transformation you want to unlock for that group of people?" And I think that's what's interesting to me because I can hear you do that for your groups. You're thinking to yourself, "What do I need to unlock for them?"

Elise Foster:

Yeah. Well, what you're raising for me is two things. On the leadership transformation side, so much of the change is more elusive. It's not a durable good. It's not a thing I can see, touch, or feel. And so it has me puzzling through, what is that connection that 1713 could make within the context of their business and when you pitched the idea of having this conversation it had me thinking about an IT leadership team that I'm likely to be working with soon. When I think about the IT systems that exist today and what they're trying to do today to connect their global business, that could be a really good grounding piece, to start with 1713 to ground them in the work that they do and why it's so important for them to be effective as a leadership team.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, the thing that was bouncing around my head is I think sometimes people feel like, "I can't do this with a group of senior folks because they just want some slides. They want me to tell them what's what and they're going to think I'm bullshit or something and I'm going to have to sell it to them." So, I'm wondering what you do that the line from Henry V is, "How do you screw up your courage to the sticking place?" What do you do to make you, yourself, feel like you can get away with whatever thing you're going to pull out of your hat?

Elise Foster:

Some of it's just being bold and trying it but I think some of it's in the set up. As I set up the session and letting people know, setting up the tone that it's going to be experiential. So, part of leadership is a thing you do and a set of instructions, if you will, that you try to implement each time, but it's also how you feel when you're doing it. And so we're going to weave those two together. There's going to be a little bit of an idea that we're going to play with. And notice I used the word play because there's going to be some experience that goes along with that and a lot of leadership, in my mind, is really about experimenting because even if you have a playbook that has worked reasonably well for you, when you add on a new team member or a new challenge that your team is facing, that playbook, exactly as you ran it before, may not work tomorrow.

Elise Foster:

So, as a leader, you have to start to be able to sense into and notice, "Oh, well this thing was working. Why is it no longer working and what's the little experiments I can run to see what's going on and how I might rewrite that play?"

Daniel Stillman:

So, what I'm hearing you say, and I think is very true is you have to set up that they're coming into a space that is going to be different. You can't sandbag them entirely but there is also a little big of sandbagging where you... I'm hearing in your tee up, it's like, "Hey, everyone. Leadership is about experimentation and so we're going to run an experiment together, right? So bear with me, this might feel uncomfortable. Everyone stand up and dot, dot, dot."

Elise Foster:

Yeah, exactly. And then inviting them in that to experience their discomfort and notice what was uncomfortable for them. What was the voice in their head saying? Was it, "I'm going to look like a fool in front of my companions?" Is it that, "I just don't think there's anything we can learn from this." What's their self talk? "I have better things to be doing. I have a problem to be solving."

Daniel Stillman:

But this is profound, Elise, because I think we often feel like as folks who are coming in as change agents to coach a group of folks... I'll just say for myself, I know people are like, "Daniel, tell us what to do." Right? And the whole, "Fill us up with more knowledge so that our knowledge cup is full so that we can just pour it out on everyone else." The idea that it's my job to make them sit with some discomfort, that's something that I strongly identify with. It is my job to get them to sit with this uncomfortable moment of, "What was that like? How would you connect this to your work?" Because I have a little bit of faith that they will have an insight. But I think there is a feeling of abject terror in myself and everyone else when you pull one of these things out that maybe it won't land. Maybe it won't connect. Right? Maybe they won't have an insight.

Elise Foster:

Yes, and what you're raising for me is sometimes they won't, but they will still try to convince you they have because they play along really, really well.

Daniel Stillman:

Right, right. Yeah. Confabulation. People have had an experience and if all they say was, "That was uncomfortable and I hated that," then we can still work with that, presumably.

Elise Foster:

Presumably, but there's also, I think, the other element to this is I think, in my experience anyway, is you can get a room full of people who all had an experience together and there's one person for whom it was really profound and then everyone else is like, "Oh, it was really profound for them. Maybe it should have been more profound for me, so I'll add something in that makes it sound like it was profound for me." And there's not a lot you can do with that and you probably won't know for whom it was really profound. I think, though, creating the space for people to have the reflective moment there and some sharing gives people something to take away and hopefully further reflect on.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. So, when we think about how to do the workshop math to include these things, I think there has to be some popcorning of people's experiences in. And depending on how large your group is, that can be a lot or a little. And if we want to add on your experience I doing this, I think you always need a warmup to your warmup. So, I think what you did in the group was great, where you said, "Okay, let's do it with something straightforward that we all know and then let's do it with something stranger that's harder for us." I mean, these things take time. I think this is actually the biggest challenge that I'm having with this executive leadership team session that we're doing. It's like the max we can get is two hours with... these are very, very senior people from a major global brand and me and my internal [inaudible 00:22:51] are having this little battle over... She's like, "Can you do it in 30 minutes?" And I'm like, "No. I can't. It takes 45 because they have to think and we have to talk and we have to hear from everyone and that means she only has another hour and 15 to do all the slides."

Elise Foster:

It's probably been three or five times in the last week and a half where I have heard a colleague say, "You know, I have just decided, I mean, in this online world, you can't do anything more than two hours." I mean, you just can't do anything more than two hours because people check out. It's the max people can offer you and when I think about the experiences that we had in the Master Facilitation course and some really well held online facilitation, I don't think it's the length of time that matters. I think it's how you choose to use that length of time. So when you think about planning this, it drives me want to ask the question of the leaders you're working with, "Okay, what is driving your time window?"

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you for the pushback. You're not wrong, but I think part of the reality is people... It's about their commitment to anything. Like, nothing's that important because everything is important. To literally get four hours from them. Like, of course I could design a four hour session that would be deeply engaging and would be incredibly valuable, right? But the question is would they be willing to see it as an organizational imperative to give up a "full day." It was hard enough to get a full day back in the day. Now a full day is... I mean, people just have kids around their house and even the CEO of a major brand can have a baby or a pet walk across the screen. But the pushback is well taken and well provided.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, and I think it's also pushback, though, for my own thinking, to go, "Okay, why am I pushing for more time? What is it?" And so it just means you do really have to do the math. What is the way that I quickly bring them in and knowing... It was funny, I did a session for a big Latin American brand and I came on and I started talking and I'm immediately getting Zoom messages going, "There are no slides showing. There are no slides showing." I'm like, "I know there are no slides showing. Trust me, the slides will come but there aren't any slides right now." And so it was a great learning to set expectations for what is it that we're going to be up to here today and this may look and feel like some of what you've experienced in the online world and it may look and feel quite different.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So this goes to setting expectations and what my counterpart and I were talking about was when you're designing that arc of the conversation, I was like, "Let's just have a hot start." And we just let them know that we're not going to do introductions. They all probably know each other. They don't need to do that thing. As much as I love check-ins, this is not the time for it. Okay, we've got two hours with these folks. You're like, "Everyone, grab your pen and a piece of paper and we're going to draw a vase." And it's like, "Okay, that's where we're going." And I think the way I think about it is, "I'm going to burn some trust and hopefully I will earn it on the back end as quickly as possible.

Daniel Stillman:

You know, this is a very short burn and a very short cycle of the clasping hands if you're listening to this while you're folding laundry. The clasping of hands is a short burn and a strong payoff because you've done it a million times. 1713, because it's an improv game and requires either a fishbowl conversation and two very, very brave volunteers and then potentially a breakout session and then a popcorn coming back. It's a 30 minute set piece and so you have to really want to help people understand jobs to be done is the way I would put it or that we don't understand who our product is for or we can't explain it to ourselves or to each other in our organization. You talk about the IT silos that you're talking about. Like, "Can we actually explain all of our silos to each other? Right? And if we can't, then that's aha, we can't. But that means that we don't understand them."

Elise Foster:

Yeah. I think the word aha is kind of ringing true to me in this conversation. The work to be done is to create a container so that everybody can have an aha no matter where they are in the process. For some people the aha is going to be a big huge thing and for other people, it's just going to be, "Oh, I realize how uncomfortable that is and maybe I need to get more comfortable with discomfort." And other people are going to go, "Oh, I totally see why I have abandoned that thing I have been so committed to doing."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. There's one thing that I'm really taking away from this, because I know our time is growing nigh. This idea of the bell curve of people's experience and that it's okay that somebody's going to be like, "Wow, Elise you changed my life. I never thought about leaning into discomfort." And somebody will be like, "I don't really get it, but I can see other people are..." And then this person in the middle is like, "I see other people are getting it and so that's kind of interesting." And that that's okay because what you've done is you've given them an experience together and they get to talk about it, unpack it, and potentially own it and it can sometimes just become a metaphor. Luckily it can become a new piece of languaging for people. So like, "How are we leaning to this exercise or can we explain this to somebody from 1713 or are we building a vase or a way of experiencing flowers?" Which is another exercise I may be sharing in this workshop. I think it's profound to give people a shared experience.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, thank you for that and I think it's profound and we can't know how much it nudges the system. That experience is something that might not take hold for 18 months. And 18 months later, something major happens because of that experience and we'll never, ever know that.

Daniel Stillman:

Boy, that is heartbreaking, though, because this work is hard enough, right? And transformation doesn't happen with the snap of a finger. It takes time. So yeah, it sounds like one thing you remind yourself is, "This is a seed I have planted," and to trust that it will find and take root.

Elise Foster:

Yeah, and if you have more than one opportunity with them, what do you notice in the soil consistency and what new nutrients do you need to bring in to help it grow just a little bit faster if that's what you're going for?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah. You know, we can accelerate it by providing some heat and some focus, but it's a balance. I'm growing seeds right now, so this is very much a take-home for me. It's like, you can build a greenhouse but you can get too much moisture and then you have mold. Right? You can overcook it, right?

Elise Foster:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So I think holding these experiences lightly and just being like, as my mother would say, "Everyone is here to contend with themselves." Right? We're providing them an opportunity to have an experience. We can't force them to have an experience.

Elise Foster:

Right, and the more you try to force it, the more mold you grow.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Elise, anything we haven't talked about? Anything I haven't asked you that I should have asked you about this idea? We've covered a lot of really interesting ground on this.

Elise Foster:

No, I think I just want to say thanks. It was a really fun conversation and something new always is sparked when we have a conversation. So thank you for that.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. Yeah, I'm leaving with this, like, "You can't force someone to have an experience. It's an opportunity." And to remind myself and everyone else, it is a risk and the payoff can be there or not and that it's okay.

Elise Foster:

I mean, just with that, when I coach clients, there's something they're up to in between sessions and I always remind them, "Don't beat yourself up if you don't do the thing. Just pay attention to what got in the way of you doing the thing because we learn as much from you doing the thing as we learn from you not doing the thing."

Daniel Stillman:

Right. I agree, and they feel so bad. Negativity keeps them from trying again.

Elise Foster:

And we learn from that and so I think that's what your comment brought up for me. So, thanks again.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you, Elise. I will call scene. I'll stop recording.

The Conversation Factory Book Club: The Creative Empathy Field Guide with Brian Pagán

I'm so excited to share this book club experiment with you. I've been inviting alums of my facilitation masterclass and subscribers to the conversation factory insiders group into intimate conversations with authors of transformative books. In this conversation, my friend Brian Pagán, Author of "The Creative Empathy Field Guide," is our guest.

Brian points out early on that empathy is lauded by many thought leaders and no lack of articles - with the simple, inspirational message that empathy is good for you! And while that is absolutely true, what is missing is the how of empathy - not the why. Brain sought to fill this gap with his book, "the creative empathy field guide" which is a very short and very helpful book....and if you follow the links to Brian's website at the Greatness Studio, he's got a "greatest hits" selection from the book that you can access, free of charge.

So: Just to clarify our definitions: Creative Empathy is the use of empathy in the creative process. That is, we are making things and those things are not for us. So, we must learn to both connect with those people we are creating for and to detach from them - we have to tap into our skills of emotional agility to lean in and out of creative empathy.

One thing that you'll find most surprising (or at least I did!) is that creative empathy benefits from some of the tools of method acting - the ability to connect to your own experience and bring that experience into the present moment.

One thing that is missing from this conversation is my friend and guest from early in 2021, Dr. Lesely Ann Noel, who really helped me understand that there are limits to us-them dichotomies in design thinking and that designing for others can reinforce existing power dynamics, stereotypes and "othering" of people. Brian does address this in his book, but I recommend my conversation with Dr. Noel, DeColonizing Design Thinking. Dr. Noel has a complementary array of tools to help decolonize our thinking, like her Positionality Wheel which we turned into a Mural template to help you facilitate that conversation with your teams.

In this conversation, Brian and the Conversation Factory Insiders Community dives deep into The Empathic Design Process that Brian adapted: 

1. Discovery, 2. Immersion, 3. Connection, 4. Detachment

Discovery: As creators, we approach the other person’s world, which provokes our interest, curiosity, and willingness to empathize.

Immersion: We enter the other person’s world, look around, and absorb what we see without judgment.

Connection: Here, we resonate with the other person’s experience by recalling our own relevant experiences and memories.

Detachment: Finally, we leave their world to focus on creative action, before starting the cycle afresh.

Also check out Brian’s site for Free Creative Empathy Tools like an Ethical Design Checklist, his Journey Map Canvas and a Character Map Canvas (as an alternative to personas).

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Brian Pagán 

The Greatness Studio - What’s your superpower? 

Creative Empathy - The Greatness Studio

Brian Pagán on Twitter

Double Diamond: What is the framework for innovation? Design Council's evolved Double Diamond

Personas: "The word derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask"

Method Acting: "The method" is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions

For-With-Am-For: Shifting Perspectives as a key to the creative process: Discovery "I work for you", Immersion shifts to the 2nd person "I feel you", Connection shifts to the 1st person "I am you" and Detachment shifts to the 3rd person again "I work for you."

Minute 18

Daniel Stillman:

If you were to choose one tool, what is your favorite tool for getting people to connect? When you talk about it as a field book and you talk about tools and techniques when you're teaching teams about how to be more creative in the way they connect for creative projects, what do you feel is the tool that people really find the greatest leverage or connection or ease in? And maybe also which one's the hardest and the most struggling, but that they should get better at?

Brian Pagán:

I think the biggest... I hesitate to call it a connection technique because I think it's something that serves the entire inner loop, so it's for immersion and connection in that sense, but trigger cards and sensitizers as something that's in the book. These are... So if we look at the idea of sensitizers, any sensitizer is some sort of bit of information or some kind of story or some kind of personal thing that we share about someone in the targeted audience or in our group of people we're designing for, that allows us to emotionally connect with it. Somehow invites our resonance, our emotional resonance with that thing.

And one of the ways that we can create sensitizers are trigger cards. And in the book, I show trigger cards from Melina Lopez Reyes who is a graduated master's student. And she did her project, her graduation project in Mexico around victims of domestic abuse. And what she found was that whenever she was working together with government officials or people who run associations or sort of volunteer organizations that help victims of domestic violence, they... In ideation sessions, it was helpful for her to sort of prime people with stories from her interviews. So she talked with a lot of different victims and made their stories really easily digestible with these little cards that people can use.

So before an ideation session, she can distribute these cards to the participants of the ideation session, and either as part of the session itself or as part of the pre-read that before you actually join the session, you can go through and look at these trigger cards. And because they tell such intimate stories and real stories based on actual research, they allow us to emotionally resonate with what's going on and the experience of those people that we're actually going to be ideating for in the session itself.

Minute 21:

Daniel Stillman:

My last question before I unleash the other brains in this room is what is not in the book but should be? Because I know that happened to me.

Brian Pagán:

Oh yeah, for sure. There's so many things. What's not in the book and should be? What is going to be in the expanded version is something about the hierarchy of spiritual intelligence from Cindy Wigglesworth. And going back to our earlier talking about humanity and recognizing shared humanity, Cindy Wigglesworth came up with this thing called this hierarchy of spiritual intelligence, which is basically four stages of connection between people going from apathy to compassion.

So first it starts with apathy, like you don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever. And then there's sympathy, which is not quite empathy, or you feel sorry for someone, but you're still not really opening yourself and being vulnerable to putting yourself on their shoes or even trying to relate to them on that level. Then after that is empathy, where we actually recognize each other's humanity, we actually try to connect our own experiences with the other person's experience. And then we have compassion, which is where we take our empathy and our feelings of wanting to help this person and actually put them into action and do something about it. This is where we build a house or help the person out or give a hug or these, whatever compassionate action it happens to be. Or design an app for them, or whatever kind of thing. These are the four stages, let's say, of from how you get to compassion.

And just bringing those together and putting empathy in that context helps to understand that, one, if you can feel empathy for someone else, it basically forces you to recognize them as a human being and recognize their humanity because you're connecting your own experiences with their own too. So I think that's quite important and also shows that empathy can lead to compassion. It's hard to have compassion for someone if we don't have empathy for them first, if that makes sense. So those are the two key things that I'd like to bring in in the next version, let's say.

Minute 24

Erin Warner:

Could you explain the purpose and the value of detachment?

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely. So as far as I understand it, the difference between immersion and detachment is just the fact that it's hard for us to look objectively almost at something if we're still immersed in another person's world. Another way to say it could be that empathy exists out of two different components. There's the effective emotional component, and then there's the cognitive more rational component. And if we have too much of one without the other, then it can either be dangerous if we have just emotional empathy without rational empathy. But it can also just go too shallowly. If we don't connect emotionally, then we're not going to... We're not really having true empathy in that sense.

So I think by virtue of the fact that we go, we immerse ourselves in another person's world and then connect our own experiences with that, that's the inner loop. And then once we detach from that, then it gives us the psychological space and distance to be able to more effectively weigh the needs of the person in whom's world we just were immersed in, and everybody else, if that makes sense.

More About Brian

Hats I wear include speaker, actor, podcaster, writer, and UX consultant. Over the last 19 years, I’ve worked with around 40 clients, coached 16 startups, and traveled to 11 countries to give talks and teach classes.

I founded The Greatness Studio in 2016, Computer Drama in 2018, and MindFolk in 2020.

My home is with Hester Bruikman-Pagán in Zeeland (Netherlands), and I’ve loved avocados since before it was cool.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

I'm going to start recording in progress. Brian Pagán, thanks for being here for the Conversation Factory Book Club. And Chantel, Erin, and Jim, thanks for being here from the community to make the conversation so much more interesting than it would be if it was just me or just me and Brian. If it was just me by myself talking for the whole time, I don't think that would be that interesting at all. So thanks for making the time you all.

Daniel Stillman:

Brian, people can Google you, but what's important for us to know about you that we cannot find on the Google? What's important for us to know about you so we can get to know you before we get started?

Brian Pagán:

It's funny. I was just having a conversation with some students at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and a lot of students are doing projects around gender and gender identity. And we just went off on a tangent talking about how more common it is these days to be defined by what you're not in the sense that anyone who might be different from the mainstream or different from what we would consider a default in Western society, that we're just starting to define ourselves as like non-monogamous or non-binary or non this, non that. And it's, yeah, I think in some kind of way, I think that applies to me a lot as well. I remember having a T-shirt back in the day in Germany that said "Not quite normal." And I feel like if there's a sort of nutshell description of myself, I think that would be it.

Daniel Stillman:

Not quite normal.

Brian Pagán:

Maybe that's how I want, I pretend that I am. Maybe I'm just super normal and very boring, but then I think, oh yeah, if I pretend I'm not... But people think I'm more interesting. Maybe it's that. I don't know, but I definitely, yeah, don't feel like I fit into a lot of the default things of our society, if that makes sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that does make sense, and I identify with that, which is maybe why we hit it off. So Chantel, Erin, Jim, what you don't know is Jim and Brian and I met drinking I think in New Orleans as is common at an interaction, Information Architecture Conference like 2012. That was a really, really long time ago. And we reconnected recently and sort of found that the arcs of our careers from sort of user experience design to thinking about humans. And UX designers at one point sort of woke up to this idea of like, "We're the only people who talk about our customers in the same way that drug dealers do." That's one of the classic quips of like...

Brian Pagán:

Oh yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

They're people, and then also in sort of the coaching and transformation space. So Brian and I have a lot of overlap. We've had some really wonderful deep conversations. And he shared this book with me and I thought it would be a really interesting opportunity to share this book with you all.

Jim Burke:

Drinking happens in New Orleans?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It does.

Brian Pagán:

What? Shocking. Clutch the pearls.

Jim Burke:

And that's where the best conversations come from. The deepest thoughts come out of doing that.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, let's just say from heightened states of consciousness, Jim. There's lots of ways to get there.

Brian Pagán:

For sure. Yeah. I will say there were also musical instruments there. There was a lot of music, music playing, piano playing, and singing, and guitar playing, and stuff at the party we were.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that was a good party. A rare party. It was one of those... Somebody had rented a room that had one of those balconies. There's something... By the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't been to New Orleans... Show of hands, who's been to... Chantel, have you been there?

Jim Burke:

Who's been there? Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

You've been to New Orleans? Chantel, that's amazing. All the way from South Africa.

Chantel Botha:

Five years. Daniel, five years in a row. If you say "New Orleans," I say-

Daniel Stillman:

"When."

Chantel Botha:

... "Beads, beignets, and hurricanes."

Daniel Stillman:

The drink, not the atmospheric-

Chantel Botha:

Yes. No. The refillable cups with-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also jazz.

Brian Pagán:

Like this tall made out of plastic with a huge straw. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And crawfish. That's what's really important to me about them.

Chantel Botha:

And then some black magic if you're into that.

Daniel Stillman:

And some black magic. All right. So now we really know Brian. Excuse me. So I'm really curious as somebody who's written a book, how is the book, how did writing the book change you? What was like, this is maybe my meta question was like, what was it like for you to write a book about this and what has it done to you? Maybe not for you.

Brian Pagán:

That's a great question. I think the first thing would be that it made it lot less scary for me to write a book, if that makes sense. Just I guess the first time... Because I always knew that I wanted to write a book or write books. I've always been very interested in writing. And so I, for a long time, I had the fantasy of just writing a book. But doing it the way that I did with the publisher Bookboon, they had a specific process, and it's almost like they coach you through the whole thing, and that really helped me to just write the first one, if that makes sense. And most of the time, the first one's the hardest one, right? So I think after that, I guess just the internal change or internal shift for me is I feel much more confident as a writer. I feel much more confident in the idea of, could I write a book? Yeah. I know I can. I have proof. And also just articulating the ideas in such a way that other people can hopefully understand them.

Brian Pagán:

I'm really curious to hear you all's thoughts about this too. Because did I succeed or not? We'll see. But yeah, I think that was the biggest change was the internal change of having confidence and also more the content wise change of understanding the things that I wanted to write about better because I had to formulate them for other people.

Daniel Stillman:

And why empathy and why creative empathy? Why a field book?

Brian Pagán:

So empathy is something that I feel like we need more of in the world. I know there are people who don't necessarily agree with that with folks like Paul Bloom, for example, talk more about compassion than empathy. But in my mind, empathy is something that we need if we want to be able to have compassion for each other and treat each other more kindly.

Brian Pagán:

And if there's... I don't know. I feel like there's a general overwhelming understanding that we seem to be farther from each other as human beings than ever. And they're all kind of factors and stuff, but one way to get back through that is just to recognize each other's humanity, treat each other like people. And I feel like if we were trained in emotional intelligence, if we learned very practical things, techniques about how to regulate your own emotions, how to empathize with another human being, how to listen to each other, then the world would be a much better place with or without technology, if that makes sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, it does.

Brian Pagán:

You still hear me. I'm getting a message that my internet connection is unstable, so...

Daniel Stillman:

Oh no. I hear you loud and clear.

Brian Pagán:

I hope I'm not breaking up.

Daniel Stillman:

That's fine for me.

Brian Pagán:

Oh.

Daniel Stillman:

So I think it's really important to contextualize this because I think there's at least two layers here. Obviously, there's the human and day to day, but specifically you're coming from the context of product design and product innovation. And so that's where I think the empathy process and the sort of like the first question I have for you is a visual question. Well, it's because this diagram was new for me. And this... I mean, I love visuals. I love models. I love loops, especially when there's two of them, and this empathic design process, and for people who are listening, maybe you can describe it, how you found it, and why... I mean, because it's sort of like, to me it feels like the backbone, the beating heart of the book, if that's correct.

Brian Pagán:

It definitely is. For sure. For sure.

Daniel Stillman:

Also interestingly in the book, I don't think this is red, this little number three is red, but on Bookboon, it is, which is interesting. So maybe you can tell us about...

Brian Pagán:

So of course there are two versions of it. There's a color one for the digital, for the ebook, and for the just paper book I wanted to keep costs down and try to make sure that things are, for the environment they aren't too damaging. So I did everything here in monochrome black and white. So basically, it's all in just black ink, whatever.

Brian Pagán:

But yeah, to answer your question. So I definitely see this for me as the big theoretical backbone of everything. And for folks listening, basically it's two loops. There's a loop inside another loop. So it's a four-step process and the two steps in the middle, so steps two and three, form their own sort of loop, if that makes sense. So you go through the first stage is part of the outer loop. And then in the second step, you go into the inner loop, to the third step, and this is immersion and connection. And then you leave that inner loop and go outside again to the outer loop with the fourth step. And just to really quickly talk through that, the four stages are discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment. Yes, exactly like you've drawn it with the thing on the screen.

Daniel Stillman:

Terribly.

Brian Pagán:

But it does make sense in that way because it's sort of almost like a railroad track in the sense that you go into one and go onto the other one. And if you look at-

Daniel Stillman:

So discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment.

Brian Pagán:

And detachment, yes. Yeah. So if we look at like a traditional design process, we already have discovery, immersion, and detachment. Discovery would be something like when we do market research and we notice that there are, I don't know, there are millennials who would like to have some kind of product and they're not getting it yet, and their needs aren't being met for some reason. And then people would start doing UX research. This is where we do immersion, where we do ethnographic studies, or they gather information about people.

Brian Pagán:

And then we skipped already to detachment. This is where we start designing stuff. And what empathy does, and the reason why, and just to go back to your earlier question, why creative empathy? Creative empathy for me is empathy applied to a creative process. And that's why it's a field guide as well. Because I wanted to make it very practical. Most of the stuff around empathy these days... I don't want to talk trash about anybody, but a lot of it is about how great empathy is and how it can help our lives, but there's not really much around how do I get started? Steps one, step two, step three in order to do empathy.

Daniel Stillman:

Just by, just super meta, that's very empathic of you to not talk trash about the other empathic thought views.

Brian Pagán:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

I can really see their point.

Brian Pagán:

Exactly. Yes. I try to... But so this connection part, basically the thing about empathy is, it's twofold. One is that as designers, everyone's always talking about, "Yes, I'm customer obsessed and I want people to... I want to make things that people love. And I want people to really fall in love with my business and my brand," but we are not allowing ourselves in the creation process to be vulnerable towards the people for whom we're creating. Right? So we don't fall in love with them, but we expect them to fall in love with us. Right? And so this connection phase is when we actually, after immersion, after we've immersed ourselves in the world of another person through our research or through simulators or whatever, the connection phase is where we create space to reflect in our own experiences to understand that thinking about the last time that I felt the way that this person I'm observing is feeling.

Brian Pagán:

And then I can ask myself, what do I need when I feel like that? And if I can recall that in myself, this is another reason why I use a lot of acting techniques in the book, because acting is a lot about emotional recall and stuff, like bringing an emotional state into your mind so that you can use it. Once I get that into my head... Let's say I'm looking at someone and I can see that they're sad while they're interacting with a certain system. What do I need when I'm sad? I can recall that for myself. And then when I detach myself and start working on the actual solution, then I have an extra layer of insight and understanding into the sadness and the needs of the sadness around it. Does that make sense?

Daniel Stillman:

It makes a ton of sense. And I really want to highlight a phrase you said that was devastating, which is that we expect our customers to fall in love with us and our products, but we don't fall in love with them. And that's really profound because I think there's something fundamental about empathy that relies on humanity and equity. And I love the idea of truly bilateral relationships, of relationships among equals, and the idea that there should be for every action an equal and opposite reaction from my physics heritage. It's like, why-

Brian Pagán:

It's like Newtonian design.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, Newtonian design. It's like, and so now I get why it's in red, that the connection is so deeply important. And there's all these techniques that you have around it, like free writing and method acting, which I want to make sure we talk about. And that's why it's underlined in red, is that that's the step that you feel is missing in a traditional double diamond UX. Find a problem and then find a hole and then fill the hole process.

Brian Pagán:

And I will say another... If you don't mind, we'll just one more thing about the empathic design process. I don't necessarily see it as on a project level where you have a project that's discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment. I see the empathic design process very much as sort of a fractal kind of thing that can also apply within other stages of design processes. So for example, you just mentioned the double diamond. And the double diamond has four stages where you diverge and then converge and then diverge again and converge again. And within those stages, I feel like you can repeatedly do an empathic design process. It can be at every phase of a project. It can be every sprint. It can be every day. It can be that as a designer, you might be going through this process a few times a day as you're making decisions going forward through moving pixels.

Daniel Stillman:

It's fractal.

Brian Pagán:

It's very fractal in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So two things I want to say. By the way, if Chantel, Erin, Jim, if you need to or want to break in at any point and say, if there's something unclear, you want to go deeper in something, you don't have to save your questions to the question. We're all equal humans here.

Daniel Stillman:

And I guess the second thing that's coming up for me, because maybe this is the thing that we wouldn't know about you if we Googled you, or maybe it is, is your acting experience. I mean, it's in the book, but I think the reason I'm interested in this is the idea that all of us can and maybe should, not to should anybody, can and should bring all of the parts of ourselves to the things that we're doing. And it's really interesting that because you have this acting heritage, you're like, "You know what this is like? This is like method acting," thought no one else ever. Right? And so I don't know if that's a question or a comment or just like a tell me more about that. And also just to anybody, for everyone, I think it's just, it's so valuable to be able to bring all the parts of yourself to a challenge. So kudos for doing that. And also tell us more about method acting for people who don't know about the method.

Brian Pagán:

The method. I love that. Yeah. So your question, I mean, answering your question is going to touch on so many things because in creating the book, it was exactly bringing different parts of myself and different interests that I had together into one space because I'm an actor, but I'm also, I practice mindfulness and I noticed a lot of things there that could be useful for design practice that aren't necessarily taught as part of a design practice, which I think is like a missed chance. And we talk a lot about empathy and we talk about empathizing with personas and with fictitious characters or characters in a product development cycle, but actors have been doing this for 3,000 years, three-and-a-half thousand, 4,000 years, or however long people have existed, they've pretended to be other people, and-

Daniel Stillman:

For fun.

Brian Pagán:

For fun. Yeah. Or for money or whatever. To precipitate social change. But there's already a really wide existence of techniques and almost a science that we can lean on and inform ourselves with that we're just not even paying attention to, which I think is a shame. So this is my attempt at a first, let's say, interconnection between those different disciplines, mindfulness, acting, and design.

Daniel Stillman:

Right, because this is... I was just in Greece for my honeymoon. And so I stood in one of these amphitheaters on the goddamn Acropolis.

Brian Pagán:

I'm jealous. Wow.

Daniel Stillman:

And you're like, "This is a place." Right? And it's been occupied on and off since prehistoric times, right? So it's like this little divot in the hillside just was used as a divot in the hillside, and then somebody put rocks in it so people could sit down and not give muddy, which was very nice. But this was the thing about personas. The word persona comes from persona, to speak through, because when they did these... When they acted, they used these masks that also helped them project their voices to the hundreds and hundreds of people. And I think personas are these things that are thrown around in the design field, and finding out the origin of this word persona, to speak through, was mind-blowing. So tell me what that sparks in you, Brian, because I heard you, just like your yes.

Brian Pagán:

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's by creating a persona or a character, we let our target audience speak to us. So yeah, I mean it... Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Cool.

Daniel Stillman:

And maybe in terms of connection, if you were to choose, and this is a terrible question, one tool. If you were to choose one tool, what is your favorite tool for getting people to connect? When you talk about it as a field book and you talk about tools and techniques when you're teaching teams about how to be more creative in the way they connect for creative projects, what do you feel is the tool that people really find the greatest leverage or connection or ease in? And maybe also which one's the hardest and the most struggling, but that they should get better at?

Brian Pagán:

I think on the team level especially-

Daniel Stillman:

We can walk on two, both sides of that.

Brian Pagán:

For sure. I think the biggest... I hesitate to call it a connection technique because I think it's something that serves the entire inner loop, so it's for immersion and connection in that sense, but trigger cards and sensitizers as something that's in the book. These are... So if we look at the idea of sensitizers, any sensitizer is some sort of bit of information or some kind of story or some kind of personal thing that we share about someone in the targeted audience or in our group of people we're designing for, that allows us to emotionally connect with it. Somehow invites our resonance, our emotional resonance with that thing.

Brian Pagán:

And one of the ways that we can create sensitizers are trigger cards. And in the book, I show trigger cards from Melina Lopez Reyes who is a graduated master's student. And she did her project, her graduation project in Mexico around victims of domestic abuse. And what she found was that whenever she was working together with government officials or people who run associations or sort of volunteer organizations that help victims of domestic violence, they... In ideation sessions, it was helpful for her to sort of prime people with stories from her interviews. So she talked with a lot of different victims and made their stories really easily digestible with these little cards that people can use.

Brian Pagán:

So before an ideation session, she can distribute these cards to the participants of the ideation session, and either as part of the session itself or as part of the pre-read that before you actually join the session, you can go through and look at these trigger cards. And because they tell such intimate stories and real stories based on actual research, they allow us to emotionally resonate with what's going on and the experience of those people that we're actually going to be ideating for in the session itself.

Brian Pagán:

So for me, that's, I think, one of those measures or one of these techniques that takes very little effort and is quite easy to do, but it gives... The ROI is huge for this kind of thing. Does that answer your question?

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, it really does. My last question before I unleash the other brains in this room is what is not in the book but should be? Because I know that happened to me.

Brian Pagán:

Oh yeah, for sure. There's so many things. What's not in the book and should be? What is going to be in the expanded version is something about the hierarchy of spiritual intelligence from Cindy Wigglesworth. And going back to our earlier talking about humanity and recognizing shared humanity, Cindy Wigglesworth came up with this thing called this hierarchy of spiritual intelligence, which is basically four stages of connection between people going from apathy to compassion.

Brian Pagán:

So first it starts with apathy, like you don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever. And then there's sympathy, which is not quite empathy, or you feel sorry for someone, but you're still not really opening yourself and being vulnerable to putting yourself on their shoes or even trying to relate to them on that level. Then after that is empathy, where we actually recognize each other's humanity, we actually try to connect our own experiences with the other person's experience. And then we have compassion, which is where we take our empathy and our feelings of wanting to help this person and actually put them into action and do something about it. This is where we build a house or help the person out or give a hug or these, whatever compassionate action it happens to be. Or design an app for them, or whatever kind of thing. These are the four stages, let's say, of from how you get to compassion.

Brian Pagán:

And just bringing those together and putting empathy in that context helps to understand that, one, if you can feel empathy for someone else, it basically forces you to recognize them as a human being and recognize their humanity because you're connecting your own experiences with their own too. So I think that's quite important and also shows that empathy can lead to compassion. It's hard to have compassion for someone if we don't have empathy for them first, if that makes sense. So those are the two key things that I'd like to bring in in the next version, let's say.

Daniel Stillman:

I think that's absolutely wonderful. Well, you answered all of my questions, so I'm going to pass the mic over to Erin first because she took the most copious notes in the Google slide stock that I shared. So Erin, what-

Brian Pagán:

Super cool. Thank you for that too, by the way.

Daniel Stillman:

Ditto, Erin, what is left in your mind that you want to unpack since we've got Brian here?

Erin Warner:

I know. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for this book, Brian. Yeah, I do have some questions, and maybe I'm sure they reflect where I'm coming from in my experience, but could you talk a little bit more about detachment? And you said that's in the standard repertoire of design, but I'm not really coming from that world, and so the word rings a little almost negative to me. Could you explain the purpose and the value of detachment?

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely. So as far as I understand it, the difference between immersion and detachment is just the fact that it's hard for us to look objectively almost at something if we're still immersed in another person's world. Another way to say it could be that empathy exists out of two different components. There's the affective emotional component, and then there's the cognitive more rational component. And if we have too much of one without the other, then it can either be dangerous if we have just emotional empathy without rational empathy. But it can also just go too shallowly. If we don't connect emotionally, then we're not going to... We're not really having true empathy in that sense.

Brian Pagán:

So I think by virtue of the fact that we go, we immerse ourselves in another person's world and then connect our own experiences with that, that's the inner loop. And then once we detach from that, then it gives us the psychological space and distance to be able to more effectively weigh the needs of the person in whom's world we just were immersed in, and everybody else, if that makes sense.

Brian Pagán:

So if I go into your world and I want to create something for you, if I'm still immersed in your world in my head while I'm trying to create something for you, then I'm going to forget everyone else, and I'm going to make something that works for you, even if it maybe exploits someone else. But if I can detach first, then it gives me that bird's eye view again where I can do something that helps you, but then I can also balance the needs of other people, the people around you, maybe people, other passive stakeholders of whatever I'm designing, in such a way that you are helped without trying to hurt someone else, if that makes sense. Does that answer your question?

Erin Warner:

Yeah, definitely. And actually, now that I hear you saying it, that was in the book. I read it. But then hearing you say it, connecting it directly to the detachment phase really clarifies. Thank you.

Brian Pagán:

Thanks. That's a good note. Maybe I should make that more explicit.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll give you the transcript, Brian. Chantel, Jim, just in terms of following that thread, is there anything more that you wanted to probe at on that topic or a different topic? But first, I want to see if there's anything deeper on that that's worth following. Because I'll just say one thing that's coming. Oh, wait, Jim, was that... I couldn't... Was that your mouth moving? I can't tell.

Jim Burke:

No, no, no. Go ahead. I have a completely different thread to go and disrupt everything with.

Daniel Stillman:

No, that's great. I was just designing the conversation. I was like, should we go deeper before we go other, elsewhere? It's-

Brian Pagán:

You've got the conversation canvas in front of your face, don't you Daniel? I know you're like looking at it. Which one am I-

Daniel Stillman:

It's on my brain.

Brian Pagán:

It's burned.

Daniel Stillman:

It's burned on my brain. One of the things that's coming up for me is the classic example of somebody coming to you and being like, "I'm sad" or "I'm upset." Just on the one-to-one conversation basis, on the human basis of like, "I'm sad. I'm having a hard time," and somebody goes, "You know what you should do is blank." Right? And that's going straight from the cognitive without any of the emotional resonance. It's like, "Oh, I'm so sorry you're going through that. That sounds hard."

Brian Pagán:

Yeah. I would even go as far as-

Daniel Stillman:

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Count to 10.

Brian Pagán:

I would even take it farther and say that a response like that is sympathy rather than empathy. Because it's easy to just come with solutions. I don't have to be vulnerable with that. I don't have to sit with you in your pain or in your trauma or in your experience in order to give you solutions. I just say, "Oh, you know what you should do? Just do that and that." It's real easy.

Daniel Stillman:

I read an article about that. You should read it.

Brian Pagán:

Here. I'll send you a podcast.

Daniel Stillman:

And I think the other thing that's important about detachment is that there are choices that have to be made in a creative project sometimes. Right?

Brian Pagán:

Yeah. Always.

Daniel Stillman:

And trade-offs. And I think that's sort of the classic trope of the designer, because that's where... He's like just fighting for the user and the customer, and you don't understand what they need. It's like, well... And then there's the trade-off of like, well, how will this be profitable? How will this be paid for? It's capitalism.

Brian Pagán:

When I teach-

Daniel Stillman:

Sorry, Erin.

Brian Pagán:

... beginning... When I teach basic UX, I have a slide on it with a... It's like a spider web with a little spider in the middle. And I like to talk about UX being in the middle of the web. We have to balance the needs of... On the outside edges of the web, there's developers and business and the user, and then there's people around the user, and then there's maybe legal team, and then there's maybe some experts or whatever. And we're like, we have to balance all that stuff. It's not just user advocate. We have to think of all these other things and like you say, make trade-offs and everything like that.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. And I'll just say, sorry for... But when I talk about that, that is that cloud three-way Venn diagram of user focus, business focus, and engineering focus. I'm like, those are people. Money people matter too. They have concerns and they need to be listened to, and sometimes their feelings need to be assuaged, and we have to empathize with them. And so the tech people, they're like, "I can't do that."

Brian Pagán:

Those poor money people.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, those poor money people. But there's people behind it where it's not just about... It is about finding appropriate balance between those three fundamental forces.

Brian Pagán:

Of course.

Daniel Stillman:

All right. I'll stop tirading.

Brian Pagán:

No, thanks for pointing that out. It's a good one.

Daniel Stillman:

Ladies first. Chantel, what's on your mind? What's important for you to bring into the conversation?

Chantel Botha:

So Brian, thank you for the book. I loved it. I skim read it. And Daniel said to me, "It's a light read. You're going to love it." And I really did. And I'm looking at the book more in the context of almost if someone said to me, "I've got a magic wand. What would I change in the world?" I would probably want to put just a whack load of kindness and empathy in the world. I really think we need a lot more of this. I mean, your book should be a prescribed book for every human on the planet, I think.

Brian Pagán:

Thank you.

Chantel Botha:

And it, I think it should be, I think empathy should be taught at school. So I've got two questions for you. So the first one is the emotional interest, how to escalate someone's emotional interest. Because what I see, and I operate a lot in the service environment teaching call center people and service professionals how to survive their jobs, and how to start thriving, and how to find passion, and how to unleash the human potential. And really what I see in that environment, there's a lot of people that have gone on autopilot. It takes a lot less energy. They don't really want to connect. They don't really want to feel if someone says to them, "You need to fill in this form." And the client replies, "You know what, I can't fill in the form. My son's sick and they need to go to the doctor." They pick, "We really need the form be because before we can do anything," rather than taking the bait and saying, "I'm so sorry to hear about your son." So I mean, a lot of what we see is energy conservation. So how can I create motivation for someone to want to connect and want to feel, because my value proposition is not very compelling. Yeah. Hey, feel some empathy. You're going to feel like shit. You're going to be sad. You're going to feel someone else's pain. And then what? Like...

Daniel Stillman:

We need to work on your sales pitch, Chantel. That's for sure.

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely.

Chantel Botha:

Daniel, do you have time for me? We can brainstorm it together.

Daniel Stillman:

We have Brian here. I think he's... Hopefully, he's going to help you find another entry point into the conversation.

Brian Pagán:

Nope. Empathy sucks. I'm leaving. No. I think it's a... I love that you gave me some context around it as well, because I think... So I have two, let's say, responses to the question or to the scenario. I would say the first response, if it's about creating that motivation, I feel like for most of us, obviously not for everyone, but for most of the human beings on the planet, we have this already inside us. We are born with the desire to be social, to understand people, to be kind to each other. And I would even go as far as to say that that's one of the reasons why we've survived while Neanderthals and other forms of humanity have died out is because we work together with each other. We help each other out. We take care of little babies and stuff. We don't just run around and hunting all day.

Brian Pagán:

So I think it's inside, and one way to I think help that happen for call center employees, for example, would be to create more space for them to allow them the time and the energy and the breaks and the recovery time to be able to actually do that kind of stuff, and listen, and be curious.

Brian Pagán:

Because of course I'm coming from a bunch of assumptions here. So if I say something that isn't true or isn't accurate, just please jump in and correct me. But I have the feeling that most of the customer service professions these days, a lot of times the companies look at customer service almost as bandaid or like a hygiene factor. It's like something they have to have, and they're not really passionate about it, and they're not interested in innovating around customer service. So the budgets for these kind of departments tend to be really low. And they say, "Okay, we need to hire a bunch of people, and they have a script, and they have the stuff that they need to do, and they just need to deal with it and stop bothering us with your problems."

Brian Pagán:

But if we give people, if we empower people to actually do things for people to help people out, and we give them the space to be able to recover from if they decide to immerse themselves in a person's world that they're talking to on the phone and listen to the fact that their son is sick and how is that affecting that person and how is it affecting their life and filling in the form and all that stuff. And like, "I get it. It's okay. Let's talk about it for a minute." If we can give them that space afterwards to be able to recover, then I think it makes it easier for them to actually do it. And especially if we model these behaviors, if we create a culture around listening and around non-judgmental observation, I think that could be helpful. But that is one. So that's one aspect of it is sort of taking away obstacles and letting it happen on its own.

Brian Pagán:

But if we're also trying to promote it a little bit, I think what we don't talk about enough might be this feeling of connection that we do get once the, let's say the climax happens and the sadness cloud sort of resolves, and the other person comes back and says, "You know what, thank you so much for this conversation. That really means a lot." Or "I feel much better having talked to you. Thank you for listening. This really, really just helped me feel better." And the feeling that you get when someone gives you that feedback is just amazing. And it costs time, it costs energy, it costs sadness, emotional, this journey, but it can be extremely rewarding. And think about if you do this 4, 5, 6 times a day, it's like a drug maybe. You'd feel really good. It's just this drug of helping people out and making people feel good and happy. That's amazing. Human connection. Yeah, we don't talk about that enough.

Chantel Botha:

And it's legal. It's a legal drug.

Brian Pagán:

It's legal even.

Chantel Botha:

I like that angle. I really do like that angle. I'm not sure how I would sell that up the hierarchy, because I think as the seniority and the pay grade gets more, I'm not sure that they're going to necessarily buy the legal drug. But thank you. Thank you for that perspective.

Chantel Botha:

I've got one more question for you. So if you had 60 minutes with a person that's very unempathetic, you've got a bundle of tricks and some magic sprinkle dust in your book, how would you... And I know you said earlier, we all have this inner, so we've kind of lost it a little bit. So let's just think about kind of the gem or the diamond that we've lost. But how would you in 60 minutes just reignite that empathy, flick on that switch? What would you do with a person?

Brian Pagán:

I hope you're not going to hate my answer. It's a typical coach answer, but I would listen first. Through going through a process of just listening and validating, listening and helping this person feel comfortable about what they're saying, helping them feel comfortable about what they're explaining about why they don't feel empathy or what holds them back, and accepting that for them, it's true. Even if I don't agree, it's for them, that's the reality that they're living with, and just observing that nonjudgmentally and creating space for them to sort of air out maybe some of the things that might be weighing on them that stands in their way.

Brian Pagán:

Sometimes it's enough for people to just get certain things off their chest or have articulated certain things maybe from their childhood. Maybe people don't understand that they went through this thing where, I don't know, their dad gave them a spanking because they were crying for some kind of thing. And boys don't cry. That's weak, or some kind of thing. That can have a huge impact on a kid in that moment. But then as they become an adult, that teaches them what's the worth of emotions and emotional intelligence. And if people are taught that empathy is bad, and emotions are bad, and crying is bad, and we shouldn't do this stuff, and you should be strong and don't show emotions or whatever, then there's a lot of baggage that they're working through. And just talking about it sometimes can help people open their own eyes, if that makes sense. Like just listening and letting them go through their own journey and sort of being there asking questions. I think that's the strategy that I would try to follow. Does that help? Does that make sense?

Daniel Stillman:

That's so insidious, Brian. I like that. Empathize with them until they crack.

Brian Pagán:

Yes. Kill them with kindness.

Daniel Stillman:

Kill them with... Well, yeah. Yeah. Jim?

Jim Burke:

Yes, sir.

Daniel Stillman:

What's on your mind? What's important for you to [crosstalk 00:39:15]?

Jim Burke:

So I want first, Daniel, I want to thank you for allowing us to come into your space and be part of this. This is awesome. As I read through Brian's book, there's a lot of things that I absolutely loved about the way that it was set up, because it was... It started with that diagram that you put up Daniel, the circle diagram. And the thing that I loved about that was it was more than, had me thinking that it's more than the hexagons for design thinking. By doing connection, when you look through, and I say the hexagons because when you go through empathize design, ideate, prototype, test, what you're talking about with empathy is really about a glue that binds those together. Because if you actually go through and if you're in academia and you're going through what's a part of ideate? What's a part of prototype? What's a part of test? Underneath everything is the connection that you're talking about, trying to connect with that user that you're designing to. So I love the fact that that, that circular diagram allowed us to be more than.

Jim Burke:

The other, the part that led then to the, I think it was an earlier chapter that you had which resonated with me, which was the product market fit side. I'm one of the denizens of Strategyzer and their Value Prop Canvas, and the Business Model Canvas. And the thing as a facilitator that I always... Not that I struggle with. I struggle with being in sessions where it's poorly facilitated, where it goes, "Oh, here's the Value Prop Canvas and we have the product, and we have the pains that people are doing. And here's your pain reliever, and the jobs that people do. And connect the dots and the skies will part and you'll have this thing because you filled out the rubric, therefore it must be so." When I start seeing that, and I loved your line in there. I loved creative empathy helps us achieve this by surfacing latent people's needs. Are there any suggestions that you would make on how to help surface those product market fit needs as you're designing, whether it's prompts or more probing questions?

Brian Pagán:

Both prompts and probing questions, I think... Yeah. So basically, everything in the proximity section, all the techniques in there and some of the ones in the team section as well, of course, but as a designer, working on something like myself, if I would be working like that, then I would try to use those techniques from the proximity session to be able to move myself into that head space or that emotional space while I'm actually designing something.

Brian Pagán:

So in the book I tell a story about when I was designing the interface, the UI for a breastfeeding tracker, for example. And I never breastfed. I never will breastfeed. It's not an experience that I have a lot of proximity with. But by doing this, it's a very simple exercise, but a free writing and character thing. Basically, I wrote... My acting coach gave me this exercise to pretend that I'm a new mom and I should write a letter to my newborn child. And that helped me really get into the head space of what it's like to be a new mom, a new parent who might be having some kind of anxieties around like, "Am I doing this right? Am I going to... I don't want to make you sick. You're such a fragile thing. I don't want you... I want to take care of you and I really love you, but I'm also scared. Like you're such a, you know, kind of thing."

Brian Pagán:

And just understanding that as part of my design process really helped me connect with the already existing research material that was there, but then on a much deeper, much more emotional level, so that it gave me not only the insight that things needed to be a lot simpler than I thought with the UI itself. But it also gave me a lot more confidence to fight for that simplicity within the team.

Brian Pagán:

And to give a very concrete example of this, at the bottom of those tracking screens in the app, there was a push to have content there, like articles that people could read. The assumption was that a mom while she's breastfeeding, wants to look at articles on her phone because she's bored or whatever. I thought, no, there's nothing boring about breastfeeding. It can be a very stressful thing. There's so much going on. We need to take this content out. We need to put the content in another place, serve it in a different way. And that one technique gave me sort of the ammunition and the ability to actually get that stuff taken out and placed in a more appropriate place. Does that answer your question?

Jim Burke:

Oh yeah. Yeah, it does. Thank you so much.

Brian Pagán:

Cool. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

Just to turn the crank on that a little bit, two things. One, I think that speaks to Chantel's question a little bit that one of the most powerful ways to create change is to have people get more proximity where the challenge is happening. And I've definitely done situations like this Chantel, where you bring people into the call center and they actually watch and listen while they go through it. And it's you increase the proximity. It's much harder to ignore what's going on.

Daniel Stillman:

But there's another thing which I really wanted to make sure we talked about, which is the first, second, and third person shifts that happen through the process. And when it comes to facilitating this process for others, Jim, which is what you're talking about specifically, like how do I help create a space where this can happen? The writing, the free writing is going back into the first person. It's not, she does this. She does that. She does this. It's trying to internalize it from the I do this. I do that. And even though I think there's some risks of stereotyping and not being, oversimplifying, it seems like making that intentional shift to the first person is a really important part of the connection step in creative empathy, like going back into the, like, to really inhabit.

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely. And that's exactly what that connection phase is all about, is really stepping into that world, becoming that person on some level. And whether it's in your head or whether it's as part of a simulator or something, it really personalizes it for yourself so that you really feel that connection. Indeed. Wow, you put it really wonderfully. Crap. I should put that in the book.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, Erin's moved locations, which means it's almost time for us to part. We only have a couple of minutes left, and I didn't design the close, which is kind of hilarious. Brian, is there anything else that we haven't asked you that we should ask you or anything else you want the people here or at home to know? That's the best I got right now.

Brian Pagán:

I'll say one last thing. It's a little bit more general than just from the book, but it's something that underpins everything in my entire life. So I'm convinced that every single choice that we make as people can be reduced to love versus fear. And the more we choose fear, the more easy it becomes to keep choosing fear. And the more we choose love, the easier it turns into keeping choosing love, or to keep choosing love. And the choice to listen, the choice to empathize with another person, the choice to be vulnerable and resonate and connect with another human being, it's that's a choice of love. And I want to help everyone that I possibly can to facilitate them in choosing love a lot more. Yes. Oh yes. It's all... That's the best. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Chantel has put on her heart sunglasses for those at home.

Brian Pagán:

Heart sunglasses.

Daniel Stillman:

And more Baby Yoda.

Brian Pagán:

Do love, you should.

Daniel Stillman:

So Brian, isn't this true that you do... So other things that people should know about you, which we didn't talk about. You do workshops on this stuff for teams and organizations, helping people get better at this.

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

Can people get a paperback version of the book? I know you sent me one, which was very sweet of you. Can they buy it from someplace else if they want to get it?

Brian Pagán:

I have a very strict pay what you want if you want policy for the paper book. So if you want a paper copy, just email me your address. I'll send it to you. And inside will be a little piece of paper with the QR code that if you want to make a donation or pay something... Those are another heart glasses. Oh man. That if you feel like giving something, you can, but it's totally optional. I really want this to be like a pay what you want if you want sort of give me what you think this is worth kind of scenario. And yes, I do give workshops on this for larger teams, smaller teams, at events, in-house like for companies, lots of trainings and stuff. Yeah. I definitely. It's a lot of fun too.

Daniel Stillman:

And people can find you at the URL that you're going to specify now.

Brian Pagán:

Thegreatness.studio, at The Greatness Studio, or especially for creative empathy, it's just creativeempathy.eu.

Daniel Stillman:

There you go. Easy. Well, with two minutes to spare, Chantel, Erin, Jim, what's one word you're checking out with?

Jim Burke:

Excited.

Chantel Botha:

Bold with joy. Thank you, Brian. I loved this conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

That's five words, but we'll allow it. Erin, what are you checking out with?

Erin Warner:

Oh, the positive residence of detachment for the holistic picture.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a good tattoo. I'm in for it. Brian, thank you so much for making time to have this conversation. Erin, Chantel, Jim, thanks for lending your brains to this delicious soup. This is really delightful. What a nice way to start my day. So thank you very much, everyone.

Brian Pagán:

Thank you all. This was amazing. I appreciate it.

Jim Burke:

Thank you all for having us. Thank you so much.

Chantel Botha:

Thank you.

Jim Burke:

Thank you, Brian.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you, Brian.

Jim Burke:

Fantastic to meet you and be part of this.

Brian Pagán:

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Let's stay in touch.

Jim Burke:

Will do.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll call scene. And scene.

Brian Pagán:

And scene. Thank you all. Amazing. I appreciate it. So cool.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks, Brian. All right. Have a good day, everyone.

Jim Burke:

Take care.

Erin Warner:

So cool to get to talk to the author, so thank you very much for this opportunity.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you.

Brian Pagán:

And if you want a paper copy, let me know. Really. I'll send it. It's all good.

Erin Warner:

I think I do. I think I need to read it again, but thank you.

Brian Pagán:

Thanks.

Erin Warner:

Thanks, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks Brian. Talk to you soon. Hey, man. Thanks for doing that.

Brian Pagán:

Thanks for all-

The Perfect Conversation

What is a "perfect conversation"?

What about the "perfect" conversationalist?

I'm thrilled to share this discussion that Michael Bervell and I had around those questions and more. Michael is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and philosopher. He currently serves as the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and works as a Portfolio Development Manager at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Capital Fund.

He's also the author of Unlocking Unicorns and the host of the blog "billion dollar startup ideas" 

He's also a conversation design nerd, like me… and his insights into conversation design are not to be missed. We unpack some essential questions, like:

• Understanding the types of Conversations with the “Concentric Circle” model of Conversations

• The Importance of Self-Talk in Conversations

• The Art of Noticing: What to “read” when you're reading a conversation.

• Being an “authentic chameleon”: Balancing being adaptable in conversation with being authentic 

• The Power of non-questions and Questions with a period.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Unlocking Unicorns, by Michael Bervell

Michael's website

Billion Dollar Startup Ideas

Michael on TikTok

The TikTok Michael told Daniel to make

Minute 5:

Michael Bervell:

I was raised by my grandmother for a long time in my elementary school years, and my grandmother used to always tiptoe into my bedroom at nighttime. And she would tiptoe into my bedroom and take my teddy bears, because she would go to Ghana once a year and take these teddy bears and give them to kids in the hospitals, and the orphanages, and the schools. So, it was so sweet.

Daniel Stillman:

She stole your teddy bears.

Michael Bervell:

She stole my teddy bears but for a good cause. Obviously, I didn't see that good cause as a young child. But eventually when she passed away, we went to her funeral and saw all these kids at her funeral, kids under 10-years-old. And we're like, "Why is everyone here?" And they said, "Oh, well, this is our mom, too," in the sense that she had given them all teddy bears and helped them, and so they felt this kind of sense of loss when she died.

And so, in the communal kind of conversation aspect, what we wanted to do is to make her legacy live on. And the conversation that we started here in the States is asking people at local high schools and middle schools to donate their teddy bears so that on our next trip to Ghana, we could hand deliver them to these hospitals, orphanages and schools.

And so that was in 2007. Now about 14 years later, it's an annual thing that we do. We actually have a Hugs for Ghana Day. That's the name of the nonprofit in our local town, and we do this once a year and kind of have this almost kind of cross-cultural conversation where students from the U.S. will fly to Ghana and hand deliver these supplies to these Ghanaian schools, and hospitals and orphanages.

So, I think that was the first kind of conversation of meaning that I really had.

Minute 10:

So that's what self-talk, I think the core of that is to think, "If you have those 60,000 thoughts, try to grasp one and hold on to it." Right?

I think the metaphor can apply to a two-person conversation or a dyadic conversation as well, in the same sense that in a two-person conversation, there are about a hundred things that you could be saying at any one time. And, of course, people say active listening is the idea of not listening to figure out what you're going to say next, but instead listening to understand and respond to that, which I think is very similar to trying to latch on to one thought in self-talk.

Minute 12:

Daniel Stillman:

Which goes to the question of, what do you read when you're reading the conversation? What are you noticing? And I think the idea of being a chameleon is such an interesting one, so there's two layers I want to pull, because I've been playing with this idea, as well, of can I show up on purpose to serve the conversation? I think it's worth doing if you want it to become something more, more of itself, or to be able to bend it into another direction, but that requires you to show up in specific ways, intentionally, which means you have to notice what's going on in the conversation, like what are the signs and signals.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and it's not just in the conversation. It's also in the context of the conversation. Right? If we're having this conversation not as a podcast, it would probably be different than if it was a podcast.

And so the context outside of conversation also affects the conversation, and profoundly.

Minute 18:

Daniel Stillman:

So, this kind of goes towards... I have a stick note here around asking questions with a period, as in not interrogating people, and I'm wondering. This is where I think about the art of invitation, the ability to invite people into a modality or a process or a set of questions without it seeming abrupt, forceful or strange. And I think it seems like that's a challenge here.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. I mean even what you just did now. You asked a perfect question without putting a question mark on it. The question that you're asking is, how do you overcome that challenge, and yet all you said was, "There is a challenge here." Right? And that opens up the next step of wanting to say, "How would one solve that challenge?"

And I think, obviously, if you go to every conversation and you always are asking, "So, how was I in that last conversation? Was it good?" I mean, you can probably think of all the funny jokes that similar to, that no one wants to really ask. And so I think one strategy that I have, even as, one, you could do it asynchronously, meaning you send out an email to all your friends. This is the extreme self-improvement method. And you say, "Hey, once a year, I send this out to all my friends. Give me feedback on how I converse." Right? And it's not really a question. It's more like an invitation to contribute to the bettering of Michael, the bettering of Daniel.

More About Michael

MICHAEL BERVELL is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and philosopher. He currently serves as the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and works as a Portfolio Development Manager at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Capital Fund.

Bervell's blog BillionDollarStartupIdeas.com has been viewed by more than 750,000 people around the world. In 2007, he co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization with operations in 6 countries that has impacted over 300,000 youth. Because of this work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015, alongside Pope Francis and Dikembe Mutombo.

He received a Bachelor’s in philosophy from Harvard College and a Master’s in communication from the University of Washington. Find him at MichaelBervell.com.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Michael, I am so glad that you made the time for this conversation. Honestly and truly, I'm so excited to have you on The Conversation Factory. You are a unique conversation designer in your own right, so thanks for making the time.

Michael Bervell:

Well, I really appreciate being on here. It's almost like you're finally on the podcast that you listen to, and that you've touched the moon. You know? That's kind of what it feels like a little bit.

Daniel Stillman:

You're very kind. Well, so, I mean how... I've been thinking about how to contextualize you and honestly, our relationship, because the way I think of it is like you're a younger person than I am. You're at sort of the beginning middle of your career. But I also feel like I've learned so much from you every time we've spoken. So even though you don't have an official reverse mentoring relationship, that's the way I think of it. After our last conversation, you were like, "You know what, Daniel? You should make a TikTok video." And I did, and it was really-

Michael Bervell:

Oh, amazing. I love that.

Daniel Stillman:

... So I was like, "I should take Michael's advice, because he's-"

Michael Bervell:

That's so cool.

Daniel Stillman:

"... smarter than me in so many ways." How do you describe yourself? What do you say it is? What would, the classic quote, what would you say you do around here? How do you describe yourself?

Michael Bervell:

And you know what's so funny is, I made my first website when I was in 9th grade, because I had an older brother. He was junior in high school, and so he was two years older than me. So, he made a website, and I was like, "Well, I should make a website, too." And on my website, my first iteration of it, it said, "Michael Bervell is an enigma." Which that first sentence has changed a couple times. Now it says, "Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American, angel-investor, entrepreneur and author." Which is a little different from an enigma.

Michael Bervell:

But when I think of myself, I think of all the people who came before me and how that shaped who I am. And so, I'm the child of two Ghanaian immigrants. I grew up living in the United States. I've been extremely fortunate and been able to go to amazing schools and meet amazing people and been able to give back in amazing ways. But I'm also someone who wants to try to take the success that I've had and to spread it around to people who don't have it. And so, I guess I'm an enigma but also trying to give back in some ways.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it was the short version, and I like the longer version, too. I feel like we originally connected around facilitation, right?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And designing conversations. And maybe you can just contextualize a little bit of your heritage, your story in that world.

Michael Bervell:

Well, when we first met, I was doing research on how to have the perfect conversation. As I framed it, there were kind of these three parts to it. Every conversation starts with the self-talk that you have, almost the philosophy you talking to yourself. Then there's the two-person conversation, which is you talking to someone else. And then kind of what I call the N-person conversation, community conversations, conversations around a table, maybe even a conversation of a speaker to an audience. I guess we're doing that two-person conversation but with an audience listening in.

Michael Bervell:

But I lived in almost every single day growing up from birth until now always having family dinner with my family. And so, that was just a regular occurrence, is that at the end of the day, we would all sit down; we would pray, eat dinner together as a family at least for 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes the TV was on, sometimes it wasn't. And from a young age, conversation, for me, was just normal. It was regular, and it was frequent.

Michael Bervell:

And I think whether intentionally or not, that frequency permeated into me, especially during COVID, when there wasn't as frequent of conversations. I couldn't get dinner every single night with my family. Or in college, I joined a dinner group where every single week, I would get dinner with 12 of my closest friends, and we'd invite a different professor to come in. I couldn't do that during COVID.

Michael Bervell:

And so, the fact that I had lacked that conversation, I think, is what spurred me to be interested in it. But I think that upbringing, kind of being around a fireplace, a very communal, it's very much a Ghanaian type of mentality that has definitely inspired me all the while.

Daniel Stillman:

I think that's something that I... So, I've noticed a couple things I want to loop around. One is, the end conversation. I feel like you had had some experience in your university years convening and facilitating gathering people for a purpose. Right?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And facilitating and moderating that conversation.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and I was still being... And I think the first time I really facilitated the conversation that had meaning was in 6th grade, even before college, and I'll give you the quick story about that.

Michael Bervell:

I was raised by my grandmother for a long time in my elementary school years, and my grandmother used to always tiptoe into my bedroom at nighttime. And she would tiptoe into my bedroom and take my teddy bears, because she would go to Ghana once a year and take these teddy bears and give them to kids in the hospitals, and the orphanages, and the schools. So, it was so sweet.

Daniel Stillman:

She stole your teddy bears.

Michael Bervell:

She stole my teddy bears but for a good cause. Obviously, I didn't see that good cause as a young child. But eventually when she passed away, we went to her funeral and saw all these kids at her funeral, kids under 10-years-old. And we're like, "Why is everyone here?" And they said, "Oh, well, this is our mom, too," in the sense that she had given them all teddy bears and helped them, and so they felt this kind of sense of loss when she died.

Michael Bervell:

And so, in the communal kind of conversation aspect, what we wanted to do is to make her legacy live on. And the conversation that we started here in the States is asking people at local high schools and middle schools to donate their teddy bears so that on our next trip to Ghana, we could hand deliver them to these hospitals, orphanages and schools.

Michael Bervell:

And so that was in 2007. Now about 14 years later, it's an annual thing that we do. We actually have a Hugs for Ghana Day. That's the name of the nonprofit in our local town, and we do this once a year and kind of have this almost kind of cross-cultural conversation where students from the U.S. will fly to Ghana and hand deliver these supplies to these Ghanaian schools, and hospitals and orphanages.

Michael Bervell:

So, I think that was the first kind of conversation of meaning that I really had. But to your question, in college, I continued on having conversations, not just for meaning in the broader sense of giving back and impacting the world, but also in the more small sense of how to actually reflect on who you're becoming and who you want to be, almost the self-talk aspect, and that conversation was...

Michael Bervell:

I studied philosophy in college, so I'd have conversations all that time about philosophy, but we'd bring in these small dinner groups and bring in one professor to this group every single week. And that really helped me to spur really fascinating conversations. I talked with Ellen Langer, who was the first tenured female faculty member in the psychology department at Harvard. She's kind of called the mother of mindfulness. And that was one of the most memorable conversations I ever had.

Michael Bervell:

There are other conversations I had with someone named Gevvie Stone. She was an Olympic silver medalist. She came to our dinner group and told us, "How do you actually have the grit and perseverance to win a medal at the Olympics?" And she was a rower on the heavyweight women's row team. And so it was just super fascinating to meet these amazing people through conversation. But, whether conversation for meaning or conversation for self-enlightenment, I kind of [inaudible 00:07:39] it in a bunch of different ways.

Daniel Stillman:

I love the metaphor the visual of these concentric circles of conversation. I think very similarly with self-talk as this really important core that drives all of the other ones. And I'm wondering, the reflection has to do with sort of managing your self-talk.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And I guess I'm wondering, what do you feel like are the principles that are the most similar across those spheres, from N to the one? What do you feel like is the same, and what's very, very different about those three conversation spheres, those concentric circles?

Michael Bervell:

I think the most similar thing that I would say is, with self-talk. Right? Let's start with the most central circle. It's the idea that in any given day, you're probably going to have I think 60,000 thoughts is the study for that thought. Right? I mean, you're not going to say 60,000 things.

Daniel Stillman:

No.

Michael Bervell:

And I wonder if people can say 60,000 words, but you have all these thoughts. And half of self-talk is even just deciding what will surface. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Bervell:

It's almost like the very Buddhist kind of philosophy of self-enlightenment of thinking, reflecting and trying to empty your mind, and that in and of itself is one of the hardest things to do. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That to me is, there's a dot. There's a dot in the middle of the concentric circle that is the cessation.

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

And that's really hard and rare.

Michael Bervell:

Super hard to get down to that. Right? So, the thinking about nothingness, or being very mindful about thinking about one thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

And the way that I personally practice that is, I think I was listening to a Thích Nhất Hạnh audiobook. And he said, "Think about breathing." Right? "If I were to tell you think about your breath going in and your breath going out, you literally can't think about anything else other than your breathing."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Right? You can't multitask breathing and XYZ.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

And yet, it's always happening. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

Under this. So that's what self-talk, I think the core of that is to think, "If you have those 60,000 thoughts, try to grasp one and hold on to it." Right?

Michael Bervell:

I think the metaphor can apply to a two-person conversation or a dyadic conversation as well, in the same sense that in a two-person conversation, there are about a hundred things that you could be saying at any one time. And, of course, people say active listening is the idea of not listening to figure out what you're going to say next, but instead listening to understand and respond to that, which I think is very similar to trying to latch on to one thought in self-talk.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Right? And it gives you, in effect, higher and higher and higher the number of possible conversations, you know, combinatorics is infinitely higher. 50,000 thoughts for one, there's maybe 120,000 thoughts for two, and then once you get to three, it's in the millions already, of potential things that people could say, do, whatever. And so I think that's the one core that kind of strings through is the level of possibility.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

And so, in my research of having the perfect conversation, part of the question is, which possibility do you take-

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

... to make the conversation the best.

Daniel Stillman:

Of infinite possibilities.

Michael Bervell:

Of infinite possibilities, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

And with self-talk in my experiment, there's only 60,000 possibilities. In theory, you could try all of them out. With two people, even when you talk to your friend every single day for 10 years, you'll probably go through every possible possibility of your conversation. But as soon as you bring the third person, it becomes almost incomprehensible.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's the three-body problem in physics is-

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

... very, very complex. Do you feel like you have a sketch or a view of what that perfect conversation is now?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. My argument in how to have a perfect conversation is that I think the perfect conversationalist is a chameleon in the sense that they're the type of person who can mold to their environment. And so the hypothesis that I built is, okay, everyone has their own self-talk, everyone will probably talk to themselves differently. It seems like it's not too hard to kind of buy into the idea.

Michael Bervell:

If everyone talks to themselves differently, everyone's probably going to talk to other people differently. That's something that's also pretty basic. And if everyone talks to other people differently, then you should be able to tag and say, "This is your conversation type, or the habit of conversation that you tend to have."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

And so my question that I tried to answer, and the eventual answer I came to is, so how do you as a conversationalist talk with someone once you know what their conversation type is? Or at least knowing that everyone has a different conversation type, how do you adapt your style of conversation to that person? Right? And my initial research was like, okay, well if you're talking with a chatty Cindy, then you should try to be a stoic Sam, because opposites are the best way to go about things.

Michael Bervell:

But then if a stoic Sam is talking to another stoic Sam, then that won't be a great conversation. It's be fairly hard. And so it almost seems like one of them would have to change, which is how I got to the lever of the perfect conversationalist is always adapting and always changing based on how they're reading the situation and the other person that they're talking to.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Which goes to the question of, what do you read when you're reading the conversation? What are you noticing? And I think the idea of being a chameleon is such an interesting one, so there's two layers I want to pull, because I've been playing with this idea, as well, of can I show up on purpose to serve the conversation? I think it's worth doing if you want it to become something more, more of itself, or to be able to bend it into another direction, but that requires you to show up in specific ways, intentionally, which means you have to notice what's going on in the conversation, like what are the signs and signals.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and it's not just in the conversation. It's also in the context of the conversation. Right? If we're having this conversation not as a podcast, it would probably be different than if it was a podcast.

Daniel Stillman:

Totally.

Michael Bervell:

And so the context outside of conversation also affects the conversation, and profoundly.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, this makes it, this is slightly more. I mean, our conversations are similar to this, but they're a little more. This makes it a little bit more theatrical, and if there was people watching us, it's also yet even more different-

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

... because that raises the stakes.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I think the idea of being a chameleon, I'm wondering if you ever put that intention with the idea of being authentic, like how do you be an authentic chameleon?

Michael Bervell:

It's so funny. I was on a hike in Lake Tahoe in July, and I was sharing with someone my research. And so I shared this whole hypothesis, and he said, "But that's inauthentic. If you're a chameleon, then are you ever truly yourself?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

And my response was, "Well, what if yourself is a chameleon?" Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

What if your most natural state, supposing that I were able to design these tests perfectly so that you could do all these questions and understand what type of person you are, and across all dynamics, you were pretty much a circle, or you're equal or whatever it might be. Then in that sense, your natural state is to be a chameleon. Right? And in that sense then yeah, the perfect conversation comes quote unquote, "naturally" to you, whatever that might mean.

Daniel Stillman:

I guess the way I sometimes think about it is just having range. Just like a soprano or an alto has a different range, and there's some people who are double threats, or triple threats in that they sing, dance and act. They've got range. They can do a high part and a low part. And I don't think there's anything wrong with not having range if you're getting what you want out of life. But-

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and it's interesting. It's almost like getting an EGOT, right? The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

Daniel Stillman:

... Oscar, Tony, yeah.

Michael Bervell:

The EGOT of conversation, is that what one should strive for, or should we just strive to be an egg instead?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, right. And if you're getting what you need out of life, that's fine.

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

But I think, generally, people look towards... Well, this is what's interesting is, I think often people look for additional techniques to try and get more of what they want. And I feel like you're saying something that I think sometimes, which is, you just have to notice what the need is and potentially be able to serve the need of the conversation.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. And the way I phrase that in my research is, every conversation has a goal, and as a conversationalist, you should understand what the goal is in order to know how to adapt to the conversation, and whether the goal is specific to the type of person that it is. Maybe the goal is, "I want to be liked after this conversation," so you must adapt to who they are in order to be liked by them.

Michael Bervell:

But if the goal is, we need to make our next quarter's earnings and develop a strategy to do that, maybe a chameleon strategy where you're just trying to be liked isn't necessarily the right strategy. But maybe a chameleon, I think, is calmness in understanding the goal and adapting your methodology to achieve that goal.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Where do you feel, I mean in the research that you've done, where do you feel like are the biggest opportunity spaces for people to mold conversations to serve them better?

Michael Bervell:

I think there's this interesting phenomenon with what I call delivered conversation and received conversation, meaning the 15 words that I say to you, I have a perceived meaning of it, and you have a very different perceived meaning of it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

I think the best example would be Gertrude Stein. She's a Cubist writer. People say she lived at the same time as Picasso, so on and so forth. She has this great piece called A Portrait of Picasso, where she essentially writes this Cubist poetry about if she were to paint Picasso in words, and there's a lot of repetition in this poetry, but as you read one sentence, and you put it into juxtaposition with another sentence, the sentence changes meaning, even if it's same exact sentence.

Michael Bervell:

So one of the phrases that she has is, "A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose, is a rose." Right? By the fifth or sixth, "Is a rose," it's kind of gibberish, but the first time-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

... it affects. So, I'm using that as a metaphor and kind of a simile to this whole delivered and received conversation aspect. I could think I'm saying one thing, but it could be perceived as gibberish, and I think that's one area that people could try a bit more intentionally to understand. Whether it's at the end of your conversation with your partner, they'll be like, "Well, what did you hear me say?" And have them repeat it to you, because it'll be colored by their, "Rose is a rose, is a rose," tinted glasses.

Daniel Stillman:

Reverse-active listening.

Michael Bervell:

Exactly, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I think sometimes what comes up, and I always quote my mom on this, where she's like, "I don't want to be designing my conversations all the time, Daniel." And I say, "That's a choice."

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So, for some people, that, "Tell me what you heard," could seem like a lack of trust, or overwrought. Right?

Michael Bervell:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Daniel Stillman:

So, this kind of goes towards... I have a sticky note here around asking questions with a period, as in not interrogating people, and I'm wondering. This is where I think about the art of invitation, the ability to invite people into a modality or a process or a set of questions without it seeming abrupt, forceful or strange. And I think it seems like that's a challenge here.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. I mean even what you just did now. You asked a perfect question without putting a question mark on it. The question that you're asking is, how do you overcome that challenge, and yet all you said was, "There is a challenge here." Right? And that opens up the next step of wanting to say, "How would one solve that challenge?"

Michael Bervell:

And I think, obviously, if you go to every conversation and you always are asking, "So, how was I in that last conversation? Was it good?" I mean, you can probably think of all the funny jokes that similar to, that no one wants to really ask. And so I think one strategy that I have, even as, one, you could do it asynchronously, meaning you send out an email to all your friends. This is the extreme self-improvement method. And you say, "Hey, once a year, I send this out to all my friends. Give me feedback on how I converse." Right? And it's not really a question. It's more like an invitation to contribute to the bettering of Michael, the bettering of Daniel.

Michael Bervell:

But the second method, which is in conversation, would be something almost like self-critical. And I've done this a couple times where I'll be like, "Oh you know, when we were at this last party, I said, this, that thing to the other person. I hope they didn't think it was weird."

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Bervell:

And my partner would be like, "Oh yeah, that was weird, and here's why I wouldn't say it again," or like, "Oh no, I didn't think it was weird, for X, Y, Z reasons." Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

And so, almost that self-doubt, I guess, is a way of asking a question with a period.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Is there more to say about asking a question with a period?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. I think when people ask questions, they obviously do it with a question mark. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Bervell:

"How are you doing today? How was your Thanksgiving? What did you do last week?"

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Bervell:

Versus, asking a question with a period could be something like, "Oh, I saw you carve a turkey on..." Oh, I guess that's a question mark.

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Bervell:

"Your turkey on Instagram looks so tasty." Right? That invites you to tell a story about the turkey that they had carved.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Right? Or even like, "It's been so long since I've seen you, your hair grew longer." I don't know. That would be a bad one. You can imagine how you can get people to tell stories or to share things about themselves by not asking them directly, but in almost leading breadcrumbs that incentivizes them to tell a story-

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

... or to tell more about themselves.

Daniel Stillman:

So, there's an example that comes to mind, which kind of maybe leads into another sticky note I have for around Zoom networking. One of the things that I do often, and if anybody gets on a call with me, you'll probably see me do this, which is notice something about somebody's background. Right?

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll be like, "Hey, I love your sweater," or, "That's an awesome painting," or, "Hey, it looks sunny there today." Those are... And then it's just instead of saying, "How's the weather?" it's an opening for someone to go through-

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

... but they don't have to.

Michael Bervell:

I think that's an even better example of the asking questions with a period. And I think Zoom makes it a lot easier to do this.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

To the Zoom networking point, I almost always... Maybe this is genuine; maybe it's not genuine, so secrets for The Conversation Factory audience only. I almost always have research about the other person open on my laptop when I'm talking to them, whether it's a LinkedIn profile; or if they had a recent media article published about them, I'll have that open, because I actually do think it helps to develop a bit deeper of a friendship and a relationship if you are not asking super basic questions that they've told 100 people about, but you're asking them questions that they've never heard before.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

Or at the very least, you are looking at something that they've posted and taken the time to create already and are showing that you've seen it. And I think that's a big-

Daniel Stillman:

Is the three screen technique that you were talking about?

Michael Bervell:

... Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

So, wait, what are the three screens? One is definitely having something else where you're looking at their LinkedIn bio just so you can hold their story.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. One is definitely the LinkedIn bio. One is, of course, the screen with the person on it, and I think the third is even the screen of, "What's the goal of the conversation? What do you want to get out of this?" Right? Which is, whenever you see my Calendly, or if I send you a calendar invite or anything, I have a super simple question that says, In 10 or 20 words, describe what you want to get out of this meeting."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

And even that is quote unquote "an agenda" or a goal that then with the other screens, you can adapt. So, maybe it's an anticlimactic third screen, but it really is just the goal of what you hope to actually achieve in the time you have.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I feel like you are really good at, and I think it's worth exploring, especially in the age of COVID. I feel like the conversational density of our lives has decreased in some ways in that, in other ways it's just completely transformed. It's totally different. But I think about the sort of events and conferences, the sidebar conversations that we used to have, and I get the sense that you have a really methodical approach to designing your conversations around networking. Do you have a sketch of your perfect design for your networking approach? Because I noticed, for example, your Calendly link. I don't think many people... There's some people who might not go to that step of, "Here's my 30-minute Calendly link." You have a lot of availability in all sorts of strange hours to make it possible for you to connect with people.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have... I guess I have two virtual tactics and one non virtual tactic. The first virtual tactic is that once a quarter, I'll do what I call a social week. I think Bill Gates does a think week where he disconnects and like reads a bunch of books and whatever. I do a social week, where for one week, all I'm doing is chatting with people and socializing. And so, I'll have calendar blocks from maybe 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM with like a one hour break for lunch, and I'll just have 30 minute conversations. I think I shortened it to 20 minutes so I can do more conversations for five days.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Michael Bervell:

I'm pretty sure there was a time that you caught me at the end of one of my social weeks.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

I was absolutely exhausted, almost because I realized in doing social week, how many of our conversations are redundant, and so it almost became a practice to be like, "How can I summarize my life in the last three months in two minutes or less-"

Daniel Stillman:

Right, and get to something else.

Michael Bervell:

"... so we can get into the more meat of the conversation?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Because I've just said it, by Thursday, I've said it over 60 times to 60 different people.

Daniel Stillman:

That's very interesting.

Michael Bervell:

So, social week is one of the virtual networking tips that I think has been really, really helpful in helping me to develop relationships that are new, but also cement existing relationships. When was the last time you called your best friend out of the blue? Maybe not that frequently, at least social week makes me do it once every three months.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Michael Bervell:

The second virtual tactic on the whole Calendly link aspect is, I like to give people fodder for what they can ask me about or talk to me about. So, on my calendar link when they schedule time with me I have, these are the places I've traveled to, these are the board games that I've played, these are the books I've read. And, I like investing, so these are the companies or cryptocurrencies or whatever that I've invested in, in the last three months; and people can talk to me about that.

Michael Bervell:

The funny thing, and, of course, this is all anecdotal so maybe there's some type of study that could back this up, but the funny thing is, I feel like out of every 25 or 30 people I talk to, only two or three actually reference this 200-word thing that I've sent to them, essentially, about this is all the stuff that I'm thinking about lately. And so it's interesting, given all this information, why are people not using it to have quote unquote "better conversations"?

Daniel Stillman:

That is interesting, because I remember reading that and I was like, "Oh, that is so interesting and thorough and helpful, to put it in context, to put the conversation in context." It is interesting that very few people actually take use of the affordance that you are affording them.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. Because I know actually, when we chatted last, you actually brought up one of the things. You were like, "Oh, I saw that you went here. How was it? I was there this many months ago."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

I think that's very rare. Right? And so, a quick takeaway for your audience is, before you meet an old friends, look at their Facebook, look at the last three posts and choose one to bring up.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Right? Seems so easy, and yet I'm almost guaranteed 95% of people don't do it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad game recognized game in this context, Michael. I definitely appreciate, and I was like, "Yeah, this is..." And this is one of the reasons why I thought it would be so interesting to talk to you about some of this stuff.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to maybe dissect, if I may transition, to some of the other conversations in your work and how you designed some of those, because I know you work in VC. It's a world not everyone is really familiar with. I was just reading some articles about an old high school buddy of mine who works in the VC world. He was talking about transparency and allowing people to shop deals around. And I was just really interested in the different ways in which the venture conversation is designed, and ways in which you feel like it could be more optimally designed.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, definitely. I'll answer that question, but quickly to roadmap one step back. I think I promised your listeners three tips, two virtual and one physical.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh yeah, okay, good.

Michael Bervell:

And I think it's a [crosstalk 00:28:40].

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, good man. Yeah, yeah, let's loop back around and we'll-

Michael Bervell:

And the one physical tip, which, and then I'll come back to that question. But the one physical tip is, I learned when I was a sophomore in college going through Harvard's punch process, which as you know, they have these things called final clubs. They're kind of like fraternities much harder. I guess, harder to get into. I'm not really sure if it's more hard or less hard, but you go to these events, and it's 200 punches, young sophomores and 10 members. And you have to somehow impress these 10 members to get them to move you to the next round, and you do this for four or five rounds before finally getting in.

Michael Bervell:

And my tip that I had for the punch process, or the lesson that I learned was, if you go meet someone, they're really going to remember two or maybe three things about you, and so, go into theses conversations having your two or three things close to your heart and knowing what you want to share, like, "What is the goal of who Michael is?" by the end of this conversation. And having those top-of-mind is, I think, super helpful, whether you're at a conference or going through a punch process or anything else.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I mean, that's sort of like knowing the purpose, but knowing what you want people to come out of it with.

Michael Bervell:

Exactly. So then anyways to your question on VC, venture capital conversations, I think VC is just a fascinating industry. For the people who don't know about venture capital, essentially, people come to you. They ask rudely, and then you say yes or no, and that's your job. If you've watched Shark Tank, doing that every day is the job of quite a few people in the world.

Michael Bervell:

It's interesting, because there's kind of two parts to venture capital. One is everything that's deal flow, inbound. And, of course, the second is investing, outbound. And in the inbound, you have to be able to get a lot of inbound, and have a lot of conversations to vet. And in the outbound, you have to be able to convince people that they should take your money verus someone else's money, that your dollar is more valuable for some whole host of reasons.

Michael Bervell:

And so on the inbound conversations, obviously, you're talking with founders, you're talking with other investors. You're talking with people who have built companies and failed, and try to understand why, doing diligence, talking to customers. But what I find most interesting is the investor-to-investor relationship maintenance, because if you have really good relationships with other investors, then even if they pass on a really good deal, they'll send it to you to look at. And so have of venture capital, I mean maybe more than half, maybe less than half, a portion of venture capital is relationship maintenance for the purpose of deal flow. I think that's a super interesting part to venture capital that is often overlooked-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, because I would think that maybe people would-

Michael Bervell:

... what you don't hear of.

Daniel Stillman:

... think that competitors are keeping competitors at an arm's length versus having an authentic relationship with them.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and I think in the longterm, too, when you eventually go outbound with your money and invent in a company and join the board, they're going to raise more money in the future. Ideally, you're not the last time they raise money. Eventually, they'll raise a Series B, C, D, maybe they'll IPO. All of those processes take even more relationships, and so you can't burn a bridge on one deal, because then it burns the bridge for the next 50 deals that you want to do. And so it's almost like relationship maintenance in the long term has a higher effect. Even if you think, "Oh, this deal, this person might take the deal from me."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. I would almost put it in, some people think about a conversation beginning and ending. Like one phone call, it starts and it ends. But in the way that you are keeping the conversation going that your grandmother started, it's a potentially infinite conversation, where you just don't know who's going to be funding in the third round, and maintaining that relationship is part of taking a longer view to that dialogue.

Michael Bervell:

I almost call it, and this goes back to the conversational layers. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

If you add up all these layers, eventually it becomes like kind of a conversation onion. And that's another term from my research, is a conversation onion. The fun part about the conversation onion metaphor is, let's say on layer three you have a rocky part of the relationship that you never discuss, and you go out to layer 10 or 11 or 13, that rock is still going to affect the layers way far out. And to cut into the onion might require a couple tears, but eventually will lead to a good dish at the end, or a better relationship at the end. And so, every relationship is always additive, honestly, maybe even multiplicative in this nature, rather than just isolated events.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, I think only if you have that mindset.

Michael Bervell:

Correct, yeah. Well, I think even if you don't, almost unintentionally you'll have that, you'll be thinking that, whether you know it or not. I guess my hunch is that's human nature. When I see you now I think, "What happened the last time I saw him and the five or six times after?"

Michael Bervell:

And I think Maya Angelou has this great quote that, "You may forget what someone did for you, but you'll never forget how they made you feel." And I think that's, the feeling of conversation is almost more important than the content itself, especially in venture when you're sharing the high-stake deals and it could make or lose someone millions of dollars. It's all about reputation at that point, which reputation is just a nice word for, "How does this person make me feel?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Is there anything else you think about when you're designing those conversations in the context of the work that you do?

Michael Bervell:

I think we've in this discussion so far, I've assumed that we've gotten the conversation. But there's also a bunch of work beforehand of deciding who to converse with, and also whether or not to take an inbound conversation. And I think as a venture capitalist, probably my hardest job so far has been when I tell people that our conversation is ending, which we refer to as passing on the deal.

Michael Bervell:

You talk with them to or three times and you're like, "The team doesn't find it interesting. We're going to pass." How do you do that in a graceful way? And how do you end a conversation?

Daniel Stillman:

How do you?

Michael Bervell:

I wish I had better tips here. I haven't done much thinking or research on it yet, so I don't have any silver bullets. I'm still in the learning phase myself.

Daniel Stillman:

We don't have the perfect conversation yet for that one.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah. Or how to end the conversation perfectly.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so interesting, what's coming to mind, I've been obsessing over it. Have you watched the movie Moneyball?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, I have, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So, there's a whole series of clips I was watching on YouTube, and it's an amazing microcosm of conversations about how decisions get made. And there's a scene where Billy Beane, i.e. Brad Pitt, is teaching Jonah Hill, i.e. Pete Brand, I guess, how to fire people, and it was so... He was like, "Just tell him."

Daniel Stillman:

So there's some research on the order in which people like to receive news. Generally speaking, most people would say they would like to receive the bad news first, but most people try to give people good news to try and soften the blow. And I'm going to screw it up, and I'll have to put this in the show notes. Basically, if you want people to change, or grow, or evolve, you want to give them the bad news. You don't want to soften it, right?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

You just want to tell them. You have to be straight with them, which was Billy Bragg's advice. He's like, "They're professionals." But I think we feel that we're being... This is the self-taught talk piece versus the self-talk that keeps us from saying the thing that might be the most helpful to them.

Michael Bervell:

In that Moneyball clip, I know exactly what you're talking about because I watched Moneyball three weeks ago.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh yeah?

Michael Bervell:

I think he says, "This is their job." Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

This conversation, if you go to them and say, "You're fired," that's their job. It actually works if you say, "Hey, you did so well over the last two months. We're really sorry to tell you this, but you're going to have to go." Versus just saying, "Hey, times changed. You have to leave."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. We're trading you to the Mets. There it is. Here's your paperwork.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, that's it. And it's no discussion, no debate. It's just, "That's the fact." But I don't know if Moneyball is based on a real phenomenon. I don't know if that is a clip from a real incident.

Daniel Stillman:

No, they're not. Totally fair, totally.

Michael Bervell:

In that same sense, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, and I think this is maybe... And this is me just brainstorming, so take this with seven grains of salt. But it sounds like, going back to having the relationships with other VCs, I mean, that's extra work, which you don't necessarily want to be able to take on. But it is always so great for me to be able to say to somebody, "I can't help you at that price point, but I do know some coaches that are a little more junior who might be willing to take you on."

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

And they're like, "That would be great." And that does soften the blow, is being able to send them someplace else.

Michael Bervell:

The biggest worry that I have though sometimes is softening the blow versus opening a new conversation. There was a time that I passed on a deal, and I was like, "Hey, the team isn't interested at this time." And the response that they had was, "Okay. At which time would they be interested?" Like, "Can I pitch again in six months?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, this is like, "This is what it would take."

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And it seems like that's a very helpful position to say, "Here's why we're passing, and here's what it would take to get us interested again," which is very generous.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, and then suddenly they come back at eight months and they say, "Hey, I fixed the things that you said I have to fix."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

I'm like, "Well, the market dynamics have changed. The industry is no longer hot, or our fund ran out of money this year. There's no more money." There's a whole host of other factors, and so it's almost like sometimes if you give too much of an explanation when you end the conversation, it leaves the door open for the conversation to be reopened, even if it's not.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. These are the finer points that will go into the tinkering of the creation of the perfect letdown-

Michael Bervell:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

... at the end of the conversation.

Michael Bervell:

That's the next research project: How to end the conversation. I guess it'll be like how to end a relationship almost.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, I'm sure there's some parallels. It's not you, it's me. Ugh, it's the worst. Nobody likes that.

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, it's the worst.

Daniel Stillman:

But, and then some cases, and you can't tell people the real reason because that's... Usually people aren't looking for feedback on that stuff.

Michael Bervell:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

"Tell me more," never a good.

Michael Bervell:

Maybe, giving feedback with a period.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, totally. So, I feel like, speaking on the conversation, I want to make sure we talk about your book, because I think books are conversations, and they, just like any other good infinite and conversation of infinite onion size, I'm curious, for you, how the conversation about the book started for you in your self-talk, how you hosted and facilitated the conversations that helped you write the book, and what kind of growing concentric circles of the book has the book created? What ripples of conversation has it started for you? That's a lot. They're still questions.

Michael Bervell:

No, it's great. It's great, and it'll lead to a great story hopefully.

Michael Bervell:

The self-talk that started the book was when I first started working at Microsoft straight out of college, I just felt like I wasn't being as creative. I just felt like I went from college where I was studying philosophy, writing papers all the time, learning about a new subject all the time to working in this corporate job where I was being told what to do; I wasn't creating my own.

Daniel Stillman:

Sure.

Michael Bervell:

So I actually made this blog called billiondollartartupideas.com.

Daniel Stillman:

Which I love.

Michael Bervell:

That's so funny. I still do it to this day. It's been almost 800 days, and I've been posting every single day for the last two-and-some years, but I just post a new startup idea every single day on this website. And after about a year-and-a-half, I realized that 70% of my readers were from outside of the U.S. They were from India, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, pretty much everywhere that's not the global West. And it got me thinking, "I don't know anything about startups in these regions, in these ecosystems."

Michael Bervell:

And more than that, when I look at other investors in the U.S. market, I mean, there aren't very many investors that look like me. There aren't very many Ghanaian-American investors, or even female investors, or Latinx investors, and so, where are all of them?

Michael Bervell:

And then I realized, "Well, let me at least go to these regions and try to learn those stories." So, Unlocking Unicorns is a book all about startup founders in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. And it ties down the stories of super successful billion-dollar companies, unicorn companies in those regions, and some of the key lessons that these founders had to overcome in order to kind of, what I would say is, beat the odds to create a billion-dollar company in their region.

Michael Bervell:

So, in Africa, in the whole continent, for instance, I think there's about eight or nine unicorn companies, so, billion-dollar companies with a private market capitalization. And in my book I wrote about two of them. One of them was called Andela, and a second one was called Interswitch, two really fascinating companies. But even in the style of the book, it's written as a conversation. It's written as if you, the reader, are talking to the startup founder and asking them questions about their life. "Where did you grow up? Hod did you find this idea? Why did this idea trump the other five or six that you tried? And what were the key lessons in growing the startup that you knew of?"

Michael Bervell:

So, I try to almost have it almost like a Socratic dialogue, like if you were to read any of Plato's or Socrates type of work. It's kind of how it reads, more so than a monologue of me, the author, telling you about their story. So, it was really a fun book to read, and that's kind of how it's been going so far in terms of the creation aspect.

Michael Bervell:

Some of these chapters are written through conversations, meaning I actually met the founder and the executive, talked to them, and put their story back in the book. So, I was able to meet Jack Ma back in 2018 before I even started writing this book, and was able to go to a talk with him with about 25 or 30 other people, learn about his whole life story, take notes and secretly recorded a bit of it, too. And it was super fascinating. And that, I use some of those bits to add to the Jack Ma chapter.

Michael Bervell:

Same with Robin Li from Baidu, and the introduction and conclusion chapters, which feature American founders, are from a podcast I used to run, where I'd interview different Black and Latinx founders. So, all that has kind of gone together to make the Unlocking Unicorns story.

Daniel Stillman:

And what do you feel like the conversational ripples have? Because you published it, was it the middle of this year? Is that right?

Michael Bervell:

Yeah, I published it in August, so it came out just, what is it, three months ago, or I guess depending on when you release this, X months ago.

Daniel Stillman:

X months ago, yeah.

Michael Bervell:

But the ripples have been really, really fascinating actually. The books have been sold into seven different countries, which is kind of crazy to think that I wrote this text and within 100 days, people in seven different countries have purchased it, and read it, and learned from it. And I think what's fascinating is it's, I think it's brought to light the idea that the next 50 years of innovation will look different from the last 50 years. Where the internet is growing, it is in these kind of emerging economies, places like Nigeria, which has more internet users than some European countries.

Michael Bervell:

I mean, the whole continent of Africa has more internet users than the whole population of America; the same is true of India and China. And so I think for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, for anyone who wants to understand the world half a century from now, you have to have an intimate and deep understanding of these emerging economies, primarily because there's just so many people there, but also the cost of technology coming down, which means the barrier to entry for people in these regions are also coming down.

Michael Bervell:

So, any company like a TikTok, or an Uber or a Lyft, needs to be accessible to all people, especially the people, the six or five billion people who don't live in the global West.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think it's really, really, you talk about changing the conversation, expanding the horizon to the next 50 years, really does shift the... That's a question with a period actually, or an exclamation point. You're like, "The next 50 years of innovation-"

Michael Bervell:

[inaudible 00:45:48].

Daniel Stillman:

"... couldn't possibly look like the first 50 years," because the cost of building a network is completely different now than it was 50 years ago. When my dad was an account executive at AT&T building a 2G network is totally different than building a network today, and the no-code revolution, it's a completely different ball game.

Michael Bervell:

And, of course, some things will replicate or mimic the last 50 years.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Michael Bervell:

Right? Quantum computing, which takes a lot of money to build, probably won't start in an emerging economy where they just don't have those resources.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Michael Bervell:

But if you're thinking, "Where is the next social media app going to come from?" since the resources to build that has dropped almost to zero, I mean it's really as long as you can teach yourself and have connection to an internet that you can get education from MIT OpenCourseWare, from all the same courses that me and my friends might have taken, and learn exactly what we learned and able to do it yourself.

Daniel Stillman:

It's sobering. Well, unfortunately, our time together for this conversation, and I feel like I should just have you on as a weekly guest, frankly, but what haven't I asked you? What's important to share, from your wealth of knowledge, research and experience about designing, if not perfect, better conversations? What have I not asked you that I should have asked you? What's important, yet, to share?

Michael Bervell:

I think it's a question I'll leave your audience with rather than answering it myself. And it's something I've been noodling on in my brain recently, and it's, "What are your three most common thoughts every day?"

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Michael Bervell:

And I think it would be a fun exercise for people in your audience for the next month to at the end of the day, reflect on what were the three things that they thought about most and try to see what the similarities are. So, I'm getting super fascinated by the idea of meta cognition, which of course goes back into self-talk. And so that, to me, I think is super fascinating. So, I don't know where it'll lead me, but that's the question I'll leave your audience with.

Daniel Stillman:

I would love to have a deeper conversation about that another time, because I am... this question of being a chameleon with a purpose, this question of being authentic and noticing what we're living with and can we change it, is a really... Can we change how we think, is a really interesting and important question.

Michael Bervell:

It's very ontological, and it's very, almost Heideggerian. He wrote this book called Being and Time, and he talks about Da-sein is the thing. And he's a controversial figure in and of himself, but at least his philosophy is somewhat interesting, so...

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, I would say so. Michael, it's a great pleasure. If people want to find you on the internets, a simple google will do. We talked about Unlocking Unicorns, which is available wherever fine books are sold. And what's the, your offer, the billion-dollar startup? What the... I'll just let you say it instead of me mangling it.

Michael Bervell:

It's just billiondollarstartupideas.com; that's the website, and then also, unlockingunicorns.com redirects to that website as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay.

Michael Bervell:

And if you want to learn more about me, it's michaelbervell.com at Michael spelled the regular way, A-E-L and Bervell is B-E-R-V-E-L-L.com. All my projects are there, and you can contact me there as well.

Daniel Stillman:

There you have it. Michael, I feel so lucky to be in conversation with you, just in general, in my life, and specifically now in this conversation here. So, thanks for making the time.

Michael Bervell:

Of course. And I really hope you drop your TikTok in the show notes.

Daniel Stillman:

Fair enough. I guess I should make a second one first, right?

Michael Bervell:

Well, thank you so much for having me, Daniel. I really appreciate it.

Daniel Stillman:

All right, and scene.

The Conversation Factory Book Club: Facilitating Breakthrough with Adam Kahane

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is a round-table conversation with Adam Kahane, author of Facilitating Breakthrough, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven’t listened to the interview I did with Adam last season OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation.

Adam does show some slides during the conversation, so head over to YouTube if you want to follow along. 

A note on process: In this session, you’ll hear the panel share what parts of the book were most impactful to them, and then Adam responds to their comments with some deeper thoughts. The wisdom Adam drops here is absolutely worth the price of admission!

Check out the show notes on theconversationfactory.com for links to Adam’s book, our podcast conversation last year, and his work as a Director at Reos Partners.

If you’re unfamiliar with Adam and Reos, Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. 

He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between.

Adam is amazingly honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy, Transformative Scenario Planning, and Solving Tough Problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt...or just get Facilitating Breakthrough!

It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener. As you’ll hear, many of the panel members had an eye-opening moment, as I did, around the idea of Vertical and Horizontal facilitation.

Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation

In the opening quote, Adam points out that Vertical and Horizontal facilitation are two poles of a polarity. And like all good polarities, the key is to hold them lightly and dance between them mindfully.

Vertical Facilitation is focused on singularity: We have the right answer, and a right answer can be found and advocated for.

Horizontal Facilitation is focused on multiplicity: We each have our own answer, our own view, and there is no right path.

A sketch I made to help me think though the key ideas of Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation and the moves that shift the conversation from one pole to the other.

As Adam says...the “bad guy” isn’t one or the other pole of the polarity...it’s choosing one over the other.

I also deeply loved that Adam makes clear that the work of the Facilitator mirrors the work of the group.

Adam points out (on p.70 of his book) that:

A facilitator can only help participants if they, like participants, move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation

Again: it’s not about choosing verticality (finding a single answer) or horizontality (exploring multiplicity)...it’s about the opening and emergence created when we shift from one side of the polarity to the other. Can we move between Inquiring (the move to the horizontal) and Advocating (which shifts to the vertical)?

Complex situations rarely have solutions that can readily and easily be identified and advocated for. So, finding a path through truly complex challenges requires careful and artful shifting between these two modes of Vertical and Horizontal.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and that you check out Adam’s recent book, Facilitating Breakthrough.

If you want to take a deep dive into mastering facilitation and leading conversations through complexity, check out my Facilitation Masterclass. The next 12-week cohort starts in February. Learn more here.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Facilitating Breakthrough, by Adam Kahane

Reos Partners

Adam Kahane on The Conversation Factory

Minute 21

So the one phrase that I've come up with that's not in the book, about which I think explains the book, is that I think the world needs more and better collaboration. And if you define a facilitator simply as somebody who helps people to collaborate to effect change then the world needs more and better facilitation. So that is a summary of what the book is about that isn't in the book.

Minute 25

But early on a very generous person, who I actually don't know, who was one of the readers, one of the 207 readers of the manuscript, a guy named Marco Vallenti, said to me no, he thinks I'm wrong. This is a polarity, the bad guy is choosing one or the other, which I think most facilitators do, or at least they tend to one or the other. And the recommended approach is to use them both. Which you'll recognize is the central organizing idea in the book. And so a very important piece of feedback.

Now this thing about similarity and difference is interesting to me and I, years ago somebody said to me it's both. It's like Paris fashion week. Every year it's the same, every year it's different. So to me they are equally important. It's an ordinary polarity, it's related to power and love. But that they are both true. And that you need to focus both on what's common and what's different, and to focus only on what's common is the vertical and to focus only on what's different is the horizontal.

Minute 27

you don't need to decide if transformative facilitation is the right approach. I'm asserting that it is, that this is a general theory and practice of facilitation and that transformative facilitation equals good facilitation. So I know that is an audacious statement. So there is a discernment about fit for purpose, but its not about transformative facilitation, yes or no. It's about which move to make. That's where the discernment comes in.

Minute 32

The last thing, one of you mentioned this being a part of and apart from. I think it was Maggie. This is really interested me a lot. That is why I, even though logically the last story doesn't really, it doesn't have to be the last chapter, but I really wanted that to be the last chapter, because I think it's a very fundamental thing about whether you consider outside or inside a situation. And somebody said to me today it's the difference between controlling a situation and entering a situation. And when you think about it that way, of course we can't control and of course we are entering, but to recognize that, and again to recognize it's not that inside good, outside bad, but choosing one or the other rigidly is bad, and so like the other four polarities, its a matter of doing them both.

Minute 40

So Daniel is referring to an idea that I think I allude to in this book, but which is this central point in my previous book Collaborating with the Enemy. And it makes the point that there are, there is more than one way to deal with a situation. There are these four ways. And collaborating for some people is their favorite thing, for some people it is their least favorite thing. But anyhow you can't collaborate with everybody on everything, so collaboration is a choice. And not only is it a choice, but it is an unstable choice. So people can say we want to collaborate and then after five minute or five months say this isn't working I'm going to exit, or adapt, or force. But the subject of this book is if and only if the actors want to collaborate, then you need, then some person or people have to facilitate and this is how to do it. But this book says nothing about what to do if people or if key people don't want to collaborate.

More About Adam

Adam organizes, designs, and facilitates processes that help move people forward together on their most important and intractable issues.

Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.

Adam is a leading organizer, designer, and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries and in every part of the world, with executives, politicians, generals, guerrillas, civil servants, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations officials, clergy and artists.

Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, about which Nelson Mandela said, “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.” He is also the author of Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future, and Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust.

During the early 1990s, Adam was the head of Social, Political, Economic, and Technological Scenarios for Royal Dutch Shell in London. He has held strategy and research positions with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (San Francisco), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna), the Institute for Energy Economics (Tokyo), and the Universities of Oxford, Toronto, British Columbia, California, and the Western Cape.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

So, we are going to do a round robin, and just take a couple of minutes each. I'll let you know if you've gone past like three or four minutes, because that would add up to a lot of time. Just to share one, one thing from the book that you feel was impactful. And one thing, one question that might still be standing out for you that the group and Adam could help clarify.

Daniel Stillman:

Hey welcome aboard Maggie. We're just getting started with the round robin.

Daniel Stillman:

I will, I'll lead the way. I feel like the quote that I really loved was the idea that a facilitator, and this is from page 70, a facilitator can only help participants if they like participants move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation. The idea that we have to do exactly what we ask our participants to do, that there's this connection between what we do as a self and what we do as a group, I think is really profound. And to that point I think there isn't enough conversation around the inner moves of facilitation. That facilitation is an inner game as much as a set of outer moves. And that's the thing I am most grateful to have spoken about in the book.

Daniel Stillman:

And I think you mention I'm becoming more masterful as a facilitator, or in my facilitation, in as much as you can recenter yourself more quickly than you used to. And I think it's worth having the conversation at some point about how we, how you develop that skill. Because I know that is something that is not clear to everyone, how you develop that skill of the inner capacity for presence and stillness with yourself. I am going to pass the mike over to Osama. Osama.

Osama:

Hi Daniel. Hi Adam. Daniel, you look slimmer from last time I saw you. I just want to say that.

Daniel Stillman:

Just to be clear we are here to compliment Adam, not me, but thank you.

Osama:

Yes. Okay, okay. And Adam you have more hair than last time I saw you.

Osama:

So for me the thing that stuck with me the most, almost the physicist rigor. Studying these concepts. So, I know you, Daniel, your background is in physics and Adam your background is in physics. And my background is in computer science in a technical field, but when I was reading about vertical and horizontal facilitation, for me I didn't recognize them as separate things. Because I don't see them existing by them, like I haven't seen vertical facilitator or a horizontal facilitator. So for me they were kind of messy, and so I was irritated to see them split. But as I read more I valued what I learned by splitting them and studying them and then reintegrating them in transformative facilitation.

Osama:

I hope I made sense. And I pass it to, do I pass it to the next person?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes please.

Osama:

I pass it to Mark Melbourne.

Mark:

Thanks Osama. So great to meet you all. And Adam I guess what struck me, there was a lot of resonances for me I guess. I'm part of, I'm kind of a fan of the art of hosting community that does talk about many of the concepts that you've alluded to there in your book. I guess the thing that was impactful for me was just to, kind of in a way bearing witness to it being applied in such significant, kind of high gravity, kind of circumstances. Which I can't even conceive of being, kind of involved, being a witness physically to that.

Mark:

I think the curiosity for me is trying to understand how the experience of being in that holy environment of where the magic happens, how does that continue on past, once the event is finished? How does that sort of transformation continue to bleed out into what happens next and next and next? And if that is sort of an intentional part of the process?

Mark:

Hand balling to Kara.

Kara:

Okay. Hi. Thank you Adam for writing this wonderful book. It was a real joy to read. Your stories are amazing and similar I think to Mark is, oh my gosh, I can't imagine actually having been in these incredibly complex situations, like very high stakes and it sounds intimidating. But you are clearly an expert in navigating these complicated relationships.

Kara:

I had a lot of similar thoughts to what Osama and Mark had said. But something I'll add on top of that is I love the bookend, no pun intended, the concepts that sort of framed the very beginning and the very end of the book. Which is removing obstacles to contribution connection and equity as the goal of the facilitation. I love just how simple, but how impactful that way of thinking about it is. And then by closing the book where you talk about employing love, power and justice, and that that is kind of similarly things you want to remove obstacles to but also empower to kind of bring clarity to the situation. Those were two things that I really loved.

Kara:

The thing that I am left with is, it seems as though transformative facilitation is applicable to very specific scenarios and you have the very last page, which I didn't see for a little while, well maybe not the very last page. But is the guide for facilitating breakthrough and how to recognize when it's an appropriate tool. I guess I am still wrestling with that. How do I know that this is the right tool for the scenario that I am faced with and how do I recognize that in the situation? So, yeah, that is what I am left with. Thank you very much.

Kara:

And I will pass it to, I am going to pick my neighbor down the road in Tampa, Wayne. Two Floridians on this call. That's kind of fun.

Wayne:

Awesome. Thank you. All right, again thanks Mark. I don't know if anybody else listened to the book, but I did listen to it. And it was a very good listen. I definitely appreciate it. I know it wasn't you right, right? No.

Adam Kahane:

No.

Wayne:

Had somebody else. Okay. Definitely appreciated the way the book came in very into story telling. Again those high stakes situations were quite riveting. I liked overall how the book, there was not a lot of dips in it really. I definitely liked how the conclusion was almost like a fireworks show, where the end had a lot of stuff going on as well. That really tied things in, like Kara was saying, the power, love and justice. It was just like wow. You just sprinkled a lot of chocolate syrup on top of the sundae that we were already enjoying. So I loved that.

Wayne:

I loved how you put the power and love, I can almost picture it as a matrix, where without power or without love you really don't have anything, or just having one, just having another, but you need both of them which was great. Then you put the justice part on there, and it had me thinking and more curious about how different systemic inequities that exist look through that lens.

Wayne:

It almost makes me crave for a book focused on those things. Maybe someone else in the Reos group, who focus on that. What has been their experiences dealing with some of those rather sticky situations. And then lastly, this is something I've been going through personally, in terms of being a continuous improvement professional, very process methodology focused, and your book pretty much says, okay don't rely on that. You have to be able to, again maneuver and shift your balance and it's not just step one, step two, step three. It could be one, two, back to one, one, five, back to four. Just all of that. And the fit for purpose aspect is what I got from it and was really a mind set shift for me. Thank you.

Wayne:

And I will pass it to my neighbor up top, right next to me is Lynne Carruthers.

Lynne:

Thank you Wayne. On the opposite side of the country.

Lynne:

I loved this one line Adam. "It is a way to remove the obstacles to advancing on their own." A really nice [inaudible 00:10:32]. I also love the definition of the role of a facilitator. I often find that where I work, I struggle with what does a facilitator actually do. No you don't have all the answers and tell them what to do. So that lovely definition is very helpful.

Lynne:

Daniel will Adam see the things that we wrote up?

Daniel Stillman:

Oh I'm happy to share that slide stack with him. We've been capturing our nuggets in a place.

Lynne:

Excellent. Thank you.

Lynne:

I have all kinds of things, but I am a long time aware of your amazing skills and talents and I just want to say that Napier would be very proud of you.

Adam Kahane:

Thank you.

Lynne:

You're welcome.

Lynne:

That's it for me Daniel. Oh, excuse me. Mark where are you?

Mark N:

Hey. Thanks. I am actually in San Jose, California. So quite close to, regionally in a similar location. Yeah, thank you. Nice to meet everyone. People that I don't know and do know, but also very much nice to meet you Adam.

Mark N:

I can only kind of piggy back on what other people have said because they have said it so much better than I. I think really what struck me was the really simple part of the things that make us different. There's things that make us different, but focusing on the things that bring us together is kind of really the basis of facilitation. And the way that you work with the group dynamic to really focus on, I never really thought of being to bring it back to the human elements, you know the power, love and justice. But really having those goals and the reasons why, they have a reason to come to the table, even at these high stakes is just kind of how magical, how you were able to condense into something so simple. Because I think condensing it down is one of the most difficult things to do. So I very much appreciate you having gone through those experiences and being able to share it in that manner.

Mark N:

I think what, kind of the question that I have, that was kind of off book, was similar to Daniel's. When facilitating in tense situations with such high stakes, how do you as a facilitator recenter yourself, kind of avoid burn out and recoup from it so that you can continue to provide this type of facilitation again and again over time? I think that is kind of like the question that is probably going to be going for a long period of time beyond this conversations. But would very much appreciate to learn more about that as well. Thank you so much.

Mark N:

And to that I will popcorn to Maggie.

Maggie:

Thanks Mark. Adam it's a privilege to meet you and spend this time with you. I'm a fan of Solving Tough Problems, which I bought many years ago because I do a lot of scenario work.

Maggie:

The part that really resonated with me was that notion that a part of the group and apart from the group. That is always one of my mantras as I go in, especially when it's what you call the high wire situations, is this not about me, but I'm there too. So that notion of toggling back and forth between being apart and also a part of the group. It was enjoyable to see the foreword by Ed Schein. He was one of my professors at the Pepperdine MSOD Program many years ago. And I also really appreciate just the book, all the citations and notes, because I followed up on a lot of those as well. So it is a wonderful resource. So, thank you.

Maggie:

I'll pass it to Carrie.

Carrie:

Thanks Maggie. And thank you Adam for being here and for this book. I'm a fellow Berrett-Koehler author, so hello.

Carrie:

This was, I learned so much. And really over the last year and a half I never considered myself to be a facilitator, and over working with Daniel and his masterclass I have realized that everything I do is actually facilitation. This was deeply clarifying for me. Especially the ideas of vertical and horizontal facilitation. I didn't, like Osama, I didn't realize that those were two separate things. And that I often am working in environments where vertical facilitation is the only acceptable kind of facilitation, in these corporate environments. But, where from the top, but then horizontally there are just so many voices that are not being heard and are frustrated, and that are, things are falling apart. So that really clarified that for me.

Carrie:

The concept that I am taking away from it more than anything else is this concept of unconditional positive regard for the people that you are facilitating. And perhaps for yourself as well as you are facilitating. That will stick with me for a long time. Especially when facilitating difficult groups.

Carrie:

The question that I am still wondering about is, I think Carrie you mentioned this, how to know if this facilitation is right, and then how to get consent to facilitate this or if that is even a concept that makes sense in your framework? And then also what to do when working in this context and then groups have a sort of false consensus and are being too nice to each other? So that you are not really able to make any progress. So that is my big question after reading this. Thank you.

Carrie:

And I will pass it to Kelly.

Kelly:

Hi everyone. Thank you Carrie. I'm Kelly Evans from San Francisco. I apologize my late, and this is also my first one, so what an impression. Hopefully none of you will forget me this time. Because I'll be that one. Nice to see you Daniel again.

Daniel Stillman:

Likewise.

Kelly:

Wow Carrie. So many things that you said were exactly, I'm only on Chapter Two. I consider myself an accidental and a somewhat reluctant facilitator. I am an introvert and yet I have stuck myself in a position where I felt facilitation was important. It was needed at the moment. And lo and behold I was going to step in to try to be that person.

Kelly:

I was struck immediately from the book, just joyfully surprised about sort of elevating the role of the facilitator to sort of this, it was sort of a spiritual celebration of the role of facilitator for me. Because the facilitator is often, especially in my work environment, reduced to its minimal parts. You are going to keep us on time. You are going to create an agenda. It's really pretty stale. And I was really struck by the vertical and horizontal as well. Coming at it from the side. And I think one is sometimes more formal and the other one is sort of how it really happens, right?

Kelly:

And to Carrie's point I would love to learn how to influence the organization to buy in to a different way of doing and being. And also Carrie, echoed your developing empathy with myself as a facilitator. Lynne and I are colleagues and we've done a ton of co-facilitation, and just the exhaustion I personally feel sometimes with something, I just need to give myself permission because I felt I was giving so much to the group and felt so much accountability and responsibility for the success of whatever it was I was trying to get the group from point A to point B. Just being okay with sometimes it being messy or just missing the mark. So I also learned, or look forward to learning how to tap into the flow of this transformative facilitation to A to help bolster myself through and gain some buoyancy through some of the ups and downs of how these things really unfold in real life.

Kelly:

That's all. I'm just in chapter two. So tremendously impactful right at the get go Adam, thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

All right. Thank you everyone for doing that. And Adam I hope that wasn't too much of a shower, slash fire hose of insights. What from that is sticking for you as worth stretching out and expanding? I know that was a lot, but I'm curious where you think it would be interesting to start unpacking.

Adam Kahane:

Well, first of all thank you very much. Thanks for reading the book and finding something useful in it.

Adam Kahane:

Let me say a few things. And also perhaps its counter norm but also show you a few slides. And the reason is that I finished the book early in the year. It's a very long process from the time you finish the manuscript to the time the book comes out. I love Berret-Koehler by the way. I really enjoy working with them. But, any how, the point is I finish writing the book, I don't know six months ago, but I wasn't really presenting it yet. So I was sort of mulling it over in my mind and also rereading it many times, because you have to keep proof reading it and things like that, so as a result there are a few things that are clearer to me now that aren't in the book.

Daniel Stillman:

So you've learned things since writing the book? That's not allowed. It stays in time and that's it.

Adam Kahane:

Including some images, because it's more trouble than it's worth to try to get images into a printed book usually. But I'm giving a lot of presentations and I like to use images in my slides. So the one phrase that I've come up with that's not in the book, about which I think explains the book, is that I think the world needs more and better collaboration. And if you define a facilitator simply as somebody who helps people to collaborate to effect change then the world needs more and better facilitation. So that is a summary of what the book is about that isn't in the book.

Adam Kahane:

And I'm just going to show you a few images that relate to some of the things, well images that I, I like making these slides and they relate to things you said. So I'm just going to quickly share my screen here. I'm sorry this is in the wrong place.

Adam Kahane:

So you mentioned being a physicist. This is a bar in Montreal. I don't think it exists, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist anymore. But when I was a physics student, I was dating a theater student and she worked at the Kon-Tiki. She was a bartender at the Kon-Tiki. And I would go, I can't remember how often a week, but I don't know maybe three or four times a week, and sit at the bar waiting for her shift to finish and work on my physics problem. So I like that a lot. It actually really, I think this is a photo from before my time, but it really did look like this when I used to go there.

Adam Kahane:

But anyhow, I do like this activity of trying to figure out very precisely how to say things. I haven't taken anything else from my studies in physics, but I did take this love of finding a clear and simple way to say things. And the table at the back of the book, which I suppose doesn't show up very well in the audio version, or even in the digital version, but you can read in the paper version is pretty complete. And this vertical and horizontal is a new idea. I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it before. It's not that, the book is describing something that lots of good facilitators do, but it's describing it in a new way. And the big turning point in the book is when I realize the book was not about vertical bad, horizontal good, but choosing vertical or horizontal as bad and working with them both as good.

Osama:

Can you say it one more time?

Adam Kahane:

Yeah, so my editor, I don't know if it's the same as Carrie's editor, is the former president of Berrett-Koehler. His name is Steve Piersanti. He's a really, he's probably the best business book editor in the United States. He's quite a modest man, but he will admit to that. And one of the things he's told me recently, because I worked on five books with him, is that a book has to have a bad guy. You know, you have to say what this is not. And so I thought that when I first started writing and I thought that the bad guy was vertical facilitation and that the point of the book was that you needed not to be vertical and horizontal.

Adam Kahane:

But early on a very generous person, who I actually don't know, who was one of the readers, one of the 207 readers of the manuscript, a guy named Marco Vallenti, said to me no, he thinks I'm wrong. This is a polarity, the bad guy is choosing one or the other, which I think most facilitators do, or at least they tend to one or the other. And the recommended approach is to use them both. Which you'll recognize is the central organizing idea in the book. And so a very important piece of feedback.

Adam Kahane:

Now this thing about similarity and difference is interesting to me and I, years ago somebody said to me it's both. It's like Paris fashion week. Every year it's the same, every year it's different. So to me they are equally important. It's an ordinary polarity, it's related to power and love. But that they are both true. And that you need to focus both on what's common and what's different, and to focus only on what's common is the vertical and to focus only on what's different is the horizontal.

Adam Kahane:

Now the last image I want to show you is something I described in the book, but I have photographs about it. And it relates to the point that Kara made. That I'm going to say that you don't need to decide if transformative facilitation is the right approach. I'm asserting that it is, that this is a general theory and practice of facilitation and that transformative facilitation equals good facilitation. So I know that is an audacious statement. So there is a discernment about fit for purpose, but its not about transformative facilitation, yes or no. It's about which move to make. That's where the discernment comes in.

Adam Kahane:

And here is a, when Covid started my wife and I moved from the city to the country, and I wrote about this in the book. But the images I think will say it more clearly. So I live in Montreal, I'm back now and this is where I go jogging every morning. It's pretty straight forward, because the streets are marked. But when I go out to the country I jogged here where there are, yeah there are no marked paths. And it was really interesting because there's lots of paths in this forest and I kept getting lost, for days and days. In parentheses, I got lost while I was thinking about my book. So I was paying attention to something else and I would get lost. And the first time I got lost for hours, and it was getting dark, and I really thought I wouldn't make it back. I was pretty scary. And even when I did get back to a part of the trail I recognized I again started thinking about what I was writing and I got lost again, right at the end.

Adam Kahane:

But the interesting thing is its not true, I realized after three or four days, its not true that the path is unmarked. Actually its marked very clearly. There are red ribbons around the trees. But because I didn't know there were red ribbons I didn't notice them. Actually its more dramatic now that there are parts of the trail where somebody has spray painted big red dots. They are pretty high up. But the point is, if you know what to look for you can find your way, but if you don't know it just looks like this, like what's the direction. And I did this for a full year, and more or less tried to go on the same trail. But its pretty different from month to month, at least in Canada. And you have to be paying attention to different things. On the top right where the leaves are very thick its real easy to trip. When its snowy its not hard to find the trail, but its dangerous in other ways, etc.

Adam Kahane:

So anyhow, I'll stop there. So this idea that the discernment is about which move to make, there's only 10 moves. In a way its pretty simple right. Its just 10 things, it's not a million. 10 is not a very big number. But they're not in any particular order. I was thinking its like a recipe where they tell you there is 10 ingredients, but they don't tell you how much of each, in what order, or how to combine them. Just pay attention to what is needed next. I guess there are people who cook like that. I wouldn't know how. So that's the discernment. It's about what to use when.

Adam Kahane:

And I don't have to say a lot to say about this question about being present. I mean people are always interested in that. I don't know any way to do it except pay attention and when you screw up figure out what did I do there. And how do I do it better next time. There may be better ways.

Adam Kahane:

The last thing I will say in relation to your comments is, it is an interesting question is how do you get consent to facilitate in this way. I think one of the reasons for writing this book, well for all of my books, but including this one is, I'm trying to make it easy for people, I'm trying to give the user some authority. To say well, you might not believe me, but here is a book. It's got Nelson Mandela on the back. Because my experience is actually almost nobody cares about the process, if you try to explain it to them. Very few people are interested. All they want to know is do I trust you it will work. And that's about credibility and privilege and received, whatever is it called, referred credibility and things like that. So any way, I'll stop there.

Adam Kahane:

Oh sorry. The last thing, one of you mentioned this being a part of and apart from. I think it was Maggie. This is really interested me a lot. That is why I, even though logically the last story doesn't really, it doesn't have to be the last chapter, but I really wanted that to be the last chapter, because I think it's a very fundamental thing about whether you consider outside or inside a situation. And somebody said to me today it's the difference between controlling a situation and entering a situation. And when you think about it that way, of course we can't control and of course we are entering, but to recognize that, and again to recognize it's not that inside good, outside bad, but choosing one or the other rigidly is bad, and so like the other four polarities, its a matter of doing them both.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm going to invite Kara and Maggie, since I think your points were the ones covered by a fair bit of that, if there is a follow up or a deeper question you have from what was just shared by Adam.

Daniel Stillman:

Not to put you both on the spot.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:34:20]

Daniel Stillman:

Am I inquiring or advocating Adam? I actually don't know.

Maggie:

Well I like the idea that those, there are five polarities. And its that discernment at any moment, are you getting too involved and trying to shift the group to where you think they should be? Then you need to back off. If you are not paying attention and you are just outside and checking your phone, then you need to get re-engaged. And I think that for each of those polarities, I mean I love facilitating because when you are enroll its so easy to hold unconditional positive regard. And to just accept that whatever is happening is part of the process and we trust the process, and itself as instrument. And I think I acknowledge as well that the longer you do this work, the less vulnerable you are to making it about oh I hope I don't make a mistake, or I don't want to look stupid. You can just be there and stand in grace, not always. And what I appreciated too your admitting when you really messed up and when you were awkward or scared. And I think that that, I just loved your stories. But that to me, just that notion of these as polarities and having the versatility to be able to toggle back and forth pretty immediately.

Maggie:

Kara, say a lot.

Kara:

I don't think it was my comment though. I think it was somebody else who made, about the apart, a part or not apart of it.

Adam Kahane:

No that was Maggie.

Kara:

I'm not sure if that is what you were referring to Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

No, I think it was the.

Adam Kahane:

I think it was you about is transformative facilitation the right tool.

Kara:

Right, okay. Then yeah, I want to ask about that. But I was like I don't want to take it off topic.

Kara:

I'm trying to deepen my understanding and your points that you just made I think were really clarifying that this isn't a tool or a method or a technique that you use in a specific scenario. Its the way you work with people in this scenario that you are helping them move forward together, in any time that that's what's being asked of you to help people with. So I guess what I've been trying to grasp for a process. You know, like what does an agenda look like in a transformative facilitation situation. But I think what I'm hopefully understanding, and correct me Adam if I'm not quite there yet, but, this is more a set of inner moves that you are using and cycling through in whatever the agenda is. [crosstalk 00:37:34]

Adam Kahane:

You are correct and I'm seeing more clearly now. It's a set of outer move and inner shifts. Well, let me say what the book says. Someday we can decide whether this is a true or false statement. What the book says is that this is a set of outer moves and inner shifts required for any and all good facilitation. And that this is a general and complete theory in practice. So I say it with trepidation, because that's a big claim. And there may be more than five or fewer than five. But yes this is, I don't know what you would call it, but its the basics for all kinds of what I call real facilitation. That's to say, not including where you are trying to manipulate or control people.

Daniel Stillman:

So Adam, there's two things I want to follow up on. One is I think, sometimes I think about it as there's the center and the edges of a conversation. And there's definitely a heart beat in a powerful group conversation where the edges are everyone having their own opinion, but also small conversations, self conversations and the center where we are all having the conversation together. And whether or not we can align or agree or find a path forward that's the other questions. But I think when you flashed your slides I saw number 51 is I think from collaborating with the enemy, which when we talk about physics brain and thinking really schematically and clearly about these things, when we had our first conversation I loved seeing this flow chart of is a real change here possible. Can I live with it, if not then, can I walk away from it, if not then? I don't know if you can share that for a moment because I think that, yeah there it is. I feel like in a way that answers a little bit of Kara's question. Like is a real change here possible. Is everyone co-located in the same, are they all reading this diagram in the same way.

Daniel Stillman:

Because if somebody says okay I think I can force this and other people are like I'm going to exit this, and somebody is saying I think we should collaborate, then we are not. Maybe we are not ready for, I feel like I'm getting and Amen from Carrie, so but I would love to get a conformation from you Adam.

Kara:

I think that's also where part of my question came from, is like how do I know we are ready to move forward I think with the collaborating like you said. So I love that slide. That is really helpful. Thanks.

Adam Kahane:

So Daniel is referring to an idea that I think I allude to in this book, but which is this central point in my previous book Collaborating with the Enemy. And it makes the point that there are, there is more than one way to deal with a situation. There are these four ways. And collaborating for some people is their favorite thing, for some people it is their least favorite thing. But anyhow you can't collaborate with everybody on everything, so collaboration is a choice. And not only is it a choice, but it is an unstable choice. So people can say we want to collaborate and then after five minute or five months say this isn't working I'm going to exit, or adapt, or force. But the subject of this book is if and only if the actors want to collaborate, then you need, then some person or people have to facilitate and this is how to do it. But this book says nothing about what to do if people or if key people don't want to collaborate. The book is silent on that question. Except to say that's non-facilitation and that's something else.

Wayne:

Excuse me Adam, can you? Oh I think Osama had his hand.

Osama:

Are we open to make general comments, or there's a flow?

Daniel Stillman:

Absolutely yeah, totally. I'm not in charge here strangely enough.

Osama:

So for me the story about the mystery Adam comes back. The story that you started the book with. I'm both delighted and sad to see the mystery decomposed, and to gain a deeper understanding of the mystery. And when I hear you saying a general theory for participation I cringe a little bit and I think, I would like to think that there is more to that. But I think this is a very useful theory. It's like the Newtonian view of physics. Very useful. And then maybe later we'll have the theory of facilitation that adds a few things that we missed and things like that. It's like this alternation between the magical, the mythical and the kind of rational, kind of carefully strategized approaches that I get when I read the book.

Adam Kahane:

Yeah, thanks for saying that. Of course you will recognize that early in the book I abandon any attempt to define the mystery or even explain it. I don't even understand it at all. And I didn't elaborate on it, but my conversation with Pacha DeRue was super confusing because he was trying to, he basically said, anyway, he basically by the end of the dinner said don't worry, you don't need to understand that. And I moved on.

Adam Kahane:

And as I point out, which you recognize, this isn't like a mystery, like an Agatha Christie mystery that you solve. And so what I became more interested in was not what's the mystery, but what can you do to remove the obstacles. So that is where I turned my attention. As for what it is, and it's a bit of a leap to say the expression of the mystery is power, love and justice. I don't have much confidence in that statement, it just was a way of tying the whole thing together. So don't worry, there's lots more to be said about the mystery and the expression of the mystery. I haven't even begun that.

Osama:

Thank you for that.

Daniel Stillman:

Wayne what's still on your brain?

Wayne:

Yes. Thank you. Adam I had a question about the last thing you said before [inaudible 00:45:18] book being about facilitation and so when the chief, or something or another, the Manitoban Elder said I don't trust you, was he still collaborating with you or was he not? Were you not at one of those forks in the road? Or was he still participatory?

Adam Kahane:

Well it's a good question. I shortened the story a little bit because it was hard to get the tone right. So let me just add a few more things. So George Moosewagon, who was the man who made that statement, is a tall guy and he has a ponytail. So he looks like I imagine, he's a big guy, tall and he has a ponytail, so he looked like what I would've imagined a first nations, he was an elder, but what a first nation chief would look like. So when he said, I hadn't met him before, this was the first day of the meeting and I didn't know him from beforehand, so when he said that I, as I said in the book, I was pretty scared. But he said it in a very kindly way. And I got to know him later, and he is an exceptionally kind and generous person. So he was, in referring to that framework, he was saying I might exit here. Or you might have to exit here, which is how I took it. Because I have two or three times been asked to leave in the middle of a meeting, and it's not a fun experience. I was not anxious for it to be, I mean I have literally been asked to leave meetings and it's not the sort of thing you want to have happen again. [crosstalk 00:47:26] What's that.

Wayne:

We really appreciate you putting that in there. That it wasn't all happy roses. That you did put in that. It was appreciated. Being asked to leave, a little vulnerability there, loved it.

Adam Kahane:

Yeah, and being asked to leave in the middle of winter in Manitoba is like an extra kind of hardship. But anyhow, so yes he was saying I think, I'm not sure this is going to work. I'm not sure this is working for me. I might have to exit or I might have to ask you to leave. But he said it in a way that implied that he was open to staying, and that's why, when I said to him later I don't want you to trust the process, so that's the opposite of what facilitators usually say, or often say. I think he took that as a, that he liked that, that I wasn't demanding that he trust me or the process, but could we just keep going for another little while and see. And anyhow after a while things with that particular crisis passed and we became pretty good buddies and the process as a whole was quite successful.

Daniel Stillman:

I think this question of unconditional positive regard, which another way of putting it is assuming positive intent, I think someone else might have heard that comment and heard it as a threat or as a declaration of intent, not we are at a fork in the road and what would you like to do. In a way I would propose it, you took it in the best possible way in that moment, through your inner shift of oh what are my choices here.

Adam Kahane:

Well, I was, I think I at least kept the door open and then we had a facilitator meeting, and it was other people, not just me, who together we decided very quickly what to do differently, and it was on a better path. And he, his tone of voice was not threatening, it was just honest. And I've often found as a facilitator that most people in a group don't speak honestly. And the people who do you can hear them so well. It's a thrill when somebody will speak honestly, because it just cuts through the normal, you know the crap that fills up most rooms most of the time.

Daniel Stillman:

Well Adam, speaking of not filling up a room with crap, this has been a really, for me this is my favorite thing to talk about, so I'm glad to spend this time with you. I want to respect your time. We only have a couple more minutes with you. I will stick around if anybody else has some final check out or processing or additional conversation that they want to have, but I just would like to thank you Adam for making this time to have this conversation. As you say the world needs more of this, of people who feel empowered to do the thing that can help better things get done together. So thank you for doing that and thanks for everyone for being here.

Lynne:

Thank you Adam.

Adam Kahane:

Thanks to all of you. And Daniel I really enjoyed our conversation, whenever it was a year ago. And so I think you are a very gifted podcaster. So I was happy to have at least a consolation prize of a book club conversation. And it's really fun for me to talk about this with people who are interested in it. So thank you all.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you all Adam. Happy Tuesday everyone.

Adam Kahane:

Okay I'm going to leave.

Maggie:

Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you [crosstalk 00:51:40]

Lynne:

Daniel it was great.

Daniel Stillman:

Lynne it was a pleasure.

Mark N:

Thank you Adam. And Adam if you ever need any Korean translation of those comments that never quite arrived, I'd be happy to do so.

Daniel Stillman:

That's amazing. Thank you Mark. Oh it's the Marks. Thanks Marks.

Mark:

Hey one thing I was thinking about. The art of hosting community has a lot of great frameworks that resonate really strongly with a lot of those things.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Yes.

Mark:

Chaordic path is kind of the same thing to me. And four fold practice is another thing. I just sometimes, for me they are so kind of powerful, sometimes it feels so hard to get the world hearing some of these. Even collaboration is kind of

Daniel Stillman:

Du jour

Mark:

Yeah and what we need to get to.

Daniel Stillman:

I think that is an interesting question, and I must confess that I don't know about the four fold practice, which I want to look in to. I know with the chaordic path, I think it is interesting because of Adam's diagrams and I tried to make my own visual, like yeah it's about the shift. It's about the moving back and forth. And non-polarity thinking, right or polarity thinking depending on how you like to look at things. And boy oh boy I don't know. I think it is a hard thing for the world to lean into non-polarity thinking. To sit with polarity, because just like it is hard to sit with the polarity.

Daniel Stillman:

One of the polarities that I have been talking to people about is, there's nothing wrong with a sprint. Right? Jake's book is awesome. Let's spend a week just chugging through it. And then people are like well actually can we do it in a half day, can we do it in a day. Totally fine right. Let's just full speed ahead. But we don't know how to slow down and have more languishing conversations. And in the kind of conversations that Adam hosts they do both. I guarantee you that you have some rapid fire cadences and some slowed down conversations, but I think just generally speaking the western disease is speed and efficiency. That's my hot take.

Mark:

Yeah. And I wonder if, I guess a product of being in a state of anxiety or trauma or stress or whatever, you do gravitate to black and white thinking. And being able to navigate the wavy part of vertical horizontal chaordic path, actually requires that gray and negative capability stuff. Which is probably, works against the young conscience tendency we have in that sort of trauma, kind of anxiety state maybe. Anyway, keep trying.

Mark:

I can recommend outofhosting.org has a whole lot of videos, vignettes, and templates and things. Some really, people who have been working at it for a long time. Take through the stepping stones of the chaordic path. Anyway. Just thought I would say that.

Daniel Stillman:

No I appreciate that.

Mark:

Great work. Thanks Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

Good to see you Mark. I'm glad you could make it out. I'm going to include this in the episode. I hope that is okay. This is great stuff.

Mark:

Oh of course. No worries. All right. We'll catch you around.

Daniel Stillman:

All right good to see you brother. Take care.

Mark:

You too. Bye.

Daniel Stillman:

Bye bye.

Leading a Culture of Critique

Recently, I’ve been reading a book called “Ethic of Excellence” by Ron Berger. He teaches teachers about how to invoke pride in students, to invite them to work through community engagement and thoughtful feedback, and multiple drafts of work. Check out his classic short video called “Austin’s Butterfly” here.

He asserts that thoughtful feedback (ie critique) is essential to making great work, which he also asserts is the whole point of life: Make great things.

He boils a philosophy of critique down to three principles:

Be Kind
Be Specific
Be Helpful

I wanted to bring together three of my favorite leaders to have a roundtable conversation about leading a culture of critique, and to open up about how to bring these ways of working together to life at work.

Aaron Irizarry has been on this podcast before, with his co-author of “Discussing Design” Adam Connor. He’s the Senior Director of Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One and is a deep, deep thinker on this subject. 

Aniruddha Kadam recently left LinkedIn, where he was a Senior Design Manager. He’s also an Advisor at Rethink HQ, which recently released an excellent guide to leading critique. 

One of my favorite points in that guide is: Make it clear what you are NOT asking for feedback on! 

And the roundtable is rounded out by the amazing and delightful

Christen Penny, who is a Design Educator & Community Builder and leads the Design Education team at Workday, an enterprise cloud application for finance, HR, and planning. 

I wanted to open with Christen’s quote about culture change being challenging, because it’s critical to have empathy for ourselves and others as we try to facilitate and lead change. 

Creating rituals around critique takes time. Getting people to lean into the discomfort takes effort. Building psychological safety doesn’t come for free.

We should remind ourselves that we’re asking people to lean into discomfort - to run into the fire.

Ron Berger’s perspective is ultimately the goal: 

We want our work and our organization’s work to be excellent. And we need outside feedback to make that possible. Critique before a launch is a lot less painful than realizing a missed opportunity after we hit “send”.

There is so much goodness in this conversation! I hope you take the time to absorb it all.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Aaron Irizarry, Sr. Director, Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One  is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaroni/

Adam Connor & Adam Irizarry on a way-back episode: Designing a Culture of Critique

Aniruddha Kadam, Advisor at Rethink HQ, formerly Design at LinkedIn is here:

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniruddhakadam/

Rethink HQ Critique guide: https://www.rethinkhq.com/design-critique/leading-effective-design-critiques

Christen Penny, Design Educator @Workday is here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christenpenny/

Some questions that guided our conversation:

Why is Critique important?

Why is a culture of Critique important?

What are the barriers to cultivating a culture of critique?

What are best practices on the individual, team and org levels to invite more critique?

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

All right. Well, I'm going to do the thing where I record on all of the places. We're fully live and direct. Welcome to the conversation factory you all. Welcome back to the conversation factory. I guess if we're going to go in alphabetical order, you actually get to go first, Aaron, with the... Tell us about you and why critique is important to you. We'll just do a quick whip around just so everyone's oriented to the people in the room. How's that sound?

Aaron Irizarry:

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. My name is Aaron Irizarry. I'm the head of servicing platforms design at Capital One. For me, critique is crucial to the conversations we have about our work, to use as a measurement tool to see where we are making strides in the right direction, as well as where we might need to adjust. And so I just think it's such a key component to the conversations we have and the things we do.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. As we say in my men's group, aha. I agree. Aniruddha, say a hello to the fam. Welcome aboard. I'm glad you're here.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Thank you. I'm Aniruddha Kadam. I'm a senior product design manager at LinkedIn. I believe critique is important because it just leverages the strength of the entire team to drive that iteration and improvement. And it brings different skills and expertise to create space for a thoughtful discussion on the problem-solving approach.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:01:35].

Christen Penny:

Yeah. So, hi. I'm Christen Penny, and I lead a design education team at Workday. I'm always thinking about things from the lens of education and how to upskill our designers and researchers. So that is one of the reasons critique is really important to me, as I see this as a muscle that we want our design team members to constantly be practicing and building towards, with that ultimate goal of having amazing products out there that are helping to improve our users' experiences.

Daniel Stillman:

So there were so many keywords, but three that came up to me was thoughtful, conversations and a muscle. I think this goes into this question of why is it important to have the culture of critique, a real habit of it. I guess the question is like, what are some of the barriers to having it be a muscle, a natural response to host, to invite, to curate these kind of thoughtful conversations, as a matter of course? And that's just popcorn style, or Quaker style actually. Whenever the spirit moves you.

Aaron Irizarry:

I'll say for me, it's tough because it's a conversation, and conversations are had by people, and people come on sometimes in an exciting way with diverse lenses experiences and things that influence how they approach certain things, which the more of that diversity and inclusivity we have, the richer conversations we can have. At the same time, when we're having conversations, that also means people might come with different anxieties, different fears, different experiences that have impacted them. And so to build a consistent culture around something that can often make people feel uncomfortable, or is it an uncomfortable situation, because it comes with a set of challenges, and that's why creating culture for it that is inviting and safe. Even if I know it's inviting, but I'm not feeling too comfortable because I'm new to this, or I'm passionate about my work and I don't want to have it be looked at through a critical lens, at least I know that when to go there, the culture is such that it lends to a more productive conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Aniruddha Kadam:

I think I would totally plus one that. You spoke about building a muscle. The way you build a muscle is, you become uncomfortable. Your muscle gets strained to do it all in over time. So there's a routine, there's a structure. So it feels uncomfortable at first, but as you kind of build in that routine and that structure to it, it just becomes your second nature. It becomes one of the parts of building that inclusive, trustworthy space. The designers can come in and just talk about all things design, and get feedback on it. So I think that structure and that rigor is really important while setting up any kind of critique.

Daniel Stillman:

Christen, how do you feel like making those reps possible and safe happens? Because you sort of create scaffolding and structuring and education around that. If we want to invite people into a safe space where reps can happen, how do we create that space for those types of conversations?

Christen Penny:

It's a great question. I mean, first off, I'd like to just acknowledge that shifting culture of any kind, is hard. That is one of the barriers in and of itself, is you have to acknowledge and understand the current culture to be able to shift the culture. Fear and psychological safety is something that has come up in this conversation. One of the ways that we have been building towards that is, just by addressing the topics. So we talk about fear. We talk about psychological safety. What needs to be present when you're having a disagreement? Don't run from that disagreement.

Christen Penny:

Sometimes I think of it as running to the fire. You want to be able to give people the skills to run to the fire in a way that's useful. No, we're not telling them to run into a burning building, but that's part of it, is just really helping them also practice it. Practice I think is one of the most important parts. We could give articles, we could give education resources. If we're not giving them opportunities to practice it in a safe space, to again, get it into their muscle memory, I'm not sure how else we could shift culture. That's one of the best ways I've seen enacted.

Daniel Stillman:

This is like getting down to the idea of creating rituals around... It's a pattern, it's familiar. I mean, what are some of your rituals and patterns of reliable orientation to a space for critique? That's open to any of you. Aniruddha, maybe you haven't shared [inaudible 00:07:03] this round. Any thoughts on that?

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah. I think definitely just creating that ritual. The way I've done it in the past is just kind of setting clear boundaries on what's expected, what's a safe space to bring in topics of any kinds. Reviews are typically more formal, more kind of buttoned up. Whereas critiques can be like, "Yeah, just bring in a paper schedule. Let's talk about that idea. It's a safe space." So, setting those boundaries. And then also letting the presenter own the feedback, where they are responsible for coming back and responding to the feedback they have gotten in the session on why have they chosen to include the feedback versus not, so that the audience and presenter... Everybody feels that they have a part in the conversation. Overall it just feels like a good use of everyone's time.

Daniel Stillman:

This goes to the question that we were talking about before we started recording, just the question of power, right? Is the critique to give you feedback that you can take or leave, or is it, "You did this wrong, go make it better." Or, "This has to change." I think that's where, speaking from my past life as a designer, we get very protective. We want to have done a good job. We have made certain choices, and it can be really confronting to have people question your choices. And the question is, who gets to give you feedback that you have to take? And who gets to give you feedback that you can take under consideration? And as you were saying, in the next review, you say, "Thanks for all the feedback. I chucked it. And this is why."

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah. I think for me it's a combination of both approaches, where I do try to use a do, try, consider model for critiques that, "Hey, do is something. Yeah, this is absolutely... You messed up. It's a design system thing. This is what you should fix it." There's no kind of try or consider. Whereas, a try or consider feedback can be just checked out and be like, "Hey, I thought about it. It doesn't work for me because, all of these reasons, and that's the reason why I'm not doing it." But a do kind of feedback is just very black and white.

Daniel Stillman:

That kind of framing. When I talk about designing a conversation, that kind of fundamental framing... I saw Christen go like... That's a really nice framing. And that's actually kind of what we were talking about the other day about fixed, flexible and free. But it's just interesting to me when I think of like rose, thorn, bud, as a really safe way of setting up feedback. Do, try, consider sounds more like stop, start, continue. Always bothers me that the bad stuff comes first, just in terms of creating psychological safety. Does ordering of the feedback matter. Do you think in your experience, or do you... Christen, do you teach an order thing of feedbacking?

Christen Penny:

I think not necessarily in order, because I think sometimes we get stuck in this, "Give a positive." And then, one positive and two negatives or two... Or two positives and one negative. The order I don't think is as important as having an actual framework. We get into deep debates over which framework to use. So there could be rose thorn bud. There could be do, try, consider. I think what's most important is there is a framework that the team agrees with and is enacting. It's a little interesting in the do, try, consider, is we try to talk about staying away from solutioning in design critique. I hear when you're telling someone to do something, that it's more directive and a little solutiony. So I wonder if there's a different framework that is used for critique versus reviews. Because I could see a do as a review. That is someone in a position of power telling you, "This is what you need to do." Or I might have misunderstood that.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah. Yes, the do is very directive. In my experience I've seen people in power use that. But I've also seen just peers use that a lot, where it's very black and white. Where like, "Hey, I see you've used a button that, this is not how we do design system. We usually use like 12 pixel instead of an eight pixel over here." Which is rooted more in kind of those kind of systems and guidance in place. But so do feedback is typically, I would say mostly tactical feedback, that then kind of just more strategic in nature.

Aaron Irizarry:

Yeah. The way our teams work, the way I've tried to give them context is creative direction, versus critique. Because being, I just came from design systems to work. I lead the main design system one in Capital One, and there are times where someone's doing the work, and we're in a critique setting where we say, "Hey, if your goal is to accomplish this, that element you're using doesn't have the right hierarchy. You might want to try something else." At the same time, that element is also not the approved design system one. So you sync with that team and get the right element you need. What I try to do in any critique I view with my team and then I try to teach my team is, talk about what's absolute kind of the do if needed.

Aaron Irizarry:

But also even if you're doing that, explain where there's what I call room to wiggle. And it's like, "Hey, I'm telling you the direction you're heading's not working. I think you should probably consider heading this direction." And I try to give some level of boundaries, because maybe there is something like, "Hey, using patterns of art in the design system, or [inaudible 00:13:17] with our components. That being said, how you choose to work with those components to solve this problem, is all you. Put your fingerprints all over that." So that they understand that part of is like, "Hey, this is systematic. This is how we work. This is like some of our process. And some of this is okay, and here's where your room to play is within there." So they understand that. The other thing I try to do with leaders in particular is talk about... I kept trying to tell them that the designers or designer, needs time to process the feedback that they're given.

Aaron Irizarry:

So don't expect they're coming out of that critique or that feedback session, a shorter cook with a list of things to go make or change. They may need to come back and explore that a little bit, because they've just been bombarded with information. And so I started talking to them about is, think of critique as kind of like a off form of research where this designer is coming to gather insights about what's working, what may not be working, or leading towards us achieving our goal in this design. And they need to go back and process those insights the way we process research insights.

Aaron Irizarry:

And then we come back and give a report. They can follow you up with questions. They can say, "Hey, we don't know if that's the right approach. Let's have a discussion about that, and here's the reason why." I try to get away from the like, "I said so, so you must go do that." Or the exception as much as I can mitigate it from leadership. That is, "Well, since I am the VP of whatever, engineering, product, marketing, business analyst, whatever it is, and I said something, they have to go do that now." It's really about establishing in that culture that, it's a free change of ideas and we measure those the same we measure anything else, to try to ensure that we're heading in the right direction.

Daniel Stillman:

Christen, I'm wondering, in the education that you're setting up, do you talk about that journey? Because what Aaron's talking about sounds almost like an extended journey map of critique. The critique happens way before, and continues after. And it's not like, "Oh, it's just the meeting." How do you speak to some of that broader contexting and boundaring in some of the training that you're setting up?

Christen Penny:

I don't do it alone. So we have another group who has been working a lot on an overall design review framework. So groups like that, they map out the entire process. Here are different kinds of team reviews. Here's where we can get reviews with other experts who are content designers or content strategists. All the way through you're going to a VP of design and you want to get an approval. So part of it is helping people understand just that, that there is this larger context of which they're living in. I think also teams work so differently, so making sure... I'm always trying to balance this directiveness, because with education, it's for many, many teams who are doing design at Workday.

Christen Penny:

So always trying to give them some guidance, and talk about the ritualization of it. Talk about the importance of circling back on the feedback, and having deeper conversation. So maybe you want to go deeper with someone from the design system team, schedule a one off for that. So understanding that they're going to also do it in different ways. Yeah. It's a balance. That's why I'm hedging a little bit, because we're not super directive with it, since the teams tend to work so differently. So we want to give them enough guidance to set them up for success, and then let them kind of adapt.

Daniel Stillman:

This just sounds like the... when I think about designing a conversation, this is about who do we include in the conversation and being intentional about it. Can you overindex on inviting people into the conversation, or is under ex? Which is more challenging, problematic or common? Under or over indexing on inviting people into the conversation?

Christen Penny:

I think you can definitely over index on inviting people to the conversation. If you're in your early design phases, and you're showing very incomplete thoughts, I don't think that's a safe space to then take it to your product manager who wants to just pass it to developer and start building. I mean, I could see it working both ways. It depends on your partnership with your product manager. I think those early conversations can be... I've seen them be very well received when you have the support of your team, of other designers and researchers, who understand your process of design, and what you're trying to accomplish.

Daniel Stillman:

I see some nods from the rest of you all. Do you want to just add?

Aaron Irizarry:

I was thinking about designing the conversation, and that it depends on the type. And kind of to what Christen was saying is like, what type of feedback or critique conversation are you trying to have? And at what point do you feel like an attendee list makes that conversation hard to manage? Think about what that means, because if you start getting 10, 11, 12 people, you have to start really having some facilitator superpowers to keep that conversation heading with... depending. Unless there's clearly defined roles. Maybe some folks are just observers, but they're observers because they just need to be kept in the know, and see if there's opportunity for follow up. There's a select few that have chosen, "Hey, we're very close to the work. We'll be active critique participants in this. Maybe we got a note taker facilitator." But I try to think about, what is going to help us manage the conversation in a way that we get the right amount of insights. Maybe that's where, looking to things we have like racy charts and other... just artifacts we might have that a define engagement, might help there.

Daniel Stillman:

And thanks for mentioning facilitation skills, because I feel like when Aaron and I had you on the podcast means, like wow, going back a couple of years. You and Adam. Adam had this attitude like, "It's an organic conversation." Or just like, "Work together." Maybe you get past the one pizza rule, the conversation becomes very complex. And so turn taking and inclusion and the sort of me time, we time facilitation, having an inter-facing where you're doing it becomes really important. I mean, what is the average size? I mean, you're saying 12 is when things get complex, but I'm willing to bet that people are breaking the two pizza rule inside of everybody's organization on their eggs, when it comes to just getting these critiques together. They're doing it without strong ritual and facilitation skills I'm guessing maybe. I mean, not anybody on this call obviously that's... Not pointing. I'll just say, I have done that.

Christen Penny:

I do appreciate the call out for facilitation. It reminded me that that's one of the things that we do highlight quite a bit, is the need for facilitation and kind of helping people... I don't know vegetarian friendly word, but beef up their facilitation skills so that they are well prepared for these kinds of critiques.

Daniel Stillman:

The beef could mean a beef steak tomato. If you follow Aaron on Instagram as I do, do. You could just imagine a really beefy beef steak tomato. You could be-

Aaron Irizarry:

We protein up. We protein up. [inaudible 00:21:01].

Daniel Stillman:

Well, let's talk about best practices, because on the self perspective, I'm hearing, being prepared for a potential barrage, and then also having facilitation skills to manage the barrage, and some sort of a framework to pre organize the barrage. And that's just me pulling out some things that I've heard from this conversation. What else is important from the person who is subject, for lack of a better term. Subjecting themselves to this critique. What can they do to set up that critique, well, to create safety and clarity and optimized for the usability of the feedback that comes out of the conversation? I also heard one other things that I know. Maybe having a scribe, not doing it all yourself. [crosstalk 00:22:06].

Aniruddha Kadam:

I think one of the basic things that comes to my mind is really creating clarity around, this is what I need feedback on. And also this is what I don't need feedback on. I think a lot of people miss out on the latter, but people will start jumping on you and then they're like, "Wait, wait. I never wanted feedback on that one thing." So I think just creating that clarity. And then channeling those comments or feedback as they come, into these two buckets, but like, "Hey, great. I appreciate your feedback, but this is exactly what I mentioned that I don't need feedback on that." And being comfortable doing that. Kind of empowering oneself to channel that feedback that's coming through, and just kind of dropping them in these two buckets and kind of bringing the conversation back on track, and getting the feedback that that person needs.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to know a little bit more about that. Oh, sorry. Before we go to you, Aaron. How do you do that? Because I think it's so easy to doubt all of the other... Somebody says, "Hey, what about that? To say, "I don't want feedback on that. I feel confident and strong in that." How do you create that boundary? Christen here is nodding on that too? Because I think that's not trivial.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah. I think the way I've done it with my team is just providing them with feedback right after, that critic session. They're helping designers on my team grow that muscle, where they don't need me or any design operations manager to jump in and help them facilitate the conversation. And they are themselves empowered to be like, "Hey, this is really not what I'm looking for." And also kind of grounding it back into a design process. So we do have a design process. We have a visual for it. Designers will indicate I am in this part of the process, so I need only feedback at this level. I might need your feedback later, so hold on to that, later part in the process, but right now I'm at this design defined state of the design process and I only need this kind of feedback. So not that your feedback is irrelevant. It's not just timely.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That's really helpful. Christen, do you want to say more about your nod and then Aaron, hopefully you remember what you wanted to say.

Christen Penny:

The nod was not 100% on topic, but it made me think about giving and receiving feedback. We piloted some upcoming design critique or culture critique education. The need to be better prepared to give and receive feedback is something that was coming up a lot. That is a general skill, whether you're using it for a design critique or not. So we also try to highlight the psychological safety, or the need for psychological safety, for the people who are also in the room as reviewers. So calling out those different roles that... It could be a bit hokey, but feedback is a gift, right?

Christen Penny:

They're putting themselves a little bit on the edge by even giving you that piece of feedback. That could feel risky and edgy to some people. So reminding people that when they're asking for critique, it's the other side of being defensive. You might feel defensive when you're getting this feedback, but keep in mind, feelings are coming up, and it could feel a little unsafe for the person who's giving the feedback as well. So let's try to diffuse this from being something that's personal, and think about it in terms of the feedback that you ask for, to help improve this design.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. We almost forget that asking is kind of power. Right. You did create this space to do this. And as you've said earlier, you can say, "I don't actually want to get feedback on it." But it does take a lot of self possession. Aaron, what was on your mind?

Aaron Irizarry:

This all resonates with me really well. Two things I kind of really try to stress, highlight, ingrain, lean heavily upon my team about our setup and expectation setting. So, "Hey, we're going to have a critique. It's Monday. We're going to have a treatment Wednesday. Here's the work we're going to review. These are the specific things we're looking for feedback on. Please, we're giving you this now so you can gather your thoughts and not feel like you're put on the spot, and have to have give feedback this triggered by a gut reaction. So hold the feedback, jot down your notes and questions and we'll talk about it then. Set the expectations for how you want the session to run."

Aaron Irizarry:

Adam and I have kind of always kind of sketched out some rules or loose guidelines for things that we want to keep in mind when we're providing critique. But then on the other side, is preparation. Hopefully you can have the presenter and the facilitator, talking leading up to that saying, "Okay, hey. One, I may ask for more clarity, so please don't go to the next person or..." Just keeping that connectedness between the two of them to ensure that the facilitation of the meeting gathers the things they need from it.

Aaron Irizarry:

There's lots of little things to do. Also helping people understand how they might give feedback, right? And this is in the expectation setting and preparation. I with my teams I use just four questions. What was the individual trying to achieve? How did they try to achieve it? Was it effective? Why or why not? Pretty much anybody regardless of their familiarity with critique as a process or a living thing in our process, can usually use those questions to frame their feedback. So the more we give structure on how we want the feedback to be framed, I think it sets us up to have those things where it's like, "Oh, thank you for sharing feedback on that. As you recall, we're not going to touch on that one. Say, if you want to talk outside of this meeting about that, we can talk a little more. We're just not there for that yet." Right?

Aaron Irizarry:

It is. I mean, again, even giving feedback is people don't want to hurt people's feelings, but so many interpersonal dynamics that come in play, the more structure and framework we can put in place to help people feel safe, that they just have to show up and engage. Yeah, it's still on them to take the risk to say something, but there's the reporting process that's set up for a specific culture we're trying to build in a certain type of safety we're trying to encourage during the conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

They build your sense from [inaudible 00:28:44].

Christen Penny:

So appreciate some of what I heard and what Aaron was saying was, that frameworks help people relax. It helps them know what's expected of them. And even I relaxed a little bit when I heard him say that. I think it's such a great reminder. Talking about facilitation, it was also that the preparation part, we always say this about workshops. People think, "We're going to have this one workshop. Everyone just needs to show up. It's only going to be an hour of your time to facilitate this workshop." We know that that's not accurate. The preparation and the planning is what really takes the most time, to help that be successful. So I also appreciate Aaron, you highlighting that. The work really begins before the critique, that preparation.

Aaron Irizarry:

[inaudible 00:29:33]. That's something that should not be unfamiliar to designers who have... just over the course of designers doing design, have constantly had to educate others to the importance, the value of why things are the way they are, surrounding their work. And this is another area that's different. We have to help people understand. And it's not because they're willfully choosing to not understand, but I don't know a lot of data analysts who participate in regular critiques, which is actually unfortunate because design should know critique. We should always be [inaudible 00:30:03] all the things we want to approve regardless of our craft, our profession, but there is a part of that upfront work.

Aaron Irizarry:

And I think there's post work as well. There is the follow-up to help people understand like, this is going to continue. So that process that you experienced today, embrace the familiarity [inaudible 00:30:19] the next time we meet, and the next time. And you'll start to see people get more comfortable, potentially engage more. You'll see your own teams start to find their voice, because they're more comfortable, because the [inaudible 00:30:32] process protects them. So I just think there's a lot about that. Pre-work, following up, just the structure I think is just so, so key. I mean, it's like you're designing a conversation to improve upon your people, again, sounds familiar.

Daniel Stillman:

That was music to my ears. And also closing the loop on the conversation. I always get the sense that we do all this upfront prep work. And if you don't close the loop on it, people are like, "Well, why didn't they invite me? What did they do with it?" People really want to see the impact, and it will also make them much more enthusiastic to participate in the future. I don't think many people think about how...

Daniel Stillman:

I think often about the challengingness of receiving it, but it is also shocking to me that even if you set up a little mock feedback session in practice workshop, people are kind of reluctant to give a cool feedback. We're sort of, well, it'd be nice. It can be challenging to improve something with only warm feedback. And so it just seems like this is a very helpful reminder to me just to have that mindset of, of course we need feedback to improve. How could we possibly not need feedback to improve? One thing I heard you say, Aaron, and I just want to see if this is right. It's like, "Maybe don't facilitate your own feedback sessions."

Aaron Irizarry:

I mean, I...

Daniel Stillman:

If there's multiple peoples.

Aaron Irizarry:

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm a rule follower, but there is a certain level to like, if you're presenting... So you're kicking off the meeting, setting the context, presenting your work, building questions, taking notes, diving deeper. If you are doing all those things successfully, regardless of your level of experience, take these your paddle and murder. I need to understand how that works, because I don't know that that's really... That's a lie. Even if you somehow pull it off, there's going to be things you missed. That's why I think it is great to keep people engaged through rotating roles. Have different people take notes. Okay. As much as possible, take them visually, so you can go share understanding, but rotate through who does that. Rotate through different facilitation techniques as well as facilitate towards if possible. Use different ways of actually facilitating and going around and driving the conversation.

Aaron Irizarry:

All that stuff is really super helpful. We want each person to feel like they're getting the most. I think one of the things that dawned on us hearing the following conversation before right now was, I don't know how it is in other organizations. I'm making an unvalidated assumption, which is probably bad as a designer, but we live in a very needy, heavy culture, especially now with so much remote work. And so every time you ask someone to come to critique, you cost them something. They need to know what the return is on that. Hey, that was a productive conversation. My feedback was heard. I'm helping this team understand where we need to head and for meeting our OKRs or goals. If you leave it open-ended, they don't hear back from you. "Well, what did I even get from that? They didn't tell me what came of that. Meaning, I'm probably less likely to accept that invite next time because I had another meeting where I need to be more productive. So a lot of these things are also to help drive engagement as a part of building that critique culture.

Daniel Stillman:

I think one thing I want to circle back around on, as shockingly our time grows nigh. I want to talk about what a culture of critique really means. When it's not just about design, it's about taking this mindset of designing the conversation around how to get the best feedback, to give the best feedback so that we can grow. If it really is a culture critique, how does the whole organization ideally participate in this? I don't know. Christen, maybe you... Well, because I know that you specifically from our other conversations, have an interest in what happens when a designer can't even be involved in a conversation. So there may not be somebody who specifically has the designer's mindset or the facilitator conversation mindset. So how do we set up that culture of critique so that the technology people and the product managers and everyone, has this mindset, and is armed [inaudible 00:35:15] with these skills? Again, militaristic metaphor, just as bad as immediate metaphor. I don't [inaudible 00:35:21], but anyway, please, take a spirit of the question if you can.

Christen Penny:

Such a big question.

Daniel Stillman:

I know. I'm sorry.

Christen Penny:

Aaron mentioned I believe data analyst. It really made me want to retract something I said earlier, when you were talking about numbers and whether or not you're showing something, like inviting other team members. I use PMs as an example of interior design critiques, because I there are different kinds of design critiques. I'm focused right now on my work specifically on the design critiques that are within your design and research teams, because we don't have that muscle built for some people, even within their own teams, to be able to then go out and defend their designs, or talk about them in a meaningful way and get great feedback from their product managers, who are maybe not as equipped to give certain kinds of feedback.

Christen Penny:

So I feel like I'm not actually answering your question because it is so big, because there is this understanding of design that needs to happen on a general level with all of our design partners, and how they can be part of the process. Maybe critique is a way to introduce them into those conversations, to have them be part of it. My thinking is shifting a little even in this conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

What about your thinking has been shifting? That's really interesting. Kind of awesome.

Christen Penny:

Because I was thinking of it very much within the design team. I think it just keeps becoming a bigger and bigger conversation, and inclusion is such a big conversation right now as well. So when we get stuck on talking about number of people, we're also talking about who is excluded from the conversation. I think it can be really powerful to exclude people from the conversation. Building on what Aaron was saying. If it's not someone that you're necessarily going to be able to follow up with, or maybe if it is an expensive meeting for them, maybe they aren't the right people to be in the meeting. So it could be a gift to clearly exclude people from a conversation as well, if it's in a value of their time. Someone yes hand me.

Daniel Stillman:

Amen.

Aaron Irizarry:

I was going to say, we do... I love that Christen, you talked about. For me it's about levels of zoom, right? We have multiple types of critiques. So we have standalone critiques. That could be, "Hey, you know what, Daniel? If you're free on Thursday, I've got something. There's a formal critique coming up, but I need something a little sooner. Can you set aside 30 minutes for us to chat." Critique is just a part of your design process. Maybe it's at the pod level, and that's with your product partner, your engineering partner, as you're working through just your agile delivery process. There's broader team. Like, "Hey, our teams all working on different streams of work, let's do something where we have them sign up every, once or two weeks, you can sign up to have your work, you can demo your work."

Aaron Irizarry:

Present your work, get feedback. When we start trying to talk about [inaudible 00:38:32], I start to try to take design out of the competition actually. Just talk about, let's find ways to create a culture where we talk about our work in productive ways. And here's some things that I've found around feedback. And then I start talking to them. And maybe this is front of mind for me because I just posted some writing on critique and feedback in the context of people and performance management, because I got a lot of questions from my team about that. Like, so do these same principles apply when I'm giving feedback to my direct report? And like, actually a lot of them probably do. Yeah. You want to do stuff that's actionable, that it needs to be, what's their growth look like?

Aaron Irizarry:

What is the impact of maybe not doing something or something they're doing really well. And so we can start to find ways for that type of conversation designed to work its way into other conversations, that if we just start getting people to actually do critique without knowing they're doing critique, air quotes. If they're just kind of having productive feedback conversations about, "Hey, that research script might need a little tweaking. That project plan, I don't see a little clarity right around here in this section, but it's okay." They say, "No, PM's are doing it. HR, who knows?"

Daniel Stillman:

Well, to your point, Aaron, and to your point Aniruddha, having a sense of the person's intent, and curiosity about their intent. And as you said, Aniruddha, where are they in their process? And clarity about what they need to get themselves to the next step. I think that is a pattern that is universally applicable. And maybe one of the reasons why some of the organizations that I've worked with in the past, love the idea of design thinking for everyone, because that means that there is some shared scaffolding around, "Oh, here's the squiggle." Where are you at least in the squiggle? Are you at the beginning of the squiggle? Are you really close to the end? What do you need to get you to move forward? That's really important. Also important is first have some closing thoughts. My Lord, where does the time go? Aniruddha, what haven't I asked you about critique, and building a culture of critique, that's important? Do you have any parting thoughts to share with us before we thank everyone for their time?

Aniruddha Kadam:

I think yes, to everything that everyone's said. I would say, I would specifically talk about bringing other functions into the design critique process where I've tried to do that at a smaller scale, not just with the entire design team but just a bunch of designers and one PM. I've seen that they watch this in action, and get influenced about... I've heard so many PMs be like, "Hey, your design team really works very creatively." I really like the process that you guys used while going to and giving feedback. I've had many advocates that we were like, you start off with one PM, a second one, a third one. And so you're kind of transforming everyone one PM at a time. Then I've seen PMs get together, and just do the same.

Aniruddha Kadam:

They will not call it a critique. They will call it brainstorming or whiteboarding. But essentially what they're doing, they're using the principles of critique, and trying to bring an idea. So a PM will pitch an idea to other PMs. As a design manager, I get to kind of be a spectator to those, and I see that you're really using what you kind of saw in action in a design team, and you're calling it something else, but that's kind of how you're building that culture across the company, and not just keeping it within the design arc.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. This is building relationships, building culture one relationship at a time.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And I saw. Aaron, you heard of that. Nobody could see that unless they're watching this video. If you want to share some closing thoughts and then Christen will [inaudible 00:42:34]. That's okay.

Aaron Irizarry:

I heard of it because that's how I felt about it. Yes. No. For me, as long as you're trying to improve something, or measure something, you've got an opportunity [inaudible 00:42:51]. I always feel a level of guilt and like [inaudible 00:42:57] teams whether it's [inaudible 00:42:59] sharing the book with them or giving a presentation like [inaudible 00:43:03] some stance on this. Right? That being said, I don't think you can take everything I'm telling you and lay it directly over your organization. It's a one-to-one. Look at the context of your organization and the things you're trying to do there, and see what works for you, and try to use these as guidelines to help shape that, and then iterate on it. Just practice. Start small, practice, keep going, and just keep trying to have the right conversations. Because those of us who are thinking about this, are the ones who are responsible for helping create or find those who will partner with us or who can help create that healthy culture and critique within our organizations and with our clients and partners.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Amen. Christen.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Like [crosstalk 00:43:46].

Daniel Stillman:

No, sure.

Aniruddha Kadam:

I think it's talking about sharing resources. I bought five copies of Jake Knapp's Design Sprint, the book, because each time I kind of give it to a PM, they'll be like, "Hey, what are you looking at? Or how are you creating these critiques or these sessions together?" I'll give them my book, and it never comes back. So to buy a new one. Then I give it to a different PM and it never comes back. [inaudible 00:44:16].

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, that's our culture of generosity too. Just trust to get the [inaudible 00:44:23] book [inaudible 00:44:23]. Closing thoughts, Christen Penny, go.

Christen Penny:

Earlier you asked us about barriers. I think one of the barriers is just that people are busy. I think that's one of the reasons it's so important to make something like this a ritual or something that doesn't feel like a big deal every time it happens. It's just part of how we work. I think part of that is also showing the value. How do we answer the question to someone who comes to us and says, "Why should I even participate in a critique? Why should I ask for feedback? Showing the value is a big part of people understanding why it should even be a ritual. It's something I'm still working through a little bit. How to answer those kinds of questions, to people who don't inherently see the value.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think that goes back to the importance of closing the loop on the conversation, to make people feel like your voice mattered. It was hard. It was helpful, for the people who were included in the conversation, but also for the person who invited the conversation, facilitate the conversation. This is like, if you don't close the loop, then you lose that some conversational momentum somewhere along the way. Well, geez you all, where's the time go? I'm super grateful that you all were willing to give up some of your time for this conversation. I know you all agree that better critique, better design, better conversations can save the world, which is why you're here. So thanks very much. I'll call scene. Did everything feel cool? I don't think we got to any dangerous territory.

Aaron Irizarry:

No, all good.

Christen Penny:

I only felt self-conscious when I mentioned product managers. I'm like, "No, I love my product managers. I don't want it to sound like they're not invited."

Aaron Irizarry:

Yes. I'm always like, cross-functional partners.

Christen Penny:

Yes.

Aniruddha Kadam:

That's safe territory.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. Well, I can include this as a patter, just in case you want to make sure that everyone feels like... We love all of our collaborators. And everyone needs to be included in the conversation, but not all at once. One thing we didn't talk about, wait, this is really important. We didn't talk about asynchronous critique at all, because the question of like, how do we actually include more people? Why does it all have to be synchronous? Why does it all have to be synchronous? Can we just include this? Why doesn't all have to be synchronous? Does it have to be all synchronous? Christen, just one [inaudible 00:47:16].

Christen Penny:

You said that I thought what is life. [inaudible 00:47:20]. Yeah, so much is about synchronous versus asynchronous these days given the world that we're living in.

Daniel Stillman:

Everyone's busy.

Christen Penny:

Everyone's busy.

Daniel Stillman:

The reason why I think we do synchronous is because it engages people/"forces them to participate." But asynchronous means, as you pointed out, Aaron, gives people to prepare their feedback, gives them ability to think, how can we engage people in asynchronous feedback without too much cross pollination between each person's feedback so that they don't all jump on one thing.

Aaron Irizarry:

I have a lot of opinions about that, Daniel. So yeah. Here's what I'll say. I'll play with this. There's ideal and there's what's real. It's the value. Just something I live by, right?

Daniel Stillman:

So true.

Aaron Irizarry:

It is ideal. The asynchronous feedback is productive, and doesn't end up being more of a heavy lift thing, it sounds like. An activity I have participants go through will be the critique workshop. Is we have them critique an unsolicited redesign of Craigslist, using that four question process. Like, [inaudible 00:48:41] to achieve? We have them critique the street design. And I'll say, "How did it go?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, we learned how to use the question." I'm like, "Cool. Any challenges?" "Well, we didn't know what the intent of the person was. We couldn't ask them." Now, with tools and what's a lot of our Figma, XD, InVision, [crosstalk 00:49:01].

Daniel Stillman:

A Loom video maybe.

Aaron Irizarry:

Yeah. Yeah. You have opportunity to provide context there, but it just feels like I have to over-communicate so much because when you can't see me, you can be led towards assumption driven thinking when you read my written work, no matter how many emojis I use. And even if they're the right ones, because they might be funny to me, but not to you. And so it can work. It's a lot of effort and you just got to have the right process around it. So that's my very loose, but kind of really helping them.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. No, no. That's where the juice may exceed the squeeze on that one.

Aaron Irizarry:

Asynchronous prep, asynchronous follow-up the next steps. A lot of [inaudible 00:49:47] surrounding the conversation can be done asynchronously, to make the conversation go smoother. That's one [inaudible 00:49:56].

Daniel Stillman:

Aniruddha, I feel like you wanted to add something to that. And then we're totally out of time. I'm doing the [crosstalk 00:49:59]. I'm being so awful of a host right now. [crosstalk 00:50:03].

Aniruddha Kadam:

I would agree with Aaron and I would plus one that, that it has to be like that right combination of asynchronous and synchronous, because you mentioned in trans-synchronous it's more kind of like forcing people to be there. I see it more as bringing all that energy together. Usually I would always read a pre-read when I come to this conversation, based on the conversation, based on the energy in the room, I would have more ideas. That's always better than me. Just kind of sitting by myself and just jotting my feedback down and not really knowing what the world thinks about this idea, what other people think about this idea? So I think it does. I really like the framing of ideal versus real.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think that's a nice way of putting it. It creates density and combustion through that density, versus the slow burn of asynchronous can be [inaudible 00:51:02]. I think it's more cat herding, which as we know is called cat herding because it's not a thing. Anyway, we're well past our time. I mean, I really appreciate you hanging out and for this extra bit. I think this is the after show.

Christen Penny:

Cat herding also takes more time. So if time is one of the barrier, then the more... I have yet to see people fully participate in asynchronous work. It always, like you said, Daniel, winds up being more of chasing people down. Like Aaron mentioned, you're not in the moment, so you can't answer the questions. So then people start to feel like they need to over-prepare. When they start to over-prepare, this becomes more and more barriers to entry, and makes it more and more of a significant thing, where I prefer to think of it as, "Here's what we're going to... We're going to have our weekly design critique. Let's have a conversation."

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Then it becomes more of a review. There's a heavier load on it versus just a regular Kaggles and critique where whoever can come, comes. It feeds forward the quality of the work. I think that's really, really powerful. And that's really great stuff. I'm so sorry for keeping you in all over, but that was a really awesome. That was good stuff. Does it exist? Maybe. Can it exist? Possibly. But yeah, that's a really, really good reality check from everyone. Thank you so much. You all are awesome. I imagine-

Aaron Irizarry:

No, it's great.

Daniel Stillman:

... you might have other places to be.

Christen Penny:

So nice to meet you all also. Thanks for the conversation.

Aaron Irizarry:

I really-

Aniruddha Kadam:

Yeah, nice to see everyone.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's really great to see all of your faces. Thanks for participating. I'll let you know when this is real.

Aaron Irizarry:

Awesome.

Aniruddha Kadam:

Thanks, Daniel.

Christen Penny:

Bye, thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

Bye.

The Conversation Factory Book Club: Making Conversation with Fred Dust

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is a round-table conversation with Fred Dust, author of Making Conversation, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven’t listened to the interview I did with Fred OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, and RESOURCES

Making Conversation by Fred Dust

Debt, the First 5000 Years by David Graeber

Otto Scharmer's Presencing Institute

Minute 3

is that it's like all I think we've learned is to just be as human as we can possibly be. It's just to be so deeply embedded in who we are as people, as our own individuals, and pick up what we're feeling and really pay attention to that, and that's a change. It's almost like being really, really, really human is a superpower. Isn't that weird?

Minute 8

The other thing that I really liked in the constraints was that boundaries are required for growth, and as a student of yoga, I always think about that as nirodha, which are the ... Those are the bounds from which you begin through which you also experience infinity, because if you didn't have those bounds, you couldn't experience infinity, and so you can translate that physically for people in a practice to say, "It's really not about touching your toes. If you can, fabulous, but if you can't, the experience is the process. So don't get hung up on it," and so I really loved that idea.

Minute 10

The last part of that story, the person who I was talking to who I said, "You actually have to think about this," ... What was interesting is they were being attacked by their staff and really in a depressed, bad position and really cynical and unhappy, and then they said, "Okay. Got to go into the staff meeting. Got to just be perky and open and excited," and I'm like, "What about that's going to feel authentic to the staff? They know you're being under attack. Why would you feel that way?" and that's ... The HR person later on was like, "We've been trying to say that for 10 months," and so it was just this thing where I'm like, "Why not be human in front of people that know they're attacking you, and what could that do in terms of disarming them in some way?"

Minute 15

This was a piece of feedback somebody gave me for me as a coach. They were like, "Well, look. At the middle of any challenge is a conversation. That might be a conversation with yourself. It might be a conversation with your boss or whatever, and if you can actually define the way you'd like it to feel, then the question of 'How might I create that feeling?' is a whole other exploration, and that is the creative part of designing a conversation." Well, if I'd like this to feel like my client doesn't think I'm an asshole, because that's a risk with some clients all the time, how do I make this fun? How do I make it feel egalitarian? How do I make it feel safe? Those are questions that then I get to sit with. Well, how do I make this feel safe for me and for them?

Minute 16

Yeah, and I think, on the back end of that, Daniel, is the notion that we often don't think that we can ask for the conversation that we want to have, and I think that one of the things you realize is that it's like you absolutely can. It's like once you know where you want to go, it's like it's well within our power to be asking for the conversation we need or want to have, I think.

Minute 38

I had a really interesting experience where I was hired to be the CEO of an organization that focuses on global conversations and convenings, and I came into the institution. I was like, "Oh, there's some really messed up things here," and was like, "There's a lot of things that are wrong about it," and I said it to some people before we began to... So already I had ... There was anger in the institution on the first day I was going to go, and I basically said to the chair of the board ... I was like, "Okay. We're going into this really hard conversation tomorrow. It's going to be really rough, and what's the plan for the conversation?" and he was like, "There's no need for a plan. You're utterly charming. You're going to be fine," and I'm like, "That's not a plan. Let's put together a plan, or else I resign," and he was like, "I don't see why we need a plan. We hired you because you're charismatic and charming and you can handle the situation," and I'm like, "Nope," and I resigned.

Minute 47

and so we're trying to figure out a way that we can message the United States like, "Hey. Let's take some time before." I've been doing a lot of lectures and am doing a three-part essay series on why stay hybrid, which is ... Hybrid workplace has been a kind of holy grail for workplaces for forever, and now we're seeing people being like, "Nope. Everybody comes back in," and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, guys," and so we're writing some evidence-based pieces on why we shouldn't be doing that.

Daniel's Notes:

The biggest vision: to see conversations as an act of creativity. We are never just participants in a conversation...we’re co-creators. And we can step up and re-design our conversations if we look with new eyes. 

P. 20 "I want this book to give you the hope I’ve found..."

118 - the ideas of compression and expansion. How does space now play a role in our conversations!?

"If you could choose 3 adjectives to describe how you want your reports to feel after this conversation, what would they be?”

Danny's Notes:

Listening should be a form of exploration, but it has become a form of consumption. P. 47

Constraints (or rules) are important in conversation. P. 105

When we make conversation, we’re ultimately aiming not necessarily for action but advancement. Moving an idea forward, exploring that idea but not necessarily just making it happen. P. 155

Maaike's Notes:

More about Fred Dust

Fred Dust is the founder of Making Conversation, LLC and works at the intersection of business, society and creativity. As a designer, author, educator, consultant, trustee, and advisor to social and business leaders, he is one of the world’s most original thinkers, applying the craft and optimism of human-centered design to the intractable challenges we face today. Using the methodology in his forthcoming book Making Conversation, he has been working as the Senior Dialogue Designer with The Rockefeller Foundation to explore the future of pressing global needs; and with The Einhorn Collaborative and other foundations to host constructive dialogue with leaders ranging from David Brooks, Reverend Jenn Bailey, and Vivek Murthy to rebuild human connection in a climate of widespread polarization, cynicism and disruption. He is also proud to be faculty at the Esalen Institute.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's like ... I'm going to respect Fred's time as much as possible, and we have about 45 minutes together, and I think this is ... If I haven't done it this way, I want to reflect on how Making Conversation has changed all of us and how we make conversation. I want to start with Fred, actually, and say, "How has making conversation changed you?" What have you learned since making Making Conversation?

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It's interesting. I'll give you a funny little anecdote, if that's cool. I'm not sure this'll totally answer the question, but so last week I was in New York. A friend of mine who's in the media ... She's the CEO of a media company. She and I were having dinner, and she was like, "What do I do? We're having problems with the news room," and dah, dah, dah, dah, and I was giving her insight, and then she ... As we're leaving, she's like, "You have to come in. You have to come talk to me and my staff tomorrow," so I was like ... Just the leading staff, and so that was bizarre.

Fred Dust:

I'm literally showing my ID, and then I'm going through a turnstile, and then I'm having small chit chat in the elevator with somebody, and then I'm walking to an office, and then I'm in a board room, and then there's a table, and then there's a white board, and there's three other people, and it was just really interesting, and we were working through what they were grappling with, and each time I would go through it, I'd be like, "Well, what if we designed a conversation that was like this?" and we would just sort of try it on, and then we would do it again, and we'd do it again, and we'd do it again.

Fred Dust:

Two things were interesting about it, which is that it's like I realized that whether we've been in rooms or not, I felt like I knew we were going to get there. We were going to get to the right structure for them to have a conversation. I had full confidence, and as did they, which was actually really interesting, and it's only, I think, because they had taken in the book and were really engaged with it. But what I didn't realize that was really interesting is that not only was I able to help do that, but I could actually see that one of the things that was a flaw in ... So some of the staff are saying that there's a flaw in one of the leaders.

Fred Dust:

At some point I was like, "This is a real problem for you. We need to work on how to fix this," and she was really surprised, and I was like, "No, no. Actually, what they're seeing is, in fact, true," and so it was this funny thing where I was like ... I feel like this is a bad thing to say. I feel like I got it, like I got this, because we have yet to have a failure. It's bizarre, and what's funny about that ... That sounds like bragging ... is that it's like all I think we've learned is to just be as human as we can possibly be. It's just to be so deeply embedded in who we are as people, as our own individuals, and pick up what we're feeling and really pay attention to that, and that's a change. It's almost like being really, really, really human is a superpower. Isn't that weird?

Danny Kim:

Sounds like a title of the next book.

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Being really, really human is weird.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It's like, yeah. Exactly, but it's what we're good at. If we just leaned in, we'd be really good.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Do you feel like you're more supercharged coming out of the pandemic and then going back into physical spaces with physical, breathing people and-

Fred Dust:

Well, that's actually what was really interesting is that what I've realized is I was picking up ... Because we were sitting at a table, which means sometimes people are behind you a little bit depending on where you're looking any moment, and so what was interesting is I was picking up a vibe I was getting from the person who was sitting behind me who I couldn't even see, and that's something that I think you really need a room to do. I mean, I can sort of pick up the vibe because you're all focused on me, but if you're sitting behind me, it's like the fact that you could pick up a vibe in that context was like ... I don't know what that is.

Fred Dust:

One thing I've been wondering ... Sorry, and then I'd love to hear from you guys [inaudible 00:04:19]. I think, in general, I wonder whether or not this whole last 18 months has changed the way we experience sensations in general, and it's certainly remapped our neurochemistry. It has to have.

Daniel Stillman:

Fred, thank you for that, and thanks for, as David Whyte likes to say, starting close in. I'm really glad to be hosting this conversation about how your book has changed how we've thought about making conversation. Kathleen, you were stuck in the matrix for a few minutes when I introduced just the fact that we're going to be first names for as long as possible. I mean, I do want to talk about how you've brought it into your work, and that's been transformative, but I think maybe we can just start with ... Since you're here, Kathleen, what have you been imbibing from Making Conversation by Fred Dust? What is it changing for you? What's waking up for you in the way you approach this thing we do, being as human as possible?

Kathleen Rutherford:

I mean, well, I want to say two things. Technically, I'm in my mom's house, and so I'm rigged up on my phone. I'm hoping this connection stays. There's a big storm, just FYI in case I disappear, and also our realtor's going to bring a vacuum by at any moment, which I'm desperate for. So I'll jump off for that. That aside, I listened to the book, Fred, and I have about an hour left. So I sometimes like to read books, and as I ... I don't know. I guess, as I get older or I'm more slow at doing tasks, I really enjoy listening to audiobooks while I'm doing things, and I think the thing I've picked up that I really vibe with in your approach ... I mean, I appreciate a lot of the methodologies that you talked about and tools, and I'll talk some about that. There's the vacuum, but what I really-

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:06:17].

Kathleen Rutherford:

... [crosstalk 00:06:17] curiosity, was this constant-

Fred Dust:

Curiosity.

Kathleen Rutherford:

... curiosity that's very childlike and full of wonder, and that is so affirming to me in terms of thinking about design. So BRB.

Daniel Stillman:

This is the best bell to keep people short. So Danny, that's short.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. That's [crosstalk 00:06:39].

Daniel Stillman:

That's your opening. That'll be your opening introduction. If you can get the bell-

Fred Dust:

Can you have a vacuum delivered? Is that possible?

Danny Kim:

This is so funny. Yeah. I love it.

Daniel Stillman:

The real question is what was she listening to your book on if not vacuuming? How did she do that without the vacuum?

Fred Dust:

I know, and I want to talk about her topic, because it's something I'm writing about right now.

Danny Kim:

Cool.

Fred Dust:

[crosstalk 00:07:02].

Danny Kim:

Cool. Kathleen, do you have anything else do you want to add?

Kathleen Rutherford:

If I can, sure.

Danny Kim:

Sure.

Kathleen Rutherford:

So I took notes on what really stood out to me, and is that relevant right now, what sort of [crosstalk 00:07:15]?

Daniel Stillman:

Sure. Yeah. This is like our opening statement, so whatever you'd like to include in your opening statement, that's fine.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I've studied two things for a long time, yoga and poetry. So I love the haiku not only as a tool, but also as a form of expression. Just I really love that, and I love that as a way of simplifying complexity, and I can expand on that, so just to put a pin in that. The other thing that I really liked in the constraints was that boundaries are required for growth, and as a student of yoga, I always think about that as nirodha, which are the ... Those are the bounds from which you begin through which you also experience infinity, because if you didn't have those bounds, you couldn't experience infinity, and so you can translate that physically for people in a practice to say, "It's really not about touching your toes. If you can, fabulous, but if you can't, the experience is the process. So don't get hung up on it," and so I really loved that idea.

Kathleen Rutherford:

There's a thread for me, I think, in your work which is ... I think the biggest anchor was really about that curiosity component, that great wonder, and there's a thread for me too of, within that great wonder, having the presence and stability, sort of like what you were talking about in the part of your opening remarks that I heard, to be able to reflect, to be sufficiently present as to be able to witness what's happening around you and be cognizant of what is engaged in you and what's not when you're designing the conversation, so not denying your presence on the one hand, but also having a distinction about that presence that helps you observe, direct, et cetera.

Fred Dust:

Thank you.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. It's super fun to have you on. I was so excited when I saw that.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. It's great.

Daniel Stillman:

One thing I want to just connect back, because what you said, Fred, about being as human as possible, "How could that fail?" and what you said, Kathleen, of like, "Well, we're touching our toes, and as far as we get touching our toes is our experience of touching our toes," ... I see this like I'm trying to be as human as possible, and to the extent in which we do that, that is the extent which we can. That's what we did. We were as human as we could possibly be. If we get further and deeper, then that's great, and if we're just surface-level humans, then that's what we did, and that's what we could achieve in that moment. So it's a win.

Fred Dust:

Well, can I just ... The last part of that story, the person who I was talking to who I said, "You actually have to think about this," ... What was interesting is they were being attacked by their staff and really in a depressed, bad position and really cynical and unhappy, and then they said, "Okay. Got to go into the staff meeting. Got to just be perky and open and excited," and I'm like, "What about that's going to feel authentic to the staff? They know you're being under attack. Why would you feel that way?" and that's ... The HR person later on was like, "We've been trying to say that for 10 months," and so it was just this thing where I'm like, "Why not be human in front of people that know they're attacking you, and what could that do in terms of disarming them in some way?"

Daniel Stillman:

I really feel that in my chest when you said it. It's like you could try to fight the fight or [crosstalk 00:11:08].

Fred Dust:

Or recognize that you're being hurt. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Go fight the feeling.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. Such courage to be vulnerable like that, actually.

Daniel Stillman:

Danny, what's up for you?

Danny Kim:

Thank you. Yeah. No. Fred, thanks for being here with us and just writing this great piece for us to chew on. For me, I mean, I have about one more chapter left. However, I think that, for me, what's really stood out was really the idea of creative listening, and I love attention. I love your first quote that you use, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity," I mean, I think, even more so today with these guys around and Zoom and Slack messages and notifications. I feel like that is what it means to be human is to give each other space and listen.

Danny Kim:

I love the premise of the idea of create a conversation is not about holding true to your beliefs, but being willing to let go and hold space for possibility, because I think that's where a lot of tension and or disagreement arises. Really, that's the center of it is when we're not willing to let go of core beliefs. As important as they are to you, to be human means to show up and be willing to listen and say, "Your perspective is different than mine," however you argue truth and however you argue beliefs.

Danny Kim:

So I mean, I'm dealing with that in some ways in my organization as we complete Pride Month this month, and what a beautiful conversation that we get to say, "Listen. The point of, for example, our diversity, equity, and inclusion committee is not to should say you have to believe what I believe. It's to say 'Are you willing to show up and listen to the conversation?'" and I think ... So that has been such a ... and then your journey weaved into the story has been really cool for me to even reflect on, and thank you for the gift that it was for me during Pride Month to listen to your journey all marked throughout. It's just been perfect timing. That's the way the world's supposed to work, you know?

Daniel Stillman:

[inaudible 00:13:11].

Danny Kim:

I love the anecdotes. I think the one question that I'm mulling on is ... I don't know where I ... I wrote page 61, but this idea of how do we ... The question I had emerging was "How do we listen with our bodies remotely in this Zoom world?" because I wonder if there would have been an appendix or if there was another ... like, "How do we do some of these practices in a virtual context?" knowing that we'll probably be most likely hybrid to a certain extent.

Fred Dust:

Well, you haven't read the last chapter.

Danny Kim:

Oh. There you go. I was asking questions before they're ... Well, I'll have to get back to you on that then. Yeah.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Because it happened-

Danny Kim:

Right during [inaudible 00:13:57]?

Fred Dust:

I finished the book. They were supposed to be published last year. I was like, "There's going to be a pandemic," and so I was actually doing changes to ... George Floyd is in there. That happened during-

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I saw that. Yep.

Fred Dust:

So I was doing changes while it was actually supposed to be locked down. So there's a short chapter that's all about that.

Danny Kim:

Perfect. I can't wait to read it. Yeah.

Fred Dust:

By the way, thank you, and I will tell you I hate praise. So it's like it's not something that I ... It makes me very uncomfortable.

Daniel Stillman:

You're welcome, Fred.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Fred, this will be good practice.

Daniel Stillman:

We're going to start heaping more on you, so-

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

The thing that I've actually found myself using the most from the book ... Here's the thing. When I met you, Fred, as you know, using the language and the mindset of design on this very mushy thing that [inaudible 00:14:54] conversation, a friend of mine ... I think I told you this ... was like, "Don't write a book about conversations." It's just like they're just amorphous, and people don't get it, and the idea of being able to zoom in on the tactical level of a conversation to be able to actually make it as you choose, either magnificent or hubris, and I think the idea of knowing your three adjectives ... It's so simple, but it's the essence of the idea of what are your design heuristics, and I think people ... I've found in coaching conversations, people get it. At the heart of any real change is a conversation, and just I've been working on some of my own languaging.

Daniel Stillman:

This was a piece of feedback somebody gave me for me as a coach. They were like, "Well, look. At the middle of any challenge is a conversation. That might be a conversation with yourself. It might be a conversation with your boss or whatever, and if you can actually define the way you'd like it to feel, then the question of 'How might I create that feeling?' is a whole other exploration, and that is the creative part of designing a conversation." Well, if I'd like this to feel like my client doesn't think I'm an asshole, because that's a risk with some clients all the time, how do I make this fun? How do I make it feel egalitarian? How do I make it feel safe? Those are questions that then I get to sit with. Well, how do I make this feel safe for me and for them?

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and I think, on the back end of that, Daniel, is the notion that we often don't think that we can ask for the conversation that we want to have, and I think that one of the things you realize is that it's like you absolutely can. It's like once you know where you want to go, it's like it's well within our power to be asking for the conversation we need or want to have, I think.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Danny Kim:

It's interesting. One note I made too on the concept ... I forget. It was where you were talking about words and the power of words and change. I think it was in section of change, and I think that goes down to the premise of that actually our words matter. I think so many people ... They think, to your point about conversation, it's like yes, and I've jotted down a note, because once upon a time I was studying speech act theory and the idea that our words have power to change reality. So when you say, "I will do this," and you don't do it, you've broken a promise that ... You know?

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Danny Kim:

So it's fascinating that you were talking about that, and I was just like, "Wow." I think we have to, one, believe that our conversations and our words have power to make an impact versus something that is just normal and ... You know?

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and you know what's interesting, Danny, is it's ... I was on the phone. A friend of mine is the surgeon general, and he summoned me to his office today. So we were on the phone planning a national strategy on some work, some really interesting work, and one of the things I was talking about is it's also recognizing the power of the words that you might want to remove. So for instance, if you talk about divide, you see divide. That's the frequency illusion notion. It's like 11:11, and so one of the things ... I was like, "If you guys go out with divide, gap, loss, conflict," dah, dah, dah, "then all you're doing is calling attention to it. So it's counter to being therapeutic in that construct," and so it was a really great conversation and really interesting, I think, too.

Danny Kim:

That's cool. It's kind of like your one point about front porch. I forget exactly, but renaming it and being like, "We're going to relabel it in order to change the way we experience this." That's one word.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It's funny because it's like sometimes ... I have a quiz for you at some point, since you guys are so deep in this, but I feel like sometimes I feel like the book is almost like a little set of magic spells, because sometimes our team will open up and will be like, "Let's go here," and then we'll throw it into ... and it's a funny little thing.

Kathleen Rutherford:

That doesn't feel very different than how I approach my work, and I actually have a couple of magic wands.

Fred Dust:

[crosstalk 00:19:27].

Danny Kim:

I believe it. I believe it. Vacuum, appear. I'm just kidding.

Fred Dust:

What's cool, actually, about the evolution of my work that I think will make you feel better or even better is that I have a neuroscientist on my ... I have a death doula and neuroscientist. I have a bunch of different people on my team, but the neuroscience backs up a lot of what's in here, which I was just like really ... Writing without a neuroscientist, I was like, "I don't know," and now it's like it's been really interesting to [inaudible 00:19:55] affirmed in it for sure. Can I give you guys a little quiz.

Danny Kim:

Sure.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Sure.

Daniel Stillman:

We're all co-designing this conversation, Fred, so-

Fred Dust:

Okay. Cool. So you guys have read the book and you've read far enough. There's one section that's the most important section. It's a very short section.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Which section is it? Is that the quiz?

Danny Kim:

Is that the quiz?

Fred Dust:

That's the quiz.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Okay. Wait. Wait.

Danny Kim:

Oh, man.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Nobody answer until I can pull mine up in front of me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I feel like, Kathleen, you're at a slight disadvantage because audiobooks are not as-

Danny Kim:

Harder to ... Yeah.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I have an outline though. I have an outline.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:20:35] or at least scannable.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I have a good gut. So let's see.

Daniel Stillman:

A short chapter. I mean, I'm like-

Danny Kim:

[crosstalk 00:20:43].

Daniel Stillman:

I know where I put my-

Danny Kim:

[crosstalk 00:20:44].

Daniel Stillman:

... [crosstalk 00:20:44], but I'm not [crosstalk 00:20:45].

Danny Kim:

It's a quiz.

Fred Dust:

[crosstalk 00:20:46] shortest ones.

Daniel Stillman:

One of the shortest ones.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Well, I have times on mine, so-

Danny Kim:

Yeah. There you go.

Kathleen Rutherford:

... I don't have to do math.

Fred Dust:

I will tell you that it is almost precisely, almost precisely, 10 pages off from the center of the book, not including all the extra material.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Oh, that makes it complicated. Okay. I'm ready.

Fred Dust:

Okay. Do you want to guess?

Kathleen Rutherford:

Do you know that I was always the kid in school who was the [inaudible 00:21:24], by the way? [crosstalk 00:21:25].

Fred Dust:

Go for it.

Danny Kim:

[crosstalk 00:21:26]. Just go for it.

Fred Dust:

I was the one in school who my report card always said, "Disturbs others."

Kathleen Rutherford:

I just want to give you this quick anecdote. I'm down cleaning my parents' house out to prepare it for sale, and I found my older brother's fourth-grade report card. It was so hilarious. The first quarter was ... Well, anyways, it was just hilarious-

Fred Dust:

Was it accurate?

Kathleen Rutherford:

... and I sent it to his wife and to other members of my family, and everyone was like, "Yep. That sums it up." So should I say my guess? Or should I put it into the chat?

Fred Dust:

No. Say it.

Danny Kim:

Yeah.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I mean, I'm going to guess, because you're saying it's ... My first guess is going to be commitments, but then you said it's more towards the middle of the book. So I'm going to say it's the clarity.

Fred Dust:

Cool. It's a part of clarity. So you're close.

Danny Kim:

Oh. It's [crosstalk 00:22:16].

Kathleen Rutherford:

Oh. Part of clarity.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:22:18] part.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. I can't get that much more ... Let's see if I have notes on it. Okay.

Danny Kim:

Oh. So it's a section within clarity.

Fred Dust:

It's a section within clarity.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:22:24].

Danny Kim:

Oh, man. This is a-

Daniel Stillman:

So what you're saying-

Danny Kim:

I will say this, Fred. As you're talking about clarity, I was going to pick clarity as the section, but I didn't realize ... It was ironic to me on 87 where-

Fred Dust:

I know.

Danny Kim:

Okay. I literally called it out. I was like, "This is funny. It says 'Talk clearly. Talk normally,' and then it says 'Obfuscate.'" I was like, "What?" like "What?"

Fred Dust:

I know. It's so funny. I was like, "Could you have caught that, editors?" I was-

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fred Dust:

It was just funny. I'm glad you saw that.

Danny Kim:

I was like, "He probably did that on purpose just to-"

Fred Dust:

No, but I laughed when I saw it in the final thing. I was like, "Oh, yeah. I could have probably caught that.B"

Daniel Stillman:

Yep. Talk normal. Are you talking about a subsection of a section?

Fred Dust:

Subsection. Yeah. I'm willing to give you ... You guys got the chapter. You all got the right chapter. So do you want me to tell you what it is?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I mean, we're talking about giving it a name, right? I mean, that's the magic spell, right? This is the Ursula Le Guin concept, right?

Fred Dust:

That is true. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

The true name for something summons it.

Fred Dust:

Well, go to page 102, if you can. Sorry. This is super self indulgent, but there's a reason I want to tell you about it. It's kind of interesting.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. That's good.

Daniel Stillman:

Script spotting.

Kathleen Rutherford:

No. That's the thing I want to ... I wanted to come back to script spotting whenever that's appropriate.

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and so I did this quiz with my team, and they were like, "The one part that we didn't get was this script spotting thing." It was so funny, which is really interesting, and so if you noticed, the book goes through things that are very personal. They're all things that you could do on your own, and then at some point you transition to things that you have to do as a collective, so there was ... In country music, there was this thing called, I think, the hinge, where it's like the song is going in one direction, suddenly there's a flip, and the song goes in another direction or it changes level.

Fred Dust:

So in order to proceed into context, change, create, you have to recognize and see the scripts that are embedded in a conversation, and so you can't ... For instance, in the chapter on change, which is my favorite chapter, actually, it's like it's only by ... The scripts are one of the things that help you notice change. It's when things actually play off across that. So it's this really interesting tool that had to be there, and it was ... I wrote this out of order and the rewrote it in order, and this, we knew, is a really key point, but we didn't know where it needed to land, and we realized [inaudible 00:24:59] to be the hinge in the book, where it shifted the way you practice.

Daniel Stillman:

Interesting, because yeah. After you talk about spaces here, then you talk about context, and actually that was a question I caught in ... There's a Google Slides that we've been collecting some of our thoughts. On page 118, you talk about the feeling of compression and release, the very architectural concept, the very Frank Lloyd Wright compress and release, and with physical spaces, it's easy to do that. Obviously, with virtual spaces, I feel like the only way to do that is with pacing, with cadence.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. I think that's one. I think there's definitely rules. You can establish rules for the way things that you want to do. I actually feel like that there are also things like, to be honest, even like the rooms I'm in are ... This room is the room I want to be in, and I don't want you to see the bookshelf. I want you to see the full room. So I actually choose the backgrounds of the rooms that I'm in. This is my office up state, but then the other thing, for instance, is if you ... In my real life, my desk would be a mess, but actually I clean my desk before I have a serious conversation.

Fred Dust:

So there's all kinds of things that can actually affect your own psychology or even ask other people to do that. It's like maybe, "Everybody, just clear your table for this conversation," if there's something that you ... So there's actually things you can do, but you'll see a ... Danny and Kathleen, I talked a little bit about context. I thought context was going to be out the door when the pandemic happened, but it works really well especially with people who are in isolation and need to have conversations with family members and things like that. So every night, my husband and I ... We make the table for the conversations we want to have. We set our table, and my guests, if they come ... We set the table together, because I believe it's something that we should be doing to establish the platform for which we'll have the conversations.

Kathleen Rutherford:

We do the same in my household, and when my husband and I are having ... When there's difficulty, there's negotiation about dishes and who sets the table and where you put the ... It's so funny how there's so much meaning in that and so much energy.

Fred Dust:

So much energy. It's actually really true. Yeah. Well, okay. I've got a bunch, but you guys [inaudible 00:27:28].

Kathleen Rutherford:

Well, I'm going to jump in, and then, again, I'm open to being facilitated, Daniel. So if I'm taking up too much time, just tell me. So the script ... Can we talk a little bit more about that? I'm going to try not to talk about work, but just thinking-

Daniel Stillman:

We have about 15 minutes left. So at some point we can transition into the who we are and how we've brought it into our work. So if you want to bring that thread in-

Danny Kim:

[crosstalk 00:27:55].

Daniel Stillman:

... you want to start-

Kathleen Rutherford:

Okay.

Daniel Stillman:

... leading-

Fred Dust:

Yeah. I'd like to know more about that. So yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Fred might be curious at this point. What's your line?

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Exactly.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I paid so much damn money to a coach to be able to deliver that, and I still can't do it, Daniel. So might have to [inaudible 00:28:10], but I kind of get paid to be me. I'm trained as a mediator, facilitator. I just am apparently getting hired to do this big DEI thing, and I was like, "I'm not a DEI person." They were like, "No. We need you." So I don't know, but that is my training. I work in really complex areas, climate change, land use, clean energy, also violence prevention, gender equality, other social justice things. Haven't been so active in those of late, but apparently I'm getting back into that game.

Kathleen Rutherford:

When I think about scripts, I think about narratives, and when I think about narratives, I think they're embedded in this social ecological system. So they have lots of expression. They could be individual, community, more broad national identity or global, can sort of scale, but I don't know ... I came away from the scripts thinking, "How is that different than a narrative?" Do you delineate between, and if so, how or why?

Fred Dust:

Well, it's funny that you say that, because actually what's interesting for me is that increasingly I feel like our world has been dominated by a singular script writer, to be honest, and I would sort of ... So the book has a lot of history. It looks back at where I think conversation de-evolved, which is [inaudible 00:29:45] where I think that did happen, but I do think ... In my most recent work, one of the things I write about is where the places that most likely are going to set the script for you, and that's typically media and then, as a side of that, politics. It's like those are the two places that are establishing your script.

Fred Dust:

So I wrote a piece on Medium a couple weeks ago on ... I don't think I saw the story in the New York Times about ... It was like, "Are you languishing?" Did anyone see that story? It was a big story. It was basically being like, "Oh, you're at a certain point, and you're not really exploring, and you're not really ..." and it was like this diagnosis piece about how you might feel where you were, and so I had a friend who came over, and she was like, "I think I'm languishing. I read this article, and it's said-"

Kathleen Rutherford:

Oh, I read that. Yes. Languishing. Okay. Sorry. I misheard. Yep.

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and I was like, "I'm a little confused. You're a documentary filmmaker. You just made your most recent documentary. You're dating again. You've gotten hired by a big client." I'm like, "Tell me what's languishing about where you are," and so I wrote this fairly angry piece, because not only did the New York Times write this piece, which is I think is actually coining a term from Adam Grant, who I really like. I mean, he's a friend, but nonetheless. But then the film critics used it to describe some movies. They're like, "Oh, and this character is languishing," dah, dah, dah, and then they started writing all the articles that were like, "Oh, are you languishing? Here's how to fix it," and I'm like, "That's not journalism. They're selling you a script. That's marketing," and so it's like-

Daniel Stillman:

Oh. Is this the one about the story's telling you how you feel?

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Exactly, and it just ... That makes me furious. When you start having media being the thing that ... So in essence, that is narrative, right? So it's like wherever our dominant narratives come forward, that's actually one of the things ... I can't say whom, but I'm working with a foreign policy ... Not foreign. Diplomatic corps for a country, and we're reinventing statecraft, because we realize that it's like the old scripts just don't work in this construct, because it's-

Kathleen Rutherford:

So needed.

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and what we're doing, frankly, is we're gamifying it. We basically [inaudible 00:31:52] a deck of 90 cards that each day gives you a different practice and a specific task of what to do. So anyway.

Daniel Stillman:

This is where metaphor and narrative and the giving it a name, the front porching of something, becomes the transformation.

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I always give a shout out to ... I did an interview with a man named Ian Altman where he talks about sales as same-side sales. Most people are like, "I hate selling," because the narrative of their head is the person coming with a vacuum cleaner not to loan it to you, but to make you buy it versus [inaudible 00:32:28] what's the real problem, and everyone loves telling people about things that they love that they think are going to help them. That's another metaphor for sales is like, "Hey. Let's play the game of what problem is there and how can we solve it together." It's easy to say that. It's hard to do that, and we all feel anxiety over selling our work, but when you change the metaphor ... Ian really helped me to ... Yes. It's a puzzle we're solving together, not a game to win, just like-

Kathleen Rutherford:

I love the collaborative game stuff that you talked about too, by the way, and I've worked on those things. So cool.

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and it's like we have two new games coming out soon. I'm really excited about that, so one that's like a very personal game and one that's actually a professional game. So I'll let you know when they're out. It's weird. Also, to the clarity point, one of my favorite parts of doing this is we'll write proposals, for instance, and at the bottom of the opening paragraph, we'll be like, "And by the way, every consultant says that, but what we're saying is this." We're teaching them how consultants talk, and we're like, "But we don't talk like that. What we really mean is this is how we do it." So it's like it's been this really funny meta narrative in the proposals of unpacking what people always say and what we're saying.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:33:50].

Daniel Stillman:

That's funny.

Fred Dust:

Danny, tell me a little bit more about you.

Danny Kim:

Sure. Sure. So my background is in organizational psychology, and so I was working in a consulting firm for many years doing organizational design and leader development and recently transitioned out right before the pandemic as a director of people and culture at a branding and advertising agency. So the script spotting is actually really relevant to the work we do, because we write lots of scripts for production work and ... But my job, I think, and the way this works for me is elevating high-contact conversations and providing frameworks for people to be better leaders, and I think, if you just give people ... I guess my intention, my hope, is to continue to provide tools so that I can continue to develop leaders in our organization to lead feedback conversation, performance reviews, to developing emotional resilience and ... You know?

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Danny Kim:

To hold some of our beliefs loosely as we enter into different kinds of conversations that ... So yeah. So I love what I do. I'm a culture creator within our agency and hired about 40 people since January, and I just hired my first talent acquisition manager. He started like two weeks ago. So it's kind of like thank you, you know?

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Danny Kim:

I've gone through a lot of what does it mean to build a world-class culture. That's our hope.

Fred Dust:

That's fantastic. Yeah, and it's a great moment, I think, to be really working in that space, I think.

Danny Kim:

Yes. It's beautiful. Yep, and then DEI has been a huge part of my reality. So maybe, Kathleen, if you want to talk through that, I'm happy to share any thoughts, but leading a couple different initiatives on our end, and it's been a beautiful exploration as I try to figure out how do I give people a greater voice and impact, and I think that's what part of conversation is is sometimes allowing silence to be the note that we play and me being very intentional by saying, "Listen. My job is to empower these four women to be the leaders of this conversation, and my job ... I'm not being quiet because I'm not invested. I'm being quiet because I'm empowering you," and I think even just naming that is part of creating space for conversation.

Fred Dust:

That's really interesting. Yeah. No. Kathleen, I'd be curious. I mean, it's funny. I'm not going to say the name of the organization. Well, I'm going to say it, and you can bleep it or whatever, but it's like I'm on the board of National Public Radio, and I got a call-

Kathleen Rutherford:

You say that in your book.

Fred Dust:

Oh, okay.

Kathleen Rutherford:

So we already know that.

Fred Dust:

[crosstalk 00:36:33].

Danny Kim:

Yeah.

Fred Dust:

But this part is the part where it's like [inaudible 00:36:37] is like, but the chair of the board called me the other, black man, and he was like ... Whenever somebody calls me, I'm assuming they're going to fire me. That's just like I'm always [inaudible 00:36:44] like, "Oh, god. They're going to [crosstalk 00:36:53]."

Daniel Stillman:

That's so normalizing.

Danny Kim:

[crosstalk 00:36:53].

Kathleen Rutherford:

Dragons. Big Dragons. Very successful.

Fred Dust:

They're going to kick me off the board, and he was like, "Well, I was hoping you would join the DEI committee," which we're just starting, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Of course." It's like I'm on the DEI committee for most of the organizations that I work with, and he's like, "Yeah, and then I was thinking it'd be great if you would be the chair," and I was like, "Uh," and then I just basically was like, "Let me think on that one." I'm not going to do it. It's like I'm not going to be the chair of the DEI committee [inaudible 00:37:20], but ...

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. It's a very interesting ... That part of our conversations right now, I think, in terms of how we show up around power and how we recognize it, respond to it, share it or not, including saying no, I think, right?

Fred Dust:

Right.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Like, "Yeah. I'm the easy one, and I'll find other ways to support you, but it can't be me." I kind of-

Fred Dust:

That's [crosstalk 00:37:51].

Kathleen Rutherford:

... [crosstalk 00:37:51] backing out on this one, and I was like, "I'm not trying to shirk duties," and we'll see. I'm talking to those folks later today, but I was like, "I'm a white woman. I'm not really sure. I mean, I can definitely whip some white women into shape who are acting badly on this board, but I think maybe a woman of color would be better than me, and I know you know me and you trust me, and that's awesome, and I'm honored, but I'm not sure if it's the best, and I'm not sure I'm the one to make that call either."

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It reminds me. I had a really interesting experience where I was hired to be the CEO of an organization that focuses on global conversations and convenings, and I came into the institution. I was like, "Oh, there's some really messed up things here," and was like, "There's a lot of things that are wrong about it," and I said it to some people before we began to... So already I had ... There was anger in the institution on the first day I was going to go, and I basically said to the chair of the board ... I was like, "Okay. We're going into this really hard conversation tomorrow. It's going to be really rough, and what's the plan for the conversation?" and he was like, "There's no need for a plan. You're utterly charming. You're going to be fine," and I'm like, "That's not a plan. Let's put together a plan, or else I resign," and he was like, "I don't see why we need a plan. We hired you because you're charismatic and charming and you can handle the situation," and I'm like, "Nope," and I resigned.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Not doing the work for you.

Fred Dust:

Because I was like, if the chair of the board won't sit down to make a plan for the conversation, and we're just [inaudible 00:39:22] whatever, it's like then that's not an organization that's going to be the kind of caring organization that I need to do the work I needed to do.

Daniel Stillman:

You being charming is a plan.

Fred Dust:

It's his easy-

Kathleen Rutherford:

It's fantastic.

Fred Dust:

It's his easy plan, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Fred Dust:

But it's not a plan for me. There's nothing in it that protects me as an individual. It just-

Daniel Stillman:

Right. You wanted an equal conversational partner who was going to bring his own heuristics, his own energy into the conversation so you could co-design it.

Fred Dust:

That's right.

Daniel Stillman:

Versus like-

Fred Dust:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

... [crosstalk 00:39:51].

Danny Kim:

That takes effort.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It does, and-

Kathleen Rutherford:

And be willing to do it, not relying on you, right?

Fred Dust:

That's exactly right. It's like I think that really ... It feels like that felt extractive, and it was like, if this is an indication of what it's going to mean to be working with this person and this board, then this didn't feel like the right thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Speaking of extractive, we only have about five minutes left, because it's Tuesday night. It's 5:55 on the Eastern Seaboard.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Tuesday night.

Daniel Stillman:

I know. I'm-

Fred Dust:

I have hours more. Honestly, this is really fun for me because I'm like, "Oh, we're talking about things that people like about me," even though, I mean, I'm red as can be and so embarrassed, but it's like at the same time, I'm like, "Oh, this is ... I kind of like this."

Daniel Stillman:

Push another 15 if you can, Fred. I just try to respect everybody's time.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fred Dust:

I mean, I'd love to just hear a little bit more about the work you guys are doing, and just if there's anything I can learn or whatever, I'd be down for staying a little longer. It's up to you guys.

Danny Kim:

Yeah.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I would too.

Daniel Stillman:

Yay.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Daniel, are you willing to host for a little bit longer?

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, totally. In full disclosure, my wife is getting a massage from my mother. So I have nothing to do. The two most important women in my life are entertaining each other, and I don't have to have dinner. There's food in the fridge. So-

Fred Dust:

Can I-

Daniel Stillman:

... go ahead. I can totally be here a little while.

Fred Dust:

Can I tell you a really funny story about that since ... It's kind of just like sort of weird intimacy story, but it's like [inaudible 00:41:18].

Danny Kim:

Oh, my gosh. Fred, we're still recording, by the way.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah, and over full disclosure. Yeah.

Fred Dust:

It's okay. I think that it goes to Kathleen listening to the audiobook of the book. So when I did the audiobook, I did it last summer in Maine, and they wanted me to put me in a big studio in New York, and I was like, "No. I just want super small, minimal contact audio studio," so the place ... Because I was just like whatever. So the place I was in was a little glass booth. It was about 110 degrees in Portland, Maine. It was [inaudible 00:41:57] ever been. They can't run the air conditioning, because if you run the air conditioning, the sound-

Danny Kim:

The sound.

Fred Dust:

The sound.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Yep.

Fred Dust:

That's why I have mine off right now, and the booth had heated up so hot, and they decided they wanted to compress three days into two days. So it's like the room had heated up so hot that there was condensation on the walls. I wasn't allowed to eat, because of stomach noise. I wasn't allowed to ... Which I'm actually better if I don't eat. I wasn't allowed to drink too much, because you start to get clacking in your voice, and finally I was like, "I'm dying." I'm like, "It's so hot in here," and they're like, "We can't see you. If you want, take off your clothes," and so the funny, intimate secret is that the book you're listening to, Kathleen-

Danny Kim:

Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it.

Kathleen Rutherford:

That changes the whole thing entirely.

Daniel Stillman:

I hope the fabric-

Kathleen Rutherford:

[crosstalk 00:42:52] hilarious.

Daniel Stillman:

... [crosstalk 00:42:52] the seat wasn't too sticky.

Fred Dust:

It was a wool fabric seat. It was gross.

Danny Kim:

Oh, my gosh.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I would expect nothing less in some sound booth in Maine.

Danny Kim:

I don't-

Daniel Stillman:

This doesn't come up in most podcasts. This is good. This is-

Danny Kim:

I don't know if I want to listen to it or if I shouldn't listen to it, because now I just can't get that-

Kathleen Rutherford:

Oh, you should totally listen to it now.

Danny Kim:

Maybe I have to listen to it now that [crosstalk 00:43:18].

Kathleen Rutherford:

This gives a whole new spin on the closing chapter for me.

Fred Dust:

Honestly, Kathleen, what's funny is that I've been stuck in a monsoon in a taxi for 18 hours in the most rural parts of India, and I think reading my audiobook was the most extreme experience I ever had. One of the things that you might hear in the thing is when I was reading about my grandmother seeing Jesus, I was like, "I'm seeing Jesus," [inaudible 00:43:44], and It's like when I started to tear up about something, the director would be like, "Go deeper. Really. Go ahead. Tear up more." So it was intense.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Well, and that does convey. Your emotional range really is conveyed [inaudible 00:44:03], and I love that. I mean, that's why I still ... On occasion, I do like to listen to books, because otherwise I'm inferring that and it's my voice, and yeah. So that totally worked.

Fred Dust:

It's really interesting. When I was editing the book, I sent it to a couple friends, some of their quotes. Casper, I sent the thing on pilgrimage, and Andrea [Lean 00:44:26] I sent the-

Daniel Stillman:

This is Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Ritual, also a ... I think you introduced me to him.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Casper's a [inaudible 00:44:34].

Daniel Stillman:

Wonderful guest. I really loved his work.

Fred Dust:

But so Casper's quote and then Andrea Lean's quote. In Andrea Lean's quote ... Often when she'll talk about kids, she'll be like, "And they're like," dah, dah, dah, "and I'm like," dah, dah, dah, and then with Casper, he has this long thing about pilgrimage, and it starts with um and a pause, and then it goes into it, and so they both wrote back, and they were like, "Can you take out um," and I was like, "Casper, if you went into a super long monologue about pilgrimage and didn't stop to say um beforehand, which you actually did say, it wouldn't sound like you were human," and with Andrea, I was like, "Andrea, you work with teens. You say like. It's like it makes you sound more human." So I had to coax them to let me leave some of their colloquialisms in so you could actually hear their real voice. Otherwise, they would sound too expert.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. Really interesting.

Daniel Stillman:

Speak as human as possible, to the-

Fred Dust:

That's right.

Daniel Stillman:

... very first point.

Fred Dust:

Exactly. So anyway.

Kathleen Rutherford:

I always love the invitation to be who you are. I mean, I tend to like people who show up as the best version of themselves, but whatever's going on for you is going on for you when you're in the room, and I don't know. I feel like the pandemic in particular has spawned this whole new emerging field. I'm not sure about that. I might be getting old and grouchy, but at any rate, I've been on a lot of calls and webinars about this emergent field of ... Much of this, I think, links to Otto Scharmer's work at MIT, so presencing. He has this thing called the Presencing Institute. I don't know if any of you have seen or heard about that, but I really like that work.

Kathleen Rutherford:

There's accordingly this field of ... I guess, most simply put, it identifies as a field of transformation and systems change and talking about how do we design a visual language for that and how do we identify as a field, and sometimes I get off those calls, and I feel like I found my tribe, my actual people, and then other times I'm like, "What the hell are we all talking about?" So I kind of swim along there, but I think it's an interesting ... It's not for nothing that that is coming online as we're coming out of the pandemic, I guess is my point.

Fred Dust:

I think that's right. I mean, that's actually the work we're talking about right now with the surgeon general, frankly, is basically how not to just jump back into normal-

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah. Going back.

Fred Dust:

... best, and so we're trying to figure out a way that we can message to United States like, "Hey. Let's take some time before." I've been doing a lot of lectures and am doing a three-part essay series on why stay hybrid, which is ... Hybrid workplace has been a kind of holy grail for workplaces for forever, and now we're seeing people being like, "Nope. Everybody comes back in," and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, guys," and so we're writing some evidence-based pieces on why we shouldn't be doing that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, but we have a lease on this office. So we have to use it. That's a constraints-based ideation. That's really important.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Totally.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Danny, I want to bring in ... because it feels connected. I was looking at page 155 where you were talking about moving an idea forward, exploring the idea, not necessarily making it happen, and ironically the surgeon general's quote about having a minute of silence in a staff meeting is on the opposite page, and I think a lot of times people want forward-moving conversations and this idea of making conversation does feel like making something happen and moving things forward, versus circular conversations, which nobody really wants. But it seems like, Danny, what you picked up there is the importance of creating a space to marinate. I don't know if there was something more you wanted to say on that and then maybe [crosstalk 00:48:45].

Danny Kim:

Well, it's interesting. So I'm a musician, classically trained violinist, and in music, silence is a note, and so I think, in conversation, I mean, and even giving feedback to one of my team members, you can't just always talk, and her thing is like, "I get nervous if there's silence," and whatnot. How do I help develop her as a leader into this next evolution of herself of silence is key to conversation? Give space for other people to share their voice. But for me, I think I take that note, no pun intended, to heart, because I think there is ...

Danny Kim:

I mean, as a violinist in an orchestra, I mean, I would be sitting there with like 18 bars of silence, and I'm waiting my turn, and I have to count every single beat, "One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four," and then if I'm off, I miss my note, and so it's really interesting how that plays into conversation. It's scripted, Fred, to your point, I mean, as we were talking about. There's a very clear way of how we will play this piece of music, and yet there's artistry in that, and every note has its own space in that.

Danny Kim:

So anyways, and then I think that, to me, is where the ... I mean, as we talk a little bit about DEI, but for me, that's where asking people to step back from the conversation at times versus stepping in and leaning forward and giving space for that, and so I don't know. I've been thinking about that a lot, Daniel, and I'm glad you called that out in 155, and I did highlight that. Too often we prize decisiveness in leadership, and sometimes we just need ... I don't know. Let's just be present together and figure this out together, and let's circle back to it later.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. I mean, I had the, I mean, the good luck, I guess, of working with the prime minister of Greece when he was going through the crisis, and what would happen is that he would make an announcement. He would say something like, "We're not going bankrupt," and in the time that he was finishing that statement, it had been misinterpreted by the press to be already in the aether saying, "The prime minister just said that they're going bankrupt," and so it's just like this speed just builds on itself in this way that was really intense, and so I think what's really fantastic about being able to coach conversations when that's happening is when you see a leader become like, "Oh, we're planning things for four years out," then in five minutes because they're feeling crisis, you can always be like, "Let me just tell you this story about Greece in crisis," and everyone's like, "Oh, right. Well, we don't want to be Greece in crisis."

Daniel Stillman:

Well, speed's a virtue, but where, speed to where?

Fred Dust:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

Always a-

Kathleen Rutherford:

[crosstalk 00:51:26]. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

... [crosstalk 00:51:26] asking.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Speed to where and to what end? I mean, I feel like so many of the systems that are falling apart right now ... The tendency is to reify those systems and how we think and speak and act and organization and move and talk, and if we don't take advantage of the disruption to really think about what do we want, what should our social contract look like with government, how are we actually going to deal with a wildfire, then we're just going to keep repeating ourselves.

Kathleen Rutherford:

But it's a really scary thing, I think, also, because I'm working on wildfire. This is in my portfolio right now with the US Forest Service. How do they not respond like they always have while also addressing real infrastructure, real human health concerns, and in the context of climate change? All the easy work has been done. We are entering a stage of civilization that is far more complex and interconnected, I believe, I than it ever has been, so how do we ... Where I want to go speedy, Danny, on organizational culture is how can we speed up the organizational culture change-

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Nice. Yeah.

Kathleen Rutherford:

... so that it's commensurate with what we're seeing outside, you know?

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Well, it's pretty interesting, because one of the things that we've been ... So one of my clients is Rockefeller Foundation. So I've been running all of their major global convenings since March one, and so our first series was on pandemic prevention and awareness. So that was happening back in the fall of whatever, or spring of 2020, and it was really interesting. So that was fascinating because you had people from all over the globe. You had people from Google. You had whatever, and I was basically ...

Fred Dust:

One of their first comments to me when I was like, "What do you want us to design here?" is they were like, "Well, we want a situation where, for instance, the movement for Black Lives is going to give us their data," and I'm like, "Well, if that's what you want, then we're going to have the movement for Black Lives in the room," and so basically what we did to speed up the dialogue is I invited a bunch of different people who are the users. So I'm like, "If you want to hear what Black Lives feels about that, talk to the head of coms for Black Lives. It's like [inaudible 00:53:43] for Black Lives."

Fred Dust:

It was fascinating because we were able to speed through the solutions within a three-week period of two 90-minute conversations a week [inaudible 00:53:50] a pandemic institute, which we stood up, but it was because we were like, "We don't have time. We're going to collapse users into the room with the leaders and the thinkers, and you're going to ask the users directly, and they're going to tell you what they agree with and what they don't." So it's like there's some really interesting things where we were able to really speed to solutions in really phenomenal ways by bringing in different kinds of voices than would be in the room typically.

Daniel Stillman:

I think that might be one thing that ... I was just taking a look to see if I'm missing this, but in terms of the chapters, commitment, creative listening, clarity, context, constraints, change, and create, is there a C that represents participants, the who is in the room?

Kathleen Rutherford:

The collective?

Daniel Stillman:

The collective. There you go. Can we add another C? Are we allowed to do that? Because there's this question of who's in the room and who's not in the room and how do we bring them in the room, and-

Fred Dust:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

... [crosstalk 00:54:44] way to bring their voice into the room. Is it a persona? That might not be enough. They have to be in the room.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. It's funny. I write about it in create, which is basically like looking at the idea of bringing a second in or whatever, and going back to the commitment notion and even in the last micro chapter on the pandemics is I'm like ... I basically say, "Commit or don't, especially now. Make your lives less busy unless you're the voice of difference in the room," because it's one of the things ... The whole first chapter is like, "How do you get comfortable with the fact that there's different people in the room? They look different from you. They might act different from you. They talk differently, and how do you deal with it?" That's kind of where we got to in the pandemic is like, "No. We need to broaden the net in a huge way to actually have the conversations that need to happen."

Daniel Stillman:

Well, just it increases speed, because it's a game of telephone. Every time someone who's not in the conversation has a relay back and forth, it's a lossy process.

Fred Dust:

Totally. I'm like, "Don't-"

Kathleen Rutherford:

[crosstalk 00:55:45] balancing feedback loop too, right? I mean, there's a dynamic that happens in the conversations.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Exactly.

Kathleen Rutherford:

[crosstalk 00:55:51].

Fred Dust:

Yeah, and I'm sort of like, "Yeah. Well, you waited for a year to talk to USAID, and now you're surprised by what they said. We could have had them a year ago, and we would have been starting from a different point.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Could have started a decade ago with AID.

Fred Dust:

Oh, my god, and don't get me started on-

Kathleen Rutherford:

Okay. I won't.

Fred Dust:

I will say really interesting the parts of government. I'm going to meet live with immigration, and-

Kathleen Rutherford:

Oh, fascinating.

Fred Dust:

... one of my first conversations with them on the phone was like, "You know you need to change your name," and they were like, "Yeah." I just think ICE in general doesn't work for immigration.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, yeah. That's the acronym. Fair.

Kathleen Rutherford:

No. The thing that you have to put on your face after somebody just threw you into a locker? No.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It doesn't pass the Ursula Le Guin test-

Fred Dust:

It does not.

Daniel Stillman:

... by any stretch of the imagination.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Most of my career has been working with government. They are my primary clients in the US and other, and it is, I think, such an amazing ... So Danny, I know so little about corporate life, for example. I know about corporate life through multi-stakeholder dialogues, and on occasion I'll work for a company, but if I'm working for a company, it's because they want me to help them do something with government, but it's a really fascinating ... They play such fascinating roles in designing our reality, actually, and so much of it goes unquestioned. Or when it is questioned, the constructs with which or by which it's questioned are so weak, feeble. They're not-

Daniel Stillman:

These are fundamental metaphors. Sorry for interrupting, Kathleen. I just started reading the free chapters of debt, a history of the first 5,000 years. I don't know if you've read this or come across it. It's one of Bill Gates' top books or somebody. I'm amazed at how much of the book is available as a free sample on the Amazon Kindle, just for the ... So you can get pretty far in and get a lot of the goodness, and the fundamental idea is the notion that a debt is a moral obligation is a shocking one. When-

Kathleen Rutherford:

So effective.

Daniel Stillman:

And super effective, and it's really old, and the myth of money and the myth of what is forgivable and what's not forgivable and who gets bailed out when things go awry ... Spoiler alert.

Kathleen Rutherford:

The wealthy people are not suffering in that way.

Daniel Stillman:

Right, and so this ... You talk about changing the metaphor or changing the conversation around something like money. We just literally cannot see another reality. He does this hilarious bit where he goes through half a dozen economics textbooks where they just basically all share these same metaphors of like, "Well, the barter economy is insane and it's impossible, so we need money, and we have to have this medium of exchange, and this is why things are the way they are," when history, apparently, and that's why you need to buy the book and read all the chapters about all 5,000 years of history is there are tons of examples of Mesopotamian cultures that did it differently and had a very effective medium of exchange that thought about debt and forgiveness of debt.

Daniel Stillman:

Spoiler alert, again, if you've read the Bible, it's in Jewish law. Every 50 years, there's a jubilee and all debts are forgiven. That was something that used to be part of certain cultures, and it was just a completely different narrative about what money is versus a permanent binding moral obligation to pay the French government back if you're Madagascar, regardless of the fact that all of those debts are based on colonialism and extractive relationships.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Right, and they've commodified the extractives they've gotten out of your country and made-

Daniel Stillman:

Correct.

Fred Dust:

[crosstalk 00:59:50].

Daniel Stillman:

So you have to-

Fred Dust:

So that's the thing about naming is it cuts two ways, which is that it's like ... One of the things I did with Skoll World Forum is we did two-word things that established the destiny of humankind, and one of the things was manifest destiny, and it was like these superficial labels that basically push us forward. Danny, can I ask you a quick question?

Danny Kim:

Yes, and then I have to go. I'm sorry.

Fred Dust:

I do too.

Danny Kim:

Yeah. [crosstalk 01:00:24].

Fred Dust:

Given the context of what you're doing, I'm curious. What are you seeing? How has this changed the stuff that's happening over at IDEO? How's that affecting the ways that you're thinking about your work?

Danny Kim:

Can you say that one more time?

Fred Dust:

I don't know. Have you been following what's been happening over at IDEO at all?

Danny Kim:

I have not, actually. Tell me more.

Fred Dust:

Check it out.

Danny Kim:

Okay.

Fred Dust:

So basically what's happened is that there's been a whole Medium stream called Surviving IDEO, which actually ... I'll tell you honestly, and I wrote a piece about this that got a lot of traction, and I read the first article in it and was like ... I had a lot of glee because I was like, "Oh, yeah. I saw this happen. I saw this happen." I mean, just to be honest, I hired the first black designer at IDEO, and for years, my practice was called the Benetton ad, and it was derogatory. It was derisive in the way that it happened. So I was really loving it until I got to the last story, which is about me, and so then I wrote a Medium piece about it and was like, "Yeah. This happened. Here's what I learned," and that was my response, but-

Danny Kim:

I'd love to check it out. I'm sorry. I don't have much more context on it, but-

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Take a look. But the Medium piece was basically like ... It's like, "What happens when you get called out as a bad leader in a viral article."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. George Aye, I think, started the-

Fred Dust:

Yeah, [crosstalk 01:01:53].

Daniel Stillman:

Apparently, there were some more written before that that didn't go viral.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. Yeah, and then what happened? Oh. Fast Company reprinted it.

Daniel Stillman:

But I mean, it speaks to the challenge of an outside group thinking that it can solve any and all ... I mean, these are also the critiques of design thinking, which we talked about. If we can't have an inclusive conversation with all the stakeholders in a conversation, then it is a exclusive not conversation.

Fred Dust:

Yeah. No. It's funny. I mean, it's like that's the premise. I mean, with our consultancy, it was sort of like we're the last consultant you're ever going to hire, because our job is to teach you to actually do this ourself so that you can ... Yeah, and again, that's why people have been hiring us. They're just like, "Yeah. We just need to do it ourselves."

Danny Kim:

Yeah. Thank you, Fred.

Fred Dust:

Thank you [crosstalk 01:02:47].

Danny Kim:

I appreciate your time. This was awesome.

Fred Dust:

Thank you. It was [crosstalk 01:02:50].

Danny Kim:

I really enjoyed your book.

Fred Dust:

It was just so fun, and now I have to go do more work, but ...

Daniel Stillman:

Fred, do you want to have a two-word checkout?

Fred Dust:

It's the end of a long day. Peace out.

Daniel Stillman:

Kathleen, what's your two-word checkout?

Kathleen Rutherford:

Gosh. The word that's coming to mind is blessings, blessings and light.

Daniel Stillman:

Mr. Kim?

Danny Kim:

Mine is more work, but I mean, and I say that positive.

Kathleen Rutherford:

More work for-

Danny Kim:

I say that positively. I say that like there's more work to be done, more good work to be done.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

With just this last conversation, it seems like what I'm checking out with is inclusive conversations. That's a really good thing to meditate on. Fred, you are, as my people call it, a mensch for hanging out with us. Kathleen, Danny, thank you for donating your time to this conversation-

Danny Kim:

So good.

Daniel Stillman:

... and I'm so excited to share this conversation with other people as soon as I can get it into the universe. Happy Tuesday.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Yeah, and I think, for hosting, I'm looking ... This is a great start for me-

Danny Kim:

Thank you.

Kathleen Rutherford:

... and I look forward to more, and Fred, thank you so much for coming-

Danny Kim:

Thanks, Fred.

Kathleen Rutherford:

... in person. What a great gift.

Fred Dust:

Nice meeting you guys.

Danny Kim:

Bye.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 01:04:19].

Fred Dust:

See you soon. Bye-bye.

Kathleen Rutherford:

Ciao.

Leading Deeper Connection

I'm really excited to share my conversation with Kat Vellos, an amazing designer of experiences. 

Today we talk about the art of intentionality and the power of hearing yourself say something you've never said before. We also dive deep into some of the incredible insights in her book, "We Should Get Together: The secret to cultivating better friendships”

One of the things that I loved from the book was Kat's powerful metaphor about "hydroponic friendship," and how you can create a supercharged connection through intentional vulnerability and shared experiences. 

She draws on her long-time experience as a facilitator and designer to create what for me was one of the big "Aha!" moments: hydroponic friendship requires a container, and that's one of the things that leaders can do to design experiences: They can create the container. 

A container can be the question that starts the conversation, the invitation to the party. In Improv, it’s called the “Magic Circle” - the place where new rules and ways of being apply, the “game world”.

While Kat's book is about designing friendship in our lives, she points out that connection in one part of our lives leads to connection in all parts of our lives. We’re experiencing loneliness and disconnection not only in our everyday lives but at work... and work is where we spend a lot of time.

Kat and I unpack four powerful facets of leadership: 

One: the ability to design experiences - the ability to bring people together to have a shared, transformative conversation.

Two: the ability to be flexible on outcomes while still being aligned on a larger goal. This is one of the most powerful Design Thinking mental models: focusing on needs instead of solutions.

Three: We also explore an absolutely fundamental capacity of leadership - the ability to listen and connect with people, deeply. 

Four: Kat also points out that actually doing something with what you’ve heard is the last, most crucial component of leading and caring for a team.

I'm thrilled to have connected with Kat, and excited to share her work with you. I highly recommend reading her book "We Should Get Together" and its addendum, "Connected from Afar," which is filled with ways to create more intentional connection in your life and your work - it was written during the height of the pandemic, so the tools are all zoom-friendly.

Also, make sure you check out the links below to some of her other projects, and to her amazing post on 40-plus alternatives to "How are you?" with different versions for work and everyday life. Enjoy the show!

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND RESOURCES

Kat's Alternatives to "How are you"

Kat's Website

We Should Get Together by Kat Vellos

The problem with how are you: brightsiding!

Inspiration

Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W4XPK7G/

https://www.antionettecarroll.design/

https://www.creativereactionlab.com/

Minute 1

the post you're talking about, which was a month's worth of alternatives to asking how are you, a different question for each day, and then the work version upon request of a reader out there really came from my own internal frustration with this question, particularly during the last year of the pandemic. It's not that I'm opposed to people checking in on each other, it's not that I'm opposed to people caring about each other; that is not the basis of this frustration. 

But I wrote a blog post that really accompanied this. It was like 40 plus alternatives to how are you? And here is why. Part of the reason is that on a personal level, me, as an individual... I'm not saying this for everybody. I've always had a challenge with that question because it is so broad. And the other challenge that I have with that question is that particularly in the United States, the question "how are you?" is used as a greeting and not really as a question. And then as using it as a greeting, it also has a pre-supplied set of acceptable answers, which are, "Good, fine, how are you?" And so it's this perfunctory performance of a check-in, a perfunctory performance of a question that actually is not a question when it's used as a greeting. As a word nerd and someone who really cares about authentic connection, I find that irritating. And I also don't like the social expectation to just say, "Good," or, "Fine," when maybe I'm not good and maybe I'm not fine. And answering that question honestly would seem like some kind of breach of social contract to actually say, "Really stressed out; kind of falling apart right now."

Minute 8

Whenever we bring a very intentional practice to designing, whether it is boxes and arrows and technology for people to interact with or it's conversations like you're describing, or if you're designing a building or if you're designing a city or if you're designing your outfit of the day there's an element of intentionality to it. Because that is a part of who I've always been and I've applied that practice in a variety of different mediums, I still do identify as a designer. I know there are a lot of product designers, digital designers out there who only consider someone a designer if they're pushing pixels; I think that's a really limited definition of design.

Minute 16

it's often something that I think gets overlooked when people are thinking about wanting more friendship in their life or if they're feeling lonely. And I sometimes talk to my coaching clients about this is, "how are you showing up for yourself right now? Are you being a good friend to yourself? Are you being a good listener to yourself?" And it often gets put in the same category as "self-care," and it goes beyond just buying a bath bomb and taking a bubble bath.

While valuable and delightful, also, are you doing the things for yourself that you would love for a really good friend to do for you? When we talk about listening skills, it would be really nice to have someone who listens really well. Well, what are you doing to listen to yourself? Journaling, as I mention in Connected From Afar, is a really powerful tool, particularly expressive writing as designed by James Pennebaker and crew. This is a really, really valuable tool to process challenges, struggles, emotion, vulnerability, and to then get to a place of learning or perspective or at least getting out of a feeling of stuckness with a challenge or an experience. And so I've always been a writer in addition to a designer, although writing was not always the basis of my day-to-day work like it is more lately. Writing is a really, really generative, powerful tool. I consider writing to be a friend of mine. When I think of what are the intangible friends that support me in living my life? Writing is one of them.

Minute 24

One of the things people really want the most that is lacking in their work life or personal lives is the experience of really being listened to, and the experience of really being listened to can contribute to the feeling of being cared about. And if you've been listened to and you've been cared about and you see any supportive action taken on the things that you have shared, then that's a demonstration of the listeners commitment to their care for you. It's not just one step, and often that first step of listening is what's missing, therefore it's harder to then be cared about and it's harder then, for whatever actions and evidence you're seeing in the world, to feel connected in any way to what your needs and feelings are as an individual human being.

Minute 26

And this is usually not what makes it to the boss's boss's boss's ears, it's when people speak to each other and it's one person saying, "I don't want to go to this mandatory happy hour on Wednesday night. I need to pick up my kid from daycare by 4:30 and I have to give them a bath and help them with their homework and be doing my job as a parent." Being forced to stay at work or to figure out a sitter or to figure out how to pay extra for the childcare, that actually does not make them feel good. Even though they might enjoy the happy hour or the game night or whatever it is, the lack of concern, the lack of listening about what they need and what might actually help them more and feel better is completely missing. 

And this goes all the way from every kind of thing, from introverts and extroverts to people who want to do public performances like karaoke and people who are mortified to feel like doing karaoke's the only way to get on the list for a promotion next season. There's not enough listening and flexibility to accommodate the fact that people need and want different things to feel connected, heard and seen, and some people... There's just not going to be one answer for everybody, and the lack of adaptability, flexibility and accommodation is what often leads to frustration.

Minute 44

Well, one thing that we didn't talk about, and I'll just briefly touch on it, is to say if there is anybody listening who has a curiosity about this, about learning how to be a better friend or learning how to cultivate more connection in your life intentionally, I would say go for it. Whether you read my book or other books that are out there or you take a class or a workshop, the benefit is not just for you, the benefit is also for each person that you then get to interact with and befriend. And the usefulness of learning how to feel more comfortable and capable in these kinds of interactions is that it doesn't just change, oh, your friendship with Mary or your friendship with Bob or whatever; it will also change the other areas of your life.

MORE ABOUT KAT

• Author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships which was called “marvelous” by BookLife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly, and which Kirkus Reviews compared to the work of Norman Vincent Peale and Cicero. Since its release in January 2020 — and with the addendum Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away — both books have been helping adults around the world form deeper platonic connections and heal from disconnection and loneliness.

• Creator of Better than Small Talk, which has created connection for hundreds of people across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, helping people get closer to their friends and loved ones. An avid workshop facilitator and experience designer, Kat brings two decades of experience creating powerful positive communities where people find belonging and authentic connection.

• User Experience and Product Designer who has researched, designed, and advised on the user experience of countless flows in digital products serving millions of people at Slack, Pandora, and multiple Silicon Valley startups. In addition to her design work in the corporate sector, Kat also has almost multiple years of experience designing powerful and effective creative empowerment programs in the education and nonprofit sector as well.

• Founder and Community Leader of Bay Area Black Designers, a company-agnostic employee resource group that exists to provide meaningful community to Black design professionals who want to support each other’s growth and development. BABD members work at startups, agencies, design studios, universities, midsize companies, and large corporations. BABD provides professional development and community for Black designers, especially those who know what an isolating experience it is to be the only Black designer in their company or design team.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

Okay, well then Kat Vellos, I welcome you to The Conversation Factory officially.

Kat Vellos:

Thanks, Dan.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really excited that you made the time. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Kat Vellos:

Thanks so much for inviting... Oh.

Daniel Stillman:

It's okay, we're just going to have high collaborative overlap on both side of-

Kat Vellos:

Yes, I love that description from your book. High collaboration, high overlap. Yes, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really excited to have you because your work is so interesting, it's so broad. I feel like there's so many places we could start the conversation, but I'll start where it started for me which was seeing your grid of all of the alternatives to How Are You? that you had made that went, I don't know, kind of viral. And when I re-posted it, a lot of people liked it, so I think it's awesome. And then you made another one for work. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the question how are you? And what are some of the challenges around it?

Kat Vellos:

Absolutely. I love that question as a alternative to how are you? as well. Yeah, the post you're talking about, which was a month's worth of alternatives to asking how are you, a different question for each day, and then the work version upon request of a reader out there really came from my own internal frustration with this question, particularly during the last year of the pandemic. It's not that I'm opposed to people checking in on each other, it's not that I'm opposed to people caring about each other; that is not the basis of this frustration.

Kat Vellos:

But I wrote a blog post that really accompanied this. I was like 40 plus alternatives to how are you? And here is why. Part of the reason is that on a personal level, me, as an individual... I'm not saying this for everybody. I've always had a challenge with that question because it is so broad. And the other challenge that I have with that question is that particularly in the United States, the question how are you? is used as a greeting and not really as a question. And then as using it as a greeting, it also has a pre-supplied set of acceptable answers, which are, "Good, fine, how are you?" And so it's this perfunctory performance of a check-in, a perfunctory performance of a question that actually is not a question when it's used as a greeting. As a word nerd and someone who really cares about authentic connection, I find that irritating. And I also don't like the social expectation to just say, "Good," or, "Fine," when maybe I'm not good and maybe I'm not fine. And answering that question honestly would seem like some kind of breach of social contract to actually say, "Really stressed out; kind of falling apart right now." And during the last-

Daniel Stillman:

You're like, "Oo, awkward. Didn't really want-

Kat Vellos:

Awkward. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

"... an actual answer."

Kat Vellos:

Didn't want to hear the truth. And so during the last year of the pandemic and the social uprising around racial justice, there were many days where I was not "good or fine." And each time I got asked that question in that expected way of you're just supposed to say good and fine and move on, it did more and more highlighting the fact that it was not appropriate to share what was real and true and that this question, which is a meaningful question and a powerful question if meant intentionally, was actually just a throwaway set of words.

Kat Vellos:

It's too vague, it's too dictated by what's an acceptable answer? And it can also be triggering when someone's in a time of crisis or stress. Someone's just like, "Oh, how are you?" It's kind of upsetting to realize you can't tell your whole truth right then because it might be awkward or they're not ready to really hear it or they don't have the capacity to really hold your truth. And so it's a tough one and I think especially in challenging times it can be loaded. And it puts the burden on the person who is being asked that question to explain themselves to the person who asked it, and they may really not be in the mood to explain themselves to that person. There's a whole lot of mental gymnastics around it, and that was all the basis of why I was like, "Here's a bunch of alternatives, because I feel this way," and it just so happened that thousands of people who saw that post were like, "Oh my God, this captures my feelings too."

Daniel Stillman:

Where I really loved about it... And thanks for giving that broad overview. When I looked at that grid, I thought to myself this is what I mean when I mean designing conversations. Designing the invitation, setting the stage for the kind of conversation you want to have, it's a type of design. When we were connecting before we started recording, saying, "How are you really?" Is providing the opportunity for somebody to say how they really are or saying, "Hey, what's lighting you up these days?" Is asking someone to talk about what's on the bright side of stuff, which it's choosing the conversation I want to have.

Kat Vellos:

Yes, yes. And I think that the addition of the word "really" is a part of making it safer for someone to then know I don't just have to say good or fine and leave it at that, I can actually say, "Wow, I think my dog is really sick," or something, "and I'm really worried about them." Or you can say something that gives more context about how you are really and to know that the person asking that question is more prepared to hear any answer because any answer is acceptable if they really want to know how you are.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yes. And this also speaks to one of my favorite invitations on Twitter, which is for people to give only wrong answers for something.

Kat Vellos:

I love that.

Daniel Stillman:

How are you really? Wrong answers only.

Kat Vellos:

I think you'd get a lot of good and fine there as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, fine, good.

Kat Vellos:

I'm great.

Daniel Stillman:

Awesome. All right, let's get to the agenda. Weird pivot. And this is the kind of emotional agility that's required to be alive in 2021 as a person. My answer to that question of how are you? is it's a strange time to be alive, which is my way of allowing other people to go, "Oh, yeah, okay, thanks."

Daniel Stillman:

I'm curious about so many things, but you are a... I assume you identify still as a designer. Is that true? Do you identify as a design person?

Kat Vellos:

I do. Do you still identify as a a designer?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I do in the broad sense of I still get people on LinkedIn trying to get me to design bots for them because I call myself a conversation designer. I'm like, "No, no, you should actually look at my profile. I design human conversations, not human computer conversations." I guess what I'm curious about is the river of your journey from designing experiences between a person and a company mediated by a piece of technology to designing human-to-human experiences with the kind of love and intentionality that you clearly bring to it based on what I've read about you.

Kat Vellos:

Thank you. Yeah. Part of the reason why, yes, I still identify as a designer is... And I talked about this in an article that was in Communication Arts magazine last summer where they were profiling designers, and in my definition of design that I give, it's that it's the practice and the art of intentionality. Whenever we bring a very intentional practice to designing, whether it is boxes and arrows and technology for people to interact with or it's conversations like you're describing, or if you're designing a building or if you're designing a city or if you're designing your outfit of the day there's an element of intentionality to it. Because that is a part of who I've always been and I've applied that practice in a variety of different mediums, I still do identify as a designer. I know there are a lot of product designers, digital designers out there who only consider someone a designer if they're pushing pixels; I think that's a really limited definition of design.

Kat Vellos:

And also, from the early 2000s I've been a facilitator as well and a convener of community spaces and IRL interaction design, and so when doing that kind of experience design for the real world, for human-to-human interaction, for change then, yes, three is still absolutely that same process of intentionality that I would bring whether I was designing screens and flows for an app or what is the process that should happen for humans who arrive on this day and time at this setting and they stay for anywhere from three hours to 10 days? What should happen for them over the course of that time? And I've designed for that scenario as well, and so we typically call that facilitation or experience designer. Experience I know something gets mixed up with user experience designer, which is the digital wing. And I do both, and I've done both for a very long time. I've also been a graphic designer.

Kat Vellos:

I think it's more exciting, honestly, to live in the world when we have that lens of anyone can practice this, sort of similar to the idea of creativity. I don't only thinks someone's creative if they have gallery paintings hanging on a wall that they sell for thousands of dollars. I think anybody is creative. Everyone has the ability to accept their innate, internal creativity just like all kids have it, and then we grow out of that as we get older. And similarly, I think everybody has the capacity to bring an intentionality to the practice of whatever they're trying to create in the world.

Kat Vellos:

There was another quote I really liked in your book that said... You'll probably remember it better than I can, but it had to do with saying that it's designing a conversation to get the expected outcome, the change the existing conditions into preferred conditions. That is the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that's the classic Herb Simon definition. I sometimes ask people who gets to make things worse on purpose? And who-

Kat Vellos:

Tricksters.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, and some of us can make things better by accident, but the ideal is to make things better on purpose. But I love the idea of intentionality is a much more beautiful word-

Kat Vellos:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

... to describe the act of trying to create an experience for other people to have a transformation of some sort. There's so many layers to unpack here because I'm wondering... I have some of the frameworks that you have from your book, which everyone should read because I think beside the fact that it's beautifully illustrated, it's beautifully read, and it's an important idea. I'm wondering, as a design person, what are some of the frameworks or mindsets or mental models that you've taken from your user experience design world into your humans in a place and time, what my friend calls meat space, to meat space design? In what ways do you feel like you are doing the same thing through the same eyes?

Kat Vellos:

Good question. I think that because I see a lot of overlap, as I mentioned, with facilitation and user experience design... I wrote a, ages long ago, medium post about why these two would get a 90% match score on OK Cupid.

Daniel Stillman:

That sounds amazing. And you're also dating yourself by referencing OK Cupid, which is amazing.

Kat Vellos:

I know, and I'm totally into that because then my people know I'm their people. Yeah, there is a huge overlap in the way that we question what is the ideal path or outcome for someone to experience here? What are the different realities that they're showing up with? What are the considerations that we need to make around accommodations or accessibility? How can we make this usable and pleasurable for as many people as possible for them to achieve the intended outcome or the intended experience? And so having that mindset, whether it's for meat space or pixel space, I think it's the same to me, it's the same to me, and that's probably why... I was a graphic designer in... That was my college degree. And then I did that for awhile, and then I did facilitation. And then when I found UX Design, I was like, "Oh, this is the same thing. This is what I've already been doing." And dating myself further, UX Design was not a major that you could have when I went to college.

Daniel Stillman:

No.

Kat Vellos:

There was no smart phones and social media, all the things that we have nowadays, and so it was a completely different world. And when I met UX Design, I was like, oh, this is literally just the digital version of the same kind of practice that you would bring to designing experiences for facilitation or other kinds of meat space experiences for human-to-human interaction. Obviously there's more to it than that and some learning I had to take on and certification and whatnot, but there's just so much similarity, again, in that envisioning who the people are that you are there to serve? What is the outcome you hope to achieve? What is your attitude towards experimentation and testing and trial and error and figuring out and adjusting the flow that you've designed? so that it can continue to be welcoming and accommodating to the people who are literally there and also get them to the goal at the same time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Sometimes I use the term empathic walkthrough. A customer journey map is such a powerful idea in the user experience design world; the ability to put on the glasses, the mental model of a person who's not you and to take a step-by-step walk through what you think they will experience is, I think, a very similar... is what I'm hearing in what you're saying. Who is this person and what's going to happen and what's going to be their experience? And can I then adjust on the fly based on what I'm learning from them or not?

Kat Vellos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), right. To me, it's always been an exciting and a challenging practice. And it's a space where I can feel both confident and insecure at the same time because the exciting and confident part is having the vision and having the opportunity to say, "We're going to create a thing together. We're going to create an outcome and an experience. Let's do this together." And then the part of it that feels a little bit scary or insecure is there's things that we can't predict that are going to happen and we're just going to have to trust all of our intuition and training and gut and collaboration to figure our way out when that happens because there is always the unexpected. That's where the nervousness comes from. Oo, this is exciting. What's going to happen? And it could be better than we expect and it could be worse than we expect, but let's go find out.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. It's funny, I wanted to get to this question much, much later, but something that I try to teach folks that I'm coaching on facilitation is the importance of being a friend to ourselves, managing ourselves through this experience while we're trying to create an experience for others. And I feel like you addressed this question a little bit in Connected From Afar where you talk about journaling and being intentionally intimate with ourselves. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts to share about the importance of... I want to talk about being friends with other people and the power of that, but there's also the aspect of am I a friend to myself?

Kat Vellos:

Yeah, that's a big one, and it's often something that I think gets overlooked when people are thinking about wanting more friendship in their life or if they're feeling lonely. And I sometimes talk to my coaching clients about this is how are you showing up for yourself right now? Are you being a good friend to yourself? Are you being a good listener to yourself? And it often gets put in the same category as "self-care," and it goes beyond just buying a bath bomb and taking a bubble bath. Are you doing-

Daniel Stillman:

While valuable-

Kat Vellos:

While valuable and delightful, also, are you doing the things for yourself that you would love for a really good friend to do for you? When we talk about listening skills, it would be really nice to have someone who listens really well. Well, what are you doing to listen to yourself? Journaling, as I mention in Connected From Afar, is a really powerful tool, particularly expressive writing as designed by James Pennebaker and crew. This is a really, really valuable tool to process challenges, struggles, emotion, vulnerability, and to then get to a place of learning or perspective or at least getting out of a feeling of stuckness with a challenge or an experience. And so I've always been a writer in addition to a designer, although writing was not always the basis of my day-to-day work like it is more lately. Writing is a really, really generative, powerful tool. I consider writing to be a friend of mine. When I think of what are the intangible friends that support me in living my life? Writing is one of them.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think that's so beautiful. I don't know if you've read The War of Art. I feel like I'm permanently halfway through it.

Kat Vellos:

Steven Pressfield.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. There's this-

Kat Vellos:

It keeps getting recommended to me. I got to finally get to it.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, there's this moment where he... The visual that I'm remembering is him setting up the things on his desk. There's this little cannon that he points towards him that's supposed to point good ideas at him; just this little moment of... When I was writing my book, I opened up Oblique Strategies. I don't know if you've ever played with oblique strategies they're from... Brian Eno made this list of... There's some apps. You can buy a deck of cards if you like holding cards. It was a list of oblique strategies, weird prompts to get you to think differently about whatever problem you were solving, and he used them to write music with. I would just look at an oblique strategy just to twist my brain a little bit before I sat down. When you were writing your book, what did you do to be a friend to yourself to get through the process? Because it's a hard process-

Kat Vellos:

Interestingly-

Daniel Stillman:

... at least that was my experience.

Kat Vellos:

For me, I worked on this book off and on over five years, and in a way, getting to work on the book felt like being a friend to myself because there was this curiosity I had around this question of friendship during adulthood and why so many people that I was meeting and who were coming to my events and gatherings for connection were saying that they were having a hard time making friends. It puzzled me because these were really lovely people; they were fabulous to talk to great person. There was no reason why they should have a hard time making friends.

Kat Vellos:

And so my curiosity around what is it that is getting in the way for people? is something that felt like a source of energy and curiosity. I just kept wanting to follow that thread. And in a way, giving myself the opportunity to explore that question and to study it and research it and interview people and dig into the academic research as well around connection and friendship; it was a sort of play for me because it was so different from my day job. It had nothing to do with my day job at all, and so it was my project that I was interested in and constantly wanting to go and dig in and play on, and so it was that. When I started doing that took it to another level of play or exploration for me because, originally, I didn't know I was going to write a book; I was just writing on this topic over and over and over again. And then I was like, huh, got a lot of content here. It was a book.

Kat Vellos:

And in the process of doing that writing, sometimes I would read a certain academic study or have a response to an article I had read or an essay I had written or someone I had interviewed and the only thing that could capture all of the feelings in experience of that was a drawing because words, 1,000 words, pictures; you get it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, I do.

Kat Vellos:

And so I would do these little cartoon drawings to capture some of these moments, and that level of play for me was just taking it even further. It was like, oh, this is actually just really fun for me to get to make these doodles that nail a lot of these experiences that we have with adult friendship. That really was it for me, was because it was not the thing I was "working on," it was not my work, it was my play.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really curious because it's becoming your work now.

Kat Vellos:

Now it is. I've got to find other things to play. Seriously.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. There's a few things I want to pull on because from the perspective of a designer and me and the work I did in terms of what are we designing when we're designing these experiences and conversations? I love that you have this metaphor of hydroponic friendship and the four seeds, which I look at as levers we can pull. It seems like when you're creating these shared experiences and intentional vulnerability - I think I can pronounce that correctly today - you're pulling on the levers of proximity and commitment to create that supercharged connection, as you referred to it.

Daniel Stillman:

I guess the lens I want to unpack that through is leadership as the art of designing experiences for others, because I know you do keynote and talk to companies about this. Because we spend so much of our time at work, it seems to make sense that we should know how to create these moments of connection.

Kat Vellos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I hope so. In the ideal situation, that's what leadership delivers for people, and it's done in a way that makes the experience magnetizing rather than mandatory.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a really great heuristic, because I think a lot of people rely on mandatory "voluntolding" people to do things. When you are trying to help a leader or an organization, what are some of the seeds that you try to plant with them so that they can transform people from being disconnected to feeling connected?

Kat Vellos:

One of the things people really want the most that is lacking in their work life or personal lives is the experience of really being listened to, and the experience of really being listened to can contribute to the feeling of being cared about. And if you've been listened to and you've been cared about and you see any supportive action taken on the things that you have shared, then that's a demonstration of the listeners commitment to their care for you. It's not just one step, and often that first step of listening is what's missing, therefore it's harder to then be cared about and it's harder then, for whatever actions and evidence you're seeing in the world, to feel connected in any way to what your needs and feelings are as an individual human being.

Daniel Stillman:

When I look at the arc of the thread that's holding that together - listening, feeling cared, action, showing commitment - this is the arc of the experience that we're designing. I think we often think, oh, it's an icebreaker; let's have a happy hour, let's play a game together. But what you're talking about is actually connecting with the people that we serve and then doing something about what we've heard, which is pretty fundamental.

Kat Vellos:

And in doing so, if there's true listening happening and true care, if you have a large enough group of people, one thing you're also probably going to discover is that people don't all want the same thing. People don't all feel cared about in exactly the same way. There's a reason why Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages is a bestseller around the world because it captures the fact that people need different things to feel cared for, to feel cared about.

Kat Vellos:

In a work setting, when I think about how do we create connection? What's going to make people feel connected? Maybe what you need is to actually let people know that you are listening to them as individual human beings, you hear their needs, you hear their desires, and you're willing to be flexible in how you supply the solutions so that there isn't just a one pill that's going to meet everybody's needs perfectly and everybody take it and therefore check the box, it's done.

Kat Vellos:

I've worked with so many people who have been my colleagues and peers who've expressed frustration to me. And this is usually not what makes it to the boss's boss's boss's ears, it's when people speak to each other and it's one person saying, "I don't want to go to this mandatory happy hour on Wednesday night. I need to pick up my kid from daycare by 4:30 and I have to give them a bath and help them with their homework and be doing my job as a parent." Being forced to stay at work or to figure out a sitter or to figure out how to pay extra for the childcare, that actually does not make them feel good. Even though they might enjoy the happy hour or the game night or whatever it is, the lack of concern, the lack of listening about what they need and what might actually help them more and feel better is completely missing.

Kat Vellos:

And this goes all the way from every kind of thing, from introverts and extroverts to people who want to do public performances like karaoke and people who are mortified to feel like doing karaoke's the only way to get on the list for a promotion next season. There's not enough listening and flexibility to accommodate the fact that people need and want different things to feel connected, heard and seen, and some people... There's just not going to be one answer for everybody, and the lack of adaptability, flexibility and accommodation is what often leads to frustration.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. You know what's amazing? What I'm hearing is in the situation you're setting up and the lens you're bringing to it; one of the classic [designerly 00:28:17] ways of thinking... [Designerish 00:28:21]. The difference between needs and solutions. And the desire to uncover unmet needs is a very... I don't think many people realize that this is a core UX passion, and that when we think about design and designing things, I think that people think about the creativity and the making, but designing experiences for other people means deeply understanding what they actually need and then, as you said, being flexible on the outcomes, not being restrictive on, well, what we're going to give you is a happy hour, what we're going to give you is a means away, an affordance for feeling blank; whatever that thing is that we've identified.

Kat Vellos:

Yeah, and understanding that there are so many ways to meet a need once you fully understand it; it doesn't just have to be the cookie cutter thing out of the box that everybody does. And if you invite other people to help define and decide what would help meet that need and make it a collaborative process rather than, as you said, volant hold, they're more likely to want that outcome than if they're just told and forced to do the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

What you're outlining is a type of experience-driven empathetic leadership that also values co-creation and what we would call user input. This is not this is what you've got, it's being in conversation with them through the process.

Kat Vellos:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

That kind of leadership takes a certain type of, I would say, intestinal fortitude, a kind of bravery. I think a lot of people feel afraid to ask, to open up these conversations with people because they can't do everything that they're going to want.

Kat Vellos:

Sure, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. You know another designer who is... talk about leadership in this area is Antoinette Carroll and the creative reaction lab, which is all about that participatory design, it's all about you must invite in. It is only responsible to invite in the people that you're "serving" to help also create the solution that is for them.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Yeah, I agree 100%. Well, because otherwise its design is colonialism.

Kat Vellos:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

It's pushing something onto people without them pulling it, being part of what's being created for them. There's this quote that you mentioned before we started our conversation; the best thing... And I don't know if I said it or where it came from. We'll just pull it from the ether again that hearing yourself say something that you've never said before, the idea of designing for surprise, for designing for moments of delight where... One thing I'll say, it's been really enjoyable to interview because I feel like some people have talking points and I feel like you are expressing ideas in the moment, which is delightful to me, so that's... we'll just put that there on the side.

Kat Vellos:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

But I feel like this act of designing experiences for others in this context of listening, making them cared for, taking some action co-creatively with them and committing, there is this element of surprise, of expecting to be surprised, which seems to be an important lever of creating this kind of connection. I don't know, I feel like I'm running on. I don't know if that's a question or a comment at this point. I don't know if you can make anything of that. I'm trying to chip away at this idea of how does this surprise element come into this process of designing experiences for others? For everyone's benefit.

Kat Vellos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think that what it is is inviting the opportunity to experience togetherness in a new way, in an unfamiliar or nontypical way, let's say, because it's not necessarily that it's like, oh, I'm trying to design for surprise, because there's a lot of things you can do that are surprising that are really unpleasant. I could be like, "Surprise, here's a pie in your face." That's not actually fun. It's not just about, oh, I'm trying to make a surprise happen; that's not the core of it for me. But I think what it is, and what's at the core of that quote for me is when we show up in an experience or a conversation and, to use the words of that quote, hear myself saying something I'd never said before, what happens for me, personally, is a feeling of being alive in the form of words. I'm alive in my body, I'm alive in my heart, I'm alive certainly with my mind running all the time, but when I hear words coming out and I'm so present and so fully immersed in the experienced, that is a feeling of being alive, and it is in the intangible experience of trading words in a conversation back and forth.

Kat Vellos:

And that presence and that connection, when it's happening, Dan, to me it feels like a type of flow. When we talk about getting in flow state and sometimes it's Dan saying, "We're making art," or whatever, but being in a conversation where that happens where it literally does feel like a type of flow, that energy between you and me, time is suspended, our attention is here, it's effortless, it's magnetic, it's just time is irrelevant. Hours could go by, I have no idea how long it's been, I have no idea what day it is, but that energy that is happening that is being maintained and created by the two of us in that moment is that feeling, to me, of flow, and I think it can happen in a conversation. And I think it is surprising because that is not what conversations normally feel like everyday all day long. And when it does happen, my God, it's like a type of joy. It is so beautiful.

Kat Vellos:

And I think then when we talk about what does it mean to design a conversation or design for that to happen? I think it's creating the conditions that hopefully... You can't guarantee. People got to show up with who they are and be ready to go into that experience. But if you can create the conditions of suspended reality in that experience, maybe then it's more likely to happen. And when it happens in a room, I've seen it; it feels contagious in this beautiful contagion of joy and openness and presence and togetherness.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm curious how you... because I know you create experiences where people come together for intentional vulnerability, to create a shared experience, to get connection, to make friends. And I'm looking at this quote that I pulled out from your book about we can adjust how we show up for each other. The idea of being intentionally vulnerable; how do you feel like you lead people into that space? How do you get them to open up in that way, to show up for each other in that way?

Kat Vellos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). One of-

Daniel Stillman:

Because commitment is how do you twist the knob of commitment?

Kat Vellos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). One of the very first things that I learned in my training as a facilitator had to do with creating the container, creating the space, physical space, energetic space. What is the actual container that we are going to occupy? And what is it made of? And how do the community agreements that we set up as the walls holding us safely inside, what are the social contract that we enter together and that we invite everybody else to enter into together as well to help create that experience? To share here's the goal we're trying to get to, here's what the desired outcome is, and can you all say yes to participating in getting there by doing these things together? And those are the agreements that typically are unspoken, and I think to some detriment I think it's useful to speak them aloud or to have even visual representation of them to say, "This is what we're agreeing to do together. And if we do these things together, it will be easier for us then to have this experience or reach this goal together. Will you say yes? Will you help create this with me?"

Kat Vellos:

And in doing so, it's not just the facilitator who's responsible for making that happen, it is everyone's job, and it's everyone's opportunity and responsibility. And to hold that space together, to hold that container together with each other; that is where... that's the very first agreement that you make, and that's the beginning of transforming a generic gathering or a generic meeting or a generic workshop or a generic dinner or whatever into something different. And when we all know that this is going to be different and here's what's "expected/asked/magically presented as the opportunity to do together," we could say yes. And then in stepping into that alternate reality of that experience, things can be different, therefore maybe you can be more vulnerable here, maybe you can say the thing that you've been thinking about and haven't told anybody for months, maybe you can listen to somebody in a different way, maybe it's okay to cry in front of someone you've never talked to before. All of the maybes suddenly become possibilities, and that possibility can take shape in reality because, again, of that mutual, dedicated commitment as a group to make this thing together. Do you get what I'm saying?

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, absolutely. It's funny because I made a sketch of the hydroponic friendship bottle, and of course the bottle is the container. It is the power of drawing that circle and inviting people to step into it I think is absolutely profound.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay, so sadly our time together is growing to a close and I feel I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to say, at least briefly... because I know you've made these experiences in person and you've also done them online. And everyone's in this place and we're... I think it's a fundamentally transformative shift to this space where we'll be for some time. What do you feel is the same about creating these experiences in this remote space or virtual space versus doing it in three dimensional, four dimensional space?

Kat Vellos:

Good question. As somebody who has done IRL gatherings, experiences for so long, since the early 2000s, it was unwelcome for me to be like, "What do you mean I'm going to do this virtually? Excuse me?" But very quickly adapt, adjust, change. And it felt like the most unique design constraint I'd ever met in my life, which was we're going to be together without being together. And as you know, constraints are the workspace of creativity.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, yeah.

Kat Vellos:

What do I think is the same and what do I think is different about it? Well, I'll start with difference first because the first thing that comes to mind, certainly just pragmatically one of the things that's different is the fact that we can get together with people who are not in the same physical proximity. I've had people join workshops that I have done over the last year from what feels like every continent, dozen upon dozens of countries, different time zones. The ability to reach and connect and serve so, so many more people in so many different parts of the world is profound. That is so absolutely different. And it's also better for the environment to do this virtually than for me to take plane trips to 70 countries to do this. And so just on a practical level, the opportunity that we have to reach each other and to find each other via the joy of the internet is just a huge plus and a wonderful thing that I've gotten to say yes to in my work because it's just opened so many more doors for connection and reach and all of those things, so that's a major difference. That is also, I think, a big plus.

Kat Vellos:

And something that I think is the same then in getting to do that is it is possible, certainly as I talked about describing how we create a container together, create an alternate reality together. When I do workshops and gatherings online, I often try to speak directly to the fact that even though you're joining on... Let's say it's possibly the same computer you just sat in a bunch of meetings for work in, or you're using Zoom, which maybe in your head you compartmentalize as, oh, I'm at work now because I'm in Zoom. I want you to step away from your computer, shake your body, walk around and come back and let this be new, let this be a new experience. Mentally shift out of that space.

Kat Vellos:

And there's things that you can add in to, again, as a facilitator to break that norm so that it doesn't just feel like, oh my gosh, the same old, same old. But yeah, that's a different thing that I think is a challenge because when we're IRL, I have the ability to say, "Come to this address at this time and date," and when you walk in the room, you know that's not your office. I can create an environment. There's flowers on the table when you walk in, and pre-COVID if people want a welcome hug and it's mutual and consensual, you can have a welcome hug.

Kat Vellos:

There's just things that are different that are not so great. I really liked doing face-to-face work for so long, and I hope to do it again at some point when it feels safe and for it just to be so easy. Time, I think, is experienced differently online as it is in person. I think it's easier to get quicker closer in person when you can make eye contact, when you can see the small shifts in someone's facial expression or how they hold their body in their chair or how they move through the room. There's just so many subtleties of being in face-to-face space, meat space, that makes certain things easier, certainly.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that all of those examples you've brought are focusing on some of the opportunities in both of these contexts. I know that definitely has created a lot of stress for people. And as you reference yourself, the shift is not without its learning curve. But we accept the joyful acceptance of constraints and working within them, as you say, may be the most [designerly 00:44:23] of mental traits.

Daniel Stillman:

We are sadly at our closing. It's a delight. I would like to ask you what haven't I asked you that I should ask you? What remains unsaid that ought to be said about your work and some of the things we've talked about?

Kat Vellos:

There's so many things, Dan. I could seriously talk to you for hours.

Daniel Stillman:

Ditto.

Kat Vellos:

Well, one thing that we didn't talk about, and I'll just briefly touch on it, is to say if there is anybody listening who has a curiosity about this, about learning how to be a better friend or learning how to cultivate more connection in your life intentionally, I would say go for it. Whether you read my book or other books that are out there or you take a class or a workshop, the benefit is not just for you, the benefit is also for each person that you then get to interact with and befriend. And the usefulness of learning how to feel more comfortable and capable in these kinds of interactions is that it doesn't just change, oh, your friendship with Mary or your friendship with Bob or whatever; it will also change the other areas of your life.

Kat Vellos:

In the book Friends by Robin Dunbar, famous psychologist who came up with Dunbar's number, he categorizes all types of relationships as a type of friendship. When I read the book, I was fascinated by this. Even family he counts as a type of friend. And when you think about how to be a better friend, what you realize then is the potential is you have the chance to transform and improve your connections in all areas of your life, whether it's siblings or your partner or colleagues or strangers because they're all some type... They're on some kind of spectrum of friendship, and you have the ability to impact them in all areas of your life.

Kat Vellos:

If this is something that you're curious about or you're interested in, even if you're not having a "friendship problem," still do it because it's kind of like if you take a class in communication skills and you get better at communicating, guess what; you're probably going to be a better communicator in every area of your life. It's not only at work that that will matter. And so I would say the benefit there is honestly a completely holistic one, so go for it. And if anybody wants to keep up with me and the work I'm doing, I'm on the internet, I'm easy to find. As I mentioned-

Daniel Stillman:

You're on the internet?

Kat Vellos:

I am.

Daniel Stillman:

What? Right now.

Kat Vellos:

I'm out there. I'm in the computer.

Daniel Stillman:

You're in the computer right now.

Kat Vellos:

Inside the computer. As you mentioned, I do keynote talks and leadership talks and certainly collaborate with companies and associations on bringing some of these skills and awarenesses to your staff or your leadership teams or your association community; all of these things, I'm here to serve, here to speak, to collaborate, to create experiences together. Find me. I'm at katvellos.com, or weshouldgettogether.com, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram posting my doodles. Find me. Let's do the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I think that is a great place to end. Kat, thanks for being in conversation with me today. It was delightful.

Kat Vellos:

Same, Dan, so delightful. Thanks for having me.

Daniel Stillman:

We'll call scene and-

Kat Vellos:

Scene.

The Conversation Factory Book Club: Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is the first prototype, that I ran a few months back with two Alums of the Facilitation Masterclass, Meredith England and Jenn Hayslett. I won’t say more about them - they introduce themselves at the *end* of the episode... I like the idea of them just being trusted friends to you, because they are trusted friends to me!

If you haven’t listened to the episode where I interview Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk, about how Indigenous thinking can (and will) save the world, I think you can still enjoy this episode...even if you haven’t read the book...although I think you should!

As Tyson says in his book:

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…This conversation is hopefully another positive step in that direction.

This conversation is a Yarn, in the Aboriginal sense of the word. As Tyson taught me, Yarning is the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. It’s the way that Aboriginal communities connect, learn and decide together. 

And actual Sand Talk is a part of Yarning. Sand Talk, the book, is grounded in a series of drawings, drawn, literally, on the ground, in the Sand.

Sand Talk, in another, more literal interpretation, is visual thinking as a grounding for a conversation. This kind of talk is something that I think is missing in nearly every kind of meeting...saying, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what you are talking about right now.” ...and looking at those pictures of the world, together.

Most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

That’s my rant for now. I hope you enjoy this conversation. 

If you're interested in supporting the podcast and potentially joining us for one of these book club conversations, subscribe to the Conversation Factory insider! In September we’re gathering to read and connect with past podcast guest Adam Kahane, to talk about his new book, Facilitating Breakthrough. It’s going to be awesome.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND RESOURCES

Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta on The Conversation Factory

Jenn's Quotes from Sand Talk:

"In her kinship system every three generations there is a reset in which your grandparents’ parents are classified as your children, an eternal cycle of renewal." (p. 38)

"Perhaps the desire to create closed systems and keep time going in a straight line is the reason for Second Peoples’ obsession with creating fences, walls, borders, great divides, and great barriers." (p 46)

"The end point of a yarn is a set of understandings, values, and directions shared by all members of the group in a loose consensus that is inclusive of diverse points of view." (P. 115)

Daniel's Quotes from Sand Talk:

“You can’t push people to share knowledge...you just accept what they think you’re ready for…” P. 41

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indiginous and non-Indiginous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

"...human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story."

Minute 2

"If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation." I sat with that for a long time. And I also really felt moved and a lot of questioning came up for me in terms of his writing about public education as indoctrination, as how to... The historical chapter, really looking at how public education is meant to create sameness and homogeneity and looking at it as this Germanic, oppressive structure. So a lot of questioning around that that I'm really sitting with. I think that's enough for now.

Minute 4

So, probably an important thing that I feel like I need to say about myself is I'm Australian, and so reading Tyson's book feels, that kind of deeply connecting for me to where I live and to my place, but also there's so much pain and horror and disconnection around how indigenous people have been treated for hundreds of years here in Australia, and so just letting that be the backdrop to my reading. And I guess, and just really bringing a desire, just at a really personal level, for I guess what a friend of mine invited me into years ago where he was like, "Oh. You white people think that you can't experience being on country." He's like, "Of course you can experience being on country. Why would you stay disconnected to that?" Yeah. So it felt like a real invitation for me for this book.

Minute 6

Something that I keep, keep coming back to is the way he talks about, I guess, the qualities or the features of an agent of sustainability is what he talks about. So he paints this picture of a person who needs to be, the connectedness, the diversify, interact, and adapt. And they're those four words, people give you four words, four questions and it's like, "Oh, great. That's easy." But I've just been really mulling over that over the last couple of days about, what does that... How can I take on those qualities? How can I bring those ways of being into the systems that I'm working in? And specifically because I work in sustainability and so I'm just really interested in that thread that he's bringing through this about what's our role in the world.

Minute 11

Daniel Stillman:

Embodied cognition is something that we've been doing for as long as we are people, just being notched on a bone to count higher than we can count with our brains, we put half of our brain into the objects that we use. And so I feel like Tyson's book really helped me, it was very reassuring to see, I think sometimes we think traditional thinking is very woo-woo, pseudo-spiritual. And he talks about this as just performative. Blowing on a didgeridoo and doing a dance and making textiles, as if that's being indigenous. And he's like, "No, it's thinking deeply, it's connecting, it's dealing with complexity, it's thinking about where we've come from and where we're going, it's being a steward of the land."

Minute 15

And then there's this great bit where he says, "I use many terms that I don't particularly like, such as the dreaming," just because basically it helps people understand because you're reading it in English. And he says, "Because in any case, it's almost impossible to speak in English without them, unless you want to say, super rational, inter-dimensional ontology, endogenous, custodial, ritual complexes." I was like, okay so that's the beginning of the idea of what the dreaming is.

Minute 26

The kinship mind is a way of looking, it's not the only way, and certainly "Western thinking" is not cyclical, it is 100% linear, and the dialogue between cyclical and linear is, and this is one of the things that I think I took from Tyson's book as well is, there hasn't been a true two-way dialogue between these first people's and second people's ways of thinking and being, and that's what he's really trying to offer and is a true conversation where, can Aboriginal people finally, truly benefit from a modern system and not have it be abusive to them? And can the modern system learn, really, really learn better ways of being to transform the system that we are all living in? Because it doesn't work for a lot of people, and it's certainly not sustainable.

Minute 30

I had a sticky note also around yarning protocols. It has protocols of active listening, mutual respect, and building on what others have said, rather than openly contradicting or debating. There's no firm protocol of one person speaking at a time. The back and forth yarning style neutralizes the unpleasant phenomenon that occurs in many conversations, meetings, and dialogues that occur of grandstanding and waffling while the rest of the group drowns in boredom. Monologues are rare in Aboriginal culture, unless a senior person is telling a long story or an angry person is airing grievances.

I mean, it's just, the primary mode of communication in yarns in narrative, the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. And the actual Sand Talk as part of it. And this is something that I think is missing in most, in every kind of meeting, is the visual grounding of the conversation and saying like, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what I am talking about right now and stepping away..." Literally, most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

Minute 35

And I guess it just reminded me again, which is something that I'm reminded of constantly, of just the usefulness of creating those shared physical and visual representations of what it unlocks for people, of what it makes possible. And because it makes it easier also for people to disagree, because they're looking at it and they're like, "But those two things don't fit together for me, so why have you put them together?" Or like, I'll draw an arrow between two things and they're like, "Well..." And it will bring up a tension that previously will feel like a relational tension or a conceptual tension that they can't speak, but it's like, they can verbalize what they disagree with, which.... Yeah. I'm just reminded of that, and just, yeah, how we put those lines in the sand.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

This is me making my editing job easier everybody. Welcome to the Conversation Factory Book Club tape one, or two, depending on how you decide to count things. All right. We talked about just doing a Round Robin, so let's go alphabetically, which seems a totally reasonable way to do it. Jenn, that means you get to go first. Let's just take a couple minutes and talk about the questions we were sitting with. As we were reading Sand Talk, what did we notice about ourselves? What did you bring to this? And what is it doing to you? How is it changing your story and how are you taking it into your work?

Jenn Hayslett:

Thanks, Daniel. All big questions. And I think I'll start with the question that Meredith posed as we were beginning to talk about how was I as a reader in approaching this very different, non-linear book that is purposefully non-linear, and that the author, Tyson Yunkaporta, did I say that correctly do you think? Yeah? Is trying to-

Daniel Stillman:

I think so.

Jenn Hayslett:

... introduce his different way of thinking, or not just his, but an Aboriginal, his cultural way of thinking. And so there's a lot of weaving that happens and I had to really do a lot of self-talk around not wanting it to be linear, allowing myself to be woven into the circular motions of the story and of the text. And so I just really noticed that.

Jenn Hayslett:

I also did a tremendous amount of underlining and stars and hearts and yeah, things that I just felt very connected to and "if people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation."

Jenn Hayslett:

I sat with that for a long time. And I also really felt moved and a lot of questioning came up for me in terms of his writing about public education as indoctrination, as how to... The historical chapter, really looking at how public education is meant to create sameness and homogeneity and looking at it as this Germanic, oppressive structure. So a lot of questioning around that that I'm really sitting with. I think that's enough for now.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. That's good. Thank you for that, Jenn. And Meredith, I guess the same for you?

Meredith England:

So, probably an important thing that I feel like I need to say about myself is I'm Australian, and so reading Tyson's book feels, that kind of deeply connecting for me to where I live and to my place, but also there's so much pain and horror and disconnection around how indigenous people have been treated for hundreds of years here in Australia, and so just letting that be the backdrop to my reading. And I guess, and just really bringing a desire, just at a really personal level, for I guess what a friend of mine invited me into years ago where he was like, "Oh. You white people think that you can't experience being on country." He's like, "Of course you can experience being on country. Why would you stay disconnected to that?" Yeah. So it felt like a real invitation for me for this book.

Meredith England:

So, some of the stuff, a lot of the stuff that really sat with me with this book was very physical stuff in the way that he talks about, the physical stories that he tells. I love the hand movement, the hands at the beginning where he's like, "Here is your world and I'm looking at it in this way." And so I'm just constantly reminded of that as I read it. And the way he talks about... He says, "I made an ax to store my understandings." And so the way that in each chapter he has a visual, which I really connect to. I find that just even for memory, for being able, something I can loop back to that suddenly has all of this meaning and that I can add meaning to it.

Meredith England:

And the way that he almost protects his thinking, or he protects and grows his thinking through making, so making an ax, making a shield, making a fishing boomerang. It just felt so... I found that just so energizing actually how he was talking about that. And really... And super inspiring as well, so that just really struck me as things that we can do with our bodies and with our hands that are just so connected to actually deepening what we're thinking about.

Meredith England:

Something that I keep, keep coming back to is the way he talks about, I guess, the qualities or the features of an agent of sustainability is what he talks about. So he paints this picture of a person who needs to be, the connectedness, the diversify, interact, and adapt. And they're those four words, people give you four words, four questions and it's like, "Oh, great. That's easy." But I've just been really mulling over that over the last couple of days about, what does that... How can I take on those qualities? How can I bring those ways of being into the systems that I'm working in? And specifically because I work in sustainability and so I'm just really interested in that thread that he's bringing through this about what's our role in the world.

Meredith England:

And he talks about custodianship and for me, the idea of the theme of stewardship is something that has just completely shaped my life, and particularly my career, and that's just how I think about life is like, what am I stewarding? And so, yeah, just really connected with some of the ways that he was talking about being an agent of sustainability.

Daniel Stillman:

There are so many things I want to pull. All the things that I want to talk about, I'm going to make a list of them, because I don't know if you can hear me scribing away while you talk about stuff, and I captured the circular versus linear thinking from you, Jenn, true learning is an act of creation. I had an old professional who used to say the same thing, "If they're laughing, they're learning." And it's just like, truth is true. These are just timeless, this is the human essence.

Daniel Stillman:

In terms of what I noticed about myself as I was reading it, even though I'm not an Australian, and I appreciate you bringing that up, Meredith, this feeling of it's triggering to face the colonial past that we are all beneficiaries of. The whole world is recovering from this giant blow that's been inflicted on the whole world. And it was kind of mind blowing, because Tyson's own story, I know, is complex. Some people would question his bonafides as a true Aboriginal person, because he's adopted on one side and I think this question of, who gets to say they're what? When this group of people has been systematically pulled away from their past and their history is like, what a head turner that is, to be, "Oh no, you can't demonstrate that you have an unbroken lineage." It's like, "Well, who could?"

Jenn Hayslett:

No one. And he really articulates that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And so just sitting with that head fake of like, wow, it is just so hard to sit in this moment with the pain that's been done and then, how do we countenance and deal with that fact? And as you said, Jenn, can I even use the term yarning? Is that appropriate when Tyson is trying to provide an opportunity for all of us to absorb and to be in dialogue with this other way of thinking. And so you talk about circular versus linear being in the land versus being all in our heads.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, one of the drawings I drew, the same one you drew, Jenn, I got to hold it really, really close, the interplay between the real and the metaphorical between practice and reflection and the embodiment of cognition, which as Tyson said, this is something I really got from, it's like our entire brains, our entire ways of being come from being here in a real world and navigating a place and a space and being in a relationship with others, navigating complexity.

Daniel Stillman:

Embodied cognition is something that we've been doing for as long as we are people, just putting notches on a bone to count higher than we can count with our brains, we put half of our brain into the objects that we use. And so I feel like Tyson's book really helped me, it was very reassuring to see, I think sometimes we think traditional thinking is very woo-woo, pseudo-spiritual. And he talks about this as just performative. Blowing on a didgeridoo and doing a dance and making textiles, as if that's being indigenous. And he's like, "No, it's thinking deeply, it's connecting, it's dealing with complexity, it's thinking about where we've come from and where we're going, it's being a steward of the land."

Daniel Stillman:

And so the idea that I was not reading this book thinking that complexity theory would play so thoroughly and deeply and that embodied cognition would play so deeply and thoroughly. And that the idea of being indigenous and being connected to a land, Meredith, you and I were having a conversation just before this about, how do you get people to process data and make meaning of it? And it's like, they have to find their way, they have to become oriented and navigated and rooted in a space, which is very hard to do, it's a very complex thing. So those are all the things I mean, I think Tyson spun my head around many, many of those things.

Jenn Hayslett:

And the peace that in the list of things that you were talking about, that is more complex thinking and groundedness. The piece that also figures prominently is this idea of just being and noticing and observing pattern and in order to really, deeply observe it and watch and notice all of the pieces to be able to predict what's going to happen and know when the ants are going to come out of the nest, that that takes deep knowledge and knowing that is not just based upon being in a place and observation, but also being open to those who've come before you and really receiving the knowledge with respect.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Meredith England:

Yeah. There was something, I loved the story that he tells about that, about the young boy standing on the beach who is disengaged from the activity that they're trying to do and he's basically, "Well, the sand moves here and it goes here and we're all fucked."

Jenn Hayslett:

Totally.

Meredith England:

And what I liked about it, I mean as you picked up on Jenn, and I won't have good words for it, but I really like how Tyson... Well, no, I was going to say he plays with time, he doesn't play with time, he basically says, "You have to think about time and space differently." And there's a particular thing that he wrote, so the idea of a dreaming, I have never understood what that meant, and I guess he's given me a new way of thinking about it. For Australian children, we get told stories about the dreaming of the rainbow serpent, and it's this idea, Daniel, of what you were talking about of this Aboriginal spirituality and stories of creation, but they're really old and they're made up and a bit weird.

Meredith England:

That's just to be honest, that's just how I experience them. And then there's this great bit where he says, "I use many terms that I don't particularly like, such as the dreaming," just because basically it helps people understand because you're reading it in English. And he says, "Because in any case, it's almost impossible to speak in English without them, unless you want to say, super rational, inter-dimensional ontology, endogenous, custodial, ritual complexes." I was like, "Oh." [crosstalk 00:15:40] so that's what the beginning is the idea of what the dreaming is.

Meredith England:

And just so, because for me particular, picking up what you were saying Jenn, the idea of a dreaming and windscreen wipers having a dreaming and mobile phones have a dreaming, and the bed that I slept on last night has a dreaming, feels like this invitation into spacial connections and time connections and history connections that we most often don't think about, don't really want to think about, and think don't have relevance because we're like, "Oh, onward and forward and whatever's coming next will be better that what came behind."

Meredith England:

That was something that really is messing with me a lot is this connection to time and time and history and the presence of it. I don't know. I'm not explaining it very well, but just the total non-linearity of time.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. So this is great, and so Jenn, I want to respect that you did some pre-work and I actually think we can go through, because one of the things that you highlighted in your notes, I think relates to this, and it's the kinship system where every three generations there's a reset in which your grandparents' parents are classified as your children. And that was just like a, "What?"

Jenn Hayslett:

I know.

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:17:05] side of the head you're like, "Oh my god." And I think this non-linearity of time and the cyclicality of kinship and to say, "What are we doing here to ourselves and to our future children grandparents?"

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. I mean, I'm heading into the grandma stage. I mean, my children are not ready, I'm in the age where that's an appropriate thing to be thinking about, and-

Daniel Stillman:

Right. But you're not putting pressure on them, just to be clear?

Jenn Hayslett:

No pressure.

Daniel Stillman:

If it happens, that would be great.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. So, I experience that quote in a very different place and watching my parents age and that piece that this is set up in this system as a way for deep respect and knowing and fabric of care. Right? And just who knows if that actually is where it goes and I want to know more about how it plays out in the culture or originally played out, right? Because the culture is now not as rich because of the colonial impact, shouldn't say not as rich, but not as strong potentially. If there's a rebuilding.

Jenn Hayslett:

But to me what that quote says is that we are part in our families and in our communities of this cycle and we need to clarify and honor and have it in our bones that we are our grandparents' parents are classified as our children in a cycle of renewal. It's beautiful.

Daniel Stillman:

Meredith, I kind of connect this to, when you were talking about being an agent of sustainability, there's this idea that Tyson talks about and I'm very sensitive to this, this idea of going to this place to extract wisdom in the way that you go to the jungle to extract molecules, like, "Oh, let's find out what the Aboriginal doctors are giving and they'll take that molecule, versus understanding its relationship. And I feel like what Jenn's talking about, being deeply aware of your place in the cycle of life, is part of the... I really struggle with this idea of what a custodial... Why do we get to be a custodial species? But I feel like it's like, you notice, you are a person who notices what is going on in the world, which is why you do the work you do. You work in sustainability because you are aware of it and you can't not do it. You're currently a custodial species.

Meredith England:

Yes. But I guess... I think that we all are. For me, that almost feels like whether you think of it as accidental or designed, that's almost, if you look around you, it just is what we are, in that given what we have become as humans, what we have evolved into, we interact with landscapes, with other species, with each other in ways that other species don't and so for me that almost just feels descriptive, rather than even... What's the word I'm looking for? It's just describing what is, rather than describing some new understanding of it.

Meredith England:

I'm like, I don't know, for me, it's one of those base things where you could ask me why and I would just say, "Because it is." Why? Because it is. That's one of my baseline things. And I think and interestingly for me, and this feels kind of tricky, the very deeply held idea of stewardship, the history of that for me comes from my historical Christian faith, which I now don't hold, but that thread of stewardship, that completely shapes how I am, that's how I think about being a mum is like, I'm a steward of my children, I'm not...

Meredith England:

And that's literally primarily how I think about it. And so there's a... Yeah. In some ways, so the idea of being custodial, the idea of being stewards, it feels really deep for me, but I can't describe it, or I find it quite hard to unpack, because I'm like, "Well, it's just, of course." I was just describing a phenomenon more than anything else, but I think when you bring kinship and time and space and these threads of connection to it, then its starts to really, for me, that starts to really expand.

Meredith England:

And even there are lots of things, particularly in the climate change movement that are very much about trying to get people to think about time in different ways, so that they will make different decisions. So, trying to get politicians to think about their grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren, and this is making me wonder like, what does it mean if we, as you say Jenn, this structural way of thinking about kinship over time and the relationships over time, what does that start to do to how we think about where we came from, and now what we do? Yeah, I guess-

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. I very much wish he were here, because I really want to understand more about how that kinship system plays out, what does that really look like in terms of family connection and support and is this is metaphorical, or are we talking about the bloodline family and the direct descendants? Or is it metaphorical to look at all generations? And... Yeah, this idea of a system and the classification and I'm not sure, again, he probably is choosing that word because there's no perfect word, but is there a more formal structure and does this get recorded?

Jenn Hayslett:

My guess is not, based upon other things he's said, but I wonder. I'm wondering, Meredith, do you know much about the kinship system in this-

Meredith England:

No.

Jenn Hayslett:

No.

Daniel Stillman:

And if Tyson were here, I would just, Meredith and I were talking, we had another conversation before this, my interview with Tyson is going to be launching shortly, it's really hard to get a straight answer from him on anything, so if he was here-

Meredith England:

Okay. Even if he was here, you probably wouldn't get a good answer.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. You might not get the-

Jenn Hayslett:

Right, because there's no straight path.

Daniel Stillman:

Because there's no straight path. I do think it is literal. For him, it is not figurative, it's literal. But I also think all of the lenses he offers in the book are lenses. The kinship mind is a way of looking, it's not the only way, and certainly "Western thinking" is not cyclical, it is 100% linear, and the dialogue between cyclical and linear is, and this is one of the things that I think I took from Tyson's book as well is, there hasn't been a true two-way dialogue between these first people's and second people's ways of thinking and being, and that's what he's really trying to offer and is a true conversation where, can Aboriginal people finally, truly benefit from a modern system and not have it be abusive to them? And can the modern system learn, really, really learn better ways of being to transform the system that we are all living in? Because it doesn't work for a lot of people, and it's certainly not sustainable.

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like, I want to make sure we talk about yarning, Jenn, and I don't know, Meredith, this was like, for me, the idea that there was an entire other philosophy of dialogue, dialoguing, that was, there's the traditional idea of the talking stick, which is in the [inaudible 00:27:21] tradition, it's not in the Australian Aboriginal tradition, it is non-linear, there is no front and back, there's no sides in a yarn, there's no stage, there's no talking stick, there's no beginning and end. It's just sharing narratives and laughing and maybe you're making food while you're doing it, or you're weaving, or you're not.

Daniel Stillman:

It was very, I know, Jenn, you'd captured a quote about this, "The endpoint of a yarn is a set of understandings, values, and directions shared by all members of a group in a loose consensus that is inclusive of diverse points of view," which I thought was like, this is what everybody comes to every facilitation training I've ever done. It's like, "How do I get a group of people to get aligned enough to move forward together together, really?"

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. This to me, is so beautiful and elusive and that's why I captured it inside of a yellow star in my image, that there's this lightness and energy around this idea for me that I am very excited about. This idea of, "a set of understandings, values, and directions, shared by all members of the group." Now, to me, there's also inclusive of diverse points of view. Now, how is it that people feel that their values are being honored? Loose consensus? What is loose consensus? Does one person feel that the group is not moving forward in the way that they wish, but they're willing to acquiesce? Or is there just the fabric of enjoyment and pleasure that moves us forward? The fabric of our shared energy and humanity? So, definitely interested in learning more.

Daniel Stillman:

I have opened up to, because I'm so glad you included a page number, because I had a sticky note also around yarning protocols. It has protocols of active listening, mutual respect, and building on what others have said, rather than openly contradicting or debating. There's no firm protocol of one person speaking at a time. The back and forth yarning style neutralizes the unpleasant phenomenon that occurs in many conversations, meetings, and dialogues that occur of grandstanding and waffling while the rest of the group drowns in boredom. Monologues are rare in Aboriginal culture, unless a senior person is telling a long story or an angry person is airing grievances.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, it's just, the primary mode of communication in yarns in narrative, the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. And the actual Sand Talk as part of it. And this is something that I think is missing in most, in every kind of meeting, is the visual grounding of the conversation and saying like, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what I am talking about right now and stepping away..." Literally, most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

Daniel Stillman:

I will now stop grandstanding and airing my grievances. Meredith, do you have any... I mean, I assume that the yarning protocols hit you as well, because this is what you do.

Meredith England:

So I'm only halfway through, and I don't think that I've got to that bit which is devastating, this is the... I'm totally breaKing the rules of book club, which is turning up at book club having only read half the book, so I'm really sorry.

Daniel Stillman:

But the first half is so good.

Meredith England:

The first half is so good. I'm like, have to read everything twice and this book is taking me so long to read.

Jenn Hayslett:

I still have a third left too, Meredith.

Daniel Stillman:

I have like 10 more pages that I have gotten stuck on.

Jenn Hayslett:

And it's so delicious and I-

Daniel Stillman:

We're all coming clean.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah. And I don't think, he would have so appreciate that, that we are talking and diving in and in it and experiencing it without needing to be linear and getting to the end, right? We're processing. we're in it.

Daniel Stillman:

Meredith, since you've got your book there, what's the part that you've gotten stuck on that you need to go over multiple times? What's something you feel like you actually had to read twice? I'm very curious to know.

Meredith England:

Yeah, yeah. So, no, I will answer that question, before I do, I'm actually really-

Daniel Stillman:

Okay.

Meredith England:

Well no, because I'm interested by what you were talking about about the Sand Talk and Air Talk. And a conversation that I was in yesterday, which was the first face to face conversation that a team that I am in had had for obviously over a year, we're all able to get in a room together down here in Melbourne. And I had my tiny little notebook and so I was scribbling notes in my book, and we're planning, we were basically conceiving and planning about 12 months' worth of work and my notebook was just getting a little bit small and I couldn't find a bigger piece of paper.

Meredith England:

And so there was a whiteboard behind me, and so I started doodling on it, just because, and we had Miro, we had two Miro screens on one side of the wall, and then there was just an empty whiteboard, and so I started doodling literally because I just needed a bigger piece of paper. And so I'd stand up and I'd doodle a bit, and then sit down and then stand up and doodle a bit, and sit down. And then by the end of it, and this wasn't about... It wasn't a great doodle or anything of what I was mapping out, but it did eventually, particular towards the end of the conversation, it enabled a different conversation.

Meredith England:

And there were words and pictures on it and stuff like that, but it made it possible for people to conceive of three previously unconnected, or quite siloed pieces of work, and just to think about it in a different way. And I guess it just reminded me again, which is something that I'm reminded of constantly, of just the usefulness of creating those shared physical and visual representations of what it unlocks for people, of what it makes possible. And because it makes easier also for people to disagree, because they're looking at it and they're like, "But those two things done fit together for me, so why have you put them together?" Or like, I'll draw an arrow between two things and they're like, "Well..." And it will bring up a tension that previously will feel like a relational tension or a conceptual tension that they can't speak, but it's like, they can verbalize what they disagree with, which.... Yeah. I'm just reminded of that, and just, yeah, how we put those lines in the sand.

Meredith England:

So the stuff that I am really, I keep reading and it's in different parts of the book, is the idea of the spaces in between. So, it comes up in a... And yeah, so it comes up in a couple of different places where he talks about sky country and the Greek mistake of dead matter and how actually, finally scientists are starting to realize that all of the stuff that we have called empty space for a really long time, they're calling it dark matter, which doesn't really help us understand more about what it is, but it's certainly not dead and it's certainly not nothing.

Meredith England:

And then he also, he talks about, I've never heard smoke and the smoking ceremonies and stuff being talked about in this way, I probably lost it now. So in the chapter where he talks about ghosts and spirit, and... I'm trying to find it. He specifically talks about smoke is not earth and it's not air, and it's used in this way. The smoke is liminal, neither earth nor air, but part of both, and it moves across the same spaces in between as shadow spirits do, sending them on their way.

Meredith England:

So he's talking about smoke and that situation of, and I love that whole story that he tells about being in the writer's retreat and the agony that he feels of even writing about it really struck me of like, when do you say things? When do you write those stories down? But yeah, I'm really noodling on the idea of the spaces in between, which for me is the spaces between people, the landscape spaces where I think, in my work sometimes, we get fixated on the from-to, and I'm not going to the idea, the metaphor of journey necessarily, but what's the space that we are inhabiting in both of those places and in the in between? And it also just makes me reflect on the spaces between and the liminal spaces in time as well and connecting back to the kinship idea that you were talking about, Jenn.

Meredith England:

So, I have no, and maybe not surprisingly, I'm totally grasping on this one because there is nothing to hold onto. He-

Jenn Hayslett:

He relates back to... I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Meredith England:

Oh no, just one last thing. He talks about how important the spaces are in between in the way that he talks about being an agent of sustainability, and so there's a, I'm trying to remember the language that he... When he talks about interaction and the energy and sprit of communication to power the system, that felt like he was very much talking about the spaces in between, and my son is also... Sorry, I'm just drawing together like 15 different thoughts that feel connected to me, my son at the moment is studying a bit of physics in science and he's fascinated by the, I'm going to get, Daniel help me out here, the Law of Energy that says that energy never goes away. What's that one called?

Daniel Stillman:

It's the Law of Conservation of energy.

Meredith England:

Yeah. And so he's constantly talking to me about how anything I do is never useless, which I love, and so there's something for me in this idea of the flow of energy in the in between spaces, that it's never wasted, it doesn't... And I will stop there. Those are all the things on my table.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so Jenn, you had captured a diagram that I had captured too, which is exactly the part you're talking about, Meredith, the spirit and land connection, and this is, he also talks about it as abstract and concrete, thinking and doing, and the connection between them. The smoke, I'd forgotten that the smoke was part of this. Those are those lines and its liminal thinking, which is embedded in this way of thinking. Or this was my version of it, Jenn, I'd drawn this [inaudible 00:39:58] metaphor and abstraction, real connected to the land, and the practice loop between it and how embodied cognition helps with that process.

Daniel Stillman:

That to me is so one of the things that's really, I mean, maybe it's confirming something that I believe that I'm passionate about, but we are smoke, Meredith. Your job, what you are doing, making that smokiness, trying to concretize that process of thinking, it's hard, it's hard to do.

Jenn Hayslett:

And bringing it back to the human species and how we translate that. And I love how you're talking about the spaces in between. It feels to me like, when he's talking about just being present and aware and tuned in and the being rather than the doing, or the knowing, that a big piece of that, it's so interesting that he talks about the gut, right? That if we're too much in our brains, there you talked about the embodiment, if we're too much in our brains and not enough in our spirit and our soul and our gut literally, and paying attention to the gut brain, the gut knowing, that allows us to feel the spaces in between things, to hear the ants, to feel them, even if we can't see them, that this is beyond seeing. And that flow of energy and patterning is a deep knowing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jenn Hayslett:

And it's continuous, there's no end, there's no one seer or elder who holds all.

Meredith England:

The ongoing pattern finding and pattern recognition. There's respect for those who have history and knowledge or hierarchy, but that that continues to move, which I think, so for me, is when he talks about the romanticism and the desecration of Aboriginal culture as cute and stuck in time, that really hit home for me, particularly as someone who lives in this place where that's what we've done to it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I'm looking at the clock and I want to take care of us and the conversation and make sure we have enough time for a check out. And you two haven't actually introduced yourselves, which I feel like people will be like, "Who are these people who are talking?" And I'll take that somehow and bring it to the beginning of the conversation. So, can we first check out with whatever you want to check out with. And then I'll thank you for your time, and then you can introduce yourselves. We'll start totally backwards. In whatever order you'd like to, Meredith, what are you checking out with from this conversation?

Meredith England:

I'm going to check out with the [enu 00:43:33] and the dangers of greater than, less than thinking, and just horrors that greater than, less than thinking and narcissism brings to the world. He uses that as this framing right at the beginning that enu just brought chaos by bringing greater than, less than thinking. And yeah. I'll check out with that.

Jenn Hayslett:

I'll check out with something related, a quote on page three. "The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity." Just that simple being and knowing is not uncomplex. Being present for complexity.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that. Being present for complexity is such a great idea. It's like, "I'm here for the complexity." I think one thing I hadn't really thought about, Meredith, that I want to check out with is this smoke thing, which I think I was like, "Okay, he's just being weird and spiritualistic," and the idea that there's this liminal connection between abstraction and reality, between spirit and space, between thinking and doing, it is smoky, it is ineffable, and it is hard to contain it, but we also in invoking smoke and bringing smoke in to the process, Leonardo da Vinci was this whole idea was, "Can you draw smoke?" Being with smokiness which is just the hardest thing to do. So I want to, I don't know how to explore that, but I think that's something interesting to explore.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you both so much for making time for this conversation and I think is a really... I really believe the subtitle of the book, that indigenous thinking can save the world, because what we've got is not necessarily taking us in the right direction, so rethinking what we're doing is worth doing. So, thank you, both of you.

Meredith England:

Thank you, Daniel, for organizing this. So lovely to be able-

Jenn Hayslett:

For holding this face.

Daniel Stillman:

It's the least I can do. All right. And scene. Meredith, can you introduce yourself to the world?

Meredith England:

Sure. So, I'm Meredith England. I live in Australia. I am a conversation designer and facilitator working in the spaces where big organizations come together to talk about hard things and how to take action on climate change.

Daniel Stillman:

Really well said. I always struggle with what to say at parties, so well done. Jenn, if you could do the same. Welcome aboard.

Jenn Hayslett:

Sure. I'm Jenn Hayslett. I live in Vermont in the United States. I'm also a facilitator and trainer. I primarily work with executive directors and development directors in non-profit organizations, helping them ask for what matters and bringing really important support to their work. So I'm working in the non-profit space.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really glad you both joined for this conversation, and Meredith your thing that this book is not done with us yet, I think, is really, really true. I look forward to reading the transcript of this conversation and the interview with Tyson will be out soon so you'll be able to take a look at that one too.

Jenn Hayslett:

Excellent.

Daniel Stillman:

There's a lot of wisdom to mine from this universe that those of us who are on the non-indigenous, second people side of the conversation can absorb a lot more and listen more thoughtfully. I want to be respectful of both of your times, because I know it's slowly lightening where Meredith is.

Meredith England:

It is. The sun's coming up.

Daniel Stillman:

Her day is about to begin, and for Jenn and I, it's ending. So, is there anything that remains unsaid that should be said? Or do you both feel complete? What do we need to say to be complete?

Meredith England:

Just thank you guys so much-

Jenn Hayslett:

I want to appreciate... [crosstalk 00:48:47].

Meredith England:

Oh, you go, Jenn.

Jenn Hayslett:

I want to appreciate Tyson for starting this conversation, and we're continuing the yarn.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Meredith, any last unsaid to be said for you?

Meredith England:

Just thanks for having this conversation and threading our responses and reactions and thoughts and questions and unsaid things into something that, for me, takes it a bit further so that I can keep the conversation going with this book.

Daniel Stillman:

And now you get to read the second half of the book. This is so interesting.

Jenn Hayslett:

I know. Can we talk again?

Meredith England:

Oh my goodness, there's so much to come.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh my god.

Meredith England:

Awesome.

Daniel Stillman:

Well that's perfect. Thank you so much both of you.

Jenn Hayslett:

Yeah, thank you Daniel.

Meredith England:

Thank you very much.

Jenn Hayslett:

And thank you, Meredith.

Meredith England:

Thanks Jenn. Bye-bye.

Jenn Hayslett:

See you.

Doing vs Experiencing Design Thinking

My guest is Jeanne Liedtka, Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and an absolute rockstar of Design Thinking. She’s the author of (most recently) Experiencing Design and joins me this episode to talk about getting started with Design Thinking and some pitfalls that can happen along the way as you move yourself and your organization towards not just doing design thinking but experiencing it - the road to mastery, moving past the surface level with Design Thinking.

Jeanne’s latest book Experiencing Design is organized around a powerful framework that separates Doing vs. Experiencing vs. Becoming. This frame clarifies the transformational journey of an individual as they engage more deeply with Design Thinking. 

If you want to deepen and expand your understanding of Design Thinking past the Stanford Design School Hexagons, I highly recommend Jeanne’s books. Her 2011 book, Designing for Growth, co-authored with Tim Ogilvy, was a crucial moment in my introduction to the power and breadth of Design Thinking.

Jeanne and I have both had this experience with folks we’ve worked with, and maybe you have had it happen to you: you take a workshop and a lightbulb clicks on in your head... You find a new way of working that you see limitless potential in, that you want to implement and share with others.

People say, "I wish my team, my organisation, could work this way. Where can I start?" 

And when you bring the tools and tips back to work, something falls flat…transforming how we work together is non-trivial. It’s not just about the tools - the doing. It’s about the mindsets - the experiencing and becoming.

Jeanne and I talk about getting started with the tools of Design Thinking, some of the pitfalls that happen along the way, and how learning in action is a really fundamental and challenging shift both for the individual innovator and also for the organisation as a whole.

Many people who I train in these new ways of working say their primary block is that others are not doing it too, that *everyone* isn’t trained in these tools. And while I’d love to train the whole organization, it’s not always possible, or even wise. My advice is usually, "Start really, really small, and do it in ways that no one can tell you no. Ask for forgiveness instead of permission." 

The ROI of DT

Jeanne and I also talk about the real ROI on DT. Organizations focus on the visible ROI of Design Thinking - what we will see- first the outputs, the templates, the workshops, and then the innovation they hope for - moving the needle in the business.

But the real transformational aspect of Design Thinking is the way people are changed by the activities - what they experience and what they become. (check out the show notes for images of Jeanne’s Iceberg model of the ROI of DT)

Design Thinking is, of course, doing activities like gathering data, identifying insights, establishing design criteria, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimenting...but each of them results in the individual person experiencing sense-making, alignment, and emergence - some of the real gold in Design Thinking.

And all the while, they are becoming more empathetic and confident, collaborative, comfortable with co-creation and difference, able to bring ideas to life, resilient, and adaptive. This is the more deep, more durable transformation that is possible with Design Thinking...this is the real ROI of DT.

MVC: Minimum Viable Competencies

One of Jeanne's really profound contributions in the book is the idea of "minimum viable competencies": the things we can look for in the people that we are trying to transform and bring on board to this new way of working. Can they listen to understand? Can they separate facts from interpretations of the facts? Are they comfortable with ambiguity? Can they respect other viewpoints? Check out Jeanne’s book for a comprehensive list of MVC and a survey to help you benchmark your organization’s skills.

Jeanne and I also dive into how Design Thinking catalyzes organizational change at the conversational level. For example, in the Emergence phase, she talks about thinking broadly about who you invite to the conversation, and she highlights requisite variety: the idea that the diversity of people in the conversation should match the complexity of the conversation, of the challenge we’re hoping to solve. 

Refer back to my interview with Professor and Conversational Cybernetics expert Paul Pangaro for a deeper dive into requisite variety and how it applies to conversation dynamics. Also check out my interview with Jason Cyr, a Design Executive at Cisco, where he shares similar reflections on diversity and coalition building in driving a Design Thinking transformation.

We also talked about how Design Thinking has a lot of tools, a lot of doings, that help with upfront discovery and testing, but when it comes to learning in action and alignment folks find it challenging to find turn-taking structures that help scaffold the process - in other words, they need facilitation skills: structures to help our conversations be productive: listening non-defensively to critique, exploring disconfirming data with curiosity, accepting imperfect data and moving on... these are not Design Thinking tools, these are conversation design tools. This is where DT bleeds into leadership and self-management.

Another point from our conversation that is really important is that different people have different experiences throughout the arc of the design thinking process. Jeanne has this wonderful diagram in her book about how the different DISC profiles of influencer, analyst, driver, and supporter will have different emotional arcs as they go through the Design Thinking process from beginning to end. I think it's really, really important to understand that we need to have empathy with all of our collaborators. We may have a great time with the upfront part of the process, like discovery, and have a really hard time during prototyping and testing. We need a diverse group of collaborators so that we can draw on their perspectives and balance our experience with theirs. 

It's important to push against our own biases and to continuously ask, "What kind of diversity is needed for this challenge?" For that, I highly recommend you listen to my conversation with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, who I spoke with earlier this year about Decolonizing Design Thinking. It's a really powerful conversation. 

It was a great pleasure to be able to sit down and talk with Jeanne Liedtka, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND RESOURCES

Jeanne's Website
Why Design Thinking Works
Jeanne's books

The Iceberg of DT ROI: from Jeanne’s interview with Mural: https://www.mural.co/roi

I love Jeanne's Iceberg of Design Thinking, which clarifies and visualizes the ROI of Design Thinking. 

At the top, we see the tangible outcomes of innovation and organisational velocity. Underneath, below the line, we see people's ways of thinking and talking. So there are changes of perception and changes at the conversational level: this is where people are becoming different and changing their mindsets.

Minute 3

You can ask people to change their behaviors all you want, but until you teach them a new tool that helps them do that, then your odds of success aren't too high.

Minute 12

If you're always worried about, am I doing it right? Am I getting right? Is this a quality output? It's totally counterproductive and you completely get in your own way. So a lot of my role as an educator is to lessen their anxiety, to get them to trust me, to get them to try the tools out, to get them to accept the imperfection and be shoved along to the next question even though they don't really feel like they've answered the first question the way they should. To help them come out the other end with something worthwhile. If you accomplish that, they will go back and do it again. If you fail to get them through the whole process, producing something worthwhile, then they may fall in love with the idea of doing ethnography or brainstorming with post-it notes or stuff, but you're not really materially changing their behavior.

Minute 14

There's two groups of people that I am usually very optimistic about giving Design Thinking a meaningful try. One is the volunteers, the people like you said, who are just waiting to fall in love with it. Someone said, not long ago, I've been carrying a lock around my whole life and Design Thinking was the key. Those people are going to do it and they're going to love it and stay with you. The other group are people who are desperate to solve problems; who've already tried all the other ways, who have to try something new if they really want to solve this problem. Those are the other people who are willing to invest in trying Design Thinking.

Minute 21

We focus Design Thinking on the products we are producing for others. So we think Design Thinking is mostly about an output for others, but it starts with ourselves and working on ourselves. And I think what we've come to believe through this research is you are not going to achieve the truly transformational impact that Design Thinking is capable of, unless innovators themselves change on the journey.

One manager we talked to said that in order to do this well, you had to be able to call your own baby ugly. And I just loved that phrasing because it captures it. It's how do you, having engaged, then detach? Or maybe a different way to think about it is how do you remain passionate and engaged around making someone's life better while detaching yourself from any particular solution to get there?

Minute 34

So visualization is the other piece, right? So we've got the user-driven ethnographic deep understanding piece. We've got the conversational rules piece, then we've got the visualization piece. And the three of those together make a form of collaboration possible. It wasn't possible with just dialogue. It wasn't possible with just the search conferences. Just brainstorming or just ethnography was never going to produce it either. It's this coming together, this gestalt of design all coming together and that's what's really unique about it. It's the kind of accelerating effect that they have on each other when they work together well that I think is so amazing about it. But you need the whole thing. It's not like you can't use pieces of it, sure you can. But transformation, I think, requires that you buy the whole package and commit to work through.

MORE ABOUT JEANNE

Jeanne M. Liedtka is a faculty member at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and former chief learning officer at United Technologies Corporation, where she was responsible for overseeing all activities associated with corporate learning and development for the Fortune 50 corporation, including executive education, career development processes, employer-sponsored education and learning portal and web-based activities.

At Darden, where she formerly served as associate dean of the MBA program and as executive director of the Batten Institute, Jeanne works with both MBAs and executives in the areas of Design Thinking, innovation and leading growth. Her passion is exploring how organizations can engage employees at every level in thinking creatively about the design of powerful futures.

Jeanne's current research focuses on design-led innovation in the government and social sector, as does her forthcoming book, Designing for the Greater Good. Her previous books include: The Catalyst; How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth (winner of the Business Week best innovation books of 2009); Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers (winner of the 1800 CEO READ best management book of 2011) and its accompanying field guide, The Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step by Step Guide; The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, System and Process; and Solving Business Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stiillman:

Jeanne Liedtka welcome to the Conversation Factory. Thanks for making time for this. I know you've had a long day.

Jeanne Liedtka:

It's great to be here.

Daniel Stiillman:

Thank you. It's kind of you to say. Okay. So let's take the wide lens first, since that's the Design Thinking way. Can you tell me about your journey into experiencing design in a high sketch? How did you get to this point? When did you fall in love with Design Thinking?

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah. Well-

Daniel Stiillman:

What was your meet cute?

Jeanne Liedtka:

The story goes back a while, I started down the path of... I was a strategist of BCG is where I worked after my MBA and my PhD is in strategy and I was always interested in strategic planning, which is an unusual thing to be interested in, most people aren't. But I always struggled for a way to help leaders understand how important the role of strategic planning was, and that it was really about enacting a vision of a different future. So it wasn't about filling out pieces of paper and things like that, it was about envisioning and sharing this new world that could be.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So I looked around for ways to teach it and I pretty quickly hit on architecture and the metaphor of designing. I have the advantage of being here at the University of Virginia, where the main grounds as we call them was designed by Thomas Jefferson to be an academical village. And it's a beautiful story of design. He had a vision of education that was education for democracy rather than the prevailing pattern of education for monarchy. And so he designed this whole thing. Physically the village sits on a green and looks like a village, but the subjects he had people study, the kinds of faculty he hired, the honor system he put in place, all of this was part of this beautiful meta design of which the outcome would be the kinds of behaviors he was trying to encourage.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. Creating the conditions.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah, that was a model for me. So for a while, when I had students, whether they were executives or MBAs, and we were talking about strategic planning, I would take them to the lawn and we would walk around and talk about Jefferson's vision and how he made that vision real. And then we would talk about how they as leaders were architects of a space, but it's not bricks and mortar, it's culture and systems and process and all those other kinds of things. So I spent a lot of time talking about architecture as a metaphor for a long time. But you can only do so much with a metaphor. You run out pretty quickly once everybody gets it. And there wasn't a lot that architects did specifically that was all that helpful.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But then Design Thinking started to get talked about, and I can't even remember... I was already following the design world, but as I started to explore Design Thinking, I thought, well, now wait a minute. This really allows us to move designing from metaphor to toolkit and toolkits are what people need. And to call Design Thinking a toolkit is a massive oversimplification, but at its best, it offers tools. And those are the kinds of things that people need to change their behaviors. That's my belief. You can ask people to change their behaviors all you want, but until you teach them a new tool that helps them do that, then your odds of success aren't too high. So I started paying attention to Design Thinking. I immediately fell in love with it. I think in part because there are the people who need Design Thinking and the people who don't. People who are intuitive design-

Daniel Stiillman:

It isn't for everybody?

Jeanne Liedtka:

It is for everybody but people get at it very different ways. So for designers and for leaders of innovation and like the managers we've studied who were very good at organic growth, they don't need a process. They almost don't call it anything. It's just intuitive. It's the way they behave. But there's this other whole group of people of whom I am one; my undergraduate is in accounting, raised in a very linear way. I'm quite concerned about change, somewhere along the line to borrow Carol Dweck's notion of a fixed mind-set. We learned that being right and being smart were the same thing. And so we're imprinted with all of these disabilities that are ill suited for a world of innovation. And what Design Thinking does is it gives me a set of behaviors I can copy so that I can begin to do what the intuitives can do just by nature.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And I think it personally appealed to me because I was one of the people who really needed it. And I think like anything else, it's hard to teach something you're intuitively good at because you don't understand where people go wrong. But not having been good at it, I was just like amazed by it but troubled that designers didn't seem to be able to talk to us analytic types. And so I looked for a long time, I wanted to teach it to the MBAs, I looked for a long time; I couldn't find any materials that I felt like translated this incredibly powerful thing I could see into things that were accessible for the people I was teaching. So that's when I wrote the Designing for Growth book with Tim Ogilvie and we had the advantage that Tim's a designer and an engineer.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So he straddles the line between linear thinkers and design thinkers. And he has a wonderful visual sense himself. Whereas I'm a writer, I'm all about the printed word. And so I could write and Tim could visualize, and it was a good combination, I think. And it appeared at a moment when people needed what it offered. That kind of bridging, that translation device. And I was really off and running. And since then, I've spent the last 10 years just trying to understand more about why it works and how it works and how it shows up and in particular, how to help non-designers appreciate and acquire the amazing competency set around Design Thinking.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. It's quite a journey. And I actually think I was at a launch party in New York. Was it 2011? When did that book...

Jeanne Liedtka:

2011, was the Designing for Growth book.

Daniel Stiillman:

So I have a copy of it hiding in my house and I'll just say from my own experience as a designer, who was like, "Oh,..." I learned about Design Thinking after design school. And I was like, "Man, if I can learn this stuff, everyone should probably know this." And I think a lot of people think, oh, Design Thinking is a five phase methodology with a bunch of hexagons. And what I loved about that book that you and Tim put together was the questions, the phases as questions, what is, what if, what wows, what works? I'm like, these are just good questions. And summarizing the Design Thinking process as a series of meditations, introspections conversations to have, I still like to blow people's minds who think it's hexagons with your model, that it's a series of questions [crosstalk 00:07:43] or a double diamond.

Daniel Stiillman:

Now Design Thinking is obviously gone through waves. You've been through all of them, cycles of boom and bust. And I want to talk about the lens of the experience you and I have both had of somebody coming to a workshop, a Design Thinking workshop, and they go, "Oh my God." They light up. They're like, "This is it." They have the experience that you had, they have the experience I had and they go, "Everyone should do this." My mother tells a story of how she and her friend made a batch of crackers and they came out so well, they literally just handed them out on the subway. This was of course the '60s in New York and so you could do that thing. And they were like, "These are amazing." And people would be like, "Okay." And they're like, "Oh my God, these are really good." When you taste something delicious, you want other people to taste it.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Exactly.

Daniel Stiillman:

And usually what happens is I find they hit a wall. They don't know where to start. They don't know how to... It's like they've gone through the hero's journey and there's the rejection of the prize of the boon on the other side where people haven't had the experience they've had, they don't know how to teach people or on-board them. They don't know how to teach them the tools or take them through the process. And they want everyone to have a common language. They want everyone to work in this way. And I guess one of my questions for you is what advice do you have for these people at the beginning of, because there's still people in the beginning of their Design Thinking journey. Those of us who are haggard wizened, hardened professionals on it, there are people who are still like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." What do you say to those people who are just getting that spark of Design Thinking? What should they watch out for look out for think about as they start to go on their journey?

Jeanne Liedtka:

Well, I think there's lots of levels of good stuff that Design Thinking can do. Even if you do Design Thinking badly, I think it's better than not doing it at all for most managers. Now, that's not true if you're being paid to design something really expensive and stuff. But for most people that are adding Design Thinking to an existing, largely analytical toolkit, I see very little downside. Because they don't think they're designers and they're not going to go up and try it and outlive their skillset.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And even one interview with someone that you learn something about is better than none at all, so I'm very comfortable with this idea that some of it is good and you should just get in there and try it. On the other hand, what we all worry about in organizations in particular is the Design Thinking loses its legitimacy, because people think you can all get all the great benefits in one day hackathons.

Daniel Stiillman:

Right. What, you can't? You can't do Design Thinking? It's not a process that you do end to end in a fixed period of time, every time?

Jeanne Liedtka:

No. You can get the wow that you were talking about earlier in a one day hackathon. And that's what they're good for. I think they're good for whetting people's appetites, but the reality of it is, when you're taking analytically trained people and introducing them to a decision process and toolkit that is so different than what we currently work with. You need to give them a lot more structure and a lot more digestion time and coaching and all that stuff to really affect their day to day practice. Sure, they can go off while they're in class and do some theoretical case and come up with stuff.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But if you want people to go back to work and actually use it, then you need to give them a lot of help. Now, it doesn't have to be expensive help. One of the things that I've really been excited about is the ability to teach Design Thinking online in a really scalable and inexpensive way. So a lot of other stuff we say, "Well you have got to fly to Charlottesville, Virginia and spend $8,000 and we'll teach you how to be a great leader or a strategic thinker."

Daniel Stiillman:

Sure.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Design Thinking now you have to commit to a class that may run eight or 10 weeks and you have to pick a project to work on and you have to do it consistently. But what I can tell those people is if you stay with me-

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes.

Jeanne Liedtka:

You do the work, at the end you will have produced something you can be proud of. And it gives me a thrill to be able to say that, but this is what I do with the MBAs, because I think in some ways, anxiety is the biggest obstacle to fully experiencing the power of Design Thinking.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah, I think one of the things... I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Jeanne Liedtka:

No. I was going to say so if you're always worried about, am I doing it right? Am I getting right? Is this a quality output? It's totally counterproductive and you completely get in your own way. So a lot of my role as an educator is to lessen their anxiety, to get them to trust me, to get them to try the tools out, to get them to accept the imperfection and be shoved along to the next question even though they don't really feel like they've answered the first question the way they should. To help them come out the other end with something worthwhile. If you accomplish that, they will go back and do it again. If you fail to get them through the whole process, producing something worthwhile, then they may fall in love with the idea of doing ethnography or brainstorming with post-it notes or stuff, but you're not really materially changing their behavior.

Daniel Stiillman:

I think the thing that I've noticed, and maybe you've experienced this too, is that people already have jobs that occupy pretty much 100 to 110% of their time. And Design Thinking shows up as a new way of working that seems to add another job that they're supposed to do. Innovation and Design Thinking and all these other new practices wind up feeling like another five or 10% of what they're doing instead of organizations finding a way to reduce or integrate what they're doing. And I see that as a real challenge where people want to practice it, but they just don't know how to literally find the time. They're like, "Well, how do I do it? When do I do it?" Because it's just on top of everything else.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah. And I have a bias on this, I think, Design Thinking should be taught in projects and it should be taught in projects that people choose themselves out of their own world that they would do anyway.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah.

Jeanne Liedtka:

There's two groups of people that I am usually very optimistic with about giving Design Thinking a meaningful trial. One is the volunteers, the people like you said, who are just waiting to fall in love with it. It's that someone's said not long ago, I've been carrying a lock around my whole life and Design Thinking was the key. Those people are going to do it and they're going to love it and stay with you. The other group are people who are desperate to solve problems; who've already tried all the other ways, who have to try something new if they really want to solve this problem. Those are the other people who are willing to invest in trying Design Thinking.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But again, you have to make it something that they need to do anyway. You have to make it safe for them to do. You have to layer on the cognitive complexity so that it's accessible and you don't overwhelm them with too much at one time. So you have to introduce them carefully, but I think that's really what we've spent like 13 years doing now, trying to figure out how to make the process better. And we started off with those four questions and 10 tools that was the Designing for Growth book. And we pretty quickly discovered trying to actually teach it to people, that that wasn't enough, because they could use the tools, but they didn't know how to string the tools together and they could ask the questions, but they didn't know how to transition from one question to another. So I could ask what it is and go off and do a bunch of ethnography, but then they didn't understand how to pull that into ideation.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So then we started looking at the intersections of the four questions and adding structure to help people. So we added the design criteria between what is, and what if, because the design criteria took everything you got learned, forced you to prioritize it and distill it down to a short set of qualities of what your idea needed to accomplish. And then we transitioned into coming up with ideas and people could do it because they clearly were able to pull the learning in real shape. Then between ideation and testing, we created this napkin pitch because again, people would have a billion ideas. They wouldn't begin to know how to test them or which ones to test. And so we introduced this notion, well think about first of all, how you'd execute it? What are the assumptions you're making? What are the assumptions you're making about the value? Why should the organization want it? And parsed it off into this simple little thing.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So that was really round two where we dealt with the intersections. Then we figured out nobody knew what to do at the front end. So the people were asking what if, but they were completely defining problems that Design Thinking wasn't suited for, or they were designing wicked problems. I get very frustrated with all this talk about Design Thinking is for wicked problems. So people think they need to tackle world hunger with it.

Daniel Stiillman:

Right.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And the reality is nobody ever safely learned by starting with tackling the wicked problem. So you need to help people define a problem in their world that they can safely attempt Design Thinking on without too much visibility and risk to themselves, but that is meaningful enough that it matters that you solve it.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. It's a very sweet spot of not triggering, but significant.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So the selection of the project is absolutely critical. So we ended up building a bunch of stuff in the front end that was like, well, how to scope a problem, how to know whether you had the right problem and then how to be the problem into the research plan. All of this stuff that happened before you actually went out to the field to gather data. So now we have 15 steps for gods' sake and I'm cognizant of how ridiculous it is to have 15 steps to do something creative. The reality is people don't need 15 steps after they've done it a couple of times, but the first time through those steps really happen, really are needed.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And then in the last batch of learning where we had a process and a system, we were shoving people through and it felt kind of right; the question was how to deepen it. What were we using? Where was the travel through the questions and the steps at all? Where were we still losing people? And we started reading the journals we'd been collecting. So as part of my teaching of Design Thinking of the MBAs in particular for 10 years, I've asked them to journal on a weekly basis about their experiences as we go through process. I also at different points in time would have them pulse their level of comfort at each week. We've given them some diagnostic instruments like the disc to help sort all this out.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So what we did for this book is we stepped back and just went really deep about this personal journey individuals were on and tried to mind that level of data, through ways to deepen their learning. And what we realized pretty quickly was it wasn't about the tools they were being taught, it was about the experience they were having. And so the question shifted from how to better teach the tools to how to deepen the experience of the learning at each stage, which interacts with the tools. But really what it produces is somebody who's different as a person, not somebody who's just developed this set of skills. So, it's very deep work, but it's driven by this fairly self-evident obvious work of trying to learn how to master these skills.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. So two things I just want to maybe double set or highlight in what you were talking about is the importance of the spaces between the phases and coaching or facilitative leadership to push people through these phases, even when they don't feel like they're necessarily ready for the next one. This is where learning an action really comes into place. And I want to make sure we make some time to talk about that. But first I feel like it's worth talking about the diagram.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah.

Daniel Stiillman:

There's two phases of this, where there's the doing of the thing with the tool, what somebody is experiencing and what the shift is internally that they experience at each phase. And I do think this is a really interesting aspect of an insight in your book because I don't think many people think about the changes that happen on the individual level, how Design Thinking changes how they approach the world.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Exactly. We focus Design Thinking on the products we are producing for others. So we think Design Thinking is mostly about an output for others, but it starts with ourselves and working on ourselves. And I think what we've come to believe through this research is you are not going to achieve the truly transformational impact that Design Thinking is capable of, unless innovators themselves change on the journey.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And what's interesting too, is we talk about Design Thinking this massive lump of stuff that is quite discreet. So when you go through the Design Thinking process, in some ways you can position immersion and experimentation at opposite ends, learning and action. In immersion, we're telling everybody you're supposed to be emotionally engaged. You're supposed to value the subjective, all this stuff. Then we get to experimentation learning and action, we're saying, "Okay, now you've got to detach. You got to be objective. You've got to look for confirming data." It's completely opposite behaviors that the same process is asking for. And so often, if you don't make that explicit, you just confuse the hell out of people.

Daniel Stiillman:

This is emotional agility that you're talking about, Jeanne. This diagram of the different disc profiles and what they experienced through the journey of Design Thinking, I think says we will all be experiencing joy and pain at different times. And just to acknowledge that our experience is going to be different. I want to zoom in if we can, because I loved the iceberg diagram. I think a lot of people come to Design Thinking because they want the ROI. They want innovation. They want organizational agility. And underneath the line of the iceberg are ways that people see and changes in the conversation and I don't know if that is mind-set changes because I don't think many people realize the sloshing around and disruption to the power structures that will happen.

Daniel Stiillman:

Specifically, I want to talk about the minimum viable competencies in learning in action and a quite a few... Because it seems like on the conversational level, the idea of needing to be right, what you talked about, we're all paid to be smart versus willing to be wrong. I'm a creator and I love my ideas and I'm emotionally attached to them versus I'm in a scientist or an investor, or I'm empathic to the person I'm solving for. I want all the proof versus I'm willing to accept enough to move forward into my hypothesis. I find these are tremendously challenging at the atomic scale of the conversation in an organization, needing to be right and needing proof are fundamental. And I don't think anybody starts on their Design Thinking journey thinking, "Oh, let's blow up authoritative thinking and de-center ourselves from the conversation."

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah. I do think that the whole back end of Design Thinking, the testing things is it's the real opportunity area for educators now. Most people fall in love with the process during the immersion. They're all nervous. I always joke that I have these MBAs who think they could run a giant corporation a day after graduation, but when I tell them to go, they have to go to the supermarket and interview a person, they fall apart. They're like, "Oh my God, I can't do that. That's not what I signed up for." They have this fear-

Daniel Stiillman:

Talking to strangers.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Exactly. Yeah, "I don't mind texting them, can I just text the questions to them? Do I actually have to see them?" But once they do it, a goodly percentage of them, it opens up their work. They really see the power. There's none of those good feelings in testing for the most part. The front end is about opening up new opportunities and creating possibilities. The backend is about finding out what doesn't work and stop doing it. And we are able to help learners a lot less on the backend. The kind of structure and tools that we're able to use with people on the front end, we don't have for the back end.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So in some ways I think the backend is harder to begin with. It's more universal because it isn't just Design Thinking that requires that you be good at hypothesis driven thinking, if you're trying to do agile, if you're trying to do lean start up, if you're trying to do a whole bunch of stuff, even without the front end of Design Thinking, you still have to learn how to design and run experiments. And people are generally terrible at it. Even smart, quantitatively oriented people are pretty terrible at it. They design experiments, they give them the answers that they wanted.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. You talk about fighting bias. And I feel like we should address briefly that Design Thinking can help fight bias, but it also can totally play into it.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Absolutely. One manager we talked to said that in order to do this well, you had to be able to call your own baby ugly.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And I just loved that at phrasing because it captures it. It's how do you, having engaged, then detach? Or maybe a different way to think about it is how do you remain passionate and engaged around making someone's life better while detaching yourself from any particular solution to get there?

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes. How do we do that Jeanne?

Jeanne Liedtka:

I'll put you through that. Other than by recognizing... I mean, this is a problem that doesn't belong to Design Thinking what Kahneman-Tversky, when did they start to publish about this? In the '40s or the '50s. Hypothesis, confirmation bias, probably the most well-recognized bias that's out there. We confirm what we want to believe. And so awareness becomes huge. To me, if there's a couple of threads that show up everywhere in Design Thinking, one is conversation, that it's always about conversation. Whether it's conversation with who I'm designing for, conversation with the people I'm designing with, conversation with myself. It's all about how do we structure more productive conversations in across difference and in times of threat.

Daniel Stiillman:

And as you say, Design Thinking, doesn't actually have specific tools aside from when I think about alignment and sense-making where the group dynamics are implied in affinity clustering, but they're not specifically called out. You talk about learning together through dialogue, and then turn-taking structures and listening non-defensively to critique exploring disconfirming data with curiosity. This is at the conversational level, but as you talk about in the book, Design Thinking has something to say about it. Design Thinking disrupts older patterns of conversation, but it doesn't actually... How can Design Thinking help at the conversational level changing the way that we make meaning together?

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah. Well, I think there's always in the background, this context of, is there something, is there with designed biggie. For instance, didn't we already know about brainstorming? Didn't we already know about ethnography? We certainly already knew about all this stuff that we're making part of it. Dialogue, how long has that been around? Since Socrates or something?

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes. That's true.

Jeanne Liedtka:

So what's amazing to me about Design Thinking is the way it comes together and these pieces accelerate the impact of the other pieces. And so dialogue to me and here you could go back to Peter Senge and systems thinking. He basically said everything you need to say about Design Thinking back when he wrote The Fifth Discipline, only nobody could do it. The [inaudible 00:30:00] was too hard. So even people who got it know they should be doing it. The ladder of inquiry and all that stuff; it was more than most people can actually handle. And so the simplicity of Design Thinking, saying, "Okay, there's these things..."

Jeanne Liedtka:

First of all, there's turn taking. So everybody has to go around the table and take a turn. Second there's the no debate rule, which is if you find yourself defending something and listening to argue, rather than listening to understand, stop talking about that and talk about something else and come back to that later. There's things like, think about the diversity in your group; do you have requisite variety? The group composition has to match the nature of the problem. I mean there's visualization which is-

Daniel Stiillman:

Can we just pause on that very briefly, because most people don't... I actually had Paul Pangaro on my podcast way back in season one. This is a concept from cybernetics that many people are not familiar with. And I was so overjoyed to see you talk about this, the idea of a group of people as complex as the problem. That is who you need to invite into the challenge.

Jeanne Liedtka:

To me the two-

Daniel Stiillman:

Diversity of what are we inviting into the conversation as you said.

Jeanne Liedtka:

In the [inaudible 00:31:13], right? And I mean, of course we tend to go to one extreme or the other in my experience with people. I work with museums and social service organizations, they basically want to invite everybody into the conversation, everybody. And businesses want to go off and have a retreat with only the senior executives in McKinsey.

Daniel Stiillman:

Right.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And the reality of it is every problem drives a different kind of conversation and a different group. And you kind of have to work backwards from the problem as to who should be in the conversation. And so we have this kind of the last bastion of executive privilege is strategy, for instance so you don't invite anybody into that. And then at the other extreme is what I think of as the kumbaya effect, where we think all we have to do is put all these people who are different in the room and ask them to talk and good things will happen, which is absolutely not true.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Somewhere in the middle are what some people have called these micro structures, where you structure the conversation and you control the conversation. You don't control the people, you don't control the content of what they talk about; what you control is the structure of the conversation. And I mean, we can go back to, well, the UN calls it the democratic dialogue, is their phrase for it. We used to have search committees or search... What is it? It was searches that was kind of community organizing. In architecture, we had the Duany Plater-Zyberk kind of put everybody together for a week and design a whole town of the charrette. So it's been called many things and it's floated around for a long time. But it's really only when you couple it with designs immersive front end.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Because you can't let people let go of their own parochial perspectives unless you give them something more powerful to latch onto. But the front end of Design Thinking says is, look, here's what we're all going to latch onto; we're going to all commit to this person we're designing for, and we're going to design what they want and need given the current reality of their lives. And that's what we're going to align around. And out of that comes emergence, which is our ability to work together across difference to come up with higher order solutions that no one of us could ever had.

Daniel Stiillman:

So I want to give two shout outs. One is if, I'll share it with you and for people listening, I had Leslie and Noel on my podcast at the beginning of the season, she talks about decolonizing Design Thinking. And this question of who do we invite in the conversation? Which direction is the conversation going? Are we helping the other, or is the other here, who controls that dialogue? And the other is I don't know if you've read Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. He talks about aboriginal ways of thinking and making and talking.

Daniel Stiillman:

And I used to always talk to teams about air talk and he talks about sand talk. His book is drawing on the ground, is like a fundamentally ancient way of dialoguing. And I think what Design Thinking does to change the conversation is, well, we're not just going to go talk to a bunch of people, but we're going to make a persona. And we're going to sit around the fire of the persona and meditate on that and look at it. We're going to look at the journey map together. It puts the conversation in another place, it takes it outside of our heads.

Jeanne Liedtka:

My own head. Exactly. So visualization is the other piece, right? So we've got the user-driven ethnographic deep understanding piece. We've got the conversational rules piece, then we've got the visualization piece. And the three of those together make a form of collaboration possible. It wasn't possible with just dialogue. It wasn't possible with just the search conferences. Just brainstorming or just ethnography was never going to produce it either. It's this coming together, this gestalt of design all coming together and that's what's really unique about it. It's the kind of accelerating effect that they have on each other when they work together well that I think is so amazing about it. But you need the whole thing. I mean, [crosstalk 00:35:24]-

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah, it's a cycle.

Jeanne Liedtka:

It's not like you can't use pieces of it, sure you can. But transformation, I think requires that you buy the whole package and commit to work through.

Daniel Stiillman:

As a consultant I perfectly agree with you that they have to buy the whole pa... They can't just buy the first part, you have to get the whole thing. I think it would be remiss of us to not talk about the minimum viable competencies holistically, because I think one thing that's interesting is many people think of Design Thinking as a tool kit that they can acquire without changing who they are. And what you're showing in this self-reflective tool is building our own personal development plan based on my own perception of, am I listening to understand? Do I observe versus interpret? How am I with my comfort of ambiguity? Can I engage in co-creation? Do I build on the ideas of others? And being very clear about the inner growth I want to engage in. I get to choose which of these minimum viable competencies I want to grow in. And I've been teaching Design Thinking for a long time. I feel like the inner aspect of connecting it to a personal growth plan is profound. I don't see it integrated often.

Jeanne Liedtka:

I don't know if you've ever tried to read Heidegger, I've tried and failed. But one of the things he talks about that has been enormously influential for me is this notion of the withheld. And it's this idea that we all have a better higher version of ourselves inside. But then we share it very selectively, mostly just with our family and friends and things like that. We rarely invite people to bring it into the workplace. And you can't insist on it. You basically create the conditions that invite someone to share their withheld, right?

Jeanne Liedtka:

And to me, that's a lot of the magic of this. I mean, it's very similar to Theory U, [inaudible 00:37:30] work. It's this notion of the future is inside of us; we just have to get it out. And we need to figure out how to lose all these dysfunctional kind of competitive habits and things like that, that prevent us really tapping into the richness that a diversity of perspective brings. But people need to know what specific behaviors to change. So for instance, you can send someone out and say, "Now, go out and do [inaudible 00:38:05]." And you can read all about anthropologists and all that.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But the reality of it is you've got to work on their listening skills. There's a very specific set of fields. You listen differently in order to do this work well. And what I would have often been frustrated about is that it's all this vague abstract kind of stuff with Design Thinking. And the reality of it is if you want to make anything measurable, if you want to be able to demonstrate increases from competency, if you want to connect, for instance, people's individual learning with organizational goals and strategies and all that kind of stuff, you need observable behaviors. You can't assess someone's mindset. You don't have access, I mean over time may be.

Daniel Stiillman:

No it's hidden as you say.

Jeanne Liedtka:

We have translated to things that are specific and that I can observe in other people as well. But one of the things I'm really excited about that we experimented a little with in my MBA class this year was the 360 version of that instrument. So I can make a self-assessment, I can decide where I want to work and what matters to me; I can pick a couple of things, and then I can get feedback with people who are working really closely with me to give me the kind of reality check on am I seeing a version of me that no one else is? Am I diluted?

Daniel Stiillman:

Right. Am I respecting other people's viewpoints? You tell me whether I'm respecting your viewpoints or not.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And we all know that many of the people who are most active in teaching this stuff are the ones who don't practice it. So you need to [crosstalk 00:39:48] again.

Daniel Stiillman:

I try.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yeah, exactly. We try. I mean, I have to say one of the things I find interesting these days is I've gained a lot of self-awareness around, for instance, my personality type and I'm a driver, so I always want action. I want to go, go, go. I kind of run over people who don't agree with me, that's kind of stuff I got. I said now, after all these years of self-awareness, I now realize that I'm doing that, but I still do it. I just feel poopy for it. So when somebody [crosstalk 00:40:23]-

Daniel Stiillman:

That's a step.

Jeanne Liedtka:

I've always substituted guilt for lack of awareness, but it is a step. Because once you got to get people to jail and to recognize that what they're doing is wrong before they have any incentive to do what's right.

Daniel Stiillman:

They have to see the gap.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But you can't say to someone here, "Just go do better ethnography." You can say to them, "How are you listening? Are you listening through your own solution?" So in the diaries of the students, you can see it. Their awareness that they're listening through their own solution. It's really profound when they realize to what extent they're doing that.

Daniel Stiillman:

And just to highlight the importance of creating space. When you talk about designing the conversation, enforcing the boundary and defining the space for this type of internal reflection, to have the conversation with other people and to make it specific so that it can be practical and fruitful is profound. We're running low on time together. I'd love for you to just reflect for a moment, since we're talking about the importance of reflection, what haven't I asked you? What's important to say that hasn't been said, and are there any ahas that you want to check out with from this conversation?

Jeanne Liedtka:

As an educator, one of the things that's wonderful for me is that coaching really makes a difference. The teaching really makes a difference. Leadership really makes a difference. I mean in strategy, I was raised as a strategist where you basically want the McDonald's model, which is you want to build all the intelligence into the system because human beings are unreliable. And you can do that in a lot of things. You cannot do that in innovation because you can't do that and create new worlds. So what's special about this is that every individual can make a difference. I mean, I love how small scale Design Thinking is. That's one of the reasons why it's so subversive.

Jeanne Liedtka:

I talk to teachers and teachers are rule followers generally, and they're waiting to be given permission by the school superintendent or something to go off and do these new behaviors. But I can say to them, "Look, go into your class tomorrow and just turn some of this stuff. Try just focusing on making the lives of the 20 kids that are looking at you better and learning richer." You don't need anybody's permission to do that. You don't need a lot of money to do that. You don't need to be a smarter, better person to do that. You just need to do stuff like listen differently and try and see how they see the world. And allow them to test your ideas and allow them to be the decision maker, what works for them and what doesn't.

Jeanne Liedtka:

These are really simple things that you can bring to people. And in a world that's so complex with so many wicked problems where we so often feel like it's out of control and there's nothing we can do about it. The fact that you can give people back a confidence in their ability to control part of their world; even if it's a little part, that's really important to me, that's really critical and I think we all need that now. So the needs that Design Thinking fulfills are much bigger than just innovation or a better product, or...

Jeanne Liedtka:

Even things like building trust, I think they're giving us faith and hope that we can act and we can make a difference and we can make people's lives better and that just feels good. I think I worry... A lot of times when you're implementing stuff in business organizations, you're really fighting a tide. I mean, shareholder value never made anybody feel better other than the shareholder who was getting money at the end of it.

Daniel Stiillman:

I know it briefly then.

Jeanne Liedtka:

But Design Thinking feels good. And at a grassroots level, a lot of people just want to keep doing it. So it makes me more optimistic because we know organizational change is incredibly hard.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And I don't like to spend a lot of time telling people how their organizational culture needs to change in order to support this because nobody controls that, it just makes them feel powerless and it's incredibly difficult work to do. You can go off tomorrow and you can listen differently and you can shift the conversation in the small world you live in. And in the long-term those small shifts can make a huge difference. And so I think that's a subversive element I've always loved.

Jeanne Liedtka:

As a child of the Woodstock Generation, I inherently distrust authority and I don't have a lot of faith in reforming bureaucracies in large organizations. But I do have a lot of faith in individual people and in their innate desire to help other people and to better control their own world and find meaning in their worlds something that people like Dan Pink have been talking about for a long time. And I think Design Thinking as simple as it is, it can bring a lot of those kinds of profound things to people where it works.

Daniel Stiillman:

Thank you for that. The idea of forgiveness over permission; I remember the first time somebody said that to me, it is profound. It is hard to think about bucking the system and pushing back. But at the conversational level, you can have power over the conversation, power to invite people or disinvite them to a meeting, but the power to actually silence someone, we have the ability to express ourselves in the conversation. It may not make you very popular to ask why or who is this for, and what is the value of this to the end customer? And all of the questions that Design Thinking asks us to ask, we can ask in the moment on the conversational level.

Jeanne Liedtka:

And you know the trouble I have with the permission versus forgiveness stuff; the whole point of experimentation is when you blow it, you don't have to ask permission because nobody even noticed. So much of the benefit of Design Thinking is as risk manager. I mean, it's treated as this airy berry thing, but it's a risk management tool. It teaches us how to fail cheaply and quickly so that nobody else does notice. So you don't need to ask either permission or forgiveness, you just learn and you move on. And I think that's a really important aspect of Design Thinking that we're done just saying, look, embrace your failure. We're saying, make your failure insignificant in which case yeah, sure I'll embrace insignificant failure. Nobody wants to embrace visible giant embarrassing failure.

Daniel Stiillman:

A prototype in people's minds is often a pilot. Whereas what you're talking about is something so small, trying something so small, the tiny domino that it's like, "Oh, I learn something," but no one else... I call it failing cheaply quickly and quiet.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Yes. Exactly. And we don't even think of that. We've been so ingrained to think big. I mean, Design Thinking is about thinking as small as possible. The possibility you envision maybe big, but the risks you take, we want to keep as small as possible. It's the way entrepreneurs have to early on or aren't bank robbed by lots of money and so I think there's a lot of struggle team. There's a lot of depth to all this Design Thinking stuff. It's so much more than a bundle of tools, but it is those tools that make possible everything else. They're the drivers of the experience. Now, my belief is you can't get really good at the tools unless you have a deep experience of that part of Design Thinking, but you also can't have the deep experience unless you're trying hard with the tools. So it's a very symbiotic relationship I think.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yeah. Doing, experiencing and becoming there's a virtuous cycle. We really should check out, Jeanne Liedtka people should go on the internet to find you where they should buy your multiple books. I'll provide links to all of them but is there one place you'd like to make sure that people go on the internet to learn more about all things, Jeanne Liedtka?

Jeanne Liedtka:

Well of course I've created a website like everybody else that is just like jeanneliedtka.com. And I've tried to put everything on that, the educational piece, the writing piece, all of those together. The nice part of having a really weird name is that there's hardly anybody else on the internet that you can confuse with me. So in fact I'm pretty easy to find and the university is good at creating web pages and all of that kind of stuff. So, I'm all over the place out there, trying to [inaudible 00:49:52] that's probably harder. But I often think that we suffer from plenty, not scarcity. And so having a place to start and it kind of contained world to explore, I think can be really important in a world where we have too much information not true.

Daniel Stiillman:

Yes. That's completely fair. And lesson learned on Design Thinking I agree. It's giving people a slice of the elephant rather than the whole one. So I'll direct people to that. Jeanne, thank you so much for writing the book, I think people should read it. It is an important perspective on this thing that some people think they know everything about. And some people aren't at the beginning of their journey of, but I think both people can learn a lot from what you've written. So thanks for your time.

Jeanne Liedtka:

Oh, and thank you for asking me great questions Daniel.

Daniel Stiillman:

That's my job. Well, we'll call Singh. I know we're at time...

Coaching Executive Mindsets

I am obsessed with culture, change and transformation…and always puzzling over how it really happens.

One thing I know for sure: Forcing change, telling people to change, doesn’t make it happen.

I think there are two ways to profoundly facilitate change. One is:

💫 ASKING PEOPLE QUESTIONS THAT SHIFT THE CONVERSATION.

When I talk about Conversational Leadership in my book, Good Talk, this is what I mean: We can transform how other people think, not by telling them how or what to think, but by framing and fostering a new conversation.

The other way is by:

💥FACILITATING EXPERIENCES THAT FOSTER AN “AHA” MOMENT.

This means, for me, asking a series of questions, and making space for conversations that bring people into a new mode of thinking - the other side of an “a-ha”.

This is why I love to say "an experience is worth a thousand slides" We can throw a thousand slides at a group and never see the shift we want to foster.

Recently, my friend Jeff Gothelf did a lovely write-up of an experience I led for one of his clients, one of my favorite exercises: The vase and flowers game. It's always thrilling to see one's impact through someone else's eyes. My reflections and his reflections are both linked here.

Back in May, I offered a free workshop to subscribers to my Conversation Factory Insiders group walking through this exercise and a few others. I'd love to have you join that conversation...we meet every month to learn and grow together!

I’m so grateful Jeff came on the show to reflect on his journey, how key partnerships and relationships have been essential to his success, and to share some of the most powerful questions he asks leaders to shift their mindsets and thinking.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND RESOURCES

Forever Employable by Jeff Gothelf

Becoming Forever Employable

How to Inspire Creativity and Innovation with One Simple Prompt by Jeff Gothelf

"Intuitive UI" is Not a Feature by Jeff Gothelf

The Big Lie of Strategic Planning by Roger L. Martin

Minute 7

There's something really powerful about having an accountability partner, right? There's the sense, especially if you're self-employed, or a consultant, or a freelancer that you've got to do it all by yourself.

And you don't. But, if you can find someone who can function, not only as a friend, but as a colleague and as an accountability partner, it makes a tremendous amount of difference. It really starts to force you to challenge your own thinking. And frankly, just to commit to certain things that you would probably have let drag on forever. And so it's super powerful.

Minute 14

For me, I've found that in my teaching, it's been a series of prompt questions that prompt them to think differently. So for example, one of the big questions I ask these days, especially when I'm talking about objectives and key results, because organizations are so focused on output to get them thinking about outcome. One of the big, most powerful prompt questions I ask is. "What will people be doing differently when we deliver the app, the service, the feature?" Whatever it is, because they never think about that, right? There's such a fixation on delivery that, just prompting them to think about the next thing. Okay, what happens then? What will people be doing differently if we do a great job?

Minute 17

And so with this traditional top-down thinking where it's like, "Well, I'm the boss. And so I have the answers." Will just make a vase to hold flowers and people will get as creative as they can. But at the end of the day, it's going to be a container that holds water and flowers.

It might be decorated. It might be hexagonal. It might be round. Right? But nevertheless, it's going to all be sort of variations on a theme. As soon as you say, "Come up with a way to experience flowers." Boom. Right? You've taken off the constraints. You said, look, our goal is to get people, to have this type of amazing experience, figure out the best way to do that. And so there's a couple of things that happen there. Number one is you've sort of taken the blinders off and you've expanded the space for people to come up with ideas and they will do it.

Minute 28

And one of my favorite pair of questions that comes from Roger Martin, legendary business professor and author. And he wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2014, called the Big Lie of Strategic Planning. In that article, he boils down product strategy into two questions. Where will you play? And how will you win? Right? And to me, those are fantastic prompts for any team, including a design team, right? Where will you play? What's the market segment? What's the target audience? What problem you're solving for them, right? Why would they care? And then how will you win? And I guarantee you, if an executive gave you those two questions and you came back with "intuitive UI," they would puke on that. And rightfully so.

Minute 34

It's the same reason why I wrote the book, right? I wrote the book not just to share my story, but because I believe this is the future of professional development and career. I believe that taking control of the narrative, telling your story, owning your brand, and then creating a reality where you are continuously attracting opportunities towards you is the future of careers and career growth. And I know there's a ton of people who want to do this. They face a tremendous amount of obstacles sometimes self-imposed, sometimes not.

And so the hypothesis here is that I can create a community of like motivated individuals, where they can find feedback for their work, accountability to get their content done and published, and mutual amplification where they can kind of help each other out. And so, in a sense, it's a self perpetuating cycle of folks growing together, helping each other, and essentially taking steps together towards becoming forever employable.

MORE ABOUT JEFF

Jeff helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Lean UX and the Harvard Business Review Press book Sense & Respond.

Starting off as a software designer, Jeff now works as a coach, consultant and keynote speaker helping companies bridge the gaps between business agility, digital transformation, product management and human-centered design.

Most recently Jeff co-founded Sense & Respond Press, a publishing house for practical business books for busy executives. His most recent book, Forever Employable, was published in June 2020.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

Hey Jeff, thanks for making the time for this conversation. Welcome to the Conversation Factory.

Jeff Gothelf:

My pleasure Daniel. It's nice to be producing conversation in the factory, manufacturing conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

I know, I feel like there should be a sound of the hammer on the anvil.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right. Machinery and the backgrounds churning out conversations.

Daniel Stillman:

That was by the way, one of the first logos I made for the Conversation Factory, was an Anvil and a hammer. And then it was a factory with voice bubble clouds. And then my friend was like, "Are you trying to say that the conversations are pollution that comes out of [crosstalk 00:00:38], got to work on that visual metaphor." And so we did. So Jeff, you require no introduction, but if people are completely unaware of who you are and why you're important, can we put you in context?

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah, I'm important because I fathered, and parent two amazing girls.

Daniel Stillman:

Love it.

Jeff Gothelf:

That's why I'm important, with my wife, of course, not by myself. Couldn't have done any of that stuff without her. Professionally, I co-wrote a book called Lean UX with Josh Seiden. In fact, I co-wrote that book three times with John Seiden, once in 2013, once in 2016, and once again, in 2021, this is our third edition, which is very exciting. It will be out later this year. I've worked as a designer and a product manager and a team leader and over the last decade or so. I've been working as a coach, a consultant, a keynote speaker, and a trainer teaching companies, how to build great products and teaching leaders, how to build the cultures that build great products. And that's kind of how I spend most of my time these days, although in recent days. Just from the comfort of my home office, more so than anywhere else.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. And we're going to talk a lot about the leaders and culture thing, but first I want to take a step back because I think what you and Josh have is very special. Maybe it's just me, if you've ever watched Lord of the Rings.

Jeff Gothelf:

I have.

Daniel Stillman:

One of the things I love about Lord of the Rings is just guys crying together. They're just like, "We're here. That was hard. I love you. Let's keep going." And it gets me every time I think guys need more friends, men need men friends, and you and Josh have something really special. You are deep collaborators.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. We've been working together for 12 years. I think I met him in 2008. That's roughly what we estimate to be. In New York city in some design leadership, networking thing. And then I ended up on stage at various events with panels and things like that and I was like, "There's that guy again." Every time I looked to my left or to my right, I was like, "There's that guy again." And it worked really well, and we worked both well.

Jeff Gothelf:

The reason why we work well together besides just sort of just getting along generally speaking. I think there's a couple of things. One is we have complimentary qualities, like a yin and yang as opposed to sort of identical quality. So for example, I am, "Well, let's just jump out of the airplane and figure it out." Right? And Josh is like, "Before we jumped out of the airplane, can we just like, at least look and see what we're flying over?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right? "Is it land, is it sea?"

Daniel Stillman:

Does it have a rip cord? Is it attached to a parachute?

Jeff Gothelf:

Right. Is there a parachute.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Jeff Gothelf:

And the nice thing about that, there's a lot of that tension both in our professional relationship because I'm eager to ship stuff and he slows me down a little bit, which is good, it comes out better. But then I also sort of, he would sit on it forever and never ship it if it wasn't for me. Right? So it's, I pull him out of the airplane with me at some point, let's just ship it and see what happens. That's hugely helpful. Hugely helpful because it allows us to not only get stuff out into the world, but get stuff out into the world that is a decent quality. Right? And I think that goes a long way.

Jeff Gothelf:

The other aspect, I think that's really helpful in our relationship is we are super comfortable and look, it takes time to get there, let's be honest. But we're super comfortable being very honest about situations that arise in our dealings together that one of us deems as unfair, or unfair I guess, it's never dishonest, but it's more like "Hey, listen, I did a ton of work on this thing. Right? And I really think that I should get a slightly bigger cut of the thing." For example. I have no issues being like, "Okay, I did most of the work on this." Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Jeff Gothelf:

And he'd be like, "Yeah, you did, and that's okay." Right? Or that type of thing. The other day, perfect example of this. We teach together all the time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so sometimes he wins the work and sometimes I win the work, but we always bring the other end to teach the course because we built the course together. The videos are both of us, that type of thing. Recently I closed a particularly demanding client. And it took a long time to bring the client over the finish line, lots of procurement, lots of big company, procurement stuff to go through it again. Normally, I don't even think twice, I'm like, "It's a 50/50 split." That type of thing. But the other day I was like, "Look, Hey, I brought this client over the finish line." I was like, "This one was work." It was like, I reeled this one, this was a big one. Right? Like I reeled this one in for a while.

Jeff Gothelf:

And three hours later, a nice bottle of Mezcal shows up at my door. Right? Literally three hours later. Right? It's stuff like that, that that has really helped us be super successful together. And I think generally we like each other, we get along and we have similar interests and we're both like steely Dan, which is, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but it's the truth.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, the ties that bind.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

I think what's interesting about this and I'll just highlight this. When we think about culture, this kind of powerful, paired relationship and give and take, yin and yang of let's launch, let's check is a really important and powerful polarity. And I think it's really great that you have it in your work. And I feel like everyone should look for that in their work.

Jeff Gothelf:

There's something really powerful about having an accountability partner, right? There's the sense, especially if you're self-employed, or a consultant, or a freelancer that you've got to do it all by yourself.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Jeff Gothelf:

And you don't. But, if you can find someone who can function, not only as a friend, but as a colleague and as an accountability partner, it makes a tremendous amount of difference. It really starts to force you to challenge your own thinking. And frankly, just to commit to certain things that you would probably have let drag on forever. And so it's super powerful.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I just want to celebrate that. And so my own experience of coming into that relationship was electrifying. When Josh called me and said, "Hey, we would love for you to do a set piece." You wrote the blockbuster Design Thinking, Lean and Agile, medium posts that became a book. And I was really glad to... Even though, design thinking is not the core of what I do anymore. I was like, I'll be honest. I'll just say this out loud. You guys threw money at me. You're like, "This is what we know it costs, and come and do this thing." And it made it very possible for me to jump in with both feet and take your attitude of like, "Oh, so we did some slides. Okay, what do we need?" Like, "Oh, here's my favorite thing." And just be part of that party with you too, is really easy to enter into that.

Jeff Gothelf:

Lovely, that's great to hear. Look, I think there's another aspect of the success we've had together is that we know where we're good, and we know where we're less good. And we know where others are better than us. There's ego. I mean, there's ego and everything, but there's not so much ego that we can't say, look, I could stumble my way through a design thinking workshop and Josh could do the same, but Daniel's good at this. And he's done this a lot, and he's better than us. So let's bring him in. Everybody wins.

Daniel Stillman:

It was fun. So here's the thing I want to roll back because Lean UX, and I don't think this is a great secret, but sense and respond was a sense and respond to people saying Lean UX. We want our bosses to be reading, thinking, being part of this conversation and sense and respond was like, "Here, CEO's read this." And so the main reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you was if we're trying to create these cultures of learning and excellence in these most important ideas in innovation of design thinking, lean and agile, how do we get the executive leadership team, the senior managers to think differently? And my theory is an experience is worth a thousand slides, right? We can sit with them and say, "Here's all the slides and here's all the case studies." but there's an opportunity to get in the room with them and to give them an eye-opening experience that changes how they think.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. Look, to me, that's the most powerful thing that you can do. I think that there is a mix though, right? There's a little bit of a case to be made, and it's not a big case, and it's not a complicated case because I've had these conversations with executives. The case being, you are in the software business so Sense and Respond, the book, the first half of the book makes the case that you're in the software business, right? That's how you scale. That's how you compete. Technologies would drive success these days.

Jeff Gothelf:

And then very, very quickly to make the case. That's that says, "Look, here are what the top performing tech companies, here's what they are capable of right now." It's such a powerful, say for example, Amazon ships code to production every second, right? Every second, when we wrote Sense and Respond, it was every 11.6 seconds. Today, it's every second, right? That is such a powerful statistic and it typically terrifies an executive, right? Because they know how long their organization takes to get new ideas out into market.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so saying, "Look, you can't manage your business in this old-school way when you're competing with organizations." Everyone has the same capabilities available to them today, to be able to get ideas into market as quickly as you can create them, right? As quickly as you can. And so that plus the experience then of saying, "Look, come into the room with the customers, come watch them use the thing." Just anything at all should in theory, motivate some kind.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know if you can hear the subtle sigh in Jeff's voice, where it should, and so facts are one way to wake people up, like giving them that like it's every second and then there're feelings.

Jeff Gothelf:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Daniel Stillman:

Which is, watch the customer feel their pain. And then hopefully they get some insights out of that. And I guess I'm a big proponent of, and I've seen these discussions in some of the communities that you and I are part of. Like, I used to play blank game with these folks to teach them about this. How do I teach this blank concept to people now? And I don't know, what are some of your favorite ways of getting groups of people to open up their eyes to a way of thinking that's important to you?

Jeff Gothelf:

For me, it's less about games. I don't know that I've ever successfully incorporated games into. I mean, I've done it a couple times, done what you might call it, that Pictionary game with Post-it notes where you draw the picture and then you write on top of it-

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, visual telephone?

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. Visual telephone. That's what it's called. Yeah. I forgot what it was called.

Daniel Stillman:

It's hard to play online, but possible.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yes. That's a great one for showing how handoffs and how communication mutates through series of handoffs. For me, I've found that in my teaching, it's been a series of prompt questions that prompt them to think differently. So for example, one of the big questions I ask these days, especially when I'm talking about objectives and key results, because organizations are so focused on output to get them thinking about outcome. One of the big, most powerful prompt questions I ask is. "What will people be doing differently when we deliver the app, the service, the feature?" Whatever it is, because they never think about that, right? There's such a fixation on delivery that, just prompting them to think about the next thing. Okay, what happens then? What will people be doing differently if we do a great job?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right? And then, okay. Then what are people doing today, right? And where's that gap and why does that gap exist? And so you're sort of leading them down this path. I do it with questions, less so with games, but that to me, those are the kinds of prompts that at least open up new ways of thinking about the work.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Finding a really, really directed question. And I feel like there's sometimes it's the logical sequencing of the question where you say, you don't just say, what will people be doing differently? You start with, what do you want? What are you going to make and dot, dot, dot, let's think about the real impact, let's not leave that out.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yes, exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

The reason I wanted to have this conversation with you is because it was really eye-opening for me and always really nice that the vase and flower exercise resonated with you and seemed to reveal some deeper truth about the questions of design, and what are we designing. Capital D design versus lowercase D design. And I want to peel apart some of those layers with you in this conversation, what did the, the question of, are we making a vase versus a way of experiencing flowers open up for you? What was surprising about it to you?

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. It's amazing to me having seen her in action a few times now, how powerful, again, a simple prompt, right? The change in the prompt can make people think about this and it showcases the power of creative, like how much creativity lies in an organization. Right? And how much creativity do you unleash simply by changing the prompt?

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so with this traditional top-down thinking where it's like, "Well, I'm the boss. And so I have the answers." Will just make a vase to hold flowers and people will get as creative as they can. But at the end of the day, it's going to be, a container that holds water and flowers

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Jeff Gothelf:

It might, it might be decorated. It might be hexagonal. It might be round. Right? But nevertheless, it's going to all be sort of variations on a theme. As soon as you say, "Come up with a way to experience flowers." Boom. Right? You've taken off the constraints. You said, look, our goal is to get people, to have this type of amazing experience, figure out the best way to do that. And so there's a couple of things that happen there. Number one is you've sort of taken the blinders off and you've expanded the space for people to come up with ideas and they will do it. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

You made it safe and okay for them to do this. And so they will do it. That to me is amazing. The variety and diversity of ideas that come up are incredible. Right? You can eat the flowers, you can make them digital. People will come up with a thousand different ways to do this. And then it always brings us back to this continuous learning and improvement and agility conversation. So, we've got creativity, we've got innovation. And then it brings it home because it says, "Okay, great. We had 50 people in the room. We have 50 different ways to experience flowers, which one is the best one?" Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

And how do you know? And that again comes back to that prompt. What will people be doing differently if we give them the ideal way to experience flowers?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so, to me, it's such a powerful shift in thinking. It not only changes kind of what the teams do, but it actually explicitly creates the safe space for creativity to take place, which does not exist with, make me a vase.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Yeah. I feel like what I've seen and some of the cultures that I've practiced it in, people do it. And they say, "We are told, we are given so many just do projects. Just go do blank." But then they find out there's much more behind the request. And so doing this exercise with the executive leadership teams, I've been prototyping this recently, it gives me an opportunity to say, "This is what your people are doing. They're telling us, they think you're asking for them for questions over here on the vase side. And I believe you probably have a whole host of ways you can ask them for what you really want. Sometimes it's okay to say, "Yeah. Give me a hexagonal vase that holds flowers, but probably what you need most of the time is, I wanted to find the outcome, not the output. I want the experience, not the object."

Daniel Stillman:

I think for me personally, I think in terms of changing a culture of an organization to be more human centered, I noticed when people draw a vase, is it's a vase. Sometimes there are flowers, mostly not. When you draw a way of experiencing flowers, there are people there's action. There's emotion. There is life. There is an experience. And it's like, what's a vast foR? A vase is for experiencing flowers, but we don't picture the person. And we don't picture the emotion. And that to me is that's one of the uh-huh that I like to give people is like, "This is what we are really trying to do. The outcome is the human experience.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. That's a really great observation actually, that you see they actually put the people into the creation, right? Like you, you see faces, and bodies, and eyes, and things.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It tickled me that you were like, "This says something about design." What does design mean to you? What's important about, and why do you value design? What's important about design?

Jeff Gothelf:

It's interesting. Everybody suffers at the hands of bad design. And everybody knows when they come across it, everyone's frustrated by it. Just the simple things, perfect example, right? So I've got a smart TV and that smart TV-

Daniel Stillman:

So smart.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right. The smartest TV. And that smart TV runs all the streaming services. Right? We've got Netflix, and Amazon, and HBO, and Disney. We've got all the streaming services. I have one remote control for the TV, right? The remote control literally functions differently for every single one of the streaming services. Right? And to be clear, it works best in Netflix. Right? When Netflix is the service that's running now, everything's sort of, the universal remote works, how you'd expect it to work. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

With prime, it's a disaster. with Disney, you have to exit the service once you've selected a movie that you don't want to see to come back to the top. Right? That's designed, right? That's thinking about the experience, right? We sit down in the evening right now and we're like, "Hey, should we watch Amazon, Disney or Netflix?" I'd say at least half the time we choose Netflix, just because it works better. Right? Everything just is easier to use from every perspective. It just makes it more compelling to use the service. To me, that's design.

Jeff Gothelf:

You've not only solve the problem for me. You're not only providing some kind of an experience for me, but you've thought through how to make it as efficient, as simple, and in the right cases, delightful for me to use that service. And the net result is outcomes, right? The net result is out of three services, 50% of the time we choose Netflix. And then 50% of the time, which is the other two, one of the other two. So they're sharing a percentage, right? And that's incredibly powerful. That's what it means to me.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, and I think with the implication that I'm hearing there is in the context of this exercise, experience, we can say you're a technology company, and that is true, but we are also, everybody is an experienced company. Andy Pauline's is not here, so we have to say it for us, right? Everything that you think is a product is probably a service, because people experience your product over time. People experience your product in a larger context. Even of what you make is pants, people still see it on the rack. Look at it, look at the tag, reverse it. And you've seen this, right? Sometimes you can't read what's on the tag.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Another company, the tag and you're like, "This tag is a journey. I've been transported into the world of Gore-Tex by this tag." Gore-Tex tags are amazing. They designed the hell out of their tags. They've made it an experience. And I think to me, this is the soul of design. Design implies an experience for a person that we are designing for. And if we're not thinking about them, what are we doing here?

Jeff Gothelf:

I recently wrote a blog post called Intuitive UI is Not a Feature.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Jeff Gothelf:

And like many of my blog posts, they're born out of some recent client-based frustration, right? Where inevitably I've been doing a lot of products work lately and a lot of products strategy work with some clients. I've been challenging the clients to write good product strategy work. And literally, I'd say at least half, if not three quarters of the product strategy work that I've done recently, has at some points come back from the client with a declaration that they will win the market with an intuitive UI.

Jeff Gothelf:

And I'm like, "You've said nothing." Right? "You literally said nothing" Because I guarantee you, you're not going to set out to build an unintuitive UI. Right? "You're not telling me a thing. You haven't done the work. You're not going to deliberately build an unintuitive UI." It's not to say there aren't crappy lies out there. There's a ton.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes, but they're not doing it on purpose.

Jeff Gothelf:

But they're not doing it on purpose. Right? And so this idea of intuitive UI is an abdication of design leadership, frankly, and design work. And it's risk to good design actually making it into the final product. Right? I would much rather have you bring an opinion that says, "We are going to win the market by having one click shopping." Right? At the very least you've got, you've got a sense of what that looks like. Right? We are going to have the shortest possible mortgage application form, something along those lines, right?

Jeff Gothelf:

That is a far more compelling product strategy than intuitive UI and that's design work. Right? That's you doing the design work to say traditionally, mortgage applications are 17,000 steps long and people inevitably drop out, 98% of people drop out before they complete it. Right? So we're going to solve that problem.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right? You're not going to solve that problem with an intuitive UI. You're going to do design work. You're going to do research work, and you're going to determine, right? What the optimum number of questions that you need to ask to make that a successful process. And again, it may not be the shortest possible process, because people might be like, "Well, I only answer three questions. You're going to give me a mortgage based on three questions?" Right? Somehow the legendary IDO Betty Brocker story, right? Like when they made the cake mix. They're like, "Wait, I don't add an egg. I don't do anything." And so now you've got to add egg-

Daniel Stillman:

So it's nothing.

Jeff Gothelf:

Right. But now that you have to add an egg, it's a much more legitimate product, right? That's design work, that's research work. And to me, it manifests in how you define the problem that you're solving and your hypothesis for solving it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And to me, I think this question of vase, which is a product, a commodity, a go-do in a way of experiencing flowers, which is experience, diverse thinking, being intentional about what we are, as executives giving them the eye-opening experience that they can ask better prompts of their communities, their employees, their teams, their organizations on purpose. That's their job.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. Right. And look, if you're an executive and someone hands, your product where it says, intuitive UI, you give that back to that person. Right? But that's your job. Your job is to recognize that they're not actually saying anything. Right? And again, to me, I love like when it comes to this kind of stuff, sometimes, believe it or not, sometimes some of the best prompts for design thinking come from non-designers, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf:

And one of my favorite pair of questions that comes from Roger Martin, legendary business professor and author. And he wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2014, called the Big Lie of Strategic Planning. In that article, he boils down product strategy into two questions. Where will you play? And how will you win? Right? And to me, those are fantastic prompts for any team, including a design team, right? Where will you play? What's the market segment? What's the target audience? What problem you're solving for them, right? Why would they care? And then how will you win? And I guarantee you, if an executive gave you those two questions and you came back with intuitive UI, they would puke on that. And rightfully so.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, the problem is, its incomplete thinking. So, to the prompt you asked earlier is like, "So that what?" An intuitive UI, so that people can do blank in order to accomplish blank. It's just like, "I'm giving you a vase." It's like, "So what?". "So that I can put flowers into it and it's hexagonal, so it can fit into corners. And that's how we're going to win because our vases fit into corners."

Jeff Gothelf:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Cool. Great. Now I can tell you thought a little bit more deeply about what you think this thing is and what you think it does.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. And it's amazing right there. All these things come together, right? We've got all these different design thinking and jobs to be done, and OKR, and all kinds of things.

Daniel Stillman:

I know. Jobs to be done just snuck in there. Right. I think it's-

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. Exactly. There's a guy named Bob Moesta. Bob Moesta, he was an associate of Clayton Christensen and he's one of the big jobs to be done, authors and advocates. And there's a story. I think, again, as a HBR. I read a lot of HBR. I think it was an HBR as well. And where he talks about how there were these builders who were building new townhouses and they were struggling to sell them. And they couldn't figure out why, because the townhouse had everything in it, big ceilings, multiple bathrooms and hot tubs in the master suite. And so Bob and his team came in and they were trying to figure out what the job to be done for these home buyers were. And what was interesting was the communities that were being built, were for older folks.

Jeff Gothelf:

And these older folks come with furniture. Furniture they've had with them for a long time, especially these dining room sets. And they were kind of big. I used to drag these things around too, I believe believing when I was younger. These big dining room sets and they didn't fit into the living rooms of these new construction town homes. And so the target audience, the job to be done, was not only to buy a new home, but to buy a new home that actually allowed them to bring in the furniture that made it feel like a true a home for themselves. And they couldn't because the living rooms were too small for these sort of old school, giant dining room sets.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so again, it's a design conversation. It's a research conversation. It's a customer centered design thinking conversation, like jobs to be done. It's about understanding what you're solving for and how you're going to solve for it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I feel like we only have a little bit of time left, so I want to make a, it may sound like a needle scratching across a record sound that some kids won't even know about.

Jeff Gothelf:

You may be asking yourself, how I found out, how I got here?

Daniel Stillman:

But I think all the questions you're asking yourself about the community building for forever employable, all will revolve around these same questions. And I also imagine that Money Networks is like that townhouse, right? Where you're like, "Why can't I do blank? I want to be able to do blank with these people. They bought it. They've built a software product that enables you to do certain things and not others." And you are not trying to build a vase, you're trying to build a way of experiencing flowers. You want people to come together and have real conversations about their professional growth. And you have to do it through technology.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So I'm just curious, to me, I think community building is something that everybody needs to work on. We were talking about this in our check-in on Monday, building community for ourselves in all sorts of different ways and also building community for others that we benefit from in various ways. Like I have a community facilitation, Friday, and I learn from the safe space that I've created for these folks. I learned from them every time they try something new and it pushes my edge and I have a group of people I can prototype with.

Jeff Gothelf:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Daniel Stillman:

Why are you building this community? Why go to all of the effort? I will share with you a Twitter thread that talks about how these types of communities that you and I are both trying to build are the hardest things to build, bar none.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. It's the same reason why I wrote the book, right? I wrote the book not just to share my story, but because I believe this is the future of professional development and career. I believe that taking control of the narrative, telling your story, owning your brand, and then creating a reality where you are continuously attracting opportunities towards you is the future of careers and career growth. And I know there's a ton of people who want to do this. They face a tremendous amount of obstacles sometimes self-imposed, sometimes not.

Jeff Gothelf:

And so the hypothesis here is that I can create a community of like motivated individuals, where they can find feedback for their work, accountability to get their content done and published, and mutual amplification where they can kind of help each other out. And so, in a sense, it's a self perpetuating cycle of folks growing together, helping each other, and essentially taking steps together towards becoming forever employable.

Jeff Gothelf:

So I don't have to do this by myself, right? I don't have to do this alone. I have someone I can bounce an idea off of. I have someone who will help me amplify this. I don't have to beg the community for retweets. People just kind of do this because that's what we do for each other here. That's my hope, is that people find inspiration. They find that accountability to get the work done, they find feedback for their work, so that it gets better. And then ultimately some support for getting the word out.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting. One of the phrases you just used is one of Dave Gray's way of defining culture, the way things are done around here, right? What are some of the challenges you feel like you're facing as you establish norms, and culture, and language around this, inside of this group of people?

Jeff Gothelf:

It's going to be tough. It's going to be interesting because for people who aren't used to blogging every week, for people who aren't used to tweeting every day, for people who aren't used to being on stage in front of others, there is a tremendous amount wrapped up in each one of these ideas that they want to put out there. And so, if I'm new to this and I come in, and join the community. And I share a piece and the community rips it apart, and then I share another piece and community rips that apart, I'm out of here, right? I'm not getting any value out of this.

Jeff Gothelf:

There's a real risk in the challenge is to build a safe space where people can feel comfortable sharing, but also somehow miraculously are really good at critique. That part is part of it is still missing for me, like how they will miraculously all get good at critique and feedback. There are certainly rules of the road, right? No one has any dumb ideas, et cetera. That to me is a big challenge here.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh my God, it's a universal challenge. I literally just posted, because actually this came up in our conversation on Monday, the ending of Ratatouille where I'd actually know this it's Peter O'Toole is the voice of the critic. And he-

Jeff Gothelf:

Anton Ego.

Daniel Stillman:

Anton Ego. And it's a wonderful quote about how the job of the critic is easy, but that we all have to become friends of the new. And I posted a section of the video and I tagged... I don't know if you've read Aaron Irizarry and Adam Connor's book called Discussing Design. I had them on the podcast a couple of years ago. I think it's so important to have a culture of critique and to have a framework around critique. I'm always a big fan of Rose, Thorn, Bud, because you said, "Hey, here's what I like. Here's what I don't like. And here's some potential that I see." Having a framework, I mean, you didn't ask me for advice. I'm giving you some anyway.

Jeff Gothelf:

No. It's good. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

Adam and Aaron were the whole book about it because the big myth they were trying to bust was like, "oh, critique is not just fancy feedback. It's being really intentional about the..." I mean, what I'm using my language, it's designing the conversation to say, "Here's what I was trying to solve. Here's the type of feedback I need back. Don't tell me about the colors." Right? And this is where I feel you've probably taught this a hundred times inside of organizations. I know.

Jeff Gothelf:

Sure.

Daniel Stillman:

Being intentional about how we ask for help is nontrivial.

Jeff Gothelf:

It's not. It's not, I hope and I have expectations and we'll see how it goes.

Daniel Stillman:

I think you're also like to bring it back to our first conversation. It's almost like you're hoping to create more Josh, Jeff pairs.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah. That would be amazing. If people could find their sort of their yang. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Jeff Gothelf:

Into their yang or whatever it is. Right? That would be amazing. To me, that would be a tremendous success that people can start to build those kinds of groups and do that. That's what I hope. And it's going to take some stirring and amplification from us as well, but I'm optimistic.

Daniel Stillman:

That's awesome. Okay. So my new final questions are, what are your uh-huh's from this conversation? What are you taking out from this conversation?

Jeff Gothelf:

That's a good question, actually. My uh-huh's are that framing your requests with good prompts is key to getting the answers that you want and for opening up new perspectives.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Jeff Gothelf:

And I think the other benefit of framing the questions correctly is that you actually create the safe space for the best possible answers to emerge. I think that's a thing that permeates everything that we've talked about here today. So those are the two biggest takeaways for me.

Daniel Stillman:

It does. You connected it all. That's amazing. I agree with you. That's a big uh-huh for me as well. It is our job to dial in, to ask for the conversation we want to have. And I think that's true from an executive in the middle of an organization, and also inside or outside, it's okay to ask for what you want and to frame it up, how you need. And then you can get what you need.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yes. Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

Is there anything I didn't ask you about that I should've asked you about?

Jeff Gothelf:

No, I think it folks want to join the community. They can go to becoming.foreveremployable.com and that's about it really. That's all good stuff.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I like the becoming. That's nice, because there's foreveremployable and now there's becoming.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yes. If you go to foreveremployable.com, you'll find everything about the book. And if you go to becoming.foreveremployable.com, you will go to the mighty network.

Daniel Stillman:

That was my last, last question, which is where should people go on the internet to find you? So I'm glad we addressed that.

Jeff Gothelf:

Super easy. Jeffgothelf.com, foreveremployable.com or LinkedIn. Lots of activity there these days.

Daniel Stillman:

Jeff, thanks for making the time to have this conversation with me. A lot of great things that we unpacked. So I'm glad you made the time.

Jeff Gothelf:

Yeah, this was great. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it.

Daniel Stillman:

End scene.

Jeff Gothelf:

Excellent. And wipe.

The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility

Imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display a deep regard for others’ dignity. This is the world that Marilyn Gist, author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, is working hard to bring about. Marilyn is a Professor Emerita, Executive Programs and Center of Leadership Formation at Seattle University and also a member of the MG100 coaches...a group of the top 100 leaders in the world, convened by legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. Check out my interviews with other MG100 rockstars like Ayse Birsel, author of Design the Life you love, Dorie Clark, author of *several* books, including the upcoming “Long Game” and most recently, Alisa Cohn, the top startup coach in the world, and the author of the upcoming “From Startup to Grownup”

Marilyn is working to redesign the conversation around leadership. Many folks, when they close their eyes and think “leader” , picture a light-skinned man in a dark suit, exuding alpha energy. Just do a google image search to check in with this out-moded vision of leadership.

Leaders lead. They take charge and show the way.

But leaders also need to listen, learn and understand the people they’re meant to be leading.

Marilyn has been teaching and coaching about leadership for decades and she wrote this book so that the world would stop overlooking what she calls “the one variable at the heart of leadership”

Marilyn and I dig into what Leader Humility is, what it means to have it, practice it, and live it, and practical ways to incorporate it into your work and life.

What’s at stake? In human terms, Marilyn points out the Gallup poll that suggests that only 36% of Employees Are Engaged in the Workplace. While that’s actually the highest it’s been in 20 years, since they started measuring it, it’s still really low. Gallup claims that about 14% percent of folks are actively disengaged (rather than just the 51% that is just regular-old disengaged).

On your next zoom call, look around...it might be possible that only a third of the people on the grid really care. Again, in human terms, that 60-ish percent of folks is a drag on the small percentage of folks who really care.

In financial terms, some estimate $500 billion in total losses in the US. In any one business, estimate 34% of the total salary roll. Yikes.

If you ask the average worker in the US if their leader cares about their culture

31% of leaders don’t think they have the culture they need to succeed. Their workers don’t even think they care! 9%of workers say the leadership in their organizations are very committed to culture initiatives, and 58% of respondents say that their leadership either takes no action regarding culture or are merely reactive instead of being proactive.

Marilyn suggests that workers want answers to three key questions from a leader:

1. Who are you? (Not your name - who are you really as a person? What do you stand for?)

2. Where are we going? (What is the bigger vision?)

3. And do you see me? (Am I just a cog in the wheel or do you see me at all?)

Also listen for a few of Marilyn’s Six Keys to Leadership Humility:

1. A balanced ego, 

2. Integrity

3. A compelling vision

4. Ethical strategies

5. Generous inclusion

6. A developmental focus.

Listen on to the halfway point of our conversation to hear Marilyn tell a powerful story of generous inclusion and the generous question that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft used to turn the lone dissenter on a team into a supporter of an initiative. While it would be easy and, as Marilyn points out, defensible, to go with the majority sentiment, using the skills of leadership humility can be more powerful and durable than conventional leadership.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Marilyn's Website (you can find links to her book there!)
Marilyn on Twitter

Reinvention is Building a Conversation with Dorie Clark
Designing the Life You Love with Ayse Birsel
The Art of Coaching with Alisa Cohn

Minute 5

So I'm defining humility, leader humility very specifically, it's not meekness, it's not weakness. So it can seem counterintuitive because a lot of times people associate humility with meekness. I'm talking about a different aspect of it, which is feeling and displaying deep regard for others' dignity, really showing up, showing respect for other people's dignity. And that's what sets people on fire because most leaders don't do that, unfortunately.

Minute 8

People have hearts. They're whole human beings, they come to the work and every single one is different. And this idea of dignity is really that individual sense of self-worth, what is it that goes into their sense that I'm valuable as a human being? And every human being has and needs a sense of self worth. So if we can honor that, if we can support that in our leadership, then we've got people's attention. If we step all over it, they start to withdraw or resist.

Minute 16

Hypothetically as a woman, I may be more sensitive to looking at an organization that has very few women above me in leadership. Men might not be as sensitive about that. But that can touch on my sense of self-worth in a way that it might not touch on yours or a man's. That doesn't mean I'm political about it or that you can dismiss that as identity politics, it's identity, it's a sense of self-worth. So I think understanding that is the first thing and having the humility to feel and display regard for others' dignity is how we get around it.

Minute 17

When we look at a leader, if I'm getting a new boss or we have a new national leader or a new CEO comes into the organization, immediately we start to think about three things, who are you? Not your name, but who are you really as a person? Where are we going? And do you see me? Am I just a cog in the wheel or do you see me at all?

And the leader's behaviors and the spoken words in a fairly short period of time are going to signal people about who they are, the direction they're setting and how you're being treated. And so there is a set of behaviors that tend to offer positive signals and support others' dignity, and I call them the six keys to leader humility, and I do discuss them in the book.

Minute 27

You ever hear a backlash about nobody asked me about it or why didn't you come and talk to us in advance? We would have told you about this potential impact that's now very serious. So I think that's an example of the kind of thing that happens quite often where leaders in thinking about other people's dignity would realize that I have relationships with all of these different stakeholder groups, and while they might not always be in sync or agree, they all have a sense of dignity that I need to honor, and at the very least, I need to pick up the phone figuratively and have a conversation about it.

Minute 40

And I like your phrase, owning our own dignity because I think we all do it whether we're intentional about it or not and the extent to which we compromise that. I mean, if we compromise our sense of dignity in key ways, it's not good and we end up not feeling good. And I talk about this with leader humility, but it applies to all relationships. Think about being in a partnership or marriage or whatever. If you're with someone and you're compromising your own sense of dignity all the time, that's not going to last well or long, friendships, family relationships.

More About Marilyn

As author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, Marilyn Gist guides leaders in creating thriving organizations and great results. Imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display a deep regard for others’ dignity. This is what humility means and it helps leaders resolve conflict, increase engagement, and optimize performance. Marilyn has extensively studied why leader humility is the essential foundation of all healthy organizations and validated her work with interviews of prominent CEOs of companies ranging from the Mayo Clinic and Ford to Starbucks and Costco. She adds value through ground-breaking insight: the six keys required for leaders to work together well with all stakeholders. According to Marshall Goldsmith, “Marilyn Gist’s The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, is a must-read for every leader.” This bestselling book has been featured in Forbes and Quartz, and Marilyn’s ideas on leader humility have appeared in The Hill, CEOWorld, Sirius SM Wharton Radio, and numerous podcasts.  Ken Blanchard who authored The One-Minute Manager says, “This inspiring book belongs on the desk of every CEO and politician in America.” 

Based on this work, Marilyn consults widely and is a keynote speaker on topics emphasizing NextGen Leadership, Rising out of Crisis, and Get Off the Sidelines and Into the Game (the latter being geared toward female leaders).  A recognized expert, Marilyn brings direct leadership experience along with academic credentials.  As former Associate Dean, Professor of Management, and Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Formation, she led the design and development of Seattle University’s Leadership EMBA degree program from its inception in 2006 to rank as high as #11 in the nation by US News and World Report.  She began her academic career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She later joined the University of Washington where she held the Boeing Endowed Professorship of Business Management and served as Faculty Director of Executive MBA programs for many years. Her research has been highly cited by others, demonstrating exceptional thought leadership. 

Marilyn earned her BA from Howard University and her MBA and PhD from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a member of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Marshall Goldsmith 100, and the International Women’s Forum.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Marilyn Gist, I am going to welcome you to the Conversation Factory. I am super excited that you made the time to talk about this really important virtue, humility.

Marilyn Gist:

Yes, thank you for inviting me. It's a delight to be here, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

You're very kind. So okay, let's actually start close in, let's start where we just were because if we're going to change the conversation about leadership, the intention of your book, The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, which I thought was a lovely book, the idea is to put humility at the center and it's not right now. How do we-

Marilyn Gist:

Correct.

Daniel Stillman:

How are you... it seems like it's your mission to move humility into the center of the conversation.

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Can you just take us on the journey of how you discovered and came to really value humility?

Marilyn Gist:

So some of it was my own personal trial and error. As a leader when I was younger, I don't think I got it, in fact, I know I didn't. And I watched my intent to motivate people through more of a command control directive approach that stepped on some dignity seemed to go in the wrong direction. So I'm a pretty reflective person. I didn't have an answer, but I watched that and I kind of winced at some of the reactions that I saw.

Marilyn Gist:

And then over the years of working with executives particularly because I've been involved in executive MBA programs for over 25 years in different universities, and I've met some wonderful people and I've heard lots of unsolicited comments about the organizations they work for, the people they work for, some of those were consistently good. I'd hear some of the same things over and over again, for example, about Jim Sinegal at Costco, CEO, co-founder of the company.

Marilyn Gist:

And I won't mention names that were less receiving praise, but I'd hear the same things. And after a while, I really became curious as to why is it that people like Sinegal are always not only praised by people who work for them, but the people are so passionate about the organization they're willing to do just about anything to make it succeed, they put in enormous amounts of effort and time. And the more I looked into this and also looked in some academic research, I realized there's a component of humility that we are not talking about. And Daniel, this goes back a good 20 years to some of Jim Collins work with the book Good to Great.

Daniel Stillman:

Sure.

Marilyn Gist:

I mean, he, in my view is the, as far as I know, the first person who identified that what separates companies that become great from those that remain merely good is leadership and that the leaders in particular have two qualities. One is a strong drive for success, and that's pretty standard that we select leaders for that. We want driven people, we want goal-oriented people.

Marilyn Gist:

So they certainly had that. But the thing they had that the merely good companies didn't have was a deep, personal humility, which is also what Sinegal has. And so I just really became fascinated and started looking at it more and then as you'll know from the book, began interviewing people who were known for their humility as well as people who worked with them. And I just began to see that's what sets people on fire. So, yeah it's magic.

Daniel Stillman:

So it's such an interesting phrase because the idea that humility sets people on fire, it's not a given.

Marilyn Gist:

No.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't think many people would expect that that's the case. But in this sense, and this is my understanding, is it's respect for others worth and dignity that is a game changer in getting the best out of other people.

Marilyn Gist:

So I'm defining humility, leader humility very specifically, it's not meekness, it's not weakness. So it can seem counterintuitive because a lot of times people associate humility with meekness. I'm talking about a different aspect of it, which is feeling and displaying deep regard for others' dignity, really showing up, showing respect for other people's dignity. And that's what sets people on fire because most leaders don't do that, unfortunately.

Marilyn Gist:

But I'll go back to this idea that we think of leaders as people who are going to drive results and get a lot done. And that's certainly what we're hoping they'll do, that maybe they'll have a vision, they'll set strategy, they'll drive results. All of those things are important but what we miss is that leadership is a relationship. Leaders are not individual contributors just working like crazy, they're doing a lot more work through an organization or with other people.

Marilyn Gist:

And the quality of that relationship with each of their different constituents determines how much people cooperate, how much they give of themselves, whether they phone it in, go through the motions, do the minimum they have to do, or whether they give it everything they possibly can, whether they have your back, whether they're full partner with you in trying to achieve your goals. And the thing that really makes a difference is showing respect for their dignity. When you do that, you've got their attention.

Daniel Stillman:

So you've been involved in a lot of leadership development work, and it sounds like you believe that humility is not at the center right now, it's about results and there's the technical aspects of driving results. How do we start to put humility at the center of the conversation about leadership as we develop leaders in our organizations?

Marilyn Gist:

I think we have to first raise awareness because I don't think people see what they're missing. They don't understand the huge opportunity cost that we are paying because we are not selecting and developing leaders who do this. And that's part of what I'm attempting to do with the book and by interviewing the dozen leaders I selected who were all pretty much from big brand companies so that you can show this isn't a backwater concept that only works for some three person organization over here in a corner that no one knows about, this is working for mega organizations that are producing just great results.

Marilyn Gist:

So I think getting the awareness up that yes, there is a differentiator, yes, it does drive results is the first step. I would hesitate to say it's not being used. I think that there are a number of leaders who are outstanding in their own sense of personal humility and the way they have fired up their own organization and I could run down a list even beyond those that I interviewed. But I would say it's not mainstream. I think in that, it's, yes, it's not the heart of the conversation, but I go back to we're not yet realizing how important the relationship piece is with leaders.

Marilyn Gist:

And I think we've come at relationship more from a compliance standpoint. We're teaching leaders what not to do, how it is that you avoid sexual harassment, how you give performance feedback that is specific to the task and the job at hand and doesn't sort of fall over into some other things. So I think those more compliance oriented approaches have some merit. I'm not saying we can't focus on compliance or that we can just ignore it, but I don't think it gets to the heart of humans. And I wrote the word heart judiciously.

Marilyn Gist:

People have hearts. They're whole human beings, they come to the work and every single one is different. And this idea of dignity is really that individual sense of self worth, what is it that goes into their sense that I'm valuable as a human being? And every human being has and needs a sense of self worth. So if we can honor that, if we can support that in our leadership, then we've got people's attention. If we step all over it, they start to withdraw or resist.

Daniel Stillman:

It really is... so I want to just meditate on this for a second with you, Marilyn, because I think it's so interesting. And my group facilitation work, when I coach groups to transform, I have a personal value that everyone's voice is worthy of being heard and can and should matter. And so I, because of that belief, I create a space for everyone to be heard as much as I can, that's part of my values.

Daniel Stillman:

If they're in the room, they are a person, they have a heart, they have opinions and they have a voice and they can use it. And I think creating that space for other people to express themselves, I agree 100% can be transformative. I guess the thing that I'm struggling with is the people, and I don't know if I'm expressing this correctly and I'll try to work my way and hopefully you'll guide me to the... I don't say that humility is... it's not at the center of people's consideration.

Daniel Stillman:

We're having meetings and we have to go fast, we have to make decisions. And if somebody gets knocked around, so be it, it's about results. Sometimes it seems like humility and making time for humanness takes time and we don't have time to do that. And so I'm wondering how we might encourage people to make the time and space to invest in that time to celebrate and appreciate the dignity and self-worth of other people, because it does take a time investment. You can't just... it's not a box tick, it's not an email that I can send.

Marilyn Gist:

Right, right. So imagine you have a runner and you have two different tracks and they are both running at the same speed. One track is longer than another and so you're on that track and you think that it is going to take you longer to get there. And that is the way we tend to view investing in the human side of things, is like it's long. What we're missing though is the evidence, it says only 34, 35% of employees globally and in the United States, it's about the same, there's some variability across countries, but globally, only 34% of employees are fully engaged in their work, just 34%.

Marilyn Gist:

That 66% who are not, and of that, a chunk of them are actively disengaged, meaning they hate what they're doing, they hate where they're working or who they're working for, they're actively looking for another position. And even more of them are disengaged, but not necessarily actively looking. Maybe they need the job, maybe it's the only job around, they show up, they do what they have to do and that's it. There's a huge opportunity cost.

Marilyn Gist:

Think of how much we're losing on a result standpoint by having what I think of as shell partners, a sea shell, you pick it up, it's empty. There used to be something living and breathing in it, but it's just a shell. Well, a lot of the people who are sitting around the table or sitting in the cubicle or sitting down the hallway are shell employees or shell partners. And it's not only in an employment sets, leaders have many different stakeholder groups. They have suppliers, they have customers, they have senior leadership boards, they have regulators and on and on and on.

Marilyn Gist:

And so they have relationships with each of these different groups, and the question in my mind is how many of those are shells, how many of them are shell workers? They're occupying a certain role, but they're not fully engaged with you. So this idea that it takes time to invest in the humanness and we don't have time is the assumption that that's the longer path, and it really isn't. It doesn't take a ton of time to really respect other's dignity. And in my work, I talk about some very specific ways that we can do that. And not all of them are very time intensive at all, some are.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, let's decompose it a little bit because I think you've done a lot of good thinking on humility for you is not one big thing, it is a set of behaviors. It's a set of questions, it's a set of mindsets.

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

So if somebody is like, how do I get really good at doing this in my work? What are some of the key ways in which we can start embodying proactively the humility and dignity of the people around us? I know it's like on one level, I'm like, "We shouldn't have to ask this question," but we do. I have a feeling people need these concrete ways of doing it as we develop our young leaders.

Marilyn Gist:

Right. So let me start at a macro level and say this idea of dignity of another person's sense of self-worth runs pretty deep. So we have not only this basic sort of sanctity of life thing that we have going in most cultures, but there is more of a personal sense of dignity when I think of who I am and what I feel is worthy about me as a human being. It could include a set of talents I have, it could include the fact that I'm a woman, it could include where I grew up, it can include my education, my job skill set, my family, my family structure, kids, it can include all sorts of things about me as a unique person.

Marilyn Gist:

And some of the things that go... I mean, we're all different with 7 billion people on the planet, no two are alike as far as we know. And every single one of us will have this package of things about ourselves that contribute to how we feel worthy as a human being. So I think the first step is for leaders to realize that in relating to people, we have to put that idea front and center, that I'm talking to you and you have a name, and I see you as a person on the outside, but there's a really deep, rich inside to you and I can't just steamroll over that in my comments to you in the way I act to you.

Marilyn Gist:

I have to be somewhat sensitive to it. So as an example, we have this sort of cultural discussion about identity politics, to me, which is such a... it misses the point. It misses the point in attempting to even politicize the idea that people have differing identities. Of course, we do. And of course, the responsibility needs to be on those who have the power and the authority to be open to the fact that there are these different identities.

Marilyn Gist:

Hypothetically as a woman, I may be more sensitive to looking at an organization that has very few women above me in leadership. Men might not be as sensitive about that. But that can touch on my sense of self-worth in a way that it might not touch on yours or a man's. That doesn't mean I'm political about it or that you can dismiss that as identity politics, it's identity, it's a sense of self-worth. So I think understanding that is the first thing and having the humility to feel and display regard for others' dignity is how we get around it.

Marilyn Gist:

There's three questions people have, and I talk about these in the book. When we look at a leader, if I'm getting a new boss or we have a new national leader or a new CEO comes into the organization, immediately we start to think about three things, who are you? Not your name, but who are you really as a person? Where are we going? And do you see me? Am I just a cog in the wheel or do you see me at all?

Marilyn Gist:

And the leader's behaviors and the spoken words in a fairly short period of time are going to signal people about who they are, the direction they're setting and how you're being treated. And so there is a set of behaviors that tend to offer positive signals and support others' dignity, and I call them the six keys to leader humility, and I do discuss them in the book. I'd be happy to chat more about it if you'd like.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, you hit on one, which is relating to people as full people.

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

And you said there were three key ones. And I was like, "Oh, what are the other two?" So we can-

Marilyn Gist:

There're three key questions, so the who are you, where are we going and do you see me? And then the leader's behavior answers those in kind of a mirroring way. So who I am as a person gets conveyed to you, the direction I set and how I treat you. And then within each of those, there's a couple of specifics. So in terms of who I am, what really moves the needle positively or negatively is what I call ego ballots: Am I arrogant, or am I merely confident? Or am I too meek?

Marilyn Gist:

So you want kind of a vital confidence in leaders where they know their strengths and their weaknesses. If they can't admit their weaknesses, then they put the organization at risk. And let's face it, Daniel, everybody else sees our weaknesses. Why can't we admit that we have them? It's no secret. Does its wrong for people to realize, what I'm good at, what I might not be so good at. So the ego balance is really important to really supporting other people's dignity because if I'm super arrogant, then people will know that they can't really let me know when I've made a mistake or they'll find that I'm taking credit for other people's work, that I might be blaming people, I'm very self-centered, I'm boasting.

Marilyn Gist:

So those types of behaviors work against this idea of supporting others' dignity, where someone who's confident, who knows that they're able to lead people but also knows their strengths and weaknesses is much more supportive of others' dignity. Another piece of the who I am that's really important is what I call robust integrity. Does a leader walk the talk, can they be counted on to follow through with what they commit to? Are they fundamentally honest in the way they communicate and fairly transparent?

Marilyn Gist:

So the integrity piece matters a lot to others' dignity. If a leader is dishonest or can't be counted on, it has a negative effect on other people's dignity as well. So with each of those three questions, I walk through a couple of the really powerful behaviors we mentioned including people, so I'll piggyback on that when I get to the part about how you treat people. Generous inclusion is a really important part of it. But you were saying if someone's in the room, they should be able to speak, voice their view.

Marilyn Gist:

But I take it beyond that because I'm thinking of including all of your stakeholders and drawing the boundary broadly enough that all of your stakeholders are included in key decisions you're making or actions that are going to affect them. So it doesn't mean you have a huge town hall and invite thousands of your customers and your suppliers in, but it means when you're making decisions that you think are going to have an impact on this group, particularly if you think they're not going like it, it's going to be negative, figuratively pick up the phone and invite their input and listen.

Marilyn Gist:

Is there a way that you can moderate what you're doing to bring that in? If I can share a little story here, I think it illustrates generous inclusion, and I was doing a workshop recently and I actually heard this story. So it's secondhand, but it was so powerful. And it was a woman who worked at Microsoft and had been involved in a proposal for a policy that had to go before Satya Nadella, the CEO for recommendation and approval. And there was a committee that was working on it and there were 10 people, nine of whom were very strongly in favor of, let's call it option A, and one who was adamantly opposed to option A and very in favor of option B. And they had not been able to reach agreement beyond that nine in favor of one, and one opposed.

Daniel Stillman:

They were apparently agreeing to disagree, as we say.

Marilyn Gist:

They were agreeing to disagree. So when it came time to meet with Satya and to share their recommendations, they explained that this was where they were, nine wanting option A and one voting for option B. Most people would say, "Well, tell me a little more," they'll listen and they'll say, "Well, it looks like we've got a majority. Let's go with option A." That would be very common, and in some ways defensible approach because the majority rules, nine people, that's pretty compelling. He did not do that.

Marilyn Gist:

What he did was to turn to the person who favored option B and say, "What three things would need to be true in order for you to support option A? What three things would need to change and be true in order for you to support option A?" And it was powerful when I heard this because it puts the responsibility on that person to do more than complain or oppose or resist. They've got to come up with suggestions but it also really was generously including that person in the problem solving.

Marilyn Gist:

So the person said, "Well, I think if we did this, it would help." And then he would turn to the majority and say, "What do you think about that?" And they'd go, "Well, I guess we could tweak it this way and we could do some of that." And then he went back to option B person, got the next thing, went through the same process, got the third thing, went through the same process and then said, "Now that those three things are out there, if those three things are true, could you support option A?" And that person said, "Well, yeah."

Marilyn Gist:

And then he turned to the majority group and said, "Can you support it now with these changes?" And they said, "Yeah, actually we can." And you ended up with 10 out of 10. It was just a magnificent example to me of generous inclusion where he didn't do the default taking what the nine wanted, but he listened to that 10th person, and in the process came up with a stronger alternative than what they had started with.

Marilyn Gist:

Now, it's possible that they wouldn't have gotten to agreement at the end of this, which is also okay because then what happens is everybody's been heard and they've been even heard by the person at the top. And then the person who didn't get their way, say the minority opinion, at least has been part of a more rounded discussion. So I think that it was just a really great example of generously including all of your stakeholders and a way of solving an impasse.

Daniel Stillman:

It's a beautiful and profound example, Marilyn. Because when I think about designing conversations, I think that's a wonderful example of in that moment, you could say, "Well, majority rules," and that's, as you say, defensible and reasonable, nine to one. Person one, you are basically saying to them, "Shut up."

Marilyn Gist:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

Right? And-

Marilyn Gist:

You've been overruled.

Daniel Stillman:

You're overruled. And they might respect the fact that majority rules that's, as you say, generally defensible position, it is hard to turn a no into a yes. If that person really needs to support that decision, does nine people saying we want it actually get them to support it?

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Does that actually get the best out of them?

Marilyn Gist:

Not necessarily, it doesn't. And particularly if they had some expertise or some real awareness that what they were resisting or suggesting was accurate and important, I mean, how many times do we watch this in organizations where we know better about something but we're not necessarily being heard. So that to me was really the brilliance in his effort to realize that, "Let's see if we could draw out of this person what the essentials are of their opposition to this other approach and find a way to blend the two so that we come up with a win-win." And just really amazing example to me, of generous inclusion.

Marilyn Gist:

You could think of it in terms of, you've got an organizational policy that you're about to implement, maybe it's a change that's going to affect your customers and perhaps your suppliers, but the people who are going to have to do the work are your employee group, maybe some other managers. And so typically, we work those issues on the inside and we come up with our new policy and then we send out the announcement.

Marilyn Gist:

You ever hear a backlash about nobody asked me about it or why didn't you come and talk to us in advance? We would have told you about this potential impact that's now very serious. So I think that's an example of the kind of thing that happens quite often where leaders in thinking about other people's dignity would realize that I have relationships with all of these different stakeholder groups, and while they might not always be in sync or agree, they all have a sense of dignity that I need to honor, and at the very least, I need to pick up the phone figuratively and have a conversation about it.

Marilyn Gist:

And it can be we have a policy issue, we've got some concerns, I'm going to have to make a decision, but I want your input. Can you tell me what your thoughts are? How is this going to affect you? And at least allow people to feel that they have been seriously included in the process. Now you do have to listen. You're not going to get away for long with faking your way through that, and then constantly ignoring the input that you get. So that is the other side of it.

Daniel Stillman:

It seems like a rigorous and thoughtful approach to what I would call stakeholder mapping is absolutely essential. And I think one of the things that people would probably... that I've seen leaders struggle with is where does it end? Because when I looked at your quote on LinkedIn about how putting humility at the center of a leadership conversation can transform the health and progress of civilization. It took me aback for a moment. And when I'm sitting here in this conversation with you, if I'm willing to acknowledge the dignity of people outside of my organization or outside of my community, outside of my nation, it really can be transformative to respect the humanness, the human dignity of all of the people who might be affected by my decisions.

Marilyn Gist:

Right. And that's a big order, but I think it's where we need-

Daniel Stillman:

It is.

Marilyn Gist:

It's where we need to go. We're such an interdependent set of nations and our interests are so intertwined we will never go back to living within national boundaries. I mean, take COVID, the pandemic situation, you can't contain that based on some geographic boundary. Take climate, you can't contain that within some geographic boundary. So we have a number of issues that are really human wide global and I think we have differing approaches to it, different politics around it. But if we could approach the discussion from the standpoint of really supporting and respecting other people's dignity, then we look for a win-win, we'd have a different level of discussion about what we need to do to work together to resolve some of the larger problems.

Daniel Stillman:

Game-changing. So I want to ask you a very-

Marilyn Gist:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, I want you to share your unique expertise as an educator, and as you said, a group coach and trainer of leaders. Now showing people as you do exemplars of excellent leadership in some of the top organizations in the world is one way to inspire people to model themselves in this way. I'm wondering in some of the programs that you run, what are some other ways to concretize this approach? Because I have this idea that an experience is worth a thousand slides. We can show people all the slides in the world we want about how humility is important and it's good, and here are the six questions, but how do you get people to really experience and change their perspective on that to wake up to this truth?

Marilyn Gist:

So there's a couple of... I mean, there's multiple ways of doing it. Certainly as we were saying earlier, there's one-on-one coaching. I think humility can be taught in most cases, I'd say probably for 85% of the leaders, they either already are displaying it to a great extent and might benefit from knowing the one or two areas they could strengthen. Or if they're not good at it at all, they can make major improvement.

Marilyn Gist:

There's probably 10, 15% who are so narcissistic, they're not ever going to get it. But what I believe is that it takes self-awareness as well as a desire to do it. And I influence the desire in my coursework by helping people understand the opportunity cost, by providing the conceptual framework around what is dignity and the fact that it's universal. What's in it for each person is different, but we all have and need this sense of dignity. How do we feel when someone steps all over our dignity?

Daniel Stillman:

You have the cat, you said there was a cat. If you're playing at home and you can't see the video, but you can circle on your Zoom BINGO Card. It's a lovely, is it Persian?

Marilyn Gist:

This is my-

Daniel Stillman:

Long hair Persian?

Marilyn Gist:

He's a Siberian. His name is Sebastian. He's my Zoom twin.

Daniel Stillman:

He's got a luxurious coat folks if you can't see him, but he's got a luxurious coat, he's a beautiful cat.

Marilyn Gist:

He does lots of shedding.

Daniel Stillman:

I had Tonkinese-Burmese cats growing up and they have a similar coloration, beautiful cats. Anyway-

Marilyn Gist:

He's a beautiful cat. He's mostly asleep, but that's okay. The blanket was here for a reason, it's his spot.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that's his desk. I can see that, he's pulling at it.

Marilyn Gist:

So I think presenting them with a conceptual understanding of dignity and often I dial into that by focusing on your own and what are the things that make you feel valuable as a human being and how do you feel when someone steps all over that? What's your reaction? And then getting people to generalize that to how other people feel, and then moving into leading as a relationship and this dance between your humility and someone else's dignity kind of being like a ballroom dance.

Marilyn Gist:

If I step all over your feet, it's not a very elegant tango, right? I have to pay attention to where you are in that process. So there's that piece to sort of dial up the motivation to care about this, coupled with understanding the opportunity cost, the low engagement, the fact that if you violate dignity, you have shell partners, but that's a longer way around than taking the time to support people's dignity and just the magic that starts to happen when you get real partners toward your goals in the organization.

Marilyn Gist:

So that's one phase of it. The other phase then is the skill, set of skills involved, the six keys. And we've designed a couple of assessment tools which are available. One is basic to just the six keys and then there is an advanced version which actually has 10 scales that gets at some of the beliefs that people have that drive the behaviors, and it also gives more assessment of this ego balance in terms of looking at arrogance and humility in addition to the confidence. And so people in our courses will take the test confidentially. And it is a self report so it doesn't have the rigor of getting other people's opinion of whether what you think is what you think.

Daniel Stillman:

Sure.

Marilyn Gist:

But it's actually because we normed it so carefully on a population of leaders, it's pretty sensitive and it picks up where your strengths and weaknesses are fairly reliably. And then my assumption is that most leaders have some degree of self-awareness and I encourage them then to start checking in with other people to make sure that what they think is valid or to work with an outside coach who might then work with them around, let me talk to some of your peers or some of your employees and get their input on how they see you with this so they can augment that. I do believe the assessment tools are information and what I found is people are very motivated then to up their game. And it's because it's so behavioral, you can make significant change very quickly, it's really not hard.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting. I mean, putting... this shows one of the things I believe, reflection, self-awareness are key skills for leaders to develop themselves and to develop as leaders.

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

And I mean, it's funny you talked about relating to people as full people, the realization that everyone is living a whole life before and after your meeting is an important thing for them, one, to project on others. I guess the thing that I really wanted to ask you and is for the 15%, if my boss, for anybody listening has a boss in that 15% of just somebody who just does not get it, how might we use humility to work with and interact with people who do not understand humility? Because I think there's a temptation to want to use violence against those who... right? I mean, and right? This is an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Marilyn Gist:

I don't think the violence bit works very well.

Daniel Stillman:

No, I know, that's why I'm asking. What can we do instead?

Marilyn Gist:

So I would sort those 15% maybe into a couple of different buckets. There are people who are simply not going to get it, and you're not going to change them. They're almost at a clinical level, so narcissistic that they can't be coached and improve. The remainder of that group though, I assume is operating out of ignorance. And so I think you can lead upward with humility in a couple of ways.

Marilyn Gist:

You can talk about the importance of the relationship that we as an organization, including you, boss, have with this group of people. And the fact that if we support their interests and their dignity to a greater extent, they're going to be more engaged in doing what we need them to do to support our goals. So sometimes by pointing to that opportunity cost benefit, you can help that boss realize, "Okay, well, maybe I don't need to blast them in that way or don't need to exclude them when I'm making decisions." So you can kind of coach upward.

Marilyn Gist:

If it's a personal thing where I'm working for somebody who's just stepping all over my dignity and being rude, you have to evaluate your own courage level in kind of speaking up and saying, "When you talk to me that way or when you do this, this is how I feel and it isn't making me motivated to do better." And that can be a high risk strategy in some organizations or with some leaders so you have to be judicious about that. I'm fairly brave about it. I try to find ways of being pretty direct and yet in a respectful way, letting people know this isn't right, this is how I expect to be treated. And if that isn't forthcoming in a period of time, then we all have to make decisions on what we're going to do, right?

Daniel Stillman:

You're basically talking about owning our own dignity.

Marilyn Gist:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

Right?

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

And it is very challenging. I know we've all done this, I've certainly done this, sacrificed my own dignity and well-being for the sake of others, for the sake of the relationship, but really holding our ground and saying, "This is not how I would like to be treated," is an edgy thing.

Marilyn Gist:

Right. It is. And I like your phrase, owning our own dignity because I think we all do it whether we're intentional about it or not and the extent to which we compromise that. I mean, if we compromise our sense of dignity in key ways, it's not good and we end up not feeling good. And I talk about this with leader humility, but it applies to all relationships. Think about being in a partnership of marriage or whatever. If you're with someone and you're compromising your own sense of dignity all the time, that's not going to last well or long, friendships, family relationships.

Daniel Stillman:

I was thinking the same as these are not long-term strategies to sacrifice that.

Marilyn Gist:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

It's not a long-term strategy to extract from people without honoring their dignity and nor is it a long-term strategy to deny our own self-worth in hopes that things will get better.

Marilyn Gist:

Right, right.

Daniel Stillman:

Marilyn, our time together is growing nigh. What have I not asked you that I should ask you? What haven't we talked about that's important to address about this critical topic?

Marilyn Gist:

So I will mention this and I know that some may not agree with me, but I think there's a moral underpinning to this idea of showing deep regard for others' dignity. I think there's a moral underpinning to our idea that life itself is valuable. So we think of the sanctity of life. And what I would suggest is that life isn't just the biological life, it's also the psychological life, the social life that we have, that in thinking of each of us as a different, unique human being, I think there is some sanctity to that larger sense of life.

Marilyn Gist:

And so there's almost a moral underpinning in my view that says, we really need to honor other people's dignity. Now, certainly there's some boundaries on that. You have crime, you have abuse. I'm not saying that all behavior is equally valuable, I'm not saying that. You can have very high standards, you can be very clear about what's acceptable and what's not and still thwart other people's dignity.

Daniel Stillman:

It's a moral imperative and it's a human value, something really, really critical.

Marilyn Gist:

Yes, it is.

Daniel Stillman:

Marilyn, I really appreciate you making the time for this conversation.

Marilyn Gist:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

And to help everyone put humility at the center of their leadership conversations.

Marilyn Gist:

Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman:

We should all go to where on the internet to learn more about you, to learn more about your book, where ought people-

Marilyn Gist:

So if you need-

Daniel Stillman:

And you also have a course. Is it a public course that's going to be launching soon too?

Marilyn Gist:

Yes, it is, it's occasionally offered. So my website is marilyngist.com, M-A-R-I-L-Y-N-G-I-S-T, one word. And on there, there's a tab for resources which will talk about the book, where you can get it, it talks about the assessment tasks where you can get those, and the course which our current course is sold out, but there's a wait list option you can sign up for and when we get the next set of dates, we'll go to you first. And then there's also a tab that has information about me, my bio, services that we offer, that sort of stuff. So marilyngist.com, it's all there.

Daniel Stillman:

And I will put a link to that in the show notes. And-

Marilyn Gist:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. I'll call scene.

Growing by Giving: Live Coaching Session

This episode is a little different than most…Today I do some live-coaching for Rashmi Sharma, a Global HR executive and TedX speaker, on shifting what she wants to be known for, evolving what she wants to offer to the world and how her work can heal others, while she heals herself.

I’m so grateful that Rashmi reached out to me for some coaching after we were both speaking at a virtual conference in Southeast Asia. As Rashmi has evolved as a leader, she wanted to do some deeper thinking about how she can evolve her thought leadership, and offer something to her community from a deeper place in herself. 

I really commend Rashmi’s courage in sharing her process with so much vulnerability. As you’ll hear in the conversation ahead, Rashmi and I talk about (although very indirectly) the ideas of sublimation - healing your own wounds through helping others.

We also dive deep into how she can hold space and create more depth in her conversations, as she interviews her community to understand what wellness and wholeness really means to them. 

Make sure you check out the show notes for Rashmi’s full notes reflecting on her insights from the coaching conversation, but, two that I want to highlight here are:

Using all of yourself to Lead

Joseph Campbell famously said “it’s the privilege of a lifetime to be as you are”...

Finding and highlighting her phrase “use all of me to help people” was a golden nugget in the conversation. This is what Rashmi’s interest and work on wholeness and wellbeing is really about - allowing our whole selves to be accessed in our lives. So, it makes sense that Rashmi wants to do the same for herself.

Creating Depth in Conversations

One powerful way to create more depth is to go there yourself...Rashmi and I talk about asking and listening from a deeper place in herself.

We also highlight the idea that "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast," a motto from the Navy Seals. As she interviews her community to gain insights on her new area of focus, Rashmi realized that slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable and to think more deeply in her interviews. 

Slow and Smooth can mean slowing down your own voice, creating a little bit more space between your words, and it also means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response. (Extra credit for not thinking about what you’re going to say or ask next while they’re talking!)

Slowing yourself down can help others slow down and connect. Active listening helps me really hear, and also helps my partner hear themselves. Depth in a conversation can be hard at high velocity. 

One piece of advice I shared with Rashmi as she prepared to head into her next round of community interviews was to simply take a deep breath and ask her partner to tell a story. Narratives can pull a conversation from a back-and-forth of questions and answers. Narratives can help you more deeply enter into the world of the person you’re talking to and hoping to get insights from.

I love to work with leaders trying to define their thought leadership, leaders trying to scale their impact and leaders working to transform their organizations. I only work with a handful of high-performing folks each year. If you’d like to reach out about coaching, head over to DanielStillman.com/coaching

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

Rashmi on LinkedIn

Rashmi’s TedX talk

Rashmi’s notes: 

“There were several key takeaways for me:

• Clarified to me why I want to really speak about this. Why does it matter to me so much? "This is a classic and really powerful way of growing and healing, psychologically, giving to others what we wanted and needed for ourselves. It's basically healing our own inner child's children, our own inner child. Time travel, in the present. By helping other people, we are helping ourselves." that I want to "use all of me to help people."

• So much insight on creating a safe space for the interview and generally the way we should 'research': "If I were to give you advice, the much more effective is, tell me more about that, or can you remember a time when you felt that most acutely? Can you tell me a story about the last time you blanked? Can you take me there? Paint me the picture?" "So there's a couple of points here. One is that this is a great part of the research process when things start to feel repetitive. But that also means that you need to change your approach to find deeper insights."

• THIS - "Slow yourself down, slow them down. The US Marines say, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." And slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable, to think, which means slowing down your own voice, which I'm doing now. It means making a little bit more space between your words, it means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response."

My interviews have been much more effective after this.”

Minute 1

The second reason why it's important from a more tangible perspective is, I feel like success should not come at a cost of wellbeing. And I think it is possible to thrive, which is to grow, to be happy, without trading off either of those things.

A lot of times people think that, "I can be successful, or I can be a CEO, but I won't have time for my family. I won't have time for taking care of my health. I won't have time to take vacations." And that's the way it is. It's normal. And if you do have that balance, there's clearly something you're not doing right. 

It's almost like that, and I want to dispel that thing and say that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too, when it comes to wellbeing and performance, because wellbeing is a driver of performance, not a trade-off. That's how you create that balance in your life. And you should aspire for that balance, than just aspire for things which tangibly people can see, how high do you go in the corporate ladder and so on and so forth.

Minute 11

I feel like I can do so much more, but I haven't got an opportunity to leverage and push those levers, because I didn't have a cause. It's like feeling you have a voice, but you don't have a song. I want a song which is worthy so that I can use the full variation of my voice to do that.

Minute 29

Rashmi:
So even though I did prepare an interview guide, I feel I need to relook at that, the setup, the questions. How can I immediately share with them where I am without speaking too much, so that they get it? They get it, the kind of conversation this is, immediately.

Daniel:
This is what I would call designing the invitation to the conversation, bringing them into a space that you are creating. It's a conversational space. And being super intentional about the design of that invitation is 100% powerful. You really have to dial it in.

If you over explain, you're going to get just what you're looking for. As you scrunch your nose. And you don't want that, you want to get what's really inside of them. I think okay it's to say, "This topic is really important to me. I really want you to be as honest and open as possible. I'd love to share some of my stories, but it's more important that I get your stories, so that I can use your stories to help inspire other people, that we can live a balanced life and be whole people."

More About Rashmi

On a mission to help people thrive and be anti-fragile by unlocking the powers of leadership, learning & wellbeing.

With 15+ years of experience in catalyzing action, Rashmi has built her expertise learning from some of the best names in global people practices - IBM, Aditya Birla Group, Unilever. As an HR consultant, she has implemented core learning, talent & leadership development initiatives. Have extensive experience straddling global, regional and local leadership roles.

She is a speaker on how to stay fit in the future of work. Apart from her TEDx talk, she has been invited & spoken at 7 countries at prestigious events such as Corporate Innovation Summit, HRM Asia- Singapore, The Fit Summit Singapore, Innovation & Tech Fest, Sydney to share her thoughts & experiences.

Likely one of the fastest learners and multifaceted person you would meet, she derives ideas from diverse places, which she has deliberately exposed herself to. For e.g. after seeing the struggle firsthand on how difficult it is to provide good leadership learning to young managers at scale, she ventured building a tech solution with support of her organization and Entrepreneur First, an incubator backed by Reid Hoffman.

She is equally comfortable with corporate hierarchies as she is with the start-up ecosystem or with creative art forms. She has been a pageant finalist, a theatre actor and a Lindy Hop dancer having danced across 9 international locations. These experiences have helped her be ‘antifragile’ – which she believes is a key skill for a rapidly evolving future.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

So why is wellness, balanced wellness important to you? I want you to, just before you answer, because you're looking up, I want you to look in. Just take a second and say, "Why is wellness important to me?"

Rashmi Sharma:

So, more than wellness, I would say balanced life and wellness is a part of it. It's important to me for three reasons. One reason is that, again, there was a saying that, doing only one thing in life, it's like going to an ice cream shop and having only one flavor. So that's a part of it.

Daniel Stillman:

Who can do that?

Rashmi Sharma:

I feel so much to do. So that's one thing.

Rashmi Sharma:

The second reason why it's important from a more tangible perspective is, I feel like success should not come at a cost of wellbeing. And I think it is possible to thrive, which is to grow, to be happy, without trading off either of those things.

Rashmi Sharma:

A lot of times people think that, "I can be successful, or I can be a CEO, but I won't have time for my family. I won't have time for taking care of my health. I won't have time to take vacations." And that's the way it is. It's normal. And if you do have that balance, there's clearly something you're not doing right.

Rashmi Sharma:

It's almost like that, and I want to dispel that thing and say that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too, when it comes to wellbeing and performance, because wellbeing is a driver of performance, not a trade-off. That's how you create that balance in your life. And you should aspire for that balance, than just aspire for things which tangibly people can see, how high do you go in the corporate ladder and so on and so forth. These are the [crosstalk 00:02:21].

Daniel Stillman:

This is good, this is a lot. Take a deep breath. Let's slow down for a second, if that's okay. I want to know what's important to you about a balanced life, and not having to sacrifice one part of yourself for the benefit of another?

Rashmi Sharma:

Because I feel like I'm very multi-faceted, interested in a lot of things, and I don't think being great at one thing will make me happy, if that means I have to cut out parts of myself and not do those other things. I won't feel fulfilled, I won't feel that I've exercised what God gave me, in terms of interests, talents.

Daniel Stillman:

What's the risk to you, if you have to cut out a part of yourself?

Rashmi Sharma:

I guess fulfillment. Happiness. I don't know, probably a better word for it.

Daniel Stillman:

That phrase really jumped out to me. I'm really curious about, if you felt that experience, if you felt like you needed to or had to cut out parts of yourself.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yeah. I did. You want me to talk about it?

Daniel Stillman:

I want to follow you, but I'm following also my own curiosity, because I think we're talking about finding a pathway and understanding what balanced wellness means to other people. There's the positive aspect. And then this is the painful aspect. This is the dark side. This is what that risk, if we don't-

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes, so I think in a very short way-

Daniel Stillman:

Your background has changed into something very weird.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yeah, because I just realized that, since it's recorded. A neutral one.

Daniel Stillman:

Fair.

Rashmi Sharma:

So it helps me be seen, be understood, and be recognized for the whole self of me. I guess it comes from your childhood and your inner child and all of that thing. And yes, I may have felt some parts of me unseen, in a very loving manner, but unseen. And maybe that's where it's coming from.

Daniel Stillman:

Maybe that's where it's coming from?

Rashmi Sharma:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What parts of you do you want the world to see, that you feel like the world doesn't get to see?

Rashmi Sharma:

Creative, entrepreneur, fun. I am fun and everybody knows me as fun, but somebody who is successful in terms of what they want to do, whether it's... I'm not saying they don't see me as that, they do see me as that. But I feel like not many people want to be that. They don't want to explore other parts of their personalities, because they've been told that. I was told that to was too, I was, but I did it. I'm like, "You know what, you guys can do it too." But I don't want to force people into it.

Rashmi Sharma:

But I just want to raise their awareness that if they want to, they can.

Daniel Stillman:

This is a classic and really powerful way of growing and healing, psychologically, giving to others what we wanted and needed for ourselves. It's basically healing our own inner child's children, our own inner child. Time travel, in the present. By helping other people, we are helping ourselves.

Daniel Stillman:

It's complex, but if we're clear on what we're doing, it can be really powerful, that we are helping, and that we are also healing ourselves.

Rashmi Sharma:

Oh, my God, you're absolutely right. Because for the last three, four days, I've been going through all my video recordings of the interviews. And while I'm making notes for my synthesis, it's also, the penny is dropping in my head for myself as well. I'm like, I see. So these parts is what I'm happy with, these parts, all of that.

Daniel Stillman:

You're doing some looking at yourself through their eyes. One of the things I'm curious about is, you do keynote speaking, and you said, "I only want to talk about this now." What's important about speaking just about this?

Rashmi Sharma:

Because I want this to be my thing, I want this to be my thing. I want to be seen as somebody who is inspiring people to thrive, who is helping people, helping them expand their consciousness of what success is. Not saying it's not expanded right now, but there will be people who may have questions about it. I can interview people who have done it and shared how they have done it.

Rashmi Sharma:

I feel a lot of times, we don't do what we want to do, because we don't see role models for that. What if there are CEOs role modeling, having a very thriving family life, hobbies, great work, professional success? And then one CEO can see, "You know what..." I have people telling me that. It's like, I looked at my boss, and I'm like, "Why do Europeans get to have all the fun? Why do Indians work 17 hours?"

Rashmi Sharma:

And then the wheels start turning and then you're like, you know what, you can do it. It's just that you don't know how. I want to raise that awareness. Sorry, what was your question? It's not like I don't want to talk about learning or wellbeing and all of the other things I already do.

Rashmi Sharma:

But I feel like if I want to double down on this, I have to leave all, not leave, but I have to put a lot of energy into being let's say the best speaker about this in the world. So obviously, then I'd want to put focus on this.

Daniel Stillman:

So if you do put focus on this, if you really focus on finding out the most powerful way to inspire people to have a balanced life, what becomes possible for you then? If we visualize that future state, what do you see when you look around there? You are there, you are powerfully inspiring people. What do you notice?

Rashmi Sharma:

I notice the whole self of me. I notice myself using whole of me to help people. All of me to help people.

Daniel Stillman:

I just want to stop you there, because that is a wonderful phrase, "Using all of me to help people." I want us both to just sit with that phrase for a second. Because I feel it in my chest [inaudible 00:11:09] that. "I'm using all of me to help people."

Daniel Stillman:

When you think about using all of you to help people, what does that feel like? Where does that sit with you? You don't have to guess, by the way, I want you to sense. I just want you to feel the words [crosstalk 00:11:35].

Rashmi Sharma:

I might get emotional.

Daniel Stillman:

Good. That's okay. Me too.

Rashmi Sharma:

I have tissues. I'm good with it. I feel like I can do so much more, but I haven't got an opportunity to leverage and push those levers, because I didn't have a cause. It's like feeling you have a voice, but you don't have a song. I want a song which is worthy so that I can use the full variation of my voice to do that.

Rashmi Sharma:

And also, because I think amongst many things which I can do, not everything I can do as a master, but amongst many thing I can do, I feel like this is one of my strengths, better strengths, to be able to inspire, connect, in a one-to-many scenario. Because that's what I've been told, that's what I've experienced, whether it was my career as a facilitator, not one-on-one... One-on-one, yes, but what excites me most is one-to-many.

Rashmi Sharma:

I feel like apart from helping people, it gives me an opportunity to do things at a large scale, which is important for me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. I want to push back, if I can, on at least one way that you're thinking. Let me know how this sits with you. When you say, "I want to use all of me to help others," one of the ways that I think about an individual, we in fact contain multitudes. You have multiple stakeholders inside of you. I like to joke that I've got a fully functioning simulation of both of my parents.

Daniel Stillman:

And you also have your inner child and teachers, all the little memories along the way of different versions of ourselves. That's the all of you. You have to do that work on yourself to bring those pieces of you to the forefront, so that you can help others while helping yourself. You need to do that work and say, "What is it in me, what parts of me am I not allowing myself to tap into?"

Daniel Stillman:

So it's like using all of you to help others, you are one of the others. You are in that picture as well. Using all of you to help all of your others too.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yeah. I get it. I get it, but what does it mean... I get it at a meta level, but that does mean that I should follow my curiosity.

Daniel Stillman:

Very much so. Which you're doing.

Rashmi Sharma:

Which I'm doing now.

Daniel Stillman:

Look, at some point, I don't know what questions you're asking people as you're trying to understand what they need, what their experiences are with it. But going into your own experiences I think can help you find more impactful questions, to dig more deeply into what it means for them. That's one part of the equation, is trying to understand others, because I know you want to build community as part of this. But the other is, I think, focusing on your own work.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes. But I feel like I am doing that. So then maybe I'll look at the... Right now asking questions, which are non-controversial. But maybe I should go deeper. Are you saying, for example, I felt unseen or whatever, those kind of things saying, "What does it mean for you if you don't attain X?"

Rashmi Sharma:

So first question I asked them, "What do you think of the word thrive? And what does it mean for you?" They say, "Oh, it's growth, it's growth with happiness. It's having courage." All of that. Should I go deeper, saying, "What does it mean then for you to not have it?"

Daniel Stillman:

Why is it important to you, let's say you had the perfect question. What would you get from these interviews with the perfect question? What would that enable for you?

Rashmi Sharma:

A new way of looking at... So the reason I started doing these interviews is because the person whom I'm working with and they said, "You need to find out what people think about it." And what are their challenges? What are the nuances around the topic?

Rashmi Sharma:

So the [inaudible 00:17:53] talking to people is to find what they think of it. I have gotten many definitions of thrive, of course, [inaudible 00:18:00] patterns emerging. But the objective is to find those patterns. And then use my keynote to deepen that, and to look at various contours of that pattern. So that's why I'm having those conversations.

Daniel Stillman:

So this is an interesting question, because you used the word deepen. I was thinking the same thing. It's like how do you take these conversations more deep? How do you really get to insights in those conversations about what thriving and living a balanced life means?

Rashmi Sharma:

Use probing questions. If they say something, I'm like, "Why do you say that? Would you have said that pre-COVID as well? Or has your [inaudible 00:18:45] changed after COVID?" I just use my gut instinct and probing questions.

Rashmi Sharma:

I asked them what advice they would give to themselves 10 years back. So these kind of questions. Is that okay?

Daniel Stillman:

Why is this controversial question in design research circles. Why can put people back on their heels. People don't often know why.

Rashmi Sharma:

Oh, why. Okay, okay.

Daniel Stillman:

If I were to give you advice, the much more effective is, tell me more about that, or can you remember a time when you felt that most acutely? Can you tell me a story about the last time you blanked? Can you take me there? Paint me the picture?

Rashmi Sharma:

I am doing that, and that's my second question, because actually a researcher told me that. So then they said, think of a time when you thought you were thriving according to your definition and then talk about it.

Rashmi Sharma:

So they tell me stories, maybe then I'm not getting the right thing out of that story, because that story is of course many things, story is about kids, story is about so many things. But maybe I'm not able to then understand how to deepen or pick out insights from that story. They are telling stories. But their stories are also very predictable.

Daniel Stillman:

That's something else that's happens-

Rashmi Sharma:

[crosstalk 00:20:36] a lot, and then one day I realized that I should take care of my health. Running in the morning, and now I can't live without my run, which is a great story. But it's also repetitive and it's also something I'm not able to take to another level.

Daniel Stillman:

So there's a couple of points here. One is that this is a great part of the research process when things start to feel repetitive. But that also means that you need to change your approach to find deeper insights.

Rashmi Sharma:

Deeper questions.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, the question of what depth in a conversation means, is an interesting one to me. I've written a little bit about it. But I'm curious what depth means, if you wanted to take people deeper than you have taken them already, or deeper into what? And how would you take them deeper?

Rashmi Sharma:

That for me is holding space, and creating a space where they can share. Sometimes I'm able to do well in the beginning of the conversation to create rapport, and they're generally more conducive, they're more open to sharing.

Rashmi Sharma:

In some conversations, they will answer the question and they'll stop, period. And I felt that I've not been able to have that connect. And maybe they don't want to share, but most likely, they've never thought about it and they don't want to think about it now.

Rashmi Sharma:

Some things, I let it go, but in cases where they are talking, for me, depth is about going into details, stories, and sharing what they feel.

Daniel Stillman:

Details and stories. What was the last one?

Rashmi Sharma:

What they feel.

Daniel Stillman:

So trying to understand more about what they were feeling.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes. And also sharing if they were scared, and things like that, which they may not feel safe otherwise to share there.

Daniel Stillman:

Why scared specifically?

Rashmi Sharma:

No, not scared in the sense... Vulnerable. Because a lot of people I work with are leaders. They're extremely used to talking about the stuff with a very clinical lens. But if they can put that away and talk as people...

Daniel Stillman:

How have you been able to do that, to connect with them person to person? What's helped you to do that?

Rashmi Sharma:

Just general, because I know them through [inaudible 00:23:44], or I'll do a little bit of a intro, get to know. Sometimes our kids are going to the same school, sometimes. They're mostly from all India. I talk a little bit about me, why I'm doing it.

Rashmi Sharma:

I don't do anything specifically, other than the general context setting chitchat.

Daniel Stillman:

I would just invite you to think about how to intentionally set a space for depth. If that's what you want to design the conversation for, for depth, then the question of what would create the depth that I need? What would make it safe for them to go deep?

Rashmi Sharma:

Are there any things which I could explore?

Daniel Stillman:

I believe that creating safety for others requires creating safety in ourselves. And this is what we were talking about earlier is, we can only take people as deep as we are willing to go, as we have gone. And you can ask for and invite depth if you set the stage for it.

Rashmi Sharma:

For example, if I were to begin a conversation instead of saying, "This is what I'm researching," I could also talk about why I'm researching this. I could talk about what I told you in terms of growing up I felt like that. And this is why this [inaudible 00:25:29] really important topic. Is that a good thing to explore then? This is what you mean, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, what does it feel like? You imagine, with your own story, there's risks and there's potential benefits.

Rashmi Sharma:

I'm okay with risks. I talk about my story to anybody who cares enough to listen.

Daniel Stillman:

The only thing I would push back is, you obviously need them to be speaking within you, by a factor, 10 to one. So finding a way to say what you want to say, why leading a balanced life has been important to you, without tipping your hand too much. Because you don't want to color their responses over much. You want to find out what resonates with them and what their stories are.

Daniel Stillman:

So there's an edge of over disclosure, so that you then color what they're doing. [crosstalk 00:26:40] correctly, the goal here is you want to find nuggets of insight that you can use in your keynote to really inspire people and attract them to this idea, because you want to be a champion for this ideal.

Daniel Stillman:

What I want to close with, because I want to leave some time for us to check out is, looking at everything we've talked about, what would you want to look at as the most important question for you to ask yourself as you move forward with this project? Everything we've talked about, what's a question you want an answer to for yourself that will help move you forward?

Rashmi Sharma:

So for me to move forward in the sense, do another 10 interviews and have them go better than the last few, what I think I need to ask myself, how can I prepare my initial setup of the... How can I redesign my setup of the conversation, to make it immediately safe for them to talk to me about these things, and also redesign my actual questions?

Rashmi Sharma:

That's the question I would ask myself harder now. Because when I look back at my interview recordings, which I've been doing for the last four days, I feel like sometimes I'm rephrasing questions, sometimes I'm explaining the questions. I'm not coming across as very deliberate.

Rashmi Sharma:

So even though I did prepare an interview guide, I feel I need to relook at that, the setup, the questions. How can I immediately share with them where I am without speaking too much, so that they get it? They get it, the kind of conversation this is, immediately.

Daniel Stillman:

This is what I would call designing the invitation to the conversation, bringing them into a space that you are creating. It's a conversational space. And being super intentional about the design of that invitation is 100% powerful. You really have to dial it in.

Daniel Stillman:

If you over explain, you're going to get just what you're looking for. As you scrunch your nose. And you don't want that, you want to get what's really inside of them. I think okay it's to say, "This topic is really important to me. I really want you to be as honest and open as possible. I'd love to share some of my stories, but it's more important that I get your stories, so that I can use your stories to help inspire other people, that we can live a balanced life and be whole people."

Daniel Stillman:

Because of why you think it's important. You think if we don't do this, we can't have a balanced world. We can't have balanced lives. We can't have balanced families. That's what's at stake.

Rashmi Sharma:

Do you think it's okay for me to share that I'm doing it for a community or a keynote speech? Or do you think that just dilutes, or not dilutes, but that digresses from the main focus? It distracts.

Daniel Stillman:

I think ethically, it's important to let people know what you're planning to do with the information you're getting from them. When I started in 2016, I did four interviews with four people I really respected about conversation design. I was like, "I just want to have a conversation with you. I'm just going to record it for myself to get some insights about this idea." That was it. That was very clear.

Daniel Stillman:

And we had an hour with each of them, and we went really, really deep. I picked those people very, very carefully. I got insights that helped me be inspired to do my podcast, to do other things with the idea to write the book. But those guys framed those conversations very carefully.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's totally okay to say, "I'm just trying to learn more about this idea from other people's perspectives." If that's all it is, then that's what it is.

Rashmi Sharma:

Is there any resource you've written or your book where I can see more of it?

Daniel Stillman:

I can share some resources about at least one way of thinking about depth from the book. But the key thing is, which I've been trying to do in our conversation, it's what threads you pull at in the conversation. And facts versus feelings, versus insights and potential. These are different things to ask about.

Rashmi Sharma:

I should focus on feelings more, generally.

Daniel Stillman:

I think you should focus on where they are, where they have energy, and follow the energy. And if I were to give you one piece of advice is, slow down.

Rashmi Sharma:

Just in terms of the pace of...

Daniel Stillman:

Slow yourself down, slow them down. The US Marines say, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." And slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable, to think, that means slowing down your own voice, which I'm doing now. It means making a little bit more space between your words, it means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response.

Daniel Stillman:

I've had a couple of people on my podcast to talk about this. We can think, there's a lot of research on this, but people can think really fast, much, much faster than they can speak. We can only speak 125 words per minute. We can think at some people say 400, 900, 4,000 words per minute. There will literally always be more to say than people can say.

Daniel Stillman:

And so while active listening is sometimes derided as mechanical, it's really powerful to allow people to even hear what they said. Because they don't know what they said, and they don't know everything that they think. They can't say all that they think and that they know.

Daniel Stillman:

So one thing that I think can be transformative is just giving people a little bit more space and time to think, and reflecting back what they said. I imagine you're doing a lot of this. It's just about doing it with more-

Rashmi Sharma:

Intention.

Daniel Stillman:

More intention and more inner care. We have to check-out. What are you checking out of this conversation with?

Rashmi Sharma:

I realize that while I want depth from people, I'm not giving them depth. I go into the conversation trying to cover a lot in 60 minutes, because I literally, sometimes they have meetings after that, so I know it can go on. Sometimes I'm not doing active listening, because I know they have veered off and I don't want to interrupt them. But I also know that this is not something which is related to what I want to talk about.

Rashmi Sharma:

I also veer off sometimes because I know I'm recording it and I will go through it again. Even then, I think it's just the energy I could... As you said, I have to give them what I want to get out of them. So that's my biggest takeaway, that you made me realize that I'm not doing that.

Daniel Stillman:

It's work.

Rashmi Sharma:

It's work.

Daniel Stillman:

It's work to set up a space where people feel safe to be real. It's work to find the right amount to disclose to get what we need. I guess what I want you to remember is, why you're doing this. The interviews have a function and the function is insights, and the insights function is to inspire others and to build your keynote.

Daniel Stillman:

I would just suggest that I think, I hope you have, and if you haven't, I think you could write it now. You don't have to wait.

Rashmi Sharma:

Write the keynote or write the intro for the conversation?

Daniel Stillman:

Write the keynote. You don't have to wait.

Rashmi Sharma:

And that's going another down rabbit hole. Because I think somewhere I always have, "Oh, I need more information. I need more information. I need more information." If I do what I have now, people will like, "This is so obvious." And everybody knows that. I feel like, "Oh, maybe I'll do 10 more conversations, and I'll get a new angle through it."

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know.

Rashmi Sharma:

I know cognitively I'm hearing myself and I know what I would advise to my friend if she said that to me.

Daniel Stillman:

What would you say to your friend, if she said that to you?

Rashmi Sharma:

I would say that, I read a book and the book said women always do that, but there'll never be a perfect time and you've got to do it now. And last time you did it, you're better off, even though you're not perfect. So you just have to brace yourself and do it.

Rashmi Sharma:

And if people don't like it, they don't like it, at least you know.

Daniel Stillman:

I would say instead of, you don't have to brace yourself, you can love yourself. It's in you. What you want to say is in you already. The interviews will have a function.

Rashmi Sharma:

I guess I want to hear from more people because I don't trust that what I have in me is relatable for others. And there is no point if nobody else has that problem. You know what I mean? I need to choose a different problem to help people in.

Rashmi Sharma:

Because the idea is not to just share my story. I have other avenues to do that. I only want to share this if people find it helpful. So in a way, I'm [crosstalk 00:39:17].

Daniel Stillman:

[crosstalk 00:39:17] find out if people found it helpful, what would be a prototype and an experiment?

Rashmi Sharma:

So talking to people. Like in a startup thing, I spoke to, when we used to ask our mentor, how many potential consumers we should speak to, his answer was always the same. "More." But I think I've done about 13. I have another five slotted, which I'll redesign based on our chat. I think I'm getting to that place where I feel like, this is what people think about it. This is what people have a scope to go deeper in. And then I am getting that. I'm getting that confidence is what I'm saying.

Daniel Stillman:

If I were to push you, I would say don't wait. I think you could run a workshop on this, you can run a keynote on it. You would learn as much from that prototype, that experiment, as you will... It's not an either/or proposition. It's a both/and, it's an all inclusive, three pronged approach. I think it's really valuable to do the interviews and to try and get those insights and find out if it resonates, and find nuggets of insight.

Daniel Stillman:

And also don't do the thing that you just said women do, which is polish it to be perfect. I can't do this until I have three degrees. And that's not true.

Rashmi Sharma:

It is though, but it always [crosstalk 00:40:59].

Daniel Stillman:

What would your friend say?

Rashmi Sharma:

Obviously, if you're talking about vulnerability, you're not going to be Brené Brown. I would rather listen to Brené Brown than my friend talk on vulnerability.

Daniel Stillman:

Fair.

Rashmi Sharma:

But that doesn't mean she shouldn't do it, that doesn't mean my friend shouldn't do it.

Daniel Stillman:

If you've done one TEDx Talk, and you have, you can do another. You can write a talk about this. If you haven't yet, you can write this talk, and you can practice this talk. I imagine you will learn just as much from the people who come up after the talk, to talk to you.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes, yes, yes. You're right.

Daniel Stillman:

You're right. I have to roll. Rashmii, thank you for this.

Rashmi Sharma:

Thank you. You know it's been a breakthrough for me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yay. Thanks for letting me be in service of you.

Rashmi Sharma:

Thank you so much. It was so good to speak to you. And yes, I will be in touch, I will keep you posted.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, you're going to do the experiment.

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes? Maybe?

Rashmi Sharma:

Yes, yes. No, no, I have a conversation tomorrow, 9:15 a.m., and it's 9:00 p.m. I'm just going to have dinner, sit, and I'm really excited to redesign this.

Daniel Stillman:

That's wonderful.

Rashmi Sharma:

I'll drop you a line how it goes through.

Daniel Stillman:

Me too. I'm really excited.

Rashmi Sharma:

Thank you so much, Daniel. Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll share this recording with you.

Rashmi Sharma:

How can I get this recording? Is it easy?

Daniel Stillman:

I'll just put it on the internet. I'll put it on Dropbox and then you'll take a look at it. Let me know if it's good and then we'll [crosstalk 00:42:59].

Rashmi Sharma:

Cool. All righty. Thank you, Daniel. Bye-bye.

Daniel Stillman:

Bye-bye. Take care.

Rashmi Sharma:

Thank you so much.

Rituals for Virtual Teams

In this episode, Glenn Fajardo joins me for a conversation about virtual rituals and their power to help us make sense of the virtual waters we are swimming in every day. Glenn co-leads the immersive course Design Across Borders at the Stanford d.school and is the co-author of Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships. His thoughts on ritual and using curiosity as a force for connection in virtual collaboration are just some of the must-listen moments.

Glenn is a conversation designer, through and through. I love his simple frame of “Occasion, intention, and action” to think about creating moments of transformation for teams.

Also...as a side note, you should absolutely pair this episode with my conversation with Casper ter Kuile, author of “the power of ritual” and co-founder of the Sacred Design Lab. His work is all about how we can learn about creating meaning by learning from the patterns and principles of religion. It’s like biomimicry, but for religion!

Glenn takes inspiration from storytelling, cinema, and...punctuation! We co-created a new conversation design framework, together, based on commas and ellipses. I kid you not.

Occasion

In my book, Good Talk, I identified a few key components of conversations that, when shifted and changed, can have a profound effect on a conversation. There are nine total in the Conversation OS Canvas and two that Glenn highlights are the interface for the conversation and the cadence of the conversation.

Occasion collapses a few elements of my conversation OS. An occasion usually happens in time and space and a ritual can happen on more than one occasion...giving it a cadence, a pattern of recurrence.

But Glenn has done a tremendous amount of work to design occasions that don’t happen at the same time. What does that mean?

Together and Apart

Glenn has done a lot of experimenting with creating team cohesion, not just when teams are together but apart, in real-time, virtually, but when teams can’t be together but must collaborate - like groups in very disparate time zones. Glenn shares some powerful insights on how to build connection when you can’t be together at the same time.

Creating Expressive Spaces

The medium of a conversation shapes the conversation...it is the interface that enables some types of conversations and makes other modes harder. For example, Zoom’s breakouts were, at one point, a unique innovation that many other platforms lacked, and made having dynamic conversations much easier. Now, video platforms exist that push the boundaries of capability, allowing new interactions to form - like virtual audio spaces that allow people to move around in a virtual space and hear each other differently when they are closer or farther apart. Kumospace is one such tool.

I asked Glenn what was crucial for creating orientation, connection, and productivity in virtual spaces and he pointed out that we must find mediums that capture expressiveness.

A lot of folks feel like synchronous video and audio are the best way to connect remotely..but Glenn suggested that video messages can be amazingly connecting, and even more powerful because they are asynchronous. 

If you work with a larger team, across multiple time zones, you’re going to need to be more intentional and creative in your ritual design - creating rituals and engagement in asynchronous conversational platforms like Slack or WhatsApp.

And that’s the message I want you to take from this conversation. Do an inventory of the meetings and moments for your team. Find ways to shift the intention through thoughtfully designed actions...and the more often you do them, the more they will become rituals, ie, core artifacts of your team’s culture.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did...and I hope you take the time to create an inventory of your team’s essential moments and find a pathway to make those moments create the team experiences you intend to create.  It is, as Glenn says, as simple as asking:

“How do we want people to feel in those different moments in a team's lifespan? And then, what are the actions that we could associate with those things?”

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Rituals for Virtual Meetings

Making virtual more human at d.school

Making virtual more human: companion piece

Glenn on LinkedIn

Glenn on Twitter

Kate Quarfordt Episode

Casper ter Kuile Episode

Minute 10

I think there are two things. One is, I think it's important for people's distinct person to come across in that introduction. So, I think if you say I'm Daniel and I like pizza, interesting, but a lot of people like pizza. But once you start to get it, what makes a person unique, or quirky, or that thing that is not common? You start to look at them more as an individual versus a category, if that makes sense.

The second thing is figuring out mediums that capture expressiveness. I'll give you a really simple example, the video message is a very underutilized medium. And being able to hear somebody's voice, and see their facial expression, and do it in a way where they have a little bit more agency over it. I think there's a big difference between a video message and a video call.

Minute 28

Anyway, so Ida is a designer we interviewed for the book, pointed out something really important to me, which was, as she said, something like as much as we know we're not supposed to transfer the physical onto the virtual, most of us are not starting with anything. And so, we had to start with what we have.

And take like, okay, if we're thinking about the virtual commute, and we're talking with folks who are not designers, it's those really simple questions of like, okay, let's talk about what it is that you miss about your commute. What are should likes, and concrete examples of things that you do, and then digging into the why, starting from that concrete.

And then, digging into the reason behind it, and then you start to say like, okay, so the reason why you did this is this. Okay, that's really interesting. And then, if you want to get this, how can you take that, and apply it to this different context? And then, how can we start experimenting with different ways to get at that thing that you enjoyed about your commute? While not trying to recreate the things that you hated about it.

Minute 35

Asking what you want from people, and also making sure that everybody has a chance to put an idea forward, and a chance to be heard. And I think the conductivity that comes from that is really critical. Whether it's done, like where everybody shares in a Zoom chat, or on a billboard, or says it out loud in small groups. It's literally a moment for everyone's voice to enter the conversation. And there's so many meetings that don't have a single moment that have that.

Minute 39

So, linking this back to, thinking about affordances, and how people find each other. There are little tricks I use to basically encourage people to stalk each other in a non-creepy way. And so, for example, in a digital whiteboard like MURAL, and I'll do exercises where people will share what questions they have, or curiosities that they have. And then, after that's done, I'll encourage people to look through, and then right click on it to see who said what.

And then, to see like, right-click on something that you found really interesting too. And then, see who said it, and then send, and then create a moment where it's okay for everybody to message each other about that curiosity. So, you have to create the container in which that curiosity can be expressed. And be like a normalized thing versus feeling weird, and out of context, and creepy later.

Minute 45

So, it's this question of like, why is it hard to watch five minutes of Netflix? And the answer is that darn curiosity stuff, and its curiosity in, and curiosity out. So, at the beginning of the episode, there's enough of curiosity creation, where you're like, "Oh, I want to find out what happens." And then, when Netflix is absolutely deadly at is the curiosity out. It's like the ends of the episodes. This is not new to television, but with Netflix, the fact that you can watch the next thing makes it deadly.

I was just going to say, so we don't think of meetings in that way, though. Maybe we think of curiosity going in. If you're lucky, I think that's true. And then, we rarely do the curiosity out part, which I think is so critical to connecting conversations across different times.

MORE ABOUT GLENN

Glenn Fajardo helps people to be creative together when they are far apart. He has been a student of virtual collaboration since 2008, working with people and organizations across six continents engaged in social impact work. At the Stanford d.school, Glenn co-leads the immersive course Design Across Borders and was the d.school's 2020 Distributed Learning Teaching Fellow. He was formerly the Director of the Global Network Co-Design Practice of TechSoup, an international nonprofit social enterprise, and is trained in nuclear engineering sciences and public policy. Glenn plays electric bass and enjoys cooking in other people's kitchens.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

I will welcome you officially to the Conversation Factory, Glenn Fajardo. I feel like I'm always at a risk of mispronouncing your last name, but I appreciate you writing it up phonetically for me. So, hope I did.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, you did great. And if it helps at all, in terms of remembering it, Fajardo literally translated means meat patty.

Daniel Stillman:

The literal translation of Fajardo is meat patty. It's funny. I feel like that's the opposite of helping me remember how to pronounce your name. But it's a very powerful image that shifts. That's so interesting.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, instead of being the frontal mnemonic, that's the backdoor memorability in a different kind of way mnemonic.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And this is, if you've ever done any research on memory palaces or the people who do memorize random orders of numbers or cards and stuff, they use these unusual associations to remember all the digits of pi. So, this is a very interesting bit of brain hacking you're doing on me. And speaking of brain hacking, I think that's what we're going to be... I feel like we're going to talk a fair amount about brain hacking at some point. Okay. So, I'm so glad you're here.

Daniel Stillman:

You are a deep thinker about this thing we do, gathering people together. And I remember, you've been doing work on getting people connected virtually for a long time. You and Cal have been prototyping stuff at Stanford d.school. I feel like this goes back a couple of years trying to work out digital connection, and virtual collaboration across time zones, and cultures, and things like this. So, can you just, I don't know, tell a little bit about your origin story in this work, and why it's important to you, why you care about it, how you got yourself into this thing?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It actually goes back even farther than that, all the way to 2008. And so, this is at the scene like this was when George W. Bush was president.

Daniel Stillman:

I remember that. It's not everybody's scene. It's some people's scene. Just as a total side note, George Bush is looking great these days. By comparison, he's aged surprisingly well, because he's painting and doesn't like Donald Trump. So, that's interesting, but anyway, sorry. It's an interesting moment in history for you to take us to.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. And this was even before Obama was elected, Zoom was several years from being invented. I was one of the first people in my organization, using the video feature of Skype, that thing called Skype, if you remember. But the reason why I care about this stuff is I've been working with social change makers around the world for the last 13 years.

Glenn Fajardo:

And I have the great fortune of working with a bunch of different people at TechSoup, which is a nonprofit social enterprise that helps other nonprofits with technology. And so, in working with people, we just work with these awesome leaders, who have these great minds, doing awesome things in the world. And I want to co-create things, and I want to be able to think together.

Glenn Fajardo:

And what would happen is we'd go in with the best intentions for co-creation, but then we'd run into these challenges of how to do that remotely. And then, what would end up happening is the usual command and control where San Francisco would be telling our partners basically what to do. And we ended up with what I remember telling my boss this saying, "We're getting to a point of accidental colonialism with this."

Glenn Fajardo:

And that gets the reaction of like, "I know what you're saying, Glenn, but I don't like your frame." But I said, "But you wouldn't say it's completely untrue." They're like, "No, I understand what you're saying." But I think that struggle of the how, how can we be creative together when we're far apart? That's been my obsession for the last 13 years.

Glenn Fajardo:

And I've been gradually chipping away at it with different ways of approaching it, working with people, doing really deep work with people in places like Kenya, in Argentina, just places where, how can we bring each other fully into the conversation, and create together when we're thousands of kilometers, and are coming from completely different cultural context, as well?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's really important, by the way, and this is just a total side note. Will your partner be done making a sandwich in the kitchen? Whatever is going on back there.

Glenn Fajardo:

I know, I know. This is the flip side of the bike, so to speak.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. It's really interesting, actually, because I miss being in a coffee shop. So, I'm just trying to remind myself, so we're just in a coffee shop with Glenn. And there's somebody clearing plates in the background. So, if you're hearing that, folks, just imagine that Glenn and I are in downtown San Francisco together having this conversation. Like we would be, where we've had versions of this conversation before.

Glenn Fajardo:

And I love that reframe too, where I think, one thing that's interesting about the last year plus is it used to be that something would appear in the background or to be like a noise like, "Oh my God," so unlike it's not the way it should be. Now, we have this thing of like, I feel that the term somebody used the other day about, it's like there's no more borders, in some ways. It's becoming like this. The lines between our work life and personal life are no longer there. And that's life, that's what life looks like and sounds like.

Daniel Stillman:

People have commented, it's not an original thing for me to say, but the guy from the BBC, where his baby, and then his toddler, and then his wife all came in. And it was like this hilarious scandal. When this happens on a meeting that I'm in, I call it out. I say, everyone grab your Zoom bingo cards, and circle cat, if you're playing along at home, and I don't know.

Daniel Stillman:

We were going to talk about theatricality later, but I feel like expecting that everything's going to go well on a virtual meeting is a fool's errand. And I think acting that things are going to go completely awry, and preparing for it, and being laughing at it when it happens, I find is a powerful reframe to make.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, totally. Because I think there's that powerful reframe and I think about how... actually, I think that's you, a fellowship that I was leading in early 2020, where our participants were in 11 different countries. And I remember one participant in particular, I think she was based in Legos. And she'd be embarrassed about like, "Oh, there's background noise. There's this thing like, I'm in the middle of a bunch of different things.

Glenn Fajardo:

Really? No, this is great. First of all, we don't want you to feel embarrassed. If you feel that way, that's what you're feeling, just know that we think it's great that you're here. And as long as we can hear what you're saying, and understand the conversation, and it's not becoming like, I think that's derailing the overall flow of things, that's nice. It's all good."

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like in a way, this connects to in our pre conversation, we were talking about the episode with Alison Coward, where she talked about the luxury of facilitation. And it is a luxury in the sense that having someone who's looking out for everyone, and making it okay, and that's their job does seem luxurious, but it's so critical to have someone setting those norms, welcoming people in, orienting them to the space.

Daniel Stillman:

You said, as you mentioned, you've been thinking about this, I remember when you were prototyping some of your ways to get people to introduce each other, and to know each other better over remote distances. I feel like a lot of what you've learned is in the book you've created. What do you feel is the most important for people to know about creating orientation, and connection, and productivity in this space?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. I think there are two things. One is, I think it's important for people's distinct person to come across in that introduction. So, I think if you say I'm Daniel and I like pizza, interesting, but a lot of people like pizza. But once you start to get it, what makes a person unique, or quirky, or that thing that is not common? You start to look at them more as an individual versus a category, if that makes sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes, yeah.

Glenn Fajardo:

The second thing is figuring out mediums that capture expressiveness. I'll give you a really simple example, the video message is a very underutilized medium. And being able to hear somebody's voice, and see their facial expression, and do it in a way where they have a little bit more agency over it. I think there's a big difference between a video message and a video call.

Glenn Fajardo:

But then providing people constraints so that they don't feel like they're staring at infinity when you're making an introduction. So, a really simple one is say your name, where you're based? And what's one thing that most of your friends don't know about you? And then, it gets people at the same usual. And to me, that's more unique and personal. And then, that becomes a different layer of getting to know a person, and also one of the first steps of trust building, as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah. And this seems important to do in projects where people are coming from diverse places, from diverse organizations. Is it different? I'm wondering about somebody reading your book. And a lot of the people inside of organizations where people might know each other a little bit already, what are some rituals for virtual meetings that you feel are appropriate or helpful for people who might already know each other? They're not starting from zero.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah. For people who are not starting from zero, I think part of what I try to get at is things that are either new, or novel, or things that are likely sticking out getting in their mind. So, I'll give you an example of the first one. One of my favorite rituals is one called last line, where you have people think about what's one awkward thing that's happened to you in the last month or so?

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, you think about, how would you tell the story of that thing? And then, you're not going to tell the full story, but you're going to share the last line of the story and begin with, but it turns out that like. And so, what happens is, just to fast forward to the punchline is, people see that people's curiosity about each other is suddenly activated, and then you're like, "Oh, I want to hear like," but it turns out that the car could only take unleaded plus.

Glenn Fajardo:

And you're like, "Why is that important to me? What is that thing?" And so, what are ways that you can make people who see each other all the time, more curious about each other? And what is going on? Because a lot of times, I think with groups, we get into this mode, where every day becomes the same. And it's like the same old, same old. So, doing things that give that little nudge towards curiosity towards each other, I think is really important.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. So, this is good. This is a good hinge point for us to... I feel like we should zoom out at this point. And say, so you started in 2008 with your curiosity. And then, one day, now we're using narrative, and I'm going to totally butcher Kursat's name, you to met, you wrote a book. I'm curious about the journey of the book and where it is now. What it's changed for you. I remember you posting on LinkedIn, you're like, "It says it's a bestseller. Is that a thing?"

Daniel Stillman:

And I'm like, "Yeah, it's a thing." So, can you talk a little bit about the journey of the book, and I feel like people shouldn't need much of a reason to buy. Once they hear the title of the book, they'll be like, "Oh, I think I need that." If you can also define for us why rituals are important, because I feel like you've just started talking about this idea of making things special. And I was like, "Oh, ritual, thanks."

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's probably like, so as far as the origin story of the book, Kursat is totally obsessed with rituals. And this is a guy who runs this thing called the Ritual Design Lab. And it's been his thing since I feel like, since he just got out of the womb, basically. I've never met a person more just like... I used to think like, this guy is crazy. I think about people I know who are so obsessed about certain things.

Glenn Fajardo:

And there's only a few people that come to mind, like Kursat is one of them. Actually, Daniel, I'm not saying this because your podcast, but you're also one of them. Where I've listened to, I'm like, I love how Daniel was so into this thing, but oh, my God it's crazy how much he's so into this thing conversations.

Daniel Stillman:

Because the rabbit hole goes so far deep for us. I read his first book, and it's really, it's just called rituals for meetings. And it's, it is an amazing book. And this is a very needed second book to this, which is like, well, now this is where we meet.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah, this is where we meet. And Kursat and I had run into each other at... we both teach at the Stanford d.school. And we would see each other at lunches for instructors. And then, one day, Kursat said I've been wanting to write a second book, I feel like, this is the book that needs to be written right now. And I'm heavily paraphrasing what Kursat said, but it was basically like, I'm ritual guy, your virtual guy, let's write a book.

Daniel Stillman:

Chocolate and peanut butter. But this was before the pandemic.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, this was leading up to the pandemic, and it was teetering at that point. And so, I had thought, sure, why not? I said like, yeah, I love your work with Rituals for Work. And I'm definitely in the virtual stuff. I'm not sure I fully follow the virtual rituals part. But let's go ahead and see where this goes. And I thought it was going to be like this, we would take maybe six to eight months to develop the concept, and shop it around.

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, we would have a book, who knows when, a year and a half, two years from now. And then, we had our first test pitch with [Wiley 00:17:13], and with the publisher that Kursat worked with before. And immediately, the publisher is like, "Okay, here's the contract, sign and live." And then, they said, like, "Okay, can you finish it by..." this was back in April, April 2020. And they said, "Okay, can you finish the manuscript by July 1st?"

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah, I had that same reaction. I was like, how about July 31st? You're in a little bit one side of it.

Daniel Stillman:

What's funny is that you said, "Yeah, let's write a book." That's like saying, "Yeah, let's get married." And then, it's like, "Oh, can we go to Vegas tonight?" And then, that's basically what happened is you're like, "And it's happening now." So, you really brought this together quickly. But as you say, both of you had a wealth of knowledge and experience to bring together. So, not to say, and we've talked about this. It's not easy to birth one of these things, but it's a great book.

Glenn Fajardo:

Thanks, thanks. Yeah. No, it's not easy. But in some ways, the constraint of time. We tried to lean into it as much as possible, just to say, "Hey, what's the advantage of having less time on this? What is-"

Daniel Stillman:

How design thinker-ish of you.

Glenn Fajardo:

And as an author yourself, Daniel, you can imagine the pros and cons of how this stuff works. And we were able to try things and pivot really, really quickly. Kursat's first book, Rituals for Work was more of a compilation of different rituals that many different people did. And so, we started off with like, "Oh, let's go find what different people do with virtual rituals."

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, as we looked around, we found that actually, there's not a whole lot. There's not yet. This is back again, back in April 2020. And so, we did find people who did different things, but part of the book, quite frankly, was also me emptying out my own playbook. And just going through every single thing that I've done, and one of the great things about that journey was, I never had a deadline to go through my life.

Glenn Fajardo:

And like, okay, what did I do? What's going on? Why do people like it? What could have been better, and then just go through that in a very rigorous way, and having to write all of that up. It was a really fantastic journey. And I'm really appreciative of that opportunity to do that part of it, and as well as putting the framework around the first few chapters that were around rituals, and the secret science virtual meetings as well.

Daniel Stillman:

I'd love to unpack rituals a bit because I had Casper ter Kuile on the podcast last year. He wrote a wonderful book about ritual, and how important it is. And he was using ritual in this much broader sense. And bringing in design principles, you might say from religion, from faith, which is a way of giving our year and our years special meaning.

Daniel Stillman:

Each days have significance. And you talked about in our... we all know each other, we go to work every day, it all becomes the same. And so, rituals can be a way of marking time and making things different. How do you define ritual? What is and isn't a ritual in this context for you?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, that's a great question. So, I'm going to give you two answers. One is the Kursat answer, and one is the right answer. Because we have different ways of looking at this.

Daniel Stillman:

And you're still friends after writing the book, just checking.

Glenn Fajardo:

And we're still friends after writing the book. Because I think there's just a lot of different ways you look at a ritual, and Kursat has a very thorough definition, being ritual guy. And so, he talks about rituals as actions that a person or a group does repeatedly, following a similar pattern, or a script in which they've imbued symbolism and meaning.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, I agree with that definition. I don't think that's not true. But because my brain just isn't as big, like I think about rituals in a little bit more of a shorthand way. And I think ritual is actually those constraints with purpose, that lead to a meaningful moment. So, again, that's constraints with purpose, that lead to a meaningful moment. I know, very designery, I know.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Constraint with purpose that lead to a meaningful moment.

Glenn Fajardo:

Correct.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What's important? Can we pull that apart? What's important about constraints and purpose for you? These are not accidental constraints.

Glenn Fajardo:

No, no, they're not accidental constraints. And I think they're really around thinking about occasion, intention, and action. So, a ritual has to have like, what's the reason you're doing it? It's because you make people feel a certain way at a certain moment.

Daniel Stillman:

When, why and how. That's this occasion, when does it happen? Intention is why you're doing it. And action is what are you going to actually do? Yeah.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah. So, that is understanding what those things are, I think is really important. But within that simple frame of occasion, intention, and action, I found that to be a helpful frame for helping people come up with their own rituals. And so, when I talk with teams about how they can get into their team rituals, we think about what are the different occasions that your team has?

Glenn Fajardo:

We just kind of brainstorm what are... there's things like starting a meeting or celebrating a thing, there's all these different moments in a team's lifespan. And the more consciously you think about those, and start writing those down, and then you think about, okay, how do we want people to feel up in those different moments in a team's lifespan? And then, what are the actions that we could associate with those things?

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, just get into a spirit of experimentation of trying things out with those three things in mind. I'm not saying that rituals are easy to come up with. But it's not quite as hard. Once you start to have that framework to give you a pointer, a point of departure that you can leap from.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What do you see something that people do? And we're thinking about design and designing of conversations now. What do you feel like is a challenge that people have as they go into designing their own rituals? What's something that they miss when they're designing them?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. This is going to sound like a circular argument. But I think it's missing on those three things in terms of not being clear on why are you doing it? So, let's say something, like a common one is the fake community, that people have been introducing things. And then, just thinking about why, why is it that you're doing to mark a transition from work to non-work, I think is a great starting point.

Glenn Fajardo:

But digging even deeper into the why of what is it that you want to gain from that practice? And then, that understanding helps you hone that ritual in a way that really works for you, versus just mechanically copying like, "Oh, well, I used to take Caltrain for 30 minutes, I'm going to sit on Caltrain for 30 minutes."

Daniel Stillman:

This really highlights for me why I think people should design, have the mindset of that I am designing the system of our conversations. Because you can try to copy somebody else's rituals, copy somebody else's icebreakers or whatever. But you can't necessarily copy their why. There's an article I wrote a couple of years ago, where if you Google what types of meetings are there, you'll find like, oh, so there's information sharing, and information gathering, and making decisions.

Daniel Stillman:

And this one article I read from Atlassian said, and the one type of meeting you should never have is the meeting about meetings. And I was like, "What, that's actually the most important meeting." We should totally have a meeting about our meetings. And that's what you're saying, in a way. It's like almost doing an inventory. This is design thinking. I was like, "Well, let's discover and define, let's develop and deliver." Let's look at the shape of the thing and be more intentional about it. I think it's profound to do that on purpose.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. I think it's doing it on purpose is almost like, how do you create your own movie? How do you create the movie of your life, and thinking about the different scenes, and what are the transitions in it? What's the overall plot of it? Where's it going? And then, how are people, how are characters developing within that story?

Glenn Fajardo:

And I think that's how our brains are wired to make sense of the world in a lot of ways. But if we go through life on autopilot, and we don't think about those things, I think we miss an opportunity to get a little deeper.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I want to talk about narrative and using the science of story. But before we do, I want us to go back one step. Because I have needs in affordances circled several times. The virtual commute is actually a feature now in Microsoft Teams. Well, no, it's interesting. They basically said, "Oh, this is a thing, we can set this, we can set when our virtual commute is." I haven't played with it. So, I don't really know the ins and outs of how it works.

Daniel Stillman:

But people, they understood that this was the thing people were doing, this is a need, and they created an affordance. So, I'm wondering, when you think of needs and affordances, and you want to explain them to somebody who's not a user experience designer, what should we be thinking about when we think about the needs and the affordances in this digital system that we're talking... the virtual meeting system?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, yeah. I was just chuckling a bit. Because I think I used to get annoyed with things where I felt like people copy and paste the familiar onto the virtual. And I don't know, do you know Ida Benedetto? I don't know if you guys have crossed paths before.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know, maybe.

Glenn Fajardo:

Okay. It's like New York is a big city. Anyway, so Ida is a designer, we interviewed for the book, pointed out something really important to me, which was, as she said, something like as much as we know we're not supposed to transfer the physical onto the virtual, most of us are not starting with anything. And so, we had to start with what we have.

Glenn Fajardo:

And take like, okay, if we're thinking about the virtual commute, and we're talking with folks who are not designers, it's those really simple questions of like, okay, let's talk about what it is that you miss about your commute. What are should likes, and concrete examples of things that you do, and then digging into the why, starting from that concrete.

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, digging into the reason behind it, and then you start to say like, okay, so the reason why you did this is this. Okay, that's really interesting. And then, if you want to get this, how can you take that, and apply it to this different context? And then, how can we start experimenting with different ways to get at that thing that you enjoyed about your commute? While not trying to recreate the things that you hated about it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Right. Some people may have enjoyed the fact that they were able to read something, and other people like, "Oh, I can actually catch up on work before I got into work. I feel like this is... sorry, go ahead.

Glenn Fajardo:

I was going to say, to read something, and then I think it's also to dig even one level deeper into that. It's like you get placed into a set of constraints where you... it's difficult to do what you do by default. In other words, one of the things I grew to actually love about Caltrain, the Caltrain and it's a rail system in the Bay Area, which I would take from San Francisco to Stanford.

Glenn Fajardo:

And I used to think like, "Oh, I hate the fact that Caltrain doesn't have WiFi." And then, after a while, I realized, "No, no, this is the best thing about it." This is a place where it's actually super inconvenient for me to do the things that I would do otherwise. And then, it's not just that I read a book, but it's like being placed in a different context that forces you to be in a different space.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And so, I think intentionally introducing people into those new spaces can seem risky. You've done all this for a long time. And I think you've had a lot of experience. And so, you have a lot of faith and trust in your ability to try something new, take a risk and experiment. I know that when I coach people, people come through my workshops, and whatnot, there's this... I don't know if I can do that with senior people, or oh, I can't, like, I don't know if people are going to want to do this with me.

Daniel Stillman:

You are a theatrical person. You can bring that energy if you want to. I think for some people, introducing somebody to a new reality, to transport them into a new place can seem hard to do. It takes an infusion of energy. And I just wonder what you found, is there a similarity between the people who are successful at running these types of experiments? What can we learn from them? Those people?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. I think one thing we can learn is one is that I think there are people who are just more theatrical than others. I think to say like, "Oh, no, anyone can be that way," I think there's a little bit disingenuous. But I also think there's also this, where can you start with your experiments? And if you're starting with, "Oh, I can't get senior people to do X, Y, and Z." Maybe it's starting by experimenting with your peers, or even if you have people that report to you, with your subordinates.

Daniel Stillman:

They have to say yes.

Glenn Fajardo:

They have to say yes. But what's the ground on which you can experiment, and get started, and start to get your feet wet in a way that is not going to blow up? Because I think the mistake that can be made is like, "Oh, I need to start with the big impact first." And I'd actually argue the opposite, that you want to start with something that's really small. And then, not only test if it works, but also build your own confidence in being able to facilitate and lead the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

What would be an example of a really small ritual, virtual ritual to bring in? Let's say a micro ritual.

Glenn Fajardo:

Really small micro ritual, and one that I really like from... that I got from a friend, [Murica 00:34:29] at the Acumen Fund, it's just been over I know.

Daniel Stillman:

I love Murica.

Glenn Fajardo:

You know Murica, small world.

Daniel Stillman:

I worked with him years ago.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, Murica has one that Acumen does is almost religious about it. It's just the parting aha. They end every meeting with what's one aha that you got from this meeting. And what I love about it is it's such an ingrained regular practice. It's not just like, "Oh, oh, this time we should do a parting aha." They just do it.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. And I think a lot of people think about this, and we'll look at the book, and people come to workshops I do, and they're like, "Oh, I want to be able to do improv, I want to do warm ups, I want to do games, I want to play, oh, I have to throw out an invisible ball." And that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about having reliable structure that makes sense to people.

Daniel Stillman:

When we were talking about serious rituals, because they don't always have to be silly. What's your aha is a very serious ritual. It's human. Having a regular retrospective is a serious ritual. It's just saying, we will always, every couple of weeks, look back and say what worked, what didn't work? What would we like to change? I think it doesn't have to be a theatrical, high energy experience. It can be like, just asking for what you want out of people.

Glenn Fajardo:

Asking what you want from people, and also making sure that everybody has a chance to put an idea forward, and a chance to be heard. And I think the conductivity that comes from that is really critical. Whether it's done, like where everybody shares in a Zoom chat, or on a billboard, or says it out loud in small groups. It's literally a moment for everyone's voice to enter the conversation. And there's so many meetings that don't have a single moment that have that.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Yeah. And it's so important. It's funny, my wife, Janet, who you know, went to an actual in-person... she's in the next room. She was like, I had a real sidebar conversation with somebody because they went to a bar outside last Friday, and it was nice enough. And we can do that now legally. And she's like, I had a real sidebar conversation with somebody.

Daniel Stillman:

It is hard to do that virtually. And so, I guess this is leading into the one thing on my arc of the conversation that I really want to make sure we talked about, which was the serendipity engine, the building in of ways for multiple people to interact, which is something which is something that would happen in a team, non-virtually.

Daniel Stillman:

But virtually, it's very hard to create that many-to-many connections. I'm wondering, because you've done some thinking about this, how to create serendipity engines inside of groups. What are some insights that you can share about that?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. I think there's a couple that come to mind. One is a lot of like a serendipity engine to me, is really a curiosity engine.

Daniel Stillman:

I love it. Say more about that. Yes.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, it's like what do you do where people share these almost incomplete thoughts? Where you don't have them share the whole thing, and it ends with a period, you want thoughts that end with a dot, dot, dot, either they have a dot, dot, dot before or after? And so, if we think about in terms of punctuation, I know this is a totally random way to think about it, but because people think, "Oh, we want fully formed..."

Daniel Stillman:

No, you're designing continuation in the conversation. If it's a fully formed thought, it ends, someone has to pick it up. If it's a comma, or a dash, or a hyphen, it's passing an invisible ball.

Glenn Fajardo:

It is passing an invisible ball. I love your framing of it. It actually is about sound ball, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

Everything is about sound ball. I can teach anybody anything with sound ball, I'm just saying. How do we start doing that? Because we were talking about the hallway track being the most popular part of conferences in the other episode, which I'll link to in the notes. You're doing some thinking about this, what did that spark in you?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. So, they're like little linking this back to like, thinking about affordances, and how people find each other. There are little tricks I use to basically encourage people to stalk each other in a non-creepy way. And so, for example, in a digital whiteboard like MURAL, and I'll do exercises where will share what questions they have, or curiosities that they have. And then, after that's done, I'll encourage people to look through, and then right click on it to see who said what.

Glenn Fajardo:

And then, to see like, right click on something that you found really interesting too. And then, see who said it, and then send, and then create a moment where it's okay for everybody to message each other about that curiosity. So, you have to create the container in which that curiosity can be expressed. And be like a normalized thing versus feeling like weird, and out of context, and creepy later.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. By the way, to go back to needs and affordances, we talked about how we don't want to make tech the answer, or the thing we worry about. But one thing you're implying there, which I think is really important to highlight is, we have to have a shared channel. And it's ideal if it is persistent.

Daniel Stillman:

From my perspective, Zoom is a shared channel, but it's not persistent, or I think it can be, but it's weird to do it that way. You can message on MURAL, but it's not really where we want to be necessarily. You've done things at Stanford where you have a WhatsApp group, a place where anybody can message anybody else any time, I think is really important for groups to have that hallway track.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. Having that hallway track, and then having a mix of persistent communication that is... have parts that are linear, and have parts that are nonlinear. And so, if we have conversations in... linear is great for certain things, where you have a flow in a direction of where everything is going.

Daniel Stillman:

What's an example of linear?

Glenn Fajardo:

Linear is like a WhatsApp chat. So, it's this continuous flow of things. It also helps to have things that are nonlinear as well, like a digital whiteboard like MURAL, where you can look around, browse in different directions, rearrange things, find patterns. But then, create, I think one of the things that we're still figuring out is how do you facilitate conversations in asynchronous nonlinear media? I know that's very jargony, but like-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's hard because my own experience, people have to be highly motivated, in order for that to work.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yes, yeah, I think that's true. And I think highly motivated is an achievable thing, if you find the right thing to be motivated around.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Glenn, we're getting up to the... I want to be respectful of your time. We're almost at the top of the hour. That went really fast.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, good.

Daniel Stillman:

What haven't we talked about? What's important for us to say that has not been said? There's a lot, but what haven't I asked you that I ought to have asked you?

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah. I think maybe talking just like for a couple of minutes about story.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that's on my list.

Glenn Fajardo:

Because I think there are a lot of things that didn't make sense to me about a year ago, and in doing a ton of research. And having the opportunity to do a fellowship that gave me a container to focus my time on that. One thing that I learned was that it was about the length of story basically is around how our brains work. And the twin engines of curiosity, and chunking are really critical.

Glenn Fajardo:

Where curiosity, we talked about quite a bit, but I think understanding that memory doesn't work as a continuous run of everything. But that our minds are model makers. We make what cognitive scientists call event models to remember things. And then, as conversation facilitators, I think what we do is we insert little cues and little things that trigger that chunking. And that becomes even more critical, I think, in virtual and hybrid worlds. Is that making sense so far?

Daniel Stillman:

For me, yes. I don't know if you've listened to the episode with Kate Quarfordt from ages ago. But I'll link to it. She uses the Four Seasons as a container for how she chunks the major components of her conversations. And I think that's what was my entry point into this was using design thinking as a way of organizing a single meeting or a single project. It's chunking. We're in this phase or not in this phase, we're discovering.

Daniel Stillman:

We're not defining, and it really orients we're empathizing, we're now are testing and prototyping. I think it really clarifies for people what is supposed to happen in this conversation, as opposed to what isn't supposed to happen, or what has already happened, and what's going to happen next. I think it's profound, but I think this also goes back to the theatricality of creating peak experiences within the conversation. I think you are very, very aware of how you are shaping an engaging story for people, even within one arc of one conversation.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, within one arc of one conversation, and then the analogy that I use to help people get started with us is to think about Netflix. And if you've ever binged on Netflix, I'm guessing that you have Daniel Stillman.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, I have. Yeah. I love bingeing.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, it's this question of like, why is it hard to watch five minutes of Netflix? And the answer is that darn curiosity stuff, and its curiosity in, and curiosity out. So, at the beginning of the episode, there's enough of curiosity creation, where you're like, "Oh, I want to find out what happens." And then, when Netflix is absolutely deadly at is the curiosity out. It's like the ends of the episodes. This is not new to television, but with Netflix, the fact that you can watch the next thing makes it deadly.

Daniel Stillman:

I know. I used to... yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Glenn Fajardo:

I was just going to say, so we don't think of meetings in that way, though. Maybe we think of curiosity going in. If you're lucky, I think that's true. And then, we rarely do the curiosity out part, which I think is so critical to connecting conversations across different times.

Daniel Stillman:

So powerful. And by the way, what I was going to interject with was how I hacked my brain so I wouldn't watch too many episodes of Game of Thrones at once.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, how did you do it?

Daniel Stillman:

I would watch, because the end is like, "Oh, my God, what's going to happen next?" And then, you want to watch the next episode. So, what I would do is, I would watch from middle to middle.

Glenn Fajardo:

That's a great hack.

Daniel Stillman:

The middle, because you get to watch the beginning of the episode, and you're like, "Oh, that's what happened-ish." And then, in the middle, there's a lull and you're like, "Okay, now I'm going to stop. My blood pressure is lowered. And now, I can go to sleep, before I go to the end of the next episode, and then I'm going to watch the next beginning one." So, middle to middle, was my way of hacking my own brain. And I think maybe if we think about the reverse patterns, most meetings are middle to middle, which is why they're so terrible.

Glenn Fajardo:

Right, right.

Daniel Stillman:

So, I want to check... sorry, go ahead. Please finish that thought.

Glenn Fajardo:

I was going to say I love how you reverse the words, like the middle to middle is what you need for Netflix. And then, the [inaudible 00:47:47] what you need for meeting, but we do the opposite of that right now. That's why our world is broken with boring meetings and Netflix bingeing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. And because they're hacking our brains on purpose. We should check out, what's your aha? I'm going to use a new ritual. What's your aha from this conversation?

Glenn Fajardo:

Man, quite a few. I think I'm still sticking with the punctuation and sound ball thing. And I'll fully make the punctuation stuff, that was just a co-created moment in our conversation, which I hadn't thought of before.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that we come up with new things, fresh conversations, everyone delivered to you.

Glenn Fajardo:

So, I think the aha was around that specific point. And then, there's like a meta aha around appreciating those moments of co-creation and conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

My aha is actually, because I'm going to connect that to the curiosity engine, curiosity at the beginning, and the end, versus the middle to middle my hack. I often use the five Es of entice, enter, engage, exit and extend, it's a classic, experienced design framework, which maybe you've seen. And when I'm coaching people on their agendas, I'm like, "Well, what's the entice?

Daniel Stillman:

Why do people want to enter and engage? And then, how do you manage the edge of the experience where they are going to exit? And then, how do you extend that energy?" And so, I love the punctuation, and the curiosity to curiosity that gives you the momentum to get to the next thing. And I think the other aha I'm leaving with is when I think about that big question of how do I take a risk and try something new?

Daniel Stillman:

The realization that it can be something very small, and human, like what's your aha from this meeting? And how profound it is just to have an anchor point of this is how we do things. We end with personal interest. What am I getting out of this? I think often, people look at these things, and they're like, "Oh, I have to be able to..." because some of the ones in the first book, I was like, I don't think I could do those.

Daniel Stillman:

In Kursat's first book, I was like, those are all elevated, like the death of a project, which seemed bigger. And this is like, you can start really small. I think that's huge. Thanks for staying on a little longer. Sorry to keep you over. I think I'm really glad you came on to talk about this stuff. Where should people go on the internet to learn about all things, meat patty?

Glenn Fajardo:

All things meat patty, I know. It's funny, I'm literally in the process of creating a website right now. But one place that you can go at the moment is just glenn-fajardo.medium.com. And that has some material. I always say that I'll be writing more, but I really will be writing more.

Daniel Stillman:

You wrote a whole book. Take a break. You're good.

Glenn Fajardo:

But yeah, that's a good place. But yeah, otherwise you can also find me on Twitter and LinkedIn as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes, you're active in all those places. Glenn, I'm really grateful, if you can stand for just one more second for us to close out. I'm just grateful for the time. These are important things, and we can change the world. If people do this, it will change the world. This is important. So, thank you.

Glenn Fajardo:

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

All right, end scene.

Unapologetic Eating & Unapologetic Living

What on earth would a podcast about designing human conversations, facilitation, leadership and organizational change have to learn from a coach and an expert on Food and Eating? Quite a lot, as it turns out! One of my favorite design thinking principles is to learn from “alternative worlds” - absorbing how other people and communities are solving similar problems in different contexts.

My guest, Alissa Rumsey, is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life.  

It’s always interesting to learn from reflective practitioners - people willing to think about how they do what they do. Alissa designs many human conversations in her work and life, from her coaching work to her group programs to her book, and the marketing thereof - a book is a conversation, after all. Alissa’s whole business is a series of conversations designed to shift the larger conversation about food and dieting.

Food and eating can be fraught topics, but Alissa's approach of connecting with and learning to trust your own body is inclusive, empowering, encouraging and wise. She places dieting in a much larger (and longer) conversation about historical racism and gender dynamics. At the core of Alissa’s work is an idea that is of deep interest to me: Interoception.

Interoception

Lately, I’ve been using this word in my coaching calls a lot, and it’s Alissa’s work that put it back at the top of my vocabulary. You might have heard the word proprioception: It’s how you can touch your fingers and toes with your eyes closed: You know where your body is, physically. Proprioception is sometimes described as almost a sixth sense, the sense of self-movement and body position. It’s essential for navigating the world in three dimensions, and survival.

But if proprioception is a sixth sense, there’s a seventh: Interoception: One’s sense of one’s internal state. When we say we feel fine, or feel sad, or angry or hungry, we’re interpreting a multitude of internal sensations and summarizing them into a simple word. It’s how we know what we need and start on the path of getting what we want in response to those needs.

When we feel sad, what are we feeling that lets us know that we are feeling sad? Where is it in your body? Think about that...and feel that!

When we’re hungry, it can be physical hunger (like when I do a 16 hour fast...I know that I’m really hungry at the end!) or “mouth hunger” ...like how it just feels GOOD to eat ALL the popcorn. Or it can be emotional hunger that we soothe through eating.

The challenge is that, unless we are attentive and aware of what’s really going on with ourselves, we can’t take care of ourselves, we can’t give ourselves what we really want and need...and we can’t grow. For example, for me, getting a massage is a much better way for me to soothe my emotional hunger...because I can tell you, no amount of popcorn will do it!

In leadership, facilitation, coaching and transformation work, we need to learn to take deep care of ourselves since we are constantly caring for others. 

It’s only when we give ourselves real nourishment, that we can care for and nourish others.

Like the sign in the airplane says “Put your own oxygen mask on first”.

The Work is in You & The Leader you want to be

If you listen back to my episodes with Alisa Cohn (a different spelling and a very different type of coach!) she talks about how “the work is in you”...the idea that as we grow and develop, we have to find new resources in ourselves: ways to be firm and decisive, to be bigger and the CEO others need us to be...while being and staying true to ourselves. As Amy Jen Su (Author of The Leader You Want to Be) said in our conversation about leadership development coaching, “we need to find our own North Star”.

I truly believe that Interoception is an absolute key to personal growth and transformation from the inside out.

Also..we all eat and try to diet, to control ourselves...so stop! Eat ALL the popcorn and mac-n-cheese if you want to...and listen to your body when it says you have had enough.

The Body Keeps Score

If you can learn to listen to your inner signals,you’ll know when your gut tells you your client is gaslighting you, or if the deck isn’t actually right (versus all the changes everyone wants to make!), or when to say what needs to be said. 

In my coaching work, I have to hear the voices in my head and trust that sometimes, it’s intuition...and sometimes I’m getting ahead of the conversation - that rushing feeling in my stomach could be my excitement to share my insights instead of bringing them out of the person in front of me. It’s a dance.

I like to joke: If we don’t listen to our intuition, it just might pack up and head off to someplace where it’s more appreciated. So, welcome your Interoception, your body wisdom, and give it a place of pride. Honor it!

Alissa’s book, Unapologetic Eating could also be called “Unapologetic Living”...if you want more of that in your life and work, check out her book. I’ve enjoyed it.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Alissa's Website

Unapologetic Eating

Fearing the Black Body

The Beauty Myth

Minute 2

my goal is to really shift how we talk about food and bodies and health in society as a whole, and so I see it ... That's kind of what I'm doing. I'm more writing and social media work. That's kind of where I'm speaking to, but also I see the one-on-one conversations that I have with my clients translating also into this larger conversation, because the more people that are able to just really connect to their own bodies and embrace their own power, the more that they then go on and sort of change that conversation with the people in their own lives too.

Minute 6

and just to define interoception, I kind of define it as this ability to really notice and connect with the physical sensations that arise in your body and also connect those to the emotions that you're feeling, and in my work, a lot of what we're doing is, at least at the start, is ... Because I work with a lot of people who have spent a lot of time dieting, are just very disconnected from their body cues, are really eating based upon what they kind of, quote, think they should eat or shouldn't eat rather than connect it to their own body. So where we typically start is just starting to feel into the body for the physical sensations of hunger, of satiety, of thirst.

Minute 7

I mean, certainly it's a way of respecting your body, of telling your body "Okay. I trust you to tell me what it is that I need to eat," because so many of us don't, and we've been taught to distrust our body, but really, my work is helping people get back to that place of we're born with this inherent ability to ... Our bodies know what we need. For thousands and thousands of years, our body ... It's a survival mechanism when it comes to food and to eating. So it's a way of respecting our body, which then builds more body trust.

Then what I so love about the work that I do is that it starts with this piece, with the food and the eating, but then it gets to this much bigger piece, because when you trust your body to tell you what you need to eat, how much you need to eat, rather than listening to external people, you then are able to just connect more. Again, interoception connects to even more of that body trust and for everything else. So it's the intuition piece around food, but then this bleeds into everything else, just intuition with things with relationships and work and all these other things. So rather than questioning, it's this trust of like "Okay. I understand what my body is feeling right now. I'm understanding what it's communicating to me," because our bodies communicate so much wisdom to us, but we tend ... Most of us as adults tend to live mostly in our head and aren't integrating that body piece.

Minute 9

It's the judgment, the bullying, and it's really like at the root of that is usually shame, and it can become these shame stories that we tell ourselves of like "Oh, I just have no self control. I can't control myself around this thing," or it just becomes so integrated and ... Yeah. Exactly like what you just said. Shame leaves us no room for growth, and so such a huge part of this is really being able to, A, be aware of that conversation you're having with yourself in your head, bring awareness to that, and then start to notice ... Because all of the thoughts and beliefs we have in that inner dialogue ... That all developed from somewhere.

Minute 10

Usually all that development starts in childhood, and so this inner bully or inner critic, whatever you want to call it, developed usually from when you were a child, and it was trying to help you, because children don't really know what's going on and they're trying to survive and they're relying on all these people around them. So these different voices developed to try to help them survive, but then at some point it becomes more harmful than helpful. Once you're an adult and once you kind of know like "Okay. I am safe. I don't need these bully voices anymore," but for most of us, they just still stay in there because they're so integrated. So it's bringing the awareness to it and then starting to notice like "Okay. How are these not helpful to me right now and maybe even harmful?"

Minute 13

So unapologetic eating means eating what you want, when you want, how you want. In a way, that's honoring that interoception that we just talked about but without feeling like you have to explain yourself, or without feeling those shoulds or shouldn'ts, without feeling guilty, without feeling ashamed. It's being in the moment with food and eating in a way that feels good in your body, eating things that you enjoy, fully inhabiting your body when you're eating, like that audible ... that you let out when something is really good.

Or that look on your face, and you're like "This is ..." Your eyes close, and you're like "This is so good," and it's being in the moment with that and without feeling self conscious, without worrying about like "Oh, what are others might be thinking of me?" and really, the ... This is kind of the arc of the book is it goes from unapologetic eating but really getting people to unapologetic living, because exactly what I said before, where you start to ... This starts with food and eating, but then it bleeds into so many other areas of your live, and so I also just see unapologetic eating as getting back to our roots and who we were before society told us who we should be.

Minute 15

 Well, I think, to just your first point of "Well, I can't eat whatever I want, because then I'll go off the rails," or whatever, that's so, so common, but I always say we feel that way because, well, A, we've been taught by so many different ways in our society that we can't trust what we eat. In the United States, the diet culture, the diet industry, is a 70-billion-dollar-plus industry. So we're taught and told in so many different ways from so many different sources that like "Oh, you can't trust your body. You need to follow X, Y, Z things, or else you're not going to be healthy," and in reality, that couldn't be farther from the truth, and I always tell people to look at babies and small children.

Minute 17

So I see this with my niece and nephew. I was out there a couple months ago visiting them, and at the time, they were three and a half years old, and so I'm making them dinner one night, and so I make Kraft mac and cheese. I had the Trader Joe's steamed lentils. I roasted some vegetables, and I think I put some hummus on the plate or something like that. So two three and a half year olds, right?

The first night, neither one of them touched the Kraft mac and cheese, neither one of them. My nephew ate all the lentils, and then he asked for yogurt. The only yogurt we had in the fridge was the plain Greek yogurt, and I was like "Ooh, I don't think he's going to like this," and I was like "This one? You sure?" and he was like "Yes. That one," and he ate ... I don't know. He just kept asking for more. He probably had a cup of lentils and a cup of yogurt and didn't eat any of the mac and cheese, and my niece ate all her carrots and just kept asking for more carrots, and when they were done, they're just like "I'm done," and I didn't say "Ooh, you sure you don't want this?" and it's really hard to do this. I'm just like "are you sure you're done?" and they were like "Yep. I'm done," and then the next day, we had leftovers, and that day, they both ate some of the macaroni and cheese, but yeah.

So they're not looking at that plate thinking "Oh, mac and cheese. This is bad for me. I shouldn't be having this. I don't know when I'm going to have this next. So I got to eat it all now." They're just like "Here's the plate of food. What sounds good to me?" They're eating based on their body cues

MORE ABOUT ALISSA

Alissa Rumsey, MS, RD, CDN, CSCS is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life. Alissa is passionate about advocating for people to reclaim the space to eat and live unapologetically. She is the founder of Alissa Rumsey Nutrition and Wellness, a weight-inclusive nutrition practice that offers virtual counseling and online programs to help people liberate themselves from dieting, cultivate a peaceful relationship to food and their bodies, and live a more authentic, connected life. Her expertise has been featured in hundreds of media outlets and she speaks regularly at events, online trainings, and conferences around the country. She calls New York City home and spends her free time exploring the city’s food scene and searching for patches of green space to sunbathe in.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

So I will then officially welcome you to The Conversation Factory. Alissa, I'm really excited that we get to have this conversation.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. I am too.

Daniel Stillman:

I was thinking about where to start the conversations, and I'm curious. Do you have a sense when I ask you what conversation do you feel like you design in your work? What are the conversations that you feel like you are attending to and designing on purpose?

Alissa Rumsey:

So I would say there's a range. I would say, in the work that I do one on one with my clients, I'm designing conversations with us in session, where it's very similar to a therapy session or coaching session, where I'm really trying to help them connect and make their own meaning and sort of figure out what's going on and connect the dots for themselves, and within that, there's also a big part of the work that I do tends to be around bringing a lot of awareness or helping them bring a lot of awareness to their inner conversation that's in their head, like their inner thoughts. We often call it the inner critic voice or the judgmental voices or the shoulds that are in there, and really working with them to help them change that kind of conversation or tape that is playing in their head.

Alissa Rumsey:

Then I think that also sort of connects to the larger conversation, which my goal is to really shift how we talk about food and bodies and health in society as a whole, and so I see it ... That's kind of what I'm doing. I'm more writing and social media work. That's kind of where I'm speaking to, but also I see the one-on-one conversations that I have with my clients translating also into this larger conversation, because the more people that are able to just really connect to their own bodies and embrace their own power, the more that they then go on and sort of change that conversation with the people in their own lives too.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that this is where we're starting, because when I think about conversations, thinking about the range and what the range is that we're working on or designing in, this size ... Your sort of highlighted there's the one on one and then there's your social media. There's the one to many, and then you also facilitate or gather groups and build community around the work you do, and then there's this larger societal or cultural conversation around food and dieting, which is just like ... I'm glad that we have the whole conversational range from the way we talk to ourselves to the way the whole culture talks about this topic, and they're all there laid out on the table. That's all part of what you do.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

So for me, when we were talking about having you on the podcast, I was like "How does this fit in?" So much of the people who come on the show are talking about organizational change, innovation coaching, or facilitation leadership, and ... Oh. Hey. What's that?

Alissa Rumsey:

Oh. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry.

Daniel Stillman:

It's okay.

Alissa Rumsey:

That was another call coming in. I don't know why.

Daniel Stillman:

That's totally not a problem.

Alissa Rumsey:

It rang on my computer, which is bizarre. I don't know if it's because my phone. I'm turning off my computer sound just in case. Sorry about that.

Daniel Stillman:

Technology. It's totally fine. We're going to keep this in, because this is all real. So for me, I was like "I don't know. This is kind of off topic," and then Janet and I were reading your book, your book that just came out, because I want to make sure we talk about this. We were at the spa reading this together, and just for anybody listening, we've already had COVID. We got better, and this was an outdoor pool. So it was relatively safe. No COVID shaming. We were reading the book together, and I was like "Oh, my god. This book is a tool to change the larger social conversation about food and dieting and body image," but you spend so much of the book talking about interoception and sensing ourselves and connecting with ourselves, and I love the word, and I've been using it in my coaching calls as well. I say "Well, you know what proprioception is," and they're like "Yeah. Kind of," and I'm like "Yeah. Well, interoception is knowing what you're feeling inside, and that's important." Why is interoception important to you in your work? Can we just unpack that a little bit?

Alissa Rumsey:

Sure. Sure. I love that that was what you pulled out, because that was not what I was expecting you to pull out. So I thought that that was really interesting. So yeah, and just to define interoception, I kind of define it as this ability to really notice and connect with the physical sensations that arise in your body and also connect those to the emotions that you're feeling, and in my work, a lot of what we're doing is, at least at the start, is ... Because I work with a lot of people who have spent a lot of time dieting, are just very disconnected from their body cues, are really eating based upon what they kind of, quote, think they should eat or shouldn't eat rather than connect it to their own body. So where we typically start is just starting to feel into the body for the physical sensations of hunger, of satiety, of thirst.

Daniel Stillman:

Wait. Is that how you pronounce that? [inaudible 00:06:21].

Alissa Rumsey:

Satiety. That's how I pronounce it.

Daniel Stillman:

That's fine. I'll go with yours. So why is it important for us to, instead of eating according to a specific plan or ideal, to eat according to what our bodies are telling us?

Alissa Rumsey:

So I think it's important for many reasons. I mean, certainly it's a way of respecting your body, of telling your body "Okay. I trust you to tell me what it is that I need to eat," because so many of us don't, and we've been taught to distrust our body, but really, my work is helping people get back to that place of we're born with this inherent ability to ... Our bodies know what we need. For thousands and thousands of years, our body ... It's a survival mechanism when it comes to food and to eating. So it's a way of respecting our body, which then builds more body trust.

Alissa Rumsey:

Then what I so love about the work that I do is that it starts with this piece, with the food and the eating, but then it gets to this much bigger piece, because when you trust your body to tell you what you need to eat, how much you need to eat, rather than listening to external people, you then are able to just connect more. Again, interoception connects to even more of that body trust and for everything else. So it's the intuition piece around food, but then this bleeds into everything else, just intuition with things with relationships and work and all these other things. So rather than questioning, it's this trust of like "Okay. I understand what my body is feeling right now. I'm understanding what it's communicating to me," because our bodies communicate so much wisdom to us, but we tend ... Most of us as adults tend to live mostly in our head-

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Alissa Rumsey:

... and aren't integrating that body piece.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to unpack this. I want to go one more layer down, because the way I would language this is there's a dialogue. We have internalized these shoulds. There's these internal voices that are saying "Oh, I shouldn't eat this. I should be eating more of that. I should be doing these things," and there's another part of us that's saying "I want ice cream," and then there's this like "No. You're a bad person for wanting ice cream," and shifting that conversation is non trivial. What I say often is forcing people, aggression, bullying really is not super effective change management technique when it comes to other people, and yet we're having these internal bullying conversations with ourselves.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's the judgment, the bullying, and it's really like at the root of that is usually shame, and it can become these shame stories that we tell ourselves of like "Oh, I just have no self control. I can't control myself around this thing," or it just becomes so integrated and ... Yeah. Exactly like what you just said. Shame leaves us no room for growth, and so such a huge part of this is really being able to, A, be aware of that conversation you're having with yourself in your head, bring awareness to that, and then start to notice ... Because all of the thoughts and beliefs we have in that inner dialogue ... That all developed from somewhere.

Alissa Rumsey:

Usually all that development starts in childhood, and so this inner bully or inner critic, whatever you want to call it, developed usually from when you were a child, and it was trying to help you, because children don't really know what's going on and they're trying to survive and they're relying on all these people around them. So these different voices developed to try to help them survive, but then at some point it becomes more harmful than helpful. Once you're an adult and once you kind of know like "Okay. I am safe. I don't need these bully voices anymore," but for most of us, they just still stay in there because they're so integrated. So it's bringing the awareness to it and then starting to notice like "Okay. How are these not helpful to me right now and maybe even harmful?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. We're going to dance around all of these different conversations, because I'm wondering ... The book. I think of books as conversation pieces, really. You're putting a sound out. Has the conversation around the book been what you've hoped it to be? Do you feel like it's creating the conversation around eating that you want to facilitate?

Alissa Rumsey:

That's such a great question, and I would say yeah so far. So the book's only been out for about a month. It's funny. I was just posting on Instagram this morning. It's such a funny thing. You write this book. You spend all this time. You put it out, and just getting the feedback ... I know that, at this point, hundreds, if not maybe thousands, of people have bought the book and are reading it, but you're not hearing from all those people. So I always appreciate when people are giving me feedback, because I'm like "This is so great because it's just out there, and I don't really know," but yes.

Alissa Rumsey:

The feedback I have gotten has been just in the sense of really making people think and really making them kind of uncomfortable in places. I say that right in the introduction like "Look. There are going to be parts of this or maybe many parts of this book that make you feel uncomfortable, and that is okay, and that is part of this process," and yeah. That's the feedback I have been getting is that and also just getting so many messages from people that are like "Oh, my gosh. This resonates so much," or "Oh, this makes so much sense," and so that feels really great as well.

Daniel Stillman:

So the title of the book is Unapologetic Eating, and it's become ... Maybe we're misusing the book at this point in our family. I don't know, but Janet and I can joke now. I am unapologetically eating this ice cream. We can just anchor ourselves on like "I'm eating this," and maybe it's giving us too much license to eat whatever we want, because we're on a mini vacation right now, but what's important, do you think, for people to know about unapologetic eating? Let's just put a flag in the sand there and say for somebody who has no idea. A lot of the people who are listening to this ... This is going to be a very big, new idea for them. This is what my dad used to say. "What? Do you want me to give the 25-word-or-less version?" I'm like "Yes. Yes. I do." For somebody who's new to this conversation, can we give them an invitation into this space?

Alissa Rumsey:

Definitely. So unapologetic eating means eating what you want, when you want, how you want. In a way, that's honoring that interoception that we just talked about but without feeling like you have to explain yourself, or without feeling those shoulds or shouldn'ts, without feeling guilty, without feeling ashamed. It's being in the moment with food and eating in a way that feels good in your body, eating things that you enjoy, fully inhabiting your body when you're eating, like that audible ... that you let out when something is really good.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, I know.

Alissa Rumsey:

Or that look on your face, and you're like "This is ..." Your eyes close, and you're like "This is so good," and it's being in the moment with that and without feeling self conscious, without worrying about like "Oh, what are others might be thinking of me?" and really, the ... This is kind of the arc of the book is it goes from unapologetic eating but really getting people to unapologetic living, because exactly what I said before, where you start to ... This starts with food and eating, but then it bleeds into so many other areas of your life, and so I also just see unapologetic eating as getting back to our roots and who we were before society told us who we should be.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, and that was ... I mean, honestly, that's one of the reasons why interoception comes up in my coaching work is for people to ... I used to joke, years to myself, if you don't listen to your intuition, it may go some place else where it will get love and attention. We just constantly silence our intuition. We're not in the habit of connecting with it. I think some people would ... I definitely have this experience of like "Well, but I can't just eat whatever I want. I'll get fat," and then, well, okay. So then there's this whole larger conversation about what fat is and who gets to say what a good body is, and that's a mine field.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. Well, I think, to just your first point of "Well, I can't eat whatever I want, because then I'll go off the rails," or whatever, that's so, so common, but I always say we feel that way because, well, A, we've been taught by so many different ways in our society that we can't trust what we eat. In the United States, the diet culture, the diet industry, is a 70-billion-dollar-plus industry. So we're taught and told in so many different ways from so many different sources that like "Oh, you can't trust your body. You need to follow X, Y, Z things, or else you're not going to be healthy," and in reality, that couldn't be farther from the truth, and I always tell people to look at babies and small children.

Alissa Rumsey:

Before any of that, which unfortunately does start to get in kids' brains very young, but before any of that kind of cultural messaging gets in, if they're given a variety of foods and they're fed consistently throughout the day, they eat a variety of food, and they naturally balance out on a week-to-week basis the calories they need, the nutrients they need, again, assuming there's enough access to food and enough variety provided without any adult intervention. So I see this with my niece and nephew. I was out there a couple months ago visiting them, and at the time, they were three and a half years old, and so I'm making them dinner one night, and so I make Kraft mac and cheese. I had the Trader Joe's steamed lentils. I roasted some vegetables, and I think I put some hummus on the plate or something like that. So two three and a half year olds, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alissa Rumsey:

The first night, neither one of them touched the Kraft mac and cheese, neither one of them. My nephew ate all the lentils, and then he asked for yogurt. The only yogurt we had in the fridge was the plain Greek yogurt, and I was like "Ooh, I don't think he's going to like this," and I was like "This one? You sure?" and he was like "Yes. That one," and he ate ... I don't know. He just kept asking for more. He probably had a cup of lentils and a cup of yogurt and didn't eat any of the mac and cheese, and my niece ate all her carrots and just kept asking for more carrots, and when they were done, they're just like "I'm done," and I didn't say "Ooh, you sure you don't want this?" and it's really hard to do this. Even me [inaudible 00:17:51]. I'm just like "are you sure you're done?" and they were like "Yep. I'm done," and then the next day, we had leftovers, and that day, they both ate some of the macaroni and cheese, but yeah.

Alissa Rumsey:

So they're not looking at that plate thinking "Oh, mac and cheese. This is bad for me. I shouldn't be having this. I don't know when I'm going to have this next. So I got to eat it all now." They're just like "Here's the plate of food. What sounds good to me?" They're eating based on their body cues, and then we just get so disconnected from that for a variety of reasons as we get older, and so really that's my hope with the book is helping people get back to that place where they're not questioning their wants and needs. They're like "Okay. Tonight, I ..." I mean, I literally just had mac and cheese for lunch right before we started recording this, and it's like it's fine, right? I had like 20 minutes to eat. I'm like "What do I have in my fridge?" I have leftover mac and cheese that my partner made, so I was like "Great. This is what I'm eating for lunch. It's going to fuel me. It's going to taste good. It's going to get me through the next few hours of my work day."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It'll get you to satiety.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

What's interesting about this, and I want to just connect this for people who may have listened to ... A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, who's a professor of design thinking, and her work is a lot about decolonizing this idea of innovation, and she actually did the experiment where she was doing a design-thinking innovation project with a bunch of kids, and she was like "Hey. So we just talked to some people about these problems they're having, like what do you want to do now?" They were like "Well, I think we should try to make sense of all of it," and she was like "Yeah. Totally. How could we do that?" and they were like "Well, we could just put it up on the wall, and let's see what's interesting," and like "Yeah. Let's do that, and now what should we do?" Like "Well, it seems like we've got a couple. Maybe we should try some stuff." Like "Oh, yeah. You should totally do that," and meanwhile these kids just invented design thinking by themselves.

Daniel Stillman:

This idea that we have to do it the right way and that there is a right way and that someone else can tell us the right way and that we should be doing it that right way so it's repeatable and perfect every time ... It's a tough balance, because nutrition is a thing. You studied this. You are actually certified. You can tell me, like "Yes. There's ..." But everybody's different in the same way that I would say every organization is different and every team is different. You have to actually pay attention to what's happening, so the idea of how do you get your ...

Daniel Stillman:

I want to flip back around and talk about the change piece, because when clients are coming to you for behavioral change coaching when they are not happy with he way things are, what's the process to get them to start to trust their voice and say "Yeah. I can de-regulate or de-control what I eat and listen and then change from there"? There's the example in the book, which I love, of like "Yes. Let's re-regulate mac and cheese." Mac and cheese seems to come up a lot. It's like "Yeah. I'm going to eat mac and cheese." It sounded almost like when parents are like "Here. Smoke this whole pack of cigarettes." It's like "Yeah. Have mac and cheese as much as you want," and then you're going to be like "You know what? It's lost its power over me, and I'm going to have it when I want to have it or when I need to have it, because it soothes me or because it satisfies me." How do you get them to do those experiments?

Alissa Rumsey:

Well, that's the exact word, experimenting. In our culture, perfectionism is a very common thing, and there's this like "Well, I have to be perfect," or "I have to do it the right way," and it's also very ... There's so much binary thinking, like either I'm doing this right or I'm doing this wrong. That's with everything, but certainly when we think about food and eating, it's like I'm either on the wagon or I'm off the wagon, or I'm either dieting and Monday through Friday everything is super clean and et cetera, et cetera, but then the weekend is just off the rails, and what people don't realize is like-

Daniel Stillman:

Right. So that I can get back to eating celery and kale smoothies-

Alissa Rumsey:

Right. Come Monday morning.

Daniel Stillman:

... Monday through Friday.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah, and what people don't realize is that, when it comes to food and eating, the reason we're off the rails on the weekend is because we're trying to over control so much during the week. So really, I see my work as helping people find that gray area, find that area in between, not shooting for perfection, and experimenting and approaching food and approaching our bodies with curiosity rather than judgment. So we do a lot of work around, I mean, certainly, unpacking where their beliefs around food, about bodies, about weight, about health ... where those beliefs came from, how they learned those things.

Alissa Rumsey:

A lot of that goes back to family of origin and caregivers, but certainly also just society and movies and TV and all these different things, so really unpacking that and unpacking the impact that that's had on them, which usually it's been pretty harmful, like disconnected them from their bodies and themselves and lots of shame, and really ... Yeah. Just, I mean, I ask a ton of questions, and because I might be sitting here and be like "Okay. Well, I know exactly what's going on." It is so much more powerful if I'm able to ask them questions and getting them to connect the dots, and they're like "Oh, I wonder if it's because of this," or like "Oh, yeah. What about this?" So much more powerful than if I'm just telling them.

Alissa Rumsey:

So really, I see my work with my clients like I'm not the expert, like I'm there as an equal partner, and like they're the expert of their body and I'm just there to try to help them get back in touch, that interoception part, the intuition part, and also be a place of support, because experimenting and allowing yourself to eat certain foods when you've been telling yourself for so long "Oh, I can't, because I'll just have too much," or "I can't keep that in the house," ... That can be a really scary thing, especially if and when people are concerned with gaining weight or their body changing. So it's also the support of like "Okay. You can do hard things. This is going to be an experiment. Let's see how it goes, and let's see what you learn," because every eating experience is a learning experience, and so really being there to sort of point out patterns that I'm seeing and really trying to help them connect those dots.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so interesting, the idea of having curiosity and maybe even patience with the process. I know when we started this conversation, we were talking about the range. We were talking about this range of large to small, and in my work in trying to understand what we can shift around a conversation, pace is one of them as well, and I imagine there are some people who are like "I want to have a change and I want to have it fast," and you could maybe download ... Can't I just download Alissa's brain, and she could just tell me all the things, and I could do them? But this kind of change is a slower change, having curiosity about yourself and then doing these experiments. How do you help your clients define what a good experiment looks like and how to judge whether or not that experiment was a success for them personally?

Alissa Rumsey:

Well, I would say that even trying to get out of the binary of like "Was it successful or not?" It's just like every time you eat, every time you try something, you're going to learn something about yourself, and so just continuing to try to find that gray area and getting out of that binary thinking. So a lot of times, what I'll tell them is like "Okay." Again, mindfulness is such a huge part of this, because again, if we're not aware of what the thoughts and beliefs behind those thoughts and feelings about those thoughts are, that's in this case with eating or with how they feel about their body, then we can't do anything with it.

Alissa Rumsey:

So we need to really be aware first. So definitely mindfulness is a practice that we work on together, but yeah. Just noticing like "Okay. When that judgmental thought starts to come up, what is it saying? Where did you learn that? What contributed to the development of that thought or that voice?" Again, unpacking how might it have helped you in the past but also how might it have harmed you or held you back, and then just getting curious about ... Let's just say, for food, it's that judgment of like "Oh, I can't believe I just ate all those cookies. Why did I do that? I wasn't even hungry." Let's just say that's the first judgmental thought. I think you're laughing, because it sounds very familiar, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, totally.

Alissa Rumsey:

We've all had these thoughts. So it's like, okay, let's set aside the judgment for a minute. Let's get curious. What might be going on right now? Maybe it was that I didn't have breakfast this morning. So I was really rushed, and my lunch was really fast, and I had a really stressful day, and I just haven't eaten enough today. Or maybe it was my lunch was like eight hours ago. So by the time I had dinner, I was starving, which then makes it really difficult to stop at this comfortable place of fullness, because your body is sort of like "Well, you haven't fed us all day. We don't know if we can trust you to feed us the next time you're hungry. So let's get it in now." Or maybe it's just I had a really crappy day. I was feeling really emotional. Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite thing. This is like me talking. Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Amen.

Alissa Rumsey:

I had a bunch. I really enjoyed them, and I'm feeling better now. Yes. I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortably full, but you know what? It's fine, because there's some emotional stuff going on, and I really needed that comfort in the moment.

Daniel Stillman:

So there's two things I want to prod out. One, thank you for pushing back on my binary thinking around an experiment either being successful or not and just being like "What did I learn?" So in the sense of just being curious, I can say "What was that like? What was it like to just let myself do blank and not worry about it? What did I learn? How did that feel?" That's very different than saying that was bad or good. I know you talked about this in your book as well, where there's just one number that says whether or not I was a successful person or not, right?

Alissa Rumsey:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

My weight, and this is so interesting because I'm relating this back to people who might be listening who are thinking about agile transformations of organizations and just have this one OKR, this one thing that we're supposed to measure our whole company's success by, and that's fair. Oh, man. There's so many directions I want to take this, because how do you adapt this? I didn't even think I was going to go here now, but how do you adapt these principles to your business? Because obviously you live by your wits. You live by caring for your clients. A business does have one metric, one ultimate metric of validity, right?

Alissa Rumsey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Daniel Stillman:

Did people come? Did they show up? Did they support our work with their time and their money? So how do you avoid apologetic businessing?

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. You know, I mean, it's a constant kind of thing of just recognizing when that's showing up and when ... Because I think, again, especially in US culture, but in many Western cultures, there's ... I think a lot of the work I've been doing just in the last few years around the decolonization and unlearning and recognizing where white supremacy is showing up in our lives, and there's this really amazing ... I think the website is Showing Up For Racial Justice, and they have characteristics of white supremacy culture, and perfectionism is one of them, sense of urgency, this binary thinking, quantity over quality, only the one right way.

Alissa Rumsey:

So I try to think about decolonizing just my own mind, and therefor with business, and then I think it's also thinking about the capitalistic capitalism society that we live in, where better is always more, like more money, more clients, et cetera, and it's like "Wait. Is that what my business needs to be?" and what I've realized is no, that's not. I did not go to school to become a dietician to make money. No one goes to school to be a dietician to make money. That's not how you make money. So that's never been my goal, but I totally got sucked up when I started my own business six-plus years ago, got sucked into this, like "Okay. The six-figure mark and then the seven-figure mark," and shooting for these things, and it's like "Wait. Why? Why?" and so whenever I catch myself with that, like [inaudible 00:31:47], looking at the book numbers, it's like "Okay. Well, why?" Yes. I am really proud of this book, and I think it can be really life changing, and I want to get it into people's hands. I also didn't write a book to make money, but at the same time, how does that help me, to get caught up in the numbers?

Alissa Rumsey:

So I think it really, again, comes back to this gray area, and I know so many organizations are set up where it is the black and white and the pass fail, but I think it's thinking about how can we maybe measure in a different way, or how can we ... If we didn't hit the numbers, it's not like the end of the world. It doesn't mean you're bad, but where can we start to just look at these different things? So I think it's getting out of this, because what tends to happen with binary thinking is the good or bad, and then it turns into a judgment on you as a person, like "Okay. Either you were good and you're a good person, or you're bad and you're a bad person, you're failing," and again, this shame spiral, which, as we said before, doesn't help anybody.

Daniel Stillman:

Not so helpful.

Alissa Rumsey:

So again, finding this gray area, and just I know for myself it's just been really coming back to my values. I've been doing a lot of values work and just like "Okay. Why did I start my business to begin with?" Again, I mean, yes. It was to make more money than I was making on a clinical dietician's salary, but it wasn't to make a million dollars. That's not why I started my business. I started my business so that I could help people in the way that I wanted to help people, so that I could have more flexibility in my schedule, all these other different reasons. So just trying to kind of keep it value centered really helps me from when I do start to get caught up in the numbers, which I do sometimes, just coming back to like "Okay. Am I doing the work that I want to do? Am I having the impact that I want to have?" without trying to necessarily measure that impact.

Alissa Rumsey:

I do understand measurable goals and stuff like that and how it can be helpful, but for me ... I consider myself a recovering type A person. So for me, I actually find that it's not helpful for me to have measurable goals, because I get way too caught up in the numbers, and I get so stressed out and so anxious. It's not worth the mental health. So yeah. I have some loose goals, but I just personally have found that I do better if I don't have those kinds of things, or else it just gets just way too much.

Daniel Stillman:

That is so interesting, and I love that. I think sometimes people talk about this idea of strong opinions loosely held, and not holding so tight on this is exactly how everything is supposed to go is a more playful in-and-out approach to your own process, which I personally value.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's a great way to say it too, and again, it's just like for me, at the end of the day, it's like "Okay. Yes. I want to have enough money so I can live the kind of life I want to live," but that is not as much money as our society tells me I should have or should need. So it's again just questioning why, like "Wait. Why do I think this is right or wrong? Why do I think this is the way?" Should is always a warning sign for me. If there's a should anywhere, I'm like "Wait a second." That's not me. The should isn't me.

Daniel Stillman:

So I want to interrogate this, because this is really ... I want to go back to a point ... I think people who are listening to this for the first time, not knowing as much about this topic as you do, certainly, and me a little ... They might be like "How do you decolonize dieting? This is total bullshit. What does this mean?" and while Janet was reading the book, I'm like "You don't know about Kellogg and masturbation?" and she was like "No." I was like "The history of the ideas of what we're supposed to eat and how we're supposed to look are cultural."

Daniel Stillman:

So I'm wondering maybe from your perspective, because I feel like now we're ... We've talked about a couple of ranges in conversation. One is the sizes of the intimacy of the dialogue, the public to the personal to the interior and the fast versus the slow. We didn't touch on this, but you spoke to transferring power from yourself to your clients, giving them ... You could tell them the answer, maybe. Would it help? Probably not, and so it's about giving them the dialogue to pull it out. There's this other range, which is like just stepping way back and taking an historical view of this thing, like "Well, why do we think these are the shoulds?" and it's weird, the history. You actually have a graph. I'll just say I don't think it went back far enough, all the weirdness of food and how we're supposed to look, and so maybe just unpack that a little bit for people. We're sitting in this moment now. Everything we know and think and believe is based on some history, and the history's not all great.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yes. Yeah. I have a line in the book, I think, where I say something to the effect of like "Everything that you think you know about food, about weight, about health, about body fat is something you were taught at some point and something that was created for a reason." So yeah. I love this. I love the zooming out because I think this is so helpful for people, because it's like "Well, but this is healthier," like you said before, like "Isn't nutrition important?" It's like "Okay. Let's ..." Yeah. If we zoom out a little bit, in our society ... I use the term, in the book, diet culture, which really means that thinness is put on a pedestal and thinness is seen as the epitome of health and happiness and like this is the thing we should all be striving for, and if you're not thin or you're not striving to be thin, then something is wrong with you.

Alissa Rumsey:

So there's a lot of anti-fat beliefs. There's a lot of fat phobia, but this fat phobia and these anti-fat beliefs ... They don't exist in a silo. They didn't just come from nowhere, and so yeah. I wasn't sure if I was going to do this, but I ended up starting the book with this information because I really thought that it's so important to understand this foundation about why we think the way we do about bodies and the roots of that, and so the cultural beliefs about body size and then food as well were specifically created to keep certain people down, mainly black people, people of color, women, fat people, and other people, mainly white people, men, cis gender, heterosexual people, on top. So it was really to keep certain people oppressed and not in their power, and

Alissa Rumsey:

so I reference Sabrina Strings' book Fearing the Black Body, and she really lays it out so well there, the colonist roots of diet culture and how, as a lot of us have been, especially white folks in the last year, been learning a lot about and just really putting these pieces together about how our society and our culture in our country here in the US was built upon the control of black people, indigenous people, people of color, and Sabrina Strings really talks about in this book how, to establish social hierarchies where white people were at the top and where they could justify ... This was several hundred years ago, when the transatlantic slave trade was really going, where they could justify keeping black people enslaved. They created this anti-fat bias, this fat phobia. This racial scientific rhetoric linked fatness to greedy Africans, and there was also the protestant wave going through the US too, and so religious discourse, kind of saying overeating is ungodly-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's greed. It's-

Alissa Rumsey:

... and so fatness became stigmatized because it became a way that white people could separate themselves from black people. So it had nothing to do with health. This was hundreds of years before any research started around health around nutrition, and then at that point, who was doing the research in the early 1900s? White men, and already these biases against fat people and against people of color and their cultural foods were already there. So yeah. This was a huge shifting point for me was just understanding where this diet culture that we know it today came from, and it really is rooted in racism and colonialism as well as sexism.

Alissa Rumsey:

So I reference as well Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth, which was actually first written in the '90s, but it's wild. It's still so relevant if you go back and read it today, and she talks about how when we look back at history, every time women gained power and advancement in society, new and more beauty and body ideals came out, and she has this amazing quote in her book where she says "The cultural fixation on thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience," and when you think about ... I mean, I just think about all my clients, and I have a past of dieting and body image issues myself.

Alissa Rumsey:

Just think of how much time that takes to try to diet and be thin and meal plan and all of these things. So it's taking so much time, time that you can't use elsewhere, and also, like I said when we started, you're teaching people that they can't trust themselves, and when you look back at societal control, it's easier to control groups of people when they distrust themselves. So again, why? Why do I believe this? Why do I think thin is better? Why do I think fat isn't as good? We just think it's like "Oh, because it is. Because it's unhealthy," or whatever, but no. It actually goes back so much farther, and I do think having that bigger picture view is so helpful.

Daniel Stillman:

It is, and if we're going to connect this back to you and your business ... Excuse me ... this idea of like "Well, why should a business grow exponentially? What does success look like? What does that mean? What does enoughness look like in our own life?" and I think it's so powerful to be able to step back and say "Why do I believe what I believe not a personal basis, but what was taught to me? What's the water that I'm in?" which we don't even see most of the time.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's like we're all swimming in this, and we've been ... Those of us born in the US ... We were born in it, and especially those of us who have a lot of body privilege. So I have a lot of body privilege. I'm white. I'm thin. I'm cis gender, heterosexual, grew up solid middle class, fairly wealth privileged. I didn't see it. I especially didn't see it because it didn't affect me on a day-to-day basis. I wasn't treated differently because of the body I'm in. So I didn't see it, but you talk to fat people ...

Alissa Rumsey:

This great book, just written, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, and she just talks about, every single day, the amount of hate she gets just because of her body. She's not doing anything to these people, just walking down the street, and it's just like I didn't see that for so long because I don't experience that. Same thing when black people are like "Hey. We've been dealing with racism for hundreds of years," and white people are like "Wait. What? What? That's still not around anymore," and they're all like "Yes. It is." That's been the whole last year, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Alissa Rumsey:

Is like white people being like "Oh, wait," waking up to this fact, because it's not affecting us. So yeah. It really is taking a look around at this water we've been swimming in and how has it affected how we view ourselves, but also how has it affected how we view other people.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so important, as you said, to step back and to take that wide view. Speaking of taking the wide view, it's almost time for us to say goodbye. This time goes so fast. These are some of my favorite things to talk about, systems change and awareness and wondering why things are the way they are. What haven't we talked about that's important to talk about? What are some closing parting thoughts about, oh, boy, everything that we talked about?

Alissa Rumsey:

I mean, I guess I would say, if I had to sum this up, I would just say ... Because certainly, we all eat, the food piece, but even if the food piece doesn't resonate, that's what I've come to love about the work that I do is that it's so much more than just food. So anything we've talked about today can be extrapolated to all sorts of other areas of life, and I think, really, to me, it comes down to that unlearning and unpacking, like "Okay. What are the things that have been put on me by society that are not mine? This isn't me, and then who is it that I am underneath?"

Alissa Rumsey:

This was a big thing for me the last few years was kind of figuring that out, and that was actually ... I have a couple chapters about that towards the end of the book, and that was what was most fun for me to write. It's like "Okay. If I'm not this, who am I?" So really just doing that work of unlearning and unpacking, asking why, like "Why do I believe this? Why do I think this?" and really just, to me, it's just all about getting back to who you are underneath and being able to be unapologetically yourself no matter what that looks like and especially if that's not something that aligns with what our society tells us we should be or should look like or should do.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow. That's such a powerful idea and such a great place to close out our time. Where can should people are wandering around the internet and want to learn more about these things ... How can we direct them? Where should they go to learn more about all things Alissa Rumsey?

Alissa Rumsey:

So they can go to my website, which is alissarumsey.com. I also hang out a lot over on Instagram. @alissarumseyrd is my handle, and then my book Unapologetic Eating. Everything we spoke about today is in that book. So that's another great place to start as well, and that's available wherever books are sold, so Amazon. You can get it IndieBound, your local book stores, Barnes & Noble, book shop, et cetera.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Thank you so much for this time. I'm really glad we were able to unpack so many important aspects of listening, curiosity, learning, non-binary thinking. There's so much goodness. I'm really grateful that you were able to share just a little bit of your work with us today.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yeah. Of course. Thank you so much for having me on. This was really fun.

Daniel Stillman:

And scene. Oh, man. There we go.

Alissa Rumsey:

Yay.

Daniel Stillman:

That was good. This is such great stuff. Thank you so much. This is super awesome.

Alissa Rumsey:

You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah. I feel like we got to a lot of different places. That was really cool.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Somewhere between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that’s where all the magic and fun lies” So says author Tyson Yunkaporta, in his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, my guest for this conversation.

Towards the end of the book, Tyson is explaining the meaning of Ngak Lokath, an Aboriginal word for the brackish water that forms in the wet season when freshwater floods into the sea...an example of what the Yolngu Tribe calls Ganma, a phenomenon of dynamic interaction when opposite forces meet and create something new…

...many pages later he picks up this thread saying:

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…

I see all conversations in this way, too: as flowing, tidal forces. We can push and pull the waters, like the moon, to exert force on it, but the conversation still sloshes around with its own inertia. Power can form, transform or deform conversations, and the historical power disparity between so-called mainstream culture and indigenous cultures has prevented a great deal of potential insight and transformation, the opportunity to live and work in accordance with a natural order, rather than against it.

Tyson’s book does an extraordinary job of grounding ideas in physical reality. Tyson offers us a thought experiment: Risk, viewed through an indigenous lens.

If you cross a river once, there’s a risk of being taken by a crocodile. The first time, the risk is minimal, but if you do it twice, the risk is greater.

Non-Aboriginal statistics and risk calculation would take the risk and multiply it - It assumes that the risk is random each time. But it’s not.

As Tyson says “The crocodile is not an abstract factor in an algorithm, but  a sentient being who observed you the first time and will be waiting for you the second time” (emphasis mine). The risk goes up exponentially.

So what? Tyson asks us to think about the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, when non-Aboriginal thinkers insured bets against losses, and then bet on the outcomes of those insurance bets. As he says,

“In a cross-cultural dialogue, we might see that the problem with this model is that every time you create a new layer of derivatives...you double the size of the system, you do not merely double the risk...you multiply it exponentially”

I learned a lot from Tyson’s book, most notably, about Yarning, the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making. Also, the Indigenous notions (or lack thereof!) of safety… Aboriginal Australians don’t have a word for safety. Instead, I learned that protocols of protection are more critical than trusting an abstract system to provide safety.

Also: Yarning about Yarning is fun, informative and oh-so-meta! 

Yarning, in Aboriginal culture, is based on sharing stories and coming to decisions through mutual respect, active listening and humor. There is no talking stick in Australian Aboriginal Yarning (That’s something the Iroquois created), just an organic back-and-forth and the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point.

Yarning is a rich and powerful tradition for anyone to transform their gatherings to be more deeply human. Sand Talk, the drawings on the ground that are a natural part of these conversations - roots the dialog in the land and makes the complex clear, if not simple.

Tyson’s book suggests that Indigenous thinking can save the world, and I agree. Our meetings and gatherings could use some more Sand Talk: More listening, more visuals, more mutual respect, more conversation.

In the opening quote, Tyson points to the idea that human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story. Modern living and modern work has resulted in a deep sense of disorientation and disconnection...and working online, remotely, has only made this sense even more acute.

Indigenous thinking, grounded in relatedness, rooted in and within a specific landscape, is deeply orientating and connecting. 

I believe it is a leader’s job to create a sense of orientation where there is disorientation, and connection where there is disconnection, always pointing towards the north star, or your southern cross. Especially when leading through a transformation. Change is disorientating. Moving to a new place, a new land is strange and painful. For more on that, it's worth checking out my conversation with Bree Groff about the 6 types of grief and loss in organizational change.

My conversation with Tyson is non-linear and complex...like any good yarn, it wanders a fair bit...so, I hope you’ll take the time to read his book and absorb the fullness of his message directly and understand all of the ways in which a conversation with Indigenous thinking can save the world! In fact, Tyson’s whole approach is to be complexity-conscious. The world and all of its interactions are complex - the alligator sees you coming the next time, and together, a system is formed. There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and Tyson isn’t selling a simple approach...he’s offering an embrace of complexity.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Tyson at Deakin University

Beer with Bella: Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta looking at the world through an indigenous lens

Minute 11

Cognitive diversity just means that just the amazing difference between each mind and each web of relations that people has it. It's you meet with someone like we are now and it's two universes coming together. I got annoyed about the term cognitively diverse now, and I forgot the question. You see what happens when you're in an antagonistic relation with the world, your memory doesn't work properly.

Minute 14

We have to have a narrative and spatial framework, that we agree what a door is, what a wall is, what a floor is, just so that we don't fall through the floor in the house and end up being like, I don't know, the EA for a demon in hell or something like that. Although that reality is going to be constructed by story as well. You need that. You need quite a bit of a collective, organic emergent agreement on what the reality is in order for anything to be tangible, and therefore measurable and knowable in that way. And it all starts with a story.

Minute 16

Okay. It's living within a specific landscape. So you're a neuroscientist and you're a cognitive scientist and all this sort of thing, trying to figure out the patterns of how people think. It's just most human cognition is spatial and navigational. Your memory is built on these. But all that is tied together with story. There is something in your mind that is the storyteller, that weaves together all this random information into a narrative of your life. Where you're the character in the story, and you're going through it. It gives it coherence, it gives it some structure. And so it's stories and story maps really, because these are all grounded in a relationship with place, and an awareness of your locatedness in the world. And without that awareness, your cognitive function, well it doesn't function. It's just not there.

Minute 51

It's just yarns are an entanglement. And once you're entangled with somebody, then that's it, you're always entangled. If something happens to you, then I'll feel it on some level over here. It's hard when you end up with like 100,000 people you're entangled with, but hey. But you must get that through the podcast, when you make relationships with people and you can't track them, you feel things coming through you every day, because there is an entanglement and their failures are really bound up with yours. And the things that happened to them, that are cataclysmic enough to affect their energetics. One of them goes through a breakup and bloody nearly kills himself or something like that, that's going to hit you. You're going to have a bad day, and you won't even know why.

Minute 58

But for me, with my infant point of view on that story, infant point of view, there's a lifetime of things to explore in there for me, but particularly around fixed viewpoints, and multiple pluralistic viewpoints. So if you're standing on the beach, and you're seeing that moon, the way the shine of the moon is, that's not there. It's not where you're seeing it. And somebody 20 meters further up the beach is seeing it in a different place. And as you move and walk up and down the beach, it's moving as well in relation to where you are. So you get 1000 people right up and down that coast, all reporting on the location of where the moon reflection is. Every single one of these stories will be wrong and right at the same time. 

But the aggregate story, the big meta story, the big narrative there would be the moon shines on every part of the ocean at once. Which is something that's approximating the truth. It's approximating enough of the truth that you could make some accurate predictions and models based on that.

MORE ABOUT TYSON

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

Well, then I'll officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. Well just thanks for being here, Tyson. It's awesome to have you.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. It's great to be here.

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like we should just say, first of all, your book is electric. It crackles, it's funny, and it's super weird, so I'm really excited.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, that's one conversation didn't come off of production line. It went through the usual supply chains, but it was a very different production line. I'm assuming Conversation Factory is ironic.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Thank you for picking that up. It is tongue and cheek. I mean, it's a double entendre. We are manufacturing them in our lives, but yeah, the first version of the logo for this was like little voice bubbles coming out of a factory. And my friend was like, "So talking is pollution, is that what you're saying?" And I was like, "No." So we changed it. I mean, there's so many places to start the conversation but-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I think most discourse is pollution at the moment. As they say, there's a lot of noise and not a lot of signal in there.

Daniel Stillman:

I agree.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Most discourse is pollution, and I think that's a very apt metaphor.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, yeah. I mean, I guess my thesis is, it's worth being reflective and intentional about the way that we design our conversations.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah, that's it. And the truth isn't your main driving force, is it? Because I mean, you have an understanding that that's the truth about a lot of the discourse in the world right now, and you showed it with smoke coming out of a factory. And it's true. It's a true metaphor, and a good metaphor. But in relation with your friend who didn't like that very much, you respectfully changed it. It's not too hard to do. You're not a bloody like this unfiltered torrent of truth in the world.

Daniel Stillman:

I am not.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Truth needs to be used judiciously and with great discernment, I believe.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, there's a lot of ways to take this, but I feel like I want to set the stage a little bit. And it's traditional in your land, it's much less traditional in my land, to do a land recognition and just to acknowledge the land that you and I are both standing on. I think one of the things that as a "Westerner" that's challenging is this idea of being a custodian. I love the phrase in the land acknowledgments to acknowledge the custodians of the land, past and present. It pulls at something in my heart, and you use this idea of being a custodian of the land in your book. Can you help a non-Aboriginal person, like what it means to be a custodian of the land?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Well, look. I mean, we acknowledge country we call it here, in that way. But that's something that's done around settlers. I find when there's no settlers around, and we're in our own kind of ritual or community context is this, there's no acknowledgement of country, because you're in that. That's your context, that's your lived context, you're embedded in it. It would be weird to say, "Well, before we go and hunt this [inaudible 00:03:55], I'd like to acknowledge that..." But I mean you do that in a way like you're walking into a place where it's a different family member, or clan member or clan group who holds the story for that place. Or maybe even if you're coming in another part of your place, where your ancestors are, you're acknowledging you're calling out, but you're calling out to those ancestors.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

You're like, "Oh, people, oh. I'm just coming in here. I'm just chasing that [inaudible 00:04:31]. We're getting there." Because you call out to let them know you're there, so you don't disturb them. And there's a whole heap of stuff. I don't know. With a lot of places you might put your body smell on any of the kids or any of the children or anything that's around, or people from other groups who are with you, visitors. You put your smell on them so the ancestors know them from the smell, and they don't like... or the spirits of the place don't go, "I used to see you walking through here." Because there's little things even like there's like this little devil things that they'll be there in the long grass, in a story, and they might get a piece of that grass, a stem of grass, and spear you with it. And you'll just be like, "Ow."

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And it's just there's no mark there yet, but it's just like a sore there, and then in a couple of days there's a big ulcer there. And it kind of spreads and you end up with a big infection there, and it's, "That little one got me there." So I mean, there are entities in the landscape that are there, kind of protecting it anyway, or regulating your movement in that place. And you as a custodial species, you're not that spirit in the landscape, although you will graduate to that at the end of your life's journey. You'll be in there, and people will be calling out for you. But what you are in the meantime, is you're an organism, so you're occupying an ecological niche. And a unique ecological niche, which is somebody who looks out for the entire system and has ritual technologies and psychological technologies, and learning technologies that allow you to be able to work holistically with that system, and understand it and care for it, and all the entities of spirit and everything else within that landscape. And that's what it is.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And mostly, it's just about attention and observation, and collective group thought and action within that landscape in both ritual, but then just in how you live your lives, the patterns of your lives. Because your pattern within that landscape should do good things to it. How a lion moves through a grassland doesn't damage the grassland. Although an antelope might have a different idea, but it doesn't damage that... The way he moves through, everything he does is perfect for there.

Daniel Stillman:

It's funny. [crosstalk 00:07:16]. The system looks different according to the relational context of the entity.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah, yeah. Well, here's where perception comes through. You can get too caught up with perception. Sometimes we think we can check [inaudible 00:07:35] economic, social, political, ecological landscape, by changing perceptions, by increasing awareness. "Oh, man. So much energy goes in increasing awareness of things by changing attitudes and stuff like that. But dude, that's not it."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So it seems like we can get to the first diagram in the book that I thought was worth starting with. I've been telling my wife the stories that I've been learning from your stories, and this idea that our great grandmothers are also our niece, that the cyclicality of time. Time is one of the most fundamental ways that I feel like inside of corporate America, inside of product design innovation. We use time and journeys to orient and to delimit, but here's the beginning of the end of the user journey. And you make it clear that time doesn't go in a straight line, and that we're not living in a closed system. And so I feel like the idea that Aboriginal thinking can change the world and save the world, this is one fundamentally different idea that time is a set of ripples that fall back on itself.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Right. That's sweet. Well, look. I mean, all I can think is my experience there recent. So just a couple of weeks ago, I got a new auntie. A new auntie was born for me, because my niece's daughter had a baby. So my niece's daughter, she's my granddaughter. You know what I mean?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And then, so my granddaughter's daughter who was born the other day, she's my auntie. Because it comes back around where your great grandchildren, that parental line sort of role for you in that kinship way, how it goes around like that.

Daniel Stillman:

And it breaks the brain. This breaks my brain. Because I think when we are talking, we talk about time and we think about linear time.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well it breaks the wheel, I guess in a Game of thrones sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes, it does. I mean, how does that view of time change how we talk and how we gather? Because it seems like yarning is a place without time.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, I mean, it really just shifts your focus on what's important, and where your attention goes. And really, that's the only... There's so much diverse cognition. There's so much cognitive diversity in the world. And I hate it that cognitively diverse now is the term for a brain damaged person. It's annoying because I already was using that term for something else like, "Fine. Your own term. All right."

Daniel Stillman:

What does it mean to you?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Cognitive diversity just means that just the amazing difference between each mind and each web of relations that people has it. It's you meet with someone like we are now and it's two universes coming together. I got annoyed about the term cognitively diverse now, and I forgot the question. You see what happens when you're in an antagonistic relation with the world, your memory doesn't work properly.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it connects to embodied cognition, because there's different ways of thinking. There's different ways of thinking about time and there's different ways of... I mean, you have this quote, where you're talking about composing a chapter by carving a club. That's a different way of looking at writing as carving a piece of wood.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

But I mean it's not really. I've met like, I don't know, Latvian quilt makers, and when they start telling you about their practice, it's the same thing. You got, I don't know, Japanese flower arrangers. And you got some people in some cultures who just every single task they perform throughout the day is like that, it's like what I describe in that cultural activity. When they're sweeping the floor, they're doing that. I'm probably doing that when I sweep the floor, my attention hasn't gone to that. That's what I was saying. The cognitive diversity, it's about where your attention is directed.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I mean, if it's where it's supposed to go, then like water it will find its way back, like this little conversational piece has. But I know it's going to get [inaudible 00:12:55]. But it's about where your attention is directed. And that's the only thing that makes the difference between people with their cognition. And that's what's beautiful, because that means that you can really only try to find a semi-accurate idea of what's going on by having many different points of view or many different stories. Because your unique cognition is directing you to focus on certain things. And it's where your attention goes, that that's your part of the story. That's your story that you're contributing to the aggregate of stories.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And once you're doing that together with a collective kind of meta narrative, I guess, all those stories are coming together. If you're doing that, then you're doing that collective sense making, you're... If you're not doing it, you're just in a quantum soup. You know what I mean? Because all this shit is just atoms and such. It's like electrons spinning around, and they don't make any sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Except for the stories we tell.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah, exactly. We have to have a narrative and spatial framework, that we agree what a door is, what a wall is, what a floor is, just so that we don't fall through the floor in the house and end up being like, I don't know, the EA for a demon in hell or something like that. Although that reality is going to be constructed by story as well. You need that. You need quite a bit of a collective, organic emergent agreement on what the reality is in order for anything to be tangible, and therefore measurable and knowable in that way. And it all starts with a story.

Daniel Stillman:

So let's unpack this because I've got a couple of quotes here, which I'm going to read, which I think can spring off our next conversation. Which is because I love these, yarning is a structured cultural activity that is valid, rigorous method for producing transiting and inquiring around knowledge. And there's this other quote you had that said, "All things that last must be a group effort aligned with the patterns of creation discerned from living within a specific landscape." So this idea of people coming together in a time and place to have an intentional conversation, to come to a decision. What ought we to know about ways to do that? To tell stories together, to learn together and to decide together?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, I mean, you could just backwards map from some fairly obvious stuff. That's how that works. What was the last thing you said, again?

Daniel Stillman:

Which one? The quote, or just deciding, yeah.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

The [crosstalk 00:15:55] from the book.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah. All things that last must be a group effort aligned with the patterns of creation discerned from living within a specific landscape.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Okay. It's living within a specific landscape. So you're a neuroscientist and you're a cognitive scientist and all this sort of thing, trying to figure out the patterns of how people think. It's just most human cognition is spatial and navigational. Your memory is built on these. But all that is tied together with story. There is something in your mind that is the storyteller, that weaves together all this random information into a narrative of your life. Where you're the character in the story, and you're going through it. It gives it coherence, it gives it some structure. And so it's stories and story maps really, because these are all grounded in a relationship with place, and an awareness of your locatedness in the world. And without that awareness, your cognitive function, well it doesn't function. It's just not there.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I mean, there's been a lot of science which isn't really science, it's been speculation about imagining what Palaeolithic life must have been like, and it's like, "Well, I wonder what I'd be. Wait. What'd I do if I got thrown back and there was no police, and I was just able to do whatever I wanted roaming across the landscape? Well, I'd probably rape everybody." So therefore, human history has been mostly rape and murder, and at least a third of all human deaths were homicides in the Stone Age. Like, what the hell is getting that from any proper data, proper interpolation, extrapolation, anything? You're not really analyzing things properly. But if you think about what I just told you before, about that spatial and narrative relations forming the core of human cognitive capacity, and everything we think and remember and do, then I mean, it doesn't take much to reverse engineer that back, to understand what kind of lifestyle has led to that, what kind of patterning of human activity and interaction has led to that.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

You throw in the necessary kind of, your brain can't be healthy unless you're in a state of profound relatedness with other people as well, otherwise I mean, there's certain chemical things that just won't happen in your brain. You'll be like the Romanian babies, you just won't function. So you throw those things together, that relationship, that place and space or mappings and that narrative, and then you've got your cornerstones of what it is to be human, and how it is you go about occupying your ecological niche as a custodial species. It's not that hard to find it in there, that big story.

Daniel Stillman:

It seems like, one of the things that sparked me in the book as when I advise people on having better collaborative discourse, embodied cognition and also spatial cognition, like drawing on surfaces, getting the thoughts out of our head and on to other places. I know that it helps. And it seems like this is built into an Aboriginal way of discourse as well, like drawing on the floor, carving on objects. Like that is part of the discourse. It's not just all in our heads and in our voices. It's in the space. It's embedded in the space around us.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Well, you see a lot of research out there that's sort of, I don't know, framing this as kind of supersizing the mind. Almost like this is a hack, like you found a hack in our biology that you can exploit and actually improve the human mind to more than what it's ever been before. Like, "Oh, we can do this embodiment stuff. We can do distributed cognition. This is a technology we're inventing." And it's like, "Really?" I mean, it's not. It's your natural cognition, your actual patterning of thought ancestrally that you've just lost over the last century or so. And it hasn't been long, it's mostly industrial civilization that's done it that's to remove that capacity for embodiment.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I mean, read any diary from a century ago, and the way people, normal people, referring to their tools, in their sewing with a knee, sewing with an O, etc. All of that. Whatever their tools were, the way they refer to that and their relation with the place and with each other, and everything else, you can see it was a very different way of thinking about things, and some very irregular spelling.

Daniel Stillman:

People were a little bit more flexible with their spelling, especially when they got paid by the letter.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. That's it.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, let's talk about stories, because the idea of a meta-yarn. It seems like gathering together with a group of people, where there's no stage or audience, there's no inside or outside of the circle. And what we're doing is we're exchanging stories. And it sounds like in a way, we're using other people's brains to test our stories. It's like I'm telling my story of how I see the universe, and then you tell. And then it sort of bounces off. The idea of including and respecting all points of view, it does not seem like it's not a crazy idea, but but it's rare nevertheless.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Well, look any organic tensions that might exist between those stories and different versions of truth, I mean, they would only serve to strengthen each other, strengthen the stories. The idea is not a rivalrous dynamic, where you're seeking to conquer the other story, or anything like that. You can have competing truths and even contradictions sitting quite comfortably alongside each other. I mean, it's funny, but that particular hack, that particular natural hack and that ability to know things as completely true, that are contradicting each other at the same time, and that has recently been exploited with not just disinformation, but more the kind of cults that have arisen out of disinformation. So there are kind of cultish behaviors that have happened with things like QAnon and things like that. People are able to believe completely like... I mean, the dates past and there's people who still believe in the storm. They still believe the prophecies and all that sort of stuff.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm sketching some... I'm trying to get good at your... When I saw this I first thought this was what my dad used to tell me that you have two ears and one mouth, but it's two people around a space telling stories.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. But that's a good message too from your dad, and that's in there. That's in that one that I've got there. That's the idea of wisdom being about having a big ear. This Aboriginal language is where big ear literally means wise. And most of the words for cognition, for deep understanding, knowledge acquisition, transmission, they all involve phrases about the ear or hearing. Even things like intelligence. The word for a person who would today be referred to as cognitively diverse, I guess is [inaudible 00:24:26] in my family's language. And [inaudible 00:24:32] just means deaf. So there's this idea that you could have such profound brain damage that your inability to have executive function is a direct connection to your incapacity to hear.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

So whether you're mechanically deaf or not, that's not the point. So a really stubborn and narcissistic person, or a sociopath would also be referred to as [inaudible 00:25:02]? It's just that that's a deaf person. That's a person who can't hear. But then it's funny because I mean an actual hearing impaired person who's really astute and has amazing cognitive skills would not be referred to in that way. You'd have to be referred to otherwise, I guess.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm trying to connect this, and this may be wrong. But this drawing of... I mean, what I took from this was the real, the land and the metaphor, maybe the difference between story and practice. Because we're talking about like yeah, there's I have my story, you have your story, QAnon has their story, and then there's the flat earthers have their story. And we're living in a moment where it's terrifying that people can have their own story for some people, and liberating for others.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Really, that's just showing a feedback loop. And I guess that's a meta story, like between heaven and earth kind of thing. It's just basically showing the feedback, the narrative feedback loop between reality and story, and then back into reality again, the way that feeds back in in this sort of endless cycle. It is a feedback loop. And it's damaging to break that loop and just sit in an abstract space. Just to sit in theory, or spirit or something like that. But then it's also bad to just be sitting in a tangible reality and go, "Oh, just thought is real." You can't do that. You got to have that flow going around.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

But also, I mean, that can be hijacked by bad metaphors. You can have feedback loops that, like what I mentioned before, with QAnon, is this amazing, somebody's tinkered that system. Somebody has sort of used that feedback loop that I just mentioned as a hack to create this sort of self-sustaining auto poetic system that just keeps generating new narratives that have an immediate impact in the world. Someone will go and open fire on these people over here or bloody start building gallows. Just like, immediate effect. So that's that feedback loop in motion. It's an amazing thing about creation and part of our role as a custodial species. But I tell you, you got bad actors misusing it and it's more devastating than a nuclear bomb. Story is powerful. And there's good story and bad story. Bad story will kill you, and good story will heal you. And that's it.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so I want to unpack that because you talk about narcissists in the book a fair bunch which I love. When we're in this, we're trying to create a space for real, mutual respect, silence, multiple overlapping stories. Narcissists can take advantage of that. So what is the way? What is an indigenous way of dealing with assholes? What are we to do with people who use those systems to-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

First of all, to recognize that everyone's an asshole from time to time. I don't know. This is the first time I'm saying this, but I feel like you're worthy of this little Easter egg, this little cheat code. But the way I wrote that bit about the narcissism, it was like I wanted to see how many people would be going, "Yes. Yes, that's true. These fucking narcissists." And when I'm writing it, I'm like, "Okay." So when people talk back to me about this, if they're like punching in the air and high fiving over there, then they are narcissists. So if that gave you like a massive thrill to read, then you're a narcissist. But I only know that because it gave me a massive thrill to write it and expose to me the absolute.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I know I'm a narcissist, but I didn't know how bad it was. It's pretty fucking bad. And the act of writing that and just the dopamine hit I got off saying it, that just made me go, "All right. Okay. There's a lot going on here." And that makes you dig deep into the stories and go, "Okay. Well, there's a reason for this. There's a seed of narcissism in everybody." And this great and revered being, ancestral being of the Emu, this is a revered entity. But in a lot of our stories, it's the harbinger of narcissism coming into creation. But it's a revered entity. So it just means that you have to have an asshole from time to time, otherwise, your institutions, your ways will just keep replicating in the same way over and over. And then entropy will ensue. You need mutations.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And your narcissists help you mutate a little bit, because you've got to really evolve some very adaptive mutations to be able to survive them, and to be able to contain them. And it's just basically you have to have a sustainable system that's in place that can deal with for all eternity when the narcissism arises, in yourself and in others around you. And if you've got that, then you've got something that allows for a bit.

Daniel Stillman:

So this is what's really interesting about this, because I noticed you talk about this a couple of times. You love the outsider narrative. And I think there's a reason. If you look, going back to the first idea of there's no closed system here, this is an infinite system. I want to see if I can loop this back because often people ask me like, "How do I deal with difficult people and challenging stakeholders?" And I say, "Well, they're not difficult people, there's difficult behaviors, or they're just expressing an unmet need. They may be speaking for something that needs to be heard in the system."

Daniel Stillman:

And it seems like there's something fundamental about stepping back and looking at a larger circle and saying, "Well, what's good about this? What are they protecting? What are they standing for?" Rather than just excluding them and being like, "You're being a narcissist. Stop being a narcissist. We all want to have this inclusive conversation, but you're excluded from our inclusive conversation." But this is really hard to do. People have a hard time welcoming dissent and welcoming difficulty. What is it about the yarning perspective that allows that to be included?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I think there's better people than me to answer that question. But what is it about it specifically? I guess, mostly it's about our patterning as people who are embedded within a landscape and within an ecology, and within a lore, which is a living substance in the land, a lore which is running through the land all the time, and is understood. And the pattern of that lore is fractalized from your tiniest, tiniest relationship. And even before that, it's fractalized from the sort of tunis within you, as your first relation almost. And then that pattern is replicated out through all of your relations and webs of relations. So in the same way as the governance of just a pair of people that comes out to groups, and it's always something that demands the balance of autonomy and collectivism over time.

Daniel Stillman:

Is that the tunis? Is that what you mean when you say the tunis of us?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. There is that struggle between the individual and the group, which is just one of those human drama things. I guess in western literature, it's one of those unsolvable, who knows kind of thing. But at least in Australian Aboriginal culture, I can assert that that's something that's been resolved. In that you don't have to come down on one side or the other. There is a lore in the land that makes sure they're balanced, and that both of those two things are happening at once. And that then each collective in itself is an autonomous collective that is syndicated with other collectives. And then they form groups, which are autonomous, which are then syndicated with larger groups. So you see what I mean about the fractal structure?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And that ends up covering the whole continent, that ends up going up into Asia, as you're trading up into Asia there. So it's a governance system that comes down from it. It's exactly the same in the parts as in the hall. And that's how you manage to get a New Guinea that has the richest linguistic and cultural diversity on the planet in quite a small landmass. And so it's just basically, you just reverse engineer that. How the hell would you have a tiny place with more languages than anyone's got on the planet?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And you reverse engineer that, where you know there's no imperialism going on there. You know there's no large scale warfare going on there. You also know there has to be some kind of system whereby women are really honored and have agency and taken care of, because nothing can... No community can survive that doesn't do that. No community can survive longer than 1000 years with mistreating women. So you know there's a whole heap of different stuff that you can not out logically or you can actually go and talk to the people as well.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to roll back to, there's this, I think it was Whitman who said, "I contain multitudes." This idea that you've got parts that you're acknowledging and accepting. I had this quote here, the Aboriginal pronouns. Often in facilitation, we talk about me time and we time and balancing them. And I know that it transforms a conversation to allow some silent thinking time. That it can't all just be talking nonstop, there has to be introspection, and there has to be quiet. And it blew my mind that there was this, I, myself, we too, us too, we but not others, we all together, to acknowledge like a much greater diversity of defining a collective. It seems like that would have... It's a non-binary view of a collective of how we create a collective. I don't even know what my question is there. It seems like in the process of a group dialoguing and trying to come to an agreement, there's a lot of fluidity.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, you can see the structure of that fractal that I was talking about before, you can see it there as you just go through the conjugation. I guess, as you're going through those pronouns, and you're seeing that fractal pattern there. Right there from me to us, to us but not them, all of us, us belonging to him, us belonging to them. It's like all your relations are encoded in how you describe yourself. And that is the focus of the [inaudible 00:37:40] mission. Your language directs you to that. It doesn't direct us to structure our society, not a society, but to structure the relations.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Gender is not one of the broad categories to do that, which is interesting. In my home language anyway, that there's no separate pronouns for he and she, him and her. That's just [inaudible 00:38:09]. So it's like everybody, regardless of gender has the same pronoun to refer to them personally. Which I mean, you think about where the attention goes. And I mean, there are languages like your romance languages, like Spanish, Portuguese, French, all these ones. You can't speak them. You can't say any word without referencing its gender. That is the most important category, relational category. That is the most important division. So much so that it has to go into every single object in the universe, has to be masculine and feminine. It's, "Wow." So speaking that language, where is your cognition directed?

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, maybe this is the wrong question to ask, but I feel like in meeting rooms all across the world, people... And one of my primary concerns is how does a group of people come to a decision? And this me greater than all of you, is often the way that these decisions are made. One person says, "This is the way," and yet at some point, a group of people has to stop yarning and take an action, come out of metaphor and go into the real. I mean, it's like the question of like, "In what ways can you advise the world on making better organic out of that multiverse to the choice?" So I think it puzzles me sometimes.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I don't know. It's usually in the collective mind, it'll direct you to something that you couldn't otherwise see. It's seldom going to be one of the stories coming out on top and being, "No, that one's the most right, or the most likely to give us the best outcome, so we're going to go with that." And it's seldom about a consensus that is a compromise. It's like, "All right. We'll do a little bit of everyone's, and just cobble together just this monstrous, ridiculous, ineffective solution as well." It's in a way there's something a bit more magical about it. It's about all the stories come together, and, "Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, understood. Respected." And then it's like something else comes out of that.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And often, this will need the guidance and authority of elders, who will listen to everybody's input, but they're the ones with experience and with that highly focused skill of observation, to even be able to see the patterns and flows of spirit and knowledge in that situation, and all the rest. And everybody is getting together with a solution for, I don't know, how to rescue an animal that's trapped, maybe. And everybody's got a different story about that. And there's somebody who has that animals, that taught them and they've got a story for that. And there's somebody who has some tools that they reckon they could use to help untrap that animal. There's a whole heap of story goes around.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Everybody would talk about it, but then, I guess the elders job would be to look at, it would be in the aggregate of those stories. Which it can happen without an elder, but I mean, it's really good to have that relational technology of that big mind, sort of helping to arrange your meta narrative. Because they have that cultural authority and a deep time authority, which where it becomes more than just the people in the circle, but every person circle, the ancestors going back time out of memory, that that elder knows. And there's an aggregate of a lot of stories of wisdom and experience.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And the emergent solution might be completely different from any story that elder has, or any story that anybody that has. It might be, "You know what? That animal is supposed to die." And there's a tiny part of everybody's story and everybody's opinion, that ends up contributing to that. There's a clue in everyone's story that leads to the big conclusion that that animal is supposed to die. I think after it's dead, if we cut that animal open, we might find that we find something terrible in its belly, and we'll need to dispose of it carefully. There'll be something like that [inaudible 00:43:22]. That wasn't a very good... I'm usually better at cross-cultural sort of... That's why that makes sense to me [crosstalk 00:43:31].

Daniel Stillman:

No. It makes sense to me too.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

There's still a lot of people here, but-

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it's a crisis moment.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

See, I'm supposed to be... I had an elder the other day tell me my role in the world. As you said that I'm a settler whisperer, that I can come up with good metaphors to translate ideas [crosstalk 00:43:53].

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I'll tell you what. I talk about this is that sometimes something that's an emergency isn't an emergency, something that we're all up in arms about, maybe sometimes inaction is sometimes the best action. And what I heard from this is, in my mental model, there is a whole spectrum of conversations that are happening, potentially at once. There's each person's conversation with what they think, what they see. My conversation with your story, the group listening to all of them and there's much bigger... And what seems the value of respect for an elder's view, the longer time horizon, the cultural story. So all of these are, like the first diagram, the first lore, the ripples of circles coming outward, those are circles of conversation to consider. And the wagon is, we don't know.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

That's it. That's it. I think any knowledge tradition that is not a process, that is not a method of inquiry, it's not going to last. If that makes any sense.

Daniel Stillman:

Say more about that. Let's talk about the method of inquiry.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, this way where you end up with dogma and ideology and things like that, you end up with fixed bodies of knowledge, where there's these principles that are unassailable, and everything in the universe must be made to fit them, then that's ridiculous. Your knowledge system must be more than a collection of content. You can't have that. You can't have a Codex. You can't have a biblio. You can't have something that he is the rules. You just can't have it. It has to be a process. Your knowledge system has to be a process-oriented thing rather than a content-oriented thing. Once it becomes fixed content, it can only destroy itself and lots of other things as well. It has to be a method of inquiry not a body of information.

Daniel Stillman:

And I feel like, I'm like, "Where did I put that sticky note?" It's here someplace. Because you talk about discovery and synthesis. I was reading and I was like, "This sounds like design thinking to me." It's a process of digesting complexity but not into simplicity. It's a process of digesting complexity into complexity.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. And there isn't a set of steps that you can follow as an individual to do that. It's something that has to emerge collectively, organically and dramatically.

Daniel Stillman:

Euthydemus. I had to Google that when you used it. It makes perfect sense.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Yeah. I love it because it for me, I think of biotic, the term biotic. People are usually, it's pretty easy to jump from there to understand what emergence is, but they struggle if you say demotic. They know demos means human, but they trouble-

Daniel Stillman:

It sounds too much like demon.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

So think about how you feel about the word biotic. Okay. Now look, demotic there. That one. Our thing is patented on that. It follows the pattern, so that's the same thing. So there's the demotic. Can you see how the emergence would happen there? It's like, "Oh. Yes, I can."

Daniel Stillman:

And it's almost like demotic and biotic, I think in a Western mind, we'd put them in opposition. But maybe they're in conversation, their intention when you're thinking about forming a world.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, I mean, at the very least unified worldview, you have to think of them as being a stack in a stack on the landscape, an evolutionary stack. And I mean, the deeper you go into the layer, the more biotic you're going to get with the membranes closer to the top of the layer around things you can tinker with like economies and value systems. And disruptive innovation would be in this layer up here and all that sort of thing. I don't know. The deeper you go in the stack, you got to protect that though, because once you mess with things at the bottom, the whole Jenga tower falls.

Daniel Stillman:

This is why we have to slow down and pay close attention, and listen.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Yeah. But for me, it's not a stack. For me, it's not a stack. There aren't membranes. It's one thing. For me, there's no separation between the ecology and the economy, the governance system, anything else, culture.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to respect your time, Tyson and I'm really grateful for this. I had a quote here from the beginning of the book, where you talk about what sharing this knowledge has cost you and how it's... I appreciate your time and you holding space to share these ideas because I know they're important.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Well, thanks, man. I don't know if that was a question.

Daniel Stillman:

No, no. That was just a thank you.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Thanks, man.

Daniel Stillman:

The question is like, what haven't I asked you about yarning that I should have asked you? Is there anything that... What's left unsaid?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I think if it doesn't come out, then it doesn't come out. That's the other thing, you can't force it. You can't force the yarn. This year, this might be a yarn that takes us 12 years to finish.

Daniel Stillman:

That would be epic.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. I mean, we might find ourself in the same refugee detention facility one day for climate refugees, and we'll sit down and finish it there.

Daniel Stillman:

It's possible.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I might call you next week and go, "Oh. Something else."

Daniel Stillman:

Please do.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

"Tell me about this." You know what I mean? It's just yarns are an entanglement. And once you're entangled with somebody, then that's it, you're always entangled. If something happens to you, then I'll feel it on some level over here. It's hard when you end up with like 100,000 people you're entangled with, but hey. But you must get that through the podcast, when you make relationships with people and you can't track them, you feel things coming through you every day, because there is an entanglement and their failures are really bound up with yours. And the things that happened to them, that are cataclysmic enough to affect their energetics. One of them goes through a breakup and bloody nearly kills himself or something like that, that's going to hit you. You're going to have a bad day, and you won't even know why.

Daniel Stillman:

That is what happens, actually.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Then you could just have that dream, have that dream about, "I need to call that person." Or, "What was the fellow's name? I need to get back and talk to him about aspects."

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, I think talking is maybe the most fundamental thing that we have, and that we do. And I guess, it's impossible to summarize it all, but what do you want us to know about how the world ought to be talking differently than we are today?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

What do you want to know? Man, I don't know. You kind of have an agenda. So you kind of have an agenda. If I had like a 10 point plan or something like that, I'm like, "Oh. People need to start doing this and this and this." And then I try and get followers and then [crosstalk 00:53:19].

Daniel Stillman:

But not having the agenda is actually a tremendously profound non-agenda agenda.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

That becomes a thing. And that's in the world. It's like you go, "People don't have an agenda. Agenda item number one, don't have an agenda. Agenda item number two, don't have an agenda. Oh, oh, oh. We're fight clubbing this." And it's just like, everything is branded. Everything's like that. Everything's ruined. So I try and wrestle with that. So like in the book, every now and then, I know there's kind of an Easter egg thing I do in there where I sort of set something up, like it might be a framework.

Daniel Stillman:

And then you destroy it five pages later.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And then like, "No." Then I just sort of undermine it. And then it's like, "Oh. So that's not a thing. What is it? Is it a thing? I don't know. I'm looking for the thing here. Can I have a thing?"

Daniel Stillman:

I was looking for the story about the moon sisters. I have a note about it, about not having a fixed perspective. And I couldn't find it. It's like you changed it. It's not in the book anymore. I looked through it like twice and I couldn't find it. You're playing tricks on me.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Isn't that cool? Look, maybe I didn't mention it in the book, but I've mentioned it in yarn. I think around the place, so you might have heard it somewhere.

Daniel Stillman:

Maybe.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Or maybe it was just coming up between the lines there somehow.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, since we're talking about not having-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

[crosstalk 00:54:53] fixed perspective.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I can't remember the story now. I just took a note and I set to ask... It was like my second point.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I was telling a story to my four-year-old daughter for the first time last night. But yes these two sisters who are after a bonefish. A bonefish is a beautiful big fish. And it's weird because it's got a dotted line like where to cut it.

Daniel Stillman:

That's handy.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I guess the best thing is to have the belly and there's a perfect spot where you can cut it, where you get the entire and it just ends up opening out to a plate of meat. You just chuck it on the coals. It's amazing. I love it. But you can only catch him at night. You can't catch him in the daytime, they only feed at night and they're attracted to light. So the moon sisters were having a bark canoe at nighttime, and they had soft tea tree bark torches smashed at the ends, for the fire to bring them up. And they were spearing big bonefish, bringing them in the canoe. And the canoe was full, like really full, and they were about to come back in, but then one of them said, "There's another. There's a really big one out there. Let's go after that."

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And so then, "All right. We'll have to go quick because it's time to go back. We don't want to like..." So they're heading for that big white shape on the water, but it's like, "We nearly had it. We nearly had it." But of course it moves. It keeps moving. And so in chasing that illusion of the full moon shining on the ocean, they fell into that trap of that illusion. And so the Moon Man had them then. Because in the southern hemisphere, the moon is male. I know where you are, it's probably female. A female thing and the sun is a man, a bold god of death kind of thing. But no, it's like the moon is male and the sun is female in the southern hemisphere.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

So anyway, the Moon Man abducted those sisters, and took them up. And so when you look anywhere where you are in the world, you look up there and you'll see two shadows. There's one like that that is on the top half coming down the side and another one is slightly lower. You see the two shadows in the moon, that's the two moon sisters. And that's a story about being careful of illusion of a fixed viewpoint. I mean, that's one interpretation. There's a lot more to that story, but I can't tell it because I'm not one of them older people who can hold that story. I can just kind of report parts of it.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

But for me, with my infant point of view on that story, infant point of view, there's a lifetime of things to explore in there for me, but particularly around fixed viewpoints, and multiple pluralistic viewpoints. So if you're standing on the beach, and you're seeing that moon, the way the shine of the moon is, that's not there. It's not where you're seeing it. And somebody 20 meters further up the beach is seeing it in a different place. And as you move and walk up and down the beach, it's moving as well in relation to where you are. So you get 1000 people right up and down that coast, all reporting on the location of where the moon reflection is. Every single one of these stories will be wrong and right at the same time.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

But the aggregate story, the big meta story, the big narrative there would be the moon shines on every part of the ocean at once. Which is something that's approximating the truth. It's approximating enough of the truth that you could make some accurate predictions and models based on that. And that's good enough for me. There are higher levels of that story that go into much deeper stuff where you could perform a lot more stuff, but I think there's enough on that for me to work on, just that level of the story for a lifetime.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, I think that's wonderful. It says so much about what it is to sit in a circle and talk with other people about what is. And to have a point of view of respect for everybody's perspective.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah, exactly. Like, "No. The moon is fricking, the reflection is there. I can see it. Are you insane?" A person 20 meters away, "It's there. This person wants to ruin the world."

Daniel Stillman:

How dare they say the moon is 20 meters to the left? That is scorched earth.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Existential threat, this person's point of view. Anyway. God, things are funny. I'm terrified to talk to Americans at the moment. [inaudible 01:00:06].

Daniel Stillman:

America is the best something. I'm not sure what it is but that's another story for another time.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. You just never know what you're going to get. You never know when someone's just going to lose their fricking mind at you.

Daniel Stillman:

But the deescalation...

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I've had to shut down a couple of things.

Daniel Stillman:

Really?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Weirdos and their real extreme reaction.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, some white people have a hard time imagining that they don't know everything about everything, because it's supposed to be what it's all about.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Well, that's their job.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. And I think what's really challenging is, you're challenging us, all of us to sit with not knowing.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

But without having to worry about the most important thing about that message is that you're evil. You know what I mean? It's got to be a bit funny, and it's got to be establishing relationships. If it's boring or angry, and about establishing barriers and boundaries between people, then I find that's not as productive.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think those people must not have-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

[crosstalk 01:01:45] be quite unproductive.

Daniel Stillman:

I think those people must not have actually read your book. Because I think-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

It's hard talking to people who haven't. There was one guy in this event. This guy hadn't read it and he just lost his mind. He was so angry. He was traumatized. He wrapped himself in a blanket and was rocking back and forth kind of thing. And just piping in the comments in all caps. And then I'm muting his mic and just screaming. It was full on, man.

Daniel Stillman:

That guy just needs to be held, I'm presuming.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Well, I mean he thought he was helping me I guess with my problematic stuff. And maybe he did help me, who knows? Because I can't get that image out of my mind. I've been rocking back and forth, and it makes me laugh about five times a day and that was months ago.

Daniel Stillman:

What do you do with that?

Tyson Yunkaporta:

He brought a bit of joy into in my life. I just laugh about it. But it's also feedback on like... because you come up with little bits you think are funny, and just about figuring out as autistic spectrum kind of guy how to try and read a context in a room to see if something was going to land.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. From 15,000 miles away. It's tough.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. Yeah. I was just doing this whole sort of joke about how for some reason white women are public enemy number one at the moment, and it's like just as feminism was sort of starting to land and become accepted. Now suddenly it's like, white women are getting the blame for everything and just getting smashed left, right and center. And they're being so patient. And I just said, "You've got to watch it though, because they can get angry." Usually at the moment, I mean all of the white females I know, at the moment when you're mansplaining and criticizing them and telling them everything that's wrong with them, if they go really quiet and they're agreeing with you, that's a bad sign.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

If you're a man who is seeing that signal and going, "Oh, good. She's listening." That's a bad idea. And so I was like, I don't know. And then I went, "Just imagine this whole sort of scene of all these ladies just losing it at the same time." And Greg and I grabbing a Glock and running out of the street. Just telling people, "Call me Karen again. Call me Karen again, motherfucker." Anyway, and I'm just like, I don't know, I'm just running with this ridiculous scenario that's offensive on so many levels. You can edit it out.

Daniel Stillman:

Sure.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

And just my, I don't know, my riffing on that, "Call me Becky. Say it." I was just, I don't know. I thought I was lightening the mood because it was [inaudible 01:05:21] it just catastrophized these hundreds of people. They were traumatized by it. And so that was good feedback for me. I mean, I could tell they were being nice about it. But I mean, it was you could see it upset them. And then because I was sort of going, it was like only a few days after the storming of the Capitol.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I was saying, "See. That was all ladies. They're at the front. They're the ones who organized. Men are useless. All they did was rub their poo on the wall. The women were in there and they were stealing Nancy Pelosi's computer, and looking for dudes to hang on the gallows they made at the front. They get shot in the face. They're right there. Hold the line, the center must hold." That was all girls doing that. Anyway, so I'm just riffing on that, and I'm just digging myself deeper and deeper. And I'm on Zoom and just not reading the room. But anyway, it just...

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, humor is a really important component of yarning in indigenous cultures, and you were trying to use humor for a purpose. That purpose backfired and I mean, that happens. I found that the easiest thing to make fun of is myself. That's always the safe thing to use humor for. I think you do that plenty.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I think that's great, but I'm running out of material. Only so many times I can accuse myself of having a small penis before people don't want to hear it anymore.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I think that's probably our sign to wrap up.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

You got it there.

Daniel Stillman:

I guess the final thing is, I mean everyone, I think should read your book. Is there any other place you would like to direct people on the internet to learn about more things about you? Because I know you do research and you teach and stuff.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I'm not here to promote anything. I'm just interested in the arts. I'm not really into branding, you probably got that impression. Although I wouldn't mind getting canceled, and so maybe this episode will contribute.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll do what I can, and I'm not that big of a deal so I can't-

Tyson Yunkaporta:

I want to be able to buy a house before I die sometime in the next couple of decades that my kids can live in when they grow up. And I think the quickest way to sell a whole heap of books is to get canceled.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, because people will hate read your book.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

No, but all the people who hate, people who hate like...

Daniel Stillman:

oh, reverse hate reading your book.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

[crosstalk 01:08:22], they are only 15% of the population. But it seems like most of the people are horrendous dudes who will pretty much just read anything that a terrible person has written, or anything that somebody who is awful. So anyway, [crosstalk 01:08:39].

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, if they read it, they might actually learn something.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

... get canceled and sell 6 million books, and just buy a big mob of my family's land back, and just pretty much settle into a good life down the track, and have somewhere for my kids to go where they're not going to get shot or bulldozed.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I'll see what I can do. I don't think there's enough material in here to get you properly canceled.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

God dammit. All right.

Daniel Stillman:

We'll just have to do another... I don't think you get canceled on purpose. Because people can tell when you don't really mean it.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Because it's all about the intent, isn't it?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

All right. I'm going to have to work on my evil intentions. Thanks for the tip.

Daniel Stillman:

You got it, brother. I'm looking out for you.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

All right, man. I'm going to go and look after these babies.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Thank you so much for the time and for sharing these ideas, Tyson. I really appreciate it.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Yeah. No worries.

Daniel Stillman:

Good on you.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Thank you, man. See you later.

Daniel Stillman:

Take care.

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Bye.

The Leader you want to be

For almost two decades, Amy Jen Su has partnered with investment professionals, CEOs, and executives to sustain and increase their leadership effectiveness as they drive organizational change and transformation. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles to Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day.

Amy and I dive deep on leadership, and how who you are as a person affects the organization you're leading, for better or worse. This means that self-leadership and mindfulness are essential for leaders, and we unpack Amy’s approaches to these dimensions of leadership. 

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to strengthen their center and be a more balanced, more effective leader. And as Amy says in the opening quote, there is no one way for everyone to lead...we each need to find our own north star and our own thread to follow in the story of our own leadership development.

Cultivating Our Inner Conversation

One insight that I was so glad to have Amy “yes and '' is my feeling about the deep importance of our inner conversation - the parts of ourselves that cheer and check us. As Amy says, 

“some of these voices no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us”

She suggests that we stay updated with our current selves, and know when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us.

Cultivating an outer conversation: Finding mentors and supporters

Amy advises us to consider:

“who are (your) cheerleaders and safe harbors (and how can you build) a network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people.”

She suggests that you find and recruit folks like the 

“sausage maker, the accountability buddy, the mirror, the cheerleader, the safe harbor, the helicopter”

People who you feel safe sharing the nitty-gritty with, folks who keep you accountable to your goals, people who help you see yourself as you are, who cheer you on, who can be a safe harbor, and people who can pull you out of the dumps when you are down.

It’s hard to find that all in one person. For many, their spouses serve too many of those roles! Finding a coach like Amy or myself can help you maintain a regular cadence of attention to these modes of reflection and growth and get to your North Star...and find your next star, too.

Mindfulness is Key. But it’s not about feeling good.

Amy and I talk about how mindfulness is very popular right now, but often not considered in its full context. Amy points out that:

“I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time... It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what reality is... Mindfulness... with razor clarity, (help you) actually come to reality.”

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Amy Jen at Paravis Partners

Amy Jen’s Books:
Own the Room
The Leader You Want to Be

Thich Nhat Hanh: "How do I stay in the present moment when it feels unbearable?"

Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Mentioned Episodes: 
Cameron Yarbrough on Scaling Leadership Development
Eve Rodsky on A Game Changing Solution to Gender Inequality

Key Quotes:

Minute 4

I think we all underestimate the wisdom that does exist in our experiences to date, within our bodies, within our knowledge base, and certainly there's great wisdom in those who work with us, which is why 360 feedback and other forms of feedback can be powerful and sort of the combination of both things, the willingness to hold up the mirror to ourselves and to ask others to hold up the mirror can be the catalyst for propelling us into greater forms of expansion and growth.

Minute 6

I'm stunned by some of the folks that I work with who are making a phenomenal difference in their organizations, for their families and for their communities, and how hard they are on themselves and that when we start a new role or we find ourselves in change, somehow we assume the clock goes back to zero. It absolutely doesn't. So there's something in Mary Oliver's work and I think that poem in particular that reminds us of the importance of self compassion, and it's amazing how we speak to ourselves in ways we would never speak to a friend or a loved one. So I think that poem reminds us to say, in the way that you would say to your best friend, with kindness, walking them out of a tough day, why don't we speak to ourselves that way?

Minute 8

So in part of all this conversation we're having around how do you stay updated to yourself, it's also knowing when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us, and then how do we along the way, in coming to understand who you are today, who are the cheerleaders and safe harbors and the really beautiful network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people.

Minute 12

I think often when we feel that we're in the face of judgment, we hold ourselves back or we don't feel that we can speak freely, so being able to be witness to another person's wonderful process, to sit in the presence of another person's thoughts and brainstorms and creative expression that's flowing through them, I know from myself personally, and I wonder if you feel this way, it just feels like the greatest honor.

Minute 18

So even in Own The Room, as you mentioned, my first book, the inherent paradox we were exploring was how do you have a voice for yourself and voice for others, and that the most effective leaders both have cultivated an ability to bring their own voice, opinion, point of view, decision making, to the table, as much as they've cultivated the ability and the access to know when it's time to listen and to ask questions and to hold multiple perspectives, and that being in the zone is kind of this middle path of that in a conversation we're being fluid to both those things and when we're too anchored in just one, if I was a leader only having a voice for myself, you might experience me as a bull in the china shop, or unwilling to listen or interrupting, as much as if I'm only listening and asking questions, someone might question my leadership ability.

Minute 22

In that case, as a leader, let's say suddenly now your role does demand that you do more all hands, and it's not your favorite thing. So just recognizing, my hope, number one, is that you're in a role that speaks to 80% of what comes natural or to your strengths but there's always going to be 20% of any role, I think, that forces us to oscillate out of our comfort zone, but it's an important part of the mandate. So in the case of the leader who may not love doing an all hands, perhaps we would tap into the values they feel towards making sure that they're transparent with their organization, that they do care about employee engagement, and that their communications from a one to many perspective is really critical. So for that leader, helping them get prepared for that moment so that they can increase their comfort, and then making sure maybe it's after the all hands that they block an hour after the event to make sure they grab a little time back to themselves to recharge the battery.

Minute 24

I think the faulty assumption that we, for high stakes situations or conversations, that winging it is the way to go. I think there's a point where I often will say to a leader, "Hey, your job now requires a different influence where the percentage of time you once spent on the slides versus the percentage of time you are now going to allocate to prepare for delivery has to change. "

Minute 25

I often advise my clients, "Hey at the start of your week, take a look at your Outlook Calendar Monday through Friday, it's not that you're going to be able to prep for every meeting, it's not realistic, but pick the two that really make a difference to priorities, or could really make a difference to employee morale or your team's morale. Or it's a really difficult conversation, perhaps it's a feedback conversation and you want to both get your message across but honor the dignity of the other person, those do require some preparation time and be thoughtful and, to the word you used, Daniel, planful, mindful, intentional.

Minute 26

Mindfulness is important to me, I know it's a popular item and topic these days, for good reason. Everything we're talking about here, the tuning into oneself, the bringing the head and the body back together in any moment, the head heart body, and saying, "Wait, what's actually in front of me and going on?" I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time.

And in fact, I have found it's the opposite. It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what really reality is so that then you could be making better choices or creating the action plan necessary. So oftentimes we either want to run away from something, or run towards something. Mindfulness I think brings us to, with razor clarity, actually let's come to reality.

Minute 31

We all have results we need to deliver and priorities to make and teams to lead and so in the everyday of what we do of our doing, it's important to say how do I optimize my productivity and my efficiency as much as it is, to your point, around the conversation you just had with that CEO, where does doing and being come together, and again, who we are as people and the motivations that guide our actions can have tremendous impact on our organizations and culture.

Minute 32

In higher orders of leadership, so much of the job becomes you're the person to help paint the picture, to help connect people to why should they care? How does their day to day job connect to something bigger than all of us? And I think the best leaders, especially at the CEO level are able to do that.

Minute 38

I think we don't own ourselves unapologetically, both for what we know and what we don't know. And there's actually, as you were just describing that set of leaders, there's tremendous confidence that telegraphs when we can say, "Hey, you know what, Daniel, that's a great question, but I actually don't know."

MORE ABOUT AMY JEN

For almost two decades, Amy Jen Su has partnered with investment professionals, CEOs, and executives to sustain and increase their leadership effectiveness as they drive organizational change and transformation. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles to Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day (2019), which draws on her extensive experience serving industries such as private equity, financial services, biotechnology, software, consumer, and media. She is also currently a Board Member of SRS Distribution Inc., a portfolio company of Leonard Green & Partners and Berkshire Partners. Amy has been a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review online and has written for publications including Huffington Post and Leader to Leader magazine. She is also co-author of the Washington Post bestseller Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence (HBR Press, 2013) with Muriel Maignan Wilkins. Her work and thinking have been featured in media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc., Forbes, and Marketwatch. Previously, Amy served as a management consultant for Booz Allen & Hamilton where she advised senior executives of consumer product companies on growth strategies. She was also a strategic planner for Taco Bell Corp helping to launch Taco Bell into non-traditional points of distribution. Amy holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BA in Psychology from Stanford University, graduating from both with honors and distinctions. Her additional certifications and background in Integral coaching, yoga, and the Eastern philosophies provide for a unique high impact, whole-person approach to executive development.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

All right.

Amy Jen Su:

We'll take our deep breath.

Daniel Stillman:

We'll take a deep breath, get centered.

Amy Jen Su:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Amy Jen Su, I am so grateful that you made this opportunity, this space in your day and your life to have this conversation with me. Thanks for your time.

Amy Jen Su:

Daniel, thanks so much for having me, and I'm so excited to be here with you today.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. So I have not read your first book, but I love the title of it, and I was wondering, just to orient ourselves in your journey, I was wondering if you could connect your first book and your second book, because they seem so connected to me, this idea of owning the room and finding your signature voice and being the leader that you want to be. What's the through line in these two works for you?

Amy Jen Su:

Daniel, wow. Thanks for that question, because there is a through line, and the connection is in some ways, both bodies of work mirror my own journey as a leader, a professional, as a person. So in the years that we were working with leaders and professionals on discovering their signature voice and own the room, those were things that I was sitting in the middle of and exploring myself. And so for the time that we started our firm in 2004, through when Own The Room came out to market in 2013, this idea of, and similar to your work, what are the conversations we're in? What are the many rooms, I guess now virtual rooms we all sit in where owning yourself and connecting to others is important. And then the outflow of that work was realizing that as the world got a little crazier and busier, I would have clients say to me, "I can own the room, but I can't seem to have enough hours in the day to be my best self. So it's hard to do that."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So The Leader You Want To Be naturally flowed out of the work.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting because there's a quote from your book really early on that effective leadership is about creating the conditions, understanding the conditions that cultivate your highest and your best use. That is a really fundamental challenge for people is literally just, not just finding the hours in the day but finding the leverage points in their day. Those are two different conversations, right? Having enough time and then doing the, quote unquote, the right things.

Amy Jen Su:

Absolutely. I think, as you said there, we're often so busy that we don't have the time, or we forget to take the time to pause and look inward and to say, wait a minute, what were the conditions that made the difference between a day going a little bit more smoothly and for myself to feel connected to myself and to have the impact that I hope to make.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And retrospectively, as we do the introspection, wow what was it about those days which didn't feel as easy, and I felt a lot of resistance. And there's a lot of wisdom to derive from that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So what I love about your work is this wisdom can be found in ourselves. Some of it can be found in ourselves. I think the question in our last conversation was where am I burning calories? And just that question is like okay where am I spinning my wheels and then what? It's just such a powerful question to be asking oneself.

Amy Jen Su:

Again, I think that as you said, Daniel, the pause point, the check in, the without judgment pausing to reflect and sit in those questions of inquiry for ourselves, I think we all underestimate the wisdom that does exist in our experiences to date, within our bodies, within our knowledge base, and certainly there's great wisdom in those who work with us, which is why 360 feedback and other forms of feedback can be powerful and sort of the combination of both things, the willingness to hold up the mirror to ourselves and to ask others to hold up the mirror can be the catalyst for propelling us into greater forms of expansion and growth.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. There seems to be this idea though that we can find our own way to be the leader that we want to be, that there isn't a single correct right way to do it. Am I reading you right? Or is that, so she's taking a deep breath in, tell me more.

Amy Jen Su:

Yeah. I don't know that I think there's one way for each of us, but I do think, I believe we all have a path, and if we tune into that path and we trust it and we understand what we're made for and we honor that and follow that thread in our lives, it can be a very powerful way of coming to know north star and to see if we're heading in a directionally correct way, but how that shows up in my life may be different than yours.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Amy Jen Su:

So I don't know that I think there's a right way or wrong way beyond how do we each find our way to tune in.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So maybe I misspoke. I agree with that. It is our job to find our way, our approach, our path. And I feel like it's, in the middle of the book I saw you quote Mary Oliver and I immediately just had this wave of relaxation go across myself, because I love this poem, Wild Geese, that says you do not have to be good, you do not have to walk for 100 miles on your knees repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. And to me, I mean what does that poem say to you about leadership?

Amy Jen Su:

I love that poem, Daniel, and I am so happy that it resonates for you and that you love Mary Oliver's work too. And I think it says a lot about how hard we are on ourselves as leaders and professionals. I'm stunned by some of the folks that I work with who are making a phenomenal difference in their organizations, for their families and for their communities, and how hard they are on themselves and that when we start a new role or we find ourselves in change, somehow we assume the clock goes back to zero. It absolutely doesn't. So there's something in Mary Oliver's work and I think that poem in particular that reminds us of the importance of self compassion, and it's amazing how we speak to ourselves in ways we would never speak to a friend or a loved one. So I think that poem reminds us to say, in the way that you would say to your best friend, with kindness, walking them out of a tough day, why don't we speak to ourselves that way?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Why don't we? So in the framework from your book, The Leader You Want To Be, there's this idea of the people in the picture. And I think there's two ways to look at that question of people. There's the question of the inner people that we're carrying around. There's definitely somebody who, at least you and me, I don't know if anybody else is like this, there's some inner people that we're carrying around that are not cheerleaders, that aren't necessarily safe harbors, and it seems like it's important work to do, leadership work to do, to look at our own inner stakeholders, for sure.

Amy Jen Su:

For sure, Daniel. That inner committee as you just described often play outdated roles in our life, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So someone in our life that had that kind of impact or that kind of influence on ourselves when we were 10, when we were 20 in a first job, may have served their value. So in part of all this conversation we're having around how do you stay updated to yourself, it's also knowing when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us, and then how do we along the way, in coming to understand who you are today, who are the cheerleaders and safe harbors and the really beautiful network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. When I was reading this list of stakeholders one needs to have in one's corner, the sausage maker, the accountability buddy, the mirror, the cheerleader, the safe harbor. I was reading that and I was like those sound a lot like roles that a really great coach does, and I'm wondering what do you feel like, are there hats on that list that aren't on that list that you feel like you do as an executive coach, ways that you're showing up in your conversations with leaders? Ways that you're showing up on purpose to be that person in their dialog?

Amy Jen Su:

Absolutely. I think the list that's in that particular chapter that you just named are many of the roles that a coach will play in a given coaching conversation, whether that's like a helicopter helping to lift somebody out of the weeds and to see the bigger picture, certainly the accountability buddy that if you set priorities and goals for yourself, there's nothing like having somebody to check in with a couple of times a month. But what's not on that list as a coach, I think because we play a unique role as container, we hold a safe container, I hope, for others to do the exploration to safely share what's on their mind, to reveal the vulnerabilities that invariably come with holding a lot of responsibility and accountability.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So that safety and that container we hold I think is an important part of being a coach.

Daniel Stillman:

Can we unpack that a little? Because when I was reading this section about sausage maker, I was like this is such a safe and important, like having someone to, for those of us who think this way, free wheel, but not have it be taken out of context, not have it taken too far, like it is so powerful to have someone you can sausage make with, and to have that safe container around it. What do you do as a coach to build that container for yourself and for your clients? If we're building those four walls, what are those walls in that container?

Amy Jen Su:

I love that visual. I think the walls contain psychological safety, certainly. That when we're sausage making, we're riffing with another person, we're allowing thoughts to flow in stream of consciousness, that there's no judgment.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

I think often when we feel that we're in the face of judgment, we hold ourselves back or we don't feel that we can speak freely, so being able to be witness to another person's wonderful process, to sit in the presence of another person's thoughts and brainstorms and creative expression that's flowing through them, I know from myself personally, and I wonder if you feel this way, it just feels like the greatest honor.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

To be able to serve in that role for another person.

Daniel Stillman:

Absolutely. I think it's pretty hard to coach someone if you don't respect the work that they're doing. At the same time, it's interesting, I imagine, maybe I'm identifying our first paradox of the conversation, the safe container versus mirrors is very like maybe an objective mirror, but then there's somebody who steps forward and says, "Do you see what you're saying?" And that becomes maybe more of what my coach would call tapping somebody's bottle, being like, "Do you see what you're saying?" Which is a little different than saying, "You just said this."

Amy Jen Su:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

So yeah, where do you step forward in that way?

Amy Jen Su:

I think, I love that you're describing the dance, right? So within that container, the fluidity of dialog, I think often begins with the openness of the safety, the inquiry, the curiosity and wonder of what's happening for another person, how they see the world, what assumptions they're making, and then you as a coach, listening in and tuning in to the patterns that are being reflected and what's being shared, and then I think in that moment of safety and trust and after hearing, being able to say back to somebody, "Could I frame for you what I feel like I heard you said?" Or, "Can I reflect back what I feel like maybe I heard, or a pattern that is emerging, and let me check in on how that resonates for you?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So if you only spent the entire coaching time listening and in inquiry, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

The balance and wholeness of coaching where then you have an opportunity to reframe or create new distinctions, or to shine light on a different way of seeing something or to help someone uncover historic pattern that they may want to explore, come up with a new set of choices.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Requires you to also be willing to share those observations and make those frames back.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And to really clarify, what I think you did with your, what's the word I'm using? What you were modeling really beautifully in that moment is an invitational pattern. I'd like to mirror this back, I'd also like to check in with you how that resonated, it's stepping, when you talk about the metaphor of advance, it's stepping in with clarity. It's not waiting to strike. Saying, "Okay well I'm seeing this now, do you see this?" It's saying, "Can I share a perspective?" And then checking in with it. So within the coaching there's almost this micro coaching moment. It's a conversation that you invite yourself into and they can say, "No, I don't want anybody's feedback." But then of course this goes toward choosing your clients very well, and only working with people who are open to being challenged, or working with people who are interested in looking at themselves in a mirror.

Amy Jen Su:

I think part of that seeking, checking in on the invitation, is sort of meeting someone where they are.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So in our own work, how do we sit in a space and own fully our own space, while allowing somebody else to fully have their presence and space, where we are neither overbearing nor shrinking our own presence in that moment.

Daniel Stillman:

So one of the things that was really interesting to unpack with you was this idea the various paradox ... I don't know what the plural of paradox is, paradi?

Amy Jen Su:

I'm not sure, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Paradoxes doesn't sound right, but I think that's what it is. The idea of finding a middle path that is not watering down was such a profound idea in your book, and I feel like the idea of coaching someone through a paradox is a really interesting question, because, and I have a few that I've captured here, this idea of I need solitude time versus I need to be in community, how do I find time for both? Ones that we talked about in your own business, autonomy versus control, being busy versus being still, being reactionary versus passive, honoring myself versus transcending myself. They can seem like double binds sometimes when we're in the problem. So I'm curious about helicoptering I guess is the term you used, right? To pull someone out of that paradox and to see that they have choices, that they have agency.

Amy Jen Su:

Absolutely. And I think, Daniel, what you said there, the helicopter, the how do we broaden the perspective where what is tempting to be seen as an either or proposition is helping ourselves and others really seek the both and. So even in Own The Room, as you mentioned, my first book, the inherent paradox we were exploring was how do you have a voice for yourself and voice for others, and that the most effective leaders both have cultivated an ability to bring their own voice, opinion, point of view, decision making, to the table, as much as they've cultivated the ability and the access to know when it's time to listen and to ask questions and to hold multiple perspectives, and that being in the zone is kind of this middle path of that in a conversation we're being fluid to both those things and when we're too anchored in just one, if I was a leader only having a voice for myself, you might experience me as a bull in the china shop, or unwilling to listen or interrupting, as much as if I'm only listening and asking questions, someone might question my leadership ability.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Amy Jen Su:

So it's the both and of what can seem like a paradox on the surface that in working with others you say, "Wow, how much more effective can you be to multiple situations and audiences by having access to the whole versus just half of the toolbox?

Daniel Stillman:

This goes to the question of as you indicated in your book, what is effective? What is going to get me ultimately what I want? What I see as my best and highest use?

Amy Jen Su:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

What will help me create what I'm trying to create? I think that I'm struggling with, this is something I've been struggling in with my own something I've been writing right now, so maybe you can coach me on this, because I think there's this tension between how people think they need to be, because I think people want me to be a certain way, I have this other way that I want to be, and then there's, as you're talking about, empathy, tuning into my audience, understanding what is needed, and then finding a way to resolve all of those tensions and to show up as we intend. It's a complex dialog between these different points, to find the mean.

Amy Jen Su:

Yes it is.

Daniel Stillman:

Now I feel like I should read your first book.

Amy Jen Su:

Yeah, I know. It is complex. It's taking that moment, as you just said, to first say who is the audience, what's the impact I hope to have on them, what's my intention, and then coming back to oneself to say well what's the message? And then there is that moment of marrying both mission and message, but recognizing that there's a very specific audience that in honoring and helping the audience to receive your message, it's taking that extra pivot and step.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Or in the case of, as you mentioned, solitude and community, right? This also depends on your own preferences. Some of us need more solitude time to feel our best, some of us need more community time, but in the end, as human beings, we both meed time for quiet and rest, as much as we need belonging and connection to other human beings.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And so, do we have awareness of that and do we have a portfolio of practices that allow us to oscillate to one of the other as needed?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And also to learn how to self manage when we have to do the thing that maybe we don't enjoy doing as much. The idea of oh I'm not so good with crowds, and it's like well guess what, that's something you're going to have to manage, you might have to do an all hands at some point and you just have to find that in yourself. How do you coach somebody to find something in themselves that maybe they don't feel is there?

Amy Jen Su:

In that case, as a leader, let's say suddenly now your role does demand that you do more all hands, and it's not your favorite thing. So just recognizing, my hope, number one, is that you're in a role that speaks to 80% of what comes natural or to your strengths but there's always going to be 20% of any role, I think, that forces us to oscillate out of our comfort zone, but it's an important part of the mandate. So in the case of the leader who may not love doing an all hands, perhaps we would tap into the values they feel towards making sure that they're transparent with their organization, that they do care about employee engagement, and that their communications from a one to many perspective is really critical. So for that leader, helping them get prepared for that moment so that they can increase their comfort, and then making sure maybe it's after the all hands that they block an hour after the event to make sure they grab a little time-

Daniel Stillman:

Recovery.

Amy Jen Su:

Back to themselves to recharge the battery.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So it's really planning for the process, understanding, we talked about what are the conditions that cultivate my highest and best use, it's really about the care and feeding of me, whoever the me is that's looking at that. I think some people look at that and say I shouldn't need an hour to prepare and an hour to recover, and then they judge themselves and say well I'm terrible at blank because I need an hour to chill out and I can't just go into my next thing. And I feel like we abuse ourselves with that idea and it's unfair.

Amy Jen Su:

It's unfair, it's unproductive. I think the faulty assumption that we, for high stakes situations or conversations, that winging it is the way to go. I think there's a point where I often will say to a leader, "Hey, your job now requires a different influence where the percentage of time you once spent on the slides versus the percentage of time you are now going to allocate to prepare for delivery.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Has to change.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Because now a lot of your impact and your contribution is actually how you show up to the broader organization.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And I think spending as much time visualizing how you're going to be and how you want to show up is work.

Amy Jen Su:

It is work.

Daniel Stillman:

And I don't see that as work, it's in our work. It's working on our instrument, ourselves, but it is still work.

Amy Jen Su:

Absolutely. And I think it's time, I often advise my clients, "Hey at the start of your week, take a look at your Outlook Calendar Monday through Friday, it's not that you're going to be able to prep for every meeting, it's not realistic, but pick the two that really make a difference to priorities, or could really make a difference to employee morale or your team's morale. Or it's a really difficult conversation, perhaps it's a feedback conversation and you want to both get your message across but honor the dignity of the other person, those do require some preparation time and be thoughtful and, to the word you used, Daniel, planful, mindful, intentional.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So as a practice, I always say pick the two this week where just that little bit of extra preparation and thoughtfulness could make a big difference.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about mindfulness and what it means for you? You said a couple of times, and I know you did your fair share of work in that direction, to the point that it's one of the five Ps in your framework, can you say a little bit about why that's important to you?

Amy Jen Su:

Mindfulness is important to me, I know it's a popular item and topic these days, for good reason. Everything we're talking about here, the tuning into oneself, the bringing the head and the body back together in any moment, the head heart body, and saying, "Wait, what's actually in front of me and going on?" I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Amy Jen Su:

And in fact, I have found it's the opposite. It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what really reality is so that then you could be making better choices or creating the action plan necessary. So oftentimes we either want to run away from something, or run towards something. Mindfulness I think brings us to, with razor clarity, actually let's come to reality.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well it's funny, we're talking about the difference between what some people might call spiritual bypassing and Taoism, right? Which is seeing the way and accepting the way and working within the way. And I don't know, that's again a question that's not a question, that's just me summarizing, clarifying for myself. I know that in your book you talk about this, the Eastern thought has become very mainstreamed in a way and it's both good but it's got a little flavor to it that it's like well I'm glad, but let's not misuse it. You have a long tradition, and this is also it's part of your culture. I don't know what my question is in there for you, it feels like there's complexity there for you.

Amy Jen Su:

There is complexity. I did grow up in a household where Eastern thought was always part of our upbringing. My father has always talked about the middle way and not living or playing to the extremes and so it's been something that I've thought about for a long time and what is yin and yang and why are the dots inside each side and a lot of curiosity there. But I love what you said, Daniel, about spiritual bypassing. I think with anything, any trend, we all need to be careful to not have it become our new distraction or our new form of egoic heroism. Rather than saying how do any discipline, from any culture, all cultures had explored for centuries what human performance and potential can be and what can I learn from different ones and which ones speak to me and resonate for me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think where my mind was going with this was that your book is a very practical feet to the ground guide, and if you're listening to this, I'm looking out the windows, whoever's here listening in on this, I found each chapter full of, and I'm just a lover of frameworks, a good two by two to analyze where my highest and best uses, you take this very lofty ideal of what's my highest and best use and you say well here's a two by two and let's break it down and let's have a really, really clear conversation on that. I think it's so valuable.

Daniel Stillman:

At the same time, at the center of one of your diagrams is purpose and I just had this discussion with a CEO today where he was like, "Well what can we do together?" And I'm like I don't know what your purpose is yet, man. What do you want? We just started to draw the map of what you want. Once we figure it out, we can go there. And that's work that nobody can do for you. That's inner work. And so that's what I love is that you do have that, there's an affability, it's not just a business book without a soul.

Amy Jen Su:

Oh I appreciate that, Daniel, and it warms my heart to hear that you picked up on that because that, I think in terms of just being a business person myself, and serving the corporate world, there is a pragmatism and a practicality that's super important. We all have results we need to deliver and priorities to make and teams to lead and so in the everyday of what we do of our doing, it's important to say how do I optimize my productivity and my efficiency as much as it is, to your point, around the conversation you just had with that CEO, where does doing and being come together, and again, who we are as people and the motivations that guide our actions can have tremendous impact on our organizations and culture.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

So it feels like the conversation has to explore both the what and the how, and the why.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

In terms of purpose, like why even put resources against something or time against something if we fundamentally can't answer that question.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. And who or what or how could we answer that question, right? What would help one do that? And at the end of the day, it's a question that a leader has to define, it seems like they have to define for themselves. Or at least that's the privilege to be able to do that.

Amy Jen Su:

There is a privilege in it in terms of being able to set the why for more people than just yourself.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And in higher orders of leadership so much of the job becomes you're the person to help paint the picture, to help connect people to why should they care? How does their day to day job connect to something bigger than all of us? And I think the best leaders, especially at the CEO level are able to do that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I want to make sure we have some time talking about some other paradi, because I'm wondering, what I loved in our first conversation was getting a glimpse into you clarifying for yourself your own tensions that you were trying to navigate, and I thought it was such an amazing touchstone. In my work when I think about designing the conversation and designing the conversation with yourself, in a way what I saw was you clarifying here are the extremes that I am navigating. The yin and the yang that I'm trying to work through for yourself. And when I saw it I'm like I think that's something everyone needs to do, is to have a map on the wall of here are the choices I'm working through, having agency around, and I'm just wondering if there's one particular paradox that we can sit with for a minute and talk about how to peel apart the layers.

Amy Jen Su:

I'm happy to. I every year sort of put together a one pager that's my north star, and what is it I'm struggling with as a leader.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And it shows up in the work, because then I'm curious how other people are handling it as well. So probably one of the ones that started off actually a couple years ago in a conversation with a group of leaders was this paradox of leading and learning, but interestingly it's showing up a lot in my life this year and so I think, Daniel, of the four paradi, paradox that I showed you where I had lead, learn, community, solitude, action, stillness, dissatisfaction, gratitude. I did have lead, learn at the top, I think probably for a reason.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What does that mean to you? We talked about it earlier, this idea of as a leader if you're only asking lots of questions, there's a question of who are you in this relationship, where what do you want maybe doesn't show up. What is that tension for you?

Amy Jen Su:

I think the tension as a leader is on the one hand, all of us want to show our value and understand our value and remember who we are. So on the lead side, in the roles we're in, or new roles or opportunities we're given, really thinking about wow, if nothing else this year, what are the three things I hope to do for this organization or for this team or for this body of work? It really calls on the part of ourselves to lead and have a voice and have a point of view and lean in and really help drive something forward. And at the same time, how does that not tilt into somehow I need to prove myself.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And it's a fine line. So I think for me, the paradox of lead, learn, the learn side helps to keep it truly in leadership and learning and not veering into some prove myself space. So as I mentioned earlier, sometimes this faulty assumption of that somehow the clock went back to zero just isn't true. So on the lead side it's always saying, "Gosh, with every new experience I have an opportunity to lead." But there's amazing learning in every new role too.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Amy Jen Su:

So I think even as I help leaders onboard, or I'm helping myself right now, it's both the what are my goals and what do I want to achieve this year as much as what do I want to learn?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

In a new industry or in a network or something else, and holding both of those things in balance somehow has helped navigate tough weeks easier.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so profound, what's coming up for me, I was just working with a group where they were taking on, I was really working with them around facilitative leadership and being better facilitators of complex dialog in the organization and what they realized for themselves was we have to own what we don't know. We have to own that we are holding space, that we are creating the conditions for these conversations to happen, there can be this tendency to want to pretend that we know more than we do, and I think owning what we want, and owning what we want to know more about is so powerful.

Amy Jen Su:

And I love the word you're using, owning, Daniel. Because I think it's how do we own [crosstalk 00:37:39]-

Daniel Stillman:

It's actually yours. Wait that's your phrase.

Amy Jen Su:

Well just as you said it, the word captured me, because I think we don't own ourselves unapologetically, both for what we know and what we don't know. And there's actually, as you were just describing that set of leaders, there's tremendous confidence that telegraphs when we can say, "Hey, you know what, Daniel, that's a great question, but I actually don't know."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

And I'd love to sit with it or have my team look into it or ask my colleagues around the table if others have a point of view or instinct on it. And I do think that the voice, when we were talking earlier about the voices in our head that can be unkind, that says you must be an expert, your value add is tied to being an expert. Can sometimes really get us into trouble.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Sometimes for sure, I would say. Well for no other reason than it's not authentic, right?

Amy Jen Su:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

To say that-

Amy Jen Su:

You can act like we know everything.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, so this is really interesting, and this is where maybe having a helicopter view of the lead, learn paradox can be so helpful, because I for myself am totally obsessed with knowing and knowing as a survival method in my family system, and as a consultant and as somebody who does learning and development I'm sure all of this resonates with you. People want to know, they want to be told often, they want a solution, and it is much harder to sit with not knowing.

Amy Jen Su:

It is much harder to sit with it. Our society grooms us to acquire knowledge, and then we're graded on that. For anyone who had kind of the good student carry with them forever, you head into our adult life with that same framework and I hope, even writing on a sheet of paper and looking at it everyday, that even as I go through life and acquire more knowledge that I preserve enough humility that there's a lot still left to learn, and that the colleagues I work with are very smart and if someone disagrees with me, it's probably for good reason. So rather than getting defensive which often is easy to happen, how do I maintain enough of a stance of curiosity to at least hear out why they have a different point of view.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So I'll, as we're unpacking this conversation of leading and learning, there's curiosity is a vector in that dialog, and then pulling ourselves out of it and seeing the rationality of we can't possibly know everything. That's self coaching, right?

Amy Jen Su:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So you can't know everything, so it's okay to pump the breaks on that feeling of danger. I think it's so important to be able to, and this is really sitting in that paradox of we can't know all the things to do and we have to be very specific on what we want, what our goals are, both in accomplishing and also in filling our own gaps really specifically. I'm so desperate to ask, what do you want to learn about this year? If you feel safe to tell us.

Amy Jen Su:

Yes, this year I am continuing to go deeper in my own exploration of mindfulness. So I have been listening to and I'm going to say his name incorrectly, so [inaudible 00:41:35] videos, I was just listening to one this morning around how to stay present even when the moment feels unbearable. So inquiry and listening to other teachers in that modality have been really helpful. And then on the practical side, this is the first year where I'm a board member of a private company, it's a really different, new role for me, and it's one worth sitting in the middle of leading and learning and humility.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Has been really critical because it's completely new. So as we all take on new roles as leaders, it's an exciting time, it's a company I'm very passionate about, and believe in their culture, and very humbly with my fellow board members realize I have so much left to learn. I'm sometimes awestruck by how much there's still left to learn about different businesses and people and organizations.

Daniel Stillman:

That's really wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. And with our tiny amount of time left, what haven't I asked you that I should have asked you? What haven't we talked about that's important to talk about?

Amy Jen Su:

I think as we think about paradox, I did want to shout out to a colleague named Brian Emerson who wrote a book called Navigating Polarities. For anyone who's interested in polarity and paradox work, just kind of who have been the teachers and influencers in my life around that particular subject, Brian and I have been colleagues for a long time and he's a deep thinker on polarity, so I would be remiss to not shout out his book and work as an influence, for sure.

Daniel Stillman:

It's duly noted that you're owning what you still have yet to learn.

Amy Jen Su:

Yes. I still have a lot to go. Total work in progress, all the time.

Daniel Stillman:

Something that I'm really taking away from this conversation is that you talk about it's important for us to realize where we have agency and to make choices, to make effective choices based on what we want, which comes down to knowing ourselves, and that is a path towards resolving paradox, is to ask what we want. And I think what we haven't touched on, and I don't know if we can do it justice, is this idea of wholeness, that even within that choice there is still a view of wholeness.

Amy Jen Su:

I think, thank you Daniel for raising the question of wholeness, because paradox, while we think it's either or, often it's parts of a whole. We are parts of a whole. Leading and learning are parts of a whole life experience, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

Community and solitude are parts of a whole human experience and so I hope as all leaders and professionals and people explore their own development, so many different interesting parts of life and ourselves as human beings and just the more we explore that and discover that the more whole we become. So that's kind of a personal mission for my own life and for others that I work with, that we can access a whole ambitious, full life.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Amy Jen Su:

I don't think it gets better than that.

Daniel Stillman:

So this is, I want to make sure I understand this because I think it's, I don't know if you ever read Zorba The Greek.

Amy Jen Su:

No.

Daniel Stillman:

Well you can just watch the movie, Alec Guinness, it's a classic, it's one of my dad's favorites. There's this line where he talks about life being the full catastrophe. Getting married and having children, the full catastrophe. And in a way, this idea of community and solitude or gratitude versus contentment has choices that I make once and forever is not the truth, the truth is that I have a whole life and I will get to make this choice many times over and that it's potentially even a cyclical set of choices to make, and sitting with that wholeness is that it's, well this is just one time I'm choosing this.

Amy Jen Su:

There's life in many ways is just many, many, many moments that we sit in and that we make choices, the frame of our life, the life condition and situation we find ourselves in drive different choices, and recognizing there is agency and the ability to craft. I mean to use your language, design and create a full life is really exciting.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It is an amazing opportunity to be able to do that. Where, of course, where should we direct people to the internet if they want to learn more about all things Paravis Partners and Amy Su? Where can they go to learn more about you?

Amy Jen Su:

Our firm's website, paravispartners.com is a good place to start, and embedded in there is also theleaderyouwanttobe.com. So for folks interested in potentially finding more information, those are both good places to start.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And your book is a worthwhile read.

Amy Jen Su:

Thanks.

Daniel Stillman:

I really appreciate you making the time to unpack some of the subtler points at the core of this long and deep work, which is becoming ourselves and accomplishing great things. So thank you very much for making the time.

Amy Jen Su:

Thank you so much for having me and for the dialog, I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. And scene.

The Art of Coaching with Alisa Cohn

In this episode, Alisa Cohn and I talk through the Art of Coaching and also one of my favorite ways of looking at Leadership: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. A Coaching mindset is a transformative way to show up for others and yourself, so I’m excited to share these insights from Alisa, since she was named the Top Startup Coach in the World, and she has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. If you’re stepping up as a leader, or are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Everyday Coaching

A coaching mindset can be powerfully transformative, so even if you don’t have a startup, even if you’re not a coach... if you’re not even an official leader, or even if you just want to be a good friend, you’ll find lessons in this conversation with Alisa that you can use in your work and life, every day. 

Coaching is a conversational process that works with someone to help them improve, from the inside out. Alisa shares some of her most powerful coaching questions and all about how the most impactful coaching conversation she’s ever had was only 8 minutes long.

Alisa and I got right into the heart of coaching, with her sharing some essential, fundamental conversational approaches to the coaching process like: 

>>firm and gentle inquiry
>>moving from the presenting problem to the context
>>Trusting your curiosity
>>Staying Loose!
>>Trust that they have an answer...that the work is in them. 

As Alisa said:

“All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?"

>>Alisa will ask “What if you did know?” and push her clients to sit with the question. The act of reflecting is helpful no matter what springs up.

>>The ability to reflect will help with one of the absolute key executive skills: choosing a response versus having a reaction. 

Alisa actually quotes Victor Frankl’s blockbuster thoughts on this capacity:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

A coach isn’t all warm and fuzzy listening though…My coach calls his approach “tapping someone’s bottle”...pointing out the limits to someone’s thinking. When Alisa wants to push back I heard her use the phrase:

"Well, that's how I invite you to think about it." 

Alisa will step in with her perspective but without force. A tap isn’t a shove!

Asking “How is this situation serving you?” is a gentle challenge.

What to Expect in a Coaching Relationship...and why you might need a coach

If you are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Alisa and I talked through one of my favorite ideas: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. One huge challenge of being a leader is that, as she says “You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows.” Alisa and I talk about how to find new ways of tapping into your inner humanity and show up authentically, no matter the situation. Just because the board says “you need to have more conviction” doesn’t mean you have to become a jerk, or invert how you want to be. It’s about finding ways to be passionate and firm that work for you. 

In my own experience, I’ve found that, as a coach and a coachee, a powerful conversation can help me find my own, authentic path forward, through having a conversation with my own inner parts. It’s hard to do that on your own...having a coach as part of the conversation can be transformative.

Alisa also points out that coaching has to be 3-Dimensional, because we are 3-Dimensional. As we grow as leaders, she thinks of three dimensions of growth: we have to grow in our self-management, our skill in managing others, and, of course, in managing the business. A powerful coach is going to make you look at all three.

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Alisa's website

Alisa on LinkedIn

Alisa on Twitter

Alisa on Jeff Gothelf’s Forever Employable series

Alisa Rapping!

Check yourself before you Wreck yourself

Minute 4

The way people feel safe is if you can be gentle with them and with the questions. The way people feel guided and supported is if you can be firm. It's both of those things together and sometimes it's a little more gentle and sometimes a little more firm.

Minute 4

I think for all of us, it's important to have dexterity and a set of tools so that we can use a fine chisel when we need one and sometimes a sledgehammer when we need that too. You need to have both and more in your toolkit.

Minute 7

All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?" Because the work is in you and the answers are in you.

Minute 8

Let me ask you to actually think deeply about what you want out of this onboarding plan and think deeply about how you want this person to integrate into your culture and your highest and best hopes for this new person and what they can bring to the table and what we can all do together. That is the work is in you.

Also, here's your onboarding plan, here's the form. Right? The form is actually very helpful to structure a step by step process. I'm not the kind of coach that will say, "You've got to figure everything out and we've got to wander together in the wilderness until you figure out what the onboarding plan is." I think that the deep inquiry inside of yourself is very powerful for all of us.

Minute 9

It's not about I want you to wander. It's that I want you to have the fruit of the labor that it takes to actually reflect and to think about it and to gather your thoughts. Also, to let yourself be unedited and explore these ideas and the reason you think you don't know is because you got to get it right. What if you don't got to get it right? What if we're just having a safe space where you can brainstorm on what you think? What would come out?

Minute 11

Certainly, a startup founder and, increasingly, as he or she builds a company to scale, they need to do that self-awareness and that self-inquiry to figure out what are my triggers? What are my strengths? What are the things which are important to me? What are my values? Where are we going with all of this?

It's actually super important. Then, in general, I work for the CEO and people would say, "He needs to have more conviction." He would say, "Listen, I am not the kind of sales guy that pounds my fist on the table." No, absolutely not. But how can you in your quiet way express more conviction? What they're looking for is something a little more firm from you or something a little more awake or passionate from you? How can you do that? That is the question.

Minute 13

Again, I'll talk about the CEOs that I tend to work with, you're onstage. You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows.

You have to practice things that don't always feel authentic. In order to expand your ability and your repertoire of skills and behaviors so that ultimately do feel authentic.

Minute 15

Part of what I think about leadership is that the first people you lead every day is yourself and if you're going into the office or a remote office these days to lead a group of people, that's where one way or the other you need help and support in thinking about that because leadership is an unnatural act. It is learned. You need to learn it.

Minute 34

Well, I think one question is how is this situation serving you? Right? Because people complain about whatever and this question is how is this serving you? What are you contributing to this situation? That's a very important and powerful question. I think what are you afraid of?

Minute 35

That's the initial stage of the coaching conversation. Even that, we talked about people who are skeptical or you said volun-told. It's like, "I don't want to be here." Okay, fine. Okay, great. I love your skepticism. Let's put it aside. If you had a secret weapon dedicated entirely to your success for six months, what would you want to get done? That's just a better question or a better conversation than I'm not happy, I don't like this.

Minute 37

Well, maybe the question is what's the entrepreneurial journey like? Why is it so hard? I would just say that founders are like the most incredible, courageous, crazy people who are risking everything against all odds to build something when they could just get a job at IBM if they wanted to. Right? It's like why are you doing this?

Just maybe to hold with reverence what a founder is and then what a hard job that is because you're learning as you go, the entry level position for a founder is boss, right? The entry level position. You don't know what you're doing necessarily. You may not have had any other management leadership experiences before. You've got to learn all of that pieced together and then you've got to do all the other things that a founder has to do like raise money, like figure out the market, figure out the strategy, run an operational business, hire people, fire people, hire your friends, fire your friends, handle conflict, all those things are very difficult to orchestrate together.

MORE ABOUT ALISA

Named the Top Startup Coach in the World at the Thinkers50/Marshall Goldsmith Global Coaches Awards in London, Alisa Cohn has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. A onetime startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she was named a top 30 “Global Guru” and has worked with startups such as Venmo, Etsy, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Tory Burch. She has also coached CEOs and C-Suite executives at enterprise clients such as  Dell, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and Calvin Klein.

Marshall Goldsmith selected Alisa as one of his Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches – a gathering of the top coaches in the world – and Inc named Alisa one of the top 100 leadership speakers, and also been named one of the top voices of thought leadership by PeopleHum for 2021.

Alisa is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Cornell Universities, Henley Business School and the Naval War College. She is the executive coach for Runway–the incubator at Cornell NYC Tech that helps post-docs commercialize their technology and build companies. She serves on the board of the Cornell Advisory Council. She has coached public and political figures including the former Supreme Court Chief Justice of Sri Lanka and the first female minister in the transitional government of Afghanistan.

Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been featured as an expert on Bloomberg TV, the BBC World News and in the New York Times. A recovering CPA, she is also a Broadway investor in productions which have won two Tony Awards and is prone to burst into song at the slightest provocation.

She is also an amateur rap artist.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

Alisa Cohn, thank you for making the time to be on the Conversation Factory. I'm really glad to have this conversation with you.

Alisa Cohn:

I'm so excited to be here with you.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks.

Alisa Cohn:

It's great.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks for saying. I appreciate it. Okay. I'm really curious, let's start close in. You've been a coach for a long time. I'm curious about how you approach your craft. Because you're crafting conversations with people. I mean, I would presume that's the core of your business is the conversations that you're having with the coachees that you are caring for. Has your craft changed over the almost two decades that you've been doing this? What have you noticed about your growth and transformation as a coach?

Alisa Cohn:

Boy, I love that you just dive right in. I love that.

Daniel Stillman:

Let's not screw around.

Alisa Cohn:

Exactly. No small talk. Let's go. Let's get serious. I want to pick up on what you just said about the conversations. Absolutely. What I tell my clients all of the time is the work of coaching happens in conversation. We're not digging ditches. We're not doing spreadsheets. We are having conversations. That is exactly the work of coaching.

Alisa Cohn:

I think, for me, if I think about how I think about coaching, first of all, is that most people bring me in when there's a problem. The problem may be this thing happened, right? So some people bring me in, "There's an employee I'm dealing with and I can't manage the situation. I'm not sure what to do. I'm having an issue with my co-founder. Whatever it is."

Alisa Cohn:

Sometimes the problem is I'm a new CEO and I know I don't know what I don't know. That's okay, right? That's also still kind of a sensitive problem and that's okay. My first entry point is for me to think about what's going on around here? Right? That's all I really think about. What's going on? To try to understand who this person is who is sitting in front of me. Who this person is and what is their environment and their context like? Because for all of us, we are ourselves in our makeup and we're also our environment. It's a marriage of those two together.

Alisa Cohn:

For me, assessing that and thinking about that and being with the person that I'm coaching as we explore that together in the initial meeting and then going forward but then the last question being how have I grown? I mean, oh my God. I've changed a lot. When I first became a coach, I was nervous and I had a lot of performance anxiety and I wanted to do it right. That made me tight.

Alisa Cohn:

Over the years, I've loosened up a lot and I've let it go the way it's going to go and I would say that the most important thing is that I feel much more empowered personally to follow my curiosity and to go deep with a client and also to help them feel safe in going deep with me.

Daniel Stillman:

There's so many threads to pick up on. I think that's ... This question of what you are curious about is such an interesting question because as a coach, there's so many directions you can take a conversation just through questioning. The phrase you used in the conversation with Jeff on his Forever Employable series was firmly and gently inquire. I was like, "What a great way to put it." I mean, in a way if we're talking about heuristics by which you would judge the design, the way you're shaping the conversation, are you holding those words in mind? Like the firm and the gentle.

Alisa Cohn:

I'm not holding those words in mind. I'm trying to hold that space in my heart. I'm trying to ... The way people feel safe is if you can be gentle with them and with the questions. The way people feel guided and supported is if you can be firm. It's both of those things together and sometimes it's a little more gentle and sometimes a little more firm.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

You know? I definitely have that in me. I think if anything, I have to tone down my firmness sometimes. That's probably also a way that I have grown over the years.

Daniel Stillman:

In which way? Like using the firmness more or knowing how to hold your firmness lightly?

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Probably both. Probably both. I'm definitely known for being quite direct, for being kind of blunt. I think that in the wrong moment for me, that can look a little ... I don't want to say dismissive but maybe peremptory or something, abrupt maybe.

Daniel Stillman:

Sure.

Alisa Cohn:

I think it's important to be able ... I think for all of us, it's important to have dexterity and a set of tools so that we can use a fine chisel when we need one and sometimes a sledgehammer when we need that too. You need to have both and more in your toolkit.

Daniel Stillman:

This is so interesting to hear you talk about the way you're crafting and chiseling at this because I think of the conversation as a craft. For you to pick up a sledgehammer on purpose is very different than you picking up a sledgehammer because you're frustrated with your client. That's control.

Alisa Cohn:

Exactly. Right. Or because you're having a bad day.

Daniel Stillman:

You're right. It's about what you're bringing ... It's also so interesting that you use tight and loose. In design school, one of my teachers said that this is the only criticism that anybody will give you of your work, that it's either too tight or that it's too loose. I think it's such an interesting question of how you were holding the space for the conversation.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I'm a fitness fanatic, which I'm sure you know. On my Facebook, I do kettlebell quarantine on the weekends. I do a little kettlebell movement. My fitness coach is incredible. He's taught me a lot about strength training and strength training turns out to be the polarity between tension and relaxation. When you need to be tense, you need to go all in tense. When you need to be relaxed, you need to go all in relaxation. The play, the play between tension and relaxation is a dynamic. It's a natural system that plays out in all of our lives and, certainly, in conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm sure that that is also an applicable lesson to the startup founders.

Alisa Cohn:

Oh, yeah. For sure.

Daniel Stillman:

That you work with.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like one of the things that I want to pick at is this, "I don't know what I don't know" feeling that people feel when they are rising in their work. Of course, they don't know what they don't know because they're doing things that they've never done before.

Daniel Stillman:

You have this video where you talk about the work is in you. I mean, there's this idea of like, "Alisa, please tell me what I don't know about being a founder" versus bringing it out of them and maybe this is the tight and loose. How do you handle this shaping of that conversation space of I want to know how to do X, Y, and Z?

Alisa Cohn:

I know. All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?"

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Alisa Cohn:

Because the work is in you and the answers are in you. That's not always true when it comes to, sadly, we have to lay people off, how should I do it? In part, there's a how do you want to do it? How do you want to be known for it? Even in this difficult moment. But there's also just certain mechanics that have to do with a communication plan and have to do with a messaging and the same is true of an onboarding plan, right? Let me ask you to actually think deeply about what you want out of this onboarding plan and think deeply about how you want this person to integrate into your culture and your highest and best hopes for this new person and what they can bring to the table and what we can all do together. That is the work is in you.

Alisa Cohn:

Also, here's your onboarding plan, here's the form. Right? The form is actually very helpful to structure a step by step process. I'm not the kind of coach that will say, "You've got to figure everything out and we've got to wander together in the wilderness until you figure out what the onboarding plan is." I think that the deep inquiry inside of yourself is very powerful for all of us.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds like at some point you'll be like there is a best practice and here's some of it.

Alisa Cohn:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

But you want them to wander a little bit.

Alisa Cohn:

It's not that I want them to wander. I want them to ... The first thing is that people will say, "What should I do?" Right? I'm going to exaggerate. This is not really a dialog but I'm going to exaggerate. "What should I do?" "What do you think you should do?" "I don't know." "What if you did know?" Right?

Alisa Cohn:

Sorry to be so coach-y but the reason that's important is because you might know if you sat and reflected for five minutes. The act of reflecting will actually be very helpful for you no matter what springs up. I promise you something will spring up if we sit together and allow you some time to reflect. That is actually very good.

Alisa Cohn:

It's not about I want you to wander. It's that I want you to have the fruit of the labor that it takes to actually reflect and to think about it and to gather your thoughts. Also, to let yourself be unedited and explore these ideas and the reason you think you don't know is because you got to get it right. What if you don't got to get it right? What if we're just having a safe space where you can brainstorm on what you think? What would come out?

Alisa Cohn:

There is much fruit that comes out of that. Much better than me saying, "Here is your template."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Alisa Cohn:

At the end, sure, I'll give you the template.

Daniel Stillman:

If you're Alisa's client, know that ... Just struggle a little bit and then ... I mean, I'm joking but if we go back to what you said earlier, what I really loved was ... This is work that I think I do, which is name how you want it to feel.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Right? I can't tell you what kind of a CEO you want to be. Maybe you just want to rip the band-aid off and tell everyone, "Hey, everyone. We're out of money." Or maybe you want to make it into more of a dance, more of a conversation. That's something you can't decide for them, how they want to play it.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. That's also true. I think it's important also for all of us to bring ourselves to the table and I think a CEO needs to ... Certainly, a startup founder and, increasingly, as he or she builds a company to scale, they need to do that self-awareness and that self-inquiry to figure out what are my triggers? What are my strengths? What are the things which are important to me? What are my values? Where are we going with all of this?

Alisa Cohn:

It's actually super important. Then, in general, I work for the CEO and people would say, "He needs to have more conviction." He would say, "Listen, I am not the kind of sales guy that pounds my fist on the table." No, absolutely not. But how can you in your quiet way express more conviction? What they're looking for is something a little more firm from you or something a little more awake or passionate from you? How can you do that? That is the question.

Daniel Stillman:

This is interesting because I've been noodling on this, this idea of leadership as the art of showing up on purpose. I think sometimes there's this idea that we have to assume a virtue that we have ... I was coaching somebody recently who said, "I'm a work horse and I want to be a show horse so that I can get promoted." She resented it. She was really holding that she was like ... This resentment against the structure she was in and the organization that she had to turn herself inside out in order to rise up. That was the narrative she was telling herself.

Daniel Stillman:

What we discover is that there are parts of her life where she knew how to be in charge. It was in sports actually. She coaches a team that she's part of. She's like, "I know how to call the shots that I see and see the system and own what I know." For me, I was like you don't have to become a show horse. Maybe you just need to become the coach.

Daniel Stillman:

She lit up finding it inside of herself. I guess I'm just wondering ... I think there's this idea of like I have to become something I'm not versus the work is in me, I have to find it in myself and how do I ... How do you help people tap into what's native to them?

Alisa Cohn:

Right. What's native is that [inaudible 00:13:18]. It's the idea that you have some internal drivers and you have a personality. At the same time, the truth is ... Again, I'll talk about the CEOs that I tend to work with, you're onstage. You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows.

Alisa Cohn:

You have to practice things that don't always feel authentic. In order to expand your ability and your repertoire of skills and behaviors so that ultimately do feel authentic. I told you I'm writing this book From Startup to Grownup and it's the idea of how do you activate both your internal nature in a way that does feel authentic but learn the counterintuitive skills sometimes that you're required to to become a successful leader, a successful CEO.

Daniel Stillman:

I think that's a beautiful idea because when we think about the journey of a startup, there's I have an idea, I'm making some experiments, maybe I've launched something, I've product market fit, and now it's like I have to build a business.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm just curious because it seems like the ideal client for you is somebody who is not way in the beginning of their journey and saying, "I'm thinking about starting something up. I'm still in the corporate and I haven't made the leap." They are starting up. There's acceleration. We need to catch up with it.

Alisa Cohn:

You know, it's funny because people sort of say, "Who is the ideal client?" And whatnot. I didn't really think about that but it is true. I don't tend to work with folks in that stage. That is true.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

I tend to work with folks who have already ... First of all, I work also with people in large companies. That's a whole different dynamic in helping them, CEOs of large public companies or C suite executives of large public companies, but help them build their leadership skills inside of a certain context.

Alisa Cohn:

I also work with ... I do still work with a few individuals who are trying to think about their careers probably differently in a more impactful way. Yeah. It's like I work with all kinds of folks but when I think about founders and I just focus on founders, there's no question that I work with people who have something to work with.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

Part of what I think about leadership is that the first people you lead every day is yourself and if you're going into the office or a remote office these days to lead a group of people, that's where one way or the other you need help and support in thinking about that because leadership is an unnatural act. It is learned. You need to learn it.

Daniel Stillman:

Can we unpack that? That's so interesting, this idea that leadership is an unnatural act and people have to learn it.

Alisa Cohn:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, I'm surprised because a part of me feels like, "Oh, leadership is an innate skill" or it's a human skill. That it's unnatural, tell me more about that.

Alisa Cohn:

Well, I think that we sort of think it's supposed to come naturally and that gets in the way of learning it but here's a very good example of what you have to do as a leader. If someone, let's say, a CEO is looking at their executive team and there's one person, one of their executives is not doing it right, so they're not doing what I want them to do.

Alisa Cohn:

That's annoying. If how you are being naturally is, "I'm annoyed at you." That is not going to motivate that person. Right? Sometimes counterintuitively, you have to compliment this person and praise them for what they've already done for their attempts. You have to take sometimes the blame as in, "I probably wasn't very clear. Maybe I've given you misdirection. Maybe we all together haven't thought through the whole process" or whatever.

Alisa Cohn:

Even though, how you're feeling and what is actually possibly true is, "You're doing it wrong." Now why? Because people get defensive, because people get demotivated. In the fast-paced world, pressure cooker of startups, you can control yourself and if you get irritated, impatient, frustrated with somebody in that fast-paced world, they may very well shut down and that will be counterproductive.

Alisa Cohn:

That's one example. I can give you many, many examples of why leadership is an unnatural act. You must check yourself. You must understand your own triggers, your own things that set you off, your own makeup and then you pause and reflect and think before acting. Then you have a fighting chance of being a good leader.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it's interesting because I want to hold this intention with ... By the way, the reason I was giggling is because I know you like to rap and when the phrase check yourself, in my mind, must be completed with, before you wreck yourself. It's just a sort of ...

Alisa Cohn:

That's very good.

Daniel Stillman:

That's just a total aside. We can go back around to that later. I want to hold this idea that it's an unnatural act because this is really interesting with the work is in you because it sounds like what you're saying is reactivity and impulsivity are at odds with scaling leadership.

Alisa Cohn:

So true. Yes. You want to be in a position where you can choose a response versus have a reaction.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. In my language, that's design. Right? It's intentionality and it's choice.

Alisa Cohn:

Intentionality. Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

How do people build the capacity to be able to make that choice? How do you coach people to be able to build that capacity?

Alisa Cohn:

It's a great question. First of all, it's taking on a reflective practice, whether it's journaling, meditation, even talking to a friend. That kind of thing. Part of the journaling, in addition to just [inaudible 00:19:29] and reflecting, it's also assessment of how am I feeling right now? What has set me off today? What has energized me today? Getting in the habit of that.

Alisa Cohn:

Also recognizing that you have a choice, right? Viktor Frankl said in the period between action and reaction there's a space and in that space there is your freedom. That's where your freedom is. It's looking for that freedom, relating to it like freedom, and then the very basic and simple, count to 10.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

Someone once told me he could only get to five. I'll take it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's so true. I'm so glad that Viktor Frankl is in the room. I mean, it's such a small space sometimes between action and reaction. I think the difference is between, "You made me" blank versus, "I am feeling blank."

Alisa Cohn:

Definitely. That's part of it. Yeah. That's not the only thing, though. I think it's also we together are creating blank. Right? Or also maybe it's an even deeper experience of what I'm really feeling. I'm feeling frustrated. Not really. I'm feeling anxious.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Becoming aware of your emotional state, what's your reflective practice?

Alisa Cohn:

Well, my fitness practice is definitely reflective practice. It may not sound like it is but it definitely is. I also do journaling. I meditate not regularly but times. I take a walk. Without any headphones or whatever. Those kinds of things. Also, I'll do a pause in the middle of the day and check in and see how I'm feeling. Those kinds of things.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Spaces.

Alisa Cohn:

Yes. Spaces.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so important. My wife has been [crosstalk 00:21:15].

Alisa Cohn:

What's yours?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, my wife has been going for long walks in the mornings, which actually gives me space. I do a seven minute workout. I stopped playing music with it. Then it becomes more of a reflective ... Like just to be present with the sensation than like I'm going to listen to some '80s hip hop while I get through this. It's a big difference. I think, for me, that's what makes it more of a mindfulness experience.

Alisa Cohn:

Definitely.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks for asking. I agree. I think it's like table stakes. If somebody is not doing that, it's very hard to help them with the next step if they lack all self-awareness. It's really interesting. There was a phrase I heard you use in the conversation with Jeff as you did a little micro coaching for him where you offered him a different way of thinking about something. You pushed back on his belief system and then you said, "Well, that's how I invite you to think about it." It was really interesting to watch you step in with your perspective but without force. With gentleness.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know. I just wanted to highlight that and unpack this way in which you help people see themselves as a coach mirror person thing.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. I was just in this retreat center and somebody there said to me ... He also works with founders and startups. He said, "I do a test." Already I'm like, "All right. I don't know ... Where are we going with this?" "I do a test. When I talk to them, I ask them this question and then I give them some material and if they get back to me, I know they're coachable. If they get back to me with a right answer or with an answer, I know they're coachable. If they don't, I know they're not coachable. That's my test." I'm like, "Okay, well, I'm a coach. I don't see it that way."

Alisa Cohn:

You know, it's not one and done. It's not, "Oh, here's the thing. Fill it out. If you don't fill it out, you're not coachable. If you do fill it out, you are coachable." It does not work that way.

Alisa Cohn:

What I told him and what I know is true is that very often people need an invitation, an invitation to change, an invitation to think about something differently. Sometimes it's more than one invitation that they need. He was talking about something else, which is here's my lens about how I decide if I want to work with someone or not. Not a problem. That's fine.

Alisa Cohn:

The notion of coachability, to me, is very ... It's very interesting that people think they can tell by looking at someone's outsides and what I try to do is get on people's insides and then we see how coachable people are.

Daniel Stillman:

I presume that coachability is an important heuristic for someone you want to work with.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Well, of course. I don't know if it shows up right away. People will say to me, "That guy will never change", "She's not coachable" or whatever. I'm like, please don't speak to me. Everyone's got their opinions about whatever.

Alisa Cohn:

I approach somebody as in they have not been powerfully invited to change. They have not seen a what's in it for me? About any kind of change. They have been judged. They have been assessed. They have been demotivated. They have been made put down? "Well, no wonder you're not changing. I wouldn't change either."

Alisa Cohn:

For me, it takes a little while to really figure out what's going on and, again, will this person change?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Also, it's whether you're willing to engage in that conversation with them, which means you have to be excited. Marshall Goldsmith talks about how important choosing your clients is.

Alisa Cohn:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

In the process of do you believe that they've got what it takes to do it with you?

Alisa Cohn:

Definitely. That is definitely important and, also, coachability is important and for him, it's particular. There is this sort of index. Like he doesn't get paid if they don't change. Marshall also knows that people don't always show up immediately the way they really are. It takes a while for defenses to go down.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think I've noticed with people in my coaching circle who are like ... We, as coaches, can make stories of, "They didn't respond to my email. They must be not into this enough" versus like ...

Alisa Cohn:

Everybody makes up stories. Exactly. Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to really try to peel back another couple of layers on this Startup to Grownup idea, because not for you to ... The book is coming out in a while but when you think about this arc from building a product to building a culture, this transition from that arc in their life cycle ... Part of me is sort of like, "Okay, well, what do they need to learn at each phase?" Is there a beautiful framework that Alisa has? Or just when should they start thinking about having a partner in the process?

Alisa Cohn:

You mean like a partner as in a coach?

Daniel Stillman:

You. Yeah. When should they start thinking about having a coach?

Alisa Cohn:

I do want to say, if you think about a framework, the way I think about the framework is you have to grow in three dimensions. You've got to grow managing yourself, managing others, and managing the business. The framework is to think about where am I inside of managing myself, managing them, the people around me, and managing the business?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

In terms of how do people know it's time to bring a partner ... As I said, you have to have something to coach, something to manage. Also, it depends how interested you are in this sort of journey, in this process. I think that some people get a little bit tripped up at different parts in the way. They may, again, recognize they know what they don't know or they don't know what they don't know.

Alisa Cohn:

They may get into trouble with a situation going on that feels dysfunctional and they don't know what to do. They may have people tell them, "You've got some issues." One of my clients had a board member who said, "You need a coach." You know? He got angry as in like don't tell me what I need.

Alisa Cohn:

They had some harsh words together and my client, ultimately, came to me saying, "I don't think I need a coach because he thinks I need a coach. I think I need a coach because I want to learn." Different people come from different directions. At times, it's also more about how do I scale up because now that my company is getting bigger, I need to change my ways.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That's pretty mature of him.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Very mature.

Daniel Stillman:

Because the idea of being volun-told. I mean, as somebody who does training and developing groups of people and cultures, the early stage is when people are there because they're the first responders to this new way of working, they're the most fun to work with, and then there's the people who are volun-told.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

To like, "Okay, this is how you need to work." I imagine working with somebody who is being forced or pushed to be coached ... I'm so glad to be in this [inaudible 00:28:42] like, "I can handle that."

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. I tell everybody [inaudible 00:28:47]. I welcome skeptics. I welcome skeptics. I mean, come on and talk to me. It's not about like, "You need to be coached." It's about how can I help you?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

How can I genuinely, legit, help you get more of what you want? Who wants to say no to that? Coaching is not framed that way. [inaudible 00:29:06] fix you. Well, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about you. People like that.

Alisa Cohn:

Also, it's funny because I was ... I've been put into shotgun marriages many times actually. This one person after ... It was a large company I was working inside of and he came to me on our first meeting and he said, "I've been asking for a coach for two years and now suddenly there's a problem and I get a coach. I'm mad but I don't care because I'm going to get the most out of this experience." I was like, "Okay, me too."

Daniel Stillman:

Strap in.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Let's go. Let's go, baby. That is what it's about. Right? I have to align with my clients so that we can figure out where are we going? It's like where are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? That's all I care about.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Alisa Cohn:

If somebody doesn't want to ... Who doesn't want to engage with that? Right? Then part of that, then there's trust and then part of that is a 360 feedback process very often where people around say, "He's not influencing. He throws bombshells into meetings. I don't know what he's thinking. He doesn't share. I can feel him in my head but not feel him in my heart." Okay. Now there's something to work on.

Alisa Cohn:

We've already established that we have an alliance here and I'm going to help you get better one way or the other.

Daniel Stillman:

What's your favorite way to contain the coaching conversation? Do you have a periodicity, a rhythm that you prefer to work with people? Some people are two hours, some an hour, 30 minutes. Marshall talks about 15 minute sessions with people.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. The most powerful coaching conversation I ever had was eight minutes on a Friday night, cellphone to cellphone, we're both driving. That was the most impactful coaching conversation ever. Who knows?

Alisa Cohn:

Now that all said, you have to have some structure. Okay? I tend to give my clients more or less, every other week, more or less, for 60 minutes. Also, I'm available as needed. I think that as needed time can be the most important time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That eight minutes. Can we unpack that? That's leaving a gun in act one. What made that eight minute conversation so impactful?

Alisa Cohn:

There was a president of a division I was working with and she had some important changes to make. This was like a Friday night. She had to go in on Monday and make these important changes. She was thinking about it very tactically. Like, "I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that." I just asked her a few questions like what are you trying to achieve here? What is it going to look like and feel like when you've made these changes?

Alisa Cohn:

She would hesitate so then it's like, "Why are you hesitating? What are you not saying?" Then what we did was we uprooted a number of things and her realization was, number one, I'm the one that's not communicating enough. The reorg has to happen, the changes have to happen, but I see that they will not take root unless I change my communication style definitely.

Alisa Cohn:

Secondly, she was thinking about the org structure and various people in a way, which was very superficial, because she wasn't going deep enough into what was actually going on and, as a result of that conversation, she made changes in the changes she was going to make and that was a better, more resilient, more effective organization. She was able to immediately communicate differently on Monday, which set the tone for the whole process.

Daniel Stillman:

Boom.

Alisa Cohn:

Boom.

Daniel Stillman:

What I love about this story ... I assume you were some weeks or months into your coaching relationship, right?

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. It wasn't the first time we met.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Alisa Cohn:

Hi. Hi.

Daniel Stillman:

Eight minutes. Kapow.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What's amazing, I've been sitting with this question of like what's the value of a coaching conversation? People ask this all the time, "How much do you charge?" Well, I don't know. How much change are you trying to make? If you measure it by the value you created in that eight minute conversation, the value is priceless.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. I tell people I want to spend the least time with them as possible. Your time is valuable. Right? I want to give you maximum change with minimum time. Doesn't that sound better? It's only the HR folks who are asking you how many hours?

Daniel Stillman:

For those of you listening at home, she rolled her eyes when she said that.

Alisa Cohn:

I love my HR colleagues, who are excellent.

Daniel Stillman:

Here's the interesting thing, this is something that my coach has coached me on in my coaching, which is as meta as it can get, is coaching people as much as they need. I think many people, myself included, when I started was like, "Okay, here's your beginner package and this many hours" and it's transactional versus what you're talking about, which is having a relationship with somebody and being there when they need them, which is where the juice comes from.

Alisa Cohn:

Totally. That's where the value comes from. That's where I think the joy of self-discovery comes from. Definitely.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm wondering ... I'm unpacking so many beautiful ways you firmly and gently inquire in the work you do. I'm wondering if you have some other of your favorite conversation hinge points, ways that you unpack, questions that you ask in those moments to get somebody to flip the card over and look at it differently.

Alisa Cohn:

Well, I think one question is how is this situation serving you? Right? Because people complain about whatever and this question is how is this serving you? What are you contributing to this situation? That's a very important and powerful question. I think what are you afraid of?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

You know, that's ... Again, with a trusting relationship, that's where a lot of the fruit is.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Taking ownership.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Also, that sort of self-inquiry, the depths of the self-inquiry.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting because there are these two points in the journey where the beginning is like where are we now? These questions are like where do you want to get to? What can draw you forward?

Daniel Stillman:

There was one question I heard you use with Jeff, which was if you had a secret weapon that was totally dedicated to your success for three to six months, what would you want to work on? I just wanted to say I love that question. It was a beautiful question.

Alisa Cohn:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know if you still use that one but I like it.

Alisa Cohn:

Of course. Well, that's entering ... That's the initial stage of the coaching conversation. Even that, we talked about people who are like skeptical or you said volun-told. It's like, "I don't want to be here." Okay, fine. Okay, great. I love your skepticism. Let's put it aside. If you had a secret weapon dedicated entirely to your success for six months, what would you want to get done? That's just a better question or a better conversation than I'm not happy, I don't like this. Okay, whatever. Those are boring. Let's talk about what's really interesting, which is what you actually want to get done in your life.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, because here you are in the conversation. Somebody potentially has paid for your time already and here we are, what do you want to do?

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a great question. I mean, we're getting close to the end of our time. What haven't we talked about? What haven't I asked you about that I should ask you about? What's important for us to know about the way you craft coaching conversations and how we can help startups, founders, become leaders? Or anything else we haven't talked about.

Alisa Cohn:

Well, I think maybe one thing that I would just say, it's not so much a question ... Well, maybe the question is what's the entrepreneurial journey like? Why is it so hard? I would just say that founders are like the most incredible, courageous, crazy people who are risking everything against all odds to build something when they could just get a job at IBM if they wanted to. Right? It's like why are you doing this?

Alisa Cohn:

Just maybe to hold with reverence what a founder is and then what a hard job that is because you're learning as you go, the entry level position for a founder is boss, right? The entry level position. You don't know what you're doing necessarily. You may not have had any other management leadership experiences before. You've got to learn all of that pieced together and then you've got to do all the other things that a founder has to do like raise money, like figure out the market, figure out the strategy, run an operational business, hire people, fire people, hire your friends, fire your friends, handle conflict, all those things are very difficult to orchestrate together.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Alisa Cohn:

Just to say that, I'm in awe constantly of the founders that I work with and their ability to deal with that struggle.

Daniel Stillman:

The Yiddish word that's coming to mind that my dad loves is [Foreign language 00:38:30], which is like a deep empathy. I can feel that you really get and relate to their journey and their struggle.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Yeah. That is true. I feel really alive and aligned.

Daniel Stillman:

There's some parting things that we should make sure we ... Places where people can learn about all things Alisa and the things that you're launching. There's some programs that you have coming up when this conversation will come out, plus just general evergreen things that you're doing. Where can people go to learn more about you in the internet places?

Alisa Cohn:

Right. On the internets. People can always find me on my website, Alisa Cohn dot com, and all the socials. Right? At Alisa Cohn or LinkedIn, Alisa Cohn, A-L-I-S-A C-O-H-N. Everywhere you find your social.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. We can read you on Forbes and Inc and some other places.

Alisa Cohn:

Exactly. HBR and Inc and Forbes. Find me on Clubhouse. Follow me on Clubhouse at Alisa Cohn. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay.

Alisa Cohn:

All of that. The thing I want to say is that when you come to my website or look for me on LinkedIn, you will see I am doing a program for coaches to teach coaches how to build their businesses, how to get more clients. It's called the Business Development Academy for Coaches. It's got two parts to it. April, we're going to do a 30 day quick start challenge and help you gain traction after this year coming out of the pandemic. Then a 10 month program, which is called Build Your Business program, which is how do you build a sustainable business. That is with WBECS, W-B-E-C-S. Go there or come to my website.

Alisa Cohn:

Then the thing I'm also particularly excited about, October 2021, this year, coming to a bookstore near you, From Startup to Grownup. It's about growing your leadership while growing your business.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a good subtitle. When there's a galley ready, I would love to read it and have you back on to talk about [crosstalk 00:40:31].

Alisa Cohn:

Thank you. I would love that.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's important ... I don't know a boss who has talked about the zero to one idea. This is what startup founders are doing. They're trying to make something truly new, which is truly hard.

Alisa Cohn:

Totally. Truly hard. It is.

Daniel Stillman:

And also truly important.

Alisa Cohn:

Yeah. Super important.

Daniel Stillman:

I honor the work that you do with them. I hope you can ... I'll find links to all that. There will be links to all that in the show notes.

Alisa Cohn:

I will help you fill out those show notes.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. We'll create that. We'll create an alliance and those show notes will get made.

Alisa Cohn:

I love it.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, then I will thank you for being part of this conversation. I'm really grateful for the time and for your wisdom.

Alisa Cohn:

Thank you. I love chatting with you and thank you for elegantly steering this conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

That's very kind of you to say. Well, then I'll call scene.

Mastering (Virtual) Presence

Mike Sagun is a certified professional men’s coach, and he has partnered with companies like DropBox, LinkedIn, and Google. Mike also partners with EVRYMAN, where he hosts men’s groups, facilitates men’s retreats, coaches individuals, and co-leads EVRYMAN’s diversity and inclusion program. I met Mike through the work we’ve done together in EVRYMAN’s programs, and I was delighted to have him on the show to get his perspective on facilitation, coaching, leading intimacy online...and just how important it is to create the space to connect with ourselves.

Doing deep, transformative work online is critically important...certainly in the pandemic, it’s essential to be able to keep connecting with people. And as we transition into a hybrid future, it’s important to remember how virtual connection has made so much of the world more accessible.

I always remember an NPR story from the start of the pandemic where a wheelchair bound individual was thrilled that they could finally go to church without all of the hassle of transportation. Worlds opened up for so many as well all went online. As hard as making space and time to connect online is, it’s worth doing and worth doing well.

Many facilitators and leaders still say that “in person was better” or “virtual will never be like in person” to which I say...yes, indeed. They are different animals. My conversation with Mike Sagun will help you see how deep online work can be, both in groups and one-on-one.

My own men’s group has struggled with the online transition, so I visited the Drop In Men’s Group Mike hosts each Friday to see how he does it.

I was excited to see that, in the first moments of the session, Mike formed clear and powerful boundaries for the group of 30 men, and did everything and more that I advise folks to do when they want to build a more powerful group connection. There’s nothing fancy to it. Like some of the best food experiences, it’s about good ingredients, treated with respect. My experience of Mike’s facilitative presence was just smooth, open and easy. His pace is not rushed. Some of the things I spotted him doing, which we’ll dig into in our conversation were:

0. Greet the people. Connect with them, ask for how to pronounce names.
1. Being Explicit about agreements. What is this space for? What isn’t it for?
2. Slow Down. Close whatever came before with a moment of mindfulness.
3. Passing the mike - giving power and control to others in the group to lead parts.
4. Breakout to connect. Smaller groups help create more safety and connection.
5. Assign “captains” of each breakout and give a clear, focused prompt.
6. Get people to share from that breakout.
7. In larger groups, give someone the time-awareness job so you can focus on connecting.

That last element was one of my favorite moments, of Mike setting clear and safe boundaries for presence and connection. Mike asked someone to put in the chat when someone’s share out had reached four minutes. He clarified “When it's four minutes, it doesn't mean your time is up. It just means that you've been talking for four minutes.”

I sometimes call this practice “giving people jobs so you can do yours” and Mike did an amazing job of it. Giving away jobs helps people feel responsible for the space, in control...and it frees up mental space for you to focus on the most impactful aspects of your presence.

Mike also broke down three levels of listening, which are a powerful key to mastering virtual presence. 

Level One is where you are doing what some would call “cosmetic” listening. You're there with a person but you're already thinking about what you're going to say next. 

Level Two listening is being deeply engaged in the person. As  Mike says “We're listening to every single consonant of the word that they're saying and we are very fully tuned in to their story or what they're talking about. Level two listening is one of the most powerful gifts that you can offer for someone. Just being there for that person to use you as a sound(ing) board.”

Level Three listening expands to what's happening within ourselves internally and in the environment. I’ve heard some folks call this “global listening”. Here, Mike suggests that we might notice “what's happening in their body language and their micro facial expressions. Then also, what's happening in the environment... then also what's happening outside in the world. What's happening in the culture, what's happening in politics.”

This level of listening is tremendously powerful, to be able to hold the conversation with the other person, with ourselves and with the larger world, all at once.

As Mike says “Level three listening is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer someone but also what we can offer ourselves... especially when we're facilitating a space like this.”

So there you have it...the secrets to presence. As Mike said in the opening quote: 

“holding that space, I think what's most important is first checking in with ourselves and noticing how you show up. How am I showing up into this space? Do I need to let go of anything in order for me to be completely present for the person in front of me?”

LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

mikesagun.com

The Unshakeable Man

Mike's TEDxKP Talk

Mike on LinkedIn

EVRYMAN

Minute 6

when we relearn how to listen to our bodies, we then give ourselves the opportunity to notice what it is that we need. I'm not just talking about the pillars of health. Not just talking about what we need to eat, that we need to hydrate, that we need to move our bodies, that we need to sleep, that we need social connection. It also means that we are relearning what our purpose is or we are discovering what our purpose is. We are discovering what it is for us to be intentional in our lives and be deliberate in our lives. Also, when we are in our bodies, it helps us connect with ourself, lower case s and upper case S. Also, connection to others, connection to people that we love or our colleagues and our peers or even men in our life. When we can drop into our bodies, it gives us more access to connect and to feel fulfilled and satisfied in our lives.

Minute 8

There comes a point and I think many men experience this but don't know how to quite articulate it. There comes a point where these conversations just become dull and they're not energizing anymore. All of a sudden, we are in this place with our best friends who we feel we are deeply connected to that the relationship is stagnant. We start to feel de-energized. We start to feel exhausted in the relationship.

When we can open ourselves up to connection which is vulnerability which is what we would say at Evryman, speaking the unspeakables or if we were to go deeper into this, maybe opening up our hearts a little more. Then, we can start to sense and literally feel in our bodies what it feels like to connect to another person.

Minute 11

I love that because our bodies are our vessels. It is what we drive 24/7 a day. We are in it all the time. Often, we separate ourselves from our body. We don't often allow ourselves to slow down and feel into our body. This is quite important especially if we are in this modern day and age where the word stress means productive.

Minute 12

If we aren't connected to our body and we're not listening to the signals and the symptoms of stress, then what we might be doing is saying, "Hey Mike, you are having this high heart rate, you have high blood pressure, and your body is shaking but you know what, keep going. Keep moving forward because this is what it means to be productive. This is what it means to be a man or this is what it means to be a responsible individual." That is just so nuts and gnarly because, I mean, if we look at data today and if we also know the research on chronic stress, chronic stress basically leads to low life expectancy.

Minute 35

When I used to lead the in classroom workshops with an organization in California, I always made it a point to say, "Hi" to every single student that was coming to my workshop and to make eye contact with them and to, if I had time, then to go deeper into a little bit of a conversation. It takes a lot of time to do that. It takes commitment to do that. It creates the safety in the room and if we're facilitating large groups, if more people feel safe, the deeper work you can do with the group.

Minute 41

When there's a time boundary like that, it doesn't mean to speed up your share. It actually means, "Let's go straight to the emotion. Let's go straight to it.

MORE ABOUT MIKE

Mike is a certified professional men’s coach. He has a BA in Education and spent 10 years as a teaching artist coaching young people. He trained with Challenge Day and with Lincoln Center Education in NYC. In 2017, Mike delivered a TEDx Talk about the significance for young people to have trusted adults in their lives. 

Recognizing the impact and importance of deep emotional health propelled him into his coaching career. After graduating from Coaches Training Institute, Mike launched his coaching practice with the purpose of creating safe spaces for men to think deeply about themselves and to develop skills for living authentic lives. 

Since then, Mike has partnered with companies like DropBox, LinkedIn, Google, Kaiser Permanente, and Saje Wellness. Mike also partners with EVRYMAN, where he hosts men’s groups, facilitates men’s retreats, coaches individuals, and co-leads EVRYMAN’s diversity and inclusion program. 

When Mike isn’t coaching, hosting webinars, or developing ways to help men grow, you can find him with dirty hands, either planting succulents and cacti or in the kitchen cooking with his husband, Jerry. Mike, Jerry, and their pit-bull rescue, Bert, live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Stillman:

I'm going to officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory, Mike Sagun. Here we are, I'm grateful for this time.

Mike Sagun:

It goes both ways.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks, man. I wanted to talk with you. I wanted to have you on the show to talk about men's work in virtual space probably for at least two reasons. One, I think, I mention men's work in my work and a lot of people are like, "What's that about?" Then, I want to make sure we talk about that. The other thing is I know that so many of the guys that we know in this work are ... It's challenging. Everyone's making this challenging transition into virtual space. I think men's work is such an interesting sub-species of virtual conversation. I think there's so much to unpack there.

Daniel Stillman:

I feel like the very, very first thing we need to do is talk about who's Mike Sagun and how'd you find your way into doing this work? That's a good place to start.

Mike Sagun:

Hello, everyone. If you really knew me, you'd know that I spent most of my life on the stage in theater. Yes, the charisma comes in naturally. My name is Mike Sagun. I am a men's coach. I'm a men's work facilitator. I facilitate for organizations like Evryman which that's how I know you ...

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Mike Sagun:

... is through Evryman. I am a proud, proud, proud gay man of color. Born and raised in the Bay Area in California, now live in San Miguel de Allende with my husband which is central Mexico three hours north of Mexico City. I focus my work with men or all people who identify as male. The foundation of my work is really a lot of what we practice at Evryman, Daniel, which is slowing the heck down and coming back into our bodies. As men, we naturally are up in our head. We love being up in our head. We're fixers, we're doers, we are problem-solvers. It is completely necessary because we are responsible people. We have families to take care of. We have to earn a living. We have responsibilities. We have friends, unity. Oftentimes, that leads us or that guides us to be in our head all day. What I do with the men that I work with is I teach them skills and tools to add to the tool belt to allow them spaces, intentional time in their day where they can slow down. Honestly, the work is simple. It is really simple.

Mike Sagun:

However, I think the difficulty is knowing when to do it and how to do it. How to get ourselves out of our head because sometimes even being in our bodies, we can lead ourselves back to our head with judgment, with story, with thoughts. The practice, just like my practice of meditation and any practice of meditation, is always about coming back. Coming back to presence. Coming back to this moment. Coming back to my body. What I do with the men I work with is I do that regularly, often, consistently. I bring guys back into their bodies. That's a little bit about me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Why do you think it's important for men to do this type of work?

Mike Sagun:

Well, I firmly believe that intellect and knowledge lives in our head and wisdom lives in our body. When we allow ourselves and I like saying when we relearn how to listen to our bodies because we ... Growing up, when we're babies, we come out of the womb reaching and feeling this world. This is how we develop our brain. We are literally screaming and crying and putting our hands on things. As we get older, we notice that we have a mouth. We want to put things in our mouth and we want to climb things. We want to use our bodies. We naturally do that. We, as babies, we naturally learn how to pick ourselves up. We naturally learn how to turn over. We naturally learn how to crawl. Then, find something to lift ourself up again. We naturally know how to feel into this body of ours. We naturally know what our bodies need.

Mike Sagun:

When we're babies, when we're hungry we cry and we get what we need. When we feel unsafe, we cry and scream and we make ourselves known so that we can get attention. As we develop language and we develop our prefrontal cortex and we develop the understanding of consequences and then also social dynamics, we then unlearn how to feel into our bodies. We have to because we go to school and we take tests and we have to learn and memorize. We have to do all of these things to be quote-unquote "successful" in our lives so that we can go to college or get an education or figure out what we want to do in our life and that actually traps us in our head. Often, when we are conditioned to think that way and live this way, we don't naturally know how to come back into our bodies.

Mike Sagun:

This is important because when we relearn how to listen to our bodies, we then give ourselves the opportunity to notice what it is that we need. I'm not just talking about the pillars of health. Not just talking about what we need to eat, that we need to hydrate, that we need to move our bodies, that we need to sleep, that we need social connection. It also means that we are relearning what our purpose is or we are discovering what our purpose is. We are discovering what it is for us to be intentional in our lives and be deliberate in our lives. Also, when we are in our bodies, it helps us connect with ourself, lower case s and upper case S. Also, connection to others, connection to people that we love or our colleagues and our peers or even men in our life. When we can drop into our bodies, it gives us more access to connect and to feel fulfilled and satisfied in our lives.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's funny because this is on my agenda for us to talk about presence. What it sounds like you're implying, and what I think I also believe, is that if we can't connect to ourselves, it's hard to connect to someone else.

Mike Sagun:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I was this. This is me in my teens and 20s hanging out with my guy best friends. We would just [inaudible 00:07:28] and just hang out and talk about the most trivial things in our lives. Not saying that that isn't important because it can be very important because part of connection and part of friendships is belonging and part of belonging is shared interests and shared passions. My friends and I would sit around and just talk endlessly about basketball, endlessly about skateboarding or endlessly about the kinds of beers that we loved or the kinds of music that we liked listening to or dancing to. There comes a point and I think many men experience this but don't know how to quite articulate it. There comes a point where these conversations just become dull and they're not energizing anymore. All of a sudden, we are in this place with our best friends who we feel we are deeply connected to that the relationship is stagnant. We start to feel de-energized. We start to feel exhausted in the relationship.

Mike Sagun:

When we can open ourselves up to connection which is vulnerability which is what we would say at Evryman, speaking the unspeakables or if we were to go deeper into this, maybe opening up our hearts a little more. Then, we can start to sense and literally feel in our bodies what it feels like to connect to another person. I want to believe that many of us know what that feels like. Maybe it's like, I'm getting it right now, chills on my arms, chills on my neck. Maybe it's my heartbeat racing a little faster or maybe there's energy running up and down my spine that makes me feel so alive and good. These are sensations in our body that we don't normally pay attention to unless we're guided and directed to. These sensations in our body are lessons for us. There's so much information in what's happening in our physiology and the connection that it has with what's happening in our external world.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I'll just say my opinion is, and there's plenty of other people who've said this, that certainly men in heterosexual relationships, there's this idea of emotional work that women do in a relationship with men. Then, men need to show up more in their work, in their relationships, in those ways. I think there's also in the workplace ... A good friend of mine share with me his principles of running a feminist business. She's in this study program to learn how to make her small business more feminist. The first principle of running a feminist business is you have a body. I was like, "Whoa." I was blown away by this because I think there's this idea that we can force ourselves to be a certain way. That we can show up infinitely. That we can squeeze out effort from ourselves instead of the reality that we have to sleep, we have to eat, we have to take care of ourselves and we're human beings. We have this beingness that we have to take care of.

Daniel Stillman:

I think maybe, and I don't know if you agree with this, that one of the reasons why it's important for men to do this work is so we can have a more balanced world. A lot of women talk about defeating the patriarchy from the outside. I think what we're talking about is resolving ourselves. I think men have internalized patriarchy as well and ways that we are supposed to be, we think we have to be versus, "Well, how are we right now? What do we want? What do we need? Let's be more human." It's real work.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. I love that because our bodies are our vessels. It is what we drive 24/7 a day. We are in it all the time. Often, we separate ourselves from our body. We don't often allow ourselves to slow down and feel into our body. This is quite important especially if we are in this modern day and age where the word stress means productive.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm busy, man, I'm so busy these days.

Mike Sagun:

Right. It's like a badge of honor. It's like a badge of honor to be busy all the time, to work our butts off, and to not have any alone time.

Daniel Stillman:

Not to even be alone with yourself.

Mike Sagun:

Not to be alone with ourselves. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that is destructive, one, to our bodies and our mental health. Also, destructive to everything that we are in contact with, everything that we are in community with. Not only our families but our workplace and the things that we love. If we aren't connected to our body and we're not listening to the signals and the symptoms of stress, then what we might be doing is saying, "Hey Mike, you are having this high heart rate, you have high blood pressure, and your body is shaking but you know what, keep going. Keep moving forward because this is what it means to be productive. This is what it means to be a man or this is what it means to be a responsible individual." That is just so nuts and gnarly because, I mean, if we look at data today and if we also know the research on chronic stress, chronic stress basically leads to low life expectancy.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. It does.

Mike Sagun:

Why aren't we doing more to take intentional time for ourselves throughout the day? I'm not saying go on a freaking awesome retreat and do 10 days of silence and fasting or going on a visioning quest and fasting by yourself. I'm not saying doing that but finding these opportunities in your day to take a deep breath and drop into your body and just notice the sensations we are feeling. Emotions come and go. They wash over us like waves crashing on the sea. How we feel in the morning might not be what we feel when we take our lunch. It may have shifted but often when we don't give ourselves the opportunity to drop into our bodies, that state ... If we woke up frustrated and stressed and we don't notice that we actually shifted it to a place of calm, we might actually be tricking ourselves into saying, "Actually, you're still stressed, Mike, so keep going. Eat your lunch stressed out and keep moving forward." It's like we have to have these opportunities to honor and cherish our bodies. I think women have the intuitive sense to do that.

Mike Sagun:

I think naturally we, as human beings ... I'm not going to say every single human being. I'm not going to say every single human being but I think most of us naturally know what it's like to be in connection another person. Know what it's like to feel love with another person.

Mike Sagun:

It just so happens that socially women ... It's more acceptable for women to have little cuddle puddles with their home girls and sit and talk and gossip and chill out with each other and open up about their feelings. We men have that natural instinct when we are kids. However, we have a brain that says, "Actually, Mike, don't do that because that's social suicide" and that all your friends are going to think that you are whatever derogatory term you want to throw out there. That shoots men down.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Guys police each other very, very hard. I think that's true.

Mike Sagun:

Right. Right.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting though because I think there's a difference between the casual emotional conversations that women can potentially get a lot more access to just because of cultural norms. I was actually coaching a female entrepreneur recently who ... I'll tell the story very briefly because I want you to share some wisdom from your own coaching. I think a coaching conversation is more intentional because it's my job to sit in presence with them and it's their job to be as present as they can and speak the truth. She was expressing that she would be grateful to get all the problems of her start-up if they were handed to her today. Somebody's like, "Here, we're hiring you as the CEO. Here are all these problems." She would be like, "Whoa. This is so exciting. Wow. Look at all these cool, fun problems to work on."

Daniel Stillman:

She then said that she and her co-founder, she's like, "I guess we kind of do have mild PTSD but we're just pushing through." I was like, "Wait a minute. I'm just going to repeat back what you just said to me. You have mild PTSD and you're pushing through." She was like, "You know, when you say it that way, I mean," and I'm like, "Oh, like exactly how you said it to me."

Daniel Stillman:

What would you say to a friend of yours who said, "I have mild PTSD but I am just going to knuckle through this?" She was like, "Yeah. I would say that we should" ... Because she was looking at the problems that she had and there's all this emotional baggage with them. She wasn't just like, "Okay, it's a problem. Let's go solve it." It's like, "Oh my God, I've created this problem and I hate myself. I can't believe I have to do this." Holding that intentional space for something is transformative for them to hear themselves. I think you do an amazing job of creating intentional safe space for people to peel back layers. I'm just wondering what do you think you are doing on purpose? What do you think you are doing? What are you doing internally to show up in that way for people?

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. In a space like this as a facilitator, in a healing space like this as a facilitator, I think what's most important is for me to notice what I'm feeling first, how I'm showing up in here.

Daniel Stillman:

How apropos, yeah.

Mike Sagun:

Coming into each ... Yeah, and just really checking in on myself and noticing what my nervous system is like and if I'm activated or not. Allowing myself to do my work with myself before coming into a space like an Evryman drop-in group or even in a coaching relationship. What I'm really saying is I'm listening. I think in the coaching world we talk about this often as a really valuable coaching skill, listening. Through my practice and through my training, there's three levels of listening.

Mike Sagun:

The first is level one listening which is not really listening. You're there with a person but you're already thinking about what you're going to say next which, I think, many of us can experience and we are very familiar with. Then, level two listening we're really engaged in the person. We're listening to every single consonant of the word that they're saying and every single ... We are very fully tuned in to their story or what they're talking about. That is a powerful skill is just to be there in space because I also feel like level two listening is one of the most powerful gifts that you can offer for someone. Just being there for that person to use you as a sound board.

Mike Sagun:

Then, there's level three listening which is level two listening but also listening to what's happening within ourselves internally but also what's happening in their body language and their micro facial expressions. Then also, what's happening in the environment that we are in both intimately like in our room or in our office and then also what's happening outside in the world. What's happening in the culture, what's happening in politics. Level three listening, I think, is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer someone but also what we can offer ourselves especially when we're facilitating a space like this. Just understanding where this person might be and what they might be going through. Not just internally but also externally in the world.

Mike Sagun:

Holding that space, I think what's most important is first checking in with ourselves and noticing how you show up. How am I showing up into this space? Do I need to let go of anything in order for me to be completely present for the person in front of me?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Then also, and maybe I'm projecting, I feel like I'm also ... This is sometimes called transference and countertransference where it shows up as intuition. Sometimes, what's showing up for you, your internal sensations are, "I think this person might need to know this. I might be two steps ahead of them and they need to get there on their own." That sometimes comes up. I don't know if those are internal dialogues you have with yourself as a coach.

Mike Sagun:

Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I mean, my intuition is ... I mean, I lean on that the most. I've been pushing for several years, and right now, my intuition is 90% to 95% right. That when I call something in my intuition and I see it and I put a voice to it, it resonates. However, there's a five to 10% chance that it's wrong and that's okay. That is okay because when our intuition is wrong and it gets called out for being wrong, the person that you're working with gets to figure out what the answer is for themselves. In many ways, it's a win-win but also if we get it wrong, then it also strengthens our intuition. It lets us know, "Oh great, okay, cool. That was wrong so let's honor that. Let's honor that that wasn't the right path but let's see what comes up next."

Mike Sagun:

I think for us as coaches, I think sometimes ... We all have an intuition. Every single person has an intuition and we would call it our sixth sense. It is right there in our belly. That's where the expression having that gut feeling comes from. Every single time that we have the opportunity to listen to that intuition and we take action based on that intuition, we are strengthening that intuition even if that intuition was wrong.

Mike Sagun:

If we were to think about our bodies, we have a mind that we use to get things done. Then, we have instinct which our body tells us, "Hey, Mike, you should probably eat some food right now" or "Hey, you should probably get some sleep right now" which is the oldest parts of our body. It is part of our reptilian brain. It's part of our nervous system.

Mike Sagun:

Then, we have a third part of our body which is our intuition. That intuition is wisdom. It is not a guess. It is based on evidence though. It is based on what we know. The deeper that we are, the deeper relationship that we have with our clients or the groups that we're working with, the stronger intuition is going to get in understanding and knowing what might be best for this person or what might be best for this group. I love listening to my intuition. It is so part of this work and especially so part of the work that we do with men because sometimes I could listen to my intuition and I'll say something so freaking random and the guy is like, "Oh, whoa. Yes, that totally lands with me. That totally feels right."

Daniel Stillman:

I always like to joke, if you don't listen to your intuition, then you might just pack up and go someplace where it's a little more wanted. I mean, I just feel like I'm in a passive-aggressive relationship with my ... My intuition's like, "Well, I'm clearly not needed here so okay, I'll go visit Mike more often because he listens to me." It's interesting because what you're describing, coaching and facilitation don't sound very different to me in practice because and maybe I'm just looking through my conversation designed cybernetics lens where there's this feedback loop of sensing and responding and stepping forward and stepping back and leaning in and leaning back and pushing and pulling, asking and waiting in space. There's a feel to the thing. I don't know if that was a question.

Mike Sagun:

Say more about that.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I'm just wondering where do you feel the differences? I mean, obviously, as a coach, it's a one-on-one conversation. As a facilitator, you're holding space for, I mean, what was it? The drop-in group. It was almost 30 guys. It's a different type of presence or is it?

Mike Sagun:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know. What's different for you about the way you show up for these two-

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. I love ...

Daniel Stillman:

... different conversations?

Mike Sagun:

I see that. Okay. I love that question. Yeah. In group, I'm also monitoring other guys. I'm looking at their reactions and what their body movements are. I'm noticing how they're being impacted by what's being shared. I'm noticing if they're distracted or if they feel completely engaged in the conversation. With one-on-one, I'm paying attention to everything that's happening with just them and also what's happening maybe in their background or where they are in their environment. There is a slight difference in skill because I think with facilitation there's a little bit more of multitasking listening. You got to listen to 30 plus guys that are on this call with you while simultaneously listening to the guy who's sharing whereas in a one-on-one setting, there's less multitasking. Not to say that the work is more powerful with the one-on-one coaching. There just needs to be a little bit more skill in the facilitators and to manage and to feel into what's happening in these spaces.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to get down to that a little bit because I was taking notes during the drop-in group and just to give people some context because I feel like ... Could you maybe draw the arc of how a regular men's group that you and I would be in differs from the arc of how the drop-in group agenda kind of works?

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. I think when we talk about men's group, I think many of us are very familiar with ... We all meet in person which we're not doing today. It is the same six to eight guys that come every single week to group. What's beautiful about that dynamic is as the group matures and as it gets older, we get to know each other on a deeper level and more and deeper work can happen because of that. In a drop-in group, there is not commitment level. This is an offering that we put out with every man where if you want to taste the sport, if you want to dip your toe in and see the work that we do and kind of see what can happen in your life if you just gave yourself and took a risk to step in a group, this is what can happen. It's an opportunity for guys to see other guys do their work or even participate themselves and share.

Mike Sagun:

What's different is that guys don't have to commit to it. If they decide that they want to come one Friday and then all of a sudden, they're like, "You know what? This work is not for me. I don't think I'm going to come back again" or "I think I need to take a break from it," they can take that break. There's no commitment level. There's no agreement that says, "Oh, I need to tell Mike that this is not for me" or "I need to tell the group that I'm commitment for six months." There's none of that whereas in an in-person group, there's some very clear agreements that we have. Some groups that I've facilitated and that I've started, our agreement is, "Come to one group. If it feels good, commit to one month and see what happens. Then, we'll revisit."

Mike Sagun:

If it doesn't resonate with you in the first group, awesome. Here are other resources. Here's another men's group if this is of any interest to you. If not, okay, well, if it ever calls to you again, come back. In the drop-in group, what's different is we get guys from all over the world. It's not just your local community of men. These are guys that are staying up late in Israel or in the Philippines. Staying up until 9:00 p.m., 2:00 a.m., sometimes in the Philippines to be in this group with us. On some level because I have regulars that come to this group, there is a commitment for them.

Daniel Stillman:

I felt that.

Mike Sagun:

It isn't like in their-

Daniel Stillman:

I felt that. It felt like a lot more cohesive than I expected honestly.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. Yeah. I get like 20 to 30 regulars every week that show up every single Friday. There is a group dynamic that happens when there are 20 to 30 guys that understand this work and that are willing to open up.

Daniel Stillman:

Yet, you are still really explicit about some fundamental agreements because that was one of the things, bullet point one I had was you slowed us down. You really got clear on the agreements. Then, I noticed you did something and I don't know if you did this because your Internet was giving you trouble but you passed the mike. I think this is such a powerful thing to do as a facilitator is to step back. You let another guy in the group ... You're like, "Is anybody called to ...

Mike Sagun:

Lead a meditation.

Daniel Stillman:

... lead a meditation?" I was like, "What a cool thing." I mean, we do that in my men's group. We rotate that job. I thought that was so cool that you just gave that job away in the group.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. Thanks, Dan. In my years of facilitating groups and workshops and classes, what I find most powerful and most valuable for people is when they can feel like they own a part of it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Mike Sagun:

They can be a part of it and they can also be a leader or a captain in it. Every group I allow guys to step into that leadership. For some guys, it's risky. It's like their opportunity to share their craft. Sometimes, they're not as skilled as a meditator or they're not as skilled as a leader but it's okay because they took a risk and that's what this work is about. This work is about taking this risk in a safe environment so you can see what it feels like to be in discomfort but also be in safety at the same time. I always offer guys to lead the meditation because it does give them a sense of ownership. Then, you might have noticed that also when I break guys out of the small groups for the first time check in, I also assign captains. I assign guys who have been in our drop-in group or who are part of an Evryman group to lead. This also gives them another sense of ownership and leadership in the space.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's really interesting at this point almost a year into this remote world that a wide [crosstalk 00:32:15]-

Mike Sagun:

Oh my gosh, yes.

Daniel Stillman:

... for people to commit to, I think of many people who have [inaudible 00:32:19] on to the importance of the breakout. I also know that, for me personally, the more closely scoped the breakout question prompt is, the safer I feel. I was visiting someone else's session and there was sort of like an, "Oh, just tell people where you're from" and I don't even know what else it was and just my chest just gripped with fear of like, "Oh, I'm going to be in this room of random people" and in a way knowing that someone is in charge and that the 30-second check in that the men's work that we're in recommends you start with is so crisp and clear. It's very low BS. To me, that's very ... Then, we wound up with lots of time. Then, someone was like, "Oh, where's everyone from?" Then, we got into that conversation and it's fine because we had built that safe foundation which is ...

Mike Sagun:

Right. Right. How can we offer safety? We offer safety by setting people up with success. That means a little bit of hand holding. It's not just like, "Oh, we're doing some small groups in breakout rooms. We're just going to throw all of you in there and let's just see what happens because I think we all know by now," I'm making all these generalizations, "Many of us know what it's like to be in a small group" and it's just awkward silence.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Mike Sagun:

There's no direction and there's no leadership. It's like, "Well, what do we do?" That activates us. That activates our nervous system and all of a sudden we're in a fight or flight and we're like, "Oh God, got to fill the space. I got to fill the space and we men like filling space especially in silent, especially with groups. We like filling the space with words." It's part of, how can we feel the most safe in this? If we feel the most safe in an environment, then we are open and we are open to receiving. That's where a lot of the deep work happens is if we come into a space and feel safe.

Daniel Stillman:

It seems like there's two things I'm hearing, and I agree with both of them, is distributing authority can actually make people feel more in control and more safe. Also, starting with a small amount of intimacy can provide a foundation for deep intimacy.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. When I used to lead the in classroom workshops with an organization in California, I always made it a point to say, "Hi" to every single student that was coming to my workshop and to make eye contact with them and to, if I had time, then to go deeper into a little bit of a conversation. It takes a lot of time to do that. It takes commitment to do that. It creates the safety in the room and if we're facilitating large groups, if more people feel safe, the deeper work you can do with the group. Even engaging in a little bit of intimacy of asking, "How are you doing" or "Hey, what's your name" or even saying, "Hey, how do I pronounce your name," that's one of my favorites is there's a name that I don't know how to pronounce and I'm like, "How do I say your name? Did I say your name right?" That immediately brings them into, "Oh my gosh, this guy cares."

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Mike Sagun:

This guy understands I have a name that might be difficult to the American vernacular and so he might have trouble hearing my name. Asking them simple questions like that can help them open up into the space. My philosophy around facilitation has always been slow and simple. How can we make it slow and simple because if we're hand holding which we do a lot in facilitation is holding hands and guiding people, how can we make this accessible for them? It's accessible when we make things simple.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to highlight something else I saw you do which I thought was brilliant. This is something that I used to do in in-person workshops is you gave away what I call the time friend when people want to do a longer check in. After we had done the breakout sessions, somebody had something deeper that they wanted to check in on. You asked if somebody would volunteer to be the timekeeper and to let us know when ... You have four minutes and when there's one minute left, just drop that in the chat. Here's what blew me away. I loved this phrase. When it's four minutes, it doesn't mean your time is up. It just means that you've been talking for four minutes. I almost died because you talk about slow and simple but you said it so clear. It's important because you want to have multiple guys share what they're working on. You were almost doing a mini little journey with each one. If there was more there, you could pull more out of them. You had asked them to slow down and you were doing a little coaching session.

Daniel Stillman:

There was that guy in the room who was your friend who was just looking out for you who said, "Hey, it's four minutes." He would see it too. Everybody would see it. Everybody knows it's been four minutes and that's okay. That just means it's been four minutes. Such a precise way of saying, "Tell me a little bit about your relationship to time when you're in this kind of a group setting." Mike, I'm going to make sure I didn't lose you or I just asked too deep a question. Oops. Let's see. It looks like I might have lost him. Mike.

Mike Sagun:

Okay. Hey, I'm back.

Daniel Stillman:

Hey, welcome back. When did we lose you?

Mike Sagun:

I apologize for that.

Daniel Stillman:

No, it's totally fine. I was like, "Did I ask too deep of a question?" You just really paused super long and I was like, I gave it some silence and then I was like, "Let's just check that he's still here" and there's one participant.

Mike Sagun:

I lost you at, I think you were getting into the time and setting the time around shares.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, you set up this very clear agreement. You set up the very clear arc. You gave away the time friending, the time boxing role to someone. You said to the guy who's sharing, "When you get that one-minute warning, you'll see it in the chat, it's there." Someone else is doing that for you, you're liberated. You can coach that guy. Then, you said when you see that the four minutes is up, it doesn't mean that your time is up, it just means that you've been speaking for four minutes. There was some, I don't know, man, grace in the way you said it. It's a very generous, very spacious relationship to time. I felt liberated in that moment. The question was like, what's Mike's relationship to time in that context?

Mike Sagun:

Beautiful. Boundaries. We have to create the space and when we create the space, we have to set the boundaries. These are the boundaries. There happens to be a time boundary here. When there's a time boundary like that, it doesn't mean to speed up your share. It actually means, "Let's go straight to the emotion. Let's go straight to it." It takes away time for one, as a facilitator, I know that, "Okay. Cool. If this guys gets into story, if he gets into things that aren't relevant, then I know that he has two or three minutes left and I need to bring him back so that some deep work can happen in this four-minute timeframe." It helps me as a facilitator one, just be laser sharp around the facilitation. It also gives them an opportunity to know that, "Okay. Cool. I have four minutes. This is my boundary. I know that I need to go right to it. If I volunteer to come up and speak now, it's my time and it's my opportunity to share what I need to share in order for me to feel different."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's a firm boundary but it's also a soft boundary because it's funny, I'm thinking the guy whose timing the share doesn't have am, "Okay, let us know when it's another four minutes." After that four minutes, you're aware. You and everyone else, the guy sharing is ... Because [inaudible 00:42:14] has seen that in the chat. This guy could be crying. He's going through a real moment. When you're talking about presence and holding that safe space that, to me, is that once you're over that initial boundary, that's a challenging space I Feel.

Mike Sagun:

Well, I also say and this is going back to the intuition, if the energy is there, we'll keep it going. If it takes eight minutes and it takes 12 minutes and if it takes us to the end of this call, we'll keep it there if the energy is there. I've been doing this for a while and I can tell if a guy is coming to a place of completion or if a guy is, "I need more work." Also, if a guy is, "I just need to talk and I need to let this out." There have been times because this isn't talk therapy because this isn't group coaching and because we have these firm boundaries and we have an agreement to help, we want more guys to come. Sometimes, we'll have to say, "Hey man, it's been five, six minutes, is there anything that you needed to say to feel complete right now?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That's a great prompt.

Mike Sagun:

I'm using everything in my tool belt to get him to a place of emotional connection. Sometimes, they're not ready for that. They're not there yet and that's okay. It's my responsibility as the facilitator to then start to wrap that up so that we can get more voices in here.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That incompletion is also okay when it's hard to fully quote-unquote "tie it off" in the perfect bow.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we always say in the work that we do in our men's groups is, "We're not here to fix you. We're not here to solve your problems. That's not what we're doing. This work might be therapeutic. It might be therapeutic but it's not therapy or coaching. This is a space for you to share what's on your heart and get down to the emotion. What are you feeling in your body?"

Daniel Stillman:

For that, I think it's a very special and clear boundary that's being drawn out. What type of thing, what type of conversation, what type of transformation can happen in this space and time we have. Honestly, for an hour it's pretty amazing because ... I'll just say this from my men's group. When we met in person, we met from 7:00 to 9:30 or 10:00. I think we got a lot for free for being in person. Being remotely, we had to strip it down. We had to go shorter. We had to be crisper just because people were tired. Then, I think, it gets a little more mechanical. I think it's definitely a balance to be ... I think I was definitely guilty of keeping us on time but then maybe not getting to as much depth.

Mike Sagun:

So many of us are ... We're on Zoom all the time. We're on our devices all the time. There is a threshold of where we don't want to be on our screens anymore where we are more distracted being on our screens. These time limits and being very clear about how much time we're spending on the screen is important but it's also respectful. I always let the guys know, "I'm going to get you out of here at the hour because I know you guys have responsibilities and you're showing up for this hour. The expectation is you're here for the hour. This is the service. You're here for the hour and your expectation is that you're going to be out of here at the hour."

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I mean, that's a perfect prompt because our time is also running short. I mean, what haven't we talked about, Mike, do you think that's important? We've talked a little bit about men's work in the virtual space. We talked a little bit about holding safety and presence. What hasn't been said that should be said? What's left unsaid?

Mike Sagun:

Great men's work question.

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, it's how I actually end almost every interview because I think it's one of my favorite questions because I know there's no way we can tap into all the wisdom you have in this time. Before we leave, we'll make sure that you tell us where to find things Mike Sagun. For right now, what else can you leave us with in terms of leading in this virtual space?

Mike Sagun:

I just had to take a deep breath there.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. Actually, can I just because that's the one post that we did not talk about. I saw you do, and I learned this from another facilitator as well, getting the group to take a team breath. You did this three times just to ... You reset the room over and over again. You're like, "You know what? That was elevating." You didn't even say that. You'd just be like, "Let's just everyone take a deep breath." We just all just went down from the red zone into the yellow and back into the green.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I love to see you do that.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. I mean, that work ... Can you still hear me?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Sagun:

Can you still hear me?

Daniel Stillman:

Absolutely. Yeah. You're here. Check. Check.

Mike Sagun:

The body of work that I focus on is emotional awareness and slowing down into the body. Emotions come and go like I said earlier. One moment you can be feeling excited. You can be feeling elated. You can have all of these emotions as elevated emotions. Then, all of a sudden, something might happen in your environment either externally or internally. All of a sudden, you are in someplace completely different. This is normal. This happens all day long. We don't often pay attention to it. In a group setting especially in the work that we do because there is so much feeling, there's so much emotion that is being shared, we as this observer or we witnessing a person also shift in our being. If we don't honor this shift in our being, then we don't notice the different shifts that are happening in our body. Then, we don't honor ourselves for doing that. It's like when we take that deep breath, it's an up [inaudible 00:49:24] just notice what's different now. What feels different now?

Mike Sagun:

I came into this call feeling anxious and nervous. Now, I feel calm and connected. That's something to honor, to highlight or I came in calm and now I'm feeling anxious and angry. That's also something beautiful to honor. This comes down to the nuance of emotions and also emotional embodiment and emotional granularity coming down to noticing where in your body you feel something different. These are the steps to just becoming more emotionally aware so that we can be more emotionally intelligent in our life.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Really this comes down to what I'm hearing you say in terms of presence. I think it's so powerful just to say what is happening, to speak that [crosstalk 00:50:17] to say, "I'm feeling that tension. Let's all take a deep breath. Let's get back to our center" and everyone goes, "Yes, I want to do that."

Mike Sagun:

Right. Also, as a facilitator and bringing back intuition again, if I'm feeling something in my body, someone else is probably feeling something similar in their body. If I'm feeling tension and tightness in my body, someone else might be feeling that tension and tightness in their body too. I'm listening to [inaudible 00:50:54] and then I'm putting a voice to it. I'm just sharing it so that other guys have permission to connect with those sensations too.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. That's leading from your core so everyone else can show up as well. That's amazing.

Mike Sagun:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Mike, I know that our time is drawing to a close. Where should people go on the Internet to learn more about your work and to connect with your work?

Mike Sagun:

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. I spend a lot of time on Instagram so you can find me there. That is Mike.Sagun, M-I-K-E-.-S-A-G-U-N. Of course, the Clubhouse phenomenon is going on. It is a great platform but also I laugh because it's just another social media piece to tackle. You can find me there at the same handle.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. Good to know. I haven't yet beasted that beast. I'm holding the beast at a distance right now.

Mike Sagun:

I am too. It's still at a distance for me but I also find it really valuable and interesting to hear other people's perspective in real time. Yeah. You can find me there. You could also find me on my website at MikeSagun.com, so M-I-K-E-S-A-G-U-N.com.

Daniel Stillman:

Mike, I'm so grateful for the time. You're awesome. This is really important work and I hope that people will take what was in this conversation and bring it into their virtual gatherings which are pretty much the only type of gatherings that they should be having for some time.

Mike Sagun:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for this opportunity. This was so much fun. Really, really wonderful conversation and thanks for letting me follow. You're a great leader.

Facilitation and Self Leadership

Tomomi Sasaki and I sat down to talk in-depth about her journey of self-awareness and inner work as a facilitator.

We met at an advanced facilitation masterclass I ran for Google at their Sprint Conference, way back in 2018. She tweeted at the end of 2020:

I've been facilitating workshops for about a decade. The first few years were ferocious, needs-based learning. Workshops took a tremendous amount of energy to plan and run, and after each one, I'd faceplant onto the nearest sofa.

Once things became manageable, I plateaued. I worked on plenty of facilitation assignments (and did a bunch of public speaking about lessons learned) but I was coasting and I knew it.

Then @kaihaley and the @GoogleDesign Sprint Conference gave me the gift of a full day training from @dastillman, and I started to think of facilitation as a practice. (you can listen to my conversation with Kai Haley here.)

Building a practice sends a different kind of signal into the universe. This gives me watershed experiences that blows apart a door I didn't know was there. Behind each door is a whole new landscape to explore, and new friends to explore it with.

It happens consistently, once or twice a year. I don't know what's behind that cadence but it is an amazing thing. You *think* you know the edges of the land and then... ah hah! It gets me every time.

It had been a while since we’d connected, but when I read that twitter thread, I knew we had to sit down to talk about her journey to thinking about facilitation as a practice and what that meant.

Tomomi is a designer and partner at the independent design studio AQ, and a frequent collaborator of Enterprise Design Associates. She's also a top-notch facilitator and, as you might have learned by now, a very reflective practitioner, and in this episode, she gives some invaluable advice about how to improve at the skill of facilitation - beyond tips and tricks.

I loved it when Tomomi said that “The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics.”

Tomomi is essentially saying in her own words what Bill O'Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance said, that “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”

When we facilitate, when we lead a group, we are noticing the system...and what we choose to respond to, focus on or call out will shift what happens in the system. The question here is...how do you affect change in a complex system...that YOU are part of? 

Many people treat learning and change like a purely technical challenge: They have a deficit in performance and the assumption is that they can learn better ways of doing and apply them.

Similarly, we think we can apply a pattern or tool (like a facilitated workshop agenda, exercise or the like) and get a reliable result - like a baking recipe. But any bread baker will tell you that the weather, the flour and your mood can shift how things go. Dough is alive.

There are two challenges with this mechanical, recipe, way of thinking...one is that people and systems of people are complex...so, the likelihood of things going exactly according to plan without any need for adaptation and improvisation is...unlikely. People, like dough, are alive.

The other issue is that many people think it’s new and better ways of doing that are needed...where it’s actually different ways of thinking, different mental models and assumptions...which will naturally lead to different ways of doing.

Some folks (Chris Argyris and Donald Schön) describe this as the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning and others even point to triple and even quadruple loop learning...the core of which could be self-awareness, or seeing how we ourselves can affect the system. This is the transition from facilitation and leadership as “doing to” or performance to “doing with” and presence.

The way you show up internally will change what happens in the session.

https://organizationallearning9.wordpress.com/single-and-double-loop-learning/

As Tomomi says later in our conversation, 

“I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because you can't change that much, right?...So, might as well work with what you have. “

I care deeply about this idea. I think that facilitation and leadership more generally, is about expanding your range of capabilities - your ability to show up, on purpose, as the occasion calls for it. Tomomi suggests we can’t change *that much...but we can try to grow. I have a free course on Exploring and Expanding your roles as a facilitator, which you can find here.

There is so much goodness in Tomomi’s reflections. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

LINKS, KEY QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Tomomi's website

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomomisasaki/

On Twitter: @tomomiq

Minute 18

I think that it starts with recognizing that, well, to create space for yourself in the way you facilitate and think about facilitation. The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics. So, first, that recognition, and then the understanding that feeling grounded in what we're doing and who we are in that moment was this foundation that we could build upon.

Minute 19

I think once that grounding is there, we're more self-aware of what we're reacting to, and that is what allows us to regulate and recognize if we're just emotionally reacting to something that's happening in the room. Is that something we want to use or is it something that we should let go? Having that, being able to look at yourself in that moment and then what's happening in the room is this level of awareness that I definitely didn't have in the beginning.

Minute 24

One thing about having a practice is that it allows us to actively seek out peers and people to practice with. For something like facilitation, which is always done with other people, doesn't really make sense to just be in your little corner and read about facilitation. Right? You have to go out and really grapple with that liveness. So, maybe even more than other disciplines. For something like facilitation, it's always in the relationship with who you're doing it with.

Minute 27

So, as a co-facilitator, you know how the whole thing is designed and you get a sense of that person. Then when you step into that facilitator role, you start to sense what they're doing deliberately or not, and then how the energy in the room is changing or the conversation is changing. So, I think that gives you this perspective on what power is there and what's being deployed and what the reaction is. So, there's definitely a lot of observation in real-time.

Then the gift of having a co-facilitator, especially one where there's a mutual recognition that we want to grow and be better and help each other, is there's so much debriefing and exchange that just happens naturally. Maybe it's the two minutes while you go grab a coffee, it's lunch during the workshop, and maybe it's the one hour beer that you have afterwards. But all of these conversations, they're like tiny, tiny feedback loops that you can only get from somebody, a fellow practitioner that just experienced the same thing. So, this is invaluable, I think, to get that explicit feedback loop with each other.

Minute 32

So, recently, I've been thinking of facilitation as a capability and equating it to things like writing and presenting, which we all do, even if we're not writers or presenters. We know we need to do these things, regardless of our role or where we are in our experience.

I think in our heads, we know that if we invested in these skills, it would really help with everything else. If I were a better writer, I can write crisper email and more pointy Slack messages, sharper reports, and all these things.

Minute 44

I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because can't change that much, right?...So, might as well work with what you have. So, yeah. I'm so grateful for you having triggered that realization.

MORE ABOUT TOMOMI

My name is Tomomi Sasaki. I'm a designer and partner at the independent design studio AQ, running projects that deliver useful digital services through a combination of expert project management skills with a decade of practicing UX design and research. Past cases include tools that empower people to train for marathons (ASICS), gain skills in digital marketing (Google) and manage HR data (huubHR).

I am a frequent collaborator of Enterprise Design Associates, bringing product strategy, design research and facilitation skills to challenges like organizational culture change (Toyota Motor Europe), innovation in the employee experience (AccorHotels) and building the digital workplace (Deutsche Telekom).

Based in Paris since late 2014, I'm often on the road and spend a few weeks in Tokyo every six months.

Background

From Apr 2009 to Mar 2012, I was Japanese Language Editor for the citizen media initiative Global Voices Online, writing to shed insight on cultural and social issues from the Japanese blogosphere.

I have a background in multi-database research, professional Japanese/English translation skills, and used to be an editor for Japan’s largest art and design information site, Tokyo Art Beat. I currently sit on the Board of Directors for its parent organization, Gadago NPO.

I was born in Japan, spent my childhood in sunny California, and lived in Tokyo for almost two decades.

My name means 'beautiful friend' :)

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. Well, I will officially welcome you to The Conversation Factory, Tomomi Sasaki. Thank you so much for making the time for this conversation.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Thank you so much for having me, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

So, I want to unpack with you your journey as a facilitator, maybe what your inciting event was when you got the call to the adventure, when you started down this road. When does your story start?

Tomomi Sasaki:

I had a very formative experience as a workshop participant after a few years of work, and it was the first time that I had participated in a one week, we were not calling it design sprints, but a lot of the ideas were embedded in that workshop where couple of different companies had come together to envision this big digital service that we were going to design together. I was the project manager of the design team and fairly low on the totem pole within everybody that was around the group, around the table.

Tomomi Sasaki:

It was such an amazing experience for me to see how a group could, once there was a process and principles in place, how we could work together and work on how we work together and also on the idea. So, that was the first time I'd really experienced that in a professional setting, and I felt so welcome and valued in that environment where I didn't go into it thinking I had a lot to contribute. I was really just there to understand what was going on and maybe take some notes.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So, that lived experience of being liberated and being myself in that experience, and also just being able to provide more value and enjoying it was something that I thought, oh, this facilitator skill is something I would really like to learn and be able to design that environment. So, that just got me on this journey of trying to do it myself and just, yeah, trying and failing and spending a lot of time trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Along the way, I realized that a lot of what I had learned in high school, being involved in theater, and I was not onstage. I really liked being in the audience with the lights. I was a person trying the spotlight and seeing how little differences in the way the stage was set up would just change drastically the way the experience was for the audience. So, I did not go into theater, but I still have a love for it, and I think in a way, I see the workshop room as my version of a stage, that we're here to produce together.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so interesting. There's so much to unpack there, this foundational moment of being seen and heard and valued, and then wanting to give that to other people. I feel like there's a very ... It's a very beautiful internal move. I feel like facilitators do value this idea of inclusion, and it's great. What I love is that you found a metaphor that works for you to make the process coherent. Some people couldn't see it as putting on a party, if they're party planners, and putting on a show with the front of house and the back of house is a really, really powerful analogy.

Daniel Stillman:

So, for me, the inciting incident for this conversation was this Twitter thread you put on, and I really identified with this. I'm going to quote you directly. "The first few years were ferocious needs-based learning. Workshops took a tremendous amount of energy to plan and run, and after each one, I had to face plant into the nearest sofa." That was a decade of that feeling, or maybe slightly less than a decade.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah, a little bit less. I'm not a super social person. I'm not the one to grab the mic and start talking. I believe so much in the power of good facilitation. I didn't know what really worked for me, and so I was emulating what I'd seen. I think that just took so much energy out of me. It's super intense. There's no breaks, in a way, especially if you don't know how to regulate yourself, which I don't think we do know how in the first couple of years, and without maybe like a co-facilitator, someone more experienced to help pace things. So, it always felt like you spend 200% of yourself, all of your energy, and then once it's done, it was like-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's interesting.

Tomomi Sasaki:

... just flat out-

Daniel Stillman:

In a way, you as an introverted, or an extroverted introvert or an introverted extroverted. I don't know. Which do you self-identify as? Because you're definitely somewhere in the middle. My theory is that pure extroverts are psychopaths and pure introverts are just ... I don't know. I don't think they even exist. So, everyone's in the middle and has many capacities. But it sounds like you value being seen, and I would just presuppose that in a way, there's a part of you that enjoyed somebody pulling you out and bringing you out and seeing you. As an introvert, it feels good to get pulled in to the conversation, to be invited in and just have someone take your hand and say, "We want you here."

Tomomi Sasaki:

Absolutely. Yeah, and that we all have different needs in having that done to us and having the skills and that flexibility and range to be able to do that is something I strive to do as a facilitator.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's just so interesting to me because it's like you're paying it forward, but at a cost to yourself.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, just burning out, mini-burnout with each workshop. But I see, and especially because I'm Japanese and I'm female, and now I've come to understand, and that's not something I understand in the beginning, is that the skill of facilitation is a radical way to have a relationship with power, and I'm coming from a cultural backdrop where maybe I'm not expected to speak so much or be loud. I think there's a big part of that, of, well, but if there are ways to structure and design and nudge the environment for people to feel like they could do it, and also that actually, that's what we all want to be doing, then isn't that great, without being the boss or the person with official power.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Then I think after a decade of practicing, I've come to understand that this is something that all of us could be doing, even if it's not in the context of a workshop.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, yeah.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So-

Daniel Stillman:

No, please. Please go on. There's more there. I know.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Oh, I was going to refer to your work and your language to describe conversation and our language as material that can be designed, and I really subscribe to this line of thinking.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you. Power as an element to play with is really, I think ... There's a whole chapter about it in my book, because I think there's this idea of a normal power differential where people expect, as they sometimes do, to be told what to do or they want to push back against that. Facilitation does play with that power dynamic. I think there's also something in what you're saying about, at least, this is my own perspective, doing all the individual pulling out of people vs. setting up a structure that allows power to be flattened and allows people to step forward is a less exhausting way of holding space.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, everyone should read your book. So, shout out there. But yes. Yes, exactly. I think that was something that shifted in my practice a few years in and why I'm not ... Well, it's still very intense, but then I'm not having these flat out moments anymore because I learned to let go of things and also embed a lot of it in the structure so that it's not always coming from something that I need to do in that moment. Yeah. This is really fascinating to me.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. This is doing to vs. doing with, and I think that's a huge shift. You used a phrase, and I really want to unpack this, back a few beats about regulating yourself. I don't think many people would normally think about regulating yourself as a powerful leadership skill or facilitation skill. What do you mean when you say regulating yourself and how do you regulate yourself?

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think that it starts with recognizing that, well, to create space for yourself in the way you facilitate and think about facilitation. The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics. So, first, that recognition, and then the understanding that feeling grounded in what we're doing and who we are in that moment was this foundation that we could build upon.

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think once that grounding is there, we're more self-aware of what we're reacting to, and that is what allows us to regulate and recognize if we're just emotionally reacting to something that's happening in the room. Is that something we want to use or is it something that we should let go? Having that, being able to look at yourself in that moment and then what's happening in the room is this level of awareness that I definitely didn't have in the beginning.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, in a way, you are checking in with yourself. I'll just say, what I'm hearing you say is you can't regulate yourself unless you are noticing what you are experiencing-

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

... and separating what you're experiencing from what's happening in the room, and then making a decision about what you want to do with it.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

Which is work, for sure.

Tomomi Sasaki:

It is a lot of work. It is a lot of work, which is probably why I believe that if we look at facilitation as a practice, then we put continued care, intending, and investment in it, and it's not just workshop to workshop to workshop. So, that kind of care into the sustainability of how we do it is something that I'm much more conscious of now.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, yeah. What is the shift? What's the implication of looking at facilitation as a practice vs. I think sometimes people have been saying to me for the last year, "Oh, what are your tips and tricks for facilitating better online?" There's a certain part of me that goes, "You just want me to write it down on an index card for you so that you can just go do it?" Whereas there's what to do and then there's how to show up and how you will choose to do things in the moment are determined by what you think is possible, what your relationship to power is, and I can't give you any tips or tricks about changing your relationship to power necessarily, although we could, I guess.

Tomomi Sasaki:

If only it was really that easy, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Because that's about your childhood and your culture and your gender and everything. That's a lot of baggage. So, then it seems like it's very obvious that facilitative leadership is a practice.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. I would love if we moved the conversation, not you and I, but in general-

Daniel Stillman:

Because we can.

Tomomi Sasaki:

... facilitation, even in design in general as well, we move away from this idea of tips and tricks. It's like, yes, we do need techniques and there are very useful advice that can be given. But if we operate just in that space, it's not so interesting.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, I have your Twitter thread in front of me because I think you dropped so much juicy knowledge here, that you said, "Building a practice sends a different kind of signal to the universe. This gives me watershed experiences that blow apart a door I didn't know was there. Behind each door is a whole new landscape to explore and new friends to explore with."

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. That was quite an emotional outpouring on twitter…

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I want to know what happened that day.

Tomomi Sasaki:

... that I did after a workshop that I facilitated with a friend, and it was one of the sessions in our Liberating Structures practice group. So, my friend JD had wanted to do something around tragedies and gifts. These are not words I typically use in my day to day. So, this was great, right? It was my learning edge to grapple with these concepts. But what had happened in that space was so amazing. Even though we already knew each other quite well and had been together in practice for a few months, now it just unlocked this level of connection that we had never felt before between ourselves, but also within ourselves with our facilitation practice, but also just as people.

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think in that moment, I was deeply grateful to have had that opportunity and also, yeah, to have friends to practice with this kind of frame. But that's a real gift. I'm a big believer in signals, like what we put out weak signals that we catch and maybe ignore, and also how we receive signals is something that I think about a lot. I think that when we approach something as a practice and we have intentional growth in mind, it attracts some things that maybe would have never come our way, or we notice things that we would have just passed on by.

Tomomi Sasaki:

One thing about having a practice is that it allows us to actively seek out peers and people to practice with. For something like facilitation, which is always done with other people, doesn't really make sense to just be in your little corner and read about facilitation. Right? You have to go out and really grapple with that liveness. So, maybe even more than other disciplines. For something like facilitation, it's always in the relationship with who you're doing it with.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So, I try to be active in communities of practice, try to co-facilitate with people who have very different styles than myself. I also try to be a participant. I find that as facilitators, we are often the ones facilitating and don't really get an opportunity to be a participant. Then when we are, we're very judgy. Like, oh, I wouldn’t do that.

Daniel Stillman:

It can be excruciating to put yourself ... Talk about power transference, right? I like to control the conversations because it creates safety for me and a wall that nobody gets behind. Being in someone else's session and having to go into a breakout room and-

Tomomi Sasaki:

We know exactly what to do and what not to do. So, yeah. Sometimes, we mess with that. But yeah. It's great to be a facilitator. Sorry. See, I'm already mistaking ... To be a participant of somebody who's a very skilled facilitator and we can just step out of that mindset and just really experience that ourselves. I think we need to continuously build that lived experience on both sides.

Daniel Stillman:

So, what is it that you learn from watching another facilitator show up as they do? What is that process like for you? Is it emulation? Is it simulation? What do you feel like you're peeling off from that experience?

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think it's based first in observation. So, as a co-facilitator, you know how the whole thing is designed and you get a sense of that person. Then when you step into that facilitator role, you start to sense what they're doing deliberately or not, and then how the energy in the room is changing or the conversation is changing. So, I think that gives you this perspective on what power is there and what's being deployed and what the reaction is. So, there's definitely a lot of observation in real-time.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Then the gift of having a co-facilitator, especially one where there's a mutual recognition that we want to grow and be better and help each other, is there's so much debriefing and exchange that just happens naturally. Maybe it's the two minutes while you go grab a coffee, it's lunch during the workshop, and maybe it's the one hour beer that you have afterwards. But all of these conversations, they're like tiny, tiny feedback loops that you can only get from somebody, a fellow practitioner that just experienced the same thing. So, this is invaluable, I think, to get that explicit feedback loop with each other.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes, and rare, especially as you go higher and higher in your game. I think it's getting a chance to facilitate with another master facilitator and then get to be seen and noticed by them is nontrivial.

Tomomi Sasaki:

It's very special. Yes. I would say that somebody with maybe less experience, but just a different perspective or different style, is and can be equally as valuable because it forces you to articulate some things that maybe you just skip over, and also with somebody who's maybe less field experience. It forces you to, I don't know, just bring a fresher perspective, and you also just get a different pair of eyes on the way that ... maybe something that you take for granted. So, I think that having that variety in the people that you co-facilitate with is really important.

Daniel Stillman:

It's a really great reminder. I think I personally struggle with working on my own practice and making time to play with others. It's nontrivial. How do you find that balance between your communities of practice and your professional work, which presumably takes a fair amount of your time?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. Just blends all together, I think. There's a lot of inspiration that we take, even without having that label facilitator. Right? Like, okay. So, I'm stuck at home, so I'm watching a lot of Netflix and YouTube, and one thing I really like to watch on YouTube is kindergarten teachers explaining how they keep the attention of kids.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. I don't have kids, but I'm just addicted to these videos because there's such a craft in the way that they can talk about what they're doing, and then just the sheer repetition, because they're kids that maybe we don't get in our professional context because it changes so much, I think is great. I like watching.

Daniel Stillman:

They do it every day, all day.

Tomomi Sasaki:

They do it every day. Yeah. Then the same thing every year.

Daniel Stillman:

Room management is a real thing. Whenever I work with somebody who has an education background, I feel like they understand room management and energy management, and also being a bigger version of yourself as a character.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. All these things that I wish ... I wish I had known these concepts when I was starting out, and not just the process and the methodology and the canvas, which is where most facilitators in the design space start out. It's like, what's the activity I need to run?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I'm curious about how you take that foundational capacity of facilitation. What else do you feel like you apply it to in your larger work? Where else does it seep into that when it's not just here's a canvas and we're time boxing?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Right. You brought up leadership a little while back, and I think this is definitely my area focus as well. If we increase our capability for facilitation, the way we lead just changes drastically. So, the way I manage my team, the way I interact with, well, anybody, really, I think has shifted quite a bit since I started investing in my facilitation practice.

Daniel Stillman:

What do you see as what those shifts are? What do you feel like has shifted the most profoundly for you in the ways that you lead?

Tomomi Sasaki:

To put utmost value in the way we're having conversations and relating to each other, and that as long as we tend to this, things will follow. So, recently, I've been thinking of facilitation as a capability and equating it to things like writing and presenting, which we all do, even if we're not writers or presenters. We know we need to do these things, regardless of our role or where we are in our experience.

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think in our heads, we know that if we invested in these skills, it would really help with everything else. If I were a better writer, I can write crisper email and more pointy Slack messages, sharper reports, and all these things.

Daniel Stillman:

And amazing tweets. Solid tweets.

Tomomi Sasaki:

There's so much areas in which we need to be using these skills, but somehow, we don't really focus on them, and I think facilitation is actually quite similar. Even if we are not facilitators, or maybe we're not even doing workshops, we're always in some kind of meeting, and in a position to need someone to do something. That's going to happen maybe in relationship and in conversation.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So, yeah. I feel like this is, especially since so many of us are working remotely and there's just so much uncertainty, that ability to hold that conversation is just so critical. So, something that I've been asking myself is really, how can we build that among the people that we work with? Doesn't really work if just one person is really good at it. Right? It has to be this organizational capability.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's had to scale that, I've found, especially when you think about what everyone says, especially now that we're all remote, as a time is so challenging, or time to even have these types of intentional conversations has been stripped down, and our time to give to growth is also stripped down. I'll just go back to something you said earlier, the willingness to be playful with our relationship to power, I think, is an amazing leadership skill. It's an amazing facilitation skill, and again, that is, I think, always going to be rare because most people have conventional relationships to power and the willingness to, as Liberating Structures does, flatten the space and allow everyone to participate. That's revolutionary. It's radical perspective.

Tomomi Sasaki:

You should write another book, Dan. I would love to read it.

Daniel Stillman:

You're too kind. I'd rather read your books.

Tomomi Sasaki:

The idea of power is really, yeah, it's so fascinating, and then this idea that to become a better facilitator or to improve our quality of conversations, that we need to understand power, which includes understanding who you are in that picture. So, yeah. I moved to Paris six years ago and now facilitate in quite different environments from when I was living in Tokyo. Who other people think I am is part of what I need to consider. Can't just try to present myself in one way if it's a room full of strangers. So, I think moving countries was one thing that's really made me more aware of the dynamics of people in the room.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What have you noticed? What's different? Because it sounds like you said ... I think I disagree with what you said. I feel like if you're in a room full of strangers, you get to be whoever you want to be. But I'm also a White man. So, what do I know? Right? It's like, I feel general privilege and I don't feel like there's a general societal idea about who I am in a negative ... Well, actually, I don't know. Let's take a [inaudible 00:29:15]. These days, yes. Is it because you feel seen as a Japanese woman and that there are ideas about that that you are opposing or feel like you have to give in to?

Tomomi Sasaki:

First, a recognition of what they see. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Tomomi Sasaki:

A lot of times, I am the smallest person in the room.

Daniel Stillman:

That's fair.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Just physically. I'm actually average Japanese female height. I'm literally average. But that's on my island.

Daniel Stillman:

I see. So, your context is you are different in a different context. I understand that-

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. Always.

Daniel Stillman:

... in Japan, you're average.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. I'm average. But if I'm in a room full of Germans, for instance, I'm probably the smallest person there. So, I don't know. Even something like that is something I'm conscious of, like where I'm standing in the room or what I do with my voice. If I'm not feeling grounded in that moment and I need to ask them to fold a paper in eight pieces because we're going to do crazy eights, if I'm not grounded in that moment, that's not going to happen. So, something as seemingly trivial as that are these tiny, tiny, tiny things that I've become much more aware of just because I have to.

Tomomi Sasaki:

But then it's also among participants as well, right? You start to see how people are relating to each other and how that's influencing what's going on in that conversation. So, I do try to be aware, and if it's something that needs to be explicitly brought into the conversation or not is then a decision that we can make or ask for.

Daniel Stillman:

What's interesting about this and this idea of regulating yourself, I'm the beginning of the middle of a book called Seven and a Half Lessons About Your Brain, and I'm blanking on the name of the author, but one of the things she talks about, it's very, very well founded in good neuroscience, which I think seems rare. She says your brain is actually not for thinking. That's the half lesson at the beginning of the books. Your brain is not for thinking. It's actually for regulating your body and moving towards food and away from death.

Daniel Stillman:

That's the actual function is our brain is managing our whole body. It's helping us regulate ourself. What I think many people don't understand is that this is extra emotional work that you have to do that some people who are unaware of these things, it's not going into their budget. So, some of your budget is being spent on are people willing to hear me? Is it okay if I speak up? Can I be my largest version of myself? Is that going to be weird and hard for people to understand? It's literally taxing.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Then we wonder why things aren't going the way we imagined. Then we ask for tips and tricks.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Exactly, and the tip is [crosstalk 00:32:50] be your best self. I feel like for myself, when you talked about being small, in my first book, it was dedicated to my origami teacher, Michael Shall, who was a very small person who had an incredibly loud voice. He was also a White male Jewish American who was the youngest and always had to fight his way through.

Daniel Stillman:

So, that's how he became, and I think I learned from him when I was 13 or 14, watching this small man hold a whole room of 60 people in thrall, I think that's, in a way, when we see other facilitators, at least, this is my theory, is we can try to emulate someone else's way of showing up, but potentially at a cost, unless we can find it in ourselves. What's the largest version of Tomomi? What's the hugest version of Tomomi that you can become?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you remember the exercise we did in your master class, which is with the shield?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Was it called the shield?

Daniel Stillman:

The coat of arms.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Coat of arms.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. Do you want to introduce this concept?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's actually a really great ... I got burned recently for using spirit animal in a workshop. A person pointed out to me that this is cultural appropriation and uncool, and I was like, "Oh, god," because what's great about the coat of arms is that it appropriates European heraldry, which is not as complicated or convoluted. So, the idea of the coat of arms is to think about what would be on your sigil. When Game of Thrones was at its height, it was very easy as well to use Game of Thrones as a reference because everyone knew the banners and what's on them.

Daniel Stillman:

So, doing that opening of, oh, what would be on your banner? What animals, what motto, what symbols, what tools, and then people build that together. It's a great way to introduce yourself. It's also a great team tool. Right? You did that in the master class?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah, absolutely. I did that. That's right. I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because can't change that much, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So, might as well work with what you have. So, yeah. I'm so grateful for you having triggered that realization.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you, and I want to go back to the theater analogy because in method acting, one of the processes is to say how is this character different from me? So, one of the things that I would say is if you need to be larger, then there's this relationship between, okay, what's the largest version of me, and then how big is this character that I need to take on? I think it's possible to bridge that gap, to say-

Tomomi Sasaki:

That's interesting.

Daniel Stillman:

... well, I'm not that large. Well, who is that large? Then you act like that person. Because I'm sure you've tapped into larger-ness, being larger than you thought you could be.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. I don't know if the word large resonates with me. I think more of the space and how I am in that space rather than my particular size within that space-

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Yes. Fair.

Tomomi Sasaki:

... if that makes sense.

Daniel Stillman:

It does.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So, I feel I would be remiss if I didn't ask you what has been different for you in the last, oh, so year of facilitating, going online. I presume, before you had a mix of in person and remote, and now it's mostly remote, although maybe you-

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mostly online. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Have there been any live sessions in ... I know that some places in Europe are trying to have socially distant in person live sessions, but that seems strange to me.

Tomomi Sasaki:

No. I've not done anything, I think, in person since February, March-ish last year.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Tomomi Sasaki:

What's changed? Yeah. I work very internationally, and so doing workshops online was not a particular hurdle for me. Was interesting to see the more general conversation be around, hey, we don't have to meet each other, it's still fine, kind of reckoning that happened last spring, if you remember.

Daniel Stillman:

I do.

Tomomi Sasaki:

It was like, wait. We didn't know that already? I was a bit confused. I think there's a stronger recognition that this is something organizations need to learn how to do and a willingness to experiment and a recognition that there's a learning curve in it, and it's not just something everyone can be expected to do. So, that's pretty exciting. What I would wish for is for more people to have access to resources and opportunities to fail and people to grow with so that it's something that just keeps growing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. For more people to be part of the conversation. It's such critical skill.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), and just for it to be normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What do you think would make that shift possible? First of all, is it possible? I don't know if anybody's even interested in mastering it. As we said, some people just wanted the tips and tricks. Not everybody's interested in this as a practice. This is the Tim Ferris question. If there was a billboard that was on the highway, what would you want people to know about this thing?

Tomomi Sasaki:

That we can all have better, better meetings, and better ways to engage. I agree. Not everyone needs to master it. We can't all do the same thing. It's better if everyone does different things and master different things. But a realization and almost demand better and just not put up with poor interactions is something that I think we could all have and benefit from. Even if you're not interested in learning how to do it yourself, still demand that from your environment would be cool.

Daniel Stillman:

So, the analogy I use is food. You don't need everyone to be a master chef. You do want a certain amount of cooks. But I would love everyone to be a connoisseur. Right? To understand the savor of a delicious, like that was delightful, but maybe a little less this. Or I'd love next time a little more of that. What you're talking about there is there's no best. There's better, and people can do it their own way and have it still be delicious. It's not like there's, oh, everyone has to do-

Tomomi Sasaki:

Right. Have that curiosity.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. This is a really subtle thing you said and I want to make sure everyone noticed this. It's like, everyone can be better, and maybe their better is not better than mine, but different and interesting in that there's something that we can learn from their way of being and their way of showing up that we can then tap into and make ourselves more interesting and better in the way that we show up in the room.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes, like enjoy what's happening and have that curiosity to be like, "Oh, that was different." I think this ooh feel is something that only happens if you are appreciating it. Yeah. I like food. I'm always like, "Ooh."

Daniel Stillman:

That was interesting.

Tomomi Sasaki:

That was interesting. Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

You shared an ooh moment with us with your co-facilitator where she was, and this is my interpretation, heightening the challenge of the moment, like tragedies and gifts. That's very different than reflecting with rose, thorn, bud, or plus delta. Plus delta is very, very bland in general, and then tragedies and gifts. That's something you were like, "Oh. Interesting." Do you think you'll try that on?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Well, I'm on the path, or I've been on the path to explore what's outside of the design and design thinking canon. So, other styles or other schools of facilitation, and then things like education. Just have other bodies of knowledge and different ways to think about it that ... Well, we're all in our little silos, right? So, what happens if we just jump and work with somebody else, or just encounter a different body of work that has a different language for what's actually very similar things is something that I'm really curious about.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. I work in design consulting, and so a lot of the facilitation that is around me is very much rooted in rose, thorn, bud. I think there are lots of conversations and, yeah, that maybe are not a good fit. It's just not a good fit because that's not what it was designed for, to talk about tragedies in life, for instance. Then it's like, oh, we need to expand our range of facilitation in order to be able to hold these conversations and then also not feel uncomfortable having them.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I think this idea of range is a huge concept. Sorry for cutting you off there. Was there more there?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Well, no. I was agreeing with you.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. I'm curious. So, what are some places you've been feeding yourself? You mentioned Liberating Structures, and if people aren't familiar with Liberating Structures, they should explore it. I definitely want you to share some YouTube teachers that we should be watching. What other fringes or edges, edges for us, but centers for them, are you finding food, nourishment in?

Tomomi Sasaki:

In ways that communities gather, for instance, where the format is not a meeting. It's not a workshop. But maybe it's the way we tell stories, or it's the way a town conveys information, and just looking at different formats that have been established, just in very, very different contexts. I'm just curious about the structures and what that enables and see what translates in other contexts. So, I think that's a lot of fun to tap into.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. This is presenting the idea that there's no place you can't learn from. Right? You can take-

Tomomi Sasaki:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Daniel Stillman:

... an insight, a human interaction insight and bring that into your practice.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Absolutely, and it's also why I'm on YouTube all the time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. By the way-

Tomomi Sasaki:

This is what I tell myself.

Daniel Stillman:

... if you can't travel right now, and I presume that if you're listening to this in 2021, you can't or you shouldn't. Sorry, no judging. But just saying, Tomomi has a Brompton, which it's a U-sized bicycle, and she bikes around Japan. I haven't been to Kamakura in more than a decade and I just went on a bike ride with you along the coastline of Japan, and it was delightful. So, everyone should definitely follow you on YouTube in your adventures to buy baguettes and wine.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Thank you. Yeah. I started the YouTube channel over the holidays. It's like, I want to do something fun. I'm always like, "What can we learn and how does it relate to growth?" I'm like, "Just do YouTube to see what that's like," and it's been so much fun.

Daniel Stillman:

What have you learned from it?

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think I'm just enjoying the process. It's kind of basic, but I don't need some kind of, what do I get out of this? Or why am I doing this? It's just fun. For that to be enough, actually, it's more than enough. It's why I'm doing it, and I feel like we've forgotten how to do that. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I think this is so impactful, the idea that the whole effort of an organism, we talked about regulating yourself, you can't use all of your energy for survival. You need to have some leftover for regenerating yourself, for play, and I think it's super important. I've taken on watercolors. I've been watercoloring quotes and design thinking diagrams. So, it's combining some of my hobbies. But watercolor is something that's just so human and predictable. I think it's really important to have something that is flowy, gets you in flow, and is very different from everything else you do. So, good for you for doing ... And thank you for taking me to Japan, because I miss it.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Well, I'm in Paris now. So, trying to wait for the weather to clear up so I can make some more videos. But yeah. I think we don't need to overthink it or talk ourselves ... have a reason that we agree with ourselves, like have a vocabulary to even explain it. Yeah. Just do it and enjoy yourself enjoying it, I think is something that then just lifts everything else that we're trying to do, just by having that space. So, I watch, yeah, I mentioned kindergarten teachers, but I also watch a lot of opera master classes.

Tomomi Sasaki:

I love watching, having, like a student sings, and then somebody who's able to give the technical direction, but also help nurture that creativity and expression and that internal dialogue, but then separate from the performative aspect, which is another thing, and then audience engagement. So, yeah. Opera and then weightlifting coaches, for instance, who are just able to give different cues. So, yeah. All of these things, I find super interesting. What is the language we can give to the knowledge and expertise that we have so that it's translating to somebody and they can do something with it? Then the beauty of the video format, of course, is that we can see that transformation happening before our eyes, and this is super addictive.

Daniel Stillman:

I can't think of anything more impactful because what you're talking about is the ability to help someone change to transform to grow. That's coaching, that's facilitative leadership, so it makes perfect sense to me that you would get energy off of that. That's so cool. I want to watch all of those things with you, because I just watch people cook and do wood turning because it's deeply meditative.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes. Meditative. Yes. This is also something we can get from watching videos.

Daniel Stillman:

So, I want to be respectful of your time. What haven't we talked about that we should talk about? What haven't I asked you about that it's important? What remains unsaid about these topics?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Well, we talked about capability and practice and growth and also structures, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). A little bit. We didn't talk about your Medium article, which I'd love to just at least mention. People should read it. I'll link to it in the show notes. Your meta-thinking about multiple sprints, which I think is really great thinking for people who are interested in larger scale change.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Thank you. Yeah. Maybe just a quick note on structure then is, yeah, you mentioned the arrows, which in the article is about the different sprints. So, yeah. My thing with having multiple design sprints or different workshops within a bigger transformation or innovation initiative is that when we're delivering the workshops, we just think of what needs to be done next, like what's the activity and then what's the next workshop. That blinds us from seeing the workshops and facilitation as an intervention into that system that we're trying to, well, supposed to do something about and what everyone is supposed to do something about.

Tomomi Sasaki:

So, developing an eye for seeing the structures that are in place as the intervention is something that I am interested in exploring, and also trying to build more awareness about, I guess, in conversations about facilitation, that it's not just about what you're doing in that activity because it's fractal and it has a place in that bigger picture.

Daniel Stillman:

I think this is an important perspective. I started a slightly controversial thread on LinkedIn about design thinking vs. sprints, and because I quoted somebody who I think said at that first sprint conference who's kind of like an OG design person who was like, "Nothing of great impact ever comes out of one single sprint. It's all about longer work over time." I think somebody took a little bit of ... They're like, "Wait. What do you have against sprints?" I'm like, "Nothing, dude. It's just, a single sprint is about a single decision about a single product."

Daniel Stillman:

For many people, that is a tremendously impactful moment. But I think I'm grateful that there are also people like you who are like, "How do we all swim in one direction and solve lots of problems, or how do we swim in many directions and solve many problems?" Those are two very different ways of meta-facilitating and building structure of making sure we're moving in the right direction.

Tomomi Sasaki:

I think that workshops take so much energy. The pressure is very high that something needs to change from the number of people gathered in that room. That pressure is so high and if you're the one organizing it, that's where your focus is, and we lose sight that what's important is what happens after the workshop. Like, yay, it's done. It's like, no. No, it's not.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. I'm on the couch. What are you talking about after the workshop? Where's my cocktail?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

We won. You're like, "No, no. There's more."

Tomomi Sasaki:

I know. Yeah. Exactly. The game's just beginning. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, that's like the long game and the big game. What advice would you give people who want to facilitate that level of interaction, how to step into that?

Tomomi Sasaki:

What advice do I have? I think it's not something you can do alone. So, the team that you're doing it with, and it can be just one person, but the partnerships that you have with the immediate people around you in carrying out the initiative is what's going to make the biggest difference. So, being able to sit in the pluralities together and not let the whatever's going on knock us over, like build that resilience and that awareness and the language to discuss it, find the people you can do that with, I think would be, well, it's what's worked for me, if I think back to when things have gone really well, and also when things just have really been like, what was that all for? We've all been there, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's like, not for nothing, this is working in conversation. Right?

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

It is very hard to just make that happen on your own, to draw that diagram and be like, "This is what we should do." Everyone else is going to want to have a voice in that. So, that's another conversation to facilitate, and in terms of languaging, I will link to that article because I think it's such fundamental visual language to just say, "Well, where are we going?"

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Where are we and where are we going?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, so speaking of where we're going, it's getting late in Europe where you're at. You've had a whole day. I'm really grateful for the conversation. It's just super fun to hang out with you. It's been too long.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Aw. Thank you so much, Daniel. I'm such a big fan of the podcast and your work, and as we've already discussed, some of the aha moments that have really shifted for me in conversation with you and in spaces that you've held. So, I feel like it's all connected.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm so honored.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Yeah. I'm really grateful.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh. Thank you so ... I love being in conversation with you. I'm grateful for it.

Tomomi Sasaki:

Me too. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

Let's call scene. That's perfect. That was awesome. That's so much great stuff in that. I really appreciate that conversation.

DeColonizing Design Thinking

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel PhD, is the Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact, and Professor of Practice at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking from an emancipatory perspective.

Design Thinking is a powerful set of tools and mindsets that can help people solve problems. But which people and which problems?

So first off, if you’re new to this conversation, design and design thinking can be racially biased, because people are racially biased. As Dr. Noel says in the opening quote I chose, most of us don’t understand our positionality - especially if you see yourself as “white”. It’s essential to see and understand what position are we looking *from* when we look *at* people and the problems we seek to solve for them.

Design is, in essence, making things better, on purpose, and it’s a fundamental human drive: To improve our situation by remaking our surroundings. But when we design for and with other people, the process becomes more complex.

So, you might not see yourself as a designer, but if you solve problems for other people or build systems that other people use to solve problems, you might be a designer in the broadest sense, or design thinker, even by accident. 

So...you need to get serious and clear about how you learn about problems (ie, do research), frame them and solve them for others (ie, design - attempt to make something better on purpose).

If you do see yourself as a Design Thinker, you might feel challenged by Dr. Noel’s reflections on Design Thinking, not as a set of Boxes to be ticked, but as a universe of different ways of thinking and knowing. Dr. Noel makes beautiful diagrams and models for the creative process that breaks out of the hexagons and double diamonds beautifully. I recommend checking out the screenshots I’ve taken of some of these models from her talks in the Links section

Another resource I suggest you dive into is Dr. Noel’s Positionality Worksheet, 12 Elements to help you and your team see the “water they’re swimming in.” You can also check out a Mural version I mocked up.

As Dr. Noel writes in her excellent Medium article “My Manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design” it’s essential to start with positionality, for yourself and for your teams. That’s point one. Who are you in relation to the people you are working with and solving for?

Point Two of her manifesto is about seeing color, oppression, injustice and bias. For this I recommend getting a deck of her Designer’s Critical Alphabet cards on Etsy. They’re awesome!

Point 3 might surprise you: Dr. Noel suggests that we “Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”...and instead embrace Pluriversality. DNI assumes an inside and an outside, an includer and the included. Pluriversality looks to remove the center and honors multiple ways of knowing and doing, each with its own valid center. 

It’s nice to believe in a single ultimate truth for everyone...but that’s not going to happen. Pluriversality suggests that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality.  Pluriversality is essential for our time - finding a path forward together while respecting other’s paths and ways.

Pluriversality was a new term for me. I suggest you watch Dr. Noel’s talk at UC Davis on Embracing Pluriversal Design to learn more.

And I suggest you read the rest of her Manifesto for yourself! 

I am thrilled to share Dr. Noel’s ideas on DeColonizing Design Thinking. It’s a critical conversation for our time. Design Thinking still has so much to offer the world if we are willing to lean into it and engage in dialogue with fresh and evergreen interpretations of it. People have been designing for as long as we’ve been people. Learning and respecting the pluriverse of Design Thinking in all cultures can deliver powerful progress.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

LINKS, KEY QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES

Dr. Noel’s website

Dr. Noel at Tulane University

Dr. Noel’s Critical Literacy Alphabet

Alberini Family Speaker Series Lecture

Dr. Noel’s manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity, and bias in design

Positionality Template Designed with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel

Open to create a mural from this template in your workspace. Powered by MURAL

Design Thinking as Curry:

DeColonizing our Bookshelves:

Using Mural to explore Positionality and Identity: A positionality worksheet More on that here

Slides from Dr. Noel’s talk on Pluriversal Design, illustrating many ways to visualize the design process.

The Designer’s Critical Alphabet...a powerful resource to check your biases as you create.

Minute 3

And then I started to see, well, okay. Actually as designers, design thinkers, whatever term you want to use. People who are creating the solutions, our positionality affects how we create a solution. Our positionality affects how we view the people that we're working with and sometimes we don't see our positionality. There are elements of our personality that become invisible and so I created that theme thinking of twelve elements that we might include in a positionality statement. 

If we were writing research, I thought, how do we make this visible and interactive for people who are going to embark on a design process, right? So that we could see our positionality both individually and as a group and then understand how that impacts the work that we're doing throughout the process. 

If we are to pick on white men as we always do, right? If we are a group of white men, let's say we are a group of six people working on this project. The idea was that after we went through this positionality exercise where we talk about race, gender, language, sexuality, ability status, social class, after we talk about all of this, we use the positionality wheel. It then becomes evident that, oh, our group actually does not have diversity in this area, or even if we're not talking about not having the diversity, at least we could see. Oh, actually, we all speak English only. And we are all upper middle class and we're doing this research with this group of people in New Orleans. How are we going to get a perspective? How are we going to be able to understand their perspective better when we are so different to them?

Minute 9

I actually was interested in that mass design surprisingly through a social lens because I always was thinking. Okay, well, how do we mass produce this thing to make it more accessible to people? But definitely, I have learned that diversity is very, very, very important focusing on the needs. Well, this is a human centered process that we really talk much more about today than when I left university focusing on the needs, the very specific needs of individuals that come up with design that then actually serves more people, I think is important.

Minute 11

And maybe about three years ago, I was in a design thinking space and someone told me, okay, well, here are the steps, you do this and then you do that. And I said, well, actually, I've been doing this for many years. And they're, yeah, but you have to follow these steps. And the thing is, I found that I was horrified that we had reached this space where people really felt that, okay, if you haven't checked off all of these boxes, you're not doing it right. When those of us who studied in the '90s and the '80s and I think, anytime before 2005, let's say, we were encouraged. Maybe we were shown different processes along the way, maybe each professor had a different model but we knew that we were going through a type of process that would get to an outcome at the end without learning those models. 

Minute 38

Again, actually, I had a conversation yesterday where I was saying organizations actually need one or two angry people who are always going to be pushing you to make things better so you need to figure out, okay, where is this angry voice going to come from, right? Whether it's within the organization, or whether it's somebody from outside and that angry voice is going to push us a little bit, that little bit of dissatisfaction is going to push us to do things in different ways.

Minute 43

we just have to go through life with this openness and always this willingness to learn new things and understand new perspectives and talk with new people. The man who cuts my lawn, we normally have a good conversation on all that. We have just been talking and talking and talking about tips about gardening, right? And again, this all sounds random but it's not random. It's about how relationships with people help us to become, I guess, better designers.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

And I'm going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory, Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel. I'm so glad you're here.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for the invitation.

Daniel Stillman:

Thanks you for saying yes. Yes, and happy Friday. I don't know whenever anybody else is going to be listening to this, it probably won't be Friday. There's a one in seven chance that it is.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

It's always Friday.

Daniel Stillman:

But it's always Friday inside.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

There's the question of where to start the conversation. I feel I have point one of yours from a talk you gave, which is that everything starts with positionality. I feel it's worth setting up your positionality however you'd like.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Okay. Yes. Well, thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

It's a broad question.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

No, it is a broad question and it's specific and thank you for noting that because I really do think that positionality is important. I start all of my classes with positionality so my positionality, I am a black woman from the Caribbean specifically from Trinidad and Tobago. I add to my positionality that I did undergrad in Brazil. Fortunately, the Brazilians haven't yet said, oh, she's stealing our identity because this is ... I left Brazil more than 20 years ago and I still consider myself very, very tied to that country. I do a lot of collaboration with Brazilians so I do consider that part of my positionality as well. I am a parent so I'm a mother of a 13-year-old boy. What else can I add to the ... I guess that's where I will leave it for now because sometimes in our positionality there are things that we want to share and there are things that we don't want to share. But the things that are most apparent are that I am someone from the African diaspora.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Right. And then once I open my mouth, you say, okay, she has a different accent so I clear that up very quickly. I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. And I consider myself very much someone from the Americas, from the Caribbean and with this connection to Latin America.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Where do you ... There was an article, sorry. An exercise I saw the evidence of you running in one of your talks about Who Am I? in getting students. You're a professor of design thinking and so you teach this stuff to students all the time, when and where and why do you run this Who am I? exercise? Because I just saw the mural board and I can suspect I saw clusters and I wasn't sure if you put those gray bubbles there, or here, or where do you have this type of identity? And maybe you can just talk a little bit about when and how you run through that exercise with people because I think it's a really interesting and important one.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Okay. I have a PhD in design and the way I did my work is qualitatively. And so very often when you're doing quality to research, you have to start off with this positionality where you write a positionality statement and you say, well, okay, who am I?, so that the person who is reading the research will understand. Okay, if you think about me again, this person is a black woman from the Caribbean and that affects how she wrote this research. And then I started to see, well, okay. Actually as designers, design thinkers, whatever term you want to use. People who are creating the solutions, our positionality affects how we create a solution. Our positionality affects how we view the people that we're working with and sometimes we don't see our positionality.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

There are elements of our personality that become invisible and so I created that theme thinking of twelve elements that we might include in a positionality statement. If we were writing research, I thought, how do we make this visible and interactive for people who are going to embark on a design process, right? So that we could see our positionality both individually and as a group and then understand how that impacts the work that we're doing throughout the process. If we are to pick on white men as we always do, right?

Daniel Stillman:

It's totally fine.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

If we are a group of white men, let's say we are a group of six people working on this project. The idea was that after we went through this positionality exercise where we talk about race, gender, language, sexuality, ability status, social class, after we talk about all of this, we use the positionality wheel. It then becomes evident that, oh, our group actually does not have diversity in this area, or even if we're not talking about not having the diversity, at least we could see. Oh, actually, we all speak English only. And we are all upper middle class and we're doing this research with this group of people in New Orleans. How are we going to get a perspective? How are we going to be able to understand their perspective better when we are so different to them? It just brings that identity to the surface so that you don't ...

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Because what sometimes happens in design is that, we assume that the decisions that we're taking represent a mainstream, or we don't understand how our assumptions affect the design process. This is to bring our personalities out in a visible way and we can talk about this. It also helps us see where there might be some hidden benefits within the team, or hidden alliances. Once I did this exercise with a very large group of people, about 75 people and as we were analyzing bubble by bubble because we did this now on a mural but on a remote white boarding app. Right? And as we started to analyze bubble by bubble, someone piped in and said, oh, I speak Vietnamese. And look, there are three other people who also speak Vietnamese. And so it also revealed some very interesting things about your group. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, and things that you wouldn't normally know. Otherwise, I think we've all made assumptions about people's background and sometimes it's wrong. Right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And that can be both offensive or surprising or delightful, there's a whole range of possibilities.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes. You're not going to look at me and know that I speak Portuguese. Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Well, if you navigate in Brazil as we've talked and I would hope eventually you made it through that but it's really interesting because I think we have some affinities, if not shared identities because I studied industrial design as did you. And I think there's the promise of universal design was something that I believe I was taught is that, that was certainly the vision of post-World War II. Bauhaus design was like, let's make things that everyone can afford and that everyone will love and everyone can use and everyone will understand using universal language. And I think what I'm hearing you say is that, that is not necessarily possible.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I definitely say that that is not possible and like you, I believed in that idea of designing for many. And I actually, when I left university in Brazil, which gives me then a completely not a completely, it gives me a very different kind of framing. Right? I was so in love with the idea of mass.

Daniel Stillman:

Like mass appeal?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

But I was ... Yes, I loved designing for the masses rather than designing for a smaller group. I actually was interested in that mass design surprisingly through a social lens because I always was thinking. Okay, well, how do we mass produce this thing to make it more accessible to people? But definitely, I have learned that diversity is very, very, very important focusing on the needs. Well, this is a human centered process that we really talk much more about today than when I left university focusing on the needs, the very specific needs of individuals that come up with design that then actually serves more people, I think is important.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And I want to go to that in a second but the first thing I wanted to touch on in this idea of universal design is, I was reading an article where somebody was writing a very, very high level overview of design thinking and it was hilariously general. They were like, well, so as we all know, by definition design thinking is a human centered design process that has five phases and here are the five phases. And everyone who's not, because there's no video for this. Her eyes widened everyone. That should have come with a trigger warning. I apologize, Dr. Noel.

Daniel Stillman:

But one of the things that I really loved about, I watched one of your talks was the ... I suppose, excessive is the wrong way to put it. The abundant model making that you've participated in. There were three or four different and I want to just flash them on the screen. There was like, oh, a woman in a head dress. And like an organic, it looked like a batik print. And I read an article of your students, many, many self-made models and I have always believed that it's important for people to map and understand their own design process and to craft it for themselves. What is important to you about people making their own design process?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I'll tell you my own triggering experience. I graduated in 1999. No, actually not '99. I finished university in '97 and then the ceremony, the walk was is in '98, right? I've been a designer for a little while, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And maybe about three years ago, I was in a design thinking space and someone told me, okay, well, here are the steps, you do this and then you do that. And I said, well, actually, I've been doing this for many years. And they're, yeah, but you have to follow these steps. And the thing is, I found that I was horrified that we had reached this space where people really felt that, okay, if you haven't checked off all of these boxes, you're not doing it right. When those of us who studied in the '90s and the '80s and I think, anytime before 2005, let's say, we were encouraged. Maybe we were shown different processes along the way, maybe each professor had a different model but we knew that we were going through a type of process that would get to an outcome at the end without learning those models. Right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And so it's, while I will actually say, so as someone who studied way back then and we'll actually see then the proliferation of templates of how you do design thinking. It's actually, it can be helpful. It gives you a shortcut where you're like, okay, so maybe I'm in this field and maybe I'm in that field but I'm into something called critical pedagogy, which means that ... No, it's not even, which means that. But using this research, people are actively involved in shaping their own knowledge and so that's why I ask people to draw their own process. I pick them, in my PhD research, I did some work with some children where we discussed what designers do and all of that.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Then I asked them who they would identify as designers and then they told me some people. And then we were together for three weeks and each week I had the children, I asked the children to draw the process that they were using to solve the problem and each week they would look back on the process from the week before and they would decide how they would tweak it. Right? We don't have to show people models for design thinking. We could talk about, okay, what are we doing? And then we could let people create models that are relevant and also see how they have to edit the models to suit what they're doing. Another way that I describe it, which I think people enjoy is I describe it as cooking.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, design thinking as curry.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes. You know that word, right? Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

I do. It's a beautiful metaphor and I love curry.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Who doesn't like [inaudible 00:14:37]?

Daniel Stillman:

Jokes. This is just a total side issue, but what do white supremacists get to eat?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Oh boy. What do they get to eat?

Daniel Stillman:

Do they get to enjoy Thai food or do they think that white supremacy extends to culinary activities as well? Can a white supremacists enjoy Thai food? I shouldn't be laughing but I've always thought it's like, I love Thai food. I love Caribbean food. I'm a Universalist, I come from New York city where we eat the whole world on the street so that's just me.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really glad you talked about this because there was a phrase you used about liberatory versus depository. And I thought this was a wonderfully clear way of explaining how I like to teach people, which is pulling it out of them as opposed to inserting it into their brains. And I think people would be surprised to think that design thinking could be fully decolonized and self discovered by a group of what was it? 10-year-olds?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. And I think maybe the oldest was nine to ... We had an outlier who was 12. But yeah, let's say ... Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What about the C-suite? Can the C-suite do what a group of 10 to 12 year olds do?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

It takes more work per C-suite.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. It definitely takes more work. Children are more open, even when I work with college students, college students sometimes want to know. Okay, so what textbook is this in? And I'm like, the textbook is forthcoming. But children are open to trying things out and that's something that we have to learn to cultivate. One thing that I do like about the design thinking work that people do and in a more commodified way is, I love how much fun they inject into the process. I sit there and I step away. Right? No, but I want to do it in a fun way but for those of us who are going through design education, it's because it's our main career. It might not have that level of fun but it's like when you take design thinking into somebody's boardroom, you make it all fun and whatnot because it's a secondary space and I think that that fun is important.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm just disrupting you for a second because I feel I have a rare opportunity to actually get you to like ... I'm flashing, I caught a couple of screenshots from one of your talks of just some, what I thought is just a revolutionarily, a radically different way of visualizing processes and I loved this one because this is a black woman wearing a traditional head wrap and each fold in her wrap is a different strength, or focus core area of a design process.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. But this one is less of a process. This is actually an imaginary curriculum where each ... It's a series of curricula that I had been designing. And this one I created, well, in June. In May, June, at the height of the pandemic as a response to George Floyd's murder, where I was thinking of who is excluded very often in design and design thinking and what does the curriculum look like from their perspective? What are the things that a black person ... I am a black woman. As a black woman, what am I going to put into a design curriculum for other black people? Right? And this actually started out of ... I did this in June, 2020 but it's a question that I've been asking for quite some time because I came to the States in 2015.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And so, I had never taught a predominantly white class before. Right? Even when I lived in Brazil, I was never in a predominantly white design space. And for the first time I was in this space in the US. And I once had a small class, like a Saturday class with all black students and I asked, okay, so why aren't you doing these design classes? And then they said but these classes don't have material that we're interested in. And so that's how-

Daniel Stillman:

It's not for us.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah, it's not for us. And so, I've been starting to ask all of these different questions. What do different types of design curriculum look like? Designed by the people or with the people.

Daniel Stillman:

These visuals and this one, which is very organic and sort of cell-like, that was very beautiful and this other one here, very sort of traditional colors. And this one, I love too because it's like, oh, this looks pretty conventional. It's some concentric circles and there's something in the center. What does having a visual do? How does it change the conversation about what we're doing here together, like what our process is?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I think if we're talking about how we think as designers and not designed thinking, or how do we think as, we can make it about the two groups, artists and designers. We manipulate information and knowledge in different ways. And so the experiment about drawing new frameworks, drawing the curriculum as an image, drawing processes by hand, these are to really dig into the way that we learn to work with information as people in these visual fields. Right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And currently, my students are not generally not coming from an art and design background and so I have to really bring them back to that space of, it's okay to draw. It's okay to doodle so I have one, at least one assignment within my courses where students have to give a reflection but I ask them to challenge themselves to do the reflection visually. They don't have to but I give them three alternative options of doing the reflection because the assumption is that they have to write. I said, you can do a voice note for this reflection. And then the other thing that they can do is, they can draw because I'm thinking of different senses.

Daniel Stillman:

And different ways of knowing.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Again, different ways of knowing. I really try to do a lot of the work that I do through a conscious lens of anti-hegemony.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And so in doing that, I'm trying to say, well, okay, not everybody wants to write, so what is the alternative road?

Daniel Stillman:

Can we unpack anti-hegemony for those people who don't know how to-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Right. Okay. Actually, maybe I'll just use a completely different way of describing it. In the work that I'm doing, I'm assuming that's somebody's perspective is normally considered dominant, or will take up the most space and I'm seeing, how can we consciously make sure that the people who are in the dominant space recognize that they don't, they're not all ... Well, see that they are normally in the dominant space and understand how they have to change that position and also make everything. I'm trying to create these spaces where people with different identities and positionalities can contribute in different ways. And we don't just be food to this person's perspective that is normally dominant.

Daniel Stillman:

It's interesting and I want to unpack this. There's several things I want to make sure we hit on here because in decolonizing design thinking, I don't think many people realize that there are inherent challenges with designing for other people. It's not just that like, oh, and I'll admit my positionality when I've read some of these articles that say like, oh, how can a white person empathize and design for someone else? It's hard to look at the limits of one's positionality, right? And say, because I was certainly taught, I should be able to, as a human being empathize with and take on the perspective of anyone like universal humanity if it's a reasonable position. And yet there are plenty of examples of white Western, "First world people gazing across at third world communities and saying, "I know exactly what they need making it and it not working for a whole host of reasons." Most with which go into them, not possibly understanding the complexity of the challenge that-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Of the problem. Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

... they're trying to solve. And so this is the question of, how do we ... This is the gaze of the "privileged to the non privileged." And one thing I heard you speak about in some of your talks is seeing power and trying to shift power so inverting it, sharing it, redistributing it. And certainly, maybe you can talk a little bit about sort of the Trinidad for California project because I think that was just a wonderful thumb in the nose of this common pathway of power and inverting it.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. Yeah, so that was an experiment that came about my friend, Glenn Fajardo, who is a design educator in California.

Daniel Stillman:

I know Glenn.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

You know Glenn? Okay.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, that's right. Oh, this is a small world. Well, okay. This wonderful. I'm going to have him on this show for sure.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

The worlds gets smaller and smaller, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Glenn's a deal, man.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes. And Glenn and I were actually, I think literally we were standing up next to each other. We didn't know each other that well yet and we were probably like, sure, that's a shoulder. We were listening to a conversation and there was something in the conversation that just sent up this light bulb for both of us, that we felt demonstrated the need to consciously decolonize this kind of international collaboration. And we both turned to each other and said, well, okay, how about we start thinking about doing something, right? And so Glenn and I planned this class with a colleague of mine, Michael Lee Poy, who's now a professor at OCAD in Toronto. But Michael is Trinidadian. Well, Trinidadian, Canadian. Right? And so, the three of us, we started this conversation as, okay, well, how do we flip this?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

How do we have this class so that the students or the designers from the so-called developed country, we want to assume that they are the ones with the power, right? And how do we design it so that the students in the developing country, again, so-called developing country know that they actually do have more power than they think they have? Because sometimes in the international collaboration, it isn't just always about the people from the global North, assuming that they're the ones with the power. It's that in the global South, you also get messages that you are the one without power. Right? And so we wanted to flip that and so we created this class where the students at a business school in Trinidad actually had a little bit more power in the class than the student in the school in California. And so we didn't go through the entire design process but it is a project that I would love to do at some stage where we go through the entire design process. The students in Trinidad had to diagnose the problem.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And reading the responses of the California students was like this ... It was hilarious. Honestly, I think this was like the best design thinking joke ever because they're like, I don't know.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Oh, is that a joke?

Daniel Stillman:

But they had this experience of like, oh, they just swooped in and I felt like they didn't really understand everything about me. And it's like, well, all right. This is empathy. This is the dawn of empathy in them.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. Yes, and really it's a very reflective exercise. I could see why people might see it as-

Daniel Stillman:

I don't mean to ... It's a cosmic, sorry. My father saw everything as a joke. It's like a cosmic reversal, which is how God laughs at the world. That's-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I guess so. Yes. Yes. But where we were trying to get to was some light bulb moments and we definitely got that.

Daniel Stillman:

You absolutely did. Here is the question because a lot of the people listening to this are in corporate settings where there is real imbalances of economic power. The idea that the person inside of a corporation gazes out of the world at a consumer, diagnoses a need, designs for it, that's an imbalance of power. And co-design can seem like paternalism, right? I'm going to bring you into my co-design circle but there's no actual re-distribution of power which is a terrifying thing because that can sound like, I don't know, socialism which United States, Americans have been taught to be afraid off. How can-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. That's a long conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

It is. How should people who are listening to this who are in capitalist endeavors, who are designing for audiences, change the gaze and transform this researcher subject conversation, redesign that conversation so that it is more egalitarian and that power balance is shifted in a way that matters?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

You're asking me such a hard question. You're going to edit some of this out?

Daniel Stillman:

We can. Let's talk it out because it is a hard question. That's why I'm asking because-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

It is hard question. Yes. And sometimes I have to say both to myself and to other people, I am in Academia, which ends up being a luxurious space where I can experiment with ... Actually, in Academia, I should not be maintaining the status quo because I'm in a space where I can be experimental. And then the people who are out in industry can say, oh, they tried that experiment and now let's take that experiment freely in a different way. Right? I was in a conversation with someone, this conversation is tied to your question. I was in a conversation with someone yesterday where I described that class, the Trinidad, California collaboration.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And I said, well, okay, what does that actually tell me if I'm back into the corporate world? What did students in Trinidad, or actually even before that. Glenn, Michael and I were talking about, where is the power? What's the power that the students in Trinidad have, where is their advantage? Okay? And what is the advantage if you are from ... This will probably sound like stereotyping but I'm going to run that risk, right?

Daniel Stillman:

It's totally fine.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

If you are from Trinidad, Brazil, Mexico, there are some places in the world where one of the advantage of people have, people really know how to socialize and how to build community and how to build networks and all that. And so that was actually how the students in Trinidad diagnosed the problem in California. They said there is a problem here that these people don't understand how to socialize. They are socially isolated and all of the conversations that they had, they picked that up. Right? And so now if I come back to the corporate space, I might say, actually, if I want to design a social network, I need to go to Trinidad, not to California where Facebook is. Right? Facebook should be designed in Trinidad or in Brazil or Mexico, or where people are really good at building community not in a place where people are socially isolated. That doesn't actually answer your question at all.

Daniel Stillman:

Because that's still taking inspiration from another culture rather than-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Well, engage that. You see, I'm not anti-core design, you know?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I would still come back to something like co-design or I'm still trying to think how to really answer your question. Yeah. Ask me another one. Push me a little further.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so what I'll say is the framework that I've seen is called the IAP two framework, which is from ... it's called the International Institute of Public Participation. And they have ... It comes from political participation, this idea of like, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen versus we're going to truly work on this together.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Build it together. Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, so it's like, am I empowering you, or am I might consulting you, or am I just like informing you and everything in between. This is just me personally. I think, being explicit about the power dynamics is the first step, is like saying, hey, we're just going to listen and we're not going to do everything you tell us, just so you know. I think from my own experience in design thinking, it can be very frustrating to ask people to participate in a process when nothing is done with their input.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. And actually that is my frustration with design thinking. And in some of the work that I do because I have been involved in a few civic type of projects. I really enjoy conversations about utopia and co-designing utopia and co-designing utopian concepts that could lead to policies and services and whatnot. But there is some frustration sometimes as a participant, as you rightly identified, if you get involved in this process, how do we move it forward? As an academic, that is a little bit of my frustration as well. Our students design these fantastic policies and programs that every semester and how do we actually move these forward. But I'm happier with co-designing than nothing at all. Right? I think better co-design could happen if we really have commitment to implementation and I think that that sometimes is not there.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Maybe this goes to some of the questions we were talking about earlier, before we started about ways of connecting with people and communities in ways that are not predatory, that are synergistic when there's the gaze relationship of like, oh, I'm going to go and study them and then make my own interpretation versus I'm going to actually participate with this community and understand that what they need.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes. Yeah. I think that that's a possible challenge that we have all the time in research, when you operate through a critical lens, you end up with frustration, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Why is that when you operate through a critical lens, you wind up with frustration? Can I just unpack? That's as a really interesting idea.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

A frustration, because you're reflective.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

And then this even as the designer thing where you know that your design is always in progress so like I've been involved in research where when I sit back and I reflect, I'm like, this could really be much more effective if we did X, or and sort of my frustration question sometimes is, okay, how do we ensure that there is more benefits to the community participants in the project, right? And so, I consider this a little bit of a saving grace for me that if I live with that frustration, I will design projects where there is more benefits. Or if we have that frustration, we will have the eye to see that we have to go through that. And so, I think that little discontent is something that we're going to live with to make things better.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's interesting, I think. Certainly, in corporate America, there's always this like, well, let's just get on with it. There's this pace speed of, let's get going and slowing down and saying, well, who are we? And what are our positionalities? Seem like, come on teacher, time's running, we got to get going but having the conversation can give you so much benefit. Can you talk a little bit about the designers critical alphabet? Because I feel like, having that critical conversation is something you want more people to be having more often so you want to spread more frustration at the same time.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Exactly what I thought. Yes. Yes. Before I started, as I had said, so when I was working on that project with the children, one of the board members who was responsible for this school said, okay, you want to get these children angry? And I'm like, geez. I want to make angry, which I actually think that people mustn't be afraid of anger and angry people. Again, actually, I had a conversation yesterday where I was saying organizations actually need one or two angry people who are always going to be pushing you to make things better so you need to figure out, okay, where is this angry voice going to come from, right? Whether it's within the organization, or whether it's somebody from outside and that angry voice is going to push us a little bit, that little bit of dissatisfaction is going to push us to do things in different ways. Right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

The thing about the designer's critical alphabet is that, it's me trying to get, I was building tools so even the positionality wheel is one of those. I was trying to build a series of tools to get designers to see the world around them through more complex lenses. Okay? I operate through an emancipatory frame, which is about making sure that I'm thinking about shifting power, making sure there are participants very involved in the work, or that I'm doing the work from the participant's perspective and not from my own so that card that's in there, there's a feminist card. And there are some cards that are around things like attitudes that we have to take on like self-awareness which you might not always have as a designer. You might enter the room and we walk in with our fancy clothes and fancy glasses and all that and we're not really self-aware, right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Or you drive into your community project with a big car and we don't always stop to reflect on these things, how we show up in spaces. The positionality wheel is one of those things, that's what we were talking about earlier. And then the critical alphabet is about introducing a new type of language to designers, a lot of languages I picked up in my PhD and in my reading and then with the question below that makes this theory relevant because that's the other thing. If I tell them about decolonizing spaces and decolonizing the field that we're in, we have to make language accessible. Even if we jump away back to design thinking, that's a bit of an issue in design thinking. It's just still jargony so like how do we talk about brainstorming without using that word or prototyping without using those words? How do we make all of this stuff accessible? The critical alphabet is about making critical language, or perspectives accessible. I was thinking specifically about designers but a lot of other non-designers use the tool as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And it's available but people get can get a deck of these cards to thumb through.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes, they can. They could actually Google critical alphabet or designers critical alphabet and an Etsy link will come up. Or it's tagged in all of my profiles, if they find me on Twitter or Instagram or something like that, they can get it. They'll find the link.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's one of these things where, I think we share a mission, which is having everyone be a reflective practitioner. Right?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes, that's exactly it.

Daniel Stillman:

You did this with the fourth graders-

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

... to be reflective about their practice, what process do you think you're following? What happened last week? What would you like to happen this week? And don't keep looking back so that you can keep looking forward.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yes. And I teach in a vague way around questions that must be very frustrating for students but at the end of it, it's about them learning to be reflective, to also ask questions and not just assume that the knowledge that is given to them is valid knowledge, so try to question it.

Daniel Stillman:

This seems like the path towards de-colonizing design thinking.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

It could be. I've come back with my vagueness, it could be.

Daniel Stillman:

It could be.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

It could be one path.

Daniel Stillman:

It could be one of many because there's no privileged universal perspective on it.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Exactly. And this is one tool that I've used. Right? And I may design others and I'm also anxious to hear what are other people doing to change up the space? How are other people questioning things and changing things?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it's very clear. This is the beginning of a really ... I'm so grateful you sat down for this conversation with me. I know we've got a hard stop. People can find you on the internet. I will include all links to that. Is there anything I have not asked you that I should have asked you, parting thoughts on this very broad topic?

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

I'm going to say something really random, it's really hard to grow tomatoes.

Daniel Stillman:

It's January, even in New Orleans, I imagine it's hard.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

You're like, where did this random thing come up? I've spent about six months during the pandemic learning new things. And actually, that's the connection that I'll make, that we just have to go through life with this openness and always this willingness to learn new things and understand new perspectives and talk with new people. The man who cuts my lawn, we normally have a good conversation on all that. We have just been talking and talking and talking about tips about gardening, right? And again, this all sounds random but it's not random. It's about how relationships with people help us to become, I guess, better designers. Now that sounds a little preachy but it's ... yeah, that we have to cultivate this curiosity about other people in life and yeah, could be better at what we do.

Daniel Stillman:

It's really interesting because it feels we didn't talk nearly enough about this, is that design thinking is a conversation between a group of people and relationships. Life moves at the pace of relationships. You can't make a tomato grow any faster than it's going to grow, regardless of how much effort you put into it. All you can do is set the soils as best you can.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah. Life is about these conversations that we have and we can design these conversations. And so yeah. How do we design them more intentionally?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think you've given us a lot of tools to think about, power and positionality has the foundation for making sure that it's a clean, a real relationship and not a predatory relationship and not a one-sided relationship.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Yeah, not transactional.

Daniel Stillman:

And not a transactional relationship, a relating relationship, which is really different. Well, this is really great. I'm really grateful for your time. I think there's a lot of food for thought here. Thank you so much, Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD:

Thank you. This has been great.