In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts master somatic leadership coach, trauma psychologist, and mindfulness instructor, Chris Johnson. Chris is the founder of Q4 Consulting Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm that helps leaders transform themselves, their teams, and their organizations to meet future challenges, grow and thrive.

Chris is a passionate advocate for the power of business to create prosperity, beauty, and happiness in the world. She’s been involved with Conscious Capitalism Chicago for over a decade currently serving as Chair, and on the leadership team of Ellevate Chicago, an organization committed to developing professional women. This past summer she published a book, The Leadership Pause: Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence, and Navigate the Future, an eye-opening, accessible guide to developing one’s leadership via the deliberate, body-based practices that tap the wisdom and intelligence of the body.

Listen to the full episode here:

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Chris describes the practice of pausing as a way to interrupt our automatic processing and reactions and give space for reflection and mindfulness. She emphasizes the importance of utilizing this tool as a way to reset our nervous systems and check in with ourselves so that we can show up as our best selves. This mindfulness technique is specifically designed for the workplace in that it is intended to be simple and quick, a way to center ourselves and get back to work.

• Chris identifies some of the core leadership qualities that are so essential in modern times. These include presence, curiosity, a learning mindset, interpersonal connection, care, and compassion. She notes that mindfulness principles are now key to effective leadership. (3:25)

• Many high achieving people struggle with the concept of pausing and will see it as unproductive, but science shows that taking time to be present, to pause, actually gives our nervous system a chance to reset and prevents stress and burnout. (10:12)

• In this talk we touch on how to introduce mindfulness practices to people who may not be interested in it and Chris recommends a hands-on approach. Leaders can invite and encourage pausing within their teams by asking them to follow their breath or introducing it from a neurobiology perspective. (21:18)

• Apart from her pausing practice, Chris also recommends for leaders to keep meetings short and concise and encourage teams to get up and move or walk every once in a while. These small practices can have a huge effect on energy levels and productivity. (32:34)

Our bodies and minds are not built to sit at a desk and be constantly focused and productive. Taking moments to check in with ourselves, to recalibrate our nervous systems, and recenter our intentions can have profound and positive impacts in our workday. When we give ourselves space to decompress or change our habitual reactions, we become more present in everything we do. Pausing has shown to improve resilience, capacity, and confidence when applied in the workplace, and can also be used in our everyday lives.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Pause is an interruption of an automatic reaction, an automatic habit or way of doing something. But pause gets a bad rap, because many people, especially high achieving folks, drivers, who are working their businesses often feel like they’re wasting time if they pause…. When we don’t pause, our physical system, our psychobiology gets amped up, we experience it as stress. And when it goes on for long periods of time with no remittance, then people can tend toward burnout.” (10:12)

“So having taught mindfulness for a long time, many people are like, I’m going to go away from work, so that I can practice this thing called mindfulness, or do some reflection. And actually, the call to action in this book is bring it to work, and you can practice it here in tiny doses.” (12:59)

“So pause is kind of, you know, expansive, and it can contract. But it’s a super useful, you can carry it anywhere you want, kind of practice to become fully present in the moment.” (14:37)

“Be willing to practice, be really curious. Mistakes are your friend, so if you feel like you made a mistake… It happens. Just be willing to be human, practice the pause. It will be your friend, however you choose to take it.” (42:19)

RESOURCES

Chris Johnson:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: The Leadership Pause: Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence, and Navigate the Future

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Dr. Chris Johnson. Welcome.

Chris Johnson 0:09
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Sue Bethanis 0:11
Yeah, Chris has devoted her life to the deep listing that underpins what matters most in people’s lives. She is the founder of Q4 Consulting, a Chicago based consulting firm that helps leaders transform themselves, their teams and organizations to meet future challenges, grow, and thrive. She’s a passionate advocate for the power of business to create prosperity, beauty and happiness in the world. By integrating evidence based tech teachings on the neurobiology of attention and the wisdom of the body, Chris provides professionals practical approaches to lean in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. In other words, VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous that’s a mouthful, man. Chris has been involved with Conscious Capitalism Chicago for over a decade currently serving as chair and on the leadership team of Elevate Chicago an organization committed to developing professional women. This past summer, she published a book The Leadership Pause: Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence and Navigate the Future, which is an eye opening accessible guide to developing one’s leadership via the deliberate body based practices that tap to wisdom intelligence of the body. So that’s your bio that I read, which is a very nice bio. But I’m mostly interested in your journey, how you would describe how you got here, why you decided to write the book.

Chris Johnson 1:32
You know, you want the long or the short version Sue? The middle? Yeah, okay. The middle version is that I grew up with two entrepreneurial parents. And my father had a really severe stutter really severe. So that folks often discredited him in his capacity, because of his disfluency. So early on in my life, I would credit my dad with not only being a hero of mine, but really somebody who taught me how to pause just because it was the right kind of courtesy thing to do. Like you shut up, you didn’t interrupt you let him finish, right. There’s a lot more to that whole story. But fast forward, then about probably a dozen or so years ago, I was working with a business coach. And I was talking about some of the people I was working with. And I’ve got a history of teaching mindfulness for many years, probably about 25 years. And so I was, you know, how you do in these sorts of group things in a group coaching situations, you’re fussing around trying to sort stuff out? And I came upon, I’m like, leaders just need to freaking pause. And oh, Chris, you mean the leadership pause? And like, Yeah, cuz I need to do it, everybody needs to do it. And so that was the birth of the book name. And then it took a while to actually write it. So COVID helped out with the writing of that. Yeah. So that’s kind of the middle version. How’s that?

Sue Bethanis 3:08
Well, I love that you talk about talked about your dad. That’s really, that makes a lot of sense. And I love the way you came to the name, too. So talk to us about the leadership qualities that are the cornerstone of the book.

Chris Johnson 3:25
The leadership qualities, I actually tabbed in my book. So I would be able to speak exactly to that. I know you’ve had somebody on recently on your program, who talked about executive presence. So in terms of qualities, yeah, that was great interview, presence, for sure. Curiosity and a learning mindset, connection with oneself so that we can be connected with others, the more disconnected we are from ourselves, the less connected we are with other people that’s increasingly important. And then really care and compassion. And we saw a rise in that even before COVID and COVID put a fine point on that. So those are kind of the qualities that I see as being especially important for leaders, there are many others. But skills are really involving attention, because what we put our attention on is where all of our energy goes. And then how to work with energy, like how do we actually shift our mood shift our energetic state, in terms of being more performance ready. And I think that has a lot to do with deliberate practice with listening and engaging in conversations really listening, not just feigning that we’re listening, and then developing people. So those are kind of the skills that I think right now set us apart as leaders and that we really need to zero in on. So I’d be curious what you think about that, given your work in the space as well?

Sue Bethanis 4:49
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that discernment I would probably have in there I mean, that you didn’t say that word exactly but I think a few things that you said certainly hit upon that. Because the things you mentioned allow people to have good judgment and allow them to make good decisions. Yeah, I think that what’s happening, you know, I think even more so during COVID Is that we’ve had to make decisions without having that much information. Totally. So I was just going to ask you like, did you come up with those qualities and skills before COVID and were writing about them before? Or did you come up with them during COVID? And what’s COVID at all instrumental in have you come up with that in terms of what you’ve seen with your clients?

Chris Johnson 5:38
Yeah, that’s a really great question. Nobody’s asked me that one yet. So in terms of before, after COVID, but I think probably from COVID, and working with clients during COVID, I would say the care and compassion one as a quality, really, the fine point was put on how much we need to care for the people, all of our stakeholders, but especially those that are working for us, that are contributing to us, so we can contribute to others. That seems to the fine point there. I would say I thought about it before, but I think I’ve thought about it a whole lot more since COVID.

Sue Bethanis 6:14
Yeah, I would totally agree with you on that care. No pinpoint that. Yeah. I wrote an article in 2021. And it’s finally, about hybrid, and it’s finally, like, apropos now. But the cornerstone of that was about care and compassion and how we’re just, it’s allowing us to pause in a different way. And not an in a moment pause, but more of a general pause in terms of how we need to relook at how we look at work, just know how relationships are. I was talking with somebody. I was at a conference the last couple days and talking with a lot – it was a women’s tech conference, essentially, and talking about people wanting to come in the office and how important that was to them. But that the commute, you know, is hard. And I said, Yeah, that’s what we’re finding is that people want to connect, but they don’t want to commute. It’s just not worth it. It’s too much. It’s too hard. We’re just so used to you know, once that changed, you know, people don’t want to they still don’t want to go in every day. Now. Like go in two or three days. That’s probably the max. Yeah. So what are you noticing about that?

Chris Johnson 7:30
I’m finding the same thing. People who used to commute every day, and it seemed kind of like the thing to do, you didn’t really think you had an option. As much as now we know we have many more options. And the whole commute thing is big. I think it’s not just commuting to work. But it’s also after work events, networking events, like, do we want to drive into the city in Chicago, because it takes an hour to get there to hang around for with bad cheese? And, you know, wine or something? Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of that. And I don’t know that leaders have figured it out yet, in terms of what the hybrid mix will look like. I don’t pretend to know, do you have a beat on that?

Sue Bethanis 8:16
Well, I don’t think that no, I don’t think that there’s a beat on it. I think that there’s all basically people are doing what they want. And even if the company says three days a week, they they still don’t do that. There’s, tons of reasons why and some of which is that they’re not around anymore. So they can’t go in the office three days a week, they’ve already moved. So there has to be a lot of exceptions. And so I think that’s still back pretty much backup to the manager. Now. There’s, there’s some CEOs that are really staunch about it, and pretty much are keeping track of it. But most aren’t. And most tech companies are not going in three days a week. So then that mean, what that means is, is that it means that we have to get very creative and intentional about how we connect. So maybe people come in once a quarter or, you know, for an off site or something. And also when you’re in the office, how do you meet with people and not be on Zoom?

Chris Johnson 9:19
Right? Like why am I sitting here in an office when I could? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Sue Bethanis 9:23
So what are you noticing about that?

Chris Johnson 9:25
I’m noticing that people are describing that it’s hard to do and a resistance to going in. And in my experience. Now, I don’t think that the leaders who are asking folks to come into the office have figured out exactly the magic potion to say, hey, how do we creatively use this time together to really be together? I think that we’re all in the process of being able to create that. So then the question is how does a leader create the context to support figuring that out in any given space?

Sue Bethanis 10:00
Exactly. So let’s talk more about your book. I mean, this is certainly related. You talked about mindful pausing, and that it’s both mental and physical, of course. So why does it matter and tell us a little bit more about it?

Chris Johnson 10:12
Well, certainly one has to make a choice to pause. So pause is an interruption of an automatic reaction, an automatic habit or way of doing something. But pause gets a bad rap. Because many people, especially high achieving folks, drivers, who are, you know, working their businesses often feel like they’re wasting time if they pause. And so mentally, we have to decide to make choice pause. So, but physically what we need to be able to do, and it’s interesting, the Harvard Business Review just published their latest edition, it’s all about busyness. And, yeah, and the downsides of that. And it can lead to burnout and all kinds of stuff. Because when we don’t pause, our physical system, our psychobiology gets amped up, we experience it as stress. And when it goes on for long periods of time with no remittance, then people can tend toward burnout, you know that. So being able to start to break, that frenetic movement, the VUCA, that gets there without an actual concerted pause of some sort just allows us our biology to reset. And so being able to practice a centering pause to allow us to align our mind, our hearts, and our body, so that we’re all kind of in congruence, there’s tons of research about coherence and congruence, you know, in presence, I mean, people know when we’re not fully present, because there’s something out of alignment, we’re not really attending to what’s in front of us or people. And so being able to zero in on the physical aspects of a pause and sense myself feel myself allows me to be more present with you, you and the team, however that goes. So there’s, it’s definitely you can’t separate it one from another. And I think that if we really want to have a catalytic way of working with people, we need to zero into the body right away, because that’s the quickest way to be in the moment is to zero in on the physical sensations.

Sue Bethanis 12:21
So I mean, typically in meditation, we think about focusing on the breath, that’s the way I know to get to focusing on the body, so that we can get present. And I also, in that, I believe that in order to be able to do that you have had to have meditated. It doesn’t mean have to meditate every day. But you have had to have meditated to know what it feels like to get attentive. How is mindful pausing? Is it is it meditation? Is it breathing? Like, how is that different or similar to what Thich Nhat Hanh talks about is in terms of insight meditation?

Chris Johnson 12:59
Yeah, I think it’s not different and it’s very different, and here’s the distinction. So the not different part is that it’s bringing attention to the moment. The different part is that today, and the reason that I wrote the book, there are many reasons I wrote it, but one is because I needed to read the darn thing. So to share it with people is really that I’m going to be intentional about bringing my attention to the moment at work, and not just in the rest of my life. So having taught mindfulness for a long time, many people are like, I’m going to go away from work, so that I can practice this thing called mindfulness, or do some reflection. And actually, the call to action in this book is bring it to work, and you can practice it here in tiny doses. So I describe in the book, different kinds of pauses, different lengths, to get us started, it is very much about interrupting the automaticity of our mental mind to be totally present. So it’s the same and it’s not, it’s really zeroing in on work and how to do it at work.

Sue Bethanis 14:08
What is the automaticity? That’s a good word.

Chris Johnson 14:12
Yeah. That’s a mouthful, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, those habits of mind about how

Sue Bethanis 14:20
No, no, I know what you mean that just never put those all that all that together? Yeah.

Chris Johnson 14:24
Yeah. I had to learn a new word to write about it. Right. Exactly.

Sue Bethanis 14:30
Take us through, like you just mentioned there, like there’s different lengths and different types of pauses. Give us some examples, and maybe we could practice.

Chris Johnson 14:38
Oh, yeah, I’d love to practice. So one of the guys and actually I see Lin on the call. I know she knows Rand Sagan and I do some work with Rand. I talked about Rand in the book. He was a little bit of a case study, he talks about a micro pause like just catching himself, which is a phrase I write a lot about in the book, How to catch ourselves, being ourselves in the moment and having the micro pause. So before you pick up the phone, when it rings, before you open the door to leave just a momentary micro pause on purpose, then there might be a longer pause, I’m going to take a 10 minute break at work and I’m going to go into a quiet space, and I’m going to just sit and start to notice my breath. Or I’m going to sit and notice what’s all around me. Maybe I’m sitting outside like I was right before I came up for this call, and was listening to the birds kind of feeling the breeze, noticing the sensations and just like noticing just for the sake of noticing, right. I’m on a vacation now with my mom, which is a planned longer pause. And it’s like, I’m not going to do much of anything on this break. But I really want to be with my mom and I wanted to look at gardens and I want to be all about the gardening. So that’s a certain kind of pause. We can talk about sabbaticals those can be longer. So pause is kind of, you know, expansive, and it can contract. But it’s a super useful, you can carry it anywhere you want, kind of practice to become fully present in the moment. Does that help?

Sue Bethanis 16:11
Yeah, yeah, that’s great, great examples, in my experience with mindfulness, I studied at Spirit Rock quite a bit. Nice. Yeah, I haven’t done it a long time. I haven’t been there on time. Because I think once I had my kid, which was 17 years ago, going there and having to put my phone away just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work for me, you know, it’s like I need to be able to be on call. So I just choose not to do that. But I’m sure somebody could convince me otherwise. But maybe now I could as I’m getting older. I want to go back to what I said before, I don’t believe that, I don’t want to make it a negative, I believe that, in order for us to be able to do the micro pauses, you have to have had some sort of metitations so you even know what it feels like to feel present in that way so that you can actually access it. Because without knowing how it feels, it’s hard to access those micro. So tell me your opinion about that.

Chris Johnson 17:06
I would say I respectfully probably disagree. And here’s the thing. Yeah, so for those of us who have chosen to follow a mindfulness practice, we have a fair bit of experience about like, what is this thing called a pause. But you know, anybody and I’m convinced of this, especially with a lot of the folks I’ve worked with over the years, one of them I write about in the book, Paul, he was a happened to be a Vietnam veteran. And at the time I met him, meditation was the furthest thing from his mind, he had seen active duty combat, lost some people, did some things there that, you know, he didn’t want to talk about, like a lot of them. But by the time I met him, he’s an entrepreneur, building a business and very much one of those driven characters. And when I first met him, he couldn’t sleep a full night. In fact, he hadn’t slept since Vietnam through a whole night. And so he wanted me to promise that I could help him and I’m like, you know, I don’t think so. I know, I can promise that if you practice what I’m talking about, you will have something happen. And so we started very rudimentary, like noticing when you breathe in through your nose, and you breathe out through your mouth, and then starting to just follow the breath. He got it. And he taught me, right, I’m supposed to be teaching him but he’s teaching me he taught me like, Yeah, you don’t have to start off right away full on committed, you can use your own natural expression, and I believe, Thich Nhat Hanh talked about that, too, just following the breath, you know, following your feet in a walking meditation. So I think people have more capacity than we think. But we’ve also made mindfulness kind of a out there like a subspecialty thing. And it’s kind of about being alive. I’ll just say it’s kind of about being alive and

Sue Bethanis 17:21
Breathing , you know, just being very simple about just noticing your nostrils. And that to me is how you get present is you notice something about your body. So the easiest to me, the easiest way to notice something about your body is your breathing. And it’s just rather than like feeling a tingling or whatever feeling, it’s just you have to breathe. So yeah, you know, so notice it, and that can get you. I kind of think of it as like a you know, I don’t even know how you spell it. Like you’re just over it. You’re over here and you’re – Yes. So I’m going to open up the line. Anyone have a question so far? About the mindful pausing?

Chris Johnson 19:50
Well, and can I just say hello to some of these folks I know like Lynn and Romi and Steve, thanks so much for coming today and joining in this I’d love to see your mugs. Send. Hi, Romi. Hi, Steve, nice to see you guys, I’m so glad you have a question. This is a great time to ask guys.

Steve 20:13
A struggle that I have is seeing, you know, members of our team struggling with stress, particularly during the pandemic. And not being able to coach them to think about mindfulness as a tool to help them adjust. It’s, for whatever reason, it’s not in there, something that’s on their mind. And I find it very difficult to encourage folks to try and pick up this habit to deal with stress, even as I see it real literally destroying their lives.

Chris Johnson 20:49
So your question is,

Steve 20:51
How do you open their minds to have this conversation as as a boss, frankly, it’s somebody sort of accused me of it to say brainwashing is taking it too far. But right, well, you know, I don’t need this stuff yet. I literally see you putting on pounds every week, and yelling at people and recognizing that you’re having a tough time right now. I struggled with that.

Chris Johnson 21:18
Yeah. No, I don’t think you’re alone. You know, what I would say to that is, I’m a pretty hands on kind of gal. So if you were to come in my office, and you were crabby, and etc, I might say, Steve, Hey, would you? What’s up? You know, do you have a minute, you sound like you’re agitated? Yeah, I’m agitated. I think when you want to try something, I’m all about the experiment. And I would probably say, let’s just do a little experiment. And I’ve asked people to engage in a practice, kind of like Sue said, maybe we could practice together. Because when people are really stressed out, what we tend to do is more of the same stuff. So if I overeat, I’ll probably overeat. If I scream, I might scream more. Sometimes people shut down instead, those are similar, not similar to each other, but their frequent reactions to stress. So part of the pause is like, let’s just take a moment and see if there’s another alternative to the habit way that we react. And I might actually say, hey, let’s do this. So I’ll do it right now. Let’s do it. So I would say to all of you, let’s just sit up nice and tall. So you want to feel your tailbone in your chair, if you’re sitting in a chair, if you’re standing at one of those cool standing desks, just find your find your tailbone. And let’s just take a moment. And we’ll go with what Sue said first, because I think that’s right breath is something that’s both conscious and unconscious. It’s available to us all the time. So let’s tune into the breath here with just our attention. And you might want to close your eyes. Let’s see if you can notice where breath is most vibrant for you. Is it at your nostril? Is it at your chest? Do you notice it in your ears. And just allow yourself to take a moment or two to really just follow the circular nature of an in breath. And a little bit longer out breath. Let’s do that for just a little bit longer. And as you exhale out this next time, let the breath kind of fall to the background. And then bring your attention to what it feels like to sit on your chair. So feeling your seat or your feet if you’re standing and tune into gravity holding you in your place and then with your next outbreath allowing that too to fall to the back. And then just simply sitting here for a moment. Probably noticing some thoughts come in. Let them come in and then let them go. There’s no need to follow them right now. And you might have to do that 100 times and that’s just perfect. And then take one last breath on purpose and on your outbreath come back here with your attention. I’d love to hear specially Sue or Romi. But anybody else? What did you notice just in that very short sitting, what did you notice in yourself in your physical experience?

Romi 25:23
Stillness. And to be just at peace, relaxing, and getting my attention to where the breath is helps me to stop a little bit my thoughts and when I became aware of thoughts again, just to let them again, go to again focus like an exercise to come back to the breathing again. This is this is like the beat what I felt or what happens to me.

Chris Johnson 26:06
Got it. So thanks Romi when you said that peace was that? Uh huh. Psychological sensor? Did you feel a peace in your body? Or both?

Romi 26:21
Maybe this peace refers to a connection with me. Yes, maybe that is what I am trying to express. We’re using the word peace.

Chris Johnson 26:37
Thank you. How about you? Sue what do you got?

Sue Bethanis 26:40
What I got. Yeah, definitely relaxing, grounding. Got me here more. But you know, my I have a monkey mind for sure. Like I’m always thinking about stuff. So thinking about the palm trees that were on the side of the road that I’m sure people picked up. Yeah. So we’ve had a lot of wind. So there’s palm leaves everywhere. So that’s what I was going to, then I had to try to come back.

Chris Johnson 27:11
Got it. Thanks. How about you, Steve, I saw you come back. And my question was, what did you notice with that short little practice?

Steve 27:20
It just always helps me very slow the heart rate, relax the mind, slow them. For me, the biggest thing is slowing the mind down. And especially right now. And I’ve got two things going on at the same time, unfortunately. And but it’s a wonderful feeling. And something I wish I’d known about before the pandemic I had to learn during the pandemic made me a better executive for sure.

Chris Johnson 27:47
Well, you know, it’s interesting, your question, because I think the tendency for many is to try to think our way into responding differently. And we actually have to feel our way into it. So so your question about, gosh, if somebody doesn’t have a mindfulness practice, can they do this? I would say yes. And if you’re willing, if we’re willing to like, take somebody by the hand, and like, hey, let’s just sit for a second. Or sometimes I’ll go on a walk with people. And then we slow down the walk a little bit, and we bring our attention to the breath, and the walk, things like that give people a different felt experience. And then they’re a little bit more willing to try something else. And otherwise, they just think you’re nuts. And then it’s like, okay, you think I’m nuts anyway, so that’s fine. And I can live with that. But if people really want to, like, do something different, it’s a great way to help people shift. It doesn’t have to be super big. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 28:47
Right, which is important, because they will, willy nilly and out there. Yeah,

Chris Johnson 28:51
exactly. Exactly.

Lynn 28:53
I’ll jump in just a little bit. As, as a biologist, scientist, someone was asking, how do you before how do you I’m gonna use my word. You didn’t You didn’t say this legitimize get get an opening for this, but I often talk about you changing your nervous system when you take a deep breath. That’s right, literally. And then I give a little tiny, tiny little explanation of the two kinds of nervous systems. That gets people’s attention. And, you know, I’ll say the phrase, take a deep breath, as has become trite. And there’s actually a biological reason.

Chris Johnson 29:38
That’s right. That’s a really great point, Lynne, thanks for bringing that up. Because when we marry that little bit of neurobiology and like, Hey, you can shift your nervous system. Oh, by the way, you can shift your mood and your energy too, here’s how, take a breath and all of those things together, people will respond. So thanks for putting that fine point on that. That’s important, for sure. And for that matter, Lynn, do you do this practice with your people too that you’re working with?

Lynn 30:06
Well, I do. As you know Chris, we, in our leadership work, this is a major part of our leadership work. And with a goal of instilling a practice after practicing with us for a year, we give them like, as you pointed out, varying opportunities, varying experiences with different leaders, I mean, instructors and coaches of the ways we lead them through and it’s usually done, I do it like, as you do in session often as a together. So it’s everything from the quick, deep breath to a longer, longer centering, and we have language for it, right? We have some language that fits into the executive suite. We call it recalibration, and I share that across different kinds of clients, and it’s a winner. You put it that way, and I heard you say game ready. Game readiness? Yeah. Take it back to the sports analogy, people Oh, okay. Be performance ready.

Chris Johnson 31:21
Right. And I want to learn how to deal with pressure more effectively, right, that language a lot, like I just can’t handle the pressure, I seem overwhelmed, I can’t admit that I’m overwhelmed. So then it’s like, Oh, if we give you some practices of different bite size qualities, then we can help you cultivate your resilience and deal with pressure a little bit more effectively. I think that part of the point is to not mystify what a simple pause can do just to state with clarity that it’s a very powerful practice on a short scale and a much more comprehensive scale, should one want to take it up as a practice.

Sue Bethanis 32:04
You know, before the pandemic there were natural pauses in between meetings, because people had to walk from one meeting to another, and that’s taken away now. So it means that people have to context switch really quickly. Yes, sometimes they’re going to meeting that, you know, that flows into another one and similar, but many times, they’re not many times they have to like completely shift. So what are some ideas that people can use to do that to context switch to move from one thing to another? If they’re angry about something and somebody having to move into something else to be up?

Chris Johnson 32:34
There’s a whole lot in that question. In terms of shifting, though, one of the things is to shorten your meetings, make them really effective, have more much more effective, efficient meetings to get work done. And to declare the kind of meeting it is, is this a getting done meeting? Is this a brainstorming meeting? Are we working on innovation? You know, are we doing a plan? What kind of meeting is it? So that’s one thing. The other thing that I talk to people a lot about is you need to be up and moving. Somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes, you have to get up. And you just have to get up. There’s a lot of research talking about the biology of getting up and moving. Literally moving our bodies getting water, that alone can make such a difference in terms of context shifting. So those two things right away. And then I teach people often a centering pause. So this would be akin to the recalibration that Lynn’s talking about but it might just be, I just want to align literally what I’m thinking with what I’m feeling about the situation at hand. And then my capacity to take action in my body. And those three things could take like, I’m just going to center, lift up my vertical spine, take a couple of deep breaths and shift gears, that alone can help us context shift from one to another. But you have to do it intentionally. Right. It’s not just gonna happen on its own. Usually.

Sue Bethanis 34:08
Yeah, I can’t emphasize that more and more in terms of how important is to get up because we’re literally like sitting in our desks, like, eight hours. I mean, I don’t do it very often, because when I have clients, I’m probably doing it, you know, two to three hours a day at the most, and I go play pickleball in the middle of day, on purpose, but so when the days I do have to be like just last few days, I was in a conference all week, or I mean all day, and that was a different kind of intensity, like just being on I can’t believe I used to do that all the time. Totally out of practice to do that. So that’s one kind of intensity. The other one is to sit at your desk for eight hours and there’s people that are doing it for 10. Like they get up eight o’clock, they’re not done till six and they’re like that’s what they’re doing. They go to the bathroom. That’s it. Yeah, I just, I don’t know how they’re doing that. Well, that’s not the way that was before the pandemic, because at least they got to get up and go to the next meeting.

Chris Johnson 35:09
Quite frankly, no disrespect intended to anyone, they’re probably not doing it as well as they think they are. Because we can only concentrate for such a period of time and the brain requires a little refresh with the glucose, we use tons of glucose to concentrate. And if we don’t get up and move, eat something, hydrate, all of that, that really helps. Going back to the biology that Lynn was talking about where biological creature, so we need to just like, hey, I need to get up and go and move. One of the upsides I think, from the pandemic is a fair bit of permission that I see like people, like we’d prefer, you’re on camera, but if you can’t be, you know, go take care of what you need to and come back. And in some ways, treating people a lot more like they’re adults, like, I’ll take care of myself, if I need to have a little break, and then come back, which I find to be a positive upside. I don’t know what you think.

Sue Bethanis 36:07
I agree. And I think also, like people are taking some of my classes, hey, I want to take this with me on the phone, and go on a walk, great. Let’s do it. I can take notes you don’t have to take notes. So I think that I encourage that, and encourage them to do that with their teams. So it’s a little less casual. If they are meeting with the customer? Probably not. So like, take the meetings with their teams on, you know, in the forest. My case, it’ll be on the beach tomorrow. So, yeah, I can’t emphasize that more. I really can’t I just, we need to get up and out. I mean, I my whole emphasis on people is to be outside. Yeah, like I don’t care when, but you got to be outside once or twice a day, like at least. And I think that’s hard for people.

Chris Johnson 36:53
I think it is hard for people. It kind of goes back to the choicefulness, though, right? Like, do we want to be in react mode? So life is coming at us, work in our leadership roles coming at us? Or do we want to be a choice about how we respond to the situation? And, you know, one of the questions you asked, and I wrote about is this notion of triggers. So Steve was kind of talking about it. So somebody’s like, triggered, they’re angry, or they’re gaining weight, maybe they’re sitting too much. You know, Triggers are beautiful things. And most of us like, we get triggered, it’s like, I want to hit somebody or I want to scream, or I’m gonna go have that doughnut or something. But really a trigger is an opportunity to like, Oh, something I care about is getting affected. So it might be my identity, it might be my comfort level, it might be that we have different political views about something. But a trigger brings us into the moment super quickly, often negatively, although it doesn’t have to be negative, but often, and it’s an opportunity, like, Oh, what do I really care about? Oh, do I care about this team? And I’m really irritated with Steve on my team. And yet, you know, he might have something worthwhile to say if I can get past myself to listen to that. So like, could I just take a pause to like, Oh, I’m gonna listen to him. So triggers to me are the way in to a lot of the depth work that many of us on this call like to do that I like to say, I prefer to play in the deep end of the pool, where there’s a lot of transformational work and triggers will get us there every time if we can learn to pause and be with them and unpack them.

Sue Bethanis 38:46
Yeah, it’s so difficult. I have a 17 year old so you can imagine how much triggering that is. Yeah, I mean, like all the time. It’s amazing it’s like not all the time, but some of the time, I’ll say to myself, I know there’s something I supposed to learn from this. So that’s one way for me to deal with the trigger is to Okay, another learning, okay, so let’s just to be able to be on the outside of it. Otherwise, it’s so easy to be just so in it. But it’s hard to do that when you’re in it, to say to yourself, What am I supposed to learn from this? You’re not, you’re already triggered. You’re already like, so. So what I talked about is that you have to get to the other side of it very quickly, so that you can reflect on it, even though it might take five seconds, or it might take five minutes. But you’ve got to get out you got to get out of the amygdala so you can get to the reflection of it, or you prevent it, you can anticipate and prevent it. So, yeah, so I think but these are hard to do. God, they’re hard.

Chris Johnson 39:51
They’re really hard. And one of the stories I tell in the book is about this guy that was a trainer years ago. that I worked with his name is Todd. He’s an amazing kind of experiential outdoor trainer guy. And we’re with this large scale engagement we were on, we had 200 CEO and C suite leaders together in a merger situation. And he was doing some interesting kind of experiential work with a beach ball. And you can imagine all sorts of things with that. But one of the things that Todd said is he’s like, you know, you have to, there was a game that we’re playing, it’s like you have to catch yourself doing the thing you do in order to do it differently. And that phrase really stuck with me like, we have to catch ourselves being ourselves. Like we all have a tendency to react in a particular way. Yeah, maybe we have a small repertoire. But you know, we have our go to things. Irritation, and impatience is just one of mine. I’ll tell you straight away. And so if I can catch that, like, as it starts to go, then maybe I can divert traffic. And I have inevitably, a pause is involved, right. So I’m on vacation, I just mentioned that my mother made part of the arrangements. We were supposed to stay in a place for four days. And we realized yesterday that the reservation she made was for three. And it was 10 o’clock at night. And we had no place to stay tonight. And I could feel the ‘I can’t believe this mom.’ And it was like, hold on, just wait a second. Nobody’s gonna die if we make a reservation over at this other place. But I could feel it. And I could, there were little stories starting to happen. And it was like, Okay, how do you want to show up, Chris? Catch yourself. You’re being impatient. How do you want to show up? Those kinds of opportunities happen all day long. Oh, yeah. Right. Obviously with family. Yeah. Especially with family. So if you can catch yourself with your 17 year old like I caught myself with my mom, then. Then you it’s, it’s a part of a practice, right?

Sue Bethanis 39:51
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the families are always good. Well, this has been lovely. Any last advice you have for us? You know, strategies to integrate. For the folks on the call.

Chris Johnson 42:19
I would say be willing to practice, be really curious. Mistakes are your friend, so if you feel like you made a mistake, like my mom was beating herself up, I’m like you made a mistake. It happens. Be willing to have the human. Just be willing to be human, practice the pause. It will be your friend, however you choose to take it. That’s what I’d say. Thanks Sue, appreciate it.

Sue Bethanis 42:45
Sure. I want to just remind everybody about the book Leadership Pause: Sharpen your Attention, Deepen Your Presence and Navigate the Future. You can find Chris at Q4-consulting.com. You can also find her on LinkedIn at Dr. Chris Johnson. Well, Happy spring break everyone. Happy spring. And we need spring. We do need spring. So we’ll see you next time. And again, Chris, thank you so much for all your wisdom today. Appreciate it.

Chris Johnson 43:18
Take care. Ciao.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Gustavo Razzetti, a workplace culture expert and the CEO/Founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, Razzetti has helped leaders from Fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits, and everything in between on every continent but Antarctica.

Gustavo is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas, a framework used by thousands of teams and organizations across the world to map, assess, and design their culture. In addition to his consulting work with clients, Gustavo regularly speaks with leaders and teams about culture change, teamwork, and hybrid workplaces. His coaching and tools have helped countless executives and teams develop work environments where people collaborate to accelerate individual and collective performance.

A prolific writer and author of four books on culture change, most recently Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace, Gustavo’s insights have been featured in The New York Times, Psychology Today, Forbes, BBC, and Fortune, among others.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

We dive into a deeper conversation around company culture and how it has evolved these past few years. Gustavo defines culture as much more than just how we act and behave. He explains that it is also formed by the mindsets and emotions that we bring to the workplace and that a strong culture is built on a foundation of purpose, core values, and behaviors that are rewarded and punished. He emphasizes the importance of creating a psychologically safe environment where people can do their best work without fear of criticism and utilizing feedback to learn and grow from each other. He provides further insight and examples of how to create strong and thriving cultures within any company dynamic, whether in person, remote, or hybrid.

Some key take-aways from this talk:

• Gustavo explains the 5 steps of his Anywhere/Anytime Culture roadmap which outlines how to reset culture and reframe what it used to be to what it could become, to create a shared future and a shared purpose. To achieve this, he emphasizes creating a sense of belonging while rethinking collaboration, to produce authentic connection and promote productivity. (7:38)
• He also provides some amazing examples of how to have effective check-ins by utilizing metaphors with your team, such as asking them ‘how the weather was’ for them in the last week, or ‘how charged is their battery’, which provides an opportunity to share their feelings in a way that isn’t so touchy-feely, but directly speaks to their emotions. (14:17)
• We discussed that rather than forcing games or activities to foster connection, a better idea is to allow individuals to create groups around shared interests or passions to support authentic connection. Gustavo points out that too much structure can hinder connection, it causes resistance, but providing opportunities for people to connect organically will foster more authentic relationships. (9:52, 16:43)
• On collaboration in remote and hybrid settings, Gustavo offers a few pieces of advice to create productive teamwork without over-forcing synchronous collaboration. He encourages managers and leaders to open the conversation to their team to communicate what works best for them, their preferences, and how they perform best to provide individuals with a sense of agency. It’s important to give team members control of their time to manage their own asynchronous productivity and schedule time for team-based collaboration. (15:44, 34:27, 38:10)

Overall, Gustavo provides some very helpful insights and tips on producing a culture based on authentic connection and collaboration. He specifically notes that leaders who are taking the time to do weekly one on one check-ins are thriving within remote and hybrid settings, as are those who support organic connection within their teams. While some companies are forcing behavior and making drastic changes, Gustavo encourages taking the time to shift things progressively, giving opportunities for new habits and mindsets to form to create a lasting impact. The world of remote and hybrid work is here to stay and it’s time to adapt rather than resist the change.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“The pandemic wasn’t just a hiatus or a parenthesis, it was an accelerator of things that were already progressing, and people adapted really well. It was painful, we suffered a lot. But in the end, people started to figure out new ways of working. There are companies that are learning from that, they are taking that experience into their portfolio, into an advantage. And there are companies that are acting in denial, forgetting all that learning and trying to get back to normal, but normal is gone.” (5:50)

“It is about understanding what used to work and what wasn’t working before the pandemic and also what have we learned with the pandemic. And how can we reconcile both aspects?” (7:38)

“The managers that have been able to have a 1-1 on a weekly basis with their team members thrive. And those should be optional. So put it on the calendar, if there’s something that you want to discuss, do it, if not, skip it and see you next week.” (18:57)

“One of the biggest enemies of productivity is other people. So, in order for you to be productive, you need to be in charge of how you spend your time.” (38:10)

RESOURCES

Gustavo Razzetti:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is our monthly Leadership Forum. We’ve been doing it for a long time, every month, and it’s still fresh. We’re really excited to have Gustavo Razzetti here today. You’re the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, Gustavo has helped leaders from Fortune 500, startups, nonprofits and everything in between, on every continent but Antarctica, okay, give you that. That’s great. He’s also the creator of the culture design canvas, a framework used by 1000s of teams and organizations across the world to map assess and design a culture. That sounds awesome. In addition to his consulting work with clients, Gustavo was a sought out speaker and best-selling author of four books, including the recent Remote, Not Distant, a roadmap to build a strong culture for remote and hybrid teams. His work on innovation, culture, and change leadership has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Fortune, and Psychology Today. Welcome, Gustavo, thank you so much for being with us today. Appreciate it.

Gustavo Razzetti 1:22
Absolutely. Thank you, Sue, for hosting me very excited to be here.

Sue Bethanis 1:26
Okay, thank you. I always ask the same question to start, because it’s sort of a hallmark of our show, I just read your very nice bio. But I’m more interested to find out about your journey and how you decided to write this particular book, you’ve obviously written other books, but this particular book, it’s clear from obviously the world we’re in why you wrote it, but how did you decide on the title, and how you came to this? And so talk to us a little about your journey.

Gustavo Razzetti 1:57
Absolutely, I think on one hand, like it happened to most people, in case we forgot, the world hit us. And we have this pandemic, early 2020, I was planning to a global tool to give a masterclass on cultural design. So I was planning to go to different cities in the US, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, everything was set even though people have been starting to purchase tickets, and so on and so forth. And then the world collapsed. So I have to quickly rethink my business model, also what to do with people that are expecting me. So I started adapting all my programs and stuff into virtual, but like four months, of course, a lot of work that I do is consulting so I have to start working with clients in projects that were already in place, but most important people say, hey, we have our teams working remotely, what are we going to do now? At the very beginning, it was more like a band-aid. So hey, maybe this is going to take one week, two weeks a month, you know, how people reacted thinking that this was gonna go away. But then there was a problem.

Sue Bethanis 3:03
Yeah.

Gustavo Razzetti 3:04
So at some point, I had to play two roles. One of the roles that I used to play and which clients hire me for but on the other hand, I had to help them navigate this new world, what I learned from previous experience, but also the experiments I was doing for my own business to my clients. So in the end, after over two years, helping companies deal with this pain of okay, we need to collaborate differently, we need to make sure that we can build connection, we need to understand that Zoom is not the problem it’s our company culture. So basically, this camera, this technology, are amplifying the issues. And at some point, people say, hey, you’ve been writing a lot of articles, you work with lots of company, why don’t you write a book. And it was a person that took on one of our programs also as a client, and I say, Well, why not? And that’s why I started writing a book, to share everything I learned. But most importantly, it’s not like a recipe, it’s more like a framework to help people rethink their culture. That’s basically the main one, the driver, don’t get stuck, and give them tools frameworks to rethink the culture they have also embraced technology or distant or distance become an excuse for stop building your culture.

Sue Bethanis 4:23
I get it. And this is, I think, rapid because culture is what, you know, I want to hear your definition, but the way I look at it is, you know, culture is the way things are around here. And there’s no here so there’s no there. So we have to redefine what the here is. And we have to redefine what it is. So tell me what you think culture is. And then how do we look at it a bit different now because we can’t touch it. And there’s not artifacts like there used to be right?

Gustavo Razzetti 4:58
Absolutely. You needed culture is the way we do things here. But what’s here, and it’s not just the way we behave, but it’s also the mindsets and the emotions that come to play. And it’s important because behavior is influenced and shaped, by the way we feel, but also the mindsets companies use. And a lot of companies started adopting this mindset of ‘hey, it’s impossible to build culture remotely’ and things like, ‘Oh, our culture is suffering, because people are distributed’. What I always said is look at Gallup, and other surveys before the pandemic, the numbers were to curse here, but they were pathetic. You know. So engagement on culture and team building and belonging and productivity. People were suffering from those before the pandemic, right?

Sue Bethanis 5:48
It was already a problem, right?

Gustavo Razzetti 5:50
So the pandemic simply, unbelief I was, was already there. Rather than say, ‘Hey, guys, maybe we’re weren’t doing such a good job.’ We started blaming zoom or blaming distance, subliminal stuff, instead of taking care of the culture. And I think that one of the most important issues that came to light is trust. So many leaders were not trusting their employees. When the pandemic started, they didn’t have a choice, it basically was the only option. They have to let people work from home because of health issues and regulations and fear and et cetera. But then what’s happening now that they have the option to choose many leaders are trying to force people back into the office. And I think this is important to understand that the pandemic wasn’t just a hiatus or a parenthesis, it was an accelerator of things that were already progressing and people adapted really well. It was painful, we suffered a lot. But in the end, people start to figure out new ways of working. There are companies that are learning from that, they are taking that experience into their portfolio, into an advantage. And there are companies that are acting on denial, forgetting all that learning and trying to get back to normal, but normal is gone. That train departed, and we’re never going to catch it.

Sue Bethanis 7:13
Right, exactly. So um, so from your reading, and from what you just talked about, I’m hearing you say that culture is the behaviors. So when we’re thinking about having hybrid cultures, or you call it anywhere/anytime, culture, so talk with us a little about like, what that looks like, what are the steps that you call a roadmap, like, what does that look like?

Gustavo Razzetti 7:38
Yeah, I think it’s important. You make a good point, which is the conversation when it comes to remote teams, or hybrid teams, you talk on the title of this, talk about also global teams, it’s still stuck on the location, so we work from the office or not. And that’s the thing, it’s an obstacle because the hybrid and the magic of collaboration in a remote environment. It’s not just our location, where do we work from as a team, but it’s also about having skill, flexibility, and also, team members having the freedom to define how they want to work. So the roadmap to get there starts by resetting or reframing what culture used to be. So it’s not that the past culture was wrong and then the post pandemic was good, or either way around. It is about understanding what used to work and what wasn’t working before the pandemic and also what have we learned with the pandemic. And how can we reconcile both aspects? It includes different steps in terms of we need to redefine, where are we working together? Many companies don’t have a future, a shared future, like a purpose, or things that we want to accomplish, that’s important. And then, only then, we can take a look at how can we keep that glue, the sense of belonging alive despite of working remotely, maybe we see each other once a week or maybe once a month, or once a quarter, but how do we keep the people connected? And then the other two steps have to rethink how we collaborate. There are different ways of collaboration, we need to start thinking about a syncer of collaboration, not just synchro. So mix of both how can we make decisions in distributed teams to make sure that we adapt fast and we move fast as well.

Sue Bethanis 9:23
So let’s talk about the sense of belonging first, cause I’m with you on that. I’m an advocate and a flag bearer for keeping a sense of belonging, keeping the sense of connection to our teams. So tell me a little bit about how you coach teams to do that.

Gustavo Razzetti 9:52
There are many ways to do it, it all depends on where each team is, right. I think that first of all, we need to understand what we mean by belonging. So some people understand that what we need to create is a friendship or bonding and that stuff. When we talk about belonging, it’s people, because we’re social creatures, we need to feel that we are accepted by the team, which we’re part of, we know that we are tribal, since we started hunting many centuries ago, we realize that the best way to not only survive, but to thrive is we are part of a group. So unconsciously, we’re always asking these questions ‘Do I belong?’ So basically, I’m not being accepted by my colleagues. And that’s what we need to work on. I’m accepted first as a human being, and then as a professional, so that includes accepting me on a personal level, and then how I think, what are my ideas, what are my perspectives. So depending on where the teams are, there are two things that are important. During the pandemic, many companies started to make time for personal connection, right? It was maybe check-in rounds before a meeting, maybe icebreakers. What I say is, forget about the icebreakers those are gone, that now people are getting tired of having, like fun little activities to just do something, basically, because the lack of purpose, however, check ins are really important. And people have lost, they have become like, maybe you need to change how you do it. Checking in before you kick off a meeting. If you see your colleagues once a week, twice, you need to make sure that people are connected. So that’s very important.

Sue Bethanis 11:34
I want to stop you because I think I we could do nothing else this whole time, and just talk about check ins and probably doing ourselves a service because I’m sure I’m gonna hear new things about your check ins and vice versa. And certainly, for everyone else, I actually, I think this is key. So I don’t want to be lost, I want you to tell me, and the group like, what do you see as good check ins like, I have like a list of 10 different ways to check in, I want to hear yours. What are some ways that you’d like to check in?

Gustavo Razzetti 12:08
First of all, what’s important is that every company needs to experiment and see what works for your team. So there’s no like good or bad. But there are certain practices, right? I think that metaphors work really well. So we use one check in that is what was the weather like for you the past week? So basically, was it Sunny, foggy, rainy, and windy, whatever. Yeah, or a mix of both. First that allows people to connect with your emotions without having to talk about emotions. Some people, I have engineers that say, Hey, I don’t have emotions. Well, that’s a separate conversation. And also, it removes the touchy feely that some people resist, right? In the case of the weather, what’s really good for people is that also connects that our change and our mood and the way we feel changes. And that’s also a good reminder that it’s not, we cannot expect to have a sunny day, every day, right?

Sue Bethanis 13:09
I love that

Gustavo Razzetti 13:12
There’s other check ins that we do this a basically a silence. So basically, I allow people to have one or two minutes of silence, no one talks. And it’s just to settle down because one of the purposes of check ins is to transition from as you mentioned, at the very beginning, I had a call with a client, so you need some time to maybe capture notes from that call or maybe it was good to celebrate the moment if it was a tough call to

Sue Bethanis 13:39
clear my space. Plenty to do yes. Right. Yeah, that’s true. It’s true. I think that the check in serves the purpose of transition. Because what was we obviously we found out what Zoom is this, like, there was no breaks, people are just going from one call to the other. And at least, you know, when we were in offices, we could walk from one place to another so we’re getting some exercise. We’re getting a break. We might talk to somebody on the way there was some lingering so that went away. So that’s why the check in serves a lot of purposes but I love the idea of silence, I love the idea of weather, what others do you want to share?

Gustavo Razzetti 14:18
There’s others you see like a thermometer basically or like a battery as an image to see. How’s your battery, is it charged? Is it empty? Charging is empty. Yeah, metaphors for people to talk about how are they doing this addresses topics from workload, burnout, emotions, or maybe they’re upset or there’s some friction within the team members. And you can know when you see that thermometer like finally is about to explode because so, it’s a good point. But once again, it’s about transitioning from one state to the other. So we can put aside what was worrying us and we can focus on the meeting.

Sue Bethanis 15:00
Well, I just said, I love these metaphors. And I love the idea of a check in. So I interrupted you. So I want you to keep going. So you talked about there’s other ways to think about belonging and connection. So keep going.

Gustavo Razzetti 15:09
No, you didn’t interrupt. Let’s chat. That’s what we’re here for. Yeah. So another thing that we use for belonging that’s really, really good. It’s, we create like a tool, a canvas that’s called washing instructions, the same way that your clothes come without labor. Indicates how do you want to be treated. You want team members to tell people how they want to be treated. Because we usually assume that hey, I’m going to show people how I like but people are different

Sue Bethanis 15:40
diamond method, I love it.

Gustavo Razzetti 15:44
Basically captured the do’s and don’ts, communication preferences, are you a night owl or a early riser? Different type of stuff to make sure people can engage. How can people engage with you? What are the topics they can reach out to you for help?

Sue Bethanis 16:03
What are you good at?

Gustavo Razzetti 16:04
What are you good at? I don’t think that’s important is because we will say, Well, if we only capture people’s preferences, this is going to create like a tension or it’s like, and that’s not the purpose first week to understand our clicks and then we need to start finding some common grounds, okay. You like to work 6am, I’d like to work at 10pm. We know. And then we need to find some collaboration time and stuff, too. So it’s a good starting point, to understand your colleagues and then find ways in which we can complement each other.

Sue Bethanis 16:36
Well, and also in that situation, especially with global teams is like, you know, somebody who’s raising really early on the west coast will complement somebody on the East Coast pretty well. So it’s good to know, it’s good to know that stuff. Yeah, I love that. Okay. Anything else you want to add as far as the belonging as connection sort of throwing them together?

Gustavo Razzetti 16:53
No, I think those are the most important just to get started. Like, there are tools that will, there are many other tools, and we can share with the audience later. But in the end, whatever you use it’s important that is meaningful. So don’t try to find fun activities. No, I think that it’s, I don’t have any issue with fun, but I think that many leaders miss the point, just hey, let’s do something to connect with people and people who Oh, another, like, memory game. Yeah, but tell the story that you don’t have I mean, groups by interest, like different interests work really well. So a lot of companies have created, like, for example, reading, like book clubs, or music groups in Slack, or sports groups, so people can stay connected with your colleagues around a passion. So it’s not something that your boss defines or defined, but actually, you know, people generate different types of groups, so they can linger and have some informal converse about things that they care about. It doesn’t matter if they’re work related or not.

Sue Bethanis 17:56
Right? One of the things that my client, one of my clients, at the very beginning of the pandemic talked about, that I have spread the news about is this idea of lingering and, you know, to me, this is the biggest issue with pandemic not being able to go in the office because you know, don’t have the watercooler, you’re not walking from me to meeting, what he did is he is, you know, he has his meeting is meeting and then he’ll actually pick somebody to call, right away, on the team, so that he could linger with that person on the phone, at the least he would text somebody. So he was trying to demonstrate this idea of continuing that connection. Besides, instead of just like, moving from one thing to the other. So because you end up having like, eight transitions, that are kind of harsh, in a way. So in this case, you know, he actually would end meetings early and then linger with somebody. So what are some ideas around that, this idea of lingering, that you’ve seen?

Gustavo Razzetti 18:57
One thing that works really well is when people for example, have these virtual coffees, there are some companies that have some tools that pair people, having like buddy systems in place also helps a lot. Some people use buddy systems to immerse people into the culture. So when you’re new, they assign a buddy, that’s going to help you get acquainted with the culture. But we will be working with what we call like success buddies before the pandemic and having those relationships work really well having What’s your go to person when you’re stressed out, lost, or whatever type of help you need. So there’s someone within the company, one on ones, I mean, the managers that have been able to have a one on ones on a weekly basis with their team members thrive. And those should be optional. So put it on the calendar, if there’s something that you want to discuss, do it, if not, skip it and see you next week. One of the teams I interview for my book was from Fannie Mae, this government probably boring company, they scale of the mortgages, but they practice a couple of interesting rituals. And one of the things they do within one of their teams is that people go for a walk. And they take their pets for a walk. And they use that time to connect to talk about personal stories, what’s going on, and then maybe discuss issues in a very informal setting. And they were in a different state or city, but they’re still connected. And they allow people to do that stuff.

Sue Bethanis 20:30
Just for like a team meeting? Everyone’s just gonna walk when the team’s meeting? Got it, yeah, yeah, we really advocate that too. In fact, yesterday, one of my clients said, Hey, can I just call you on the phone? I’m gonna take a walk, I’m like, Yes, please, because she hadn’t had a break the whole day. So she went outside, you know, it’s like, I totally encourage her to do that. And I’ve actually encouraged executives to do that with their teams, individual, like, you may not be able to with a customer or, you know, a peer or whatever. But with their team members, it might might be better. So that’s great. Okay, I want to stop right now, we definitely have some people on the call here. And you’re welcome to ask a question or make a comment. So basically, we focused on culture and connection and belonging, we’re going to then move on to collaboration and communication and hybrid, especially with global teams. So we’re going to move to that. But anybody want to make a comment? Or ask a question of Gustavo? Hey, Michael.

Michael 21:21
I appreciate both of you and leading changes. So we’re, I’m both an entrepreneur, and we have a platform that helps people transform so forth. But we also have a thought leadership group pretty, pretty good one I think very diverse group of people. And we are on this subject, too. And we really appreciate trying to explore it. And I think part of it is, to me keeping it simple, right? What is some of the norms and, and some of the rules that you guys can collectively put together that basically allow people to understand, well, this is kind of what we do in order to make things happen, right. And, and so I think part of what gets lost if we try too hard of a longing or too hard connecting, it doesn’t feel authentic, right, it doesn’t feel genuine. And I think that emotional connection of really connecting on an emotional level without trying but just really being authentic. You know, when you’re connecting, right? I think we do, right? Isn’t that true? And so

Sue Bethanis 22:21
Well i think intuitively yes, we hopefully are.

Michael 22:25
Yeah. And so, you know, we do our whole development team and everything is remote. But are we friends? Yeah. And why are we? Because we naturally just talk to each other, like, we’re in the same room. And we don’t know what’s going on. And we don’t spend a lot of time overdoing it. In other words, we don’t overdo it to make sure that Oh, yes, we’re connecting, you know, I checked it off today, I check connected I connect today. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why it’s so so important. And then you can have one on ones, and so forth when you want to do it. But my part of my concern is that we’re in this redoing the culture, there’s too much left brain, you know, trying to weigh in and sort of allow And so anyway, I just like to get your observations on that.

Gustavo Razzetti 23:07
No, I think that a the key word that you just nailed Michael, it for me, it’s authenticity. And I think that once again, what we want to do is to find what’s the secret recipe, the silver bullet, and they tend to copy what other companies are doing, rather than find that something that’s going to work for them. I agree with you that people are still struggling with, well, this is remote for me. I mean, I work with people from all over the world for many decades. And they have a lot of people that our friends and we never met in person, because when we’re talking like this, we’re not saying hey, the for example, many people still say, Hey, nice to virtually meet you we need to get rid of those stupid things. I always said that there’s a fantasy, that proximity guarantees connection, and I use an example that some people take it not necessarily good, but I’m gonna share it, which is how many couples so marriages? Have you seen that yeah, they been sharing the same space, sleeping on the same bed under the same roof for decades. But there’s no magic, there’s no connection. So we need to get let go of that things are going to happen organically or just because if we put people in the same room, they’re going to love each other. That’s not going to happen, I think that we need the people do. And lastly, it’s important that we mold people so when leaders try to go back to the left brain, try to re engineer everything and make it too much structure, then people are going to resist it. We are much about involving people in the process. Let people figure it out, rather than having a top down approach to how to be human being.

Michael 24:49
Yeah, so back to your point, and I won’t keep going on here. But you’re absolutely right. I mean, how many relationships break up, either families or relationships. I mean, we’re not all that great it, right. So one of the tricks is listening, and just acknowledging without reacting to whatever the person needs to say, and just, you know, connecting again in a genuine way, not mechanically. And so, you know, I think that’s part of what I see. And we, you’re right about these meetings after meetings and meetings. Well, at some point, somebody should say, Well, what’s our norm is our norm to have meetings, after meetings, after meetings? And why are we having all these meetings? Right? And instead, you know, maybe how do we get the best work done? And what if you empower people? And so we have one of our things, just to share this, again, is that equal voice. So I have a tip reinforcing that no matter what equal voice, so you gotta voice you have want to say something that’s really important. We want to hear it. And then you really do want to hear it. You can’t just say it right. So anyway, but I really like your platform that you got Gustavo. I think the transformational thing, I think that’s a good mechanical, and I don’t know if you’re gonna get into that at all, but I saw it on your when you guys advertise this event, that’s what attracted me to come.

Sue Bethanis 26:04
Thank you, Michael. Susan. Hi.

Susan 26:06
Hi Sue. So, you know, I work with a lot of professional service firms, Gustavo, and, you know, architects, engineers, who design our built environment. And the way their process works is either young folks come up in their learning process by being, at least traditionally, in the same space, as the more experienced folks and the more experienced folks, just kind of by virtue of being co located and wandering around the same space notice when somebody is struggling with something, or working on something, and needs some coaching and whatever. So and that’s just one scenario of mentoring coaching, what my clients are saying they’re struggling a little bit with the culture. And I, you know, I appreciate everything you’re saying about that. But I think the really core thing they’re upset about is that coaching and mentoring, they can’t somehow reclaim the informal circumstances in which it occurs when people are in the same office. Yeah. So I wonder if you have some thoughts about that.

Sue Bethanis 27:25
Yeah. That’s a great question, Susan.

Gustavo Razzetti 27:27
Yeah, I’m thinking because it’s a very difficult question. I don’t think there’s a solution to that. I think there are two things. First of all, there are some things that when they happen in person, they’re better than when they have been, remotely. And there’s some things that wouldn’t happen in real time, or better than when they happen asynchronously. Right? So if we have that, I always like to think of this like a design challenge. Usually when we have a constraint, people resist it. But for example, when you have a budget or a time constraint, whatever resource constrained, you need to start thinking differently. So I think that my invitation I work with lots of companies that are in that same actually my wife is an architect, so I know. Okay, the feel and I worked over two decades in design and marketing and running advertising firms across the world. So I know how that works. But I have people that have been able that forever, they resisted if one person from the team wanted to work partially remote, they say no, that’s not going to work. And now they’re running a design firm with all the people remote. So I think that I’m not trying to say move from one to the other. What I’m seeing is, first of all, ask the question, how can we make it happen? I think that people are emphasizing that it’s not working the way used to it feels more like a complaint more that we are attached to. But Hello, at some point, people didn’t have email and when email came, people resist it. And then when the web came, so there were a lot of changes that happen in human existence that we resisted until we started thinking differently. So I think that’s the most important. So the question will be, how can we still create those mentorship opportunities despite being there.

Unknown Speaker 29:13
I love that you use the word we. Because I think, you know, maybe something that isn’t happening enough is that the people being coached and mentored aren’t necessarily being consulted, about how it could work for them. In other words, the more senior people are sitting there thinking, Oh my God, how do I redesign the process? How can I fix this, you know, but are they really engaging the folks who would be on the receiving end and figuring it out together? And I think what you said catalyzed me to think that and so I appreciate that because Gustavo, thank you.

Gustavo Razzetti 29:54
No problem. There are some things that for example, we started explaining with certain clients one is, and it feels like weird but imagine I’m going to be working doing it for hours, like, on my own because I have to do some deep work, let’s say I’m going to be designing something. So I don’t need any interruptions. However, I’m going to be working like this on Zoom, I’m on my own and designing no one’s there. But if someone wants to join, and observe me, when I’m working and see my process, they can do that. So that’s an interesting, kind of,

Sue Bethanis 30:30
like an open office. Just, it’s just open, you have zoom on all the time.

Gustavo Razzetti 30:36
Yeah, but it’s less like an office that we structure a meeting. It’s more like, hey, whenever you want to see what I’m doing, look at it. And if you want to drop in,

Sue Bethanis 30:45
yeah.

Gustavo Razzetti 30:46
So basically provding the observation, which is what you get in the office. Another thing that it’s really good is to understand that we’re not talking about either fully in the office or fully from home. It’s create spaces in which the team gets and use those for a mentoring for coaching. And as Michael was saying, that involve the team and how they want that experience to happen. Don’t do the today is coaching day, come in to the office, because it’s gonna be

Sue Bethanis 31:13
right, that’s not gonna work.

Susan 31:16
Well, thank you.

Sue Bethanis 31:18
Thanks Susan. I just want to add that my word that I continue to use is intentionality. And I think that we have to be more intentional about these more informal moments, and you have to, like be intentional about informality, which is kind of like seems like an oxymoron. But we have to be intentional about creating those mentorships. So yeah, someone’s gonna have to initiate like, can I get on your calendar once a week to talk about design or, you know, it used to be that you’re a designer, so you know, like, it used to be that designers would get together, I call it with a designer, like every Friday, at one o’clock, there was design team would get together and there would be critique, critique. And if you’re talking about industrial design, or product design, or graphic design, it’s hard to do that, you know, online, it just is. So it’s possible to have people come in on, let’s say, Wednesdays, and Fridays are probably good day to do it. But maybe you have design day on and feedback day on Friday, on Wednesdays, so that you do have a day that people come in. So they can do that. So I know you’re gonna we’re gonna get into this asynchronous and synchronous communication. But I think that’s one example. But it has to be intentional. So like, I have a client who just got a new job. And I said, Hey, are they requiring you to come in? And yes, they have to, you know, three days. And I said, Well, what about your team? He said, Well, it’s not a requirement. I said, What if what you’re going to do is, well, I think I’m gonna have them come in on Wednesdays, and he’s gonna start doing that. But he’s just starting, so he’s not gonna do it yet. But I actually do think it’s important that its not a free for all, that there is a day that everybody if you’re going to have a day that have already have everybody come in on the same day, on a team, so that there is a chance, it’s like, there’s more chance for these informalities that can happen. So they have to be planned. They do. That’s my belief about it. I want you to spend some time on this, this collaboration and communication and hybrid, especially with global. Well, I don’t think it matters if it’s global teams or not. It’s like, every team is a global team now. And I think one thing is important, especially for people who are going to be listening to this, it’s like Gustavo and I, we were in global teams, if you will, or working with clients globally, whether they’re down the street, remotely down the street, or across the world, we’ve had a lot of practice on this. And I think that that’s part of what happened three years ago, is that people hadn’t had a lot of practice. They’re much more practice now. So hopefully, people are better at doing this remote thing now, and then weren’t used to it because it takes practice. You know, it’s not something that’s normal. So I just wanted to point that out. I think that’s something like you can’t just expect people to all of a sudden become really good at remote learning, or remote communication. Or asynchronous, I should say or synchronous, either one. Alright, so I want you to talk a little about your frameworks around collaboration with the synchronous and asynchronous and how you kind of balance those.

Gustavo Razzetti 34:27
Absolutely. The first thing that we want to challenge this idea of collaboration, because we’ve been hearing from leaders, I want my team to collaborate more, collaborate more, simply say we need to drive hyper collaboration. So there’s an obsession about collaboration, especially that collaboration for many people believe it’s people in the same room all working together. And that’s chaotic because if you’re always in the same room, virtual or physical with other people, you never have time to think, you don’t have time to learn, you know, time to read, you don’t have time to do research and other stuff. So I think that what’s important is collaboration is not always at least real time all together, it’s not always the solution. And actually, there are a lot of research that shows that sometimes the cost of collaboration, it’s bigger than actually the outcome that collaboration drives, many times it gets them stuck. You’re narrowly challenged to collaborate within your team, but also cross collaboration with different functions, different markets, or products and areas and so on and so forth. So it becomes really complicated. So the framework I present is our understanding, there are two types of work that teams need to do, and individual’s need to, some is a shallow work, now day to day stuff minutia, sending emails, chit chatting with people like reading some stuff to get my work, sending an update. And there’s there’s deep work like designing something, creating something, coming up with a proposal, writing a recommendation making a decision. So the reality is, most of the teams spent 70% of their time doing shallow work, basically jumping from one thing to another being distracted, and only around 30%, doing the work. We should aim for the other way around, the majority of team members should be doing work that actually is going to move the needle, and it’s going to be focused. There’s a lot of research that shows that we’re interrupted everyday constantly. But also, it takes around two hours per day that we waste because we need to switch from one thing to another. So our brain is not working. Now the this idea that, hey, we can multitask. But actually we can’t. So we need to rethink how we collaborate, we’ll spend deep work, deep work could happen at an individual level, it could also happen at a team level. So to your point, it’s better to have people five days in a row in a room working as hard and crush a project than maybe show up one day or half day per week.

Sue Bethanis 37:07
if they’re working on a project for sure, yeah.

Gustavo Razzetti 37:09
What are you trying to accomplish? And then define what’s the mode? So rather than define, let me reframe this, we’re letting the skill define how we work rather than the type of project definine our work.

Sue Bethanis 37:25
That’s awesome. That’s so great. Um, this is sort of an offshoot of what you just said, this 30 70% is really, it makes a lot of sense. It’s super interesting. It seems to me that, there should have been a silver lining, to going to zoom in the the deep work, because deep work does require oftentimes some silence. The creative works without distractibility. So it seems to me that people who are disciplined about blocking their calendar out that they should have, it’s possible that they could be more productive. Being at home. What do you think about that?

Gustavo Razzetti 38:10
Yeah, absolutely. I think we talk a lot about productivity, but one of the biggest enemies of productivity is other people. So in order for you to be productive, you need to be in charge of how you spend your time. However, in real life, what happens is other people, basically they see, hey, there’s a opening there, boom, I’m gonna send you an invite I see this. So people are managing our calendars, our clients, our colleagues, our leaders are determined how we work rather than us having control of that, as Michael said, when he said that this was the year that fair participation and exactly the language, equal voice. Equal voice also means that at some point, well, I’m not going to join that meeting, I have to take care of some work, and I need to be focused, so sorry, I’m gonna pass. Giving people control of their own agency.

Sue Bethanis 39:07
That’s the key word, their agency. I love that. So what do you do to help? How are you helping teams go from 70/30 to 30/70? How you can help them to do that.

Gustavo Razzetti 39:21
First, I like the think how you frame the question. So it’s a journey. So the jump from one, maybe some things are never going to get to the ideal state, or maybe their work is never going to demand that mix. That’s more of a rule of thumb. Even though we talk these with different teams, right? I think the most important thing is understanding in a rather than focus on how I do more deep work is how I stopped doing work that is meaningless. And also one of the things that we do is we ask people to list all the things that they do and start to track their time and how they allocate their time and realize what are the things that are stealing time from your life. And, I think that the easiest trick is to remove the things that are getting in the way. If what I want to caution the audience and our clients is don’t jump too extreme. So a couple of weeks ago, lots of companies made the headlines. One was Shopify, because they say, Hey, we eliminate all meetings. So getting rid of something by force is not going to work. Because in the end, people are gonna get back to you’re not changing. We’re we talk about mindsets, you’re not changing mindsets, you’re forcing our behavior, when people are gonna get back to hear, how do I talk to my colleagues? Well, let’s start with a little meeting.

Sue Bethanis 40:40
so basically, they’re gonna sneak meetings

Gustavo Razzetti 40:42
Exactly. Because we’re tackling the symptom, I think that we need to understand what’s the root cause many times, norms or rules? Well, a presenteeism is a behavior and virtual precedent because people are rewarding, be a being visible over if you perform your job well, if you create a huge impact on the company or not. So we need to start rethinking what reward and punishment systems we have in place that are forcing people to do things that are not productive, for example, showing up in meetings that no one cares about.

Sue Bethanis 41:17
Right, right. Love it. Love it, love it. Well, I have so appreciated our time together, Gustavo, I just want to give the audience one more shot at if you have a question or a comment you’d like to make. Go ahead and you got Michael, what do you got?

Michael 41:33
So I’m gonna give you a 30 second view of what you just talked about. So what if actually, people understood what was in your cup, and what’s in your cup is what you actually do? The work that you perform, and who you benefit. What if you have that data, right? And it was transparent. Everyone else can see what everybody else is doing. The beauty of that is you’re pointing to stuff. So if you if your cup is full, the question is what’s in it, right? And so what needs to get out of it, in order to do something better in it. And if you have that dialogue, and you set some rules around that. And again, it doesn’t matter who you are what you do, if you have the same basic process, then basically now you’ve lubricated the system. And that’s, that’s the direction that we will people go. So anyway, I really enjoyed you guys today. And some more than take care a little hug to you guys. And let’s have a good day.

Gustavo Razzetti 42:31
Thank you. I love the example. I would like to add that, that’s great what you said I think that leads us straight to enlarge the can try. But they don’t understand the can is feeling. There’s so much work we can do in a day before we burn out. So to your point, we need to start monitoring, what are we putting inside the can? And if we want to add more, something else need to go.

Michael 42:52
Exactly. And that’s where you get this work life balance. So it was a fun topic. Let’s reach out, thank you guys.

Sue Bethanis 43:01
thanks. Anyone else?

Janet 43:07
Hi, Sue. So I’m thinking of how to phrase this question in, in person organizations, and this I mean, it happens virtually, it happens in person. But there is a tendency for people to accumulate in tribes. And for particularly those people who historically have had power in an organization to have their own kind of clique where they talk with each other more, they share more ideas with each other. And then when you go virtual, that becomes even more opaque to the people who are on the outside of that insider group. Because how do they know who to reach out with? How do they know what kind of information is being shared? So how do you kind of balance that dynamic and make sure that when people are distributed virtually everybody is getting included in the conversation?

Gustavo Razzetti 44:10
Yeah, my question would be, do you think that the tribes were inclusive to start with, I think that in the workplace was divided, we talk about a lot about water cooler conversations. There’s no connection between water cooler conversations and positive impacts in things like creativity or innovation, whatever. However, there’s a lot of research that shows that many water cooler conversations were used to criticize people who weren’t in there to have conversations that were in there and also think that the tribe, the tribal aspect of a team has always liked this balance, which is good about their tribes that are positive people that like each other that are under tribes that are really exclusive, that basically don’t share information they meet without. Those tribes existed in physical spaces, so I think that I think technology allows for more transparency. If you agree how you’re going to share information, how decisions are going to be made, for example, there are companies that have adopted this to make it a handbooks. And when they have to make a decision, rather have a meeting, they do it a synchronous, and the decision is in a light, it doesn’t have to be Wikipedia in a light document in which anyone can say, hey, this is what’s going on with the company. These are the challenges. This is what I’m, for example, the leader can say, I’m exploring option A, B and C, what do you think? And anyone not only can chime in as questions, provokes ideas, but also they can read what everyone else is doing. And how is that. Another thing that is important is clarifying decision making processes, so people are clear, who has the last call when people are consulted or should be consulted, and make sure that those happens. So when you codify your decision making process that allows for a lot of transparency, to make sure regardless if you’re working in person, remotely or hybrid that people are left out of those critical conversations.

Sue Bethanis 46:10
Do you have a follow?

Janet 46:13
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree that there are aspects of virtual that are actually superior to in person, because of that kind of transparency to make sure that there’s a process around decision making. I do think that there is an aspect of virtual where there is the opportunity to just serendipitously run across somebody and talk to them, and build rapport and check in with them, that tends to be more difficult in a virtual environment. And that the people who feel most comfortable in the dominant group are most likely to reach out just kind of casually in a virtual environment. Whereas if you’re in a in person environment, and you past somebody in the hallway, or you’re in the cafeteria, there can be these kinds of spontaneous conversations that don’t so much happen in a virtual world. So I do think there’s still an issue around that maybe it exists in the in the in person world, but I think that it can get amplified in the virtual world.

Sue Bethanis 47:32
Right. That’s what I was gonna say is, I was gonna use the word amplification. So thank you. I was talking to a client yesterday about how she feels in the outs, she actually use that word. She didn’t feel like she says, I’m not in the I’m not in the inner circle. And she should be in the inner circle. And it’s like, how does somebody who’s not in it, who doesn’t feel like she’s an inner circle do that virtually? It’s so much harder to get in to get in the in? And to like, how do you do that? Like, you could you could say, alright, well, hey, would you like to go out to dinner? Or would you like to have like a virtual coffee? Like, No, you’re not gonna go for a virtual coffee. So I think that whatever it was before, in terms of power dynamics, it’s just worse. So to influence it’s just, it’s much as we always was already hard to influence. Now it’s even harder because you have this like, what are you gonna do like so that’s why I think the lingering like after meeting and hey, so the person that’s trying to be in the house, the person that wants to be in the in group if you will, or whatever, or it doesn’t even matter influence. You have to like initiate Hey, can I catch up on the final call?

Janet 48:40
And should be sensitizing leaders to being very aware of how they’re proportioning that time.

Sue Bethanis 48:47
Totally, totally. So um, this is getting be juicy but we gotta go. Bummer. Yeah, we can linger after this talk about it. So Gustavo, thanks again for giving your time. It’s really nice of you to do that. And and I know you’re busy and you’re doing your book and everything. So I do appreciate this a lot. I just want to tell everybody, Gustavo Razzetti – GustavoRazzetti.com And also fearlessculture.design. And on LinkedIn of course. And the book Remote, Not Distant love that title, design a company culture that will help you thrive in a hybrid workplace. Thank you again, Gustavo.

Gustavo Razzetti 49:39
Thank you. Bye.

Sue Bethanis 49:41
Bye.

Sue Bethanis hosts Daphne E. Jones. Daphne is an accomplished and seasoned executive with extensive experience using digital technologies strategically, entrepreneurially, and globally within multi-national corporations. She has over thirty years of experience in general management and executive-level roles at IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira, and General Electric but began her career as a secretary. At GE, she served as SVP for Future of Work, SVP & CIO for Product Engineering, Imaging, and Ultrasound, and as Senior Executive & CIO for Global Services, all of which composed a $13 billion segment of GE Healthcare.

Daphne serves on the board of directors for AMN Healthcare, Inc., Barnes Group Inc., and Masonite International Corp, and is the recipient of numerous domestic and international awards. She recently started a company that teaches leaders how to prepare to serve on boards. She is also a sought-after speaker and author of her new book, Win When They Say You Won’t: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success.

Sue and Daphne discuss:

• How to create an inclusive movement to turn the tides for all leaders who simply want to win
• How the four-step “EDIT” methodology can enable you to transform your mindset to win

Sue Bethanis hosts Christina Maslach, the pioneer of research on job burnout. Christina has produced the standard assessment tool (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI), award-winning articles, and several books including Burnout: The Cost of Caring (1982) and her new book with Michael Leiter, The Burnout Challenge – Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs (November 2022). Her research achievements over the past five decades have led to multiple awards (from the National Academy of Sciences, Western Psychological Association, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and others). In addition, she has received awards for her outstanding teaching, including USA Professor of the Year in 1997. She has been a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1971, having completed her doctoral degree at Stanford, and her college education at Harvard. She is now a core researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center, at UC Berkeley, and resides in San Francisco.

Sue and Christina discuss:

• The six domains of a work “match.” Mismatches here are what cause burnout – Workload, Control, Reward, Community, Fairness, and Values.
• Examples she’s seen of organizations designing work environments that really work.
• Specific tips for leaders as they intentionally address burnout on their teams.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Marianne Lewis, co-author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Marianne’s research and vast experience shows that embracing both/and thinking, or paradox thinking, results in more creative, lasting solutions and more satisfied people. Marianne is the dean and professor of management at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass Business School at City, University of London, and as a Fulbright scholar. A thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Collaborating with international researchers and executives, her work examines the management of paradoxes in contexts from product development and organizational change to governance and career development. Lewis has been recognized among the world’s most-cited researchers in her field (Web of Science database) and received the Paper of the Year award (2000) and Decade Award (2021) from the Academy of Management Review. Her work also appears in such journals as Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science. Lewis earned her MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and her PhD from the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She enjoys her three children and two grandchildren from her home base in Cincinnati.

Listen to the full episode here:

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

What is both/and thinking? Sue and Marianne dive into examples of how this problem-solving method moves beyond either/or situations into finding creative solutions to difficult problems. Stemming from tensions between seemingly opposing values such as the choice between profit and sustainability, performing and learning, or compassion and competency. Our brains are wired to see these sort of paradoxical options as one or the other, but when applying both/and thinking we see creative ways of combining these tensions to create new solutions.

Key takeaways and examples of both/and thinking:

• Paul Polman at Unilever was able to double profits while cutting the company’s environmental footprint in half within a decade by using and/both thinking. He chose to look at the profit vs sustainability dilemma as an opportunity to make change, and it was a resounding success that pioneered the way for future companies. (12:13)
• Leaders who face the challenge of performance vs learning succeed when finding creative ways of choosing both. When putting too much emphasis on one vs the other this can lead to burnout or lack of productivity but finding solutions to prioritize growth while supporting productivity can in turn fuel one another. (19:09)
• Hybrid work has posed a huge dilemma recently, between the paradoxes of separation vs connection or in person vs remote. With companies navigating in-person vs. remote work, hybrid has become a solution for many, but when done wrong, hybrid can lead to some serious issues. On the other hand, when done well it can lead to thriving teamwork and productivity. Marianne gave the company RocketBook as a wonderful example of how to operate in hybrid that prioritizes workers ‘deep work’ times while still maintaining intentional team building. (24:24)
• Marianne also discusses how women in leadership can often find themselves struggling to find the balance between competence and compassion. This is a perfect example of when both/and thinking can create a wonderful balance within leadership. Women do not have to lead as strictly to be respected, when allowing compassion and softness to also be present, women can often lead as their more authentic selves. (35:02)

Both/and thinking is not as easy as it sounds. It truly comes to play when the paradoxes are extreme, and the stakes are high. It takes more than just finding a happy medium or balance in any one given situation, it requires creative integration. It’s meant to be used continuously, to work towards a solution by making small choices on an ongoing basis to support the overall goal. It takes a great amount of effort, focus, and creativity to produce the unique and impactful solutions it can bring.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“For us both/and thinking is a life approach. It’s thinking on an ongoing basis, because paradoxes don’t go away. They’re interwoven contradictions.” (8:54)

“So I think one missed misconception is, this is obvious and it’s easy. If it was, it would be the default, and it is not. Either/or is the default. This takes work and practice and a mindset.” (21:05)

“I think what we were learning increasingly, is sometimes our hardest times are where we find our greatest strengths, we find new opportunities.” (39:12)

RESOURCES

Marianne W. Lewis:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast, providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Marianne Lewis. Marianne is Dean and Professor of Management at the Linder College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass Business School at City, University of London. And as a Fulbright scholar, a thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Collaborating with international researchers and executives, her work examines the management of paradoxes in contexts from product development and organizational change to governance and career development. Louis has been recognized among the world’s most cited researchers in the field and received the Paper of the Year Award 2000 and the Decade Award in 2021. From the Academy of Management Review, her work also appears in such journals as HBR, Academy of Management Journal, and organization science. She earned her MBA from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and a PhD from Gatton College of Business Economics at the University of Kentucky. She has three children and two grandchildren from her home base in Cincinnati. And so I’m really happy to have you. And it’s not too late there, we’re good. I’m really excited about this topic. As I said to you, before we started, you know, I’ve been using this with my clients, and they’ve really liked it a lot. So I’m really happy to get into this. And I’ll probably have them do some more work and listen to our talk. So I just read your bio, but I often start, I always start actually, with asking the question beyond your bio, like, how did you get into this work? How did you decide to write this book? And give us a few stories?

Marianne Lewis 1:43
Well, I think the story starts in some ways a bit young, I’m an academic brat, my father was an academic, in operations management and kind of grew up fascinated by manufacturing. But he was a math guy, and I’m dyslexic. I can’t even say the word. So I’m a qualitative researcher, and I love the psych side of it. So I ended up doing a dissertation around automation in factories, but what was really tensions. And so here, I was coming in thinking I was studying one thing, and finding myself fascinated by others, right, this pole between is technology, de-skilling, or skill upgrading, is it about the flexibility or their control? And even as I kind of started to go down this path and say, What is this? I realized my whole life is a tension. I mean, I think so many of us we struggle with, whether it’s the work family, it’s you know, being a leader who is confident and humble, thinking about, you know, my competence and skills or caring and the people and me, there’s so many areas, it was really that aha moment where I said, I think there’s something much greater here. And I started shifting from a phenomena like manufacturing and automation to tensions, and went down the path to study. How have these been examined in philosophy, and psychology, and mysticism, and religion, and places that a lot of my, especially my dissertation advisors, were like, don’t go there. This is your business person. You know, there have been 1000s of years literally, of work on paradoxes, especially on religion and mysticism, and the Taoist kind of use and others. And I thought, well, Yungian, for sure. So it was like, okay, you always stand on the shoulders of giants, you need to know who they are, you need to kind of go there. And so the paper that you mentioned, that won the 2000 Awards, that’s our top journal and Management was a paper that everybody told me not to write. And I think I’m a rebel at heart. You know, I’m like a conservative rebel. I’ve got lots of tension in my own self. And it started this crazy and wonderful career Sue, where I became the person that other researchers reached out to and said, I’ve seen them. Help me, you know, so I’d have somebody say, I’m studying boards of directors, and we’re trying to figure out is the board’s role to monitor and control or is it about stewardship and teamwork. Yes, right. Or I’d have to say it, are we about social responsibility or financial responsibility? Yes. Right. And then, and so you get into these fascinating challenges. But I was the theorist onboard, other people were doing the heavy lifting around the data. And I got to kind of really start to study it. And then it became not only about tensions but about leadership. Because if the leader doesn’t have a mindset that thinks about them and nobody else is, right, you’re gonna approach these as trade-offs and miss so much opportunity.

Sue Bethanis 4:59
Right okay, I love it. I love it. Thank you for that. So I do want to get into this idea of both/and thinking, but before we do that, I want to have you define some of these topics. So you mentioned tensions. You mentioned paradoxes. So what are these? You have tension dilemmas and paradoxes. How are those, those sounds similar. Yeah. How are they different?

Marianne Lewis 5:20
They are similar, and the way I think about them is they’re very much interrelated. So, we start with tensions because you feel tension. So, you can even say the word and like, I can feel it in my chest, it feels like a tug of war. Right? I’m being pulled, pulled in the way of saying, the way I’m feeling, the way I’m acting. A dilemma is that next step, where we actually put a frame around it as a problem. And we frame it as okay, what do we do in the tensions, and that becomes this dilemma, this decision-making point. And then paradoxes to us is this next big step of, and I always kind of have the vision of the Yin Yang in my head. And if people can kind of imagine, you know, the two slivers light and dark. Within each sliver, you can see the opposite of black or white, the point of Yin Yang is that actually contradictions define each other. And there actually is an ebb and flow and there’s a dynamic. So even though Yin Yang is like a static image, almost the flow of the light to the dark, the dark to the light. And that to us, is that step change of how do we move off this trade-off mindset of a dilemma to thinking, but I need both sides of this equation, and how do I start to shift the way I approach them? Because I’ve moved now from feeling the tension to framing the dilemma, to approaching it as a paradox.

Sue Bethanis 6:47
Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Do you see both/and thinking as different from paradoxical thinking? Or is it really the same thing? Do you define them the same? Or?

Marianne Lewis 6:59
Well, I think they’re, you couldn’t say that they’re the same thing. I think one of the issues with paradoxical thinking, which is a term that has been used in a variety of ways is it doesn’t necessarily tell you how to navigate the tensions. So what Wendy Smith, my coauthor, and I were trying to do is, yes, think about kind of paradoxical thinking. Other people have called it Janusian Thinking like looking opposite ways. Isn’t that a cool idea? So a brilliant researcher in the 70s, talk Janusian Thinking so think of the Greek god who basically is looking two ways simultaneously.

Sue Bethanis 7:34
Oh, yeah. I like that. Yeah, I didn’t know that’s what that was.

Marianne Lewis 7:37
I think it’s a cool one. And it was one of the early studies that got me really energized. So Rothenburg studied geniuses, Einstein, Mozart, Picasso, and Virginia Wolf, okay. And was reading all their diaries and doing all this work about like, basically, where does the creative genius, what’s the fuel? And what he found with these, the commonality was they actually embraced tensions. They saw them as creative friction that opened new possibilities. So you know, Mozart, it was harmony and discord. Einstein it was this thing’s in motion and still, particles in waves, Virginia Woolf, it was life and death. Picasso was light and dark. And the point is, that they didn’t shy away, they did the opposite. They looked for tensions as opportunities for really powerful creativity. Oftentimes, they would like all of them would joke like on the verge of madness.

Sue Bethanis 8:40
right? Yes.

Marianne Lewis 8:41
So Janusian thinking was his language of how do you embrace the tensions and look in opposing directions simultaneously for creative opportunity.

Sue Bethanis 8:50
I like that Janusian and how do you spell it?

Marianne Lewis 8:54
Janusian. But paradoxical thinking, you know Roger Martin does really cool work on the kind of integrative thinking. And it’s for these kinds of one-off efforts. For us, both/and thinking is a life approach. It’s thinking on an ongoing basis because paradoxes don’t go away. They’re interwoven contradictions. That we could make a decision today and we might need integrative thinking or paradoxical thinking that we will have to figure out short and long-term, work and life, we make decisions all the time and we will make them again. Because they don’t go away. We need both sides.

Sue Bethanis 9:36
I think I was working with this team a couple of weeks ago, well now it’s been about a month. We were kind of … let me throw this out, let me see what you think of it. So we were thinking about both/and thinking as more divergent thinking and it being brainstormy and then when you’re converging your choices. And I also talked about how – so we said that was similar enough, analogous enough, I wasn’t sure if I exactly liked it, they came up with that. But I also said that the third way is really important in that’s why I like both/and so much is because it’s juxtaposed to either/or because we typically do like, what are the two choices? And it’s like, oh, I think there’s usually a third choice or a third way. So while we do have to converge, it doesn’t necessarily need to be either/or thinking it’s just a distillation. What do you say to all that?

Marianne Lewis 10:33
Well, I think it’s tricky the way you just said it, because I think about innovation as necessarily paradoxical because it requires divergent and convergent thinking. Right? So I don’t think both/and is just divergent because at some point, you have to bring them together. And you’re right, I like the way you just said it. Sometimes people say, Well, wait, isn’t it either-or thinking if you say it’s either both/and thinking or either-or thinking. And actually, the point is, depending on the decision that needs to be made, and the timing it needs to meet, sometimes you do have to do either/or thinking. But in the context of this broader ongoing, both/and right, it’s today we might need to make this decision, we call this tightrope walking. But it doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to need the opposite like divergent convergent at some point. But it’s an interplay between the way we think, and that’s where it gets more complicated to think about. All right, yeah. We do make decisions. You have to make decisions.

Sue Bethanis 11:33
Right. I think that what I was trying for them in this is very common, is that I think the main thing where I would help them was that they needed to continue the conversation and not be stuck in: we’re either gonna do it this way or this way. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, keep going.

Marianne Lewis 11:51
Yeah. Well, yeah. Because he either-or thinking it tends to be or default, and it’s so limiting.

Sue Bethanis 11:55
It is a default. And it happens in school. I mean, this is something that it’s been ingrained. Certainly, yeah, we can get out of it. So let’s talk about some more examples, I gave you a specific example, and I gave you a particular group. But I mean, give us some more examples of how we leaders can use both/and thinking.

Marianne Lewis 12:13
Okay, I mean, I think it’d be kind of a variety. So you tell me if this one works, and we can kind of add more personal. We started at a very strategic level, right? So my work really all started with corporate strategy and innovation. And then we got to more personal teams and even more individuals. So if I start at kind of the big level, and to me, I’d probably make that kind of strategy. In our last chapter, we focus a lot on somebody that I’ve studied for years, Paul Polman and Unilever. So this is an interesting example, because Paul takes over Unilever when they’re failing, right, they’re really in trouble. And he basically says, ‘All right, we touch (this was at the time), we touch 2 billion consumers a day, we have to be more socially responsible, we need to think about sustainability.’ And then people said, but it’s about profit, right? We’re a major multinational company. And he said, it has to be both. And so he built the Unilever sustainable living plan on this paradoxical both/and approach of we are going to double our profit by halving our environmental footprint. And people said you’re crazy. That doesn’t work that way. The bigger you get, the bigger your negative impact. And he said, No, we can’t. And so one of the key tactics we talked about is separating and connecting and Unilever and Paul did this quite a bit. As they say, look, for every project, every project, I’m going to ask you, what’s happening to profit? What’s happening to sales, what’s happening to costs, how is the market share? And I’m going to ask you say, say we’re taking a new product, Pantene as an example, he used to use, like into one of the African nations, and he would say, tell me what you’re doing with water. How are you cutting water? How are you reducing transportation costs? How are you engaging the local community? And in some ways, it reminds me of, you know, once upon a time, people thought Toyota was crazy that quality and costs couldn’t be working together. And he found the same thing with sustainability. The more you did the kinds of things to reduce their environmental footprint, it also lowered costs. And by the way, it attracted new investors, new customers, because they said, that’s the company I like. And so they ended up being this Yin and Yang and working together. And sure enough, he hit the target, double their profits, half their environmental footprint, and completely turned the firm around. And people thought he was crazy.

Sue Bethanis 14:38
What was the time period of that?

Marianne Lewis 14:41
It was a little less than a decade. Which is impressive,

Sue Bethanis 14:44
right? For a firm like how long ago?

Marianne Lewis 14:47
He just wrote his book net positive, I’d have to grab it, but I would say it was like 10 years ago. I mean, he’s he retired after a decade there.

Sue Bethanis 14:55
And I’m just curious how it’s done. What’s happened since?

Marianne Lewis 15:00
Well, and I couldn’t say necessarily for Unilever, but one of the cool things with Paul. And what he’s done is he started a nonprofit called Imagine coordinating with the multinational CEOs globally. He’s the primary, one of the primary advisors to the UN, saying, This is what we need to do. And so he’s got more and more CEOs that are basically signing up to it. And he works with and then they work together because he did things that were really bold like because you have a short-term/long-term tension in this too. And he said to the financial analysts, I’m not giving you quarterly reports. It’s too short-termism. It was a huge deal when he did it, and moved toward a B Corp. And their stocks.

Sue Bethanis 15:49
Oh really? I didn’t know that I was going to ask you that.

Marianne Lewis 15:50
Right, it did exactly what you’d expect. And then the next thing you know – because he had to kind of work through the people that said, I can’t handle that. I can’t handle that uncertainty. I want to know, every quarter. And then he said, but the stock market is actually supposed to be long-term. It’s just not played that way.

Sue Bethanis 16:06
I mean, this is Roger Martin’s whole point. Yes. I mean, this is his. I mean, he’s, he’s one of my gurus, for sure. I’ve known him for a long time. And I got to know him through design thinking more stuff with PNC, but he wrote that one book about the NFL and a the other book about capitalism. And just like how it’s so screwed up that we have quarterly, you know, it’s just ridiculous. Right, God, and there’s so much work that has to go into it. And you? Yeah, so they, how did they get away with that, though? How did they get away with the SCC, and all that? Is there? Are there any rules around that?

Marianne Lewis 16:43
Well, part of it was they moved toward this B Corp model, which is being adopted now more, but they were one of the early pioneers. And you need pioneers.

Sue Bethanis 16:53
Yeah, that’s awesome. So it’s called net positive? Yes, I’ll check it out. I’m going to go to the SOCAP in a month, which is the social impact conference that they have here. So a lot of the B corps go to that it’s really cool.

Marianne Lewis 17:11
We have different examples of, you know, hybrid organizations, and social enterprises in the book because Wendy even more as studied a number like digital data divide, there are some really interesting companies. Because, you know, you could say the same thing for a nonprofit to serve your mission, you have to be financially viable. Right. And sometimes you can lose sight of one versus the other. So like with DDD and their leader, you know, he could go too far in the mission, and then lose the financial sustainability. And so he was navigating this in kind of, in some ways, like flipping figure and ground than you would have in a multinational, but realizing you can’t serve your people or your mission if you don’t have the money to do it. So he’d have to build in the discipline. And that was a real challenge for him. It was just the opposite challenge of Unilever Right, exactly.

Sue Bethanis 18:07
Right. Yeah. And I can see why this kind of thinking, both/and thinking, paradoxical thinking can be applied to visioning. And that’s, it’s not that it’s easy, because nothing’s easy. But you know, you should think about some of the things that have come through the pipe, with corporations and diversity and yes, you know, until we tied it to the bottom line, sustainability, diversity, it’s like there wasn’t going to be a bolt down there. But once it was tied to the bottom line, and people then you could, so I can see that. And it’s not again, not that it’s easy, but what about just like everyday decision-making? Not just envisioning, per se.

Marianne Lewis 18:52
But every day. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 18:53
So what are some examples of some everyday decision-making that you literally like you’d be facilitating as the VP or whatever, and you’re, you’re facilitating your hearing, you know, too much one-sidedness or whatever, how could you stop the facilitation and say, Hey, let’s look at the third way, or what would you do in that situation?

Marianne Lewis 19:09
Well, I’ll give you a different kind of example, that has come up increasingly, in some of the talks I’ve had with leaders, which is a tension between performing and learning. Yeah, that’s right. You got to hit your targets. So I had one leader, she explained it, you know, it’s the head down, you got to keep your head down, keep moving, hit the targets. Sometimes you got to pull your head up and take a deep breath and think okay, so how am I learning myself and helping my team learn for the future, they take very different mindsets, activities, right spaces, and sometimes. And so this leader, in particular, was saying, she’s now made it much more of a practice with her team to even use this language of head down and head up. Because if we’re only doing one without the other, if all you’re doing is putting your head down, this is the workaholic burnout mode, you are hitting your targets. And if all you’re doing is learning, it’s fabulous. I mean, I’m in higher ed, but you’re not hitting the targets. And you’re kind of hitting the clouds and you’re missing opportunities. So the big challenge and opportunity, to is to say, how are these interwoven? Right? How is my learning, always kind of fuels my performance, because I’m making new connections, as in people or in ideas to connect the dots, and new best practices are coming in. And at the same time, my level of performing is opening a new mind to new opportunities to say, what do I need? I don’t know what I don’t know. Right? And if I can have the mindset that I know, I’m going to need both, right, right, you can avoid going too far what we call going down the rabbit hole. And if you overemphasize one without the other, you find yourself in trouble.

Sue Bethanis 20:54
Right. Okay. What I think this one question here is, is interesting, like, what is the biggest misconception about both/and thinking? What would you say that people either criticize it, or they don’t get it? Or

Marianne Lewis 21:05
I think there are a few. So one that I’ve had people say to me as well, duh? Isn’t that obvious and isn’t that easy? And I’ve already said it once Sue, but I would say it again, it is not easy. It is not. Because you’re really if you’re actually talking about true tensions. You can’t do them simultaneously. Right? You either learn how to juggle, or you learn some creative integration, which is Roger’s work, right? But none of that is easy. So I think one missed misconception is, this is obvious and it’s easy. If it was it would be the default, and it is not. Either/or is the default. This takes work and practice and a mindset. I think the other is that you’re always seeking a win-win. So, I too think very highly of Roger Martin’s work. And I think his work is really about the creative integration or Wendy and I call this the mule, right? Smarter than a donkey, stronger than a horse. And the thing with that analogy is also mules are steroidal, meaning they’re one-offs, they’re brilliant. And when they happen, I think they’re rare. And when they happen, they’re fantastic. It’s that creative, wow, that helps you find a win-win. But the more likely outcome that we see we call tightrope walking, which means you’re viewing this vision in the distance that is both, you know, that has this big picture of we are going to be financially and socially responsible, we are going to be learning and performing, you know, whatever, and you’re making these micro shifts on an ongoing basis, right, you’re trying not to lean so far over that you go down a rabbit hole and fall off. And you’re making decisions, back to your point of either/or, we may have to make decisions on a daily basis of where we putting our time, energy, and resources. But we have to do it in a way that says we’re doing it here. So that right either it’s funding, energizing, enabling the other and you’re going back and forth. And so that tightrope walking is really what we tend to see most often. And then the challenge is how do you build some guardrails? So, you don’t forget the opposing side, because we are going to lean toward our comfort zone. Because for almost any tension, you can imagine we have a place in ourselves that we prefer, right? It’s just it’s our strong suit, right? I’m a workaholic, I’m gonna lean toward performance. But that’s not going to get me where I want to go. If I don’t remember to pull up.

Sue Bethanis 23:43
I like what we’ve talked about so far in some of these examples around you know, the both/and thinking regarding strategic and visioning think visioning and then also the dichotomy or this tension of performance and learning. So, again, I want to get back to some more examples, our audience loves examples. So what are some other things that we can apply this to some other scenarios, some other decision-making situations, especially with executives, in terms of how they can, you know, like, even prioritization, a lot of people now are reprioritizing pivoting, you know, what they’re doing these days.

Marianne Lewis 24:24
I’ll give you two that we could play with one is kind of the hybrid work. I think it’s working out well, right? Yes. The other is kind of a women’s leadership challenge that we’ve seen showing up again, between competency and compassion. Right. So those are two I’ve seen. So if we go to kind of the hybrid, Wendy and I ended up kind of doing a little work on this post-pandemic because people were saying, oh, you know, hybrid work is the best of both worlds. And what most of us have seen is it can be the worst of both, right? Because you could be working at home but boundaries have gone so everything is blurring together. You’re not really feeling like you’re doing well in anything, guilt builds up, all sorts of things are happening, right and when you go into the office, nobody’s there, you don’t really know why you’re there. Right? It’s just not the office of the past, in some ways. And so, you know, I’ll give you an interesting example. We did some work with Rocketbook. And I don’t know if you know, rocket book, they’re really cool startup, they were bought by Bic recently. So they do, I was looking around, I used to have one of the, it’s reusable. These are reusable notebooks. So a single notebook can be used again and again, you can upload it to the cloud through a simple kind of taking a picture. It’s got QR codes. It’s a really cool technology. And so we, I had seen through some kind of connections that they did this hybrid work in a really interesting way. So we ended up talking to their, two founders, CEOs, co CEOs. And I said, Well, tell me what you think what hybrid work looks like at rocket book? And more importantly, why? And they said, Well, you know, pre-pandemic, we were already into hybrid work.

Sue Bethanis 26:16
Yeah a lot of companies were doing rural, or remote.

Marianne Lewis 26:21
And it made them in a better position during and after too because right, this wasn’t some big shock, but it’s still I think it gives us lessons to learn from. So when we say separate and connect, we think that those are just the two big two core practices of both/and thinking. So, part of is separating to really think, what, what do I value most in each sphere? I mean, at its best, what does it look like to be working at home versus working at work? And by the way, what are the dangers if that’s all you do, right? So kind of mapping that out. And these guys got really into the idea of, and it makes so much sense that deep work, deep work happens best in a quiet, nonoffice, non-distraction, and at your best bio times, right? Like I’m a morning person, you know, I know when my quality time is right, and then when it’s not gonna go to the grocery store, right? Do it, you know, that use the time that makes the most sense. And then they have also a very strong sense that when they want people in the office is when it’s around the whiteboard. It’s about collaborative problem-solving. It’s with purpose, right to be together. And the Yin Yang was they said, the more we made sure we had that really good quality time together, the more people could read each other’s body language, their eye movements, their sarcasm, all these things that when they were on a screen, you need it. Right? You had the relationship, you had the deeper understanding. And these are really high-performing engineers, designers, and others in their firm. They wanted deep work, they wanted this social and connection and creativity together. And so they built a whole set of guardrails. So people could respect whichever side that you’re using work or home. And, you know, they built it into kind of very simple, almost like you know, Reed Hastings, no rules, rules of Netflix, kind of a simple set of rules, to keep them thinking, when are we working at home? And why and when are we in the office? Why? And it’s worked really well for them, even within Bic. And so Bic is like now looking at it and saying, Okay, we don’t want to mess you guys up. How do we start kind of learning from you in a much bigger organization? Because some people can say, that’s them. They did it before. It’s easy. They’re small. It’s easy. I don’t think it is easy. I think it’s purposeful.

Sue Bethanis 28:49
I know, it’s not easy. You know, it’s intended, I call it an intention, intention. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that’s great. So what? So we kind of throw these things around, in a way? And I think that people do think it’s easy, but I don’t I don’t really think it is. And so what are some of the questions, so you kind of rattle them off a little bit there. But what are some of the questions that pick? Well, the Rocketbook, actually in this case was we’re asking like, I want our audience to hear some of these questions because I think that that’s what is making this intentional. It’s like, it’s not just ‘okay, well, we’re coming in on Wednesdays. Everybody needs to come on Wednesdays.’ So they have guardrails? It’s like but no, no, but what are you doing on Wednesdays? Yeah, like in this one case, we know of a client is doing not Taco Tuesdays, but I’m not Taco Thursdays. They’re calling it something. Yeah. Yeah, I’m trying to think I’m spacing on what they use and what they call it on Thursday, it doesn’t matter. It’s a three-hour time set from two to five. So the first hour, they have specific celebrations, the second hour, some you know, some form of celebration, some form of performance and learning that they that they’re celebrating and then the second hour is some sort of topic that they facilitate somebody they rotate facilitation, so that someone’s bringing in some sort of topic that they maybe have read an article, or maybe they’re given a lecture or whatever they’re doing. And then the third hour is happy hour. It’s like, and each week they’re doing this. And they’re like making it’s very intentional, but it’s different every week. And it involves everybody because somebody new gets to facilities time. So that’s super intentional. It’s a great example. Yeah. And it’s not on me. We’re trying to, like get these from our clients, because another client told me today, why don’t you get a bunch of clients together? So they can talk about I said, Well, yeah, great idea. You know, because we got to make this up. And we have to know that we have to it has to be intentional. So I’m just wondering, there are other questions that so one of the questions would be, what is the time period that you’re going to require people to come so right, so let’s say okay, we want to do one day a week. Great. So what day is that? Alright, so now one question is, what are you going to people? What are people going to do? Because if you don’t do that, they’re all going to be on their laptops on Zoom.

Marianne Lewis 30:59
Yeah, exactly what happened? Right, and then you get the people saying, Why am I in the office? I’m on my laptop from zoom. No, right. Totally agree. So the morning? Yeah. So I think there were a couple of pieces that I heard that I thought they build from that great example you just shared. So, when it came to, especially the homework, their question was when are you at your best doing deep work? Right? Remember, these are designers, and engineers, there are times they put their heads down. And what they did is they built kind of a sense of, so they know who their morning people are, they know who their night owls are, you’re allowed to set some personal rules of I’m not going to take meetings before nine or 10, because I am a night owl, right? And then you’d have the opposite. You’d have people that are super early morning people. And really, they turn off a bit in the afternoons, right? Or they try to, and they would find these sweet spots.

Sue Bethanis 31:53
So what are the sweet spots? Yeah, that’s one question.

Marianne Lewis 31:57
You’re allowed to use your Outlook to show your best times. So people know how to respect you and the work you’re doing. Right? They use Slack and all sorts of tech things. But they’re also very clear about when they turn off their notifications. That’s some of the kind of the rules about let’s support people’s deep work. Because it’s about what you get done, not about the hours. And we need to know how to best support, right? Because the expectation is you are going to perform at a very high level. And we’re going to help you do that. And then I think to your point when you were talking about kind of the why you come into the office, and when they do similar things. We know one of the reasons we want people to be a tight-knit, psychologically safe bonded team because it will make them better creatively. And in terms of a sense of belonging and retention. Right. So they know that. And then they start to think about I can’t remember what they call it, they have something like your Taco Tuesdays. Right? So there are some things that are very social, and they do everything from there in Boston, to go to a Red Sox game to go to karaoke, fun, fun stuff, so here’s why, you know, the CEOs, we’re gonna have a meeting with the CEOs, we’re gonna put a topic on the table. We need as many perspectives as possible

Sue Bethanis 33:16
We need everybody here.

Marianne Lewis 33:16
Let’s be there. And people are heard. And there’s a very direct interaction with the top team. And I think that’s really engaging. And you can see people call, they have free food. I mean, exactly what you said.

Sue Bethanis 33:31
Yeah, well, food is not the only thing that’s yeah, it has to have a purpose. Because I don’t think that free food is gonna get people in.

Marianne Lewis 33:36
No, but it’s all this. We respect your time. And we appreciate you being here. And we’re gonna make the most of it. Right.

Sue Bethanis 33:43
Yeah, I think I was talking to somebody yesterday who went to an interesting conference with rewired on climate change. And so we were talking to just talking about, we’d gotten subject of hybrid and how, you know, she seemed to think that people are going to come back and it’s going to be economic. And I said, Well, I don’t see people coming back. I said I think that nobody wants to commute. I think we learned we can be very productive at home. I said I think we could get one to two days out of people. Maybe I said if we’re going to do that, it has to be productive. It has to be intentional, it has to be purposeful, because otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense to come in and have up everybody be on the laptop. Now, not everybody’s gonna come in. So you’re gonna have to deal with the stragglers and deal with people that can’t come in for whatever reason, because they’ve left the premises, they’ve got kids that whatever the reason is, there’s a lot of reasons they’re not feeling well that day, but they can still work. So, you’re always gonna have some people on online but so this is great. So it does require paradoxal and both/and thinking in this because there are a lot of criteria to use. So let’s just take one more and then we can stop what are some other examples of where we can where leaders can use paradoxically?

Marianne Lewis 35:02
I’m thinking I’ll go to the one about women’s leadership. And I don’t think women by any stretch, it just happens to be one that we hear more with women leaders were in fact, myself included. I remember having a question are all Dean’s assholes? Sorry, excuse the language, right? Because I was like, Man, when I first my first dean role was in London, I was like, I have got to figure this out. Because I, I’m a really collaborative caring person, or at least I try to be in at the same time. Man, you’ve got to have some discipline, but I didn’t like the models I had seen. And not all, but just some. And I didn’t have a lot of women models. When I took the role. Only eight of the top 100 business schools were run by women. So really didn’t have a lot of examples. And this was a top 40 school. And I was like, Okay, how am I going to do this? But what I learned through lots of discussions with women leaders in business, let alone you know, now we have actually quite a few business schools led by women is this is about that, also that Yin and Yang is, you know, how do you bring your compassionate, authentic self to build a psychologically safe, trusting, caring environment, we expect high performance, there’s no reason for them to be opposites. But you do get into kind of almost that tough love, right? Paradoxical approach is actually, you know, the integration is really powerful. If you can have both my standards are high, I expect a lot. And by the way, I care about, you know, I think the world of you, and we got to make sure that you’re taking care of because we take care of each other. And how do you build this in a way that fits. But we’ve had, you know, women leaders for quite some time, you have that challenge of, I have to be so good at what I do that I’ve got to over emphasize the competence. And now I feel cold, right? And I feel Stroik or something else, or vice versa. I am the caring leader and now looked at as soft. So you hear this kind of tension sometimes, I think thankfully, I think we’re hearing less, at least among the juniors because they realize, you know, there was a time that we would look to the executive women and they had had to work so hard against those barriers. They were, in my view, especially as some of the months I met in London in the financial district, they were tough because they had had to be super tough to get there. And so they had I’m not saying this is 50/50, right, this is that classic. It could be 90/10. But the point is their kind of trying to figure out, it’s also context specific. Do I have someone walk into my office who really needs the shoulder? Be there, whatever it feels right for you, and for that matter. But there’s no reason why you can’t hold a high bar and a caring one at the same time. It’s about finding the right mix for you for the culture you’re trying to build. Personally, personally, I mean, I really did. I did like my own little personal research study. Clearly, you can be both. And you can work really well together. But it’s about finding a personal mix.

Sue Bethanis 38:13
Yeah, gotcha. That makes sense. So very last question. And then I just want to make sure people know a little bit how to get to ahold of you. So we’re going into, I don’t know, a very uncertain time, I think that there’s no question that COVID has put us into a twirl for sure. But a different kind of twirl than what we’re going to be going into now what we were in you know, I think, six months ago, things were seemingly pretty good. But the stock market has taken a total hit. Clearly, and I think, you know, there’s they’re starting to be some layoffs. And so I think we’re going into, a different kind of uncertainty. So is there a way that paradoxical slash both/and thinking, Is there a way that it can help? Does it help more in uncertain times?

Marianne Lewis 39:12
I think there are two parts to that one, Sue. I mean, so one, I would just note that it and I’ve been saying it for 25 years, is that we basically found there kind of three factors in our environment that intensify our experience of tensions: scarcity, plurality, which means varied stakeholders voting in different ways, and change. Right, so we’re literally in the perfect storm and it’s just going to get stormier. Yeah. The flip side the other piece to that I would say so, you know, we started I told you, we started really at the strategy level, thankfully, we have met some phenomenal kind of experimental psychologists, researchers. And so we built something called a paradox mindset tool that we have been we’ve now measured 1000s of people it’s in multiple languages, it’s been really cool to study. And what we found is that the higher the experience of tensions, the more a paradox mindset. What that means is I embrace tensions, I see them as opportunities, doesn’t mean I like them. It means I see potential in that I run toward them. And I think about how to navigate and right. What we found is the higher the tensions and the higher the paradox mindset, the more productive this is, according to all the supervisors, because we get that data to the more creative again, according to their supervisors. And according to the people, the respondents, the higher the well-being. Because in that sea of uncertainty and change, and scarcity, right, they feel that there’s some value. I mean, it’s not going to be easy, we’re going to have highs and lows. But I think what we were learning increasingly, is sometimes our hardest times are where we find our greatest strengths, we find new opportunities. We talked to a lot of people about kind of career changes over time, and to a one, they will almost always say it was in some moment of real challenge. That it, it pushed them to work through those tensions and find what’s next. What’s my ultimate strength? How do I play to these tensions in new ways? Again, I’m not saying it’s going to be fun, I think it’s going to be a rough economic ride. And cultural ride and polarization. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about different tensions. Yeah, there’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of this, and it’s gonna be a big question is, are you going to be open to this? Because if you are going to hold so tight to one side, you know, it’s that classic, you know, you’re going to be battered? Versus are you going to serve through this or you’re going to find more creativity?

Sue Bethanis 41:48
I think that that’s a really important point that we can’t get stuck in one side. In fact, even using the word side itself, is problematic. I mean, we were we’re getting stuck in one way of thinking. And, you know, there’s no question that social media is contributing to this, because all it’s doing is like, basically giving you what you already know or think or feel. And it’s continuing to give you the same stuff to celebrate and reinforce think you reinforce what you already know, think and feel. Which is making it harder and harder and making it more dichotomous and making it more polarized. And it’s harder and harder to these haven’t even have a conversation with people because they’re so stuck. So being able to see the other person’s point of view and not even seeing the other side, but the other person’s point of view, another way

Marianne Lewis 42:49
With curiosity,

Sue Bethanis 42:50
With curiosity. You know, I had a wonderful client call this morning, and we had done our 360. And then we had said, you know, what are the things we want to what are the actions that happen, she wants to form? And so I said, you know, just start asking more questions. And I was, I wasn’t being casual, just like, you know, my answer for people who need to be more or be less bullying or less, not bullying. Alright, that’s not the right word. They need to be less intense and less advocating is to ask more questions to go into inquiry mode. And the people that are not speaking up enough, it’s the same thing going go into inquiry so that you can get your feet wet. And so I said, so the answer to both of these is to ask more questions, she does when you told me this, it seems so simple. I was like, okay, that’s what you got for me. So she was like, okay, yes, you’re getting your money’s worth. But she said, I have practiced it. And I can’t believe how much of a difference it makes, and how easy it has been, and how it opens up amazing doors and how provocative I’ve been able to be because they’re provocative questions, yet. They’re still questions. And but her vibe of mind is about curiosity. I mean, she couldn’t do that. If she wasn’t being super curious. And so I was just applauding her like going on ice and you’re doing so well. And this is such a tribute to you, because it’s about being curious and about being the enquirer and you, and that’s the only way that you’re gonna change. And the only way that the world is going to change, frankly.

Marianne Lewis 44:25
I mean, you know, I’m a big fan of Adam Grants work and I love his Think Again, which is really about. Yeah, Think Again, is his most recent book, okay. But it’s really about, you know, how do you approach things as a scientist, not a lawyer, not a judge, not a politician. And he kind of goes through these but the point of being of a scientist is to ask the questions, with a real curiosity of what’s going on here, like, now, you know, you’re in a political debate. Don’t debate. Help me, help me understand your experience. Is to this point where you are, I don’t want you to, you may not change my mind at all. But it sure would help me if I understood your own personal experiences to this point. Because you start to change the, you know, you change that question. And you’ve changed the dialogue. I don’t want you to convince me of anything. I just want to understand your, where you’re coming from. Right. It’s a very personal question now.

Sue Bethanis 45:26
It’s great. I really enjoyed our conversation. Really, so much. Yeah, and let me just give everyone some information. Your website is www.bothandthinking.net. You can find Marianne on Twitter @MarianneWLewis. And then the book, of course, is Both/And Thinking: Embracing Credit Tensions to Solve your Toughest Problems. You can get that on Amazon, of course. So, Marianne, thank you once again. Thank you. Vice versa. Yeah, have a wonderful rest of your evening. And let’s keep in touch.

Marianne Lewis 46:04
Absolutely. All the best. Thank you too.

Listen to the full episode here:

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode we explore the meaning of silence, how it impacts us as individuals and how we can cultivate it as leaders and within our community. Justin and Leigh have studied silence through their own experiences of meditation and mindfulness teachings, in addition to interviewing a wide range of individuals with unique experiences of silence. They ask the question “What is the deepest silence you have ever known?” to better understand other’s perspectives and meanings of silence, and what they have found is that silence can have a different meaning and connotation to every individual.

Some key take aways from this talk:

• They describe silence not as the absence of noise, but more so as a deeper presence within us. For some it may appear as a lack of sounds, but for others it can be a lack of interruptions and unwanted thoughts and interference. (5:46)
• Noise levels are increasing around the world and are becoming more detrimental to health. In our modern society all the auditory and informational noise we are exposed to creates more noise inside of our heads which can lead to overwhelming stress and burnout. (7:05)
• How we perceive silence is very individual. Some people experience their greatest sense of quiet during the loudest of experiences, which shows us that silence is more related to our sense of mindfulness, focus, or flow states that we would initially imagine. (8:26)
• Silence also does not require solitude. Some silence can be the most profound when shared among a group of people. (11:12)

Although traditional methods of finding silence, such as meditation, can be a great way to cultivate silence, it’s not always the most beneficial for everyone. Justin and Leigh provide that it takes a deeper knowing of oneself and an exploration into how silence resonates within our own bodies to discover the best practice for oneself. Some people will find the deepest quiet in loudness, in solitude, in movement, or in stillness but to cultivate it as a daily practice, one must first explore what creates that quiet within.

Within our teams and workplaces, Leigh mentions that for groups of people, silence can be magnified when it’s shared. It’s important to create spaces for silence not only on an individual level within the workplace, but also collectively. Justin and Leigh provide some simple practices that can create silence and generate deeper thinking, creativity, and brainstorming. One example of these practices is to take time silently to write ideas on post its and create a gallery wall for everyone to peruse and contemplate before anonymously voting on the favorite ideas. Even just taking time to “sleep on it” before making big decisions creates space for contemplation and reflection. Bright ideas, creative problem solving, less burnout and deeper communication can come from a culture of silence.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“At the most basic level, we do think of silence as the absence of noise, you know, at the primary level, and noise, we see it as unwanted distraction. It’s unwanted interference, not just in our ears, but also on our screens and in our heads, not just the auditory noise, but the informational noise and the internal noise, too.” (5:46)

“We think of silence really as the space where no one’s making claims on your consciousness, the space where nothing is interfering with your perception, and your intention, and it’s in this way that we can start to explore silence as this presence unto itself.” (11:12)

“You can have a culture of noise, or you can have a culture of quiet.” (31:01)

“Right now, our lives saturated with noise, our work saturated with noise, our consciousness saturated noise, the inability to focus on what we want to focus and intend, this is having a true real cost and we need to prioritize and appreciate silence for all that brings us.” (42:13) 

RESOURCES

Justin Talbot Zorn
Website | LinkedIn

Leigh Marz
Website | LinkedIn

Book:GOLDEN: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Sarah Noll Wilson, executive coach, leadership development consultant, and bestselling author of Don’t Feed the Elephants!: Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships. Sarah is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations”, is certified in Co-Active Coaching, Conversational Intelligence, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities. Sarah works with leaders to develop more powerful partnerships and helps teams spot patterns that are keeping them from higher performance. An in-demand keynote speaker, she leads workshops and team retreats for leaders and HR professionals. Previously, Sarah worked in management and as the talent development leader for an insurance company, giving her firsthand insight into the challenges of corporate leadership. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health. She holds several coaching certifications and has a master’s in leadership development from Drake University.

Listen to the full episode here:

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

For many, overcoming avoidance is not an easy feat, but Sarah provides insights and perspectives to help go from shy or passive-aggressive to confident and direct. Avoidance is common for many in relationships when it comes to having hard conversations. It is easier to put it off or brush it under the rug rather than deal with things directly, but when we do this, we are actually sacrificing connection and the overall health of our relationships. Sarah has found that many fall into specific categories of avoidance ‘elephants’ (10:48) which include:

• The Blamephant: those who blame others rather than looking at the role they play.
• The Imaginephant: those who believe they know other’s thoughts and intentions rather than being curious about their truth.
• The Nudgephant: those who take a passive-aggressive approach and ‘nudge’ the issue indirectly.
• The Deflectephant: those who deflect, hide behind jokes or never have the energy to address the issue.

All these elephants are simply avenues of avoidance that show up for people in different situations. Sarah shares that the best way to really work around these is to get curious about why we are avoiding the issue, curious about the other person in the situation, and being more open to other possibilities and open to communication. She calls this the curiosity-first approach (13:44), which leads to self-reflection and consideration of other perspectives.

Sarah also talks about how to gain confidence in uneasy circumstances (19:35). The first step is to acknowledge that it’s an uncomfortable situation, and to embrace the uneasiness in the short term because it outweighs the uneasiness of long-term avoidance. When we have difficult conversations with anyone, whether it be loved ones or coworkers, we should always do so with the intention of forming a stronger relationship. Sarah also recommends expressing gratitude when difficult conversations do go well to reinforce positive relationship dynamics (30:27). Sometimes fear of things going badly gets in our way, but Sarah reminds us that we can always catch ourselves and ask for a second chance to do it better (27:32). Fear should not prevent us from forming stronger bonds in our lives.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“It’s not that the conflict is the elephant, but it’s our avoidance of it. Hence, the ‘don’t feed the elephant’, we create the elephant when we avoid acknowledging or addressing something.” (4:11)

“The thing that I wish more people practice, and it’s something I’ve been trying to really practice, is naming my appreciation that we can have these conversations to reinforce that this is the dynamic of the relationship.” (30:27)

“When we look at organizations, all they are clusters of relationships. Humans and connections. And so when we can remind ourselves of that it can just make things easier, lighter, not as transactional.” (36:07)

RESOURCES

Sarah Noll Wilson:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Don’t Feed the Elephants!: Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Sarah Noll Wilson. Sarah, thanks for being with us.

Sarah Noll Wilson 0:09
Thanks for having me.

Sue Bethanis 0:10
Yeah. Sarah is an executive coach, leadership development consultant, and bestselling author of Don’t Feed the Elephants! Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships. And I really want to talk about the title like, like most of our time talking about that. She’s a contributor to HBr and hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations” is certified in collective coaching, conversational intelligence and a frequent guest lecturer at universities, Sarah works with leaders to develop more powerful partnerships and helps teams spot patterns that are keeping them from higher performance. An in-demand keynote speaker she leads workshops and team retreats for leaders and HR professionals. Previously, Sarah worked in management as the talent development leader for an insurance company, giving her firsthand insight into the challenges of corporate leadership. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is passionate advocate for mental health. She holds several coaching certifications and has a master’s in leadership development from Draper University. So again, I want to welcome you from Des Moines, Iowa.

Sarah Noll Wilson 1:11
Thanks for having me.

Sue Bethanis 1:12
Yeah, so I read your bio, and you know, want to make sure we got everything.

Sarah Noll Wilson 1:17
I mean, you read it all.

Sue Bethanis 1:18
I read all the things. But you know, I really just want to know more about your personal story. You know, what influenced you to write this book? And also, why did you title it that?

Sarah Noll Wilson 1:33
Nobody’s asked me about the title. So I appreciate that as an opportunity. So a little bit about me personally, and how that led into the book, I was, in my studies of leadership development, I was introduced to the idea of the elephant in the room. And not that I certainly wasn’t familiar intimately with avoidance. I just didn’t know the name for it. And, and as I was learning that, I realized that I had never experienced a team and I had never experienced relationships, quite frankly, where we talked about the hard stuff. And so became really fascinated with how do you actually create that, you know, growing up in the Midwest, you know, something we talked about a lot is the whole Midwest nice, which now I just lovingly call violent politeness. Yeah, it’s the like, I mean, there’s the niceness of if you need something, we will be there, right. Like we you know, we’ll see you on the street. Everyone can tell I’m from the Midwest, when I go to New York, like you’re to smiley, and you’re saying hello to everyone. Just like, stop, stop apologizing. But, but then there’s this other side of that, which is we don’t talk about the hard stuff, we smooth it over, we do everything we can to maintain harmony. But that doesn’t mean that you know, I always say that we’re really good at smiling but seething. And we’re really good at having all the conversations with all the wrong people. And the thing that so I just became fascinated with: can you even create this because I had never experienced it. And then I realized that part of the reason I had never experienced it is because I probably basically only knew how to avoid conflict. And you know, as I need to get more curious realized I came from generations of avoiders, and so it really became my mission to understand it. And, and it started first with just like, how do you have the conversations, right? And there are countless books written on that. But then I started to realize lots of people were reading those, and they were still avoiding it. And so then I became really curious with the avoidance, and just how do we how do we better understand when we have our foot on the brake, and to name it and to be able to then make a conscious choice from that, but it really came from a deep, deep personal desire to want to experience having healthy relationships.

Sue Bethanis 3:48
Yeah. So then you went and did some research, and I assume you did some research on attachment theory?

Sarah Noll Wilson 3:53
Well, yeah, I’m not directly but indirectly through my own therapy. I’m very familiar with it. Yeah. Right.

Sue Bethanis 4:00
Right. Right. So tell us a little bit about the antecedents of the book, in terms of how did you come to you got some different types and things like that. I mean, did you go and interview people or

Sarah Noll Wilson 4:11
Yeah, I mean so some of it was just researching and reading what other people had put out there a lot of it is just my own experience of I was in leadership positions, I led leadership development efforts. So it was a combination of research that I knew was out there and understanding more about the brain and understanding how does that impact things and really just getting curious and experimenting with language that resonated for people and I think that you know, you asked about the title, sometimes not always, but sometimes what I found is that when using language that’s a little lighter, sometimes made it easier for people to engage with the concepts that wouldn’t come with a lot of shame, or beating themselves up or really like a ton of discomfort. And so you know, I lovingly say, while the book is light-hearted, we hope it’s not lightweight. Because when we’re avoiding a conversation, it’s because something matters, or often it is. And, and so that’s, that’s how that came about. And so playing on that metaphor of the elephant in the room, you know, one of the things that I would always hear is people would say, oh, that person is the elephant in the room, and they would point at the boss. And I just became really curious about what actually creates the elephant. And, you know, because if you and I have a problem, and you come and talk to me, there’s no elephant. So it’s not that the conflict is the elephant, but it’s our avoidance of it. Hence, they don’t feed the elephant, we create the elephant when we avoid acknowledging or addressing something.

Sue Bethanis 5:40
Exactly. So there are so many directions, and we have a set of questions here. And I’ll probably go off of those. Not that I’m avoiding them, because I’m not. But you know, so much of what we’re hearing these days is about the avoidance of our care of ourselves, and the avoidance of conflict as well, because we’re in a milieu that is so full of conflict, very much more than any other time in my life, I don’t know about you, but my life, I think we’re still in very much in sort of a pandemic. I mean, we still have to wear masks when we go inside, I mean, maybe I’m one in 10 people that are still doing it.

Sarah Noll Wilson 6:21
I was gonna say in your town because I’m the only one in mine. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 6:25
So there’s a pandemic, there’s climate change, there’s Roe v. Wade, there are so many things that have been thrown at us. Yeah. And so talk with us a little bit about like, the difference between Tefloning something because there’s so much stuff coming at us that we have to sort of say, Stop, I’m not going to watch the news anymore. Stopping because we have to like, do things. That is an avoidance technique. Yeah. But at the same time, also able to deal with the hard questions. I think that balance is difficult.

Sarah Noll Wilson 6:53
Yeah, it was always difficult. And, you know, I mean, I’m sure you see this in your work and your world. But I mean, we collectively see resilience is at an all-time low, just because of the, again, as you pointed out, just this extended prolonged exposure to stress that we’re experiencing. I mean, we’re living in a time of just chronic uncertainty and complexity and conflict. And the way that I think about this, and certainly from you know, mental health professionals would be able to maybe better articulate of when does it become unhealthy numbing behaviors and avoidance, but there are times when avoidance is appropriate and okay. For me, the way that I think about it in my work is coming from a place, not a fearful avoidance, but of a, like, a conscious disengagement, if that makes sense, you know, because I kind of think of avoidance, how I see it a lot in the relationships that we work with is, there’s the aggressive avoidance, which is passive-aggressive, I’m going to leave the room, but I’m going to throw a grenade behind me, or I’m going to Stonewall you, and I’m going to do all of these things that are really, I mean, it’s not avoidance, but you know, it’s a form of it. And then that fear of I’m so afraid of what’s going to happen, it’s the stress response. And then there are just times where you go, I don’t have the energy right now, to do this. And the thing that’s, like, a slight nuance of that, for me, is that when we are reflective, and we make that choice, that conscious avoidance gives us our power back in a time when I think we can feel really powerless. And because it’s we’re making a choice to say, You know what, I know that I don’t have the energy right now, or I’m not going to have this conversation with this person, because I’m literally dealing with taking care of a sick parent, and that’s where my energy needs to go. And so I’m going to do what I need to do in order to either accept the situation or adjust it or show up differently, or you talk about like the onslaught of news of, I want to be informed. And I also know there’s a cost to me if I keep watching it, and finding that balance of so I can continue to show up at my best.

Sue Bethanis 8:57
I like that because there is a way to balance this.

Sarah Noll Wilson 9:00
Yeah. Because to totally devoid, sometimes there’s an incredible place of privilege.

Sue Bethanis 9:04
That’s right, you have to be in the world. And you have to understand that others are suffering more than we are. And that we need to be able to help people that are suffering more than we are. As extroverted as much as I am, I hate this. I still am able to have a pretty nice life. And so I but I am very conscious of those that are suffering and I’m having a hard time. So we do have to still be in the world. But I feel like every day I wake up okay, how am I balancing my day-to-day? The bad things?

Sarah Noll Wilson 9:34
Yeah, yeah.

Sue Bethanis 9:36
Because there are just so many things going on. Yeah, and this is what we’re hearing from our clients too. It’s like there’s like somebody asked me the other day – she’s in a big job now she goes, “Is this the way it’s always gonna be?” I said “Oh Yeah, actually, this is the way it’s always gonna be put your responses aren’t going to be the same.” I was like Sorry.

Sarah Noll Wilson 10:00
So somebody said, “How are you doing really these days, Sarah” and I said, “you know, the story of the Princess and the Pea,” and they’re like, “Yeah”, I said, “well, some days, I feel like the princess, and I’m inconvenienced, and I’m not sleeping well, and I said, and other days, I’m the pee. And I’m just done being like, cover it up with more and more mattresses, but I was like, I’m not enough for me.”

Sue Bethanis 10:19
One or the other. Yeah. So let’s talk about the book a little bit. So you’ve got different types of elements that maybe talk a little bit about your concept of this. The idea, and then there’s like different types of you have the avoidant, the Imagephant, the Blamephant, the Nudgephant, the Deflectphant, these are all obviously riffs on Elephant.

Sarah Noll Wilson 10:41
very, very rigorous, academic technical terms.

Sue Bethanis 10:45
Yeah. So why don’t you just go through some?

Sarah Noll Wilson 10:48
Yeah, again, part of the practice, and the philosophy is how do we see better what’s happening, so then we can choose differently and do better. And the I don’t remember the origin of where this came about, but I just became really interested in the different types of avoidance and how it came up. And then I was joking with somebody, we’re like, it’d be fun if there are different types of elephants. And the idea behind it, again, in a loving, light-hearted way is for us to examine and go when am I just outright like, avoidance is the main one, right? That’s what creates it. But when am I avoiding something by staying in a place of blaming, like, I’m just going to blame you for everything, I’m never going to reflect on the role that I’ve played, I’m not going to have the conversation with you. I’m not going to maybe have the necessary conversation I need to have with myself, we call that the Blamephant. The Imaginephant is when we imagine, that one, I actually think was the first one because it was you know, somebody was like, Well, I know that’s what they meant. Like, I just know that that’s what they meant, instead of getting curious and potentially having the conversation to confirm and clarify. Yeah, so then the Nudgephant is where it’s like, in this is I feel like this is the one in my DNA from growing up is like, I might nudge it, I might be passive, you know, like indirect about it. And sometimes that can be really an effective approach. The Deflectephant is when the mesh can show up a couple of different ways. Sometimes, you know, you’ll see groups that will deflect having the conversation they need to have, maybe it’s because somebody’s being sarcastic, and they’re making jokes, and they’re kind of the smartass of the group and deflecting actually having the like, the real conversation. Sometimes it’s literally like, I’m just too tired to talk about it. Right. And it’s an avoidant, right, that avoidant technique. But other times in teams in particular, we deflect by not working on the right problem or asking the like, hard questions. And what’s been interesting and fun is, since the book came out, is people will email me or send me new elephants that they like, Oh, I found a new one. And so somebody said, I discovered a Rentephant. And I was like, Yeah, tell me more that, like, sometimes I just need to borrow the avoidance till I can get the confidence. But I know, I’m just borrowing it for a little bit. But the newest one that’s come up, is they somebody coined the Pretendephant, it’s like, we’re just gonna, we’re just, especially in relationships and family relationships. We’re just going to pretend like that didn’t happen. We’re just gonna keep moving forward. Yeah, just smooth it over. And so the idea that is, ultimately how can we start to see oh, I’m caught in a cycle of blaming, or I’m imagining something that I don’t know if it’s true or not. So how do I test like, maybe it’s true? It might be true, it absolutely can. But like, let’s test our assumption. And so it’s a way for people to see differently

Sue Bethanis 13:35
Right and you talk about boundaries and the precepts of freeing the elephant about being curious with yourself, being curious about others and curious with others. Can you explain those?

Sarah Noll Wilson 13:44
Yeah, it’s, I mean, the first thing I would say is, one, there’s no one size fits all approach to conversations or relationships. So this is a tool that we can use, there was a pattern that I was noticing. So I’ll back up just to explain what drove these is that really consistent pattern when people were in conflict, and that was helping them navigate it was: one, it was really difficult or infrequent that people would consider the role that they played. Two, If I get angry or frustrated, being stuck in that emotion or staying in that motion and not understanding – Well, why? what is it about the situation of why I’m frustrated, and then really difficult for people to consider the other person’s point of view, and then treating the conversation like a confrontation, right? I mean, that’s part of why we avoid is where like, I don’t know how bad this conversation is gonna get, but we’re thinking of it. So the practice we call it the “curiosity first approach”, which is first doing some reflection on getting curious with yourself, which could be asking questions just like how do I feel? What was it about the situation that was so frustrating to me or, you know, What needs do I have that aren’t being met or what values of mine or not are being stepped on? Because so often in relationships, when there are issues, it usually comes down to one of those two things that we have a need that’s not being met, and we have a value that’s being stepped on or not honored. And then making sure we do ask the question, what role did I play? Or am I playing? You know, maybe it’s not something you did, maybe it’s something you didn’t do that potentially can contribute to it. When we talk about leaders, for example, and people in management, I, this applies to all people. But in particular, a question that I love to have people reflect on is, is it a preference issue? Or is it a performance issue? Because so often we confuse the two. So and sometimes that’s all you need to free an elephant. I mean, that’s the thing is, you might not have to have a conversation with somebody, you might just realize, Oh, I’m frustrated with that, that’s actually about me, that’s not about them. That’s something that I need to deal with or process with, or you get clarity and you know, in the elephant could be freed. And then the act of getting curious about someone and similarly, kind of asking questions, what makes sense to them, you know, and to clarify, the goal is not to make up a story or make assumptions or fill in their stories, it’s just to remind ourselves that they have a perspective on the situation because that can be really hard, especially when we’re in the heat of the moment. Again, depending on the situation. This is something I always say like, I never want curiosity to be weaponized. And what I mean by that is sometimes, you know, people can learn a tool, and they like, I don’t know, here’s the scenario that actually happened, somebody was experiencing fairly obvious harassment. And the person was like, Well, you just need to get curious about it like, no, that’s not when we get curious like that like they are being harmed like this. We don’t need them to get curious about the person who’s harming them. In this moment, we need to protect them. And getting curious about others doesn’t mean we diminish our needs, it doesn’t mean that we set aside our needs just we opened the door to try to understand their perspective and their needs. And then trying to approach the getting curious with someone is how do we approach the conversation again, more from a conversation of exploration instead of this, like heavy confrontation?

Sue Bethanis 16:58
So let’s give me an example. Somebody from your work, you know, where you’re getting there delineate between these, or yeah, there has to be obviously reflection as part of this account I’m curious if you don’t have the ability to reflect which you are and give yourself the time to reflect. Yeah, so I think there was no one hand in hand, but give some examples.

Sarah Noll Wilson 17:16
Yeah, so here’s a really good example of somebody. And I write about this because it was such a funny moment. But she, I was delivering a workshop actually on this topic. And my client was, unbeknownst to me very frustrated that her boss wasn’t at this training. And she was she was talking to everyone like, Where’s so and so? And why isn’t she here? And can you believe she’s not here. And in her frustration, was talking to everyone else about her. And when we got to the section about, we’ll get curious about the other person, it caused her to pause. And she realized she’s like, I know my boss well enough to know, once I realized that she wasn’t here, because there was probably something more important she was having to manage, because that wasn’t typical or normal for her. And so she came up to me at break, and she’s like, I’ve been throwing around these damn peanuts, like everywhere, Sarah, because instead of considering, you know, the other person’s perspective and thinking about them, she was just so mad and frustrated. But she said, as soon as I realized, Oh, she wouldn’t be here, unless there was something more important. And she’s the head of HR. So there’s always fires. But sure enough, there was a really urgent situation that came up. And she’s like, I realized I just needed to text her and be like, Hey, just wanted to check in and see where you’re going. She was making lots of assumptions, having conversations with everyone but the boss or her manager, and so that’s what you know, look like in that situation to kind of get to that point and realize, oh, the elephant got free. Because once I had that conversation with myself, I realized, Oh, I just needed to like, have a quick check in with her to make sure everything was okay.

Sue Bethanis 18:52
I think people avoid the conflict because the it feels too – it’s a typical fear, fear response, right? Yeah, your stomach might get gurgly or their head might hurt or, you know, whatever physical response, they learned. People have a physical response if they have to confront somebody. Yeah. Okay. In the case, you gave it was like she that wasn’t very confrontational. It was nearly like she was asking. So it wasn’t necessarily going to be confrontational. But I think that a lot of people will avoid because it feels confrontational. And they don’t want to have that either in their bodies. So what do you say to that situation where it is conflict is going to determine that it’s going to feel that.

Sarah Noll Wilson 19:35
I love that you brought that up, because one of the most common requests that I’ll hear from people, is they’ll say, I want to be more confident and have conversations that are difficult or conflict or and then I’ll ask them, I said, Well, what is being confident mean to you? Like, what does that look like for you? And most of them will say that I don’t feel that way which I appreciate. My perspective and the experience of working with so many people is that’s a biological reaction when we feel threatened, that’s a biological reaction when we feel like we’re taking a risk or we feel vulnerable. And so, for us in this work, the goal isn’t to become so skilled, that you never have those reactions, it’s that we’re able to recognize that that’s a normal part of taking a risk and being vulnerable. And instead of being paralyzed by it, we can be present with it. You know, I think if the relationship matters, if the relationship is important, or the situation is important to you, it will likely be difficult on some level, because it’s hard. And there could be, there could be consequences, I’m not naive, or Pollyanna, I’ve seen lots of times where the other person wasn’t ready to receive it, or the situation didn’t get resolved, maybe how the person wanted. But I’ve also seen a lot of times we can imagine it being worse than it actually is. And, and so part of the work of being able to navigate difficult conversations is to normalize that gross feeling. And I still get that. I mean, there are times when I know I have to have a tough conversation with somebody who I really care for, I really loved and appreciate and value the relationship, and I don’t want to ruin it. But I also know that if we don’t have this conversation, right now, there’s damage that’s already been done that we need to repair. And if that doesn’t happen, we’ll just continue to erode. And I have to work through that and process that myself. And some, you know, sometimes my husband will be a smart aleck and be like, It’s too bad you don’t know, somebody wrote a book on this. I was like, this is why it’s, it may never become easy. But the hope is, it can become easier.

Sue Bethanis 21:43
Right? Well, and then you have the situation that kind of not necessarily opposite. But another aspect of this, which is that people who are confrontational in their nature, they don’t, they will not let something get by. So they are not going to avoid conflict. They’re not going to avoid having a hard conversation and bringing something up. And in fact, in some cases, with people like that, if they don’t bring it up, it will feel really bad. So this is almost like, it’s gonna feel really bad for some people that they do bring it up as they feel really bad for something they don’t bring it up. Right. So love that. How do we help? So what are some tips or ideas around the people that are not? So they’re in a fight response? Right? And what do you say to someone like that?

Sarah Noll Wilson 22:26
Yeah, I think about that group, sort of in two categories? Because I think there are the people who need to have the conversation and who want to have a conversation, and then I think there’s the party, I mean, I’ve seen it and experienced it, where it’s I’m going to say it like it is but isn’t necessarily open to receiving it like it is. And the other thing to say to that is particularly if you are someone like that, because I mean, I will say that, you know, I lovingly call this book my love letter to avoiders, right? So it’s very much with them in mind to help them step into how do we have the conversations. But something that is difficult for people who are comfortable speaking more directly, is if you are working in a culture, if you are living in a culture that is avoidant, when you are the person to speak up and to speak the truth, it’s really easy for you to almost become the target and the villain because you’re at the heart of it.

Sue Bethanis 23:21
I have someone right now who’s in a very nice culture and she is like they’re turning to her to be the one who says the truth. It’s like dude, like that’s not fair to you. And she also can’t stop not do that, either. Yeah, so she’s kind of caught. So in that case, I’m advising or coming together on her narrating that, hey, if she’s in a meeting, and she’s actually saying, Okay, guys, I’m gonna do what I normally do, I’d be great if somebody also brings this up. You know, so I’m bringing it up, because it’s important. And that’s a little snarky, but just in some way narrating that’s what she’s doing what she usually does, because she’s calling the question. Yeah. And, and others need to be calling the question.

Sarah Noll Wilson 24:03
It’s kind of like when somebody speaks up, and they come up, I mean, this happens all the time somebody speaks, right, like, and then five people afterward in the shadows go, Oh, my God, thank you so much for bringing it up. And sometimes when you’re that person because I often feel like, even though I’m not comfortable in that role, I’ve become more comfortable in that role, right? Or become, you know. It’s just like, I can’t respond to it, because we have to talk about it, it’s always ‘so what held you back from speaking up’’, you know what, you know, ‘it’s because I can’t go out on the limb, always, you know, and I’m not going to speak on someone else’s behalf.’ But I appreciate and love that practice of her narrating like, Hey, I’m gonna do what I do. And, you know, and the other thing that I might say if she wanted to, in that situation to create an invitation is sometimes it can be powerful too. I’m gonna make an observation. What do you all notice? Like, I’m just noticing this, what does everybody else think or why notice to like, engage.

Sue Bethanis 24:56
I love that. So I tell everything that’s in her head. Just say One little thing and then say, All right, what else do you guys? Consider? Throw it out to the group? Yeah.

Sarah Noll Wilson 25:04
Yeah. The other thing that I find is that again, in some situations, if we can almost establish some commitments to each other, we call them collaborative commitments. One of my favorite questions to ask when I’m building a new relationship is: what do we want to do when we don’t show up at our best? because it’s not ‘if’ it’s ‘when’, and, and it’s a time where we, most people would say, just tell it to me straight, just give me the feedback, just whatever. And then when the time comes, the response is different. But by having some of those agreements, we can come back to that in an individual relationship or in a team and go for that, let’s say you and I agree to that. And, and you give me feedback, and I don’t respond to it well, or I’m, you know, avoiding or whatever the case might be, you can come back to that and go, Hey, Sarah, we agreed to this, did that change for you, that hasn’t changed for me, right? In a way for us to start to normalize it because especially in certain parts of our country, especially when you look at like from a white dominant perspective, right, we avoid conflict, we remove emotions, all of this. And, and like psychological safety. I think this is one of the things when we talk about psych safety because it’s a phrase that is now used as, like, that doesn’t mean comfortable. That means that we can disagree openly and effectively. And we can be better for it. And, and we can fail and we can all have this stuff. And it’s really challenging. I know when somebody is- when they are comfortable, being able to speak it, but it’s the desire for harmony is so great. And I don’t I wish I could remember who I could give credit to this. But somebody said something really profound for me anyway when talking about harmony, and they go, you know, people think of harmony, as settled and keeping the peace. But when you think about harmony and music, harmony music is because there are different voices coming in. And that’s what makes it really beautiful. So how do we think of harmony? Not as one note, but how do we think of harmony as bringing in different voices? And that always resonated with me. Yeah, I wish I could remember who to give credit to.

Sue Bethanis 27:09
So I want to take a moment to throw this out to the group

Unknown Speaker 27:13
I’m volunteering. I love this topic, I’m working with it all the time and wondering what input you have for clients who are afraid of doing emotional damage, that they can’t recover from that the relationship can’t recover from, and how you’d advise moving into the conflict.

Sarah Noll Wilson 27:32
Yeah, that I mean, that I think is such a common one. If people go I don’t, I don’t want to be mean, and I don’t want to do damage. So part of a couple of things. One is we always have the option for a do-over, a thoughtful do-over right if something doesn’t go well. Or maybe we didn’t speak how we wanted to. There’s some power in being able to come back and go. I’ve been thinking on that conversation and how it went. And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t like how it felt. And would you be open to doing a do-over because I value this relationship? And I want to make sure that, you know, we get this right. I think sometimes we’re afraid when we’ve like messed up or had a regrettable event and not come back and repair it. But there’s always time to repair it. So that’s one thing that was coming up for me that that’s been a really powerful practice for myself and clients to realize that. And the other thing is sometimes I think when we’re coming into these conversations, we’re so caught up, you know, as Sue said, like in our emotions that we are thinking about or taking the time to be really intentional about how do we want to show up? What’s the impact we hope to make? And a big question that I always like to ask myself and other people is, who do I need to be? And what do I need to do to try to increase that likelihood? I can’t control the other person, but I can control myself. And you know, I mean, we just had to have a really, really tough conversation with a family member about some decisions that were made that substantially affected health and really damage the trust and relationship, and part of the prep for it was like we do not want to damage this relationship. But the reality is, if we don’t have this conversation, this damage will go on healed. And so being really intentional about how do I want to show up? what do I hope the impact to be? who do I need to be? what do I need to do? And to speak that you know if that’s your goal like I’m having this conversation with you because I care about you. I’m having this because I think you deserve to hear this. If I was in your position, I would want to know this or things like that. Because sometimes I think and I assume you all see this as people confuse directness with not being kind, right? They think that well, I want to be kind and it’s like, right, but you can be kind and direct. You can say I’m telling you this because I care about you. And I’m sharing this feedback with you because I want to see you grow and I’m confident you’ll figure this out. And sometimes we forget to bring in the love when it’s tough.

Unknown Speaker 29:57
I like that a lot, love that. I love that intentionality. And then the only other thing I would say that I’ve tried myself in my own going into discomfort, and also I might even coaching clients is just to name the discomfort to say, you know, just simply, hey, this is feeling uncomfortable for me, I feel uncomfortable right now. But I feel like this is an important conversation, or I’m feeling a little edgy about this, or whatever their authentic language is. And I think that’s helpful, too, to just be human about it.

Sarah Noll Wilson 30:27
Yeah, instead of having to pretend like you have to have it all together, and even just say, like, I might not get it, right, but it’s really important that we try. The other thing that I will say is, when the conversation actually goes well, the thing that I wish more people practice, and it’s something I’ve been trying to really practice is naming my appreciation that we can have these conversations to reinforce that this is the dynamic of the relationship, because I mean, we’ve all had times where you build it up, and you’re like, oh, shit, that’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. And making a point to come back and go, you know, Susan, I’m just, I’m so grateful that we can have these kinds of conversations, even when they’re hard. And I just appreciate, it because then we just reinforced that that’s the norm for us. So when it comes up, we go, yeah, that heat is high. But I know I’m not gonna get burned. Because I’m with Susan, and this is what we do together.

Sue Bethanis 31:14
Thank you for your question. I just wanted to add one thing. I talk with clients a lot about this idea of being direct and directness, and it seems too harsh, you know, and so I actually reframe it for them. And for me, because it’s not just them. It’s to be clear. Yeah. So if the clarity is more of the mindset, then doesn’t feel as harsh

Sarah Noll Wilson 31:36
Yeah, it doesn’t feel like a punch. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 31:39
Thank you for your question.

Sarah Noll Wilson 31:41
Yeah. Thanks, Susan. And for the suggestion at the end

Unknown Speaker 31:49
Fascinating conversation. I mean, there’s so much wisdom, you know, I just have so many thoughts. One thing is about love. I mean, I myself or I’ve, in my life, it’s all about love. And I speak about love, as I’m kind of fortunate, I guess because I’m just naturally a loving person. It’s surprising I have, I’m not working that much as I used to before. But a couple of CEOs, you know, that I’m working with, and we talk about love, we tell each other, we love, I think there’s so much about being more in that place. You know, it’s to me, it’s more spiritual than all the stuff that we’re doing. And there’s so much antagonism in the world. Yeah, I don’t know if I can change everything. But in my own small circle, it’s really about reading love and being in that place. And if you have a difficult situation with somebody, by the way, a lot of it is the I mean, quote, so one of the most important conversations that we have is the kind and compassionate conversation we have with ourselves. Loving-kindness, love, yeah, whatever you want to call it, self-love, or whatever. And I think we’re less likely to, you know, I mean, anything’s possible and what underlies that, when I talk to people, and I like a love tour, you know, it’s like, The Rolling Stones, it’s just my nature, like, ego, I just bring it up, you know, it’s like, yeah, and underneath, I reflect a lot, like, given my age, I’m living now with incurable cancer. And, you know, so aware of making choices, you know, in all, you know, where it’s important to engage or not engage in, and all these things, but one thing I think, is really to sort of reflecting on what’s really true, and not that I know for sure, but so many people have lack of self-worth. And when you have, when you don’t feel good about yourself, you know, and we’re all working on ourselves, to say the least, otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this business. But we project all this stuff onto everybody else. We all do it right. So I don’t have to kind of sum it all up, you know, it’s, I guess it’s showing up to be in a loving spirit. And that all of a sudden, then I mean, to me, I don’t show up all of a sudden, like that, you know, it’s just yeah, the life I try to live you know if you try to show up just to the conflict, you know, good luck and then come from love with with the people we have difficulty with. And I’ve had hard conversations with people, I have no problem avoiding or whatever. But it comes from love, it doesn’t come from antagonism making someone wrong, the language that we’re using now. And if I get a referral, or on some call, and we’re calling people difficult, or the latest one, it seems like everybody’s toxic, you know, and I still haven’t worked that one out, but I don’t like it but everyone can’t quite figure it out. And everybody Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I don’t know to me it’s just really unkind. I get there are difficult words in order for all that stuff and challenging. It’s our language that we use is so important this stuff there, but

Sue Bethanis 34:27
Thanks.

Sarah Noll Wilson 34:29
First of all, I love that as you’re talking about love, you have that beautiful painting behind you for people who might be listening to this that’s just love all over. I really appreciate you bringing that up because this is a topic we talk about love in the workplace. And, you know, from the standpoint of war with humans, or you know, we’re with fellow humans, and we stepped into this mindset of at the end, so transactional, and you know, and we think about that, even from a standpoint of moving to remote and hybrid is so many of the conversations have leaned heavily into just transactional and we’ve missed these moments of transformation. And you know, we’ve explored this as a team even if you know, why is that such a scary word to use in the workplace? I love my, I mean, I love my colleagues and there’s I have clients who I definitely love and, and, you know, it comes back to and I’ve had people say, but what if I have to fire them someday like that, that that’s a lot of energy to hold on to, and it creates a distance between you and the person right out of the gate that might not even be necessary. And you can have a situation like that come up, and still, do it in a loving and kind way.

Unknown Speaker 35:39
You can fire someone with love you can do with love, right? You know, I had was when I was doing a workshop in the wine country a while back, and I started talking about love, and someone said the L word. If you gotta be kidding me, you know, it’s like, some of us like the F word or whatever. You know, I’m comfortable with it. And I’m hoping if the more we talk about it, and it’s these kinds of conversations, the more people will become comfortable with it. Yeah. And that’s the future of everything. I think we just as a species, we just need to be more kind and loving with each other.

Sarah Noll Wilson 36:07
Yeah, totally agree. And I think that sometimes we forget that, even when we look at organizations, all they are clusters of relationships. Humans and connections. And so when we can remind ourselves of that it can just make things easier, lighter, and not as transactional. And to your point about self-worth, that’s something that was coming up for me when you were sharing that is. we talked about avoidance from the fearful place. But this is still coming from a fearful place. But sometimes, you know, we might avoid it because we’re protecting our power. And I’ve certainly seen this where people will avoid, you know, maybe leaders who are in a situation where they can influence something they aren’t. And it became very clear, oh, they, they didn’t engage with that, because they were protecting the power they had until that was challenged. And you know, and some of that comes from that, potentially, from that sense of knowing yourself, trusting yourself having that deeper sense of self-worth, and not needing all that power that you had. But that’s something that I think we don’t talk about a lot is, especially when you have access to power and authority. Sometimes you avoid things because you’re staying connected to them and protecting what you have.

Sue Bethanis 37:18
Yeah, also sometimes we downplay it. Wow. Okay, thank you so much. Appreciate your comments, and good luck with everything. Yeah. Okay, Deborah, go for it.

Unknown Speaker 37:29
Thanks. So, I’ve been enjoying this immensely. And one of the things I’ve really latched on to is this wonderful use of the term harmony in its musical sense. And I’m wondering, do you have other metaphors that you find useful, besides the elephant ones, but other metaphors that you find useful in helping people get to the point of, oh, this is going to be so much better when I do this? Even though it looks so difficult before I’ve done it?

Sarah Noll Wilson 38:00
Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s a couple you know, some of its metaphors, some of it’s just like perspective. One is, it’s funny that I’m using another musical metaphor. But you know, is, how do we increase our range as humans, and so when you think of somebody who’s a great singer, great singers don’t just sing a couple of notes really, really well. They’re able to sing a lot of notes, depending on what the situation and what the song is. And so you know, because some people will be, well, I’m just not that direct person. I’m not like, you know, I can’t do that, or whatever. Or the flip side is, like, I don’t know how to be I just want to say how it is. I don’t want to be curious and ask a question Sarah, or whatever the case may be. And so sometimes I’ll offer that up is, we just want to increase the range. So you have more notes that you can play, depending on the situation. The other this is a phrase that has been very resonant for clients recently is how do we right size, the problem? Because sometimes things will feel so big. So how do we, whether that’s gathering information, having the conversation, how do we right size, it has been really powerful for people when they’re feeling overwhelmed. And so those are a few that definitely come up. I’m sure I know, I’m a little bit of a metaphor person, that those are increasing notes is probably one of the most powerful for people who go but I’m not a people person, you know, like, I’m not. I’m not an emotional person. I was like, what emotions? Don’t you feel? I mean, I’m always kind of a smart aleck when that comes up. But it’s about like, how do we increase the notes that we can play depending on the situation?

Sue Bethanis 39:30
We say the same thing in sports

Unknown Speaker 39:34
Yeah. Thank you.

Sue Bethanis 39:36
Yeah. Thank you, Deborah. So I’ve got one more question and then we’re going to go from there. So it’s want to talk about hybrid because I think that there’s a more pronounced issue with this. It’s easier in some respects to avoid conflict on Zoom and just let things just dissipate or you know, let them go. And sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes, most times, it’s probably not. So are there any tips you have or ideas around? Particularly with hybrid, and particularly, really with remote where we’re not going to be going to the office? And so how do we get people offline? For example, I like to linger with people. That’s one way to do it. What were some of the things?

Sarah Noll Wilson 40:18
Yeah, this is playing the long game, right? But we have to be even more intentional about building really deep levels of trust intentionally so that we have that foundation. And again, you know, like I was mentioning earlier, is that what we’re seeing in the clients who moved from in-person to hybrid, they’re really struggling with filling the gap of how to build the relationships, and the conversations are so transactional. And as somebody said, it’s just harder now. And I am like, I hear that because it’s different. But I would argue you might not have been great at it before you just had more opportunities for it. And so it’s, it’s you know, so the perspective shift is working in a virtual setting almost requires us to be more intentional about, right building a relationship in a different way. But so many of the principles are the same. It’s just what makes them I think, feel scarier is that if we don’t have that existing relationship to build from then it can feel more threatening. I will say this, though, there are some benefits for some people in working in a remote or hybrid situation where they’re at home where they don’t have to deal with some of the BS that they had to deal with in the office, like, I can just focus, I can just get my work done. And I don’t have to deal with microaggressions, or passive-aggressive behavior, and things like that. So I think the thing that we’re seeing is, the intentionality has to be so much higher than it ever was before. And that’s, that’s been a really difficult transition for people, especially people, quite frankly, who never really lead in a relational way to begin with, right?

Sue Bethanis 41:54
Yeah, I feel like I’m a broken record with the intentionality. Like, I think I use the word attention, like every client like five times a session, it’s like, yeah, to be more intentional about that, to be more intentional about that, you have to put time on it.

Sarah Noll Wilson 42:06
Yeah, well, and also to that point, and we need to challenge the rules we’ve created about what it looks like and how we can do it. You know, I was thinking about I was working with a gentleman, and he was lamenting the fact that he goes, I just, you know, in this new virtual environment, it makes me sad that I’m not going to have a relationship with the new hires. I said, is that a rule? Or is that a possibility? And he was kind of paused and I said, if you had to build a relationship, how would you do it differently? And, you know, because we can get so caught in our patterns that we forget to open up and go, so how I could Yeah, how could you? How might we? I think that if I were to add another word, to intentionality, it’s what experiments can we run. Like, what can we try? Like, let’s just experiment here, because we can build deep, I have incredible relationships with people I’ve never met.

Sue Bethanis 42:58
I know. It’s amazing. Some more clients who’ve never met them before. Yeah, it’s weird. But so thank you, this has been great. I love the conversation. I know there’s so much literality. It’s my new word to it’s like you’re very literal. And so nice it’s really easy to follow you and stuff and most people are not so it’s like I think sometimes people get tired of that and they get like a little tired. Okay, she’s taught me to be really literal with everything I’m saying. So that’s, that’s the flip side of intentionality.

Sarah Noll Wilson 43:30
Yeah, I know you’ve thought through this, and I’m not sure I’m ready to receive it.

Sue Bethanis 43:33
So again, this is Sarah Noah Wilson. It’s sarahnollwilson.com. @SarahNollWilson on Twitter and Instagram and Don’t Feed the Elephants!: Overcome the Art of Avoidance to Build Proper Partnerships. Really appreciate you being here. And I got a lot of things to think about fructify. So thank you very much, and wish everybody a wonderful Aloha.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts DDS Dobson-Smith, CEO and Founder of the executive coaching consultancy, Soul Trained, and a registered neuro-linguistic psychotherapist. DDS has spent over 25 years creating cultures in which people can show up, be themselves, and experience the fundamental joys and benefits of belonging. They are certified as an executive coach by the Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring. Before founding Soul Trained, DDS held a range of senior, executive, and C-Suite roles across a host of sectors and companies.  They are the author of the new book, You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

DDS provides us with some simple and profound insights into diversity, inclusivity, and belonging. The relationship between the three is much more meaningful than the way they are often tossed around in the business world. DDS states that “diversity plus inclusion equals belonging” and that “you can’t have a diverse organization without having inclusion” (4:26). When put so simply, it is evident that diversity is not the end goal, a diverse workplace that fosters a sense of belonging is the true motive. As this is easier said than done, DDS provides more insight into specific ways to foster inclusivity and how to create belonging in the workplace, whether remote or in person.

Some key takeaways from this talk:

• It’s important to reframe our mindset to accept the discomfort of being wrong. To work through uncomfortable feelings to admit we’ve made mistakes, to be vulnerable enough to apologize, and to have difficult conversations. We don’t want to be wrong or to face discomfort in new situations, but this is a huge step towards progress. (7:53)
• It’s in our nature to seek connection and want meaningful relationships, it’s necessary for our health and wellbeing. On the flip side, when we are in situations that feel exclusionary or lack connection, it can have detrimental effects. With remote work settings, as we have stated many times before, it is imperative to be intentional in how we connect with others and to find new ways to reach out to people. (13:34)
• DDS shares that leaders should refrain from claiming ‘safe spaces’ when trying to foster vulnerability. A space will only feel safe if you have created psychological safety in the workplace. You can ask people to be brave and share their experiences, but they likely will only do so when there is a foundation of psychological safety. (29:53)

Connection, inclusivity, and belonging have drastically shifted since the pandemic began. It has become ever more imperative to focus on meaningful conversations and foster a sense of belonging in the workplace. When we remove ourselves from judgment and shift into a mindset where we are open to being wrong, great things happen. Connection, engagement, and innovation are all on the other side of our fears and insecurities. As leaders, we need to embody vulnerability and inclusivity and learn to welcome differences and new perspectives.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“In a conversation, if you cause harm through the words that you use, you take accountability for that by saying, ‘Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I take accountability, and I apologize for the impact that it had on you. I won’t do it again.’ And then move on. Learn from that.” (11:30)

“In order to have psychological health, we have to have connection, we have to have attunement, we have to have nurture. And it’s actually not just for psychological health, it’s for biological health, too.” (13:34)

“I share a lot with my patients that our wounding in life, happens in relationships, so, therefore, so must our healing. And that’s why relationships and how we manage relationships, and how we nurture them in the workplace, as well as outside of it is so, so important.” (18:26)

“It’s crucial for employers, and leaders to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that we are all walking around with some form of wounding, and therefore to take action to create spaces in which people can experience psychological safety.” (18:26)

“We all know in business as leaders, we say we want innovation, we want people to be brave, we want people to change things and to make things better. But none of that is going to happen without psychological safety.” (29:53)

RESOURCES

DDS Dobson-Smith:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome DDS Dobson Smith. And again, thank you so much for being with us. DDS is the founder of the executive coaching consultancy Soul Trained. And a registered neurolinguistic psychotherapist, DDS has spent over 25 years creating cultures in which people can show up, be themselves and experience the fundamental joys and benefits of belonging, they are certified as an executive coach by the Oxford School of coaching mentoring. And before founding Soul Trained, DDS held a range of senior executive and C suite roles across a host of sectors and companies. DDS is the author of the new book, You Can be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging. So, I read your bio, but I want to hear your personal story. So, tell us a little bit about that. How you ended up in Connecticut, tell us about your tattoos. I’ll tell you about mine. And then about the book.

DDS Dobson Smith 0:59
Yeah, I mean, my personal story is I’m a transplant. I grew up and lived in the UK, and lived in London for most of my adult life. And then my husband and I moved to California for what was meant to be a two-year work assignment that ended up being a permanent assignment. And I think, you know, my linking my story to the book professionally, I have carved out a career, before I stood up Soul Trained, carved out a career in the corporate world in learning and development, OD, HR, org psych, roles, all the things ordered C suite level. And actually, when I took kind of step back from it all and looked at it, I was like, oh, really the whole career has been around either directly affecting or being a catalyst for or supporting people to create workplaces in which people could be themselves. And there’s a whole reason why that’s important, which I’m sure we’ll get into. But when I looked at that and realized that’s what I done, I couldn’t help but realize that it’s been affected by my own experience of the body I walk around this world in. And it was a non-binary queer person. Over the years in my career, that there’s been more times than I care to count where I’ve had people senior to me, junior to me, colleagues to me, say to me, you know, could you just tone it? Could you just tone it down a bit in this next meeting? Or could you just, you know, dial that back a bit. And I never really questioned what they meant by that I knew what they really meant, but hadn’t really questioned it until I was in a C suite position myself, and a colleague said it to me and I only at that point where I felt I was this was after, you know, 20 years or something? Had I felt like I was in a senior enough, powerful enough position, to be able to say to that person, ‘what do you mean by tone it down?’ And I went you know, ‘could you just be a little bit less – like less what?’ And they said to me ‘less gay.’ And at that point inside I –

Sue Bethanis 3:18
You became like, no, no way.

DDS Dobson Smith 3:18
And I said to them, ‘well, could you be a little bit less straight?’ And they said, ‘What, I don’t know what you mean, I don’t think I can do that’. And I said, ‘Yeah, exactly’. Like my personal lived experience, my corporate experience, and then also being a licensed therapist, working in community mental health, and really working in the space of centering social justice as a mental health issue, really seeing that there were deep, deep problems in this system that we operate in. And along comes this book, the book started life as an academic paper, which is incredibly dull, boring reading. And, and so I turned it into a book that would make interesting, exciting, and it really does feel like it’s come from here.

Sue Bethanis 4:09
Nice. Thank you for that. So, you do talk in the book about three different terms that we kind of in business throw it as the round a lot diversity, inclusion and belonging DEI, sometimes we say, which doesn’t include belonging. But can you explain each term because they really are distinct? Let’s talk about each of those.

DDS Dobson Smith 4:26
Yeah, you’re right, too. They’re often said, not only in the same sentence but mostly in the same breath. And I think the problem with that is it conflates three different, very different things. And I see equity as an important. Yeah, read through all of them. Yeah. Diversity is a fact. Right? And diversity is about representation. You’re you either do or do not have a diverse workforce, Team organization. When you look around you are there people that look like you, are like you and are there people that don’t look like you and are not like you. And if you can answer yes to both of those questions, you probably have a degree of diversity and representation of different identities in your organization, check first step, create diversity in your organization, which is not easy, by the way. And in the book, there’s a whole load, as you know, there’s a whole load of tips and tools of how to go about creating diversity. And once you are creating or have created diversity, I think it’s are creating because I don’t think it’s a box that ever is just like, oh, yeah, we are diverse, then you go to inclusion. And I say that inclusion is a behavior, the way that the behavior, the way the organization behaves, through the processes, policies, and platforms it uses in going out business, and also the way in which people show up and behave in their interactions and their relationships. So once you’ve got diversity, then you have to behave in an inclusive way, and if you do that you are likely to be able to have the experience of belonging, and I talk about belonging being an experience. It’s a feeling, logical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual experience, we have those moments in our lives when we’ve gone to a place or had an experience where we’re like, oh, I am with my people, I’m here. And that feels really good. And we’ve also had those experiences were like, I do not belong here. And I gotta get out of here. So, diversity plus inclusion equals belonging, you can’t have belonging without inclusion, you can’t have inclusion without diversity. But you can have a diverse organization without having inclusion. And the problem with that is if you create diversity in your organization, and you don’t have the belonging calling those so-called diverse hires, which to me is just good hiring, will exit the organization, right? Because if there’s not a sense of belonging, there’s no sense of I have a seat at the table, I am involved. And I am where decisions are being made. My perspective matters, I matter, all of those things.

Sue Bethanis 7:14
So, I love that. I love that explanation. And there’s things that kind of find the face of each other. Like, for example, if you’re trying to find your tribe, I use that with quotation marks, and a sense of belonging, find your people, your people might not be – you may think of your people as like you. And so, therefore, the diversity situation kind of flies in the face of each other. So what I think happens, because and where people get caught, if you will. Say more about that, because if you go back to brain science, I mean, diversity is different. It’s different and different causes fear. So this is a huge question. There are like five questions in there. Right. Right.

DDS Dobson Smith 7:53
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really interesting that you’ve touched on difference equals fear. And so the psychologist in me goes to the place of well, why does difference equal fear? Yeah, and, there’s a lot of the work that I do clinically, but also with my coaching clients, is this idea of when we’re in this space, we have to be prepared to be wrong. We have to be prepared also to experience and feel feelings of shame, or guilt or embarrassment, or even anger. Because what we’re getting into is conversations about injustice, we’re getting into conversations about where people are harmed at the hands of other people. And we all like to think of ourselves as good moral people, no matter what we believe, no matter where we come from, no matter who we vote for. We all believe that we are good and we are moral, we like to believe that we’re good and moral. Yeah, and fair. And so when we have these types of conversations, and when we think about difference, this fear comes because it challenges those notions that we have of I’m a good moral fair person. And I think that’s one of the biggest things and that shame and that anger and that fear, it acts in such a way to stop us from having the conversations and guess what, when we don’t have the conversations, the fear feeds itself. And the problem feeds itself and we stay where we are. We don’t want to be wrong.

Sue Bethanis 9:29
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s what I was getting into some of our even more fundamental, which I love what you just said, but more fundamental in terms of just, you know, biology that when we are in fear, if we’re in fear because of a change or difference or you know, a bear is chasing us, they’re all the same. The way I’ve reframed it for myself since I was a little girl really is that I welcomed it, but to me difference was interesting. So I kind of just keep thinking, Oh, well, that’s different. That’s interesting. Instead of that’s different. That’s scary. There are obviously points of that, but there are some things that are truly scary, like Stranger Things, that show, things like that, that my Son makes me watch. I think that’s what I’ve been reckoning with since I was a little girl. And then, you know, going to Dachau concentration camp when I was 17 and the most important experience in my life in terms of understanding difference and understanding, lack of inclusion, I guess. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about that then it was like, understanding power. So we have to be able to reframe different so I’m wondering what you think about that?

DDS Dobson Smith 9:29
Well I guess our amygdala and our emotional centers in our brain fire up. Yeah, we are emotionally hijacked, not because we are in danger. But because we think we’re in danger. And there is a sense called neuroception. That is an unconscious sense that is operating all of the time, that is sensing danger, survival danger in our environment. So even before we know it, we’re starting to go into that amygdala response, which some people call flight or fight response. Right? Freeze form. So reframing that’s an I think, for me, you reframed difference as interesting. I think I’m reframing the idea of being wrong as being a good thing. Because it means we’re learning. And, I’m not saying that we should go out there willy-nilly. Just trying to say anything we want to say in order to like, upset people.

Sue Bethanis 11:27
And then apologize.

DDS Dobson Smith 11:29
In a conversation, if you cause harm through the words that you use, you take accountability for that by saying, ‘Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I take accountability, and I apologize for the impact that it had on you. I won’t do it again.’ And then move on. Learn from that. And I think that’s the reframe for me is be okay with being wrong, right. Okay, with being less like that be okay with, you know, just knowing that these things are going to be uncomfortable. And by the way, remember, that hurt doesn’t always equal harm. So you might one thing I say with all of my patients and clients, there’s no such thing as positive or negative emotions. They’re just emotions. The meaning that you place on them is what makes them into positive-negative, right? So if you feel sad, or shame, or guilt, or fear, or anger, all of those things that some people would put on the list of emotions that are negative, I’m saying they are showing you something, they’re telling you something to pay attention rather than away from them. It’s sad, it’s not going to kill you.

Sue Bethanis 12:36
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s okay to be in it for two seconds. Okay, so I’m going to shift here a little bit, because I mean, I love talking about this the whole time. So with regards to belonging, how are you seeing that now, with the pandemic. I have a 16-year-old, so he has experienced the pandemic as a 14 and 15-year-old, all it’s done is isolate him. This is a very extroverted kid. Yeah. And you know, he’s not alone. Obviously, it’s isolated all of us, you know, he’s a big extrovert, I’m a big extrovert, and I’ve hated it can’t stand it. And it really, because it really gets to my sense of belonging. And that’s really what it comes down to. And we’re hearing that from people or our clients a lot. And we’re, I just did a thing actually, for a client couple weeks ago about how did you do hybrid? And how do you bring people together to , even though you’re remote? First, how do you connect? And we’ve been doing this for two years, but we haven’t really done it with much intention. So what are your thoughts about belonging and isolation? And what can we do about it? To me that you agree with me?

DDS Dobson Smith 13:34
I, you know, I was I’ve been talking to some clients about similar sorts of things. So about how do you create those moments of meaningful connection because connection is really fundamentally important. It’s a biological imperative. And when we talked about the psychology of belonging, in order to have psychological health, we have to have connection, we have to have attunement, we have to have nurture. And it’s actually not just for psychological health, it’s for biological health, too. And I think what is how we have been programmed in the corporate world is to seek that connection, that attunement, those relationships by walking up to people’s desks. You know, at the watercooler by perhaps going out to lunch together, the bar, or hanging out outside the meeting room and chatting with each other.

Sue Bethanis 14:26
Parking lot. Whatever. Yeah. Right, lingering in the meeting. Yeah.

DDS Dobson Smith 14:30
That’s corporate folklore. Right? That’s all law, call it corporate law. That’s how connections happen. That’s how we build relationships and then all of that went away for, at least for knowledge base workers, office-based workers…So that went away for two years. And for some people, that’s still going away. And for some people, it’s slowly coming back. And so that was completely discombobulating for everyone because it’s like everything burned. It has everything I know how to do has gone away. Now, I agree that making connections is easier in-person because that’s how I have been programmed. And my life also changed in those two years and my entire business, my entire clinical practice went online, I have some coaching clients, and I have some patients who I have never met in person. And we have had some of the most evocative moving, clinical moments of change, and also coaching moments of change with people I’ve never met. So it is harder to make those connections. And it’s not impossible, we just have to think about it. I was coaching and this is really, really simple. I was talking to one person once and she said to me, DDS, you know, I’ve exchanged the walking up to someone’s desk and saying, how have you got a moment to send them a Slack or a chat to say, Have you got a moment? And if they say, Yes, we jump on a call. And so it just because the context shifted, so significantly, and everything was up in the air, I think some of us lost touch with our own creativity and the permissions that we didn’t know we needed to go and do and connect and to be in relationships.

Sue Bethanis 16:24
Yeah, I hear you. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about the idea of lingering, how do you linger at the beginning of a meeting? And how do you linger especially after because we’re typically in that meeting room or walking to the next meeting with somebody. So sometimes, and I don’t want to take credit for this was one of my clients and I came up with it one day because he was saying, what I’m doing is I’m just calling people up. Like, if we have a group meeting, I’ll call one of them up afterward on the phone, or I’ll slack them right after just linger with them. I said, Yes. I said that’s perfect. I love it. He does it every time. Every big meeting, he’ll do one person. So he had, but he had to be intentional about that. You had to think about doing it and be creative. It doesn’t just come naturally. When you’re in person, we are programmed, that’s it’s programmed to be around that, the coffee or the water cooler or whatever. And so to create the water cooler needs attention. And I think that there was so much waiting, like we thought okay, we’re gonna go back or go back. So there wasn’t a lot of intentionality we just kept kind of just kept going on Zoom for like, five hours, 10 hours. So we were 10 hours a day on Zoom. And that’s crazy, I can only do like, four and I’m like, tired, right? Zooms are just like boom, boom, boom. And again. Can you imagine having this pandemic 20 years ago? No, I mean, they would have been completely different. The fact we have this is, it’s, I also think that it’s allowing us to sort of not be lazy, because that’s not right. But to kind of accept it as like, it is going to allow these companies to be remote first and never go back. I don’t think that would happen. But yeah, that doesn’t matter because it’s the case. So in the book, you talk about three lenses: the psychology of belonging, self-psychology, attachment theory, my favorite, and trauma-induced, sorry, not induced, trauma-informed – might be the same thing, trauma-informed workplaces. Sorry, tell me about those three things.

DDS Dobson Smith 18:26
You know, at least the self-psychology and attachment theory. I mean, they’re vast theories of work. So, whatever I say here is not going to do them justice. Yeah, I understand they are incredibly influential pieces of work when it comes to understanding self-esteem. And, our own needs for attention and attachment itself. Self-psychology tells us many, many things, but one of the things it tells us is that for psychological health, we need to see our greatness, our wholeness, our okayness reflected back at us in other people, right. And so, if we are in a workplace where we don’t see that, if we are the only gay in the village, if we are the only black person sitting around the boardroom table, if we are the only woman sitting around the boardroom table, get to see what we don’t get that psychological mirroring our okayness and it impacts our psychological wholeness. it’s the same with you know, you look at pop culture and whether you are you know, you see the Asian person who’s always unlucky in love, or the black person who’s always either a criminal or a reformed clinical or the trans person who ends up being killed off or the woman who is you know, seen as tired, right, like, we see those things if we don’t see It reflected back at us in certain messages. Now with attachment theory, attachment theory tells us that relationships are fundamental to our survival, biological survival relationships, we need them for biological survival, and the attunement to our needs by attachment figures. So important figures when we’re little, that’s our primary caregivers, these. And, you know, as we grow up, our attachment figures become our partners, our attachment figures become our colleagues, they become our bosses. And that attunement to our needs by these attachment figures is crucial to our development as human beings, I also have a theory that I share a lot with my patients that our wounding in life, happens in relationships, so therefore, so must our healing. And that’s why relationships and how we manage relationships, and how we nurture them in the workplace, as well as outside of it is so, so important. And then from a trauma-informed point of view, we have all experienced trauma, trauma happens, because we think we’re in danger, not because we are in danger, and because of the way in which we perceive that danger and our ability to cope with that danger is out of proportion. This is especially true for those of us that walk around this world with identities that come from historically excluded groups, or from identity if we carry an identity that comes from subordinate social groups. So that is anyone that is not a does not have an identity that is white, straight cisgender. Male, able-bodied. Right. And, and so I think it is important, it’s crucial for employers and leaders to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that we are all walking around with some form of wounding, and therefore to take action to create spaces in which people can experience psychological safety. So that their systems, their bodies don’t have to be hijacked emotionally, that their trauma is going to be triggered each time you go into a meeting or into a space, they are going to experience some form of oppression or marginalization once again.

Sue Bethanis 22:26
Yeah, I call that the sideways, things go sideways, because things are getting triggered, and they have nothing to do with the person that’s in front of you. Right? It happens a lot. Again, how do you help people, your patients, and your clients to recognize that when they’re in the moment? Which is hard to do, realizing ‘why am I getting so upset about this? This is not commensurate with what does the situation ask for?’

DDS Dobson Smith 22:47
The first thing right when you realize you are in that situation when you are able to improve your awareness of what’s happening in your body in the moment. So your heart rate is going quicker and your palms are sweating. You find yourself turning away from a situation rather than leaning into it, when you first the first thing I do is to start to teach my patients to be aware of that, like pay attention to what’s happening in your body. And then in that moment, you know, this is why it’s flight fight or freeze you are you either want to punch that person in the face, or at least yell at them, or you want to get the heck out and the more you’re frozen and you know, you get asked a question and all of a sudden you have selective mutism, because you’re just like, Oh my God. And so in those moments, I teach people how to ground, how to center themselves. And there’s a bunch of techniques that you can use so that you can at least move through that process or move through that experience, at least successfully without needing to, you know, fly get out of there or want to kind of get into some sort of altercation and then you begin to or at least I do, I begin to help people understand what it was about that situation in the here and now that was triggering an experience from the their right and to notice that it’s different to and to help them notice how they are safe now and that they weren’t when they weren’t safe then to unpick and distance themselves. Between the what happened then and what’s happening now.

Sue Bethanis 24:30
I like that. So this is a little different because someone who’s more impulsive, so it’s not necessarily a pinpointed trauma, certainly not a particular incident. But it might be something general but just I’m not as interested right now to talk about the why of I am like, when you look at your coaching clients, someone who’s impulsive, like we work with a lot of people who are obviously very bright and want to get, you know, their word in edgewise. It’s harder on Zoom, you’re trying to interrupt, you know, and there’s a lot of impulsivity around talking fast over people. How do you work with someone like that? And what do you suggest to that?

DDS Dobson Smith 25:10
I mean, one of the places that I go to is, you know, just thinking about Victor Frankel’s work, this idea that in between stimulus and response, there is a gap, and in that gap is the choice. And so what I encourage people to do is just slow the fuck down and linger in the space between cause and effect. And just notice, what are the causes that trigger the behavior that other people receive as unusable or debilitating? Or that the individual themselves wishes they didn’t do. And so when you when you’re able to slow that down, when you’re able to linger in that space and recognize that just because what when something happens, what feels like an impulse reaction isn’t actually an impulse reaction. I remember I was coaching, this is one particular client, she senior woman hated presenting, even when she heard the word presentations would break out into a sweat, and the word presentation, the cause, and the response was sweat. And so I would ask her, and we, in our work together, I would say, what happens just before sweat, and she said, I hear the word presentation, I was like, no, let’s slow that down. What happens just before and we spent 15 minutes unpacking the mental process that what happened in between presentation and sweat. And she realized there was a whole conversation. And there’s a bunch of associations that were happening in her head that led to that. And I think the same applies to absolutely everything when I find myself talking over someone or when I find myself stealing someone’s ideas, or when I find myself asking another woman to take notes or when. Well, I know that the stuff that happens when I when I find myself doing that and I and first of all, I’ve got to own that it is a behavior I don’t want to own that it is a behavior that I don’t want to do. slow down linger in the space between cause and effect.

Sue Bethanis 27:22
I really liked that a lot. I’m hearkening back to someone this impulsiveness. And when I asked him, I didn’t ask him exactly the way you asked him. So I think I like what you say better, actually. And I said, like, what is happening right before you’re doing this? And he says, Well, I don’t know. I said, well think like, Yeah, think about it. And so I think I’m afraid of I’m going to basically came down too afraid of not getting the idea out or not, I’m gonna lose like ground, it came down to loss. Yes, losing ground. So it didn’t take 15 minutes, but it did take some time. Right?

DDS Dobson Smith 27:53
Yeah it’s really interesting. And this happens clinically, as well. Like, as a therapist, when I’m working with people, there are so many moments. And as a coach, there are so many moments that you’d like that’s a door I want to go in as, as your coach or as your therapist, let’s open that door and walk down it. Of course, what we don’t want to do as coaches or therapists is interrupt a process that our clients are going through and I have to hold a belief that if it is important enough, it will come back with my idea that I want to share at the boardroom table or in a meeting is that good? That is going to change the face of what we’re talking about. There is gonna be an opportunity and even if there isn’t an opportunity, you know, you can say I have an idea that I’d like to share and if it’s a good one guess what people are gonna rally around it if it’s right or not. Then cool move on.

Sue Bethanis 28:48
I like that a lot. I think something else that we look we see is that this idea of asking questions, and I think that really goes with belonging to be able to inquire and when you, especially if you’re feeling itchy and wanting to advocate and wanting to get in, get that out. And I’m not even talking about impulsivity in terms of anxiety and that I’m talking just impetuousness really, to be able to go okay, well to be a pessimist about asking a question that just asks you a question. Instead, you can interrupt and ask a question, but it’s about them, not you. Yeah.

DDS Dobson Smith 29:23
So questions of exploration. As long as they’re not those, you know, those opinions that are masquerading as questions…

Sue Bethanis 29:30
Or leading questions – they’re interrogating what they’re asking for.

DDS Dobson Smith 29:33
Ones that are designed to make you look clever.

Sue Bethanis 29:38
Don’t you think? Okay, yeah. I’m not gonna ask you that kind of question. So I do want to talk about some things in the book. You talk about creating safe rooms and intentionally brave spaces in a hybrid work environment. So say more, I mean, that’s interesting to say more about that.

DDS Dobson Smith 29:53
So I think it’s really important to not talk about or not claim spaces as being safe. And oftentimes when somebody says, and we’ve all been in meetings when you’re trying to encourage some vulnerability and some disclosure and somebody says, it’s a safe space, don’t worry, this is a safe space. And that person that is claiming the space as safe is likely doing so from some sort of position of power. Yeah, either hierarchical power, or positional power as a trainer, or as, or as a facilitator or as a coach or social power. So yeah, that is good. That white, straight cisgender male, able-bodied, and it’s super problematic for somebody from a place of power, claiming a space to be safe. Because I mean, if a straight person tried to say to me, don’t worry, this is a safe space, DDS you can talk about your sexuality here, you can talk about your problems, I’m like, you have no idea of my lived experience. And neither should you. I’m not asking you to have an idea about my lived experience. But you can’t claim a space to be safe on my behalf I can do though, is create intentionally brave spaces. Okay, so you can create spaces where you invite people to be brave, but they will only be brave when they feel or when they can experience psychological safety and psychological safety being that quality that we experience when it’s not expensive to be ourselves. And that requires intentionality that requires very careful, this is the container that we are creating. And these are the behaviors that are important to creating psychological safety. And when I feel some degree of psychological safety, I am more likely to lean into that space of bravery, where I will talk about what’s wrong. And it doesn’t just talk or just talk, right. And it doesn’t have to be about issues of identity and inclusion and belonging. It’s when we experience psychological safety, we’re more likely to say things like I was wrong, I made a mistake. I don’t know what I’m doing, or I have an idea. Or I think there’s a better way of us doing this. If we don’t feel psychological safety, we’re not going to say any of those things. And we all know in business as leaders, we say we want innovation, we want people to be brave, we want people to change things and to make things better. But none of that is going to happen without psychological safety.

Sue Bethanis 32:37
So I love what you just said. And I, there’s something that I want to say about this a little different because you started listing to people that are in power, or have power. And some people who have power in the situation they’re just skillful because they’ve either had the other none of those, they’re not trainers, they’re not the kind of person with the positional or the I guess you’d say that personal power. What I mean by that is that there are some one of the things that we teach, for example is that is to be brave, and to be brave is to be is having the skill of influence, but it’s also to have psychological, there’s psychological and then there’s the physical literal, like how do you like enumerate your sentences? Fine. What I’m wondering about is, is in the Zoom world is really an extroverted world. It’s harder to get in. And so when an extrovert saying yes, it’s be brave, be brave, and it’s safe, like this. It’s like, because they feel comfortable doing it, they feel more comfortable, I should say. And that’s a stereotype of course, but my point is, is that is that there’s a skill here, whether they’re an extrovert or because they’ve just done it more. And so how do we help encourage, it’s almost like people who there heretofore have not been brave, had to have to do need to encourage people to be brave. And that makes – does that make sense?

DDS Dobson Smith 33:46
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I share a slightly different opinion in the Zoom world being for extroverts, if I’m thinking about pure, like Jungian introversion-extroversion, because I think this world is brilliant for people who want to disconnect and want to go inward. Because you turn off your camera and…

Sue Bethanis 34:07
Right, I meant to be engaged in Zoom.

DDS Dobson Smith 34:13
And the skill that I think that it requires recognizing that everyone has those different needs and being able to go to other people’s bus stops. I always say it’s easier, it’s easier for people to get on your bus if you go to their bus stop instead of asking them to walk to yours right. So like if we can the skill is understanding that other people are not going to be like me and that other people have different needs. And so if you can invite a conversation about what those needs are, and if you can invite a conversation about and I talk about a process in the book of how to do this, but you invite a conversation about what would you need in order to feel experience or experience psychological safety? What qualities are important to you, and then create a space when those qualities are real or true or experience of bool. And you know, oftentimes people will say, Well, I want a space where there’s no judgment. I was like, Well, you’re not gonna get that, you know, when anything, but when anybody says, this is a judgment-free space, I’m like, No, it isn’t. You know, you can’t get out of our judgments. You can’t not judge. Right? It’s a fundamental process that we, the moment that we wake up, we’re using judgment, you use your judgment to decide to wear those beautiful pink glasses that day so you use your judgment of what top to wear, you use your judgment of what item to eat, it’s a thing. It’s just there. It’s like, what do we do with our judgment? And like the station about what are we going to do with our judgment, what quality? What type of judgment is in this space? What do we know is going to happen or isn’t going to happen with our judgment and our behavior and our actions? And how we’re going to sign up to that is you start to create those sorts of those sorts of conversations, and you hear people out and you allow people to be listened to without trying to change their point of view. Kind of reframe them without trying to tell them that they’re wrong, because or even that they’re right, because if you just allow them to have their opinion, and to have their space, marvelous things.

Sue Bethanis 36:26
That’s great. Thank you. Well, I can’t believe we’re up on time, but we are, but I don’t want to just say mahalo. And the thing that I am, there’s a lot of things that we all get out of this. But I want to just harken back to the diversity and the fact inclusion being behavior and belonging is an experience. I think that that’s so easy but powerful. So thank you. So it’s simple, love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Thanks. So a couple of things. Your website is soldtrain.com. And your Twitter and Instagram are at Soul Trained. And then your LinkedIn is DDS Dobson Smith. Correct. Thank you so much, DDS for being with us. I really, really appreciate it. I like your energy a lot. I just like it’s just easy to be with you. So I wish you were here. We would go on to walk on the beach and hang out.

DDS Dobson Smith 37:25
I wish I was there. I recall Maui and I’m very envious of the place that you live in. So have a walk on the beach for me and pretend I’m with you.

Sue Bethanis 37:33
Okay, all right. Okay. Thank you again, everybody. Mahalo Aloha.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Dr. Britt Andreatta, an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and education, to create brain-science based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. Britt is the former CLO for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) and she has over 10 million views worldwide of her online courses. She regularly consults with corporations, universities, and nonprofit organizations on leadership development and learning strategy. Britt is the author of several brain science-based books including Wired to Grow (about how the brain learns), Wired to Resist (on how we move through change), and Wired to Connect (how to create great teams through inclusion and belonging). She was recently named a Top 20 Learning Influencer for 2021.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Britt offers great perspectives on leadership, learning, and teamwork in Hybrid settings. She applies research from neuroscience into the workplace to find new ways of operating for both leaders and teams. With Hybrid and remote work here to stay, we have emphasized the need for more intentional connections and Britt reveals the science behind why it’s so important.
Some key takeaways from this talk:

• Britt provides insights into progressive ways to train and create learning experiences. She defines the three-phase model of learning in which we learn something, we remember it, and then we change our behavior (which she notes can take 40-50 repetitions). She also discusses the Growth Culture Model which helps managers and leaders to understand the different ways to bring out someone’s potential. (8:57)
• As connection was a main theme of this talk; Britt points out that from a neuroscience perspective our brains don’t perceive video calls as the same form of connection as in-person. We are losing opportunities to build trust and rapport among colleagues when in fully remote settings and need to emphasize intentional connection in these settings. (15:17)
• Britt recommends bringing teams together to develop trust and connection during team building stages prior to collaborating with one another. She also recommends leaders give teams more freedom when it comes to busy work and tasks, but to come together in-person as much as possible when collaborating and working as a collective. (27:41, 30:20)
• Sue and Britt also discuss issues surrounding psychological safety and burnout. Britt provides some intriguing data on how our brains experience exclusion the same way we experience physical pain, which points to the importance of creating safe and inclusive workplaces. Addressing burnout is also crucial to maintaining the psychological safety of teams and preventing higher rates of resignation. (11:43, 35:10)

To increase connection throughout organizations, leaders must create cultures of support, acknowledgment, and trust. By being available and accessible to others, through virtual office hours, check-ins, or drop boxes, others can bring forward feedback and ignite deeper conversations. There’s no one single magic formula, but Britt encourages leaders to look at what will fit best for the people in their organization. Hybrid work is here to stay, so adopting practices that foster connection and collaboration early on are crucial to creating long-lasting and productive teams.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• “The Growth Culture Model…helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others to thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.” (8:57)
• “I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is…It turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain…And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it.” (11:43)
• “So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it…In this Hybrid/remote world, teams that had a lot of in-person and trust-building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboarded during the last two years because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person.” (15:17)

RESOURCES

Dr. Britt Andreatta:
Website | LinkedIn
Books:
Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill
Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion
Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we are excited to welcome Dr. Britt Andreatta. Dr. Britt is an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background and leadership, neuroscience, psychology and education to create brain science-based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. As a CEO of Seventh Mind, Inc. Britt draws on her unique background and leadership, and she unlocks the best in people and organizations. Former Chief Learning Officer for lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn Learning Britt is a seasoned professional with more than 25 years of experience. She regularly consults with businesses, universities and nonprofits on leadership development and learning strategy. She was recently named a top 20 influencer for 2021. She’s also the author of a lot of books, and most recently Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion, Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill and Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success. So I got all of them.

Britt Andreatta 1:08
Yes, you did great.

Sue Bethanis 1:10
Okay, great. So, I really want to welcome you. She’s joining us from Santa Barbara, which I’m sure it’s beautiful down there, because it always is. It actually is kind of Santa Barbara like here today, in San Francisco. It’s been beautiful weather. So before we start into hybrid, and some of the books and such, I just want to, I read your bio, but I also want to hear from you a little bit about your own personal journey, like what got you into neuroscience? Why did you decide to write these particular books? I mean, just talk a little bit about the personal side of it if you could.

Britt Andreatta 1:40
Absolutely, I mean, my doctorate I earned at UC Santa Barbara, and it’s an education, leadership and organization. So, I’ve always kind of been at that intersection of leadership and learning. And I worked at the University for many years, I created leadership development programs and ran freshman success courses. And then after I’d kind of built everything I wanted to build, I was ready to leave higher ed and Lynda Weinman and I who had been on a panel, and she’d been recruiting me for a while, and finally, we figured out what I could do. So, I popped over there as their Chief Learning Officer and was running leadership development programs. And then she wanted it all to go in the library. So, we filmed all my content. And pretty soon it was being consumed by people around the world and getting really great reviews. And I was in that role. I mean, I’m a lifelong learner. And I’m always, you know, I will always have a subscription to Scientific, American, and Nature. And I had started to kind of geek out a little bit on the neuroscience of stuff, which wasn’t really a thing when I was getting my doctorate. So I went back into the journals, and I was really researching for my own personal interest to be better at my craft. And I was amazed at everything I was finding about what we now know about how the brain learns. So that became the first well, first it became a lunch and learn and then it became a book and a keynote. And I thought, okay, good. I’ve done that. And then we were acquired, Lynda was acquired.

Sue Bethanis 3:04
We should be like Lynda, there’s really a Lynda, by the way, there’s a Lynda with a Y that actually exists. Yeah, there’s this. It’s not just a name. But yeah. So that’s good to know.

Britt Andreatta 3:13
We were acquired by LinkedIn, and I was certified, and all the change management programs. And we were in the middle of that acquisition, and I realized none of them actually worked. But none of them explained what I was going through. So, I thought, hmm, I wonder what brain science says about change. So that became my second geek out experience and Wired to Resist. And then I guess I, you know, I was like, I guess I’m doing this, I guess I’m going to be translating neuroscience to business topics. So naturally, the next place to go is teams and inclusion. And right now, I’m working on my fourth book, which is all about purpose. So that’ll come out next year, but I’m starting to do some, I’ve learned that I’m a better writer if I present it first and then turn it into a book. I’m starting to do the keynotes on that topic right now.

Sue Bethanis 4:00
Yeah, I’m with you on that. Same with me. I have to like test stuff out first before I write it down. Great. Well, I love that story. I love how you got into neuroscience. So, talk with us. Has it changed over the last 10 years, let’s say in terms of yeah, let’s I guess we could I mean, there’s less things I can ask you. But let’s focus on connection. And I think I want to probably focus mostly on the word connect, because it’s so prevalent right now with hybrid return to work or not return to work.

Britt Andreatta 4:25
Let me first start with learning, in terms of learning and how it’s changed in 5-10 years just because I wrote the first draft, or the first edition, and then I decided to make a second edition of the core of the book Wired to Grow five years later. And typically just so you know, this, someone can call a new edition, a second edition, if they change 20% of the book, of course, I set myself for what I thought was going to be an easy writing experience, you know, but so much had changed in the field. In that five years, I had to completely rewrite the whole book, it was 80% new material. So, some of the big things in learning that have changed as well, really understanding how our brain forms and stores memories, which of course is really important for learning professional or not, we’ve really started to understand habits and how we create habit change and sustained behavior change. And then of course, Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety – that’s a psychological concept. It definitely has pinnings, in neuroscience in terms of how we respond to threatening environments, so lots of big changes. And it really changes how learning professionals create learning experiences for others. So it touches the whole training and education field. And that’s honestly then touches everything else, because we can become better leaders, we can become better managers, we can become better parents, better citizens, all through learning. So for me, it kind of then spins off into everything else.

Sue Bethanis 5:49
Right. So, what has changed then, specifically in the learning field, if you will, from neuroscience, I mean, there was, we were applying neuroscience to learning 10 years ago. So, what have you picked up in those 10 years, that’s different from like, take habit forming, for example, I mean, we use the book Leader Habit a lot. And, you know, I got, he did a lot of research to help us realize, gee, it takes 60 days to learn habits like we knew this, we knew this intuitively. I’ve been talking to people about two months for, I don’t know, 25 years, but I didn’t have the research, right. So, talk to us a little bit about how the neuroscience has actually helped us perpetuate this a bit more.

Britt Andreatta 6:31
Well, now the research shows that it’s actually numbers of repetitions, it’s not days, so it’s 40 to 50 repetitions, on average, it takes to change or establish a new habit. So, if you do that behavior every day, you’re gonna get there pretty quickly, multiple times per day, very fast, once a month, gonna take you a long time, you might not have been repetitions to do it. So that now gives learning leaders the ability to craft and design their learning experiences. So, we can build those repetitions in a room and get people on that pathway faster.

Sue Bethanis 7:01
So 40-50 days. Yeah.

Britt Andreatta 7:04
You can currently predict when the grumbling goes away. So that’s one thing, the research on memory around that we, our brain likes to attach learning to something we always already know. So, our brain has kind of file folders and scientists called them schemas. And then you can have an experience live in multiple file folders. But essentially, when we recall a memory, our brain is going back, finding that file folder and feeding that information up to us. And how it goes back is it’s tied to a sensory, it’s tied to a sight, smell, a sound, and taste. So, we can now use that information to code learning through the main senses. And also, I use it now, I never teach anything without building it around a metaphor or a schema so that I’m attaching learning to something people already know. And that makes it much more sticky. And therefore rememberable, which is what we want, we want people to be able to use that information later.

Sue Bethanis 7:56
Give me an example of a metaphor you would use with somebody.

Britt Andreatta 8:00
So I’ve built from my – So after I wrote those books, what surprised me was so many people started asking for training, and I built it for my own clients. But now I sell my training solution. So, for example, my change training is built around the metaphor of hiking or mountain climbing. You know what it is. So, then every piece of content is affiliated with that metaphor in some way. And then I use imagery, because our brain thinks in pictures, not words, to really help kind of anchor that in people’s experiences. And later, they can see one of the slides and tell me what the content was because I’m intentionally using the science of how our brain finds information to, to work that in an intentional way.

Sue Bethanis 8:43
I love that I love the images. That’s great. So, um, let’s talk a little about your book and some of your models. So, you’ve got the growth culture model and a three-phase model of learning. Tell us a bit about those, and then how we’re using those every day.

Britt Andreatta 8:57
Yeah, so I’ll start with the three-phase model of learning. I mean, I was taking all the neuroscience research and kind of breaking it down to there’s three phases, we learn something, we remember it, and then we do it, we change our behavior. So, learn, remember, do, but then that’s all housed within the context of psychological safety, because you need psych safety in order to take risks and make mistakes. So learning professionals would probably use that model, and it would help them figure out how to design and deliver the training for its optimal effectiveness. The growth culture model – that’s a model around what brings out an individual employee’s potential in a workplace and it’s a model that I teach managers and leaders so they understand the different levers they can push to bring out someone’s potential. And it’s around the metaphor of a tree and the employee being the tree. They’re sitting in psychological safety, the soil. So, everything comes from that. The trunk is their growth mindset and their workstyle, how they approach things, and then you’ve got their output and their skills. But then we’re really talking about managers or leaders are in the role of kind of the gardener or the orchard manager. They’re the ones that are responsible for creating the conditions for people to grow. And so, I also find that this particular model helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.

Sue Bethanis 10:34
Yes, this is great. This is great setup for sort of mirroring. I’m going to skip over to Wire to Connect, because I love the voodle that you did on a connection. And I sent it to the people I just work with today, because we were talking basically, the premise today was hybrid culture, and how the first question I asked them is like, how are you connecting with your folks? So, they’re actually doing a lot of connection. But what I want to marry here is, how do we help people and be my whole thing is how do we be more intentional about the connection? I mean, I don’t think anyone’s going to say we, you know, you have the data, but no one’s going to argue that connection is unhealthy. I mean, the connection is helping, we want to be connected. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But we have to be more intentional about it. So that’s where this this three-phase model comes in of learning. And how do we get people to do that? One of the things I did today with them which they got, which they liked is that there was actually like, everything I was doing with it was actionable, like I said, ‘Okay, so what are you going to do about you’, we said, ‘we heard all this noise, which one thing you’re going to do?’ That’s actionable. So that’s one way to do it. But tell me how you want to marry these how we with the idea that we want to want people to connect more in this zoom fatigue world? But how do we get them to do it?

Britt Andreatta 11:43
Yeah, so two things, I’m a firm believer that training has to be actionable. Otherwise, you can have a feel-good experience, but if you don’t actually drive behavior change training, it’s not worth the time and energy, so then we can apply that to anything and apply that to a change training, manager training, teams training. So absolutely, you know, we want people to know, things they can do to go back and make their team more connected, more productive, more positive, more inclusive. So first of all, it’s like I think people lean in more when they understand the why behind things. Science and neuroscience, because when I started describing these concepts, people immediately have an embodied memory of like, ‘Oh, I remember feeling that’, ‘I remember seeing that’, ‘I remember doing that.’ And then it’s about, again, getting real crisp about what are – you can’t flood people with too many things to do, right. So we have to be clear about okay, here are the key things you need to work on. Particularly with groups, you know, that I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is. And the thing that blew neuroscientists away was that when they were studying exclusion, the pain center of the brain is what was lighting up on the MRI machines. Back that, but it turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain.

Sue Bethanis 13:01
Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. That’s a great, that’s a great piece of data.

Britt Andreatta 13:05
Yeah. And social pain does not live in a different place than physical pain. There’s just- we’re so shocked that they thought well can – what happens if we give someone pain medication, and sure enough pain medication, you know, adjudicated the feeling of social pain. And this is one of the reasons I think we have an opioid epidemic is that people go on these painkillers for legitimate injuries, you broke your arm, you take that pain pill, it doesn’t make the break go away, it changes how your brain senses pain, and then it wears off and you take another pain pill? Well, while you’re on that pain pill for a legitimate physical injury, you’re getting this invisible, unspoken break from all your social pain, all the ways that you feel like you don’t fit in with your family or your community. If you’re a marginalized community, the ways in which your community is experiencing microaggressions or bias, you get a break from that. And then it’s time to cut off the pain pill because you’re healed. And yet, we don’t talk about all this other stuff. And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it, and not just seeing it as a ‘Oh, yeah, check the box’ kind of thing.

Sue Bethanis 14:17
I’m gonna riff on this a bit. So, I would go so far to say, and tell me if I’m on the right track here, that part of exclusion and inclusion includes loneliness, the idea of exclusion causes loneliness, and pain. There’s another reason why people are doing these, on opioid epidemic, because we’re in the middle of a fricking pandemic that has caused a lot of loneliness and mental harm. I don’t know if that’s affecting our clients as much as other things in terms of loneliness. What I’m hearing you say is that there’s a connection between belonging and exclusion and connection, belonging connection with the opposite of exclusion loneliness. And it’s actually a physicality. So, talk with us more about that. And I guess that, whilst there, just say there’s if that’s causing the kind of pain and wonder people are in so much pain.

Britt Andreatta 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. And so I mean, we have an issue that I think is an issue in our society and the pandemic, just put it on 10x. Right. So, exclusion definitely causes feelings of isolation and loneliness. And then we know that the physical outcome of that is there’s it increases anxiety and depression, it increases illness, people just don’t have the same inflammatory response to things. The feelings are so uncomfortable, people start to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. It leads to feelings of unworthiness and helplessness, and ultimately suicide. So, it’s really clear that exclusion, ostracism, isolation, loneliness are incredibly devastating. And then we now have an entire world where we were not physically together. Now, what’s interesting is we live in a hyper connected world, virtually, yes, yes, that’s right now, you know, lovely to meet you, Sue. But my brain knows I’m not really meeting with you, I can only see you from the collarbone up, you’re two inches tall, I can see my living room, I can see my backyard. So, my brain while we’re having this lovely communication knows we’re not really together. So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it. Which is why when you’re visiting, and many of us are starting to have this experience, I got to go to a conference last week. And it was just amazing to be around real humans in my tribe. When we get to be in person with other people. There’s just a level of relaxation and trust that you release. Yeah. And so, taking it to the rest of your question around in this hybrid remote world, teams that had had a lot of in person and trust building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboard and during the last two years, because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person. I mean, scientists don’t even still know how our brains achieve neural synchrony, how our brainwaves line up and stuff. There may be electrical impulses going through the air between our bodies that they can’t measure yet, nothing. We know pheromones play a role, and we lose pheromones on the screen. And even just right now, we’re 2d images, and our brain loses the ability to read those micro muscular differences. That tells us someone’s emotions. So, we lose so much. And yet we can be so productive. And I think the danger we’re in right now is, we have an illusion that we’re hyper productive, and we can’t quite see or measure all that we’ve lost, but we’re feeling it in our souls.

Sue Bethanis 17:57
I’m with you. I’m wondering though, while Zoom is not, or whatever want to call zoom, Google Meets, all of them, is not the best, I still think it’s better than phone and better than a lot of things. So, I mean, this having a pandemic 10 years ago would have been a very different thing. So, I think while it is 2D, we still get some of the pheromones, I guess.

Britt Andreatta 18:23
I call them good stuff. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 18:26
So is neuroscience studying this in terms of like, what people are getting out of video?

Britt Andreatta 18:32
I mean, video is definitely better than just voice, and voice is better than just written text, right? Because all of these you start to see exacerbated layers of miscommunication and misunderstandings. I think the message for the world now is to find balance, right? And here’s what I talked about, in my book Wired to Connect, so much of what happens in those early meetings, when you bring a team together, that if you’re going to spend money on bringing people together, do it at the beginning when they’re building trust and getting to know each other. Once that’s in place, we can go long periods of time virtually and be fine. And then if there starts to be a lot of stress, or strain in the relationships, or tension and conflict, bring people back together because you’re using then all your biology to kind of help you communicate. With that said, technology is amazing and wonderful. I mean, I love that I get to connect with people around the world that I would never meet in person and connection. So it’s really about balance. You know, when we first went into the pandemic, a lot of learning leaders were worried that ‘Oh, once we push learning all online leaders are going to see the savings of that and never want to be in person.’ But good news is we all know that in person matters. We all feel it in our body. So, it’s now finding talents. So be judicious about when you bring people together. I’m just putting in the chat because some people are talking about my session that I did at ATV last week which was on the neuroscience as a purpose, I actually did it again today as a webinar for HR executive, the link lives on my LinkedIn. So go look for it and it was recorded and watch it for free. If you have to start a team virtually, which many of us have to do these days because we’re not in person you have to over index on get to know you activity. Because what we lost and where a lot of trust building happens is in those informal watercooler conversations. And those get lost when you go right into the agenda. And so, we have to build a way to create the virtual water cooler. Create times for people to share about what they did this weekend. And it’s all those little moments that we learn, oh, you have a dog. I do too. Or you saw that movie, I loved it too. Or oh my gosh, you know, those are all the moments where we learn about each other. And we have to intentionally build them back in a in a hybrid world and over index on them.

Sue Bethanis 20:50
Yes. So, I’m using the word attentional, you’re using over index, they’re both the same thing. I think what’s great about having a practice is that we get to hear from all these different people about what they’re doing and be able to share. It’s not trademarked, share what people are doing, I actually shared with the group today, something I learned the very beginning of COVID, it was probably like March 20, where a VP, who now is a coach by the way, said to me, you know, what are we’re gonna do like he says, ‘How are we going to connect?’ and that was, so that was March 20. And then a week later, when I saw him, he says, ‘here’s what we’re gonna do,’ he has a group of 200 people, he said, ‘we’re gonna have meetings from 9 to 12, and 2 to 5. That’s it. So, people can do self-care there. Of course, at that point, kids were like, all over the place, and people were crazed. And, you know, they were just people have kids, especially having a hard time. So, to me, that was just a wonderful way of creating connection, because you are saying, this is when you can connect, so allows people to not be all over the map. And that they could feel like they can have time to themselves. So, to allow the for self-care as well. He did that for a year until he left, and I think it’s a great idea. So, tell me a little bit about what you’re hearing from your clients, what you espouse as far as ways people can connect, and be and be over indexed on it, as you say.

Britt Andreatta 22:08
Yeah, so a couple things. I think when you’re bringing a team together, having a get to know you session where you’re not just jumping into the task and the project, great questions to ask people and I borrow these from Appreciative Inquiry, you know, ask people what their strengths are, ask people a project that they recently worked on that they’re really proud of, you kind of give people a chance to share their strengths and what they’re good at. And so that certainly get to know you stuffs, you know, questions about people’s personal lives, and what gives them a sense of purpose, and what their hobbies and interests are, and all that kind of stuff, you know, you have to find a balance because different people have different comfort levels with sharing. And so, you want to put that through a filter. But the kind of getting to know you and getting to know how you approach work, and what you’re good at are all great conversations.

Sue Bethanis 22:57
Conversation starters, just icebreakers. I mean, these are speaking questions. And they’re I mean, what do you watch on Netflix? That’s the favorite one these days? What are you binging on? So yeah, so lots of those kinds of questions. And there’s many of them, and we don’t have to be, we will never run out of them.

Britt Andreatta 23:13
No, but I do think it’s important to bring in the work strengths and things. Because people want to be seen and heard, we have a biology to prove our value to the group. Because even if it’s like me, if there’s value, my biology will settle down, because I’m less likely to be ousted by the group. So being a value to the group is really important. And so, when leaders set up the opportunity to have those conversations, and when we create a culture, where we do shout outs and kudos to each other, where we acknowledge each other, and not just focus on what went wrong. Those are all things that contribute to psychological safety and people being heard. Amy Edmondson has some really good stuff around like safety, I feel very fortunate that I have the only training that she has put her stamp of approval on. But she has five strategies that leaders need to do in order to create psych safety. And the first is, you know, just be accessible, you know, management by walking around worked, because you and I might talk about a work thing, but then I’ll be like, well, so there’s something I’ve been wanting to raise with you, because now I have access to so we have to recreate access in a virtual world, having office hours, having virtual drop boxes, those kinds of things where people can bring things forward. The second one is to acknowledge your own fallibility, which is to basically you have to pierce the barrier of power. And you got to do it intentionally by saying, Hey, I don’t know everything I’m counting on you to tell me or you have a different view than I do. I really want you to bring it forward. So, we have to create those opportunities and acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers so that they feel comfortable bringing it forward. We’re making it up as we go along. The third thing you’re having conversations is being intentional about digging deeper, you know, asking more about “well tell me more about that.” “What are we missing here?” “Can you share an example’. But it has to be truly with the tone of curiosity and not someone. The fourth one, and this is the hardest one is that when people do come forward with a critique, a question, mistake, you have to train yourself that the first words out of your mouth are ‘Thank you.’ Thank you for telling me that. And I literally set up scenarios in my training where they practice just that being their first response

Sue Bethanis 25:34
they’re getting triggered

Britt Andreatta 25:36
Absolutely. We all have an ego. And if someone comes to us with a critique or a question, it’s very easy to to get defensive. But if we get defensive, we shut down, it’s like safety, and people learn things. So that’s the fourth one, and probably the hardest, but the most important. And then the fifth one is to harvest mistakes for lessons. And to have a culture where instead of it being a shame and blame game, or sweep it under the rug, you actually say, Okay, we messed up, let’s dig in, what did we learn? What would we do differently? What? What can we gain from that? And if you treat it, as we learn, as we do things, of course, we’re going to try to figure it out. You know, I think the philosophy of just don’t make the same mistake twice is a great one. We want people to improve, we want people to hold themselves to a high standard. There has to be room for mistakes, too, and really valuable.

Sue Bethanis 26:28
So one of the things that another client said to me about a year ago, I think we were talking about how to create the watercooler and, you know, how do you do that? And so what he said, which I think, you know, again, it’s great that the stuffs coming from there things that they’re experimenting with. And he said, you know, after I have a team meeting, I pick up the phone and call somebody every time. I said you’re lingering, he said yes, I’m lingering, and I also will slack somebody. So, we picked up on this, and we talked about it some more. And I’ve been sort of sharing that with other people that is the watercooler when we go to meetings in person, we always linger after sometimes we’re rushing off, but I mean, even if we’re rushing off or maybe talking with somebody on the way or, you know, we’ll come in early, and we’ll talk to somebody ‘so hey did you just see my email?’ I mean that is so what we do, and we don’t have that now, because when we have one zoom to the next. So I liked that idea of lingering. I’m not sure what neuroscience says about that. But it is connection. It’s deepening some of the things, one of the things you’ve talked about is just psychological safety. What are some other things that you do to help people with the watercooler?

Britt Andreatta 27:41
I think it’s just to be intentional about it. Second, we just need to cut back on meetings, we’re in way too many meetings. During the pandemic, we went into more meetings and were not being productive. So, you got to be – when you take a 60 minute meeting and you make it 45 minutes. So, you take a 30 minute make and you make it 25. A it helps people just be able to focus but be then leave a little room for lingering. And B you acknowledge the fact that we just don’t need to be in so many meetings. I mean, really, my challenge to everyone is get rid of 30% of your meetings. Yeah. Or even 10% would be a huge thing. Sharp return. And I think right now, what I’m challenging people to do is separate the difference between the tasky work and some of that can be done asynchronously. Right? Online collaborations, people can be co working in there, from when do we need to be in person. And we need to be in person for the trust building difficult conversations, brainstorming, onboarding. Those are things where we need to be together. And so, then we can start to be really judicious around yes, we’re going to use in person too. The thing we’re seeing in the news right now is so many people saying like company forced me back to work. And I’m sitting in the office, and everyone’s still here. Right? So that’s dumb. Like we need to bring people together when it makes a difference and let people work remotely when they’re doing tasks and stuff. And that means we’re going to have to reinvent our workday.

Sue Bethanis 29:08
Yeah. And that’s what we spend most of our time talking about today. It’s like in this thing I just did, and what I’m speaking to a lot of people about, and one of my clients is like, we just got rid of the office, what do we do to connect? What do you think I said, what you tell me? What are you doing to connect and so we talked about it and it does need to be intentional. And it does need to come from the top to say, if the top says, Okay, you guys can do what you want, which is what people are pretty much saying in a lot of the – leave it to tech companies. The banks a little bit different. But Jamie diamonds be a little bit more specific about people coming back, but even he’s like, changed his tune a little bit. So, assuming that people are saying Do what you want, it’s putting it on the managers and actually we talked today about how it’s a burden, and it’s almost like it’s almost too much in a way but they would rather have it that way because they get to choose. What would you suggest as far as what you’re seeing as people coming back from off sites. once a quarter, once a month, people coming in and every Wednesday, people having their team meetings on Mondays and then coming in and doing more water cooler stuff on Wednesdays. I mean, these are all ideas that are floating around. And I mean, I’m almost like, do whatever, but just make it consistent.

Britt Andreatta 30:20
Yeah, I mean, there’s no one magic formula. So, I always like people to look at what’s your culture and context, right, it needs to fit for your group of people. But I think this conversation around what work is tasky and what work is connection and kind of thinking about it as two separate but equally important things. We’ve spent the last two years prioritizing tasks over relationship. And while some companies had banner years during the pandemic, they’re paying the price now and the great resignation, people feel disconnected, and they’re looking for something else. So, it’s really about looking at both of those pieces as equal and important. When you do an off site, you can kind of combine them, we can be tasky, and together. But when we’re in this remote world, we need to now make sure that the connection part doesn’t fall away. And I think that if you’re going to ask people to come to the office, then those are the days when meal service is provided. So, people can eat together. Those are the days when you’re not having a ton of meetings to make decisions. But you’re having more brainstorming, conflict resolution team building activities, because the person and I realized some organizations have people literally all over the world, and they may get together once a year, if at all right? That’s okay, just be super productive of the connection time when you’re together for that period of time. Because then it will create the fabric, it creates the connective tissue that connects together.

Sue Bethanis 31:45
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of teams, of course that were remote before. You know, so they look into those teams, did you see what they were doing in terms of bringing people together? I think it’s really helpful. And actually, I liked the idea of having the relationship building on the task, and then that does a separating them. But being aware and being cognizant of the balance, I like that a lot.

Britt Andreatta 32:11
I want to say one more thing, which is, and I’ve talked about this in the book, there’s actually three types of teamwork that we asked teams to do. And it exists on a continuum. So, the most basic is cooperation, and then there’s coordination, cooperation, collaboration, and they get increasingly more complex, and they require higher levels of skill. If you have a group of people that are each doing their independent piece of that task, and they don’t really, they’re not too interdependent, they can probably be fine staying remote and not have a lot of stuff. But the minute you’re doing cooperation or collaboration, then those relationships need to be in good shape, because the definition of collaboration is there is conflict as people tussle with ideas and co-create something together. It’s built because of everyone’s input, well, then you need to have trust, you need to have, those relationships. It needs to be, you know, girded with that relationship stuff. So, the other thing to do is if you’re a manager or leader is to look at, what type of teamwork am I asking teams to engage in? And then surrounding them with the right resources? To be great at that level?

Sue Bethanis 33:24
Yeah. So coordination, cooperation, collaboration.

Britt Andreatta 33:27
Yeah. So yeah, it’s a continuum. So, coordination is when two functions in the business are completely independent from each other. They don’t interface but they might just communicate to each other just to give each other a heads up about something. But there’s nothing that they’re doing, what’s happening over in facilities has nothing to do at all with its what’s happening over and IT right. The next example, is cooperation, where they’re still doing their independent piece of a task. But the task might get done until it hands off. So, for example, if it is bringing in new laptops for everyone, or desktops, facilities might need to play a role in that to make sure that things are ready and they’re can be handled. So, there is interdependence. They’re kind of their distinct portion. Right? Right. When there’s collaboration, which is if you’re asking facilities in it to design a whole new way of, of working or designing our workspace around tech, then they’re gonna get together and they’re going to be tussling with ideas, and they won’t know how it’s going to turn out because it’s getting built from the input. And that’s the highest level of teamwork. We use the word collaborate a lot when we really don’t mean it. Collaboration, then you really need to be indexing on relationships because definitely trust has to be there for teams to treat it that way.

Sue Bethanis 34:51
I liked that. I liked that distinction a lot. So, any last words as far as what we can do with hybrid? And I mean, I think window for a hybrid return to work. It’s what do we it is hybrid. Some people are remote only, but they’re still going to come together for off sites?

Britt Andreatta 35:10
Probably yeah, and we’re not going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle like work chain. So, you need to be embracing hybrid work. Yeah, it is the future work experience. Absolutely. It’s the new way of working. So, it’s about embracing that and maximizing its strengths and counterbalancing its weaknesses. I think the other thing that I would add, and it’s something I’ve been talking about a lot lately is burnout, people are burned out. And so, if you’re not addressing burnout, while you’re trying to bring people together, folks are in bad shape. And until they have enough rest and play, those are the only two things that help you heal from burnout. And there are seven types of rest until people can get kind of fluffed back up. They’re not their best selves. And so, when they’re being asked to come back into the workplace, which we’ve all gotten out of the habit of we don’t have the stamina for feels kind of overwhelming. For many of us, particularly women and people of color, and LGBTQ folks, we got a break from the jerks in the office, we’ve been feeling safer and happier than we have in a long time. Right. So, who wants to go back into toxicity? Those are groups that are resigning at higher levels. So right, some of the things you have to think about is first of all, we got to help people recover from burnout, and I’ll pop into the chat box, I’ve done two webinars on that that might be helpful. There, then we can really see what state our workforce is in. But I think a lot of people are leaving their current jobs, because what happens with burnout is you just have apathy, you’re tired and you have apathy. So, things that used to feel good, like accomplishing a task, working with the team aren’t good anymore. And so, people are thinking, Oh, I must leave this job. They’re not realizing that it’s actually one of the symptoms of burnout. And if they can just rest and recover a little bit, some of that joy will start coming back.

Sue Bethanis 37:01
Yeah, I like what you said about that. I mean, I think people there’s a lot of people waiting around like thinking that we were going to keep going back. So, there was not this conscious effort to connect or conscious effort to relieve burnout because we kept waiting. Yeah, I think people get now that there’s no more waiting. This is it, we are in the future. And we’re in it. So let’s be more intentional about it. So, thank you again, Britt. I really appreciate it. This is a great amount of information. I want to just let everybody know you can find Britt on LinkedIn, of course. And our website is BrittAndreatta. You can also find her on Twitter at Britt Andreatta. Thank you and thank you for the resources on the webinars as well. I got a lot out of this. I’m going to send it out to a lot of our clients, for sure. And I really appreciate you being with us.

Britt Andreatta 37:59
Thank you so much. it’s been great talking to you and talking to the folks of you who joined us.

Sue Bethanis 38:03
Yeah. Thanks again, everybody. Wish you the best. Thanks. Bye