Overarching Question: Which is more important, content or connection? 

Big ideas:

• Peter Block -- "Connection is the Content"
• content and connection as an infinity loop
• different types of connection -- to ideas, to others, and oneself
• relationship and communication interact with another
• trust cannot be built without connection
• delivering content with trust doesn't lead to integration
• we relate to content differently when there is time for connection
• you can't just throw content at people and expect them to learn
• it's hard to measure effectiveness in adult learning
• video courses have low completion rates because they miss the social aspect
• diverse groups provide perspective shifts that we can't get alone
• content can come easily from AI these days
• "Leave people changed, not just informed." -- Informed is the content piece, changed is the connection piece
• Perspectival knowing -- creating knowing that shifts your perspective
• knowledge needs context to be meaningful
• reading has become the exception to doomscrolling
• reading keeps people engaged in a topic over a long period of time
• when you connect with the content you're more engaged and motivated
• content in itself is useless without the connection piece
• shelf development -- when the knowledge/change stays on the shelf
• without trust you can't connect, without connection you can't trust - a feedback loop
• If a leader embodies the "connection is the content" idea, what does that mean for them?
• connection embedded into all the content
• a process doesn't necessarily create the connection
• breakout rooms are a structure that facilitate connection 
• put people into breakout rooms as they arrive to simulate the slow entering into a live space
• content without connection is information
• content is embedded in the conversation -- people are a source of content too

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THEME : Is listening overrated?

CONVERSATION POINTS:

• people think they are better communicators/listeners than they are
• listening is a very under-rated skill, and one to keep practicing
• knowledge is not opinion
• context shifts how we listen to people
• everyone deserves the right to be heard, but we don't have to take on board what they have to say
• listening without questioning what is true and what is not - practice discernment
• we listen through our own lens and biases
• What's the balance between listening to someone's opinion and sharing your own?
• when we give advice too soon, we may not be solving the right problem
• Are there contexts when we shouldn't listen?
• laws do not protect all people and do not represent all voices
• power dynamics affect people's listening
• who "has to" do the listening?
• when ego gets in the way of listening?
• higher ups need to spend more time listening to the people who actually know -- the experts
• when big companies enter into environments against the wishes and values of the citizens
• we are all capable of listening, but we don't practice and don't use the skill wisely
• the dyanmic of you're not listening to me, so I won't listen to you
• our ability to influence to change depends on our listening
• listen to ask better questions -- instead of thinking "that doesn't make any sense," ask a question to make sense
• train our listening every day 
• deep listening to things we don't value is very challenging
• the righteousness that goes along with not listening
• People not voting based on policy, but on who listens best
• The skill of listening is crucial
• Listening as a skill that goes out the window when we are emotionally triggered

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TOPIC: Do you think we should punish defiance in organizations?

BIG IDEAS:

• defiance appreciated in different cultures - in France it shows you're thinking critically
• power dynamics that are at play when talking about defiance
• defy and comply isn't a binary
• most of us were raised to believe that compliance was good and defiance was bad
• defiance can be good when it aligns with our values
• consent is when you have the capacity, knowledge
• we comply without having the knowledge
• false defiance - you go along with something that isn't aligned with your values
• conscious compliance -- where we're consciously going with something that's against your values because the risk is too high to comply
• there is often a long build up to defiance
• recognize the moments when I'm consciously complying
• not wanting to be the "complainer" when being harassed - risks too great for career
• people from marginalized groups have a great risk when defying
• looking to any ally from a more powerful social group to defy for you
• saying "no" to people's behavior and setting boundaries
• he-peating -- when a man repeats a woman's ideas, and others praise him over her
• How should companies deal with defiance? 
• getting curious about the defiance -  look at practices and processes that are outdated
• look at gaps between personal values and organizational values - how do we reconcile gaps in values
• Are values stated, but not practiced? 
• people can value the same thing, but how they demonstrate those values can differ
• look at the behaviors over the stated values of an organization
• emotional, psychological, physical, financial risks when it comes to defiance and compliance
• if there is a values misalignment between you and the organization, you choose a principled exit
• Is doing values exercises a pointless and dangerous exercise because you will never have alignment?
• the word defy has a moral connotation in French
• when people take your defiance to a process as a personal attack
• How do you defy but still stay loyal to the organization?
• it's hard to argue with someone's values
• standing on your moral high ground makes the other person wrong 
• using your values as a launch pad for your defiance
• build around a common need
• finding the nuanced way to defy - it doesn't have to be big and bold
• when you're at work, you're in a dependent relationship, so there are inherent risks
• the difference between protesting and striking 

RESOURCES:

• Defy by Dr. Sunita Sah
• Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

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QUESTION: Are Gen Z Me, Me, Me?

BIG IDEAS:

• Lots of complaints from a team leader around respect for him and org. His belief that his younger team members are overconfident and think they are superior
• Do leaders need to prioritize the organization over themselves
• Leaders looking for themselves in future leaders (projection)
• Generalizations around generations 
• We tend to overestimate when people were born, but what they went through and where are they now in their lives that make a difference
• What 25-year-old prioritizes the organization over themselves?
• Gen Z were hit really hard by Covid, and it defines how we see the world
• Perception that Gen Z lacks patience and don't want to put in the work
• Dunning Krueger Effect or status quos on timelines?
• Learning can happen much faster, but they lack experience
• When we judge others for judging, we are judging too
• Is it a lack of patience?
• Envy and resentment growing -- wish to have the attitude that Gen Z has
• Tension between the "new way" and the "old way"
• COVID shifted priorities for people, yet companies want to go back to the way things were (working in the office being a top priority)
• What does it mean to "go back to normal"?
• "That's the way we've always done it," can get in the way of growth
• Adapt rather than fight it
• Equity of treatment across generations and work preferences
• It's not about working 50% versus, it's about working 50% or leaving the company
• We only need to love 20% of our work to find meaning in all of our work
• Only 14% of people are engaged -- how is that measured? 
• Are we asking too much of people for their work?
• How much is the perception of engagement valid across generations?
• How much show off and show me rose due to the self facing camera?
• Over praising leading to overconfidence
• Instead of keeping them down, give them the opportunity to safely fail
• Seeing the gray area between people's truths

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Podcast || Social Science Bites - Episode on Generational Myths
• Book || Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham
• Book || Think Again by Adam Grant

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TOPIC : If leadership training is dead, how do companies still develope leaders?

Big Ideas:

• Learning experiences can happen without training
• Learning that happens in community can have a bigger impact
• Learning happens in a spiral -- you have to come back to it again and in different ways. 
• Learning happens across multiple axis across time, not linearly
• Leadership learning can happen below the surface before people can see it
• Creating a non-threatening environment -- psychological safety
• Put something in the community basket
• There is no lever for learning - you can just pull and it emerges
• Leadership as an emergent property, rather than something that can be directly developed
• How does the hierarchical structure of training impeding leadership training?
• Focus on the process of learning, rather than the delivering of content and information. 
• Practice versus training? 
• "Knowledge isn't wisdom. Wisdom in knowledge in action."
• Give people a space to activate the information. Everyone sparks at different times. 
• Creating self-fulfilling frameworks that can be peer generated after wards
• Some models can be reciprocated, but the experience may not be the same
• Small moments of connected learning keeps the learning alive - the more exposure to the ideas, the more your Reticular Activation System is activated
• How do we assess whether a learning experience is effective?
• If leadership training is so great, why do we still have the same number of problems we have?
• Does success always mean rising in an organization? 
• If everyone can be a leader, how do I choose the next leader?
• Managing and leading aren't the same skill set. 
• Promoting people who aren't good at their jobs, but are still potential leaders.
• Sometimes we are short-sighted about leadership development
• Garden metaphor -- plant some seeds, nurture, see what grows, adapt based on what you see

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TOPIC : Is leadership training dead?

BIG IDEAS:

• creating a learning experience without training/teaching people
• training gives people a chance to not take responsibility - they are following the training
• people are happy after a training, but change long term is limited
• attempt to get manager and HR involved in training, but it didn't work
• clients/customers want training, but don't take the time to reflect on what they need
• time is a barrier to implementation of oversight of training
• Peter Principle -- people rise to the level of their competence
• great individual contributors don't always make great leaders
• leadership is nuanced and doesn't follow a checklist
• training doesn't personalize the learning to where/who they are
• provide the spark, get people more emotionally involved in the change
• connecting the theory, to the emotions, to create the behavior change
• leadership is the state of being a leader, not a skill
• bringing the manager in was an attempt to reinforce the training
• making leadership experiences voluntary versus obligatory
• internally motivated learning is more impactful 
• letting go of agendas and objectives -- some structure, but give space for what arises from the participants
• leadership can't be taught, but it can be developed
• humans and leadership are too complex to be taught
• leadership has an emotional component
• getting stuck in what you're supposed to do, rather than reading the "room" and adapting to the situation in front of you
• letting go of the idea of needing "tools" as a leader
• internal motivation of being a leader

BOOKS MENTIONED:

• The Power of Moment, Chip and Dan Heath

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💡 SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office 

📚 GUEST READER : Valentina Tacchino

💬 CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• the book is very portable -- you can dip in and out
• how girls/women are educated to be "nice" and certain behavior were educated with not making the most for them in an office environment
• when being too "nice" can prevent us from standing up for ourselves or voicing our opinions
• student behaviors don't work in an office environment
• the cultural conventions and unwritten rules in within a work environment
• not wanting to confirm and "erase" yourself
• the book not asking women to be like men, but does invite you to reflect on your behaviors in relation to what men do or don't do
• make any book you read yours - don't follow it to the letter
• retaining your own personality and consciousness into reading and applying the book
• ask yourself what type of manager and leader you want to be
• unwritten rules come with any organization or community - hours in the office, dress codes, etc.
• many companies spell out the culture now, but at the time it wasn't like that
• wearing clothes that match your personality along with the unwritten rules of the industry
• sometimes you need to compromise on some things to make it easier for everyone
• mentoring people without telling people what to do
• having to change how I spoke to fit into the culture -- how you sound, how you project, when to participate, managing up, etc.
• not saying yes just because someone is your boss
• standing in your strength and in your values
• life and death moments in your career 
• taking time and energy to find the way 
• when saying "no" can nourish a relationship, rather than end it
• no is a powerful word in many contexts
• getting curious about someone's "no" 
• personal gratification is what will keep us going
• shaking the tree, but not uprooting the tree

ℹ GUEST BIO AND LINKS: 

Valentina Tacchino leads a team focused on wealth management for international clients at LGT Wealth Management. She looks after UK resident, not living in the UK and clients moving to the UK.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentina-tacchino-488b2a26/

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💡 SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak
📚 GUEST READER : Lucy Chambers

💬 CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• when managing 2 opposing views together ( a Taoist Nun and a Dominatrix)
• power is connected to our attention and where we direct it
• Dominant Position - attention out
• Submissive Position - attention in
• Link to coaching and coaches not setting the agenda
• power is about influence and nothing else
• both types of attention have value
• "The SMUSH" - when we flip flop between the two states of attention, or we have a foot in each state
• Incongruence occurs when our words don't match our energy - when we soften our words based on society's expectations on us
• People can smell intention - our animal body speaks more than we know/believe
• Manipulation - women get seen as this more often than men. Women fall into this SMUSH more often than men.
• Learning to ask from a place of grounded legitimacy. 
• Socialized that asking correlates with weakness
• We can't have an impact and play big if we aren't willing to ask for what we want/need
• "I am not having a conversation with _____________ about ___________."
• Asking exposes our edges.
• Connecting our requests to our universal human needs.
• Asking creates an opportunity for others and gives them a new role in their life
• Be as specific as you can when making requests. 
• The half ask is the SMUSH. 
• Wanting people to read our minds doesn't work. 
• We have a poor vocabulary for how we feel.
• Ideas need to be nourished.
• Allowing our asks to delight other people as they fulfill them. 
• When our asks create a WIN-WIN. 
• Asking takes vulnerability
• The toxic side of the independent woman - we don't have to do it all alone, and we are biologically leaned to connect with others.
• We don't create power siting alone in a room, but through connecting with others.
• Spend time taking things in and putting things out in the world.

📚 OTHER BOOKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Imogen Roy 
• Playing Big by Tara Mohr
• The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
• Video Series : The Basics of Non-Violent Communication with Marshall Rosenberg 
• Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
• How to Start a Mistress Group Workbook

ℹ GUEST BIO AND LINKS: 

Lucy Chambers is an anti-overwhelm coach and facilitator working on breaking old, broken patterns to create space for new great things. You can find and follow her at: https://facilitationmindset.substack.com/

https://www.facilitationmindset.com/

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💡 SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : First Things First by Stephen  R. Covey 📚 GUEST READER : Maha Bali

💬 CONVERATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• it's a life management book and how to prioritize
• imagining the end of your life and what people will say about you
• Live, Love, Learn and Leave a Legacy
• visualization where you attend your own funeral
• when what is written on paper and what you do in real time does not match
• Do our personal goals interfere with our institution's goals?
• Switch careers in order to focus on learning and leaving a legacy
• You don't need to be balanced in all areas at all times - you might focus more on love in some phases of your life and then lean into learning and legacy in other phases
• when strong emotional labor in our work affects the rest of our life
• when we pursue a legacy that isn't ours
• education systems all have their issues
• when our pain points direct our passions and desire to "fix" things later in life
• restart works for more than computers and electronics
• leaning into what brings you joy 
• opportunity gaps can cause us to choose a certain path, even if it doesn't fit for us
• when your value as a person is not remunerated financially within society
• reading books by only one demographic can be limiting
• reading things from different cultures takes additional reflection
• interacting with people from different cultures helps us understand other identities
• when you read a book by someone who lived it versus reading a book by someone who has observed the same experience
• when our looks and names get in the way of full assimilation in a country
• empathy to others oppression as an outside observer
• not forcing people into our language dynamics
• sharing learning with others and giving it freely
• share questions, not just the answers
• worry about giving the wrong knowledge

📚 OTHER BOOKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• Mindvalley - Speak and Inspire Course
• Lisa Nichols
• Belong - Radha Agrawal
• Emergent Strategy - adrienne marree brown
• Imagination : A Manifesto - Ruha Benjamin
• The Art of Gathering - Priya Parker
• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

ℹ GUEST BIO AND LINKS: 

Maha Bali is Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care,Socially Just Academia, a collaboration with OneHE: Community-building Resources and MYFest, an innovative 3-month professional learning journey. She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at https://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha.

For Maha’s list of peer-reviewed publications, see here.

For Maha’s list of keynotes and invited talks, see here.

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💡 SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : Wild Mind by Bill Plotkin

📚 GUEST READER : Andrei Stoicescu

💬 CONVERATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• growing from a place of unknowing
• not knowing where/when you will learn - it can happen at any time
• we often forget that we are a part of nature
• eco-psychology lens
• we live in an ecosystem and don't recognize our interdependence
• eco-centric -- start from the place of recognizing the nature and niche around us
• you can work with metaphor without understanding it
• you can live beyond knowledge and understanding
• you don't know what "cold" is before you experience it
• we communicate through our energy, not just our words
• Four facets of the self - Interpersonal View of the Self
  • Feeling Things
  • Using your Senses
  • Using our Intellect
  • Using our Imagination
• What happens if these facets are mature/immature? 
• Many of us are stuck in perpetual adolescence
• We often develop our facets based on what the world needs of us at the time
• Knowing your mature facet, and look toward the other facets to help you grow
• Miscommunication can occur when our strong facets collide with other facets
• What happens on your team when it's dominated by certain archetypes/facets? 
• Dysfunction on teams occurs when we don't understand ourselves more deeply, and those of our colleagues
• Meet yourself from the different facets and treat yourself with compassion
• Shifting our strategies that worked in childhood that don't work as adults
• Improve your leadership not through tactical ways, but through self-exploration
• Beginner's mind and humility in leadership
• Look for the patterns in your life
• Seeing the gift in the other facets of of self
• All of us have a "wounded self" - can we have compassion for our self and that of others
• Turn a sacred wound into a sacred scar
• Break the promises you made to yourself when you were young
• When we choose not to do the work, we pay in non-financial ways, so why not pay someone to help you do the work.

📚 OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED:

• Soul Craft, also by Bill Plotkin

ℹ GUEST BIO AND LINKS: 

Born in an industrial town of a soon to come out of communism Romania, I fell in love with books and stories in primary school. I have loved music and singing for as long as I can remember and I dabbled with acting until I went to university. I left Architecture after 4 years of studies (out of 6) and quit working in Architecture and Design (after 5 years), started doing odd jobs until, at 25, I ended up in a (then) more than 100.000 employee corporation where I received an Employee of the Year award (in my service center) after my first year for opening a new business line. I joined a (then) small ESG Research provider as an Engineer and worked my way up to Director of Engineering in 4 years. Even before the pandemic came I felt that I need a shift in how I approach things in life so I quit climbing the corporate ladder and started studying Philosophy and Psychology. I hold the same position with my employer and do my best to be there with my team, colleagues and friends. I continued to make music throughout my life and am now working to create my own music-oriented company that will hopefully launch next year.

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrei-stoicescu/

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LIVRE: Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines de Bernard Lahire
INVITÉ : Aïda Koné

Resumé:

• Comprendre les groupes humains
• Psychologie - focus sur l'individuel
• Sociologie - focus sur le groupe
• Racines communes entre les groupes 
• Identifiez les différentes strates -- dimensions biologiques, sociales et culturelles
• Pour un facilitateur ou coach d'équipe, c'est bien de savoir où tu vas réagir le groupe -- par quelle couche
• Les couches sont bien mélanges 
• Comment on est élevé, c'est la couche culturelle 
• Métaphore utilisée --  le barba papa - le bâton, c'est la biologie, les aspects sociaux et culturels se tournent autour du bâton
• On a plusieurs dimensions dedans nous - empathique/coopératif et compétitif/dominant - l'un ET l'autre, pas l'un OU l'autre
• On se ressemble fort quand on a un grand danger - catastrophe naturelle
• Les liens de forces sociologue -- il y a 10 dans le livre -- un est le rapport de domination
• Les humaines sont l'animal qui reste dépendant sur nos parents le plus longs possible
• La hiérarchie est naturelle pour nous, donc il faut qu'on prenne attention quand on crée une culture
• Connaissance de soi -- c'est quoi ma culture personnelle et ma response de domination/contrôle?
• Pas tout le monde préfère une entreprise avec le management horizontale
• Le conflit a un aspect positif -- les gens son engagée 
• Les valeurs sont exprimées dans le conflit
• Pas tous les conflits ont besoin d'un modérateur/trice
• On s'adapte à la culture ou on est 
• Voit l'aspect positif dont on ne perd pas l'espoir
• Les femmes a le rôle de porter les bébés, donc ça donner le rôle d'hommes plus tôt à l'extérieur 
• On est dans une transition vers l'égalité entre hommes et femmes
• Petites étapes pour garder l'espoir
• Il n'y a pas une hiérarchie entre biologie et culture

Autres livres mentionnée:

• Humankind by Rutger Bergman

BIOGRAPHIE D'AÏDA:
J'accompagne les dynamiques collectives en contexte de transformation avec les postures de coach d'équipes, facilitatrice, designer et formatrice.
Je suis particulièrement sensible aux enjeux de la transition écologique qui nous invitent à questionner nos interactions entre humains et avec le vivant dans son ensemble. 

J'ai 48 ans, j'ai fait des études d'arts appliqués et ai travaillé dans la communication et le marketing avant de m'orienter vers l'accompagnement 

LIEN LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aida-kone

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Spotlight Book: That's What She Said by Joanne Lipman
Guest : Dominique Ara 

Conversation Highlights:

• soft skills are people to people
• transgender experiences can give a peak into how our gender biases show up
• hard to recognize that we live in a man's world
• not only men interrupt women - women do it too
• we're not dreaming - the experience of the world is different if you are a man or a woman
• need more sponsors versus mentors
• mentors - give us advice, been there before, tactical approaches
• sponsor - pave the way for us, put our name forward for 
• mentorship can create more women acting like men
• the way we are conditioned can set up how we see the gender differences
• how to integrate when you are the "only" 
• when you're trained to look at the differences in order to better integrate
• women have learned to talk "men"
• empowerment - the permission to not "act as if" but to act as I am
• team up with the people who think like me
• 20% of the people can change a system 
• the power of getting together with others to change the system
• men are not the "bad guys" - they are shamed for being a man
• men are good people who have been conditioned into this system
• when courtesy becomes condescending
• when men don't say anything when they could/should
• the risk of speaking up that men feel -- they may disagree, but they don't speak up because they don't want to lose power/rank among the men
• coming in new to an organization where there is already a hierarchy - create a shared community and purpose that flattens the hierarchy
• when bad habits come back under pressure/stress 
• understanding when/how I feel threatened, and what behaviors come up when under threat 
• until proven otherwise, men are seen as competent -- until proven otherwise, women are seen as Incompetent
• what if women don't have imposter syndrome or confidence issues - it's just that the system forces women to prove ourselves more
• blind auditions in symphonies/orchestras - erases some of the bias
• Iceland as the number 1 ranked country for gender equity -- and it's not the women involved, it's the men
• the action men take need to NOT discredit themselves
• alliances between men/women to amplify one another's voices
• educate our boys differently

12 TIPS from the book:

1. Interrupt Interrupters
2. Use Amplification and Brag Buddies
3. Diversify interviewers, not just the applicants
4. She'll help your bottom line
5. She's not sorry, she's not lucky, and she's not asking you a question
6. Yay, that's not a compliment
7. She's pretty sure you don't respect her
8. Don't decide for her
9. Don't be afraid of tears
10. She's ready for a raise, but she won't ask for her
11. Hire women your mom's age
12. She deserves a promotion, she just doesn't know it yet. 

Other Books Mentioned:

• Belonging by Owen Eastwood

GUEST BIO:
Dominique provides teams and organizations with the best appropriate medicine to heal interpersonal communication diseases. She aims to energize and empower people to transform their future by expressing their full potential today. Dominique helps corporation executives to align their core values into everyday life. She is a senior-certified coach in Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ).

You can find out more at:
https://dominique-ara.com/en/about/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominique-ara/

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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK: The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler
GUEST READER : Viktoriia Berezhna 

CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• Perfectionism evolves over time when we challenge our beliefs
• Preparing does help, but doesn't change perfectionism
• The 5 Kinds of Perfectionists : Classic, Intense, Messy, Procrastinator, Parisian
• Intense - really high expectations for self and others and get intense if expectations not met
• Procrastinator Perfectionist - wait until it's flawless before putting it out there
• Are there differences in how perfectionism shows up based on your age?
• Perfectionism being external - meeting invisible standards
• The role of social media on perfectionism
• When you're driven by what other people think
• Small towns, gossip, and the connection to perfectionism
• Living in integrity means letting go of perfectionism
• When you take something that's perfect in your head and move to create it in the real world
• Are we afraid of the reality not meeting our vision, or the feelings that come up
• Perfectionism connected to shame, regret, grief, etc. 
• Not calling ourselves as a "Recovering Perfectionism"
• Can you see perfectionism as a super-power? Use perfectionism in an adaptive and maladaptive way.
• Positive sides of perfectionism 
• When you work in a team and how perfectionism styles collide
• Perfectionism is not an illness
• Seeing the gifts in your individual perfectionism
• Power in the self-awareness of your perfectionism
• Purposely making mistakes to "cure" perfectionism
• Different contexts drive different perfectionist tendency
• How do we become a perfectionist?  Conditioning from parents, society, etc.
• What we do to make our parents feel proud.
• Coping mechanisms vary depend on the type of perfectionist you are
• Knowing who you are as a way to help you cope
• Keep self moving and out of over-thinking - preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing, making a list about what to do is also not doing the thing
• Repeated action - just start.
• Do something in which you never expect yourself to be perfect. Purposely be bad. 
• Whose yardstick are you measuring yourself by?
• Whose rules are you living by? Can you break some of them? 
• How do you know if you are striving in a healthy way or in a perfectionist way?

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED:

• Playing Big by Tara Mohr
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

GUEST BIO:
Viktoriia is a product designer with a passion for creating impactful and user-friendly solutions. With over two years of experience at her current workplace as a Design Team Lead, she is exploring her path as a leader. Currently, she's building a startup called Bookclub VR, an Extended Reality app designed for reading and book clubs, alongside an incredible team of professionals. 

Beyond her work, I’m passionate about reading fiction, playing all kinds of racket sports (with a special love for table tennis), and constantly surface-learning new and interesting things, all while still being deeply connected to her journey in design.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktoriiaberezhnaya/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bookclubvr/

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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK: Moose Heads on the Table by Karin Tenelius and Lisa Gill
GUEST READER : Alejandro Garcia Machuca

CONVERSATION TOPICS:

• Leadership is something you step in and out of. It's too heavy to be a leadership all the time.
• Self managed organizations don't have managers - they distribute the power and authority among the employees
• When people take ownership for their work, they don't need managers
• Manager as the person who clears the way for others to do their work
• 3 Big Lessons From the Book - a coaching mindset and way of being, a focus on a working climate, a culture of mandate and involvement
• Having the power to give the power away
• Power will always emerge
• People require sensing and adapting
• Most of the underlying issues are unsaid
• Moose Heads on the Table = Elephant In the Room
• Advice being toxic as it disempowers employees
• Leaders NOT being the hero.
• Managing others means not doing the job 
• When being "helpful" erodes trust with the team
• Legitimacy comes from trust.
• There is no such thing as objectivity. There is intersubjectivity and agreement.
• We all have blind spots. Be humble. 
• Managing and leading aren't the same thing. 
• The "Listening Gym" - If we honored listening most, there would be a listening gym on very corner
• Leaders are listeners 
• Light fades away, but gravity holds it all together. We wouldn't have stars without gravity, but we only see the light. 
• Be like gravity - hold it all together without being seen. 
• People won't be silent if they feel empowered
• Passivity and patience aren't the same thing.
• There is a lot of activity in listening. 
• Lau Tzu Quote: Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, they task accomplished, the people will say, "We have done this ourselves." 
• People gifted to speak and people gifted to listen. 
• Leadership not as a ladder, but as pendulum.
• When the belief of arriving somewhere keeps us stuck.
• Can't have true power without listening
• Power is an emergent property of groups. 
• You know when things are working when people are engaged - people taking charge of their meetings, claiming their own power, focus
• Information when shared regains its purpose - it's the same with power. 
• Power is like fertilizer. Concentrated it poisons. Spread around it nourishes. 

BOOKS MENTIONED/OTHER RESOURCES:

• The Advice Trap, by Michael Bungay Stanier
• No Rule Rules, Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Unlearning Silence, by Elaine Lin Hering
• Good to Great, by Jim Collins
• The Power of Giving Away Power, by Matthew 

GUEST BIO AND LINKS:
Alejandro is currently navigating the muddy waters of fully remote work environments and the ever constant shift of focus and responsibilities within his job as a Software Consultant.

In a nutshell, his responsibility is to design and deliver transformational programs aimed at improving collaboration, all of it underlining the wonders of visual collaboration technology.

Beyond all the above verbiage, he's passionate about anything that's deeply moving, highly thoughtful, and unmistakably authentic. He takes conversations, vulnerability and presence very seriously.

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrogarciamachuca/

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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan
GUEST READER :  Vincent Musolino

CONVERSATIONAL TOPICS : 

• We talk of organizations as metaphors
• We speak in metaphors and stories
• Some metaphors are older than time
• Analysis of what we do, drawn from metaphors
• The 8 Metaphors - Orgs and Machines, Organisms Brains, Cultures, Political Systems, Psychic Prisons, Flux and Transformation, Instruments of Domination
• Metaphors drive our images and our language, and thus our structures and processes
• Humans driven from the outside (social) more than the inside (psychology)
• "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" ~Peter Drucker
• Recognize the dynamic nature of organizations - we are more than our org chart
• Could be a book that you don't have to read from start to finish
• Listen for the words/phrases that your clients or colleagues use and match it to the corresponding metaphor - read that part
• Good for better understanding your organization - better book for outside vendors
• What does understanding the metaphor change?
• Understanding the metaphors allows you to predict upcoming challenges
• Using one metaphor is dangerous - it's too reductive
• Multiple metaphors can shift perspectives and allow you to see new ways of working
• Play around with metaphors within meetings - create debate
• Not book circle specific

BOOKS/RESOURCES/PEOPLE :

• Peter Drucker
• Edward de Bono - Thinking Hats
• Clean Language - David Grove
• Book: Own Your Armor - Michelle Brody

GUEST INFO:

Vincent Musolino is the founder of COAPTA, where he works as a leadership coach and trainer. He works in both French and English.

Website: https://www.coapta.ch/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmusolino/
Podcast (in French) : https://www.coapta.ch/category/podcast/

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Check-In:

• What actor or actress would play you in the movie version of your life? 

Episode 1:

• Power is for everyone
• Power is an expression of our relationships within groups
• Power over and power to are different 
• How different types of power unconsciously drive us

Episode 2:

• Unleashing is allowing
• Who is doing the unleashing? 
• Purpose is in relationship to others
• Purpose is temporary 
• People can do the same job but find different meaning
• Purpose vs meaning

Episode 3:

• Belief that everyone is doing the best that they can  - Is that true and does that set us up for failure
• Generous intent
• We can't fully understand people, and they may not even understand themselves
• Understanding as an illusion

Episode 4:

• The treadmill idea - what happens to people that they get matrixed into a corporate job? 
• Multiple causes for treadmill - fulfilling expectations (society, family, etc.)
• HR looking for second generation immigrants due to high motivation
• When people tell you no, it can push you even more

Episode 5:

• Vulnerability as a strength even in 
• Coming into leadership in a protective state versus an open state
• Power dynamics shift how vulnerable we can be

Episode 6:

• Being autonomous and interdependent
• Rugged individualism can hold us back when we don't ask for help

Episode 7:

• Gratitude coming from within
• Recognition coming from outside of us

Episode 8:

• Some people who don't want a voice
• When people aren't ready to be empowered?
• Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and where an employee fits in

Episode 9:

• Is salary enough for engagement?
• Salary is not a driver for everyone 
• Disparity between what society says we need and what we actually need
• Generational differences

Episode 10:

• "You don't have to ask, but you have to listen." 
• Many of us know what listening is, but we don't know how to do it
• Poor listening as a way to sit with discomfort
• Asking questions not to know more, but to understand

Episode 11:

• Chess and checkers

Episode 12:

• Empowering people to grow - what if they don't want to grow?
• Rock starts versus Super stars - it's important to honor people where they are

Episode 13:

• The importance of stories
• If we don't hear other people's stories, we make up stories
• Brains liking closed loops
• If we have a shared sense of who we are below our roles
• Show don't tell

Episode 14:

• Is awareness enough to change behavior?
• Nothing new is created from self-awareness - self-awareness just the start
• Taking responsibility for your behavior

Episode 15:

• Being too passive in your relationship to your manager
• Imposter Syndrome gets in the way of asking manager for more

Episode 16:

• Do we have to let go of "When I was your age?"
• Not about what you said, but how you said it
• Creating connection through stories of our generation, not from a sense of our way was better
• Sharing perspective goes both ways across generations

Episode 17:

• Free added value - when corporations exploit employee generosity
• ERG - Employee Resources Groups - when organizations ask employees to volunteer their time to push DEI initiatives

Episode 18:

• Why don't people listen? Protection mechanisms
• Listening as context dependent, not skill dependent

Season Themes:

• Behaviors that are rooted in

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Check-In:

• What was your favorite job? And why?

Big Ideas:

• move from shallow questions to deep questions
• freedom, pace, connection
• autonomy and connectedness are part of the motivational factors of humans
• autonomy within a group, leaning into the group rather than isolation
• independence, dependence, and interdependence
• 3 types of conversations - the practical conversation (What's this really about?) , the emotional conversation (How do we feel?), the social conversation (Who are we?)
• context matters and appreciate what type of conversation to have
• when we are having different types of conversation with others, there is a mismatch and information doesn't get through
• meta-communication - talking about the type of communication
• we communicate through our emotions 
• we aren't rational beings but emotional ones
• recognize the nuance of other people's communication, and ask questions about their emotions without becoming emotional myself
• exercise where Theresa shared something meaningful with another person, and that person was instructed to be completely indifferent - Theresa had a strong emotional reaction
• our bodies speak to us if we listen
• holding multiple emotions at the same time - even if they seem competing emotions
• the 3 types are all in a multidimensional space
• communicate about ourselves, about the relationship, and about what we want
• emotion comes from the relationship we have with ourselves and others
• communication is like an orchestra, and certain aspects of it play louder
• cognitive dissonance - when evidence goes against what we believe about ourselves
• confirmation bias - sort out information that doesn't vibe with who we think we are
• when social media feeds our biases
• learning about the full humanity of people, and seeing their values, beliefs, history, and let go of the data to reduce polarization
• people agree a lot more than we think
• when we can listen deeply in some contexts but not others
• teach people how to be curious and ask deep, profound questions
• political system is based on making arguments, not on asking questions
• how much our childhood plays a role in our communication skills
• how story-telling about what people say or don't say interferes with our relationships
• emotional expression in professional settings is not fully expressed
• if a lot of books have been written on listening, why do we still not listen well
• we fail to practice listening to the emotional and social aspects of conversation
• stereotype threat - prime yourself on your multi-dimensional roles to overcome the threat
• being a good talker doesn't make you a good leader
• the training and book doesn't do anything for you

Resources:

• Supercommunicators, by Charles Duhigg
• Friedemann Schulz von Thun, German Psychologist
• Nancy Kline's deep listening

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SUMMARY:
In this episode, Vincent and Theresa chat about some Gallup data around employee engagement across the world. Who is actively disengaged at work? Who is not engaged? Who is engaged?

Check-In:

• What's at the top of your bucket list? 

Big Ideas:

• professional bucket list 
• the success race
• when we buy things to make us happy
• Connection between engagement and success
• Company tap into personal engagement
• Let people be engaged how they want to be engaged
• Lebanon - highest percentage of active disengagement
• Actively disengaged, not engaged, engaged 
• Sweden - lowest percentage of actively disengaged
• Mali - highest percentage of engagement
• Italy - lowest percentage of engagement
• Cultural implications of engagement - social expectations and relationship to success
• Social media and relationship to engagement 
• Engagement NOT connected to GDP
• Engagement levels have doubled in the last decade
• Covid-19 made people realize the importance of things other than work
• Choice of 5 day of disengaged employee, or 3 days of an engaged employee
• Ease in hiding your engagement in large companies
• Gallup 12 Questions:

1. I know what's expected of me
2. I have what I need to do my job
3. I can do what I do best
4. I get recognition at work
5. Someone cares for me at work
6. Someone encourages my development
7. My opinion seems to count
8. Mission and purpose of company
9. I see commitment to quality to work
10. I have a best friend at work
11. Someone talks to me about my progress with me
12. I can learn and grow

• When best friends at work keep you from being objective
• Cultural nuances around "best friends"
• Use questions like these concretely
• Engagement of entrepreneurs or in small companies is probably higher
• Would it make sense to break out large companies to improve engagement?
• Breaking up companies into pods
• If you have to make any decision, you have to find 2 other people to back you
• Create the conditions for collective intelligence
• A group is not a team
• Do work that we love and be engaged
• Are the younger generations less tolerant of corporate BS?

Resources:

• Book: The Success Myth by Emma Gannon
• Book: The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck
• Gallup Poll Data: https://www.gallup.com/394373/indicator-employee-engagement.aspx
• Book: The 12 Elements of Great Managing
• Book: Humanocracy
• Podcast: Social Science Bites

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Check-In: 

• What's your favorite place in your neighborhood?

Big Ideas: 

• Common issues in phone-based children now adults - social isolation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction
• Lack of in-person interactions and conflict, leaves them unable to resolve conflict in reality
• Dopamine addiction online, leads to cycle of waiting for acknowledgement
• Judging people in ways that we wouldn't do in real time
• Cancel culture emphasized online 
• Sense of community is superficial online - high quantity, low quality
• Anxiety - keeping up with social expectations and fear of not being accepted
• How do leaders support Gen Z? Who is doing the accommodating?
• History of the 13-year-old law on social media
• No phone policies within schools
• Withdrawals and failure to launch due to social options online
• Sense of creation and confidence
• Using vocational training to support people's confidence and purpose as a professional
• Parents modeling phone-behavior
• How can we create an environment and culture of engagement, even when we are online for meetings?
• The closer and more visible the phone is to you, the more distracting it is
• Handwriting notes and limiting access to distractions while in meetings
• Phones can be dangerous for our work 
• Creating learning opportunities for employees around phone and/or social media challenges
• Creating online community
• Leaders modeling better online detoxing and communicating it with the team
• Setting better work time boundaries for when to expect people to be online
• Good psychological safety
• Gamify non-screen time within a team or between teams
• How often we go down a road and only in hindsight realize the issues
• Meeting the younger generation where they are 
• Some younger people have been conditioned into this way of being, not chosen it
• Work design - multiple/flex job sharing to create a sense of flexibility in their roles
• Reverse mentoring - look at the strength of the technology
• Employee Resources Groups for Gen Z
• Let go of "When I was your age...."
• Enter into conversations with the intent to listen, not speak
• Be aware of who we are allowing to dictate your life and where there might be a value misalignment
• Where are we jumping on bandwagons without looking at the long-term implications
• Back-chaining behaviors so that people feel confidence
• Being "good enough" without our phones and our social media accounts
• Cultivating an internal sense of value within employees

Resources:

• "The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt
• "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal
• "Hooked" by Nir Eyal

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Check-In:

• What has recently become less important to you?

Big Ideas:

• Look at the lattice of the organization, not just the ladder
• Leap between individual contributor and manager
• No change of nature between the different levels of managers - shift in intensity, but not the nature of the work
• Develop a network of people at and around your level
• At some point you'll be playing the game, so need a wide network to support you
• How do we define a "good working relationship" with your manager?
• Being too passive in the relationship with your manager
• Lack of clarity of expectations and not asking for more clarity
• Bringing people's reputations into your relationship
• Confirmation bias - when you see people through the lens you want to
• Asymmetric power relationships
• When you think your boss should do something differently - you suffer, not them
• Relying too heavily on your power of expertise and not your power of connections
• Managing up connotates teaching your manager how to do their job
• First step - check your own ego
• Second step - develop self awareness, know your triggers, what pisses you off about people
• Third step - Know what motivates you and how your manager aligns or not with those
• Fourth step - Take the time to develop a relationship
• Know your external motivators which are context driven
• The power of working their way gains capital with them and builds trust
• Prove that you can work in their system
• Do you known what your boss needs? How can you "manage up" if you don't know what your boss needs?
• Develop a coaching mindset up toward everyone around you
• Do you ever ask your boss "How can I help?" 
• Whether we like it or not we are in service to our manager - we aren't just in service to our direct reports
• Not standing in someone else's shoes for a while
• Empathy can be dangerous. Compassion is less taxing

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Check-In: What's giving you hope right now? 

Big Ideas:

• What constitutes inequity?
• When your unbelonging can connect you with other people who feel unbelonging
• Gender equity issues not coming up in some leadership trainings 
• Cultural and country differences in gender equity
• Calling out misogynistic jokes - Should I? Context dependent?
• "isms" as part of the air we breathe - it's conditioned into us
• Creating the system and benefitting from it - are they separate
• Unconscious bias that comes out in small ways as a parent
• Is awareness enough to change behavior? 
• If we are all sexist, does that make the word meaningless?
• Sexists are actively causing harm...???
• Sexism is mostly unintentional - men don't even know it's sexist
• What do we call people who are functioning in patriarchy in unconscious ways, but still causing harm?
• The myth of meritocracy 
• Meritocracy - achievement is based solely on your skills
• Blind assessments to even things out
• Performance review differences between men and women
• Transparent data and decisions on manager, causing inequities to even out
• Be internally transparent with income differences
• Women tend not to negotiate their salaries, but they will negotiate on the behalf of others
• Women less likely to nominate themselves for promotions
• Asking women to be like men doesn't work
• Double bind - not assertive enough, not seen as a leader, too assertive, seen as being bitchy
• Anger as a man is okay, being sad/emotional as a man is associated with weakness
• Expectations in our gender roles
• When there's no problem, there's no data usually
• Believing you are objective, makes you more likely to be sexist. 
• Thinking of the behavior separate from the identity

Resources:

• Invisible Women by Caroline Criando Perez 

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Check-In:

• Which projects give you energy?

Big Ideas:

• 3 skills that lead to successful groups: building safety, sharing vulnerability, establishing purpose
• cohesive groups - telling stories and reminding one another what they stand for
• murmuration - how birds move together
• using small signals to link the present moment to the future ideal
• organizations that don't have a purpose, mission, vision, etc. 
• the challenge of extracting a purpose
• how to detect weak signals and act on them
• going through the motions of purpose - some people feel it's not worthwhile
• "What's the purpose of having a purpose?" 
• Purpose is a higher order construct - something you can build everything else around
• If there are no words, there's no knowledge
• Purpose seems too impractical - not actionable, practical enough
• Cultural differences in focusing on culture
• A tool without a purpose is just an object.
• Leadership without purpose doesn't serve anyone
• You can pivot around a purpose, and shift your business structure
• Don't sell change
• When companies focus their purpose around a story or stories, it can motivate employees in a new way
• Having a clear beacon of purpose
• What can organizations do to re-engage employees? Is story enough?
• Belief that narratives only apply to children and politicians 
• Stories are a way to make groups work together - story-telling goes back thousands of years
• Any good story has conflict and strong emotion -- some organizations still try to separate emotions from work
• How to help people identify the stories that they are telling themselves? 
• Once you identify the story, you can change the story
• How stories drive our emotional world.
• Our brains want to close the loop, so we make up the rest of the story so we can move on - a necessary evolutionary device
• Being in the matrix and not knowing you are in the matrix
• Leading for Proficiency (being the lighthouse) - establishing priorities and connected behaviors
• Leading for Creativity (being the ship's engineer, not the captain) - safe flat, high-candor environment, not about how to
• What's your leadership purpose?
• Transactional versus transformational leadership
• The leader's job isn't to motivate others, but to create conditions for people to be motivated

Resources:

• The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
• Start with Why Simon Sinek
• Find Your Why, Simon Sinek
• Adam Grant

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Check-In: 

• Do think the best time of your life is in the past, present, or future

Big Ideas:

• flexibility in work schedules - what do we need to do so
• the equipment that supports remote working
• shifting mindsets around traditional ways of working
• shifting schedules to accommodate global clients
• sense of freedom in being able to shift your schedule
• flexing people's pay to allow for flexible schedules
• Be present, be equipped, be allowed
• Compressed work week - had to create the model
• Keeping people engaged after 30+ years in the corporate world
• Empowering people to have balance and to grow in new ways
• Employees feel energized and motivated when they have a larger fulfilled
• Need for new working models to offer employees 
• Younger generation doesn't want the traditional 9-5, 5 days a week
• Covid has shifted us into new ways of thinking about how we work and where we work
• Can flexibility work for manufacturing, and other hands-on type of work?
• Hesitation to allow flexible schedules
• Creation can happen NOT sitting in front of the computer
• Companies are losing good people if they don't offer flexibility
• Using co-working spaces for networking and shifting perspectives and interacting across-organizations
• How do I lead remotely?  
• How can we support leaders to build trusting teams remotely? 
• How to facilitate meetings remotely so that people can feel that connection?
• The small moments of trust building,, in person, can't be as easily transferred to online spaces.
• Making connection the primary intention of all gatherings
• Intention, Execution, Results - Observe what is happening in your meetings
• Focus on how people want to feel at the end of a session - the doing happens as a result of the feeling (fulfilled, energized, inspired, motivated, engaged, supported, etc...)
• Making sure that everyone has a voice in whatever way that voice wants to be heard
• Not micro-managing people's time and checking their online status when working remotely
• When people speak in the first 5 minutes of the call, they end up speaking more throughout the meeting
• The relationship between trust and empowerment
• What's preventing leaders from trusting their employees?
• We want engaged employees, but we don't create engagement in the meetings
• Meeting etiquette and expectations -- different practices across organizations, regions, countries
• Less moments to sync outside of meetings when we are remote - more presence needed in online meetings
• What kind of leader does your company need you to be?
• In our fast-paced world, are we giving space for people to BE
• Messaging around productivity and efficiency and how it impacts people 
• Separating your ego from your leadership
• Self-reflection as the key to good leadership

Resources Mentioned:

• The Extended Mind, by Annie Murphy Paul

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Check-In: 

• If you could live anywhere, where would you live and why?

Big Ideas: 

• when books make leadership seem easy, when it's not
• 5 elements that every team needs to function well together, written as a pyramid
• using books as a guide can lead us down the wrong path
• The 5 Dysfunctions are: Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results
• Lencioni is anti-consensus
• Can people have results without trust? (example - the Chicago Bulls of the 1990's)
• Trusting someone's character and capabilities
• Peer review of models
• Books can be seeds of discussion, but not guides for team performance
• Components of trust, and signs when trust is absent
• Trust not being valued by a manager - it being seen as too "fluffy"
• Does the importance of trust depend on the type of team you are within the organization? 
• If everyone's competing for the CEO's job, how can you trust those you work with?
• Power in organizations - the individual versus the group
• How can one be political without being egotistical?
• Politics is making your power concrete. It's not bad or good in nature. It's a tool.
• What am I applying my politics for?
• Playing the game without playing the game. Being aware of the game and playing it for the good of the company.
• We teach people NOT to play politics at work, and then they get into organizations where people are all playing different games
• When people suffer when they don't know the rules of the game they are playing
• Play the game to be a successful contribution to the organization
• Belief that good people don't politics - it's not the tool, it's what you do with them that matters
• Can you win the fight being a good, upstanding person?
• Power is largely due to the collective sum of all the relationships you have within an organization. 
• Fear driven relationships aren't relationships - they are transactional 
• Choosing NOT to play the game, can be seen as more ethical

Resources:

• The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Amy Edmondson and Psychological Safety
• Edgar Shein and Psychological Safety
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

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Check-In:

• How did you spend your summer breaks as a child?

Big Ideas:

• How do you know when connection exists in a group?
• The importance of having care/connection when giving feedback
• Connection is not the same as relationship
• Feel a connection to someone without a relationship
• A relationship can exist without fully knowing someone
• Trusting character versus trusting someone's competencies
• Trust: Competence, Kindness, Reliability
• BRAVING Model of Trust (Brené Brown): Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-Judgment, Generosity
• Intent doesn't always match impact - can care about someone and still hurt them
• Creating more intention when giving feedback
• Being unkind versus the perception of being unkind
• Does kindness have a place in business?
• We choose complacency and kindness can cross over -  we don't give feedback when it's needed because we know it will hurt
• When is too much too much
• Connecting just enough to do my job well
• How much is too much connecting as a leader?
• Do people want their leaders to know about them? 
• Connecting with people to be strategic/manipulative rather than human
• Do we need to know the in and outs of our teams to be a good leader?
• Shifting connecting depending on the individual needs of your team
• Do we need to manage the perceptions of others on our team?
• You don't have to ask, but you have to listen
• People on our teams have different attachment styles
• Is it too much to have to adapt/chameleon to our teams needs?
• Ask people what they expect from you and set boundaries 
• Accompanying our team members
• Accompanying and giving the infrastructure to others
• Having clear expectations and the same map means we don't need to be as connected
• Connection is needed to set expectations and create the map together
• Is connection turning into the solution to all of our leadership problems?
• None of us has a map of where our business goes, so connection support us
• Common understandings of what you need to be doing and then you can improvise
• Pull back from connection as being "the answer" to your leadership issues
• Knowing information can share that you care
• The little things are important to others
• Why are you connecting?
• What's the "right" amount of connection with our teams?

Resources:

• The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey
• BRAVING Inventory, Brené Brown
• How to Know A Person, by David Brooks

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Check-In:

• In your opinion, when is innovation overused?

Big Ideas:

• Binary questions - Are they useful or not? 
• Are creating and innovating the same?
• Moving from being salaried to hourly and the implications/impact it had
• Feeling of liberation being hourly rather than salaried
• Sense of equity - treating all of us the same
• Mental load and how it's often not counted in salaries
• Sense of autonomy in deciding to work or not
• Working to deserve the salary
• Space for thinking/reflecting separate from doing
• What's your relationship to decision-making? 
• Working less as one of the goals
• Stepping back to reflect on the decision and knowing the criteria of success
• Failpoint brainstorming
• Sunk Cost Bias
• Is salary associated with time spent in a corporate setting? 
• Are we creating space for psychological detachment from work?
• Companies taking time of employment engagement
• Is a salary enough of a reward for engagement? 
• Can we pay someone based on meeting metrics?
• Quality versus quantity of work
• Can companies do what entrepreneurs do in terms of paying employees?
• Parkinson's Law -- the task will expand to fit the time given
• Playing with time to get you motivated 
• Honoring where people are in their lives, and adjusting their expected time at work to their stage in life
• Kronos time (the passing of time)  versus Kairos time (the quality of time)
• Universal income - untying productivity with your value in society
• Could we live in a world where people do what they love with love
• Depression and it's connection to purpose and meaning
• The attention economy and how it draws people in
• Moral decision about what we produce and whether it's worthy
• Inequity in salaries
• Time I spent at work doesn't matter  - what, how, and why matters more 
• Quality of time versus quantity of time

Resources:

• Taking Smart Risks - Doug Sundheim

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Check-In Question:

• Would you tell people if you won the lottery, would you tell people or keep it a secret? 

Big Ideas:

• Exercise:
  • Draw a meeting on a paper.
    • Color code.  RED- people talking too much. GREEN - people talking too little. ORANGE - people speaking in a toxic way
    • What do you notice? 
• Share of voice
• When is interrupting others okay? 
• Cultural differences between share of voice, and adapting to how others communicate
• How can we encourage green people to talk more, besides simply "Speak up"?
  • Wait time.
  • Eye contact
  • Moderate conversation more
• Does everyone's voice need to be heard?
• Are we using breakout rooms to create engagement
• 1-2-4-ALL Giving people the opportunities to write first, then share with a pair, then the whole group
• Turn to your neighbor
• Brainstorming are often more geared for extroverted people. Extend the brainstorm
• When we don't hear from others, we don't hear opposition
• Power has nothing to do with performance at times.
• Certain situations when collective intelligence is not appropriate
• Hearing from the experts, credible, valuable contributors? 
• Wisdom of the LOUD, doesn't necessarily incorporate the most credible people
• Context matters
• Collective intelligence - more people sharing, focus on social sensitivity
• More social sensitivity when there are women in the room
• Swap out the moderators of a meeting, to shift the share of voice
• Connection between empowering people and burnout - some people aren't ready to be empowered
• Entrepreneurship training versus leadership training
• Front load the sharing to equate share of voice
• Bring awareness to people
• ONE BREATH SHARE - keeps sharing limited
• What's the purpose of the meeting?
• Who's really making the decision?

Resources:

• Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet
• 1-2-4-ALL, Liberating Structures
• Nominal Group Technique
• Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini

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Check-In: What cause would you be willing to give up your life for?

Big Ideas:

• gratitude can help us out of dark places
• attitude of gratitude is not the same as a practice of gratitude
• gratitude practice as a daily ritual
• gratitude as a feeling, not necessarily saying "Thank you."
• feeling proud rather than just lucky
• Who are you grateful for who supported something you are proud of?
• Characteristics that supported the achievement - who helped to develop those characteristics in you? 
• Strangers who helped you - being grateful for the unseen people
• The emotion of gratitude - not just talking about it, but feeling into it with eyes closed
• Recognition is not the same as gratitude
• Waiting for recognition leads us unto a dangerous path
• Gratitude comes from within, recognition is external
• Gratitude is the feeling, recognition is the action
• What's the prerequisite to gratitude?
• Doing gratitude isn't the same as feeling gratitude
• Creating the pause and intention to feel gratitude
• Habit stacking - way of creating new habits on top of old habits
• Speaking gratitude out loud can be powerful

Resources:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

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Check-In:

• If you could change anything about yourself, what would you change?

Big Ideas:

• Should organizations provide resources for employee mental health?
• Mental health is still a taboo topic for many, especially in organizations
• Not educated about topics of mental health
• Shame associated with an EAP program
• Culture of "suck it up," "be strong," and "pull up your bootstraps."
• Perception of being weak - the stigma of mental health issues
• Is there a right way to support people around mental health?
• Community-based program to support employee mental health - feeling not alone by sharing with others
• Trust advisors in Switzerland - listen and provide options, not therapy or coaching
• Complexity of situations
• Neurodivergent employees and mental health - are they in the same box?
• Leaving your personal life at the door doesn't work
• Compartmentalizing our lives doesn't work
• We are meant to be in community with others - we are not autonomous beings
• Is community more important than the product?
• Sitting with our emotions, rather than trying to push past them
• Personal responsibility - where am I participating?
• Yoga, nap rooms, etc support the symptoms, but not the cause
• Provide the relationship space for people
• Continuity of support - more than just a couple of days off
• People who can step off the work highway, and others who cannot
• Pressure on employees can't be fixed with nap pods
• The CEO who was fired for providing more for his employees, but not focusing enough on profit
• Not about finding fault
• Mental health is not linear
• YES/AND - both individual and organizational responsibility

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Check-In:

• Which superpower would you like to have? 

Big Ideas:

• Definitions of authentic leadership
• Authentic leaders deeply understand their values, strength and purpose and use that to motivate and inspire others
• The ability of people to tell their own stories and help people connect to that story
• 4 Dimensions of Authentic Leadership: Self-Awareness, Relational Transparency, Balanced Process, and Internal Moral Perspective
• Vulnerability is a strength not a weakness
• How our unconscious mind interferes with authenticity
• Don't bring our true self to work due to cultural expectations, fears, peer pressure, etc.
• Authentic Leadership is self-referential
• Authentic leaders are proactive in looking at their biases and how they process people
• Leaders already think they are being authentic
• Self-awareness isn't a destination, it's a journey
• The 5 Rs - Review, Remember, Recognize, Reflect, Renew
• You can never say that you completely know yourself
• Don't crucify others or ourselves for our biases - we all have biases
• Own up to others your biases - ask others to give you feedback about your biases
• Authentic leaders lead as uniquely them
• Everything comes down to the strength of our core 
• People claiming to be self-aware, but acting as if they are not
• How can one facilitate authentic conversations?
• Create spaces that are empowering enough to be vulnerable
• When you look into the mirror and ask questions, who responds? 
• Connection between courage and authenticity
• Kindness and complacency 
• Should we always be authentic? 
• Authentic leaders know what they do not know and are willing to admit it
• Empathetic feedback
• Looking for the elements of truth in hard feedback
• How do we encourage people to take the time to reflect? 
• Not look at what's right or wrong, but look at what happened and making meaning from it
• Every day has moments of authentic leadership
• Every day provides moments for self-reflection

Amara's Bio:
Amara is a certified executive and leadership development coach with great passion for leading authentically. I work with executives and leaders to embrace authenticity, strengthen positive behaviors, develop new leadership capabilities, grow influence, and deepen impact. My clients achieve positive lasting changes in leadership behaviors. 

www.authentictransformations.net
www.Amaraemuwa.net

Please check out her new book, The Truth Behind Excuses

https://authentictransformations.net/behind-excuses

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Check-In:

• Do you like to be used or second hand items?

Big Ideas:

• Is leadership working? Does leadership training work?
• Training cannot be done outside of the context
• Consuming, Connecting, Creating
• Stopping our ways of being are habitual is more challenging than we thought
• We are emotional beings
• Embodiment of the ideas takes longer than a training
• Being intentional about practicing the ideas we learn in the training - take the pause and creating a support system
• Sense of personal responsibility of the individuals in training
• The treadmill and lack of control prevents people from implementing
• Top management not participating in training themselves - "I am a CXO, so I don't need training." This creates misalignment.
• Transparency around how we are learning
• Alienation of true selves when we go to work
• Measuring leadership
• Attribution errors - when we attribute success to one person, rather than multiple factors
• A record doesn't matter when you hire someone
• Being a good leader of yourself, to support other leaders
• What can I do today? Taking personal responsibility
• Imitation versus borrowing
• Reading books that make you think rather than telling you what to do
• Sometimes the expert is wrong - we can't always take someone's formula and apply it to ourselves
• Process consultation - practicing on the spot 
• Having multiple ongoing touchpoints throughout, or after a training is over
• Voluntary training or mandatory training? Does participation shift?

Resources:

• Less is More by Jason Hickel
• HBR - Why Training Fails and What to do About It (2016)
• The Financial Times - Success is more complicated than one exceptional individual (2023)

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SPECIAL NOTE: This podcast was originally recorded as part of the "Talent Unleashed" podcast, which never launched because Theresa was too optimistic about her time capabilities. We decided to honor the guests and publish it under this brand instead.

Enjoy :)

BIG IDEAS:

• The F*ck Up List - an explicit place for sharing our mistakes and making it transparent and acceptable
• the person who is responsible for the f-ck up is the one who adds it to the list
• challenge of internalizing the culture of being okay to fail
• sharing failures as a way to help others in the future, so they don't make the same one
• Non-judgmental view of failure
• intention to learn from the mistakes, have a good laugh about our mistakes, create more awareness and transparency around
• entries of the F-up list also include the resolutions, not about pointing fingers or blaming others
• technological and social structures to prevent mistakes in the future
• The Prime Directive - "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
• high level of trust - see best intentions of everyone
• great sense of ownership and freedom - space to make mistake and not be blamed
• comfort in challenging because not afraid of mistakes - leads to innovation
• criticize the work, not the person
• low egos help reduce social conflict
• requesting feedback on a regular basis - making it an active process
• feedback on open forums - in shared space
• modeling of open feedback from the founders
• reducing fears and doubts though mentoring
• hiring too quickly can erode culture
• truly wanting people to grow 
• not all frameworks will fit your needs perfectly

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Prime Directive 
• Holacracy

BIOGRAPHIES:

To learn more about Robin and Echometer, head to these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-roschlau/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanmicheldiaz/
https://echometerapp.com/en/

To learn more about Camilla, head here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillamaia/
https://www.behance.net/camilla-maia
https://medium.com/@c.cav.maia

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SPECIAL NOTE: This podcast was originally recorded as part of the "Talent Unleashed" podcast, which never launched because Theresa was too optimistic about her time capabilities. We decided to honor the guest(s) and publish it under this brand instead.

Enjoy :)

Big Ideas:

• What does it mean to unleash talent? 
• When learning spreads out across multiple areas of your life
• Mix of theoretical and practical aspects of learning - using the learning
• Intrinsic motivation and curiosity
• How do organizations support curiosity individually, and across an organization?
• Learning offered versus learning people want
• Just in time learning
• Encourage curiosity, but don't provide the infrastructure to harness it
• Gig Learning - short term assignments to allow people to learn in different aspects of the organizations
• Intersection of harnessing curiosity and unleashing talent
• Change the narrative around talent - talk about individuals rather than about resources
• Holistic thinking - not about moving people on a chess board
• How best delivering to all people in the organization to satisfy their curiosity?
• Linking people to their own personal purpose within the organization, not just the organization's purpose
• If want to unleash talent, have to be curious about talent
• Unleashing talent isn't just about promotions
• Squiggly careers 
• Everybody's 100% looks different
• What structures need to be in place to help manager unleash talent on their teams?
• When people are promoted to managers, but don't want to be a manager
• Understanding that the people you manage are who deliver to the client 
• Managers don't necessarily have the capacity or resources to manage well
• Getting to know the individuals well enough that you know what inspires them, what demotivates them
• What makes a poor manager poor? (Micro-management, Magpies, Chasing their own agenda, etc.) 
• Rise in managers who care about individuals 
• Poor management isn't address - people quietly quit or change teams 
• What's your purpose as a manager?
• Connection between purpose and unleashing talent 
• Breaking down silos in the organization, so people can see where their purpose can be realized, if it isn't already
• Understand ourselves and our own limitations in order to unleash others talent

DAVE MILL'S BIO:
With over 25 years experience in the learning and development industry. In that time he has facilitated internationally and covered a wide number of subjects from driver training on forklift trucks to facilitating senior leaders to flourish through change.

He is currently a senior consultant and SME in the People Development and Effectiveness Centre of Expertise for Kantar (the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company).

In his many previous lives he trained as a horticulturist, spent years as a night club and mobile DJ, built a career in retail manager, was a charity and corporate event MC and compère, and is a trained hypnotherapist.

He lives in Leamington Spa in the UK with his wife. He has 2 children, is a ‘born-again’ gardener, has recently started writing poetry, still DJs occasionally, loves reading and wants to be an archaeologist when he retires!

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Check-In:

• What's better, love or money? Which has more power, love or money? What's more powerful, love or money? 

Big Ideas:

• Money as a substitution for time
• Infatuation can be a very powerful motivator. 
• Differentiation between moments of happiness and love
• Putting love into leadership 
• People going back to work just to see the people
• Power and the complexity of human relationships 
• Power has a negative connotation
• Having power is a privilege
• Your relationship to power can hold you back, especially if you think of it as negative
• Power over, power to, power with (Brené Brown)
• When power is used to "control you" may give you a negative view of power
• 4 Elements of Power as per Ted Jenkins
  • Power of position
  • Power of expertise
  • Power of connections
  • Power of personal authority
• 6 Elements of Power as per French and Raven (1960's source)
  • Formal Power
  • Power of Consequence (power of sanction and reward)
  • The other 4 are the same as above
• Women use their power of expertise almost to a fault
• Extroversion and Introversion are not scientifically backed
• Power of position/legitimacy is given - we agree to give others that power
• Can one have power of position without any of the other powers?
• Is "authority" the right word? Confusion of power and authority
• Is authority, really about charisma?
• Personal authority and the relationship with trust
• Information brokers - knowledge power
• Information is not the same as expertise
• Connection between money and power
• Politicians starting with personal authority, which leads to connections, and then to position
• What are we gaining by giving people power over us?
• Power over you is like being in a prison
• Grow our own sense of power, and continue to have choice
• Societal and group power
• Systems changing from outside, not from inside
• Is power of personal authority, connection, and expertise enough when the power of position is so strong? 

Resources:

• Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman
• Love as a Business Strategy, by Frank E. Danna and Mohammad F. Anwar
• The Work Lab, by Microsoft
• How Women Rise, by Sally Helgeson and Marshall Rosenberg
• Rising Together, by Sally Helgesen

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Check-In Question

• If you were invisible, what's the first thing you would do?
• What good can you do while being invisible?

Big Ideas:

• 4 quadrant matrix - Caring Personally, Challenging Directly
  • High Care, High Challenge - Radical Candor
  • High Care, Low Challenge - Ruinous Empathy
  • Low Care, High Challenge - Obnoxious Aggression
  • Low Care, Low Challenge - Manipulative Insincerity
• Industry dependent  (ie, manufacturing more direct, healthcare less direct)
• gender dynamics at play - women not wanting to challenge directly for fear of being labelled a "B*tch", men don't want to be seen as weak
• Can compassion be radical?
• Compassion using the heart and the mind
• Radical - getting to the root of things
• lay down unilateral power, hold each other accountable
• Radical means essential
• end of command and control with pandemic
• "I can't believe this trust thing is working." ~CXO of some company
• Invite them to give you feedback first and make it a regular part of your day, even in small conversation
• Get to know your team about their career aspirations
• Assumption that people want to advance - Rock Stars versus Super Stars
• Assess how giving and getting feedback
• Ebb and flow between being a rock star and super stardom
• Often only way to grow is to be a manager - what about those who don't want to be a manager? 
• Often only reward the managers financially, not the ICs
• Difference between learning and growing up the ladder
• Pair the care and the candor all the time 
• Passive, aggressive - assertiveness as the third way
• Not falling prey to either or
• Permission parenting, authoritarian parenting, authoritative parenting - finding the middle ground
• We are human and won't always walk the perfect path
• Bill Gates - "Give me the bad news."
• Cultural implications around radical candor
• Use too many disclaimers to soften negative feedback, which takes away the candor
• Recency and latency biases make us  forget the middle in the "Sandwich" technique
• So many nuances
• Normalize radical candor
• Invite public criticism as a leader, so you show people you are willing to take it
• Otherwise, give all radical candor in private
• Often more care than candor
• Fear in speaking up and saying things
• When impact doesn't match intention
• I can't always measure the impact I will have on people 
• Sometimes the way we see the truth can hurt someone, but does that mean we shouldn't say it? 
• Can people take your "Radical Candor"?
• Inquisitive radical candor - test the waters first?
• Knowing the right time to give feedback - it will land different in different circumstances
• "Radical candor is not measured at the mouth of the speaker, but at the ears of the listener." 

Resources Mentioned:

• Radical Candor by Kim Scott
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

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Check-In:

• What do you think the purpose of life is?

Big Ideas:

• Failing reference models
• Shift from the meaning of crisis to the crisis of meaning
• What's the meaning of work?
• Reference models on how to live together (the Greek pantheon, organized religion, science, governments)
• Does work give us meaning?
• When we get the message that meaning at work is overrated
• Effort in making community
• In the past, work didn't need meaning because we got meaning elsewhere
• Are organizations built to provide meaning to employees?
• Cultural aspect of meaning making
• People resigning because looking for meaning
• Domains that provide meaning and purpose - autonomy and relatedness
• People turning toward personal purpose because not finding it at work
• Personal development focused on autonomous
• Deriving meaning from volunteer work
• Volunteering because it's heart-felt or because it's duty (someone told me to)
• When your work touches your heart, do you need to volunteer to find meaning?
• Universal income - will people still work?
• If we don't want people to leave their work, people need to feel connected to their work and connected to the people they work with
• Who's responsible for the meaning?
• Meaning is so personal 
• Individual why supporting the team shy
• Companies giving time and space for employees for meaning-making
• People want something more than just salary
• Social, financial, and ecological aspects of meaning - measuring each
• How are companies measuring social and ecological impact dimensions?
• Is it a company's responsibility to provide meaning? 
• Peace when you find meaning
• The journey to create meaning is part of the process
• Meaning as an evolutionary process

Resources Mentioned:

• Healing Circles Global
• Landmark Education
• Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
• Beyond Zero documentary

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Check-In:

• If you had the whole world's attention for 30 seconds, what would you say or do?

Big Ideas:

• Hypocrisy and leadership
• Immorality in leadership
• Do leaders have to be good people?
• We think of leadership as for the good of the people
• What tactics are immoral leaders using to get people to follow them?
• Leadership as a pipeline - a relationship between people
• How you position yourself in respect to other people
• Leadership can be about how you hook and attract them
• Charisma as a tool to attract people
• "Othering" of people - politicians using this tactic to gain followers
• Commonality and the group to bring people together
• Using fear with your own people to hold them
• Totalitarianism versus Populism
• The leadership purpose is different from the tools
• Inverse charisma - how you draw people in based on how you listen to them, not how you talk
• Charisma as a source of power - do people give you charisma?
• Shifting leadership depending on our audience - some people need to be listened to, some people need to be inspired
• Adaptive or situational leadership
• Leading from the front, not the back
• Cultural aspects of leadership
• Open and closed ways of leadership
• Our own biases shift how we perceive a leader as good/bad
• Leaders who are reassuring and are perceived as "strong" - people looking to leaders for strength
• Leaders are leaders because they help other people not feel afraid
• Idea that leadership starts from within
• People wanting to be told what to do and how to think
• Power over versus power with/power to
• What do you do when you want to offer people power, and they don't want it?
• Freedom is hard. Ignorance is bliss.
• Do people really want autonomy?
• Are we participants in the creation of immoral leadership?
• Amoral leadership - leadership without morality
• Immorality creates an us/them 
• Should leadership be moral?
• Trust is a psychological mechanism, value is what you think is important
• Can we try NOT to use the moral lens when talking about leadership?
• Pragmatism versus morality
• Take morality off the table and listen for their values
• How we embody values can look different
• How stay on debate without arguing
• Power in having a structured debate with a strong moderator
• Debating from the opposite side of your beliefs
• Constructive conflict that leads to innovation and creativity
• Disagreement isn't the same as conflict
• Leadership is when you stay outside of our "animal self" - you stay above the fray
• "People are hard to hate close up. Move in." 
• Easy for us to form opinions about other people without really knowing them
• Change the conditions by which you measure people and you can say anyone is anything
• Does a leader need to go beyond morality?
• Easy to other people for othering others
• Values as a factor in conflict because of it's rigidity
• Globalization has led to value conflict

Resources Mentioned:

• The Human Library

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Check-In: 

• Share an experience when you felt great as part of a long-distance team, or a team in general.

Big Ideas:

• Is virtual the right word?
• Long distance, remote, or virtual - Are they interchangeable?
• Long distance being more neutral
• Virtual teams used to be for individuals meeting for a certain project, where not everyone worked for the same boss
• Who's the hub for all the spokes?
• Who owns the team? Compliance versus ownership
• All teams have a culture, but no one person owns the culture, it's the responsibility of everyone on the team
• Proximity allows us to "read" cues more easily 
• Beyond 40-50 feet level of engagement drops
• Distance and availability are both factors
• Virtual reduces spontaneous interactions
• Proximity bias - asking people who are closer
• Us/them them in hybrid settings
• Settling for lowest common denominator when accomodating remote?
• What's the best experience for the team?
• Long distance reveals the true team dynamics - especially the "bad" ones
• Good leadership systems work across all types of disruptions
• Leadership first, location second
• Keeping hours of your manager when you are in a different time zone
• Managing for activity versus productivity
• If you have an empowered, trusted team, where they do that doesn't matter
• There are some organizations where proximity matters
• Can the work be done no matter where people are?
• Every annoying policy was created because of one person or incident
• Policies can create discrepancies
• Pilot before policy
• 2/3 of our workplace communication takes place in writing - we don't do it very well
• What role does time (when we work) play in the culture we want?
• Rather than having conversations with people, managers create policies
• Managing to the exception
• Do the rules of the company demonstrate trust?
• What is the IT of culture?
• Communication, collaboration and culture - the little things
• Does everything have to be a meeting?
• Shift in how our relationships have developed over time - more and more online
• Having 1:1 conversations with teams, even online
• Be wary of transactional communication because they don't build relationships
• What works in person ? Translate that intentionally to online spaces

Resources:

• The Long Distance Leader by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel
• The Long Distance Teammate  by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel
• The Long Distance Team by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel
• Virtual Not Distance Podcast

Wayne Turmel Bio:
For 25 years, Wayne Turmel has been obsessed with how people communicate—or don’t—at work. He is an internationally recognized expert in remote work and the evolving workplace who is the author of 15 books and has spoken around the world. He is best known for the Long Distance Workplace books: The Long Distance Team, Long Distance Teammate and The Long-Distance Leader. Originally from Canada, he now lives and works in Las Vegas. Marshall Goldsmith has called him “one of the unique voices in Leadership.”

Linkedin
Website

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Check-In:

• What is one key trait that makes successful people successful?

Big Ideas:

• Thinking better with other people
• "We think best when we think socially." 
• Social constructivism 
• Group think -- we let loyalty take the place of our thinking
• Think for yourself, before you think with others
• Use tools/methods to help people think better
• Think first, share second - Alone Together
• When the first person anchors the rest of the sharing
• Speaking last as a manager
• Divergent thinking before convergent thinking
• Giving ideas space - go into a room together to define the problem, brainstorm alone, then back together with all the ideas
• Diverging first as not being natural
• Push for convenience and efficiency which gets in the way of the social way of thinking
• Check-In is seen as a waste of time, yet it creates a synchronization at the beginning of a meeting
• How to diverge when we don't feel psychologically safe
• What creates groupiness? Learn together, Train together, Feeling together, Engage in rituals together, Synchronicity (body, meals)
• Lost the sense of "groupiness" at work
• Role-playing games - must let everyone's roles play out
• Having structure for debating with one another can make it fun
• Disagreement and conflict aren't synonymous - disagreement is about ideas, conflict is personalized
• Leaders as moderators for healthy disagreement
• Do managers need to be trained in running meeting design, moderation, etc?
• Starting meetings with music?
• Different neural pathways are used when learning versus when teaching
• The jigsaw method of teaching - learn a small part and then teach it to others
• Must learn to think for yourself through reflection time
• The more roots something has, the more powerful
• Offloading information by making it visual, talking about it, journaling
• Busy-ness isn't always productive 
• Foster different ways of thinking about things - using objects
• The importance of evaluating others' ideas not just expand on your own. 
• Arguing across cultures - different cultures approach it differently
• Arguing as not being seen as team-playing
• Creating a system for disagreement combined psychological safety
• Productive disagreement versus unproductive conflict

Resources:

• The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

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Check-In Question:

• Share a memorable meeting experience.

Big Ideas:

• Rituals in meetings
• Clear structures in meetings get to a result
• How we feel in a meeting matters
• Power dynamics in meetings
• A common ritual - rotating "leadership" of the meeting
• Rituals can vary depending on the type of organization and their values and the spirit of what you are doing
• Check-ins would be great in every organization, but the questions will change
• Check-ins can set the tone of the entire meeting
• Not all groups need to connect and build trust together
• Airport book advice - not all advice is right for you
• Tailor the ritual to the context
• Levels of maturity in the ways that people gather
• Each leader has to decide how they want to meet
• Meetings both reflect and create our culture
• Stopping all meetings isn't the answer
• The courage to step up and change the meeting culture in an organization
• Creating intentionality in your meetings
• 16 core types of meetings within an organization
• What is the value/opportunity in the meeting?
• Every time we have a conversation with someone, it's a meeting
• Putting people into a room to solve a problem doesn't work
• Having an intention and outline is usually all we need to have a great meeting
• Great practice - Not calling meetings "meetings" - give them a specific name to the purpose
• What impacts meetings are hard to count
• Can other work exist around all the meetings that are recommended?
• Meeting load increases in any crisis
• Asynchronous communication can reduce the needed meeting time
• Meeting Free Fridays - time block rituals
• Meeting time depends on many factors - human attention spans
• True collaboration takes longer
• Time box status reporting - async if possible

Resources:

• Lucid Meetings
• The Four Agreements  by Don Miguel Ruiz
• Where the Action Is: The Meetings that Make or Break Your Organization
• 16 Types of Meetings
• Meeting Guides and Templates
• The Art of Gathering  by Priya Parker
• Getting to Yes by William Ury
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• New Rules for Work 

Elise Keith Bio:
J. Elise Keith is the founder and CEO of Lucid Meetings, a meeting innovation company dedicated to making it easy for teams to run successful meetings every day. In 2020, Lucid Meetings was recognized as one of the top 10 global influencer brands on the topic of remote work and virtual meetings.

In 2023, Elise and David Mastronardi from the Gamestorming Group joined forces to host the New Rules for Work experiment, a four-part program seeking reliably excellent ways to unleash team creativity in meetings.

Elise is the author of Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization .

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Check-In Question:

• What do you look back and think, "I would never do that again?"

Big Ideas:

• We do our best thinking when are up and moving around
• Gestures help us think through ideas 
• "We use our brains entirely too much."
• Do we use our brains, or does our brain use us?
• Most of our best ideas come when not trying to think through something
• Thinking harder is counter-productive
• Protestant thinking is against fun and all about hard work
• Not wrestle with ideas, but play with them
• What is professional?
• Definitions of seriousness that drive our learning
• Rise of ADHD in the US and the increase in seat time in schools
• 20 minutes in nature was better for ADHD students than the medications
• More productive after micro-breaks
• Think will think better after a break, but think better because of the break
• Don't separate our movement from our work - invite movement into your day
• Walking meetings
• More accurate when walking while thinking (Radiologist study)
• Nietzsche had the best ideas while walking
• Mobile intelligence
• Not separate the mind from the body
• Level of conversation is elevated when we are elevated
• Afraid of chaos - children were "little savages"
• Play time versus work time
• "The opposite of play isn't work, the opposite of play is depression." ~Stuart Brown
• Emotional regulation being improved when spend time outside
• Importance of natural light to working
• The privilege of having access to green spaces
• Bringing nature into built spaces to support productivity
• Awe - the word and the sound
• We are not too different from our environment
• Leaders creating space for movement (modeling)

Resources:

• The RACI Method
• The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
• Pomodoro Technique

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Check-In Question:

• Do you think the internet is making people more or less social than we used to be?

Big Ideas

• Look at the quality of connections
• Move to virtual was an opportunity for many
• What is remote work?  What do I do in the office? How do I cope with back-to-back calls? Do I have to watch recordings of missed meetings?
• How do we collaborate together in this new transformation?
• When culture does not exist, how do you create it?
• What do we need to do to create great learning experiences where people are engaged?
• Small bites of learning, 15-20 minutes per day
• Community and connection to talk about your learning
• Difference between knowledge/content and skill
• Skill requires connecting with people and comparing your learning
• Transferring knowledge to skill base - learning to assimilate it
• Reading a book in community - learning more than I would alone
• Social constructivism - people construct knowledge together
• Change of scenery, movement, and other people support us to think
• What can you influence yourself?
• Shift expectations for how we attend meetings - listening or presenting
• Trust and safe spaces to help people break the "rules"
• Resistance to do things differently - break the boundaries
• What keeps us in front of our screens?
• Social price to pay for breaking the boundaries - Will people take us seriously?
• Role-modeling is really important
• Showcasing what learning can do for me - keeping my intellectual side
• Not being forced to learn
• Transparent about what learning and why - skill gaps, or curiosity
• Taking time to learn gets me, slow down, be vulnerable
• Craving out time for learning and development - not a one-off, part of the working week
• Following your own curiosity creates momentum
• Mandatory learning can create box checking
• Learn and engage differently when forced to learn something or self-initiate
• "I think a learn-it-all will always be better than a know-it-all in my book." -Microsoft CEO, 
• How do organizations provide the space and the financial means to keep learning?
• Leaders modeling learning and inviting people to learn with them
• Learning being fun
• Leaders helping raise the "power" standing of their employees
• Lead by example and create positive experiences for my team
• Short term satisfaction versus long term gains
• The power of coaching and a learning network

Resources:

• The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
• Stephen Covey
• Discover Your Clifton Strengths by Gallup (Don Clifton)
• Clifton's Strengths Finders

You can connect with Lisa Davidian here. 

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Check-In Question:

• What are you attached to?

Big Ideas:

• How does our attachment related to our happiness?
• Relationships have a direct relationship to our health
• What will continue to shift in our relationships as we work in virtual spaces
• Desperate for connection
• Can't escape our need for connection
• A tribe is 150 people
• Are people more afraid of connection because of the pandemic?
• 1 in 3 people around the globe says they are lonely (pre-covid)
• Social media gives us a false sense of connection
• Relying on tools for connection, but it's not true connection
• We say things online we wouldn't say in person
• Comparison of curated lives
• Prioritizing real connections with real people
• Social fitness - an ongoing practice in developing relationships
• How do we develop friendships?
• Cultural differences in how relationships are developed
• Baby steps in building relationships
• Social services as a way to meet new people
• Age not being a defining factor in a friendship
• Shifting from risk aversion to risk affinity
• Relationships take vulnerability. One person has to be the first to be vulnerable.
• Create chance and opportunity 
• Acknowledging risks and the possibilities
• The illusion of control in staying in the known, even if it's uncomfortable
• Peach versus coconut styles of friendships
• Relying on Employee Resources Groups in lonely at work
• Reaching out to people out of curiosity, without an agenda
• Letting people know that you appreciated something that they said, even if you don't know them
• Not taking it personally if people don't respond when we reach

Resources:

• Article: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-on-books/author-talks-the-worlds-longest-study-of-adult-development-finds-the-key-to-happy-living

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Dave Mills Bio:
With over 25 years experience in the learning and development industry. In that time he has facilitated internationally and covered a wide number of subjects from driver training on forklift trucks to facilitating senior leaders to flourish through change.

He is currently a senior consultant and SME in the People Development and Effectiveness Centre of Expertise for Kantar (the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company).

In his many previous lives he trained as a horticulturist, spent years as a night club and mobile DJ, built a career in retail manager, was a charity and corporate event MC and compere and is a trained hypnotherapist.

He lives in Leamington Spa in the Uk with his wife. He has 2 children, is a ‘born-again’ gardener, has recently started writing poetry, still DJs occasionally, loves reading and wants to be an archaeologist when he retires!

Check-In Question:

• Have you ever won a contest or competition?

Big Ideas:

• Fortitude in the face of adversity
• You do have control over how you respond to situations, even if you don't have control of the situation itself
• Are you freeing yourself or oppressing yourself?
• Critique of stoicism as the philosophy of the powerful people
• You can't make people do things, you can only empathize with their heart
• Don't worry about what people think
• Polarization exists because we aren't listening to one another
• Time and energy spent trying to control what we can't
• Accepting the reality doesn't mean that we don't want to change
• The space between stimulus and response
• Amygdala hijack is a metaphor, not a fact
• We can only do what we can do
• Not being pulled like a puppy, mastering your control
• Why don't we go to the source - the original philosophers?
• Urgent/Important Matrix (The Eisenhower Matrix)
• Leaders need to have a philosophical mindset and create meaning for employees
• Philosophy is hiding in blind sight in today's leadership
• The power in going to the original source
• How much gets lost from the original source
• Philosophy is the search for knowledge and wisdom
• Trust the process - follow what's in one book to find your next book
• Read it well and go back and read it again
• Build your map around the terrain of each book 
• There is no behind other than the one you sit on

Resources:

• Enchiridion  by Epictetus
• Courage Under Fire, James Stockdale
• Jordon Peterson
• Ken Blanchard
• Stephen Covey
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Ryan Holiday
• Nietzsche
• The Nature of Things
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving and F*ck and Everything is F*cked by Mark Manson
• Brené Brown
• Seneca
• Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
• Theory U by Otto Scharmer
• Viktor Frankl
• The Biography of Cato the Younger

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Check-In:

• Describe a time when you helped a stranger.

Big Ideas:

• sense of ownership
• autonomy as a cop-out for organizational responsibility
• not about changing the fish, but about changing the environment
• When we invite people into our organizations, are we hoping they will be 'unbreakable'?
• the challenge of changing the whole organization
• teaching fish to swim in the toxic water, or changing the water
• Is the entire system toxic? 
• lower toxicity with caring and listening
• leadership, history impact how toxic the environment
• treating the symptom rather than the cause
• duty to support the individuals and the leadership
• Is resilience a lever like leadership, or like psychological safety? Is it a result?
• Can we directly impact resilience?
• Resilience as it relates to personal struggle
• Asking "Why me?" versus "What now?" 
• The questions we ask determine how resilient we are
• Resilience as a learned experience, not a theoretical one
• Relationship supportive of our resilience
• Causality is difficult to determine
• What? So what? Now what? 
• Time spent looking for why - does it matter?
• Does the category help find the solution? 
• Do you need to know what is in the ocean to clean it?
• How resources impact how/where we spent our time?
• Where are the resources most impactful?
• If you can clean it, why worry about dirtying it in the first place?
• Apply resources where the leverage is highest
• System and people are complex
• Yes for the system, AND yes for the individual
• How often do we rely on the system to take care of us? 
• Moving out of the either/or choices 
• Binary bias - when there is no middle ground, we have to choose one or the other
• multiple layers of action - I, We, They
• not looking for reasons, but looking for meaning and actions
• when point 1 finger outward, there are 3 fingers pointing backward

Resources:

• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Gift by Edith Eger

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Check-In Question

• Have you given yourself a life mission?

Big Ideas:

• How different industries look at failure and learning
• Not being criminalized for making mistakes
• Can we really trust people? (ie, Body Cams)
• When to be treated as a criminal for a mistake that kills someone and when not to
• The situations that draw us into making life/death decisions
• Does black-boxing situations help us be objective?
• Hold people accountable without blame.
• Is blame the opposite of accountability?
• Blame has a sense of judgment and can be poisonous to culture
• Cultural differences in using blame
• Blame puts us on a pedestal and the other below us
• Blame leads to defensiveness
• Cognitive dissonance - when what we believe goes against the reality of a situation
• The smarter we are or the higher up in the organization, the more likely we are to fabricate evidence
• People not letting go of the idea of being wrong
• Fundamental Attribution Error - responsibility being context specific, or a character trait
• Difference between responsibility and accountability
• Historically, we would ostracize people from the tribe to keep it secure
• Emotional engagement in our own opinions - echo chambers
• Sense of worthiness entrenched into our relationship with being wrong
• "The paradox of success is based on failure."
• Persistence past failure
• If success is based on failure, keep failing again and again
• Blame and guilt assigned to others stops people
• Do we know what failure looks like?
• What are we looking at as our metrics of success or failure?
• How do leaders know if they are being successful or not?
• Subjectivity of success/failure
• When managers don't understand us - asking managers what they need
• Expect managers to have the conversation with us, though we can start the conversation. What do you need? How can I help you?
• Doing your job the way you think you should be doing it, versus how your manager thinks you should be doing it
• "Those who are the most successful are the most vulnerable." 
• Personal vulnerability versus product vulnerability
• Failure is opportunity to learn
• Self-handicapping - when you purposely create an alternative explanation for a possible failure (self-sabotage)
• Using constraints to create creativity
• If willing to accept mistakes more quickly, can be more successful
• Growth and fixed mindset
• Not getting evidence to go against labels of self

Resources:

• Start your Why, Find our Why, and Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• Black Box Thinking   by Matthew Syed
• No Rules Rules by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Mindset by Carol Dweck

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with Guest, Gwen Stirling-Wilke
Dialogic OD Consultant

Check-In Question

• One powerful moment in a virtual space

Big Ideas:

• The Check-in Question
  • Check in questions brings about shifts in the relational space and creates
  • Liminal space can help people transition from one space to another. 
  • It's a punctuation and allows for recalibration
  • Questions can be adapted to the time, the people, etc.
  • Prepares people to the relationship part of the work
  • Creates the relational glue around people
• Transition from in-person to online was both exciting and terrifying. Created a lot of new learning opportunities
• Design had to shift from in-person to online
• Bonuses to working online
• Sessions online must be shorter to accommodate fatigue
• Shared meaning making happens together, but stretch the learning before and afterward
• Preparation is part of the intervention
• Be careful about your intentions
• Expectations shifted at the beginning of pandemic to possibility
• How do we configure people - face to face, hybrid, online.  When is which the best answer?
• How to create an inclusive space when hybrid
• Asymmetry when some are in-person and others are online
• Designing an event for the bigger purpose and desired outcomes
• Trust within a team determines how to hold the space 
• Creating the conditions online that would otherwise organically develop face to face
• Harmony between the connection time and the content time
• How can quickly can I get people from sitting and receiving to participating? 
• Using "waiting rooms" to warm people up with a soft question
• Get people involved right away
• Individual time to think about something before connecting with others

Resources:

• From Physical Space to Virtual Space  by Gwen Stirling-Wilke
• Healing Circles Global
• Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung Judge

To see what Gwen's up to next, head here. 

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An episode of questions, all about 2022. How would you answer these?

• What was the best $100/100€ you spent in 2022?
• What compliment did you receive in 2022 that still sticks with you?
• What book did you read in 2022 that was really impactful? 
• What is the nicest thing that someone did for you in 2022?
• What was the best TV show, movie, or series you watched in 2022?
• What is something you had the most fun doing in 2022?
• If you could give 1 piece of advice from your experience in 2022, what advice would you give? 
• Describe a time when you did something reckless or daring in 2022.
• What's something that happened in 2022 that made you really angry?
• What is 1 thing you regret from 2022 as you look back? 
• What is 1 thing you did in 2022, that you would do differently in 2023?
• What does the world need more of in 2023 as you look back on 2023?
• Was there any period in 2022 that was difficult, but ultimately made you a strong or better person? 
• What are you looking forward to in 2023?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Gift of Therapy by Irvin D. Yalom
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• The 5 Love Languages 
• Glow (TV Series)
• Severance (TV Series)
• The End of History and the Last Man
• The Power of Regret by Daniel Pink
• Time to Think by Nancy Kline

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Check-In Question:

• Are you the kind of person to make the first step in love? Tell us all about it.

Big Ideas:

• 8 different dimensions of culture that show up in work:
  • Communication (low context or high context)
  • Evaluating (indirect negative or direct)
  • Persuading (why or how)
  • Leading (Egalitarian or Hierarchical
  • Deciding (Consensus or. Top Down)
  • Trust (Task-based or Relationship-based)
  • Disagreeing (Confrontational or Avoidant)
  • Scheduling (Flexible or Linear)
• Is seeing person by culture stereotyping?
• Talking to the person versus talking to the country they come from
• The culture sets a range
• We need to look at culture and personality
• Crossing legs so people see the bottom of your shoe is a faux pas in Japan
• Difference between cultural sensitivity and using culture as predictors
• Stereotyping and prototyping
• Assume you will do "stupid stuff" in new cultures and apologize in advance
• Humility of saying "I don't really know."
• Learning a few words in the language
• One of the best ways to ingratiating yourself in a new culture is to be a bit self-deprecating in your own culture
• What we think is "normal" in the new culture
• The US being more task-based than European culture
• Trust always start as task-based, then moves to relationship based once people finish the tasks
• Task based is more controlling and has more cost
• Differences in perception of "wasting time"
• Making assumptions and using the book to check assumptions
• Creating hypothesis about people and then test it, not using stereotypes as the ultimate truth
• How historical context affects cultural communication
• How religion affects culture
• One-on-one meetings focus more on the person and really listen
• Sandwich style feedback taught in the US
• Downplaying negative feedback - "Maybe you should"
• Not wanting to hurt people's feelings
• When people tell you what you are doing well, and don't mention what you aren't doing well. 
•  Creating mentor schemes
• Peach cultures (soft on the outside, hard in the middle) versus Coconut cultures (hard on the outside, soft)
• Different cultures within the same country
• How are we stereotyping people and is that the best way of building relationship?
• Intent versus impact when feedback - managing the gaps
• Not hearing feedback and not being receptive to it (in denial)
• Living and experiencing different cultures can help us be better humans, even within our own culture
• Incorrect assumptions about our own cultures
• Clarifying intentions
• Traveling and being mindful of others cultures - being an ethnographer/anthropologist
• Culture being a test bed of human differences and to be a better person
• How much we believe that what we do is normal
• Continually exposing ourselves to other cultures and not get entrenched

Resources Mentioned:

• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• INSEAD Business School
• No Rules Rules by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Hofstede Culture Research

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Check-In Question:

• How do you define intelligence?

Big Ideas:

• Is charismatic leadership over-rated? 
• Likeability versus leadership. They aren't mutually exclusive.
• Melencholic leaders are more affective
• Power over (positional), versus power with (relational)
• What emotions can be shown at work, and by whom?
• Leadership struggles for Theresa come from trying to be the strong, even in the face of hard emotions
• Sharing emotions can build trust
• Holding down the balloon underwater isn't sustainable
• Big life changes are okay at work, but the little stresses accumulate and can't always been shown, shared at work
• Do leaders have to be likeable?
• Does leadership matter for executives? Do we overvalue it?
• How do you define leadership?
• An executive is merely someone who makes decisions who affect the company
• Leadership is about non-organizational skills, but people skills (not process, strategy, etc.)
• Leadership is multifaceted
• Leadership is defined by how you face adversity
• Adversity sets leaders apart
• Leaders because of who you are, and "leaders" who have a position/title only
• Don't know our ability to lead until after a crisis happens
• Testament to leadership - do you have other people's back and do they have yours?
• Everybody can be a leader
• Challenge to understand ourselves well enough to serve others
• Leadership for ego, and leadership for change
• Not here to only serve ourselves, we are here to serve people and solve problems through our businesses
• How do you need to be a leader in the face of "evil" or "bad" people in the world?
• How does culture influence who we want as a leader? 
• Vulnerability isn't the only key to being a good leader
• The importance of knowing who you are as part of any leadership program
• Tell someone who/how to be, or allow people the chance to experience it themselves
• Can't buy leadership on the shelf
• Serving others from internal or external motivation
• What are you serving others for?
• Leadership comes from the backend of a crisis.
• We can all look like great leaders when it's rosy

Resources:

• HBR Must Reads on Leadership
• Bittersweet by Susan Cain
• Brené Brown
• Band of Brothers 
• The Circle Way
• The Conscious Creator by Kelly Small
• The Prince -Machiavelli
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

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CHECK-IN QUESTION:

• If you could take a week-long vacation anywhere in the world by yourself, where would you go?

BIG IDEAS:

• Essentialism isn't minimalism
• Being intentional about how we spend our time
• How do we decide what we take on and what we don't?
• Useful time - how to determine what is useful or not?
• Useful doesn't always mean fun
• What's the difference between being useful and essential? 
• 3 minimal criteria for saying yes to things, and 3 ideal criteria to saying yes
• Essential intent aligned with purpose, big why, just cause
• If we are saying no the minimum, are we taking away time to do something ideal?
• Different activities can work in concert with one another toward your essential intent
• How often we say yes to be nice or to be liked? How respectful is that to ourselves or others? 
• The essential intent is the priority
• We get pulled into the idea that everything is a priority
• We take on other people's urgencies that aren't ours
• Taking on people's problems isn't helping, it's enabling
• Taking on other's work is also about control
• Consultants come in to solve a company's problem
• Training, Coaching, Consulting are not the same
• Separate the decision from the relationship
• Say no to the problem, not the person
• Don't say "NO", say "Yes, and...", "Yes, however...", or "Yes, no"
• What gets in the way of people saying "no"? Fear, People Pleasing
• The 5 drivers of behavior -- be strong, be perfect, be quick, please others, and try hard
• No limit to the relationship, but a limit to the request you can ask of me
• Choices being actions versus things
• Is free will a thing? Are we fully determined? 
• If there's no free will, there's no responsibility
• We don't make choices, we just act 
• Creating an ensemble of activities that align in one direction
• We don't have to make things as complicated as we do
• DESA - Design, Eliminate, Simplify, Automate
• Doing less and still providing the same value
• "Reverse Pilot" - take away something you are doing and see what happens

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• Simon Sinek and a Just Cause
• Eisenhower Matrix
• The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, by Ken Blanchard, discussed on Season 1, Episode 5
• The 5 Drivers of Behavior (Transactional Analysis)

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Check-In Question:

• Is there any value in buying paper dictionaries anymore? Do you think paper books will die within our lifetimes?

Big Ideas:

• Creating connection in virtual spaces
• Importance of taking time and not having an agenda or expectations
• Who we are as people as opposed to who we are in our roles
• Skills needed in virtual space are different
• How am I different in person versus virtually?
• Knowing how we are in different spaces
• Better listeners in different spaces - virtual versus in person
• Having agreements around virtual spaces to keep people engaged and less distracted
• Virtual spaces equalize people based on height
• How people uses spaces (stages) to have power
• Virtual world changes how people perceive us
• Hide self-view, or keep it open - limit distractions or boost confidence
• Move people so they are below the camera
• Looking at screen versus looking at the camera
• meaning making and generative conversations
• the importance of engagements
• generative and transformative conversations
• Does lack of trust have to do with the importance of talking about engagement online?
• Check-In questions leads to improved engagement
• Invite people into meeting
• Preparation for the workshop is part of the workshop
• Are we allowing transition time? Where is the liminal space? 
• Create transition time or buffer into the time with people
• Time to integrate what just happened before launch into the next
• Check-out with application, reflection time
• Space to continue the conversation between time we meet (Miro, Jamboard, group chats.)
• Successful workshops live or die by engagement levels
• Design for connection before content
• Online reveals design flaws
• Connection brings engagement
• Agree on ground rules (practices, agreements.)
• Define where an organization is comfortable working in the space - meet people where they are 
• Activities:
  • Hi By Name - supports being seen
  • Virtual Charades - 
  • Virtual Tour - give a tour of your virtual space
  • Special of the Week - what are you most focused on this week?

Resources Mentioned:

• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• From Physical Place to Virtual Space by Gwen Sterling-Wilkie
• Rituals for Virtual Meetings by Glenn Fjardo and Kursat Özenç

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Check-In Question:

• What personal quality do you know people appreciate about you?

Big Ideas:

• 3 attitudes - Unconditional Responsibility, Essential Integrity, Ontological Humility
• Ontology - Philosophy related to being, relationships one has to being
• Dividing responsibility starting from 100% doesn't work, each person has 100% responsibility for themselves
• Keeping your word is not the same as honoring your word
• Keeping your word with others sometimes means NOT keeping your word with yourself 
• Integrity is different for every person because everyone's values are different
• Humility being pushed, but is it really what people need or expect
• It's all about our mindset - we can see things as a challenge or an opportunity
• You can choose
• When am I saying it was external circumstances, versus my responsibilities
• When feeling overwhelmed, easier to point to external circumstances because feels more overwhelming
• Player and victim - the player takes responsibility, the victim doesn't
• Take responsibility for not knowing
• Circle of concern and circle of influence - when we focus on our circle of concern, we diminish our ability to influence
• We don't have a lot of influence on the "IT", but we do have responsibility for the "I" 
• The answer is not to worry about what we can't control
• Trust is important before creating change and influencing others
• Coaching and psychotherapy are about helping people take responsibility
• Society that is very outcome based ("It" based) 
• Most effective when we operate from our basic human values
• People can share values, even those values show up differently
• What's the difference between a value and a belief?
• Values versus virtues?
• Operationalizing values - from Brené Brown
• Values are a noun and define something abstract, 
• Virtues are like a character trait 
• Relativeness of point of view - can we know the truth?
• Employees need to feel safe to make mistakes, so as leaders we need to model it
• Proving our way to success hooks our ego
• Ego gets hooked when focused on external validation
• How we were conditioned to believe we were worthy influences our ego
• Tallest poppy syndrome
• What's so difficult about being humble?
• Opinions being the end of democracy - how can you construct something without values? 
• What's bigger than values? 

Resources:

• Conscious Business by Fred Kofman
• The Big Leap - Gay Hendricks
• Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

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Check-In Question:

• If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?

Big Ideas:

• Theresa's BIG Reflection Question: How can I have an opinion or take a stand on something, without other people taking in personally, or feeling judged.
• "Strong back soft front." ~Joan Halifax
• Is taking a stand the same as having an opinion?
• How can you care about someone and want to persuade them that you are right?
• Can you take a stand without persecuting someone?
• Values as our stand
• Conversations don't always have to be confrontations
• Be open to NOT wanting to change people's minds
• Persuasion is different than explanation
• "For most of us the opposite of speaking isn't listening, it's waiting" ~Daniel Pink
• Asking people for their sources puts them on the defensive
• Logos (what we say), Ethos (character of person), Pathos (affect we are creating in others)
• How convincing others doesn't work and often doesn't bear fruit
• Judging activities and not people
• Difference between judgment (good/bad) and discernment (like/don't like) 
• The importance of the words we use
• Swap good/bad for useful/not useful to be less judgmental
• The lens we see things through
• Divide between consequentialists (duty pound) and utilitarians (principle bound)
• We need to take a stand for things to change
• How relationships shift whether we need to take a stand
• Constructive and destructive anger - fighting to be right, or for what is right
• You can't be fierce in a vacuum
• Our stand doesn't have to be other's stands
• Is making a decision taking a stand?
• Can our world exist without people taking a stand?
• Not just what we do, but the environment, timing, and people matters
• How/where does authority and power come into play
• Dissention among individual contributors doesn't necessarily create change
• Taking a stand when your manager gives you another project
• Not just what you say, but how you say it matters

Resources Mentioned:

• Joan Halifax
• Daniel Pink
• "Fierce Self-Compassion" by Kristin Neff
• Sinking of El Faro 

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Check-In Question:

• What website do you visit multiple times a day?

Big Ideas:

• What gets in the way of great leadership?
  • Imposing my perspective/values on other people
  • Imposter syndrome leading to self-doubt
  • When we don't address our own emotions
• Shame getting in the way of leadership
• The less we talk about emotions the more we feel
• Not talking about shame at work -- frustrations, fear
• Difference between shame (I am a failure) versus guilt (I failed at this project)
• Is shame a cohesion mechanism?
• Fault and mistake -- how are they different?
• Guilt can have a powerful impact when we see the gap between our values/intentions between our behavior
• One incidence can lead to either guilt or shame
• What do we say to ourselves when we make a mistake?
• How much are leaders using shame as a tool in leadership? Weaponizing shame
• The opposite of shame - empathy and compassion, vulnerability
• Fear of being a bad leader, leads us to not be vulnerable
• Shame drives so much of our behavior in the background
• "Should" is a sign that there is something wrong with the relationship
• Shame Shields -- move away, move toward, move against (Freeze, fight, flee)
• Offloading shame on others - trying to hurt other people back
• 4 Steps to Working Through Shame
  1. Understand the shame triggers
  2. Reality check the messages around perfection
  3. Reach out to share our stories with people we trust
  4. Use the word shame - use the words gives you power
• Giving names to our shame shields/defense mechanisms or using symbols or personalities to states of mind, gives us control to them
• Being a better leader starts with awareness

Resources:

• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
• Linda Hartling

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Check-In Question:

• Who is the most likeable person that you know?

Big Ideas:

• Taking breaks - why we do it, why we don't, etc
• Real vacation, no work AND vacation, but thinking about work
• Taking a break means NOT thinking about work
• Having some location separation between work and home
• Can't compartmentalize work and personal life 
• Is separating work and home life valid anymore? 
• Communication between work and home so the pressure doesn't build
• Setting permeable boundaries
• Breaks to process what just happened and what might happen next
• Creating space to think deeply
• Distinction between taking breaks and creating space
• Breaks having no purpose, spaces having purpose
• Are we taking breaks to be lost in thought?
• Do we need to give space for our brains to breathe?
• Finding likeable moments in the everyday
• Travail (work in French) comes from a word related to torture
• Create a life you don't need to take a break from
• Bill Gates and his "Think Week"
• How our mindset affects our experiences
• Mindset matters to a point, but if your basic needs aren't being met, it only matters up to a point
• Freedom outside the pressures.
• Cultural components of taking breaks
• Drivers to what success looks shifts among cultures
• What's best for me at this moment?
• Creating breaks allow us to create
• Covid allowed people to see how creating new spaces was good for them
• How shift away from the idea that taking breaks is a luxury?
• Accepting what is now, but not necessarily being content with it
• "The opposite of play is not work, it's depression."
• So much of what we do is purpose/results oriented, and breaks seem purposeless

Question for Listeners:

• Why do you take breaks? How?

References:

• Severance Series
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown

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Check-In Question:

• Do you  like working from home? 
  • How to create community in virtual spaces

Big Ideas:

• What's our magic, our thing, our niche, etc? 
• The importance of FUN
• Tech issues we encountered - Theresa's slow connection
• Types of episodes: Quotes and Question, Guests, Shoot from the Hip, Coaching One Another - Listeners, what is your favorite episode type? 
• Learning from other people's perspectives
• Modeling getting tough feedback
• Titles engage people - "Click Bait"
• Being more strategic about marketing
• People interested in the content more than who we are as people
• Using other people to challenge our thinking
• Element of spontaneity and fun
• Standing on other people's shoulders for visibility
• Do you like the "The" and "Episode" bookmarking the episodes?

Resources Mentioned:

• Rituals for Virtual Meetings by Glenn Fajardo and 
  Kursat Ozenc
• From Physical Space to Virtual Space  by  Gwen Sterling-Wilkie

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Enjoy this spontaneous, unplanned conversation which turned into an episode :)

BIG IDEAS:

• Relationship being more important than the gift
• Do gifts pollute or change the relationship?
• Polluting versus enhancing? 
• What do we do with compliments?
• Genuine connections over the "connect and pitch"
• Link between connections and gifts to worthiness
• When we don't accept a gift, we rob someone of the joy in giving
• The 5 Love Languages, - Touch, Service, Words of Appreciation, Gifts, Quality Time
• The gaps between how we like to give and receive love
• Adapt love language to a work situation
• Supporting peer-to-peer displays of appreciation
• Understanding our love language based on what we like to give
• Referrals from the heart, or referrals for a percentage?
• Transparency in making referrals
• "Send the elevator back"

RESOURCES:

• The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
• Take the 5 Love Languages Quiz
• WorkHuman 

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Check-In Question:

• What is money good for?

Big Ideas:

• Two kinds of money --  those that fulfill our needs, and those that we think will fulfill our needs, but don't.
• Indigenous tribes that don't use money. Question of whether it is essential?
• "Money isn't the problem. Money isn't good or bad. Money itself doesn't have power or not have power. It is our interpretation of money, our interaction with it, where the real mischief is and where we find the real opportunity for self-discovery and personal discovery. 
• The tool doesn't have power.
• When you have money, you can make different choices.
• Yes, you can have power without money. (ex Rosa Parks)
• Is causation, money then power, or power than money? 
• Power on a spectrum in line with money.
• Choice as a sense of power
• Voting with your feet 
• Difference between local and global economics - buying local and the sense of community that comes with it
• We have a role in how the money is distributed.
• Supporting the local economy and local employment
• The 3 Toxic Myths of Scarcity : #1 There is not enough, #2 More is better, #3 That's the Way it Is
• Experiencing companies wanting more (people, skills, objectives, etc.)
• Band-aids as the only support because 'That's Just the Way It is."
• The relationship between value and money. Does the price determine value?
• Value-based versus time-based pricing
• Matching your pricing to regional values and the market
• Value can differ even if price is the same (too many external factors)
• Price has to be high enough to be taken seriously
• Using internal resources to respond to a scarcity of external resources
• Support becomes more apparent when times are scarce
• Look for new relationships/resources when times are scarce
• Limits and constraints create innovation
• We often have resources within us, that we forget about because we often think of assets outside of ourselves
• If you don't have time, what do you have? 
• Spending matching values
• Money being like water
• Charity being a redistribution mechanism
• If money doesn't come to you, where will it go? Is this place "better"?

Resources Discussed:

• The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
• Jerry Maquire movie
• Stretch by Scott Sonenshein
• TED talk by Lynne Twist
• Think Again by Adam Grant

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Check-In Question:

• What do you think people regret the most when they look back on their life? 

Big Ideas:

• Different stages of life: the call, the messy middle, the resolution
• Life being one long journey, with lots of small hero's journeys throughout
• Stage 1: Ordinary World; Stage 2: The Call to Adventure; Stage 3: Refusal of the Call; Stage 4: Meeting with a Mentor; Stage 5: Crossing the 1st Threshold; Stage 6: The Adventure (enemies, shadows, etc); Stage 7: The Elixir
• Saying no in my mind, and not feeling like I had a choice.
• When our ego says that we don't have a choice
• When our mentors muddle the waters by giving us another perspective, which doesn't align with our values or intuition
• Who is the 'right' person to ask? 
• Going to the outside for advice because we don't trust ourselves
• Having a challenge network (band of pirates) to rattle us and keep us integrity
• Use criticism as a way to reinforce our values
• Can you refuse a call and be the same afterwards?
• Choices aren't always crossroads, but exits on a highway.
• Archetypes: The Hero, the Mentor, The Threshold Guardian, The Herald, The Shape-Shifter, The Shadow, The Ally, The Trickster -- all at the service of the hero. 
• The journey is the hero's search for identity and wholeness
• We can't always see the arc of our own hero's stories
• Our blinders can prevent us from seeing the truth of our life
• Importance of getting perspective to see the stories we are in
• Look at your life as a story 
• Sometimes we don't see when we need to go to the balcony to get perspective
• Is the shero/heroine journey different from the hero journey?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware
• The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• Roger Fisher and William Ury from the Harvard Negotiation Project

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Check-In Question:

• Do you think it's appropriate to cry at work, and when was the last time you cried at work? 

Big Ideas:

• Is appropriate the right word to refer to having emotions at work?
• Judgment behind the work appropriate
• Permission to have the full range of emotions, even at work
• How criticism brings up a sense of threat, even if we don't consciously think of it
• The importance of specific feedback, so we know what to do differently or more of
• Negativity bias
• What makes feedback appropriate, useful, or adequate? 
• Imposter syndrome
• Knowing what triggers us to get defensive
• How style interacts with purpose/vision, from a tactical perspective
• Clarity up front about your style
• Turning threats into opportunities
• Making our methods/styles into a differentiating factors (USP)
• What are people's expectations before engaging in a learning space?
• Is the feedback touching the core of who I am, or is it more tactical? 
• Looking at making abstract ideas more actionable
• "Our judgments are the tragic expressions of our unmet needs" ~Marshall Rosenberg
• Bias coming from expectations
• Respecting and honoring other people's feedback and their stories, rather than explaining away or defending their perspective
• Letting some feedback float away in the distance
• Looking at the needs behind people's feedback
• How are we prioritizing feedback? Is the feedback in line with our values? What feedback are we holding on to, and what are we letting go? 

References:

• No Hard Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Big Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Brené Brown's discussion of creating observable behaviors for abstract ideas in the book Dare to Lead
• Marshall Rosenberg and Non-Violent Communication
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

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Check-In Question:

• Would there be more or fewer people leaving their jobs (divorces)  if people could read each other's minds? 

Big Ideas:

• The importance of candor in organizations
• How we do candor matters
• The culture of candor matters - sometimes labeled a non-team player if point out mistakes
• Safety as it relates to communication styles - direct/indirect
• Our own relationship to threat and how it relates to psychological safety
• Two people can be on the same team, and one can feel safe and another not
• The company needs people to feel psychological safe
• How we receive candor matters
• The stories we create about our sense of safety, versus the reality of our safety
• Our personal agency when it comes to being safe at work
• Rules of engagement for our candor for both the giver and receiver
• Scaffolding to our candor - meeting people where they are
• Balance candor with empathy
• Having the conflict about the issues, NOT the people
• Bridge the connection and the work together 
• Not just what we do, but how we do it
• Is how we treat each other more important than what we do? 
• Seeing our employees as not just rational beings, but emotional beings as well
• It's not about balance, but counterbalance. Yes/And rather than Either/Or
• Do our ideas about our company belong to us or our company? 
• Interplay between voice and silence within an organization
• Silence as a sign of psychological safety - hearing people think in silence, space between contributions shows listening
• Having a seat at the table doesn't mean having a voice
• Collective intelligence - equal time of speaking is one of the factors
• Increasing psychological safety also increases collective intelligence
• Psychological safety as an outcome, there is no formula
• Honoring people's voices without forcing their voices

Resources Mentioned:

• 'The Fearless Organization' by Amy Edmondson
• 'Principles' by Ray Dalio
• Google's Project Aristotle

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What kinds of things you'll learn about us:

• What we individually create in our work, and what for
• What makes Theresa happy about her work
• The company Vincent would want to change 
• The artist/band Theresa would take with her to a deserted island
• The book Vincent would read for the rest of his life
• Theresa's most badass leadership moment 
• What Theresa would do with her one magic wand
• The leadership lesson Vincent keeps having to learn again and again
• How Vincent is like his father
• Theresa's key to a happy professional life
• Who Theresa would have dinner with if she could
• How Vincent reads so the info stays alive
• What brings Theresa a sense of awe
• What makes Vincent a reader

Resources Mentioned:

• Karpman's Drama Triangle
• Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion
• Brené Brown
• Elizabeth Lesser
• Jim Kwik - Brain Coach

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