Breakfast with Stephen

This episode explores the vitality and richness of a diverse and inclusive leadership approach to help the success of organizations.

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Wagner Denuzzo, a Latino HR leader specializing in the future of work, talent strategy, and leadership development.

Growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, Wagner moved to the United States at 22 with little means and big dreams.  As a minority leader, Wagner's professional career has been committed to creating inclusive practices in organizations to foster effective leadership.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You were born in São Paulo.

Wagner Denuzzo: Yes.

Stephen Matini: And then what happened? How did you get to the States?

Wagner Denuzzo: A convergence of things because I was finishing college. I was working during the day to make a little money, and I did college a night. In Brazil at that time in the early eighties, in mid eighties was important for you to know people to get somewhere. 

It was important for you to belong to a social class that had connections to get you in. I didn't have that. I didn't have connections and I start feeling that although I felt I had some talent, I didn't have an opportunity for me to start my career in Brazil. 

And I didn't wanna do clothing. I was actually manufacturing women clothing with a friend of mine that worked to get some money, but it's not something that I wanna do for life. 

So I decided right after college to give the manufacturing, small manufacturing company to my partner and decided to come to United States. And actually it was my first flight ever. And the first flight I ever took was outside my country and had four stops, cause it was the cheapest fair. So between some polling Orlando, I had four stops in my first flight ever. I'm glad I wasn't afraid of flying. It would be really difficult if I did.

Stephen Matini: How old were you back then?

Wagner Denuzzo: 22

Stephen Matini: 22, God, so young

Wagner Denuzzo: And I came to tonight and I came to United States not knowing English. I didn't have English and I had $600 with me. So it was an immigrant story. 

Then it is interesting because I'm very resourceful. I think living in Brazil, Brazilians are very resourceful. We've figured out how to do things with very little resources. Arriving in Florida, I immediately start getting to restaurant work, being a busboy, trying to learn English. 

A lot of bullying, a lot of people making fun of you when you're an immigrant without the language. I went through all that ,and after a year I decided that Florida wasn't for me. New York could be. A friend of mine said, let's go to Florida, and we drove up in one of those cars that you help people drive their cars in, into Manhattan. And that's how we came. And was really interesting because it was very rough in New York.

I remember having $1 and thinking, I eat pizza or I smoke cigarettes. I chose cigarettes because they last longer . And that day I found two jobs as a dishwasher and a food runner. So I quickly understood that I had to act fast and there was nobody to ask for help. 

New York was a real challenge because it was very difficult. However, little by little I started learning the language. One person that was so remarkable in my history is this Canadian waiter. After I became a waiter a few years, he said to me, Wagner, you have so much to offer. 

Read this book because this book is about enhancing your vocabulary. Because being here, you're gonna need to enhance your vocabulary. It was so beautiful. He gave me, that was the first person that extended their hands and said, Hey, this is how you're gonna get through and be successful.And I will never forget him. 

Stephen Matini: You started communication, right? 

Wagner Denuzzo: Mm-Hmm. . Yes. 

Stephen Matini: How, how did that come about? 

Wagner Denuzzo: Communications is because I, I, I love the idea of advertising, marketing and radio and TV. I specialize on radio and TV. I love writing as well. So to me that's how I would make a living. But clearly in Brazil, communications, is something that's, you know, reserved for very few. 

In New York actually. It really helped me to think broadly about how can I connect with people, you know, taking pictures and, and doing things that could enhance my experience here . I did that, but inevitably you have to do what you need to do to survive. So being in restaurants, I worked in restaurants for 10 years. 

Patience was so incredibly important to me. I didn't have an office job until I was 29, 30. When I start volunteer, I volunteered for gay men's health crisis during the AIDS epidemic and then they gave me a job. That was my first real job in an office. 

And to be honest, it was worth go through all the experiences. I learned how to connect with people from all over the world, at all levels of expertise, levels of social, economic backgrounds. And it is beautiful how you can create empathy towards everyone because you can see that everyone has value. 

And to me this is a lifelong lesson to never discard anyone regardless where they are. Because the hidden figures, the famous hidden figures are our responsibility in HR to identify them. I really enjoyed that. 

So my first job, 29, 30 years old. Then I start getting burned out because then I worked for St. Vincents Hospital was an incredible experience. I work as a social worker in St. Vincents Hospital, in the immigrant program, was undocumented immigrants with HIV and AIDS and we had 43 country represented, 340 patients. And they all need us to figure out care, housing, living and all the immigration problems that they had, we had to help them solve for them. 

So was very enhancing in my life, the experience because you see how, how critical it is to have social systems that support people. The experience burned me out a little bit, to be honest. My, my boss actually said, hey, would you like to go to an employee assistance program? Somebody I know is hiring a counselor there. So I finished my social work degree as a clinical social worker and went to work for an employee assistance program. That's how I started my career in executive coaching, in training, in doing the, the work that I do today in HR.

Stephen Matini: Throughout all those years, those formative years, were there any person, any, any specific event? I mean you already touched some of them, but were there any specific person that somehow was really pivotal, you know, for the decision that you eventually made for your life?

Wagner Denuzzo: Well, several people. In, in sometimes I was thinking about this: many of the people that influenced me don't even know that they had an impact in my life. As an immigrant, I think you know this, you start becoming so hyper vigilant in hyper observant. You observe people at all times. You under, you try to understand how to adapt and assimilate new norms, cultural norms in the way of living. That's a survival mechanism. 

Many people influenced me, but what's really important to be influenced by one person in my life that I always carry with me was a teacher in college. I grew up in a, in public school system in Brazil. I didn't learn that much in the public school system. And she was the first person who believed in me and said, hey, I need an assistant, could you help me? I like the way you read. Do you write? And I liked your ideas. Come support me. 

I never forgot that because every time I have the imposter syndrome or those self-limiting beliefs, I go right back to the people who said, hey, now I believe in you. And she was the first one. And in fact, the funny thing is, last year I decided to contact her after 30 years and she loved that I contacted her and she remembered me of course. And we met in New York, it was a wonderful meeting because reconnecting to people who demand so, so much to you is was incredible. So she was one. 

There is always others, but it's, it's mostly my partner. My husband's amazing, you know, he helped me understand that actually I can be myself and always have the unconditional love at home. That was important to me. I didn't have any other support here. As soon as I met him, it was an incredible feeling of support.

Stephen Matini: I love when you said as an immigrant you become, I would assume a very empathetic, you know, you, you can read situations very quickly. Do you think that empathy is something that can be taught?

Wagner Denuzzo: I do believe they can. A few years ago there was an article in the New York Times about a research that showed, and this is related to positive psychology, which I really believe in. An individual who put themselves out there to help others during crisis are much more likely to develop empathy and be more resilient themselves during their own difficult times. 

And that was very interesting because not only you are helping others, but actually you are building capabilities for yourself to become resilient. And that's important. And that's how I think you start learning how to empathize with others. 

The other one is when things happen to you, you know, when things happen to you, so many crisis that happen to people health wise, economically or there's an accident, there's so many things that happen in life that makes you step back and say, how can I cope with this?

And then you notice the people that try to help you, usually don't know how to help you because it's overwhelming to help somebody. So this empathy towards others develops by experience, but you have to be open to that. I know a lot of people who are not really open to being helped or open to helping others, because if people accept that they need help or that people accept that others need their help, they might get in touch with a lot of feelings that they're not ready to be in touch with. 

And people try to protect themselves with mechanisms, what we call defensive mechanisms, right? We all do have them. But it's unfortunate that people don't try to go through the dark side of being a human being because it's worth it. It's more important to go through the experiences that enhance your abilities to be a human being fully than trying to hide and protect yourself from paying emotional pain, social pain or physical pain.

Stephen Matini: Acceptance, empathy, representation, everyone feeling included, which leads to things talked about these days, you know, diversity, inclusion. But oftentimes I had this sense that it's almost like a box to tick. A lot of organizations seem to have a hard time understanding how can this be of any advantage to me? Based on your tremendous experience, you had so many professional experiences, what would you say that it is the first step for an organization to build an environment that really feels inclusive?

Wagner Denuzzo: What I believe is the first step is acceptance. Leaders must accept the stage of maturity of the organizations and how far they have come in their efforts to create an inclusive environment. 

What I see is that we have mastered the ability to narrate a good story. We have mastered the ability to talk about our values, our principles and our mission and our commitments. But those do not correlate to actions.

And I think the acceptance that actually just been committed to something in talking about something is just the first step. But the first step to actually make a change and create a more inclusive and more diverse organization is acceptance that actually we have failed in the last 20 years to bring to fruition our wish for a more inclusive organization. 

I was thinking about this now we have data. People rely on data to assess the representation and all this. Representation is not influence, it is just representation. And how you create a culture that's more inclusive demands a lot of self-awareness. Because many organizations that I see, they use data insights to confirm their biases. And it's so easy to do that. 

So I tell people, don't use technology to confirm your biases because then everybody settles back in their comfort zone and say, see we have representation, we have the opportunity, but people are not taking the opportunity. I don't think it's like that. 

I think we need to stop putting programs in place, start thinking about taking chances on people who have potential, cause we all have potential, and start placing people. 

Ginni Rometty, CEO for IBM, once said, even herself had some biases when we are doing talent reviews for example. And she noticed that in her environment sometimes the male mindset was that men had the experience, and could take a new role to challenge themselves. Women usually were said to be in need of further development for some reason. 

There is a huge problem about self acceptance. If we accept ourselves at having negative biases towards others who don't look like us, I think we go much farther because then we can take the risk, provide support services for the person that we place instead of putting them outside on a program. 

Because it's very easy right now to mask our biases by putting people in programs, oh put so and so in the Latino program, put so and so in the affirmative action program. It's not a program, you are delaying their advancement when you don't take a bet on them.

Stephen Matini: It seems to me there's an awful amount of white men in a powerful position. That seem not to be self-accepting, but somehow are very vocal in terms of telling other people what they should be doing. What would you say it is the first step towards self-acceptance?

Wagner Denuzzo: I have a lot of empathy for senior leaders today, because they're being asked to represent their companies publicly about all issues from political issues to social issues and economic issues. We're asking them to be empathic towards their own workforce because workforce is very diverse. 

And I think one thing we need to realize is that the workforce has changed dramatically. They're distributed. We can't get away from that. They're distributed, they are dynamic, they wanted the next experience. Cause they know growth comes from a variety of experiences. So they're dynamic. You have three years to convince them that your company is the right one for them. And they are diverse and they're growing diversity just by the sheer number of people in the world. And they are digital. You have to be a digital leader if you wanna manage a digital workforce. And the last one I think is something that we are still struggling with: discerning. 

Our employees are discerning, they're paying attention to the narratives, they're authentic, those they are not. They're paying attention to leaders who have a consistent approach to values-based principles. They're paying attention to companies on sustainability and the work life harmonization is very strong right now. It's not work life integrations, harmonization. They wanna have the control and autonomy over their life. And that's very important. 

Senior leaders are dealing with all this and they have to respond to the needs of the board, shareholders, stakeholders and the public in general. They are in a really difficult spot. 

I think, I know a lot of senior executives who truly believe in inclusion, truly, truly believe in the actions that they wanna take. But there are so many nuances because your organization, let's be real, might be led by a few senior men if you put it that way, but the organization's, the collective of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who need to be aligned to that strategy. 

To me, senior executives have to be the most authentic today and really walk the talk. Make sure that they are looking at the he figures, make sure that give access to those people, to leadership, give them exposure and show their value. Leaders now have to do that, represent an advocate for diverse populations. And I think that's the first step.

 

Stephen Matini: Being authentic. How to be a genuine role model. You can ask to your people anything you want, but you have to be willing to provide the example. But for a lot of people, being authentic is a risk.

Wagner Denuzzo: Authenticity is one of those words that is becoming a buzzword, right? Everyone is talking about being authentic. The reality is human development demands, reflection, introspection, and a lot of self-knowledge because authenticity is not about behaving the way you want to behave anywhere in any settings. 

Being authentic is really having this sense making skill, of understand the context you're in, the situation you're in, and responding accordingly, but always consistently according to your values, your principles and who you are. That's being authentic. 

I see a lot of people that confuse authenticity with rigid behaviors that people say, I am who I am, I'm gonna behave how I always behave. That's a big mistake. That's somebody who is not aware of themselves, that's somebody who didn't have the introspection to think the authenticity is about integrity, values, principles, but how you communicate and how you engage with others have to be a confluence of understanding the context, listening to others and really being empathic to not cause harm.

Stephen Matini: If I said that emotional intelligence could be the main competence to become authentic, would that be a fair statement?

Wagner Denuzzo: It’s a fair statement. The only thing I would go a little farther because what we are seeing now, you also need to understand cognitive mastery. Emotion intelligence allows you to understand how you react to things. Cognitive mastery allows you to step back and respond appropriately to stimuli. 

It is the Viktor Frankl’s famous quote. I love that quote. Between the stimuli and your response, there is a pause in that space. In that space is your chance to create your response, in your response is your growth and your freedom. I love that because that's exactly the essence of being authentic with a positive energy towards others in the environment.

Stephen Matini: There are so many leadership development programs, they use different approaches. You know, some of them, they're deeply imbued in emotional intelligence, others use different types of framework. You know, some of those frameworks could be a bit more normative, more prescriptive, you know, this is how you do in this situation, this is how you read a specific context problem, whatever that is. Based on all your experiences, is there any specific approach to leadership development that as of now you would recommend?

Wagner Denuzzo: I think there are some things that are timeless and some things that have to be very contextual. So for example, timeless things, vulnerability. We talk about this, but we haven't seen really coming to fruition at the highest level of leadership. When I was the head of leadership development for this global technology company was really important to start executive programs with the facilitator who was also a leader in the company to tell a story. 

They actually change them emotionally or kind of radically in their perspective of the world. That creates a safety. And we talk about psychological safety. That creates a safety you can't create through frameworks. It has to be a vulnerable leader, allowing others to share the vulnerability and experience something that has an emotional, transformational impact. I find that incredibly important. So without that, it's very hard to do leadership development if it's not an experience, it has to be a an emotional, cognitive experience.

But, when you think about the contexts we are in today, I think that's very different. You have to use the timeless vulnerability and all the emotional intelligence perspective, but also you have to help leaders understand that distributed power for distributed teams is the way to go forward. They will only be successful if they allow this collective leadership, shared leadership, sharing their knowledge, sharing more their vulnerabilities and their expectations. It's about sharing and letting the teams do the work to come to fruition. So I think leadership development today is missing the opportunity to create situations and experiences where leaders can get in touch with themselves. 

I recently did an executive program where I asked the leaders to do a breathing exercise for three minutes just for them to be present, to be in their own body, to focus without judging. Because right now, if you ask leaders, I think they're not having a great time, they don't know how to act forward. They are having imposter syndrome, feelings of imposter syndrome because it's hard to not know where to go. And I think they're not in touch with themselves because it's easier and it's less painful. 

I urge leaders to start being more introspective and allow themselves to just breathe and be in their bodies, being the moment. Because if you're not in the moment, you're not listening. If you're not in the moment, you're not learning.

Stephen Matini: I like when you talked about shared leadership, you know, and you were talking about teams. Do you think that that could be the next step for really, leadership?

Wagner Denuzzo: I truly believe that that's the way we are going forward in organizations. I've been advising a lot of HR startups. These startups, they're most successful. They create a community. They don't create a workforce. They create a community where members are mutually accountable for each other and care for each other. And with that, naturally they have to start sharing power, sharing knowledge, and becoming less fearful of becoming irrelevant. 

Senior leaders are afraid of becoming irrelevant because with the digital transformation of the last 10 years, people have access to a lot of data, a lot of information, a lot of everything. So leaders have to be comfortable and embrace that because that's the new, the new world that we are in. 

So I do believe shared leadership because in my concept of shared leadership is about consciousness. Consciousness speaks to the idea that you need the mental power to understand where you are, sense make, understand who you are, who you're talking to. Having this consciousness allows you to be present. Then you have to be curious because I think being curious allows you to always learn from others before you start talking. 

And you have to be curious about what's happening around the corner. You have to be curious about things that you never thought about, and you have to be courageous. 

When I was in this global company, we had early career folks interviewing MD’s, managing directors who are very successful and one of the early career folks. As the leader, do you really have authority? How much authority do you have? And he just turned to him and said, I have as much authority as my courage allows me to have. So it is about courageous acts of sensible leaders who are actually really centered, aligned, and know that courageous acts will lead to different outcomes. And many times courageous leaders lead to very positive outcomes.

Stephen Matini: When I read the news, everything is polarized, everything is sensationalistic, trivialized, you know, reduced to cheap bites to eat without much thinking. So how do you keep your energy up? How do you keep your strength?

Wagner Denuzzo: Let's put it this way. From my clinical background, we use to say that depression might be the most logical and normal reaction to the reality of the world. Period. But what you need to understand is that those emotions you need to experience, but you cannot isolate them and they become bigger than they are. 

What I advocate is for clarity. Clarity creates capacity for you to think, for you to grow, for you to cope but you need to be clear. Be clear about how you're feeling and what you are feeling is about in your organizations. Be clear about your strategy. Don't guess like people.

Now there's another term that's emerging, gas lighting. It is true when you're saying something to the public and internally you're saying something else. The way I approach life is you only have one job. Manage your energy, generate energy, manage positive energy in groups, in workshops and teams. Because I love what somebody said to me once, a good leader is a thermometer. You can get in the room and you see the temperature. A great leader is a thermostat. You set the temperature in the room, but you need to know yourself. You need to have the capability of doing that. So be clear about what your intentions. So clarity creates capacity. 

And the last thing that I would say is having a realistic optimism is important because regardless what's happening in the world, you always can find nuggets of hope and aspirations that you have in inspirations everywhere. 

You do need to start stepping back and feel comfortable being on your own because that's when you have the time to start assessing who you are. What are you feeling and how you can cope with this. 

One thing that we say in mental health is when you feel depressed, one of the best things you can do is to socialize. I think it's more important for you to engage in something social, engaging in the flow of life, engaging something that takes you away from that moment. Because actually it is important for you to take action.

Stephen Matini: Maybe the first step it is to understand that it, it's okay, a good leader, you don't need to be perfect,

Wagner Denuzzo: Nothing is perfect. You might try to control the environment, you might try to control things around you. And that's a natural tendency that human beings have, especially leaders. Leaders have to have this sense of control over their environment, over their actions. But that's a false sense of self because it's not about control. It's about understanding and sensing, making sense of things. 

Because I have so much information, so many data, and I always say focus on progress, not perfection. And I think now the world is asking leaders, you have to start focusing on progress even when it is not the most lucrative. 

That's why sustainability now is coming to fruition. That's why people sometimes are even taking their salary a notch down because they know that there is pressure socially. We are much more aware of the situation of the world and there are some positive pockets. So that's why I still feel optimistic.

Stephen Matini: If you have to come up with the name, a noun, an adjective for this new paradigm, which one would you pick?

Wagner Denuzzo: . That's a good one. I will pick several, but I would say versatile because that does not deny who you are and does not deny your authenticity. But versatility allows you to understand different realities because to your your point, a new paradigm is because we are in a paradoxical world. And being versatile to look at one's reality and not deny it. Look at your own reality and not deny it and accept multiple realities being part of your ecosystem. That's incredibly important.

Stephen Matini: Do you think you would've gotten to this mindset if you hadn't not been Latino? If you hadn't been part of a minority community, do you think you would've gotten to the same point?

Wagner Denuzzo: No, I'm clear. Valda, being a member of the LGBTQ community, being a a Latino immigrant from a lower social club, as in Brazil, I had to observe, understand, and overcome so much. All those messages made me who I am today. So I don't have any regrets about the paths that I took. They're very hard. Some people say, oh, I wanna go back to my twenties. I don't. 

I worked really hard on my twenties. It was really difficult, but it was worth it because I feel so much more integrated, because there is something in human development that I always tell people. Be aware that when you enter a different phase in your life, when you're more mature, some people get into despair, some people get into integrated moments. 

There are moments that are good, there are moments that are bad. There are moments that you fail. There's moments that you succeed. So try to integrate yourself because you're gonna be in a better place. If you're always trying to be defense, defending against what's happening to you, you're gonna be creating a false self that will lead to despair. It's not worth it.

Stephen Matini: When you go through a rough moment for whatever the reason, is there anything specific you do to get out of it?

Wagner Denuzzo: Sometimes it's important for me to be with the feeling, but I play a beautiful song. Sometimes it's just sitting with the feeling. But having something that creates a beauty in that moment. 

But I think also walking in nature, allowing yourself just to breathe, observe a bird. The little things in life can take you out of your self-rumination and your self-absorption. It's very easy to be self-absorbed these days. I think the best trick is to get to a place where you can get out of yourself a little bit. 

One thing that we didn't talk about, but it's so essential today for all of us, is being non-judgmental. When you feel you're reacting too quickly because there are triggers, right? People trigger you all the time. But you have to suspend judgment because you don't know exactly what the reality of the other is. It's so hard to step into a space where you don't have preconceived notions of how you're gonna respond to something.

Cause the moment you start judging, you start projecting others things that you accept on yourself. And that's where it is to do. Imagine the interactions, five generations in the workforce, how leaders can manage the cultural norms that lead to positive psychological safety? It's very hard, but I think starting with being non-judgmental improves the culture tremendously. 

Somebody that I really admire, Hitendra Wadhwa, he's a professor at the MBA School in Columbia University in New York, and I love his approach because he's one of the first leaders. He was at MaKinsey. He moved out of MaKinsey and he start growing this amazing theory that inner knowledge and inner confidence come to fruition as an outward success. 

And he talks about the energies, talks about love, energy, the growth energy, the self-actualization energies. And he's been very successful in transcending the business dialogue into a more meaningful dialogue. So he's been very successful in bridging the business and the self-knowledge and the human-centered leadership that we talk about. And I love that, you know, not many people are able to do that.

Stephen Matini: We talked about many different things, all of them are so important. Is there anything that you would like our listeners to know?

Wagner Denuzzo: The most critical thing to do is to nurture your leadership skills. In today's world and in the future, I predict the organizations are gonna rely on collective leadership, shared leadership, all members of the organization have to nurture those skills because you're gonna be in cross-functional teams. 

You're gonna be working in the no hierarchical environment, most likely agile teams are self-managed. So I'm advocating for leadership skills being developed as soon as you enter the workforce. 

I'm writing a book right now. Maybe it's gonna be ready by next year. It's called the Lead From Start. It's the idea that you are in charge of your success if you focus on leadership skills because it's the most important skills that you can have.

Stephen Matini: Wagner, you are so wise, you are so experienced. Thank you so much for the time you've giving me. I really, I really enjoyed this.

Wagner Denuzzo: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Is it possible to be competitive and sustainable? Can leaders meet the needs of investors, employees, customers, and the environment? 

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Beate Klingenberg, Professor of Sustainability and Supply Chain Management at FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management in Germany.

Professor Klingenberg’s professional interests combine two needs often viewed as antagonists in business: a short-term focus on efficient operations that meet quarterly quotas and a long-term sustainable strategy addressing the interests of all stakeholders. 

For Professor Klingenberg, a sustainable mindset combines systems thinking, ecological worldview, and emotional intelligence to develop leaders capable of driving organizations into the future.

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Sustainability Mindset Indicator by Isabel Rimanoczy and Beate Klingenberg

#sustainable #mindset #change #beateklingenberg #isabelrimanoczy #leadership #coaching #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn

TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So, how is life in Germany?

Beate Klingenberg: How is life in Germany? A little bit too busy, which I know is a running theme for me, but, and part of it is myself because I never say no when something interesting comes my way. 

Besides, I'm also, I'm always, always acknowledging that in comparison to my previous always busy life as an academic, I also have a startup. And it is really taking a lot of time by now, and it's all exciting. It's all there is so much new, new experience and new things to think about, but it, the result is basically that all what I do is work.

Stephen Matini: Is your life now that different compared to your life in Italy when you lived in Florence or in the US?

Beate Klingenberg: It's different because the, the circumstances around me are different. I think if I compare first to Italy, simply the German-ish lifestyle is, is a little bit more orderly, I would say.

Stephen Matini: No way. Who would've thought ?

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah. I mean, surprise, . I'm actually missing my chit-chats going to the mad car or when I would go to my groceries on Saturdays or just going to a cafe where people know me, where you talk. 

And I haven't made those kind of connections here yet. A, because it takes time. I know at the Marcato Centrale, it took me probably between two and three years before the, the people were willing to talk to me because initially they just thought, well, yet another stranger, she'll be here for a month and then she'll be gone again. 

So they didn't put a lot of effort in creating a relationship. And it's the same here. Of course, even there, there is an open market twice a week where I go and I try to go to the same places, but it will take forever before they know me. 

And then if I compare to the us, the US has this largeness to it, because a, you have to do everything by car and the country. I mean, you've lived there. The country is just vast in comparison. And so everything is a little, yeah, is, is bigger. 

I think my lifestyle there was different in a sense that I, I was driving around with a car a lot, but I was definitely, and this is the surprising thing, but it, it's a little bit because I don't have a car. I think I was more in nature when I lived in the US to go for hikes. 

I haven't established routines here in where I'm now in Germany, because I live in, in the middle of a big city. I have a big park, right ten minutes from me, which is nice. But to really go into woods and hike for three, four hours, I have done maybe two or three times in the last year because I have to train, take a train to get out somewhere, and you can't reach all parts easily with public transportation. I'm happy that I don't have a car anymore, but my nature connection has been reduced since I'm in Germany. 

In Italy, it was also easier because Florence particular is a city where you can do a lot of hikes even within the city, and then you get out into the hills. Connection to nature is important for me. So maybe that contributes also to this feeling that I, I feel a little sterile where I am.

Stephen Matini: The word sustainability is a word that, even in the past when you and I talked, comes up a lot. That's a really important word to you. What does sustainability mean in Germany versus the U.S. versus Italy? How does it manifest differently?

Beate Klingenberg: First of all, the word for sustainability in, in Germany has a different connotation, but it's, it's more something that means to be, to do something very long lasting, to do something that is, that is reaching into the future. 

And in terms of em, embedment in society, you hear many more people talking about sustainability in, in Germany than in the U.S. particularly in the U.S. And I just have to walk out of my house where there is a little area for shopping at the street, and there is a shop where you can buy things without you bring your own containers so you can buy pasta and, and all sorts of other things, dry goods in your own containers. 

Then there is another shop that is called the, the rescue market, where they sell off overproduction or food that is already beyond their, their official edibility. And it's, but it's still good and obviously for very low prices. 

So you can see just with these two examples that you have a lot of solutions that are being offered and people are very conscious about climate change and talking about alternative transportation. The reason why I don't have a car is, is for me personally, because I don't want to have one. 

In fact, also right outside of my building is a parking lot where there are car sharing cars. I haven't tried the system out yet, but technically if I need one, I can make a reservation and, and hop on a car. 

In Italy. I think being in Europe also, there is a good understanding for sustainability and it manifests itself in, in different ways. Maybe people talk a little bit less about it as in Germany, but I remember this idea that in supermarkets or in markets, you only have the, the plastic bags for the fruit out of biodegradable plastics. It's a huge step forward. 

In Germany, I think it's again, this the German word would be grundsätzlichkeit (principle), this fundamentalism that people always want to have these deep discussions and it's easier to move forward and to do something, I think in Italy because people just do it.

Stephen Matini: Do you remember the first time that the word sustainability entered your life?

Beate Klingenberg: I would think probably towards the turn of the century, because prior to that, at least what I recognized is more that we talked about pollution, environmental protection, and that of course goes back into the 1970s that those discussions were there for even into the 1960s for the longest time. 

But this more overarching idea of sustainability, which doesn't only include looking out for the environment, but it has a strong aspect of social justice in there with a recognition that if we're not fair to each other, we will never be able to protect also the environment because poor people simply don't have, if I make it quite simple, they don't have the time to think about, is this good that I use this thing in plastic or, or not, because their life is simply just about the basics. 

The concept of sustainability is really more overarching, and I think the first conference I went to that literally had the topic, sustainability must have been around the beginning of the century, doesn't mean that it didn't exist before, but that was about, so a little bit more than 20 years ago that entered my life.

Stephen Matini: When people hear the word sustainable, it means different things to different people, and often times evokes scenarios of climate change, the whole environmental issue and such and such. What I love about your background is the fact that you focus on operations, you focus on supply chain and those reasoning, those area often times are about optimizing, it's about saving money, it's about how to be more profitable. So how do you combine based on your experience and sustainability with areas such as operations and supply chain?

Beate Klingenberg: If I look at the, the consumption sector, we're basically flooded with products to make that really more sustainable in the sense that we look more for the resources of the planet that we use for these products, we look at if there is a circularity that we, these this materials that are being used come back into the productive cycle. 

We go to the basics. How can I make a, a container for water more sustainable? Only when I ask myself from the very beginning, what is this product actually going to be? How am I going to design it? How am I going to produce it, and how much can I think of the, here's this, I know plastic is always an easy example, but what happens to this plastic bottle when it's finished? 

If we start at that early stage, there is a concept that is called cradle to cradle means the cradle is the, the moment when a product is even conceived, not even produced yet, but the product idea that's already when we should start thinking.

It's like, what will happen to this product when the consumer doesn't use it anymore? And then the question, do we even need this product that should even come before? Which of course here I'm being a little radical because I I really think we have way too many products, but that's let's not go there. 

But for me, the practical thinking is like we're producing so many things, that's where we need to start. What is this product, what it is supposed to be, and how can I create it that it is the least impactful and uses the least resources and still fulfills the need that the potential client wants to have fulfilled.

Stephen Matini: In your opinion, what could be for an organization that decides to be more sustainable, the first step in that direction?

Beate Klingenberg: A profound reflection of their values. When I say profound, really to the deepest sense of looking at humanity and asking, what is this product for? What does it serve? 

And I'm going to refer to a concept that I am encountered a couple of years ago, which is called the sustainability mindset. This has been developed by a researcher whom I know by now very well, Isabel Rimanoczy, and she developed it based on talking with business leaders that were by themselves without stakeholder pressure, but just out of their own interest turning their organizations to be more sustainable. 

And then the interesting thing, and this was very, very insightful for me coming from this practical operations and supply chain discipline, is that yes, there is a piece to it that in this concept of the mindset is called the ecological worldview. 

So you have to understand all these ecological consequences, but then there is a big component that is called systems thinking, which in engineering disciplines is not a difficult thing because sys engineers are trained to think in systems, but business people often are not. 

Two components that when I heard about it for the first time, surprised me, and one is emotional intelligence and the other one is spiritual intelligence. And at the beginning I was thinking it's like, yeah, okay, maybe nice to have, but when I say profound over the years, I, I really came to realize there is big need for exactly that, this understanding and not emotional intelligence in the sense of Daniel Goleman who wrote a lot about it, although his, his work is very important, but more in the sense of understanding how my emotions actually impact my decisions towards sustainability. 

And the spiritual intelligence is of course a piece that is very personal. Everybody can develop their own spirituality and their own sense of it, and for one person it will be rooted in a certain religion, and for another person, it's simply meditation and, and concentrating on the self. There are, there are many, many variations, but that is important for me today to ask this question, what is the real value of what I'm doing?

Of course, that is a type of change for organizations that is really deep or do we want to be, how do we want to be part of this productive cycle of our economy? What I've learned also really working also for myself on this mindset is that we humans always talk about we are human and there is nature and we separate the two to a certain extent that it's nature against us or we against nature. And I think that's profoundly incorrect because we are nothing else than a species on this planet. 

We're not better or worse than the amp that crawls around on the floor looking for for food. We just developed a different level of intelligence that unfortunately allows us to destroy, I, I'm not familiar, I wouldn't say there, there doesn't exist one, but I'm not familiar with any other species on the planet that does that, that purposefully removes resources and uses them for something and then you can't reuse them again because the, the resources on the planet are not infinite. Eventually they're gone. 

So this profound recognition that we are just a little piece in a system. We are not the controllers, we are just a piece. And that makes a difference in, I would think, how you look at how you consume things, how you live your life. Nothing in this concept of the mindset is normative. Nobody says, you must do this, you must think like that. But there is, yeah, this deep sense of being connected to our natural environment because we are simply a part of it and that that changes perspectives tremendously.

Stephen Matini: To me, the ability of adopting a sustainable mindset probably is a transition from being a manager to being a leader, because you talk about values, you're talking about having a, a vision, you're talking about an organization that has a soul. 

One of the hardest bump that I see people going through is when they understand that operations is not enough, you know, to have an eye on this quarter, being able to meet the number is not necessarily the only strategic thing that you need to do. 

You really need to have a much larger perspective or you won't be able to survive in this competitive marketplace with things changing all the time. Why should I give any thought to what you just mentioned, all these important elements? Is just that it is a strategic, it is a strategic thing to do.

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah, definitely. It, it's of course if you read the quarterly reports of firms, you, you think, yeah, okay, sustainability, we do a little bit of ESG reporting, it's all fine. We try to reduce our carbon footprint, but it's not enough. 

Prerequisite is a realization that the impact humans have on the planet is unbalancing to the way we are living at the moment. What we're doing right now is not, it's not sustainable for the next a hundred years. A lot of things will change and they're already changing. I'm a manager or I'm a leader, I develop a vision that is more systemic and that is more looking into these many, many different aspects that a true sustainable mindset requires. 

And it's a journey. It's not something that happens in one step. In the theory of the (sustainable) mindset, there are 12 principles, but even if we go beyond the, the structure, I regularly go back depending on things that happen to me on a daily life, and I question myself like, is is this consistent with what I really want to be to put the focus? First of all, what do I want to be before saying what is it that I want to do?

Stephen Matini: It's like we're going through a paradigm shift in the way we approach management. There was such a focus on task that eventually shifted with human relations on people. And now we are talking more about really the context. How did you come up with the idea of the assessment, the sustainability mindset indicator?

Beate Klingenberg: I do agree paradigm shift is exactly the right the right word. The lady that I mentioned, Isabel Rimanoczy that developed the sustainability mindset as a framework, she approached me about two and a half years ago. We had met on conferences and she asked me that she would like to develop something that we can actually assess where a person's mindset is. 

And she had already thought a little bit about how to do it in terms of a type of questionnaire, like other personality assessment tools exist. She's a psychologist, so she's also very familiar with these kind of frameworks. But we try to come up with phrases and with statements that allow to connect to the 12 principles that I mentioned that so basically we, we have for each of the 12 principles, three sets of statements where you can decide if a statement represents you or not. And why three, because we also try to assess the emotional as well as the cognitive and the behavioral aspect of a principle. 

Who doesn't know about air pollution or pollutions through through industrial agriculture. It's just something we read about, but knowing about it doesn't necessarily mean that we do something about it. It seems like people only start to become active if they also engage their emotions, but if we assess these three for each of the principles, we get a snapshot, or it's the mapping of the place where you are on your journey towards a mindset. 

Based on these questions we developed, of course there is an algorithm behind it, but you get a, a report, you get a personal report that guides you if you want to try it, to proceed on this journey. Nothing is normative, so also you don't get a score. It's not like, wow, you have 90 out of a 100, because that's not, that's not productive in that context because we want to have a paradigm shift and we want to guide people in this paradigm shift if they're willing to, to take that journey.

The report is about thirty pages, so it's an enormous amount of material. There are some graphs that show you where, which aspects are less developed than others. So you can first focus on that part. You can jump back and forth in the report and see what speaks to you at a certain phase in your life and what you want to work on.

And around that we developed training programs. We started with training programs for educators because originally we thought that the assessment tool would be very useful in the development of leaders in the, in the academic context in universities. And now we're reaching out towards the coaching community because we think that there's also a huge interest in coaches to learn how they can help their clients in turn to develop such a mindset and to become leaders, as you said, yourself, leaders towards sustainability.

Stephen Matini: If someone starts gaining a greater awareness about being a sustainable, what would you say that would be some of the practical benefits on a personal and a professional level? What would I see?

Beate Klingenberg: At the end there is much more satisfaction with what you're actually doing. You're not just going somewhere, working your eight hours, and at the end of the day, you're coming home, you're happy about your paycheck. 

If I go back to what I said before, this understanding of the connectedness of us with our natural environment and us as people, if, if I can go to work and I can say what I did today is actually meaningful, not only in the sense that I produced something somebody else can buy or I offered a service somebody needed, but that it connected to the, to the essence what we are to the human side of us, it will be much more satisfactory to be more the person instead of just being the hamster in in the wheel.

Stephen Matini: I had a big question for you. Well, it's big and it's not. What do you hope to leave behind with your work?

Beate Klingenberg: It doesn't matter that my name or I am attached to something, but it’s ... I think it would be a very good feeling for me simply to know that something has gotten into motion that people start to think differently. 

I'll give you an example. I actually used the sustainability mindset principles as well as the indicator in the class in the fall semester. The students used the indicator, so I knew a little bit what the group looks like as a total. I did certain exercises, interventions, discussions with them, and at the end they wrote reflective essays. 

And in the reflective essays I could read that I've actually reached some of them. Some of them started to state as like, I'm after this class, I'm looking at my studies in a different way. I'm looking at my world in a different way. I'm starting to question my own behaviors. I'm starting to listen more to myself, various aspects where just feels, I guess something was set into motion that makes me, I feel, I feel glad for that person that I was able to trigger something.

Stephen Matini: That feeling you are describing, I describe it as the gentle reminder, that awareness, that feeling that I will not be forever. I want to enjoy it as much as possible, this whole path, as long as it will be, and hopefully is going to benefit people, they're gonna stay here longer that I do. 

It's not something that makes me feel sad, but it's nice. It's a warning of using my time in a way that is mindful, is productive, you know, not just doing, doing, doing, but also being and allowing other people to beat someone of value. 

You are truly one of those few people that I know that have had the courage to change. When you think about hard moments in your life, when you felt stuck, you know, in a rut, were there anything that you specifically did to get out of, of being trapped there?

Beate Klingenberg: That's not an easy question to answer, because sometimes the process wasn't entirely conscious from being in a situation that was really awful to suddenly being able to reach out and, and do something. 

Quite a few years ago, I, I would think at least 12, 13, 14 years ago, two colleagues of the university in the U.S. were worked convinced me to go rock climbing with them. I was very athletic at the time, so they said, oh, you can do that. We went once into a climbing center where there was just a, a wall, like 10 meters. 

And I actually, I thought, this is interesting because you have to be a little technical. You have to be a little strategic, and it's entirely satisfactory if you're up there. The only part I didn't like is that I had to get down again because I actually am, I don't like heights.

So they took me out after that on a real rock, and they had organized a guide. They were experienced climbers, but they, they said, okay, we want somebody else with us. What they didn't tell me is that the climb they had prepared for me to do was hundred meters . 

They just let me start and they said, anytime you don't feel like it, we can go back down. And eventually we came to a point, there were a lot of trees, so it was just straight up, absolutely straight up. I didn't really see what was happening. I was like, okay, we're going up. We're going up. And then I had to move myself around the corner of the rock, and it was suddenly in the open. And then it was a very difficult move I had to make. It was a very high grab, and then I had to pull myself up and I didn't make it.

The guide was ahead of me and my two colleagues were under me, and they said, well, we can go down, but it's going to be difficult at this stage. And then the guy had said, okay, let you, you sit in this harness and you said, let dangle just for a while, don't ... relax your muscles. So I was dangling in my seat, some probably 60, 70 meters above ground. And then I said, okay, I'll try it again. 

And I did, and it worked and my colleagues later said, they were absolutely convinced that we had to go down at this stage. They were so amazed that I got my strengths together in a way and pull myself out, literally speaking. And I think, although this is not a very precise answer to your question, that's what it is. At some point, there is a collection of energy and, and willingness inside me  that say, okay, this has to stop, or I have to do something.

It was this suddenly listening to myself and realizing somewhere inside myself, there is the strength to do it. And it's not that I necessarily think specifically, oh, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? But I let things flow. And that's very often when that moment happens where I can then say, okay, now, now there is this piece of strength I should add to that, that I did a lot of martial arts in my life, so I know about the chi, about the center of your energy. And then it's suddenly theres, then it's suddenly ready and it will not be easy, but you say, okay, now I can do the next step and pull myself out.

Stephen Matini: And maybe to find the strength, as you said, you need to dangle a little bit ...

Beate Klingenberg: Yeah. Yes. There needs to, there needs to be, I mean, the dangling was entirely scary. I have to be very, very very honest. It's, even when I talk about it, I get sweaty hands. It was a scary moment, and I said, oh, now we have to go down all of that, so I better, I better try to get me out of this situation. 

The recognition that something is happening to yourself that is really, really not good for you, even if it's difficult to try to change it, that at the end you know it will be better. Or it's like peeling layers of stuck-ness away from you, and with every little layer you get out of the energy increases, of course.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like the people that listen to this conversation to take away?

Beate Klingenberg: I think specifically when you asked about change and how to help yourself in difficult situations, then I think it's the suggestion to trust yourself that it's possible to find the energy inside yourself, and it will take time potentially to find it particular if you're not used to it. 

I'm thinking again, of these aspects of spirituality in the sustainability mindset. It's really that, it's like asking yourself, who am I? This being aspect, trusting yourself that there is something inside your, your being that you can trigger if you want to change. And then being trustful that there are people around you that are most likely willing to help you in whichever way it takes, be it practical or just talking or psychological support, whatever it may be.

Stephen Matini: A sustainable pace, that changes from person to person. And I believe recognizing what your pace is is absolutely crucial.

Beate Klingenberg: Yes, you're absolutely right with that. A person who's slower in taking the steps to change should not feel discouraged because somebody else is capable of doing something similar in a much faster pace.

Stephen Matini: You are one of the most fabulous people that I know. Thank you so much for these amazing thoughts that I'm so sure are going to warm a lot of people. Thank you so much.

Beate Klingenberg: Thank you, Stephen. That's a big, big thing that you just said, .

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Life circumstances may sometimes appear discouraging and far removed from our biggest goals and dreams. That’s when we might feel voiceless, unrepresented, and trapped in a loop that leaves us with no options.

The guest of this episode of Pity Party Over is Kofi Douhadji, an American entrepreneur, executive coach, and airman in the United States Air Force. 

Growing up in the village of Afagnan in Togo, Africa, Kofi has learned early on the power of an optimistic and curious mindset that intentionally focuses on opportunities rather than letting circumstances define who he is.

His latest memoir, Unbroken Optimist, is a testament to Kofi’s tenacious and grateful attitude toward life: Unbroken Optimist by Kofi Douhadji

Listen to the episode:

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: In your book, your dedication to your children, in which you say, “For the minute you start working for your freedom, that is the very minute you start losing it.”

Kofi Douhadji: Yes.

Stephen Matini: So why you wrote that?

Kofi Douhadji: I wrote that because I don't want my kids to take anything for granted. I want them to keep an eye on where we are coming from. And to know that success is like a rent. The minute you stop paying it, you're probably gonna go hit the streets. So I want them to, to know that it's a daily effort. You have to keep up your effort, you have to keep investing in yourself, growing, learning taking care of your responsibilities and everything. So I thought it was important for me to have my kids sink that in and know that their freedom is not a guarantee. Whenever they stop working for it, they're gonna lose it.

Stephen Matini: Do your kids have a, a sense of your upbringing?

Kofi Douhadji: They do. We talk about it a lot. I'm very big on conversation, so we talk a lot. And also we go beyond that and send them, for example, in 2022, they spent seven months in Togo where I grew up. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but for me, it was important for them to go and see, hey, where dad grew up. We are living a, a pretty decent life, they're living in their own rooms, they have their own beds, they eat whatever they feel like they want to eat on a daily basis, but I wanted them to go and see for themselves where I grew up. And that many people are not so fortunate as we are today. And I think even though my daughter is only 11, that brought her some perspective, I don't think she would've had otherwise.

Stephen Matini: And how do you feel now when you go back?

Kofi Douhadji: Personally, I haven't been back since then. 

Stephen Matini: Oh, you haven't out? 

Kofi Douhadji: I haven't. And I'm going in March. But from what I heard from my kids and my wife when they, they went back for several months, is that it makes you appreciate a lot more every single thing we have now here. And I know it's gonna be a very interesting experience for me going back

Stephen Matini: The circumstances, your experience were definitely super difficult. And somehow in those situations, without having anyone telling you how to do, you found the power of gratitude. Even in a difficult situation, you can always be grateful of many different things. And somehow that was your first paradigm shift.

Kofi Douhadji: Yes.

Stephen Matini: How did you do that by yourself, so young?

Kofi Douhadji: I would attribute the first trigger to providence, and I would attribute the second one to curiosity. I was very curious. There was this, there is this hospital that non-profit from Italy built in my village about 10 or 12 miles away from my, my village where we lived. I discovered this beautiful library in the hospital growing up, and there was one nun that came from Italy periodically to the hospital, her name is Clementine. I would spend time with her even though books I couldn't read when I was in high school, I will ask her to read and explain it to me. That reading books like that with her and having her explain certain concept to me, brought me to the realization that, hey, with controlling your mindset and being mindful and intentional about the things you wanna achieve, you can change your life. And I, I would attribute mindset shift to reading starting from that moment where I started reading through the library at the hospital, and also something in me that I can't describe that pushed me toward that place.

Stephen Matini: Other than Clementine, were there other people in your life early on that you considered to be influential that somehow have shaped the way you think?

Kofi Douhadji: I think there were, but again, when you grow up in a village where you know almost everyone in the village and people don't really have a futuristic vision, it's hard to have someone in your circle to look up to. When you are dreaming about stuff, people don't even encourage you to dream about. So I think most of the people that I consider that have shaped my life growing up are mentors met in the book. Like I like to refer to them. So some of those people, I met them in a book.

Stephen Matini: My life growing up was different than yours and in many ways was it was a different life. You know? However, there were a lot of parts of my life that I didn't like. And I remember pretty early on I learned how to escape in my head and books and games. There was, I think, something that I did in order to basically survive, you know? And I would really wonder what my life could be. And I would always say to myself, one day, I would have a different life, a very special life. So that curiosity for me came also as a form of how do you say it? Like escapism, you know, as a way to cope with very difficult situations.

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. I did have almost the same approach. You know, I would just go sit by myself on a farm under an orange tree, and just imagine things happening, a better life, an extraordinary life, and dream about it, visualize it, and just dwell on those feeling I would run following an airplane, flying over the village as fast as I can, as far as I could until it's nowhere to be seen un and then I'll stop, and then I'll just imagine myself being on that airplane one day. So I can relate to that es escapism, if you will.

Stephen Matini: If someone doesn't have that, doesn't have the ability either to escape or to focus on something positive or maybe doesn't have the innate curiosity, do you think that optimism can be learned?

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think anyone can learn to be more optimistic. And optimism is a mindset that can be developed with practice, just like any other skill. Some ways to do that I have worked for me is reframing negative thoughts when challenging situation happen, challenge negative thoughts, a more positive light, instead of saying, for example, I cannot do this, say, I haven't done this yet, I never done it before, but I can learn. And I think as human beings, our ability to learn and grow should be enough for us to be confident in ourselves. 

For example, as an officer in the United States Air Force, I was recently put in a position myself where I took leadership of my first flight with people who are older than me, have more experience than me from a different career field leading a flight that operates in a different career field.

But instead of feeling overwhelmed, worrisome about what's going to happen, the way I process the information for myself is, wow, this is going to give me the opportunity to do something I've never done before. 

So I started thinking, who can I reach out to to help me plan this out? What can I do to set myself up for success? When I start doing this, it's gonna help me become a better leader and give me more experience, therefore, I can lead better in the future. And instead of being worried and anxious, I was excited and thankful for the fact that I have this opportunity to serve people and grow along the way. 

Also, practicing gratitude, starting each day with a grateful heart can be really helpful to growing a more optimistic outlook on things and on life in general. Take each day to reflect on what you have. Feel grateful. I call it my counting my blessing practice. Every morning I will take a piece of paper and I'll start writing all the things that I'm grateful for until I can no longer have a space on that sheet of paper. And then I'll start. Most of my days, I start them like that.

Surrounding yourself with positive people. Seek out people who have a positive outlook on life and support and encourage you. Being around them. Being around positive energy can be very contagious and help you develop a more optimistic outlook or mindset. 

One last practice or approach that worked for me is focusing on solution, not problems. When facing challenges, try to focus on finding a solution rather than dwelling on the problem itself and how crushing and putting up a pity party for that problem instead of doing so. 

When you focus on the problem, you increase your chances of finding a solution. I always tell my coaching client that it is not about the size of the control you have in life, but it's all about how much use you make of the little control you have that makes the difference. 

Remember that developing, you know, a more optimistic outlook or any other skill takes time. Practice persistent and foremost, consistency. So when you engage on your journey to building a more optimistic perspective or mindset be patient with yourself, be gracious with yourself and understand that you are both a masterpiece and a work in progress. And be kind to yourself.

Stephen Matini: What would you say that are the things that kill optimism?

Kofi Douhadji: I will start with negative thinking and negative people. You can be around someone who is positive. If you don't accept yourself, accept the fact that you can to build that positive outlook on life, it's hard for you to become a positive person. So when you are around people who are always complaining, drowning, drowning your energy out of you that can kill optimism. 

Not being able to make a difference between your needs and your wants can also kill optimism. Thinking, wow, I want, I need this, I need this, I need this. I always say that we are the captain of what needs. We decide beside the basic foundational needs for us to stay alive and healthy. Everything else, we decide what is a need or not. 

With that knowledge, we have the power to design a life that is built on abundance in a sense that you are not more happy because you have more, but you are happy because you need less. And since we are the captain of our needs, we decide how much more we need. And that powerful ability for us to decide what we need makes life that much more enjoyable when we know, yes, there is more out there, but I'm going to stop here and enjoy what I have.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think so many people seem not to be the captains of their needs?

Kofi Douhadji: So many people fail to be the captain of their needs because they have society decide for them. They have other people define success for them. Success for you, Stephen might be different than what success is for me. So when we start comparing ourselves and wanting to be like other people, then we lose the ability to be the captain in command of our needs.

Stephen Matini: There are also a couple of things that I hear talking to people. One is probably fear. And fear is a term under which there's all kinds of different things, but fear often blocks people from moving forward. It could be the fear of losing a certain status, the fear of losing love. Choosing the right thing for you sometimes means to say bye to certain people, certain situations. And some people really struggle with it. If someone is still deeply attached to something, or someone, because of love or whatever habit, whatever that is, and somehow seems to have a hard time moving on, what would you say it is a first step?

Kofi Douhadji: Tell them they're gonna die.

Stephen Matini:

Kofi Douhadji: Tell them they're gonna die one day. And whether they want it or not, they like it or not, they're gonna be forced to lose everything, not just that one thing. And also tell them, the world is a place of abundance. There's a lot of everything. There's enough for all of us. 

Losing something is just as important as gaining something. And you can choose not to, you know, dwell in the lost and go find something new. Or you can choose to dwell in the last and still face the fact that what you lost is gone. So which one is more helpful? Adding more pain to what is already a fact or being grateful it happened and move on. 

So I think ultimately it's a choice. You can only change what you can control. And if you cannot control it, whether you embrace it, you change it, or you suffer for nothing.

Stephen Matini: Do you ever struggle with moving on?

Kofi Douhadji: I do. I do. I'm not gonna gonna shy away. We are human beings. Sometimes it's difficult whether it is a, a beloved one, whether it's a business you're working on, a project, a friend, something, a car. Sometimes it's difficult because you unconsciously build bounds with things with people. And sometime you don't realize until you lose them. 

What works for me is, yes, I'm gonna die. It could be tomorrow. It could be in 10 years. It could, could be far in many, many years, but ultimately that is the only truth. I can for sure tell you for sure that's gonna happen in my life. With that being said, I'm going to lose everything. So losing some now is fine. Just move on and go get other things. There's so much more out there to explore. There's so much more out there to have. And sometimes you can only pick up more oranges when you drop all the rocks in your hands.

Stephen Matini: I express the same concept by saying, you need to shut some doors to open new ones.

Kofi Douhadji: Definitely.

Stephen Matini: I love the thought one day you're going to die, which maybe sounds very scary to a lot of people. And I'm not saying that I'm not scared of dying, but I have to say that as time goes by, as I'm aging like anyone else, I am becoming more and more sensitive to what you're saying, as somehow is just a gentle reminder of not wasting my time now, now is the most important thing, and I should try to make the best out of it. And often times that's a huge motivator for me to, to do stuff, you know, to contribute.

Kofi Douhadji: In my family we sit and we talk about death. We talk about losing someone we love. We have a conversation about it. We try to do that every weekend. People would disagree that young kids can have that conversation. But I'm from a culture where that is praised. Not only does it train the kids, if anything unfortunate happens, but it also give them perspective and help them build that sense of urgency. 

It's not about the length of their life, but it's about the quality and the impact you can have on other people. Death is part of life. You can have the one without the other. And ignoring it or being in denial is not gonna change it whether we talk about it, yes, some people are superstitious, I am on certain aspect too. But disregarding something doesn't change. It's true nature. Yeah, I, I think considering that kind reminder for myself on a daily basis have helped me a lot with decreasing the amount of procrastination in my life, embracing a sense of urgency in everything I do.

Stephen Matini: Urgency is an important word for you.

Kofi Douhadji: Urgency is one of my favorite words in the entire whole dictionary for many, many reasons. You know, I attempted an artistic career, a music career back in Togo, which I failed to do. But during that process, writing songs and, and making music, there's this specific song I wrote, but I was waiting for it to be perfect. 

I will go back to the studio and have my song recording engineer go back and change things over and over again. He was tired of me of the project, of everything, but hey, he's working for me so , he's gonna do what I wanna achieve. 

So fast forward, I was in my car driving down to work one morning, and this song, this new song came on only to be shocked how similar the genre, the, the lyric. Everything was so similar that I myself could hardly believe if I put my song out that I didn't steal that person's idea.No one would believe it. So I never put that song out and that was my first reminder that you have to, to have a sense of urgency in life. 

Fast forward, I met this great man, we served together in the Air Force. He's such a beautiful soul. When I was leaving for training last year, we were testing back and forth, hey bro, I need to see you before I leave. He'll be like, Kofe, stop it, you are coming back. You know, we can hang out when you, you get back. 

I'm like, no, I just don't wanna see you. And the family share some hugs before I leave and I kept going back until he's like, fine coffee, let's meet Sunday. And we did that, spent time. And I can still to right now as I'm talking, feel how we squeezed each other. When we, we hugged the last time I was leaving, can you believe during my training, I found out he passed, he passed away.

It's always difficult when I talk about it always, every single time it's painful. But I'm happy and glad that we had that moment that I get to see him before I left, that I get to spend time with him. I can remember his face, his smile and everything. The smell of his hair when we hugged. That was a friend. 

So a sense of urgency. We always think we have time, but we don't. We are running out of time every single minute. We are running out of time. And that's how I see it. I have a lot of things to do, a lot of ideas I wanna bring to life, but I'm running out of time. So I have to put a sense of urgency in that I wanna stop. I want to be present and listen. I wanna go tell someone, make it known to them that I appreciate them. I don't want to give anything to tomorrow because I might not see tomorrow

Stephen Matini: With the sense of urgency, you seem to be a person that does a ton of things. You accomplish it so much , so much. So how do you make everything happen? Where do you find the time?

Kofi Douhadji: For me, it all boils down to management, management of resources, time, the self family, your team, your hobbies. I think it all boils down to self-knowledge, self-management, self-leadership, and then combining all that to make sense. 

I personally don't go with the work life balance mindset. I think of it more on a harmony perspective. Try to build harmony. If you take your favorite song, it has multiple instruments playing at the same time on multiple levels. Sometime the guitar is higher than the piano, sometime the voice takes the lead. 

That's how, what approach I use with my life sometime by prioritizing and using sense of urgency, you know, which instrument you wanna bring to the lead and what you wanna turn down a little. And just giving it harmonies and building the music you love. 

So for example, when I'm at work during my breaks, I take my guitar and I sit down and I play. While that allows me to decompress and break away from what I do, it gives me that space to distress and to relax and to recover. 

So finding those little ways to make things happen will be determinant in being able to do things that people can perceive as you are doing a lot, but you are just being mindful with how you use your time. 

When it come to the business side of the house though, I think something we look over a lot is teamwork. When you take my publishing company Flying Wings, I'm good at stealing the credit, but there's a team behind doing all the difficult stuff. If you are building a company that when you get sick or when you die cannot survive, then you are just, I mean, it's not meaningful in, in my opinion. So I'm building something that can outlive me. I'm building something that is not gonna stop when I'm gone. I want it to, to be here after I'm gone. 

Yeah. When I'm here or I'm working as an officer in the United States Air Force and people think, how are you able to run a publishing, a whole publishing company? Yes, I don't, my team do and I just create time to be there with my team when they need me to provide the vision, the support, and create the resources they need to get the job done and build the network they need to support them. You might see me being up in front about Flying Wings as a publisher. That's the team. The team is what en enables me to make it happen. 

Also, building processes, something that you can build and repeat. For example, I'm very present on social media. I used to think the number of followers doesn't matter, but I've changed my mind. It's very important how much people follow you on social media. You know, it's very important, but that's not the topic here. The topic is that when you can build processes, it helps manage time and resources better. 

When I have time on the weekend, there are tools that I use to schedule my post throughout the day or the week. When I die ... I know I talk a lot about a lot about dying. When I die, my social media platforms will post at least three months before it stops because I have a process in place. 

When I have time, I create content and schedule them out. So you might see me in my uniform doing military stuff. You'll be there with me and all of a sudden I'm posting on social media. So it’s, it's all about managing and building processes that are a sustainable,

Stephen Matini: A lot of people would love, or they dream of ... to have their own company, pursuing their dreams and what you just said is so important. Finding the right people, the right team. How do you select the right people?

Kofi Douhadji: It takes a lot of different things. For me, the most important thing is trust, integrity, and the willingness to fail. When I am interviewing my people, I'm prospecting to bring on the team. If you're trying to portray yourself to me as you know it all, you're strong, you're smart. You, you are talking to me about all your achievement. I will ask you about all your failures. I'm more interested in your failures. 

Those people who have failed the a lot of time, but still have the drive to win, those are who I want on my team. I've started things multiple times. I've been beginner at multiple things. I want people who can have the same drive because when we fail, not if, when, when we fail, I want people who are going to remain motivated and thrilled to keep going. People who find the joy in the journey.

Stephen Matini: You have so many interests. Of all these interests, is there any of your activities that somehow give you the biggest pleasure?

Kofi Douhadji: Absolutely. I would say coaching my bread and butter where I find a lot of fulfillment. I work with junior leaders stepping into their first leadership positions to build confidence, develop their own personal toolbox that they can use to navigate their first leadership positions. 

I also work with the seasoned and experienced leaders going to crisis or change in their organizations to gain clarity and build a roadmap that they can use to navigate the crisis or the change they're going through. Going from, oh my gosh, we are crashing, what are we gonna do, to actually next week? We need to do so and so, so that in two months this burning building here can be under control. When I see that happen, that's the most rewarding situation for me. So yeah, coaching is definitely where I find most of, of my pleasure.

Stephen Matini: There are so many thoughts and ideas about leadership. 

Kofi Douhadji: Yes. 

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, what would you say that are the most important components to keep in mind about leadership development?

Kofi Douhadji: John C. Maxwell said, leadership is influence. You cannot influence people if you're not walking the talk. You cannot do that if you don't have integrity. I always tell my airmen that I, you have my trust, you don't need to earn it, but don't lose it. 

I think the most important things is to start with self-leadership. Everyone wants to lead others, but most of the time we overlook the self leadership. It all start with the self knowing yourself, being able to lead yourself before you can lead others. 

The most important second thing I could talk about when it comes to leadership, the best leaders are the best followers. The best leaders are able to switch into a followership position in a split of a second. They know they're serving, they know leadership is not a position, but it's influence. 

The Air Force has helped me tremendously on multiple level, becoming a better person, a better leader. The force has invested in me than any other organization has ever invested in me. I think I became a better leader. I gained better tools thanks to the Air Force.

Stephen Matini: Is there anything that you would like those who will listen to this episode to know?

Kofi Douhadji: I would love everyone who would come across this episode of Pity Party Over to know that they are amazing. Whatever your dream is, I know you have what it takes to get it done. You are worthy and none of the situations currently going on in your life does not take or add to your worth. You are worthy and you will always be worthy. And don't let the situations define you. You define what you do.

Stephen Matini: That will bring a lot of warmth to a lot of people. Thank you, Kofi.

Kofi Douhadji: Thank you very much for the honor and the opportunity to share sometimes with you and your audience.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

In our personal and professional lives, we all spend much time pondering problems, but focusing excessively on them may not help us overcome a challenge as quickly as we wish. 

The guest for this episode of Pity Party Over is Dr. Lindsey Godwin, one of the most influential voices for appreciative inquiry, emotional intelligence, and experiential learning theory.

Whereas problem-solving focuses on deficits, appreciative inquiry is an approach to positive change that leverage strengths. 

For Dr. Godwin, inquiring means paying attention to our thoughts, emotions, and bodily signals to make intentional choices on what is important to us.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I would like to know something about your upbringing, if there were any special people, events that somehow have shaped and contributed the most to where you are today?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I would say my upbringing and yeah, the people in my early life had a tremendous impact on who I am and how I see the world completely. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia, sort of rural Appalachia, West Virginia Buchanan, West Virginia, where sort of many generations of my family were from. So it's sort of a lot of roots there too. Right. 

My grandparents were from there. My parents, you know, I was born in the same hospital my mom was , sort of all of that. Small, you know, small town sort of life where everybody knows everybody. So had a very sort of close-knit family where I had my, my grandparents were, both of my grandparents were sort of sets of, my grandparents were very active in my life. In fact my, my one grandparents were literally my next door neighbors.

So we had like dinner together, like a multi-generational dinner together every night. Which I realize now is not always, is not necessarily a typical normal thing in our modern world. And so I had a really sort of beautiful intergenerational upbringing. And part of that too, the closeness of our family and even the having my grandparent feel close. 

I'm the oldest of four children, and so that also impacts, I think, my personality, right? The sort of the oldest child and all of that stuff is true. , all of that oldest child stuff, I think is totally true. 

And I had two younger brothers and a younger sister, and my most immediate younger brother when he was three months old, he contracted infant botulism and through medical, different medical issues and actually some medical accidents at the hospital, some medical malpractice issues that happened at the hospital, when he was in the hospital recovering from his illness, he actually lo lost oxygen to his brain and, and different things. 

And so he ended up being profoundly mentally and physically impaired. He basically was permanently sort of mentally three months old. And so, although his body continued to grow normally, his cognitive ability was stunted at, at three months of age. 

And so he was non-verbal you know, couldn't feed or walk or talk. He basically communicated and interacted like a three month old so he could recognize voices and he would, you know, could laugh and, and and reacts again, much, much like you imagine like a three month old baby interacting. And so our whole family was really focused around his care and his needs. And so from a, I was three. I was three. I'm the oldest, right? And so he was three years younger than me. 

And so, and then my other siblings are younger than him. And so our, our household really learned that taking care of other people is something that we just do inherently without asking. And sort of the idea of, you know, looking at, at the needs of other people around us, I think was something that we saw day in and day out. 

And also the fragility of life, right? We saw that sort of day in and day out because he did have sort of fragile health. And in fact, he when I was, I was a senior in high school, so I was about 18 and he was 15. He had a massive seizure in his sleep and passed away at our, our house. So he al we always lived with us, right? And so even just the going through that right as a family and losing losing anybody is traumatic and, and such an impact on us. But I think that that all of that totally obviously had an impact on me. 

Also growing up, my grandfather was a, a Methodist minister, two uncles and a cousin who are Methodist minister. So there was a lot of also sort of this idea of, you know, again, focused on taking care of others and how can we sort of be servant leaders in the world, I guess is really from both, literally in my household, you know, being so focused on being such a, a primary caregiver to somebody who had special needs to growing up in a family where service and sort of asking, you know, how, how can we help other people? 

You know, my mother, my grandmother were teachers, my dad's a pharmacist. So there was a lot of , a lot of sort of service, service to the world. And so I think that I realized, I realized it then, but I definitely realized it now looking back how much that was an imprint on me in terms of A) believing that I can be of service first of all, right? So that self-efficacy belief of like i, I can be of service and of help in the world is hardwired in me, I guess, to where it's you know, I've seen in other situations. 

There was also a unique optimism in my family where, you know, this, this is, it is in so many, it's a tragic story, right? What happened with my brother? And it could easily sort of rip a family apart, right? I mean, I saw that with other families. So, you know, leading to divorce, leading to all kinds of things. And if anything, it made our family stronger. Like I said, my grandparents, you know, lived right next door to us, were so involved in helping to, to raise us and stuff. 

And so there was also, it might sound paradoxical in the face of something that really was quite tragic, was that there was a lot of optimism, and not, not optimism, but like he was magically going to be better, but optimism in the sense of we can still create a life of love and goodness and, and stuff. And so, so I think that those things really just were so hard. So yeah, not hardwired and lived day in and day out in my household. 

And so when I find myself now being called into like education, higher education, and then my work with appreciative inquiry and sort of, you know, positive psychology and all of that, and working with organizations to try to help them be their best self, right, leverage their assets and stuff, I realized, you know, that that comes from a very primal place in me, if that makes sense.

Stephen Matini: This event made your whole family a family of service. How did you find out what was gonna be your specific way to be of service to people?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Oh, that's a great question. And I, being in this space where I saw you know, my, my brother had unique attributes, different than other people and stuff, but I also became very aware of my own abilities too, right? In the face of, of having such different abilities than my brother. 

And so I was a really good student. I was a straight A student. I was valedictorian of my high school class. I always knew that I wanted to, I had a long, a long vision of myself going all the way in school. It was no question I was going to college. I was like, gonna get like higher ed degrees. 

Again, back to remembering that I lived in this, in, in West Virginia, in this town where I would say the majority of my people that I graduated with, a lot of them were first generation to go to college, some of them, right?

Where I grew up in a, in a family where education was my, you know, my grandfathers both had higher degrees, which wasn't the norm in terms of the population that I was living in. And so education was a very, was a very valuable thing in our household as well. Cuz I think my parents also realized that that was the path to having options, right? To having different options in the world and, and things. 

So I was this straight a student and knew that I wanted to go all the way, and I had a, I knew I wanted to get a PhD. I had no idea what I wanted to get a PhD in. That didn't matter to me. I was just like, I'm gonna get a PhD. And I had visions of being a professor. 

I started off as a genetics major. Actually. I was gonna be a genetic counselor because that was part of my like, oh, I can help other families, I could help other families. And I have that sort of empathetic experience that I could bring to that. And, and maybe, maybe there is genetic things that could help, you know. So I was in this very sort of space with that. 

So I went off to college and I was a declared genetics major, and then I took my first psychology class and I just like, it's like sometimes when you meet people and you just fall in love with them. Like, I, I took this psychology class and I was like, oh my God, this is like the missing piece of the puzzle. And for, and of course I love my professor, so I like fell in love with her. But I fell in love with the like, field of psychology and I was like, you mean I can understand human nature and I can understand how people react.

And so I fell in love with psychology. And then of course I, I went on and I took sociology classes. I fell in love with sociology. I just, so I ended up I ended up Stephen being a psychology, sociology double major with a biology minor . So I joked that I was like, I just like studying people and trying to understand them like at all levels from the like, cellular level to the interpersonal level to the societal level. 

So I, I was sort of following my passion and my heart of like, this is interesting to me, this is it was like opening up, you know, it's like opening up your eyes and seeing new things when you're studying things you're in love with. And so again, I knew that I wanted to go on in education. I had no idea what, I had no idea , I wanted to do it.

I pressure, I was like, I knew I didn't wanna be a, a counselor actually, I did know that like, I again, knowing and seeing the, the weight of my own family, I was like, I don't know that I can hold that for other people day in and day out. So I actually knew I didn't wanna become a therapist, an individual therapist. 

And so upon graduation I started, I was like, well, but I know I'm gonna get another degree, so what is it? It was just like, it was like not even a class, like, I'm gonna get another degree, but what will it be at? I have no idea. 

And so I, I came across this program in conflict resolution at George Mason University, and it was like this wonderful intersection of, you know, the psychology and the sociology and even bio ..., you know, it was like all of these things. And so I like traipsed off to George Mason at what is now the, the, the Jimmy Carter School for Peace and Complex Studies at George Mason. 

And still with this, I think it was like, I was still trying to figure out how can I help? I mean, it was still this calling of like, how am I understanding and adding to my toolbox and my sense of understanding people so that I could show up as a better catalyst or support for positive change, right? I mean, those weren't the words I was using, but I realized that's what I was trying to do.

Stephen Matini: I love that you studied people from different angles. What have you learned about people so far?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I think, and I, I, my husband and I joke about this, at the end of the day, I always say, I was like, you know, at the end of the day, we all wanna be loved and seen and heard. I was like, it's so, I was like all of this complexity that like, you know, we've studied and all this stuff. I was like, you know, at the end of the day, all people want is to be loved and seen and heard. Like that's what we want. We want to just be seen and heard. And, and fundamentally I think, you know, it does actually come down to wanting to be loved. 

And so there is many, you know, master's degrees, a PhD, at the end of the day, I was like, it's actually pretty simple. What people want and need and what we're all trying to, I think, act out in different ways, whether that's in our family life, in our organizational life, it is when we see so many, you know, whether it's wrapped up as a communication challenge or a, or a, you know, it's whatever. It's like, well, what's going on? 

Or do people feel like they are being seen and loved and heard often? Not often not. When we see sort of the symptoms of all of the, the strife and the things it often comes down to, not that solutions are, are necessarily that easy, but I think that is a huge thing that I've learned just about human that has sort of resonated with at people that I see and work with, is that at the end of the day, I think that we are human and what makes us human.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think we make us so complicated as humans?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: ? Oh my goodness, right? What a great question. If we knew the answer to that, Stephen, you and I would be millionaires, . I don't know. Maybe we're surprised that it could be that simple? My dear friend David Cooperrider always says, you know, that people, no organization was ever made to be a problem, right? Organizations are created to be solutions to things, right? They're created, whether it's a healthcare system or it's a, it's a service. 

Organizations are, structures aren't created to be problems. They're created to be solutions. And I think sometimes we get overcomplicated and we forget that. I think we forget that, you know, a we've created all this, like we've created our, if our structures aren't working for us, guess what? We created those and we can change them, right? I mean, not that it's not gonna take time or be messy or there's, you know, there's not all of the things with change that we know in the sense of fear and loss that come with change that's so natural and normal.

But I think that we, we forget, we forget like we create these entities to be a solution and then we sort of edify them or you know, and we forget that we've created them and then we feel like they start creating us. Somehow we change our behavior to fit into the system versus realizing actually, you know, the system... 

And we also I think are creatures of habit. I know I'm a creature of habit. I should just, maybe I should say the royal we, but me, I'm a creature of habit and many organizations and people I work with are creatures of habit. And so we also, I think get into our routines and we definitely, you know, there is comfort in our systems and stuff. And, and I understand right that, that there's then a sense of, of wanting to not change or keep sort of the status quo and all of the, like, this is how we've done it.

And so there's comfort in knowing that even though as we're seeing very increasingly rapidly now that our systems aren't getting us the results that we want anymore. Or in the ways that we do. And so it reminds us that we need to revisit that and make changes. But I think we do, right? We get, we create these things and then they kind of take a life of their own. And then we forget that we were the, we were the artists, we were the architects, , we were the, you know, we were the painters of all of that we're seeing. And that we could pick up a brush and sort of paint with new colors, even though that might be a little scary.

Stephen Matini: You're one of the most important voices for appreciative inquiry, emotional intelligence, experiential learning theory. How did you put together these ingredients? I mean, you just simply were drawn to them. I mean, how did it happen?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I love it, Stephen. And I wish I could say yes, but I had this magical recipe and that I knew what I was doing. But I think I was listening to my just like I sort of went off to study conflict resolution. I, I found myself through listening to my own instinct and stuff. I ended up from George Mason with my master's. I went to Case Western Reserve University to the Weatherhead School of Management to do my PhD. Cuz I told you I knew I wanted to get a PhD. 

I didn't know. And what, and so this this is so funny, it's almost embarrassing to say this. I was taking a class, I was at George Mason, 9/11 had just happened. So here I am in Washington DC 9/11 had just happened. I was the we had a university dispute resolution project that did mediation and dialogue work on campus that I was the director of.

Again, here we are in this, you know, historic moment, sort of at this epicenter in DC where there was a lot of conflict happening afterwards in terms of things happening with our student population. Everybody again, trying to make sense of what was going on. There was things happening. And here I was in this center, this conflict resolution center, these like professors were sort of the go-to people around the world that were, you know, and I looked at 'em and I realized like, they don't have this figured out either. 

What do you mean you don't, you know, he help us, like we're students here, we're trying to like, how do we show up in this moment, in this turmoil, in this crisis? And realizing that they really didn't either. I started again, I went back to my, what is my thing? My, my fallback is like, I need to learn something that my instinct is like I have to, there's something here for me to learn.

And so I actually started then taking classes outside of the institute. I ended up taking a course called Consulting for Organizational Change because I was like, okay, I've studied all this that and then like may, maybe the missing piece is the system piece. This, like you said, this organizational system, like what the, the sys the system that's broken and like is holding us into these, you know, non-functional relationships with each other. What's, you know, maybe that's what I need to study. 

I ended up taking a course with a woman Ann Baker who's phenomenal, who had been a student of David Kolb’s experiential learning theory at Case Western. And she knew I was looking at doctoral programs and she's like, I really think that you should go look at this doctoral program. I think you would really enjoy it. And I was like, okay. I knew nothing about, I didn't even really know what organizational behavior is.

I shouldn't say that out loud, but I didn't, I didn't know who David Cooperrider was. I didn't know what appreciative intelligence was. I didn't know what, I didn't know any of these things. I just knew that I was like searching. I was for knowledge to help me again, show up in this what felt like, you know, nobody knows really how to show up and be a positive catalyst in this moment. 

And so I was, I was, I felt like I was on a quest and I found myself, I was like, okay, well I'll look at this program. It was like the top rated organizational behavior program in the world. And it just so happened it's the top rated cuz there was just these amazing thought leaders that were there together at the same time. So I landed myself in this moment of time when, again, David Kolb of Experiential Learning Theory was one of my professors. 

And Richard Boyatzis with Emotional Intelligence was one of my professors. And David Cooperrider and Ron Fry were my professors. And I, I felt like coming home, people come there to study with them, right? And I was like, I didn't know any, I was like, just following my, I was like following my curiosity and my quest to sort of fill in what felt like gaps, my knowledge and my skill base. 

And somehow this mixture just really, it did feel like a magical recipe. I joke, right? Like, so it wasn't that I actively went to the cabinet and pulled out the ingredients. It was more, I think I fell over backwards in the kitchen and some stuff mixed together. And I realized that I had this beautiful thing that had been baked in terms of sort of studying and learning alongside of these amazing thought leaders and seeing how these different pieces go together.

I always joke like I'm sort of a boundary spanner. Relationally like I'm the kid that was like friends with people that weren't friends with each other. I was like in, in sort of academic world. Like I studied things like across disciplines, right? That people usually stay in one silo and then stuff. And I, I think maybe I'm more like a bumblebee . 

So I like the cross pollination and I really, I started doing work. I did some work with Dave Kolb and his wife Alice. And so I got some, some deeper knowledge and wisdom and really seeing how experiential learning and really can impact. And again, it just so resonated with how I learned and how I showed up in the world. 

I started doing writing with Richard in emotional intelligence. And then when I started doing applied work with David with organizations and before I knew it, I'm like going off to the United Nations and different projects, you know, David's around the world doing amazing things and bringing students with him.

So I had this sort of front seat learning with these amazing people. And so you're right, these were ingredients that to me felt like in and of themselves, one alone wasn't the answer. But together weaving them together really, like I said, sort of creates a new, it just again, helps me understand the world at a deeper level. 

And it helps me be a better interventionist because it gives me a wider tool set, it gives me a wider appreciation, it gives me a wider curiosity of the questions that I ask. And again, I wish I could say it was because I was so brilliant, I put them together and it was because I was brilliant enough to follow my curiosity, my instinct that this was gonna be a, an an intellectual home at case Western for me. And it led to, yeah, my discovery of these amazing fields that you will know are just each and of themselves impactful in the world and together, I think are just so rich.

Stephen Matini: Based on your experience, curiosity and instincts are the same thing?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Curiosity and instincts, are they the same thing? That is a good question. I've never thought of that. I think they are related, but not the same thing. Instincts are a form of intelligence. There is a wisdom in our instincts. I think that sometimes we've lost the sort of tapping into like our physical wisdom in our bo like you feel it, right? 

Like something feels right or like you meet a person and you, you either you have an instinct about them or a situation, you have an instinct about them to be an instinct is sort of that, yeah, that sort of innate wisdom that we have that we don't always listen to , but that we have this innate wisdom often at a cellular level, right? Like at a physical level, whether it's sits in our stomach like I'm holding my stomach right now, I feel it, or right. Or it sits in our, you know, our chest or our head. 

And it's more of a sense of how or what we wanna show up in a situation or what we wanna do. You know, like taking a new job, is this right or not for me? Is this, you know, do I wanna promote, you know, like whatever, whatever sort of coming our way, an instinct of do I go left or right versus curiosity. I mean we can have, I think instincts can lead to curiosity. 

I think curiosity is more of the question, right? The inquiring, it's then it's the act of then actively asking and getting that curious, right? So asking and inquiring, I wonder why I feel that way. I wonder why that is my, you know, where did that come from? Or you know, you can get curious about your instincts and it can go back to like, oh, it's because this was my experience when I was five and that's , right?

That's why, where did it come from? But I think they are different. But I think they’re maybe cousins or one, you know, can lead to the other. I think they can sort of point us, right? Our curiosity can, we can get in touch with our instincts by sort of getting curious about, well what am I really feeling right now? And okay, if I make that decision in my head, how does that feel in my body? Right? Like in getting curious can help us tune into our instincts and I think our instincts can help open up curiosity. That makes sense.

Stephen Matini: Maybe, and I'm thinking out loud, maybe curiosity is how instincts manifest themselves..

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Hmm. How say more. That's really interesting. Like, yeah, I love that.

Stephen Matini: You know, I have a very coaching like question, which I hate to ask, but I cannot verbalize it in any other way. A as a result of all these ingredients which you found and you pursued through your curiosity and instincts. Now who have you become as a person? How have they affected you as a person?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Well, part of it too, I think for me is the learning. It's been, I've become a person who has learned to trust her instincts and curiosity. And that might not sound like a big deal, but I, again, I think you see this probably with definitely people that we coach with organizations, is that I think we actually often sec second guess or ignore that innate wisdom or we suppress our curiosity because we're in a system that's telling us that we should look this way and act this way and, and this is what we should want. 

And so I think I, I, I feel that I am a person that being on this path where I have sort of followed my curiosity, my instincts towards sort of certain, whether it's things I'm studying or positions that's led me to do things that other people think are crazy .

But, but that have have worked out, right? So like I, my husband and I, for example, were at, we're at a university together. We were on faculty at a university, we were on tenure track positions together before we moved to Vermont. There was this position that sort of appeared in my radar at this little school in Vermont. 

And they were talking about experiential learning. They were talking about business as a force for good. I had never been to Burlington, Vermont. I had never right? Like, and I, my, I was like, well, let's explore it. And so we explored this, it felt like this job had my name on it and we explored it. And so next thing I know we're like, you know, my husband and I are giving up tenure because the school that that I'm at now doesn't have tenure cuz it's a different kind of professionally focused school.

You know, we're selling our house, we're moving away from our family to go live in Vermont, which is beautiful. But as far away, we, my husband and I sort of operate like this together. People thought we were crazy. People thought, like, my colleagues, you know, they're like, what are you doing ? What, what's going on? Like, what are, what do you mean you're like, you know, you, you have like tenure at this other place basically. 

So sometimes it leads me to do things that don't seem quite rational to other people that are sort of going step by step, like in the system that is created to do, to say yes to things, right? So again, playing on, in having the opportunity to collaborate with amazing people like David Cooperrider, right? Like he's invited me to do projects and I've been connected up with people around the world that's like organized and we'll plan a world conference in Nepal.

I had never done that, you know, in the moment. I was like, what was I thinking when I said yes to some of these different things that have just because they feel right? So I think it's, it's a long-winded answer to say, I think these different ingredients grounded me in like being an honoring my experience and also seeking out new experiences to learn from or the emotional intelligence definitely sort of tuning into the my emotions and the emotions of other people and sort of navigating the world that way. 

And then of course, appreciative inquiry. Inquiry is the verb , right? Like is inquiring and intentionally seeking out what is here that is giving life to me, to my family. And it doesn't have to make sense to other people. It doesn't have to fit into somebody's box of this is what my career should look like.

You know, again, I graduated from Case (Western), like, people were like, oh, I'm gonna go off to like a tier one research school. Well I knew I wanted to be at a teaching school because I knew that that's where my heart was, is I wanted to be an experiential teacher myself, I wanted to, I wa doesn't mean I still don't write and do academic things, but I'm not, that wasn't my vision for myself, even though it was maybe some other people's vision for me. 

You know, following and, and continuing to decisions and really trying to navigate the world from that place of instinct and inquiry. What is it that feels right and I know is right in my heart? And getting really curious about the, you know, from that appreciative inquiry space of what is giving life and energy to me and my family. And it doesn't have to make sense to other people.

Stephen Matini: Everyone wants to be loved, it wants to feel connected, you know? And and now we're talking about instinct. We're talking about the importance of being curious, you know, of constantly inquiring. I don't know how it works for other people, but I have to say that I made my life really complicated in the past because I did what you said. I second guessed my instinct. And I've done that most of my life. You know, the instinct was there, I knew, but in many situations was at some point afraid of making the decision. Have you always trusted your instinct or, I don't know, like me was you, you had to learn this along the way?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I know it's like, it's a, it's a cheap answer if I say sort of both actually. P paradoxically actually, if I get serious, paradoxically, I think that early on, and I think through even just the, like, you know, here I had just like lost my brother went off to college. I was very tuned into like, it was actually the first time, right? It was the first time. Like I went off to college. It was the first time like I could focus on what do I want, right? 

Like, cuz it wasn't, my life wasn't swirling around taking care of somebody else. And so it was sort of this opening moment for me to be like getting really in tune with my instincts. And so I think I had this wonderful sort of several chapters of my life where I was really tuned into following my instincts, following my curiosity.

And like I said, that led me to sort of case that led me to sort of then professionally land. It led me up here to Vermont to do this amazing work that I'm doing at the, the center and, and working with organizations. And I think actually in the past, I've been now here for 11 years going on 12 years. And that's the longest I've ever been in one place, one institution. 

I think I'm actually working to not reawaken, not that they're asleep, I don't know what verb I am. Maybe they need dusting off. I think maybe I've become a little, taking it for granted. I need to find the right verb. What is the right verb of of I think maybe ru I don't know if it's a rusty. I, I, I don't know Stephen, if you have a verb here, sort of like.

Stephen Matini: You got comfortable.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I got comfortable! That's a great thank you. Right? So it's like, I think that like I, my instincts took me to this beautiful place and like created this life that I love with my family and doing work that I'd always dreamed about. I'm a co I am a, I'm a full professor. I've won the awards and I've written the things and I've done the stuff. 

So now I'm kind of, and it started, I had a sabbatical in 2019. My first sabbatical was this wonderful gift in academia and just starting to try to reawaken and maybe check in with my instincts and my curiosity to make sure, and I'm sort of on that quest right now and it's active work that I'm doing right now to be like, how do I wanna continue to build? What is my next chapter? What is my next chapter individually, collectively with my family, you know, so that I'm not operating just from a place of comfort, just like we talked about with organizations, right?

Like, this is what it looks like and this is what it feels like and this is what my roles are. And I am starting to more intentionally check back in with my instincts. Where is my energy? There are, you know, new, new things I'm wanting to write about and talk about and put out into the world and what does that look like? 

And oh, does that mean that then my life still looks like this box? Or do I need to actually, it needs to look like an octagon or it needs to work. And so, you know, and then everybody has an opinion too, right? Like, oh, you should leave higher ed. Oh, you should be a full-time consultant. Oh no, you should, you know, everybody has opinions. 

And so it is going back to, and, and tapping back into my instincts, like it's sort of tuning all of that noise out and really sort of doing the work. Here I am at this stage in my life and my career and my kids are in high school and I still have so much more that I wanna do and be in, create and offer in the world. What is that gonna look like and how and where is the best place to do that? And it's not an either or, how am I continually actively creating what I want and what gives me life and what I think gives me an opportunity to add value in the world in new ways and not just being comfortable.

Stephen Matini: There's a wonderful master coach, his name is Michael Stratford. One day I asked, I said, how would I know that I'm right? And he says, righteousness, when he feels right., which seems to be such a simple answer, but it's true. And for me, like there's this sense of .. YES, that I have to go that way, you know? If someone were still in a phase of doubting herself, you know, her instinct, what would you say that could be the first step to be more reliant on that, on listening to that voice?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: When I'm thinking about the righteousness thing, I think that's so true, . That is so true. I love that. I think the advice that I have, whether it's an an individual, organization, I always start from a, a place of small steps to just take a baby step and like experiment. Like just with my kids who are picky eaters and don't wanna try anything. I was like, you don't have to eat the whole hamburger. Just take like one bite. It's sort of finding like, where can we give ourselves the opportunity to experiment where I'm not gonna lose my job. I'm not gonna , I'm not gonna totally like, you know, fall apart ... 

Stephen Matini: Safe.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: There's a safe space in it, but also that it does push me, right? So like, it's, it's safe. Like we're on the, we're ice. I always like, I'm terrified of like pond ice skating here in Vermont. You know, you're not gonna fall through the ice , but you're on the ice. 

One thing. What's one thing today that you can really try out, you know, make a decision about what, based on how you're, not how you're thinking, but how you're feeling. See how that goes. 

Great advice that I've been given that I do myself as like I try on decisions like clothes we're so out of touch with how we feel cuz we're so in our head, my dear colleague, she was like, you should, you should live in a decision for 24 hours and try it on like a coat. 

First of all, recognize and we often have more time to make a decision than we give ourselves. But if you can can really sort of in your head be like, fine, I'm gonna try on the yes to this, right? Somebody's asked me to do something and I'm gonna try on the yes.

So I'm gonna live in my head and my body for like 24 hours that like I have said yes to this ask whatever it is. And like, how does that feel? Do you, do you, does your stomach hurt cuz you're thinking about it? Are you excited? Like just noticing, right? And then switch, like then sort of be like, nope, I'm gonna say no to this and live with the, like I'm saying no to this. And what does that feel like and what, you know. So part of it is sort of the giving ourselves even the, the space and the exercise of, of listening, right? Getting in touch with what those instincts are. 

So the trying on of decisions is a great exercise to then, because then, you know, I mean, we know, right? You know, as soon as in your head you like said yes or no to something. And if you're really sort of, yeah, like my stomach hurts, okay, well then that probably isn't what I really wanna do.

Stephen Matini: When I go through a rough moment somehow becomes a super, it becomes harder to listen to that voice, to be self-reliant, to, to listen to those instincts. When you have a difficult moment, for whatever the reason, is there anything that you do to get out of it?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Try to connect with people, things or places that make me laugh . Like, so again, sounds easy, sounds silly. It's actually hard, right? When we're like in a space where we are. So, but sometimes again, that's one of the gifts my husband brings, that some of my best friends, my kids bring is like to see the, not necessarily even the humor in the situation, but to find humor in something. 

There is such a healing power in laughter. Whether it's seeing the absurdity in something else or the absurdity in ourselves. If I can, I try to like then actively connect up with people, things move these books, something that will, it's a shift. And we know that from a neurological, right? It's like stuff that we know even now from a neurological standpoint, right? Thanks to our positive psychology researchers and stuff. It's like I'm literally changing the chemical flow in my head.

I mean, they say right laughter's the best medicine. That's why, you know, I've cried until I've laughed, right? Like, you just sort of like, you've, you've probably experienced that too, where it's just you get to a place and to me that's like an emotional switch helps me to get into a different emotional space that then it actually helps me get into a place where I can be more reflective and I can be more thoughtful even because when I'm in such a negative emotional space, whether it's sad or angry or you know, fill in the blank, disappointed that I, you know, I'm literally not thinking straight. Right? 

And again, we know that neurological, we know that neurologically, right? That like our prefrontal cortex has literally shut down. And so it's sort of how do I, how do I reawaken the rest of my brain so I can even process what's happened? Richard Boyatzis from emotional intelligence and stuff, right? They talk about how, you know, you well know this, right? Amygdala hijacking, right? How do we hijack it back? Right? 

Like it's, so it's sort of, I try to find ways to sort of have that sometimes I literally have to be in a different space. I have to be with different people. I have to, I know when that first laugh comes out that I am, I'm switching gears.

Stephen Matini: If you had to say what is the main theme that has come out out of our conversation, what would you say that is?

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: I think there's a thread. There's some intention, I don't know the word intentionality is coming up for me. I'm gonna listen to my instincts, but I, the word intentionality is coming up I think because I think there's a lot of connectivity in the, the being intentional from whether that's, we've talked about sort of, you know, following our own path to listening to our instincts, being intentional about inquiring, being intentional when we're in a negative space. And how do we intent bring intentionality to honor that space, but also move forward from that space. 

And it's a nice, I think juxtaposition actually with our exploring of things like instincts and stuff. But I actually think the way that we've been exploring and talking about it, that there's a lot of intentionality, acting from instincts and a place of inquiry that actually requires a lot of intentionality, which I think some of our stories and conversation have shown.

Stephen Matini: I love the fact that we touched the topic of instinct and curiosity. And I find it really interesting because the whole business world, as you know, it's not set based on that type of thinking, if anything is about problem solving. You know, very rational, logical, and always say there's a space and time for that. Then you got to move on. And very often when people engage in that sort of thinking, they sink, you know? So that's actually what I personally love about positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, it just pushes people forward.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: It is right. That intentionality. It takes, I guess it takes courage, , right? I don't often think about that. And I love, back to your word that you said, sort of righteousness, that there is something when you know that you're on your path. It's not that you're not gonna make mistakes to your point. Like it's not that the things are gonna be all easy or that it's, you know, things are always gonna be, I always joke, it's not that it's like rainbows and unicorns, like that's not what we're talking about. 

But we are talking about righteousness and I love that the righteousness, like the right, it feels right. Like, you know, you're on your right path. Decisions actually become a lot easier when you tap into that because you know, know that left is the way that you need to go. And it doesn't matter if everybody's going right because that's your even, you know, your right path happens to be left, well then go left. Right?

Stephen Matini: You are so precious, I really love the way you think.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Well this is ... Steve ...

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for doing this with me. I really, really love listening to you.

Dr. Lindsey Godwin: Thank you. It's been a joy. I said, like I said, this has been my, I'm making a soft re-entry back into the semester and so you're helping to reawaken my brain. I really appreciate it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Our past experiences impact our lives, from how we interpret current events to how we view ourselves and others. 

Sometimes our past experiences are responsible for the fear that keeps us trapped in a loop despite our best efforts to move on. 

The guest for this episode of Pity Party Over is Nina Bressler. Nina is the Global Head of Societal Learning for Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Switzerland whose mission is to discover new ways to improve and extend people's lives.

Nina believes that learning from our experiences is the medicine to overcome fear and live a life with a  sense of purpose. Moving beyond fear is adopting a growth mindset that allows us to see the world and ourselves as ever-changing dynamics filled with possibilities.  

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: I read your essay, “Do What Makes You Feel Alive.”

Nina Bressler: Oh ...

Stephen Matini: You struck a chord because my parents were born in 1929, and a lot of what you wrote, you know. resonated with me because both of them went through World War II ...

Nina Bressler: Mom was four years old when the siege of Leningrad started. She escaped with my grandma who was just who's quite young. She was only 21. They were on one of the first transports to leave Leningrad because my mother's father and my grandfather was pretty high up in the Army. And so there were two transports that went across. 

I don't know how much you know about Leningrad, but when the Nazis surrounded it there was, it was completely under siege and there was no supplies coming in. The Soviet government, you know, Stalin wasn't really helping the people of Leningrad. But in the winter when the, when Lake Ladoga froze, they were able to start bringing transports across. And my mom tells the story that she was in one of the first transports. It was her transport, another transport.

Nina Bressler: And as they were crossing the lake they, there was some bombings and they saw the other transport actually go through the ice, but they were able to make it across. And then she spent the majority of the war first, the first few years in Russia and then eventually in Georgia as refugees, but with some family members. 

And then my father, he was also a child during the siege of Leningrad, but he spent the first winter in Leningrad, so he really had memories of people starving. And he was a little bit older. He was six when the war started. 

When they came back to Leningrad after the war, you needed to register either as Russian or as Jewish. And so both my family, both sides of my family actually had Jewish roots. But what that meant was in the seventies the Soviets opened up the borders and let people through the Iron Curtain with the intention of immigrating to Israel. 

But many Russian Jews in the seventies went to other countries. So they used that opportunity to leave the Soviet Union. And then, yes, my mom ended up in Vienna then  was my grandmother who was, you know, already in her early sixties. And and my brother who was 15.

Stephen Matini: And then she found out she was pregnant with you in Vienna.

Nina Bressler: Yeah, so my mom got to Vienna. She you know, they went to the Jewish Refugee Agency and they actually said, oh, well you see your mother's baptized Lutheran, so you're not real Jews, so we're not gonna be able to support your asylum to the US. 

And they went across the street to Caritas, which is the Catholic charities. And Caritas said, oh, you know, we we would love to help you. And actually I think for my family it was better because all of the Russian Jews that were then transported from Vienna to Rome and a lot lived there almost in ghetto conditions for a year or more waiting for their asylum to be sorted. 

But Caritas kept their refugees in Vienna. So my family actually had a relatively nice apartment and my mother she was 42 years old, her stomach started to hurt one day and she went to the doctor and the doctor said well you are pregnant.

So yeah, so when she was in Vienna, she found out she was pregnant with me. And definitely a lot of people said, oh, you know you don't speak English, you're immigrating to a new country. Probably not the ideal time to be having a child, but she yeah, she always wanted a second child. 

And so I was born in Vienna and my father, you know, I'm very genetically very much like him. I look a lot like him. So he didn't meet me till he was able to get through the Iron Curtain when I was already almost nine years old. 

My mother had to stay in Vienna until I was born. That's what Caritas asked her to do. And then we came to the United States when I was four months old and you know, there were a lot of other refugees in the US and friends from Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg. 

And they yeah, they would take pictures and send, send them to my dad and things like that. So he saw pictures of me. But you know, even then it wasn't like today you didn't have Skype or other, you know, video calling services, but even letters always were opened by the KGB and read and there were a lot of problems to even just communicate with people on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Stephen Matini: There's one thing in your assay that resonated with me, I'm gonna read it and then if you don't mind maybe sharing some thoughts. You say, “the story that I was born into was one of luck and with that came an unspoken sense of duty. The sense of duty one feels to the legacy of the family can be both an enabler and a hindrance.”

Nina Bressler: Yeah. So, you know growing up my mother shared the story of her childhood a lot. And her childhood was not a nice one, it was in the middle of war. And now that I have a daughter, I think about that a lot because you know, as your child grows up, a lot of times you wanna process your own traumas or you start to process your own traumas as your child goes through that same period of their life. 

And probably a lot of my mother's storytelling was just trying to process what she had been through cause she couldn't relate it to how my life was so different. And so she would all highlight quite often about how lucky I was. And I think it was common to hear that anyhow from immigrants. You know, we gave up so much, we left our homeland and we came to this country to give you opportunity. 

So you have that sense of duty that you need to achieve something in order to live out their dreams in some way. But of course it also puts on a lot of pressure, especially in people who maybe are already, you know, looking to please and things like that. So it's an interesting psychological dynamic that plays out over time.

Stephen Matini: I believe it is such an important point of in the developmental maturity of any person. Some people are able to overcome this, this friction and some people get stuck in it.

Nina Bressler: At the time really wanted to be very American, right? And so there was this like age divide cause my parents were much older when they had me. Then there was the cultural divide. And so I definitely felt like an outsider in the family but also felt like an outsider in most other situations. But I got quite good at kind of becoming a chameleon I would say. 

So I actually didn't live with my parents from the age of 14. I lived with my brother for some time and then I lived in a roommate situation when I was still finishing high school. And I got really involved in like several subcultures. So I got really into horses and this was almost like my doorway to being really American cause I like celebrated all the American holidays or the Catholic holidays rather.

And then also I got really involved in the Boston music scene that also, you know, that subculture and there's many subcultures within that. But I was always able to be quite eclectic in my like tastes but then also fit in and almost any scene that I got involved in. So I enjoyed it was always this balance where I enjoyed observing what was happening in a culture a little bit from the outside, but also taste testing it a little bit, if that makes sense. And I think that those kind of patterns still continue today for me. 

My parents, I did a lot of work I think on understanding their relationship with each other, understanding my relationship with them. And I do feel that it's been an ama a wonderful perspective to understand what I take from them, but also to consciously be able to say this, these are things that I've chosen not to take from them. Cause these are patterns that have been passed down generation to generation sometimes, or just because of the, you know, culture in the society that don't serve me. And so I can also make the choice to not take them. That's sometimes harder to do than it actually is to say, but you know, if you work on it, you can achieve it.

Stephen Matini: When I was 16, my father was diagnosed with cancer. And so for many, many years I lived this really anxiety that I didn't have that much time. We loved each other, but somehow we really, there was a lot of friction, there were a lot of stuff that needed to work out with him. 

But at some point I remember that, I don't know how that happened, but there was this thought in my head which was, listen, if you just simply stay in this space, it's gonna be a nightmare for the rest of your life, especially when he will not not be around. So you really have to let it go. And somehow I started looking at him from a different perspective, which is really the perspective that I have now, which is I truly believe he did his best with what he had. 

So the question for you is, is there anything that you did that helped you make the switch that put you in a position of actually understanding what you could take from your family and what you could leave behind?

Nina Bressler: I think probably one of the main triggers was when my daughter was born. So before I gave birth to my daughter, I definitely had like underlying anxieties or issues that I knew existed, but I didn't spend time on them. 

And then after she was born I started to really kind of see the world a little bit differently and really think about, okay, what is the, what is the kind of parent that I want to be and how do I wanna show up for her? How do I wanna show up in my relationships? And that led me to start doing some work. So actually, you know, going and seeing a therapist and digging into some more of my family background cause that's where you start. It's like doing a master's thesis on yourself, right? , these are some really interesting patterns. 

I don't know that I would make these same choices for my daughter. I'm not saying I would've changed anything, but for years yeah, I realized that oh wow, I was really hurt and angry because of choices that were made that were actually nobody's fault. They were trying to do their best. 

The catalyst was that I didn't wanna live with that anger, so I needed to kind of find a way to work through it. And neither of my parents are able to really hear my experience without feeling defensive or not enough. Processing it with them directly hasn't worked for me. 

Actually going and doing the work to understand where they were coming from, how really horrible traumas impacted their behavior for life, being empathetic to that and then also being compassionate to myself that resulted in behaviors that hurt me too.  Makes it possible to kind of forgive everybody and be compassionate to everybody, but also to not be judgmental about my anger, let's say. 

Because for years I was like, oh, I shouldn't feel like that about my parents. And you know, the anger that just comes out sometimes cause you're not in touch with it. By being able to be somewhat compassionate that you do have some strong feelings about it you're, I think much, it's much more effective in terms of transforming it than feeling shame about it.

Stephen Matini: Your story has shaped your purpose, your motto, which you sum up in, “Do what makes you feel alive.” I always find interesting people, but throughout all these years in my career, I've seen very few happy people. Interestingly enough when we work together, oftentimes people have this question, which is, is this really the life I was supposed to have? And inevitably comes up an element of fear that may have prevented them from taking the steps to be really, let's say, align with who they are. What was important to them. What would you say? There could be a first step to, to find that the voice that makes you feel alive?

Nina Bressler: The first thing is you need to just reframe the way that you see your work. So I think for me, I really never pursued a position, so it wasn't a job title or at least the idea of pursuing a job title. I kicked out quite early that I pursued experiences and growth. 

So and I think, yeah, I mean I did so many different jobs. Like I worked as a bike messenger, I worked as a waitress and a bar. I worked as a veterinary technician I worked as an English teacher. And when I moved to Prague and others and all of those experiences, I got such valuable skills from and tools that I took to the next one. My advice is to shift your perspective and think about instead of building yourself towards a position you should look at building yourself in terms of skillset, tool set and mindset. And then the position is just what you do at that moment in time.

Stephen Matini: Learning is a form of medicine. That's brilliant.

Nina Bressler: Yeah. So that came in the past 18 months I studied art first of all, and then I did a degree in communications, didn't study adult development. And I'm just so lucky that I ended up this role first working on some learning technologies and then owning the skill taxonomy at Novartis as the competency leader. And then helping to drive the curiosity pillar of the of the culture transformation. 

And out of that I saw that we built up all these technologies and tools and have these amazing resources that were focused internally for this company for Novartis, which is a med medicines company, right? And I thought, wow, there's so many people who would benefit from these same tools externally and how can, you know, that feels like the right thing to do. It's not enough just to scale these within this organization of a hundred thousand.

How can I take them beyond the boundaries of the company? And with that, we start to think in the past 18 months about what this agenda for societal learning looks like. And yeah, this l learning is a form of medicine is really the overarching, let's say, vision for that. We as a medicines company, of course we are bringing medicines to patients, but learning is a form of medicine as well because it helps create space for dialogue. It helps to mobilize systems. Learning as a platform is much more powerful as a communications tool because it gives you a space to really understand and dialogue with and include many different voices in your understanding in a way that, let's say a one way a communication platform. Can't do.

Stephen Matini: It sounds, I'm thinking out loud, a beautiful alternative to just straight marketing, you know?

Nina Bressler: Yeah, yeah. I mean definitely. So being a little bit of an outsider to learning, I really felt like the journey of the learning function over the past few years was very similar to the marketing function. You know, we were really looking at how to put metadata behind content, how to get the right content to the right people, the amount of content, so it was following very much the same trajectory as digital marketing. 

Only the impact measures for digital marketing are clear, it's consumption, it's click throughs, it's things like that. For learning as a society or as a fa or as let's say as an industry, we haven't solved for impact measurement in learning sufficiently because the impact measurement of learning is desired behavior change. And we don't have really scalable ways to measure that yet. So I'm also really interested in that.

And part of my work on societal learning is also looking at how learning can be used to make impact on individuals who then drive outcomes in alignment with, let's say, broader goals like the UN sustainable development goals and how we can really measure that all the way through to show what the impact of investment in learning really can do. And so we're running some control studies around that already this year with some behavioral scientists and the Harvard re-skilling lab. Cause I'm so curious to see where that, that kind of thinking and work can go.

Stephen Matini: Before talking to you today, , I was watching on Netflix, “Megan and Harry.”

Nina Bressler: Oh yeah, I just watched it too. 

Stephen: You did? So at some point he says that misinformation is a humanitarian crisis, which I thought, oh my God, this is so brilliant. It is true in the sense that we are so hyperconnected, there's so much information out there. But the one thing that so many people struggle with is what is real and what it’s not, what is accurate information and what is not accurate information.

Nina Bressler: If I look at the quality of deep fakes and everything else, like the ability even if you take a lens of criticality, the ability to really decipher if something is real or fake is or if you're being influenced by an echo chamber that you're already in, it's getting harder and harder to do. I mean, everything we hear around our US is curated to align with our perspectives, right? 

As an American who experienced the influence of, let's say Fox News propaganda on the American populace and now is really, as I'm somebody who understands Russian and is experiencing the influence of Russian state media on the mindsets of Russians, I just think we are so, as a species, we are so easy to influence. I mean, ultimately we're social preachers. We want to trust and believe what we hear and we become easily convinced of what we hear as being the only truth.

And I think at something that I think is really interesting is that at this time of actually quite a lot of instability in the world and great change, we as humans are looking for security, right? We can find that security in many different ways. Probably the healthiest way is through inner development. So we get grounded in our inner values. However not a lot of people have those tools or opportunities available to them. So they look for other frameworks to ground themselves in for that security and stability. And a lot of times those frameworks are extreme in terms of politics or religious affiliations and when, and they become quite polarized against each other. And then once that polarization starts, it evolves into more extreme and extreme polarization as they push against each other. Come on. We probably are gonna say of course the answer to everything is inner development. But I do think the answer to everything is awareness and inner development, right? So...

Stephen Matini: You wrote in your beautiful essay, People are provoked when it pokes at their fears. The person has to push it through the edge of the fear to find the light.” Yes, it is in a development, but it is that relationship with fear that I believe it is such a, an essential point in how you deal with it.

Nina Bressler: So do you wonder how I deal with it or how I think people should deal with it?

Stephen Matini: Both

Nina Bressler: I became really interested in kind of what fear feels like in my body. Cause I realized that a lot of times I'm, I'm acting from fear still and I wanna know the difference. I wanna know when decisions are coming from, you know, a place of security and confidence and not overconfidence, but a healthy place or when they're coming from place of fear. 

So I think for me the work really started by spending time feeling how different emotions come through my body by practicing that and practicing meditation really. Just being able to recognize when something is fear-driven, but step out of it before I take the action, that is fear-based. So I think it's that same knowing that I'm quite action-oriented and for me fear, it doesn't drive an anger response in me, it drives an action response and sometimes those actions just need a little bit more time.

And it can also be good. I can, it, my intuition can kick in, I can do the right action, but it's just asking myself for a split second, is this something that needs a little bit of stillness? What is the wise thing to do here? Because wisdom is not driven by fear, right? Wisdom is knowing whether to go with the intuition or go with, take some time and just create space and stillness. So yeah, that's, I would say how I try to practice not being ruled by fear. 

When the war in Ukraine started, I could feel so many thoughts and decisions being completely fear driven and it still peaks at certain times for me. I mean, I live in Czech Republic, so we have a huge refugee crisis and, and we're pretty close to Ukraine, so you're obviously aware. Plus there's the trauma that this country went through with the Soviet occupation, et cetera. 

So the topic of people kind of being triggered into fearful stance is definitely front of mind for me all the time. And I think fear is useful too when you need it. It's just a question of asking yourself, is it useful to me in this moment? And being able to catch yourself before you make decisions that are fear driven unnecessarily.

Stephen Matini: Not that I'm trying to minimize the humongous problems that we have, but I do have faith that we can learn as humans in a way we can flip things around and really believe we can do that for sure. And somehow, oftentimes the way to learn difficult stuff is to go through pressure and pain. That's what I often see.

Nina Bressler: Yeah. Well coming back to the Harry and Megan documentary though. 

Stephen Matini: Yeah

Nina Bressler: Actually, I think that there is a lot of really amazing interpretation and work happening under the surface in our societies. It's just that what is shown in the media is a totally different story and it's so similar to their experience, right? 

The media created such a fear mindset for them and, and it was legitimate. I'm not saying it wasn't but based on kind of this story that they created. But we do that same thing for ourselves individually. We take all of the stories that are out there and then we weave together a narrative that it feels really threatening for us and it feels just as threatening as a war. So, and then the way that people act in it is yeah, can be really extreme. 

I think that it's necessary to appreciate that even, yeah, I think the practice of awareness and then integration of fears is just something we have to continually do and help others do through compassion and empathy even, just that they can behave in ways that are more constructive to the society as a whole. And that means giving them security also socioeconomically social safety net and that people have opportunities to work and learn and grow. 

Cause ultimately, I don't know, I'm of the belief that ultimately people want, those want to apply their talents to something that feels purposeful and that's, yeah, part of the work that I'm doing around societal learning now is also creating new career paths in, in my case, into healthcare for people who haven't worked in healthcare before at scale around the world, working with an a really leading educational partner on that from the learning and development industry, partnering with our company, with Novartis. 

The idea behind that, this impact framework I was talking about before, I needed to really, let's say, confirm my hypothesis, but the hypothesis is that if you give people these opportunities to grow into stable careers that are needed, we have huge skill gaps that you can actually really influence socioeconomic conditions which have really positive impact also on the kind of stability of the country from a political and yeah, socioeconomic perspective.

Stephen Matini: I would like to ask you about Nina the entrepreneur. “Inner Landscape,” how that idea came about?

Nina Bressler: Oh yeah. So this is just a new project I've just started this year, but I, in my own development work, I actually found words are really restrictive for me, like it's hard for me to describe. And for me visuals or music or colors were a much better association to certain feelings. 

It made me think as we ultimately, what is growth? It's identifying that you have certain patterns and then having a growth mindset, meaning is believing that those patterns aren't static, that they're dynamic and they can change. And actually they're very fluid. They change all the time. Words feel too finite and too slow in some way. And colors or art or images or even music, I think are much more fluid. 

Two years ago I start to think about, oh, how could we take the verbal representation of somebody's patterns? Let's say for example, there are big assumptions about how the world works and translate those into art. But at the time there wasn't an AI art generation tool that was able to handle that much language. 

Yet actually now this year in 2022, there's some amazing neural networks that have come onto the landscape that can take huge blocks of text and visualize them. I would like to eventually develop an app or some tool that gives, allows you to do this visualization at scale. For me, like I said, visual and auditory are the ones that help me get into seeing that dynamic way in which we can look at our inner landscape. But for other people it's a journey. Not sure where it's gonna go. 

Before I started Novartis, I worked for myself as an entrepreneur for a few years at the time, developed a product that I would say was a visualizer of competency and skill frameworks. So the timing was a little bit too late for the big tech. And I had a nice sales channel planned with a world, a global HR consultancy. And it was about to start kind of gonna be pushed out through a lot of their human capital consulting practice.

And then they got acquired by an, an even larger global consultancy. So I ended up going back to the corporate world. But this yeah, this inner landscape project is a way for me to enjoy being creative and bringing my other interests together with human development. 

But I also feel that in my societal learning role at Novartis right now, I'm also very entrepreneurial. So it's almost like a startup running within the boundaries of an organization. And I feel really lucky to have that opportunity because I'm taking on some project that I think can make the most impact, measuring that impact and then looking for the next one. So it's that same startup mindset.

Stephen Matini: If you think about all the things that we covered, what would you say, what do you sense to be the center point of our conversation?

Nina Bressler: I would say it's moving beyond fear and being able to really live a growth mindset. To ask the right questions of yourself and of your contacts, to see that the world is dynamic and you can be dynamic too.

Stephen Matini: You are fabulous.

Nina Bressler: You're fabulous. Thank you.

Stephen Matini: Thank you. You are fabulous. And you come from a fabulous family.

Nina Bressler: Oh ...

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Organizations often view change as something to manage, an unfortunate and inevitable inconvenience that gets in the way of solid performance and results. 

My guest for this episode is Minola Jac, a transformational business professional whose background combines consulting, organizational development, and journalism. 

Minola has worked as a senior consultant for Deloitte and is currently the Group Change and Organizational Lead for the Syngenta Group, whose mission is reducing emissions and improving biodiversity.

Minola believes that, too often, organizations focus predominantly on change management without fully understanding what change entails and its impacts on people.

Minola highlights the transformative power of the change process to become a metaphorical mirror in which people can see their infinite potential. 

Listen to the episode:

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Hello everyone, I am Stephen, and welcome to Pity Party Over. Organizations often view change as something to manage, an unfortunate and inevitable inconvenience that gets in the way of solid performance and results. 

My guess for this episode is Minola Jac a transformational business professional whose background combines consulting, organizational development, and journalism. Minola has worked as a senior consultant for Deloitte, and is currently the group change and organizational lead for the Syngenta Group whose mission is reducing emissions and improving biodiversity. 

Minola believes that too often organizations focus predominantly on change management without fully understanding what change really entails and its impacts on people. Minola highlights the transformative power of the change process to become a metaphorical mirror in which people can see their infinite potential. Please welcome to Pity Party Over Minola Jac.

Stephen Matini: I read a nice quote from your LinkedIn profile that says, “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size” by Einstein. Why did you choose that quote?

Minola Jac: Well, there's, there's a very long love story between Einstein and, and myself, and, and I will also share a fun fact that quote really resonates with me because I do a lot of change work. Some people call it change management. I prefer to call it change work and focus more on the change than on whether we call it management, leadership, agility or whatever. 

I do believe that change starts in the mind and the moment you have a new idea or you connect new dots, or you connect existing dots in a new way, you cannot possibly un-connect them, and you cannot forget it. Maybe you forget the idea itself, but I do believe that at least you get that feeling with you. You know, that feeling of, oh!, you know, that, that surprise, and I dunno how you can un-live that or forget that. This is why I, I chose that quote.

It's very funny and it also links to, to change and, and how you hear things and you don't know whether you would ever use them again. A few years back, I was in a development program by my then employer, and we were in a workshop about the use of artificial intelligence in HR, and we had this wonderful trainer completely energized by everything AI. 

It was very early days for Siri, and he said, look, Siri, imagine you're in a conversation with a client and you are in in their office, and you'll spot that they have a poster with Einstein. So definitely they're a huge Einstein fan, and when they step out for a moment, you are like, Siri, what's Einstein's birthday? And I raised my hand and he was like, yes? And I was like, March 14th, 1879. He said, you just killed Siri. And I'm like, I'm really sorry.

What I didn't share with him was that it so happens I was born precisely to the date 100 years after Einstein. 

Stephen Matini: Oh, wow!

Minola Jac: You know, I had this information in the back of my mind for 20 something years since high school. And as we will probably go through our conversation today I can share more about the power of stories and how you can repurpose information in, in meaningful conversations. 

Stephen Matini: How do use that in your job? 

Minola Jac: I will give you an example, another example. I was flying from Tali to Istanbul a few years back, and it was in the middle of my flying phobia episode. I I went through a bad thunderstorm anyways, so I tried to think about something different than the flight and me being on an airplane. I, I started a conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me, and it turned out he was flying back to his home country back to Egypt.

He had a business of exporting Arab pure breads like stallions, and he was flying back home from a tour across Europe. He was visiting locations where his horses would, you know, stop every now and again on their journey to their new owners in, in the northern countries of, of Europe. 

And he told me that it takes about six to eight months for an Arabian pure bread to go from Egypt to their new owners. Because what happens every one and a half, two months, the horses go a little bit north and a little bit more north. And basically they get used and acclimatized to the weather, to the new nutrients in the food and water. And this is the safest way. So of course you can fly them, but then the risks of them developing, you know, diseases and, and you know, not getting used to the climate is very, very high.

And almost about a year ago, I was in a conversation with a key stakeholder on a project at work, and we were looking at the project milestones and the change journey, and there was a reaction of, I don't understand why is it taking so long? And I told him, I know that it's very impolite to answer a question with another question, but please bear with me. 

Do you know why it take six to eight months for an Arabian pure bread to get safely from Egypt to Sweden? And then we started to talk about what it means for an organization to get, you know, acclimatized and to go through a process little by little, little by little. And of course, you can accelerate things, but then there are things that just take time

Stephen Matini: In your job, I would assume, you must deal with a lot of different people that had different energies and different expectations. How do you keep yourself graceful, centered and calm when dealing with all these people?

Minola Jac: Well, just just a disclaimer that, that there's a lot of aspirational room. You know, when talking about keeping oneself centered and, and graceful and, and I think we all have good days and bad days. 

What I do believe makes the biggest difference is that even when we have bad days whatever behavioral question marks, we, we live in our interactions, they do not come from a place of ill intent. I think that that is the first disclaimer that I would make. 

I read something many, many years ago. When you learn that how others behave towards you has everything to do with them and very little with you is anything, then you learn grace. That is something that I try to keep in mind. How I show up in interactions says everything about me and very little about others, and whatever it is that triggers me is about me.

What I learn quite painfully, so in my journey in both life and work is to protect me time. That's time. You know, when, when I really have conversations with myself and spend time with myself and I understand what I reacted to and where I didn't respond and where I didn't stop to, you know, take a deep breath or count to 10 or whatever it is that grounds me. I think a lot of grace to ourselves and others comes from this place of, of just curiosity, courage and compassion that we show others, but we also show ourselves.

Stephen Matini: What you just said is something that a lot of people struggle with, which is carving a space for themselves. And often times what I hear is, I'm so busy, I'm busy, busy, busy, busy, there's no time for myself. And also, what would happen to the relationship if I said no to this person, to my boss, to this and that? So how do you set boundaries essentially?

Minola Jac: Hmm. This is the moment in conversations when I like to quote Mike Tyson. He has this famous quote saying that we should all sit in meditation for 15 minutes a day, unless we are very busy, then we should sit for one full hour. I think that this carving time for, for ourselves should be just as intentional as is every, everything else. 

One thing that really made a difference for me and in, in how I approach my boundaries is I understood that most of the time we think about conversations as something that happens outside of us with other people. We never think about conversations as something that we have with our own self. Who do I need to have a conversation with today? And if it's me, then I will protect that space just as gracefully and fearlessly as I protect my conversation spaces with other people. This is something that I embed in, in my work. 

I will give you an example. One of my favorite exercises to run is the stakeholder analysis and mapping. And one thing that that I do is, you know, we talk about the principles and then we, we have a look at tools that might work for a particular team and a particular project. 

And then we have this working space where they basically have fun with the tool and they start to list stakeholders and, and their engagement needs. And at the end of that exercise, I ask one simple question, how long does this list need to get before you list your own selves?

Stephen Matini: , that's beautiful.

Minola Jac: We're never that intentional about our own selves, whether personally or professionally as we are with everybody else. And we are, at the end of the day, our first line of of stakeholders.

Stephen Matini: You emphasize the importance really of being accountable. Our focus may, may be naturally go onto other people, we may see them as responsible, you know, for what happens to us. But the way you're speaking, it's all about, let's come back to ourself. Self-compassion, non-judgment, accountability. These are really important concepts to you. How did you get into this realm?

Minola Jac: Oh, by refusing to get into it for so many years, , I was put in, in, in situations where I had to learn to do this. I started noticing patterns, things that started to happen. And no matter how much I wanted to make other people accountable, the only common denominator in know in all those situations and to all those decisions was me. 

So I kept making decisions and I kept reacting, and I kept taking action based on the same principles, expecting different results, . So yes, what that didn't happen! What helped me a lot was the fact that I traveled a lot because of work, because of life. I ended up with spending a lot of time on my own. And no matter how much I tried to push and pull other people into my own time, there were still, you know, at the airport, in taxi, on trains, you know, I mean, you can talk to strangers, but how much really? 

So I couldn't escape myself basically. And, and I had to make friends with myself. And that comes with a lot of, you know, I I sometimes say that I have a love-hate relationship with myself. Have I grown more comfortable having these conversations? Yes. Are all those conversations comfortable? No. Are all those conversations comforting? Yes. I often times ask myself, how can I be present? Who are other people? If I am not present for myself, am I always the best of companies? Of course not, but at least I'm trying to.

Stephen Matini: Last time you pointed out the fact that a self-rejection is something that has given you a lot of insights. Would you mind telling me something more about this?

Minola Jac: Of course. I think I mentioned that a few years back, I was asked by, by an amazing friend of mine to give a talk on self-rejection. And I started that talk saying, hello, my name is Minola and I am a rejection subject matter expert. I think that's a different way of saying that we are our own harshest critic. We all develop that critic, that self critic because of different experiences. 

If I look in, in, in my background, because I, I believe that we are accountable for both content and context and these two feed into an, into each other. So the context is, I was born and I grew up in communist Romania in a parenting era, you know, based on, oh, but what would people say? Yeah. Or what would people think? For some reason, my parents were of the conviction that, you know, good is there and, and it's self-explanatory, but we should always point out the development areas. Yeah. 

So I, I got a lot of constructive and developmental feedback growing up because what would people say? My sense of identity came from being validated by others. I learned that a lot of self-rejection comes from never unlearning things that we absorb from other people. We grow up learning what work is, we grow up learning what expectations are. We grow up learning that we are expected to be in a certain way and not often enough we go back and challenge those and unlearn those expectations. 

There's a wonderful, wonderful quote from Muhammad Ali. He said that it's not the mountain ahead that wears you down. It's the pebble in your shoe. And I think this is how we grow our self-rejection. We accumulate pebbles that have nothing to do with us, and we never stop, shake our shoes and our sock and move on.

Stephen Matini: How did you get into organizational development? Why you chose this specific route for yourself?

Minola Jac: By accident ? Yeah, I think the best things in life happen by, by accident or they happen when, when you don't bite it and you don't question it, you, you just feel that that is where life takes you. 

I'm a journalist by trade. I worked for many years as a journalist, and it so happened that I used to write quite a lot for HR and HR services column, and this is how I got a taste of the HR world. And then when I left journalism, I, I ended up doing communication work and, and PR work, and somehow I ended up doing that for HR services companies. 

Little by little, I just fell in love with this world. I grew into corporate consulting after doing corporate affairs and corporate sales jobs and organizational development, but mostly the change work around organizational development just called my name. And I often times say that journalism for me was the best school for doing this because it's about triangulating information. It's about really understanding that it's about how you create value for other people, especially people who do not have access to the same information that you have. 

So how do you create meaning? How do you tell stories? How do you create those stories? And I think what really fascinates me about doing change and organizational development work is how do you open people's minds to new ideas so that they will never go back to their previous forum?

Stephen Matini: The concept of self-rejection. Do you see it in your work, when you work with teams, with people. Do you actually see it playing a role in the organizational dynamics?

Minola Jac: I actually do. And whether that's resistance to change or whether that has really bad experience or whether that comes because people, for one reason or another, they, they are on a journey where they're energy and focus are, are being completely purposed somewhere else, and they just feel like they cannot deal with anything else or anything different at, at that moment in time. 

I think organizational self-rejection is not fundamentally different than the personal self-rejection. And I think it, it comes down to, to really keeping an open mind and sometimes even more importantly what I call an open heart. 

Probably you heard me saying saying this before, but one of my favorite quotes is that the universe falls in love with a stubborn heart. And I believe that there is a limit to our rational being, but I think there is no limit to our emotional being. And if you really feel strongly about something in your core, your mind will find a solution if it's important enough to you. 

So I think self-rejection also comes from seeing things around us and perceiving them as transactional or corrective. And then it's like, okay, if if I don't have a problem, I cannot use them to expand the mind either. So I think self-rejection is not just about feeling like we cannot do something, but also feeling that we cannot do something else or different with, with what we have.

Stephen Matini: Which term would you use to indicate the opposite of self-rejection?

Minola Jac: Oh, curiosity. I would use curiosity. And, and for some reason, I, I, I got into this reflex of always using curiosity with courage and compassion. I think these three, they should come together. 

There is a, an exercise i, I run every now and again with teams that I work with in a, in an icebreaker. And there's a set of questions. And one question that I love to ask is, if change didn't exist as a word in our vocabulary, what would you use to get the same meaning? These three, they, they come up, you know, curiosity, courage and, and compassion. I think these three also used with self-curiosity, self-courage, and self-compassion. These to me are the exact and total antonyms of of self-rejection.

Stephen Matini: Last time when you, I talked, you said something that I wrote down, you said that we focus on the management aspect or change management without fully understanding what change entails.

Minola Jac: Yeah, that's that's what I call my personal and professional crusade, to really break this label of change management. Because what happens and, and I see in, in almost all conversations without exception, is that because we want to make sense of things and we want to gain control, then we focus very, very quickly on the management part, and we don't sit in change long enough or with open mind and open heart. 

And there is this promise made by all the frameworks, methodologies, and, and tools out there that if you follow a process, if you implement tools, and if you go through 27 steps or 8 phases or you know, 91 Excel spreadsheets, then it's done. For example, I'm absolutely fascinated how there are conversations saying, oh, it's not change management, it's change leadership, or it's change agility, or it's changed something or another when actually it's change!

Yeah, we are just trying to package it differently. What I keep saying is that we should not over rely on methodologies and tools and frameworks. Those are absolutely wonderful when we have a better understanding of what change is. 

I just had this idea in a, in a very recent conversation that why do people react to change in a more resistant way or they perceive it more disruptive when it happens within the organization, when in our lives we deal with change constantly. But I think what makes the difference, if I look at my own experiences as well, when it happens in our lives, we don't wrap it up in this change management process driven tool over reliant way. 

Yeah, we do stakeholder management and, and engagement. We do have communication strategy and plan, but in life, we don't call it our change management framework, we call it, I don't know, surviving the holidays with your in-laws. That's, that's huge stakeholder engagement effort. At the same time, I'm, I'm thinking that change management in, in organizations, you know, they, it hits very close to what gives us safety and security and it's very disruptive. 

I would really invite everybody stay a little bit longer in change. Don't rush into the management part of it because then it becomes transactional, it becomes correctional. You don't bring in change management just to correct things. We could use change management to create horizons.

Stephen Matini: I've been going to therapy for one year, and has been a phenomenal experience, with this incredible therapist. Is a she. So we talked about a million things. And the one thing that somehow kept happening every single time is no matter what challenge I was discussing with her, somehow the conversation always end up by talking, this is life. 

There's nothing particularly anything wrong about how you reacted to it. There's nothing particularly special, so to speak about that event which had an impact in your, in your life, but this is life. A life needs to be lived. And it seems to be the most, the, the simplest thing to say. And the intention was not to undermine obviously my, my struggle, whatever, I was going through it, but somehow it normalized everything. 

You know, it went from thinking, this is wrong. It should be different. I should not be feeling this way. I should not be doing this way to, this is the path, you know, this is the journey actually, and what I learned from them makes all the difference.

Minola Jac: I totally love this and, and I'm very grateful that you opened this avenue of conversation. I am a huge believer in therapy and how it helped, helped me in many points of my journey even now, is that it taught me the value of creating judgment free spaces. 

This is a trap, I think that many individuals and many organizations fall into. Creating these binary judgment systems. Is it right or is it wrong? Is it it forward or is it backwards? Is it good or is it bad? Is it efficient or is it inefficient? And I think that having a very polarized way of looking at things, that creates a lot of resistance to change. Because if it's not one way, it's the other and not a lot of many, many different ways in between. 

I think that going through therapy in a truly mindful and intentional way is life and work changing. I do believe that if there is one principle from therapy that we can all implement in life and work equally is to create these spaces of safe spaces of no judgment where we can truly say it is what it is, and we are who we are. And things are not binary. Life is not binary. The only binary thing about life is that it starts with a birth and it ends with the other end. But that's the only binary thing about life really.

Stephen Matini: And maybe that's not binary either. , who knows?

Minola Jac: Who knows

Stephen Matini: You are talking about the importance of creating a space in which someone can simply be. It's really, it's a magic that we, that we can do as humans to other humans. And so based on that, and anything that comes to mind, when you have a manager let's say, or a director, whatever the person is, I don't know if it ever happened to you, that asks you doing some sort of you know, change in moments in the organization, how should I deal with this team, with this person who's experiencing resistance to change? Because unfortunately, often times in organizations everything is transactional. You know, they have a deadline, certain things have to happen by a certain time. Based on your experience, what would you recommend to anyone in order to help someone who's struggling through a moment of change?

Minola Jac: For me, the the key is always understanding where that resistance to change comes from. And even more importantly, what does that resistance to change try to protect? What I want to make very clear from very early on in this conversation, I believe that there is huge value in understanding the resistance, the change. And I believe that any resistance to change ultimately is there to protect something that might be worth preserving. 

One of the most underrated and underutilized questions in change work is what do we need to preserve? And a lot of immensely valuable answers to what we need to preserve comes from understanding the resistance to change. And there are several reasons why, why people resist change. Oftentimes it's because they have no clarity. Oftentimes it's because what is in front is so unclear and undefined yet that their only comfort is hanging on to the reality that they know, even if they are fully aware that that reality is not okay.

That is one, I think it comes with a lot of underestimating the sense of grief and loss that comes with any change, no matter how positive that change really is, whether it's a loss of safety, whether it's a loss of political capital. Yeah. Whether it's a loss of this new change being a judgment made on a previous project, the judgment is all that that project was not okay, and we need to make a change. 

Really understand what that resistance talks about. Is it lack of clarity? Is it lack of understanding? Is it lack of being seen and heard and recognized and comforted, lack of being listened to. Again, I strongly believe that resistance to change is not exclusively a bad thing and it's not exclusively a thing that needs to be managed. I think it is definitely something that has to be understood. 

Also, since you asked about resistance to change, there's the fascinating conversation around taking Lean Six Sigma thinking and overlapping it with change management and looking at what are the wastes in change management. Focusing, over focusing, obsessively, focusing on resistance to change is one. 

The other one is not focusing on over enthusiasm. That's also not okay for doing change work because that comes with overselling and that ultimately comes with a lot of clarifying and re-contracting expectations. And if people have this huge idea and huge expectation, when you bring them back to reality, then you have resistance to change because they feel that they already lost something.

Stephen Matini: In many years that I work in organizational development, it never happened to me to find someone, a participant that did not have something interesting to say. You know, some people are easier to work with, and some people are more, maybe more pleasant. Some people, you know, energetically can be, I don't know, it's just a little bit harder. But nevertheless, I've always been surprised to see the amount of contributions and ideas that people come up with. And when you ask them what you think about this, you know, how would you do that? And the critical point is often whether or not those ideas eventually are going to be heard, are going to find, you know, enough space to be heard. And that's really the critical moment. But people always contribute. People always have ideas on how to navigate their change, you know, for the perspective or their experiences.

Minola Jac: I remember when, when we spoke a little while ago, you also asked me, how do I make my voice heard? I was actually thinking about that question a lot because that question oftentimes, you know, surfaces like my line manager or my sponsor or my senior stakeholders, they are not listening to me. 

How do I make my voice heard as I was walking over the weekend, I was thinking, is it about making your voice heard or is it about making your voice listened to? I was in a, in a recent workshop, we were speaking about one of my favorite quotes with two monologues who not make a dialogue. I don't think that we should aim at having our voice heard as much as we should aim at having our voice listened to. We should never go into a conversation only having in mind what we have to say.

I think the outcome is really understanding what people hear and what people understand. Whenever I'm asked, how do I make my voice heard, my immediate question is, what do people that you want to communicate with listen to? How do they listen? What do they pay attention to? And one of the examples, one of the stories that I share is the one about Scheherazade and the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. 

If her focus had been just on telling stories, we would probably have had one , one Arabian night. But she made her voice listened to, not just heard, she knew what the sultan would be listening to. She knew what the sultan’s listening was triggered by. She knew that the sultan’s behavior came from being you know, hurt in love, aren’t we all? Before you make your voice heard, understand what people are most likely to listen to, and then use that information to tell your own story.

Stephen Matini: And in doing that, she was able to preserve her life.

Minola Jac: Exactly. An an amazing change intervention, sustainable change intervention!

Stephen Matini: If you had to say, what is the, the one thing, the main thing of our conversation, what would you say it is?

Minola Jac: It's this invitation for everybody listening to us to really think how long do they list whatever lists need to get before they list themselves. 

If there is one thing that I am very thankful for is understanding that whatever it is that I do in life or work, it comes with a mirror that first and foremost, we have to look into it. We understand, you know, how accurately it reflects back. 

I think organizational development is about holding up a mirror so that people can see their potential and not their flaws. I think change work comes with the same way. You know, when, when people look at the mirror of their hopes and dreams and, and the ideas that will change their minds forever. This is, I believe what I take with me from this conversation.

Stephen Matini: My wish for people is sooner leader to have the chance to spend some time with you, , because when you hold the mirror, you, you see beauty. So thank you so much, Minola, this is wonderful. Thank you.

Minola Jac: Thank you Stephen. Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Excellent communication requires an ongoing effort of self and social awareness to understand both the relationship and the context of the relationship.

My guest for this episode is Brian Hanssen, Director of the Management Communication Program and a Clinical Associate Professor of Management Communication at New York University.

For Brian, storytelling is a vital communication journey transcending cultures and experiences to help any audience transition from the present to the future. As Brian says, “begin with the journey” to be more inclusive, self-aware, empathetic, memorable, and persuasive.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You and I share a somewhat similar background. Both of us decided that communication was going to be the focus of our professional endeavors. You've consulted, you teach, and so I've done the same thing, you know, so it's really nice to talk to someone who actually understands my world, without having to explain stuff. I don't know much about your background.

Brian Hanssen: The short answer is my formative years were Boston but I'm born in New York. I was a child in New York. I lived in New York and I've lived in New York longer than anywhere else, but I lived in LA for eight years. I've lived in Central America, I've lived in the East Africa, I've lived all over Europe. My mom is from Germany. She grew up in Germany, so I've spent some time there. I've lived in China or East Asia actually, specifically in China. So, yeah, I mean, you know, those are, I, I, for me to say I'm from New York is what I would say, but actually it's not always. Half of my life was other, other places, but Boston is where I grew up.

Stephen Matini: Were there any events, people, or situations that somehow have shaped the way that you are?

Brian Hanssen: So, actually, I'm gonna start in LA. I went right into education. I went to college in Los Angeles and then stayed out, stayed there for a long time afterwards. And I was a teacher. I actually was emergency certified, because they needed teachers and they went to certain schools and they said, if you went to this school, you don't actually have to have a teaching certification, you can just start teaching and then you have to do it over, over time. 

There are two experiences, both from LA both at that same time frame that really stood out to me. One, I was actually, it was my first year ever working out of college, and I was a teacher in a school district that had been taken over by the state because it was so underperforming. And there were a whole bunch of issues. It was the Compton Unified School District in Los Angeles, if you know Compton in, in LA.

And the second example is actually I shifted to teaching with students who were court adjudicated in students who are having issues in the traditional school system. And I became an administrator very, very early on in my career. The Compton experience, I think I went in there with such an idea of what education was. Basically, this is what I experienced, and so therefore I'm going to mimic that and deliver that to my students. 

And the pushback, the recognition that my style was not going to work with my audience. I think understanding how to basically break down every institutional system that I had ever thought was the way life was ,right, and realizing I had to start over and actually understand my audience, and rethink how I deliver everything for an audience that just, you know, had such low expectations of the system, did not find that system to be valuable, did not, you know, the basic understanding, the basic assumptions I had about why I was there and what we were trying to do and the goals of this educational experience were sort of BS frankly to the students that I was working with.

And I had to rethink knowing your audience, which is what we teach, right? So really thinking about delivering and communicating to an audience with very specific expectations and doubts, you know, reasons of disbelief, concerns. These are the sorts of things that totally shaped me. 

And then if I can go into the second example, I'd love to just share that one. I went into administration at this other high school also in Los Angeles very early on. I was a, like a vice principal kind of role at that, at that school. And I was much younger than the other staff that worked there. That school was in East Los Angeles, the student population, and actually the faculty were largely Latinx. And I'm not, I went into leadership and I was much younger, and you can understand how perception is reality, how challenging that was.

I think for the, for the faculty I worked with. And it was, for me, we really, I think learning about communication and trust, and again, going back to this idea that like, just cuz you're in this position doesn't mean anyone's gonna authorize you in it. And just because you're in this position doesn't mean that like you're automatically going to get the same sort of like, outcome that maybe, I don't know, my experience would, I mean, it was just, at the end of the day, it was sort of like, who are you? Why are, why are you in this position? What value are you going to bring? And until you actually prove any of those things, we aren't going to trust you. 

And I think early on, learning these sorts of experiences and being like, wow, all the things that I've sort of assumed to be true in terms of like hierarchy and like following rules and like working towards a certain goal was like, it just because I'm the boss doesn't mean that that's, that's the way it's gonna be. 

And, and, and I think that everybody should learn that because it's changed my, like my entire way of communicating, leading everything in between is sort of like, yeah, like I need to rethink every assumption I make about my own experience and why that might be relevant to someone else. And I think that's good.

Stephen Matini: So everything is ... what is the word? Situational?

Brian Hanssen: Situational leadership and, and, yeah, for sure.

Stephen Matini: So education was always part of your plan or you ended up teaching by coincidence? Was it a conscious choice? How did it happen?

Brian Hanssen: Yeah, I wanted to teach. I actually was going to be a lawyer, like most college students. They just assumed that being a lawyer is a good thing. So I was like a political science major. I, you know, took the LSAT and all of that, and I was like, I have no interest in going to law school. I actually interned when I was in high school at like this amazing company and I was in the legal department there. 

And I had a lot of exposure to the type of work that they do and lots of respect for it, but it wasn't for me. And I realized I went my, my, like summer before my senior year there was a, a teaching strike in Costa Rica. And basically they were doing a partnership between the University of Costa Rica and the University of California, the whole system.

And they were trying to find Spanish speakers who were interested in not strike breaking but going down and working with students just so that their educational experience wasn't completely like broken, right? So we just worked with students, we had lessons, we, we played with the students, we worked with them and that sort of thing, just so that they were still learning. We were not teachers, we were not paid. And it was more for the students benefit and still very much in solidarity with the teachers who are teaching in Costa Rica. But you know, it was a really cool experience. I'm so glad I did that and it made me realize I wanted to be teaching. That was, that was it.

Stephen Matini: What is that you love the most as of today about teaching?

Brian Hanssen: For me, I think it's actually the, you go into a class, you could teach three classes in a row and they go so differently and it's sort of like, wow, this really killed last year. Like everybody was so into this topic, I'm gonna like, I can't wait to do this again. And then it just dies. It just falls flat on its face. Or other times where you're like, I think I should get rid of this. And then you don't, and people are like really into it and you're like, why? 

I don't understand. Like, it's the same exact delivery. I've done nothing different. But I actually loved being a, like, so we, I was a consultant for many years as well, and I loved the change, the nature of change, new projects, new clients, and what I went full time into to this role now, I in academia, I was like, I think I'm gonna get bored teaching the same class for 20, 30 years. And that is so not the case.

Stephen Matini: When was it like maybe five years ago or something. I had two classes. So one was late in the afternoon, and then the following day at 9:00, I had the same exact class quite with different students. And so the one late in the day was a miracle, was so much fun. They were interested, interesting, kind, funny. I mean, one of those classes you think if every single class could be like this, this would be truly heaven, I had so much fun. 

The following day, and nine was the opposite. It was the opposite. I could have literally exploded a bomb, nothing would've happened in the class. Like I played all my tricks in the, and everything will will fall flat. But interestingly enough, the one in the morning performed better than the one in the late afternoon. 

Every single class, every single group has a life on its own. That group really have a chemistry that is that, and you have to be okay with it. A big chunk of it that is completely beyond my control, I think.

Brian Hanssen: One of my favorite moments was actually that's when I knew I was a better teacher because I've been struggling. I mean, I've always wanted it to become a better teacher, right? And this was now a couple years ago, but the class was just bombing. It was just not, I was not doing, nobody was into it, right? 

And it, like halfway through this like little thing I was talking about, I stopped and I was like, I turned to a student to my left. And I'm like, this isn't going well at all, is it? And she went, No!” And like gave me this like, like face and it was just, instead of being insulted or like insecure, I was like, it was just delightful. Just that student's response was like, this is bombing man. Like, you need to stop. And I was like, all right.

Stephen Matini: What did you do after that?

Brian Hanssen: Well, so I, I stopped and I'm like, you know, I actually was really, this is, this is me, right? In a nutshell. I was like, I spent like six hours yesterday alone, putting this together and making this specific for like what's going on in the world and whatever. I'm like, you are so not into it and I just need to understand what's going on. Can we like just take a minute first to like talk to each other and just like wake yourselves up because I'm like dying inside for you. 

And then two, I need to hear what's going on. It turned out enrollment was happening at that exact moment and these students are trying hard to get into certain classes and they're competing against upperclassmen or whatever. But the idea was like, because there's no computer in the classroom or there wasn't at that for that class, you know, it was, it was one of those like, they're just really anxious. And then that, that it woke everybody up. It woke me up. I was like, okay, there's a reality. I did not know.

Stephen Matini: You're ne in people's minds. You don't know why they react to you the way they do. 

Brian Hanssen: Yeah. 

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you said, there's a couple of things that come to mind, which to me are so important in communication and somehow you seem to embody them. One is being authentic, and the other one is to be willing to be vulnerable. And both are not easy to do at all.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah.

Stephen Matini: Particularly, you know, in, in the corporate world. How do you show up to people in a way that is authentic and vulnerable?

Brian Hanssen: In my classes, especially when we're doing, let's say an impromptu exercise or looking at a presentation, like I, I have a couple of presentations that are pretty public actually, and some that are from classes that are just for me to see. But either way, I'll show them, I'll show them and I'll analyze the things that I, that I did not appreciate about my delivery style. 

It sets up for the idea that this is the type of experience we're going to have where we're not striving for perfection, we're trying to understand how we can always be more strategic, more persuasive, more engaging, more memorable, those sorts of things. As opposed to you are or you aren't. Which I actually, it's a big pet peeve of mine when people say like, this binary, like you are or you are not, is we communicate every day whether we like it or not.

There's no way we're not, like, unless you have some sort of physical issue of being able to speak, even then you're still communicating, right? So I, I don't, I don't buy it. I don't buy this idea that you're like bad or good at communicating cuz we have to do it. It's a requirement to, to survive. You know?

In leadership I think it's a little bit different. I do think that it's like, I have a sheet right here, it looks like this. And it's basically every promise that I make to someone and it's like, you know, whatever it is. If I say I'm going to do something, I don't just say it, I write it down. I think doing, saying what you're going to do, and then following up and being like, I'm sorry. I know I told you I'd get back to by Friday about X, Y, and Z, but it's just not gonna happen. These are little things that sort of like, again, I think signal I'm real can't do what I promise, but at least I can follow up. And like, I think that's such a big part of establishing trust, being real, all of that. It's a golden rule for me.

Stephen Matini: For me, I guess, it is the switch between thinking that from a communication standpoint, there must be something that I can do or say that comes across authentic. But if you put the emphasis on the relationship, then everything changes. People want to feel that they can trust the person, they can see a real person, someone that is the way you show up. It's the way that you are 

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you have observed or study or experience. What would you say that is one of the most important thing to create a better cross-functional communication?

Brian Hanssen: My short answer is doing your homework for whatever reasons we expect alignment or the sort of cross-functional connection to organically happen. And I think o of that can happen if we have regular meetings where we have cross-functional, but often times even in those cross-functional situations, it's a report out. Most people aren't listening to the report outs of anybody else. Maybe there are one or two key leaders who want the macro view from across the board, but typically you're spending most of your life in your own bubble and you're not necessarily engaging around seeking to understand what's happening elsewhere. 

So, you know, I would say of course, having these cross-functional opportunities to meet and discuss are huge there. Or I should say they're the baseline. I mean, there are so many different ways you could do it. You could go to like the happy hours, you know, that are part of a different department and just get to know people or, or understand where they're coming from in that type of context. Working groups and really having them discuss and go through real organizational issues and like truly working together and, and not just giving a report out or some sort of like, you know, basic info. 

I'm thinking now in the world of academia, like I go to people's talks like from Steinhardt and I'm like listening to people from the history department talk about like, you know, something that happened in the 17th century and you know, it really does not relate very, very much to what I do on a daily basis. But those sorts of connections I think are are key. Like you doing the work to like actually show up for things that aren't necessarily related to you directly, I think make a huge difference. 

If you're in leadership, understanding problem solving is a big way of actually like understanding how you change problems to think about how you might solve problems differently. That's culture change. That's Edgar Schein in a nutshell, right? I mean, so I feel like, you know, if you are actually getting people to do real work in real teams that actually reflect the diversity of the organization and get people truly sharing their best selves with other people, that's how you're gonna get some of that cross-functional and it's really hard to do. 

One quick story, I will, I I pride myself on being one of the, when I was working at NYU Shanghai, I was one of the only business faculty that would go and show up to these like, you know, arts and sciences happy hours. I will say that I eventually just got on the list and I was invited and I was sort of like in the, in, I was in the in group for that kind of for that kind of thing.

And it made, I mean it made such a huge difference in terms of getting things done and working with people on committees and actually, you know, I think there's a social side to cross-functional that we don't necessarily always, we don't always put enough emphasis on to be like, I trust you, I wanna work with you. It's not just that I have to, or you're somebody who's representing your area in this discussion. 

And that for me was like, you know, it was really cool to see how we got things done because I knew everyone's, I went, I wasn't a strat, I wasn't like, I went naturally to these happy hours. I wasn't trying to like ease my way in so that I could like, you know, have the insides coop. It just turned out that way. But it was actually really fun.

Stephen Matini: People try to handle this cross-functional relationship with a very clear idea of what their own agenda is, but they’re almost oblivious to what the agenda the other person can possibly be. 

Brian Hanssen: Yeah. 

Stephen Matini: They’re so worried about, as you said, at their own bubble that they don't get that the other person may have a really different priorities that are very important to them. So in your opinion, if the organizational culture somehow does not foster a certain type of communication that is open and straightforward, is it still possible to improve cross-functional communication?

Brian Hanssen: Yes, I think that there are absolute grassroots things that individuals who care can do. And I think that they fit into some of the examples I already gave. Like there are low stakes ways for individuals to get to know and understand other people. I can see how frustrating that might be if you're articulating to your own group or to a leader, the disconnect and they don't see it themselves and they kind of shush you. 

I can see why that might get demotivating over time. Ideally, you know, in an ideal world, the insights that you bring from these natural connections that you're making as an individual do get recognized and you are able to shine as a result of some of those, those insights. And then from there you are chipping away at this maybe closed culture to collaboration or to, you know, to interdepartmental understanding.

Stephen Matini: There is an organizational culture, but also there are many subcultures that are created at functional level departments, sometimes teams have their own soul. If you understand the culture, the subculture and work within that, I think it's there's a lot that can be done that usually that's where I operate. But that massive cultural changes happen really over incredible long period of time.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything you have seen. If you had to say what is the secret to good communication, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Brian Hanssen: Gosh, one thing. If it's just one, then I'm going to say self-awareness and empathy building. I'm sorry, those are two things maybe, but I I, to me, understanding yourself and understanding others is like the same. It's like one larger, I don't know, I'm, I'm gonna put that together.

Stephen Matini: Emotional intelligence basically.

Brian Hanssen: Exactly right. It's so interesting because the students that come into the classes that we teach often times are like, here's the situation, tell me what I should say. And I'm almost like, I'm always like at a brick wall, I have no, like, why, why would you wanna know what I have to say? I'm not in this situation. I'm not you. I don't know anything about these people. 

Part of the classes that we teach, I, I think so much of that is to pull the students back like 10 frames and be like, you need to understand yourself and you need to understand the world around you, and you need to find ways that you can do that easily and quickly without being intrusive and asking its ton of questions about other people, right? You've gotta be able to do this stuff. 

I'm gonna have a part B to your question because I think that only gets you so far. I think the other aspect that I think really distinguishes a good leader and a good communicator is the ability to understand how storytelling works and being able to adapt a story to that emotional intelligent situation or, you know, adapt approach if you will. I think that the storytelling is a big part of it as well. 

I see my whole life through storytelling. I like the way I every, everything. It's sort of like, this is where we are now. This is what I'm asking and to get you to a new place, and this is what that new place is gonna be. Storytelling, it transcends culture, it transcends experiences. One little aside to this is I am very against someone like us, meaning people, people who are professors walking up in front of the class and saying, based on my 30 years experience, this is what you should do.

This is not about what I did in my 30 plus year career. Like, I feel like that's just so pointless. There might be interesting stories that get you to think like that's one thing, but to me, storytelling transcends like we've been storytelling since humankind existed, right? And it's the way that we are memorable. It's the way that we actually convey something. It's the way that we actually get heard is through stories. And so being able to do that well after understanding yourself and others and really figuring those two pieces out, I feel like that's what distinguishes you from someone who's not obtaining the objectives or not communicating where they could be.

Stephen Matini: Like you, I love storytelling and have people understand there's a bunch of technicalities and things to know, but the most important gift that you can give to yourself is to be yourself. You know, as you said, to be self-aware. Embrace anything that is you, your oddities, what makes you special and different. And then to show the same kindness to other people or to take the time to actually understand that someone may not be like you. And so you have to, as you said so many times, craft your message in a way that is understandable, maybe should not be called communication. It should be called more like a relationship, made.

Brian Hanssen: Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

Stephen Matini: When you go through a rough time, do you have any favorite ways to pity party? And then what do you do to say that's it, that's it. I have to move on. Is anything you do to move on?

Brian Hanssen: I truly, truly believe in this. I see the world as sort of like a current state, some sort of action, and then a future state. And I always want that future state to have, you know, not every future state is amazing and perfect, right? But a future state that has some sort of reframe to it, that's going to move me in a direction of positivity, right? Like that's, that's my, like, that's what I teach in my classes in terms of the messaging, the thought process around communication. 

And when I say where are we now, that's where the empathy and the understanding comes in for both myself and for them and really trying. It's not just like, who's my audience, it's my students, right? But I think in terms of doing that same thing for myself, right? Like if I'm in a personal or professional situation that I think is really, really challenging or, or not where I, not what I want, right?

I do the same exercise for myself, like what am I feeling? Where am I at? What, what am I, where are my true needs and wants and feelings in this very moment? What's actually happening around me right now? And then what is one ask that I may have of others? What is one ask that I may have of myself to get me to a place where those needs are either met better or whatever the, the better state is. 

If I wanted to go here and three of my friends wanted to go somewhere else, it was like, it's better for everyone if we can. Like I would prefer for the group to be in a, in a unified space. And to me, that's actually a better state than where I am now. Which why, you know, I mean, these are the sorts of things that I, I naturally reframe and I'm proud that I'm able to do that.

I will add to this pity party over that, you know, fine. Like reframing, thinking about story, asking yourself, you know, what is your journey and how are you gonna get there? Sounds so cheesy, but I really do believe in it. If you can do that. I think that the reframe becomes so, so helpful. If they don't have something on the menu, I'm like, I get to try something new, right? 

Like I, and I think that that is like, I'm so, I'm so happy that that's the way I see the world because I do think it makes it, I don't wanna say easier, but more like I said, more, more like, you know, there's lots of change in the world. It's just fulfilling, right? Like to be able to be like, I can get myself excited about a million things, even if that's not what I wanted to do in the first place.

For us as change leaders, like we've, we also have had to do that for organizations, right? Like, as we work with teams and leaders and organizations, it's like we have to embrace change ourself or we're not gonna do a very good job. 

I love uncertainty. It does not actually scare me. So, you know, I think that there's, that is a, that's my pity party over not everyone sees the, no one probably sees the world exactly like that. I'm curious, like, so are you a re-framer as well, it sounds like, is that kind of how you deal with this? Or what's your answer to your own question?

Stephen Matini: There's someone that I interviewed like two episodes ago. You see her on the podcast. Her name is Linda Hoops. Linda dedicated her entire life to the study of resilience. She talks about different strategies, and one is reframing is really playing with expectations and I think that oftentimes a lot of pain is caused by harboring not the right expectation. So it's kind of hoping for something to be different and you always end up short, which creates further sufferance.

Stephen Matini: Based on anything we talked about today. If you had to say, what is the central point of what we discussed, what would you like people to remember? You know, the intent?

Brian Hanssen: If you're talking about inclusive and inter departmental communication and connection and empathy and all of the things that we've talked about here, right? I would suggest or say that taking the time to understand this audience journey and framing your conversations around that audience journey surpasses cultural boundaries. 

It forces you to go deeper in terms of who you're talking to, who you are. It forces you to think about like a clear ask and and even if it's not communicated directly, at least it's something that's in your head. And like, that should sort of be part of the, the message crafting, you know, it helps create much more specific benefit statements for the audience, right? 

I think if you actually take the time to frame your communication around the audience journey and think through that, I really do think it goes right now. We're not the 30 plus year experience. This is what you should do now we're not, this is a very US approach to communication. It's like, no, we all actually can start to frame the way that we connect with others around a very, very basic but important journey. And I think that we, we naturally forget to do that. And yet we naturally appreciate it when others do that. 

Start with the journey. And if you can start there, you can be inclusive, you can be self-aware, you can be empathetic, you can be very, very mindful of who you're talking to and communicate clear, well-crafted benefit statements, riddled messaging, right? You have a much better chance of being memorable, being persuasive, having people engage with you and essentially just being heard. Which I think at the end of the day is the number one thing that when people come in my office, I'm hearing that they don't feel that way and it doesn't get any easier as we get older. And so I think if it's about inclusivity and connection and being heard, then I think that frame can just eliminate a lot of stress and challenge.

Stephen Matini: That's fabulous. , that's wonderful.

Brian Hanssen: I believe it. The whole, I really do. I believe that wholeheartedly.

Stephen Matini: And it's interesting because it's these are points that you're never gonna find in a communication textbook, really. No. You find other stuff, but not this, you know, but right? Brian, thank you so much for, for all this. This is really wonderful.

Brian Hanssen: There's a lot of overlap in terms of what we do and how we see the world and how we respond to things. And I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You have been, you've gotten me to think about things that I'm not sure I necessarily articulated before, so thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Living a successful personal and professional life requires a lot of things, including tremendous commitment, strategy, gut feeling, and courage.

This episode's guest is Sergio Azzolari, CEO of DSQUARED2, the high fashion brand launched by twin brothers Dean and Dan Caten.

Sergio embodies the cosmopolitan spirit, combining worldliness, wit, culture, and wisdom imbued with humanity and kindness. 

Sergio's life experiences span from Benetton and Missoni to Luxottica and Hogan, speaking six foreign languages and living on five continents. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So, how's your life in Ireland?

Sergio Azzolari: Well, life is in Ireland is good. I mean the weather is always a surprise. I mean, you have a wardrobe that is basically layers. Maybe it’s sunny like now, or maybe like dreadful like a few hours ago. And, you know, but that was good. And Dublin is really booming again. You know, it used to be one of the Celtic Tigers years ago, and then it developed incredibly. And then because of Brexit, a lot of tech companies are moving over here. 

So there's a lot of hustle and bustle. This is good. Very young, very young city, very young town, very young people around, obviously being tech and all. So yeah, it's quite interesting. It's very interesting actually. A lot of things. And, and Dublin is Dublin and then you just go like minutes, minutes away and it's scattered side and beautiful cows, all that. Just kinda, kinda refreshing as well. Why not?

Stephen Matini: You lived in London before, right? 

Sergio Azzolari: I lived in London. I lived in the US. I've lived in Hong Kong, I lived in Australia. I've lived in New Zealand, in Argentina ... yeah ...

Stephen Matini: How does this experience compare to the other places?

Sergio Azzolari: Well, you know, places are different, and you are different because you are, you are different. As you grow, as you grow up, obviously you have different sets of eyes. How do I compare? Well, if I compare with ... I mean it reminds me a lot of the US many years ago not now, now the US is not what it used to be. It's all woke. You can't say anything. You just have to be like, you know, super tame and be careful, not respectful before you were respectful. Now you have to be careful, which is a completely different set of mind. 

Here reminds me of the Google Days in US. So kinda laid back with the sense of humor. Good to stay home, good to go out and see friends, not being afraid what you say, what you don't say. So it reminds me a lot of that. 

It reminds me a bit of Australia as well in terms of mentality. You know, very laid back. I have, I had a meeting with our landlord because we are renovating offices and things, and he doesn't see me on Wednesdays because he has to go play golf. And it's so refreshing actually because, you know, being used to Milan, for example, where everybody's busy. 

Or New York pretty much the same mentality, or London. Here it is, is a lot more refreshing in a way. So you, you wanna have amazing and say, oh, do we need to discuss, or do we need to sign things? Okay, do we need to sign things? 

You come to the office, we don't need to sign things and we just have to have, have a chat. Okay, let's meet at fiver thirty at the pub, order a couple of pints or more. And then, you know, you have a conversation. And that's, there's a lot of human side of things here, which again reminds me of places like Australia or the US many years ago. 

And it's quite nice actually. And if I compare it to Milan, I go to Milan quite often cuz we have one of the offices in the showrooms and all is in Milan. So I get to see the difference almost weekly. And in Milan, we are stressed. The atmosphere is always a little bit, I wouldn't say gloomy cuz it's not the right word. But it's always like, there's always an underlying tension. Underlying current, it is not really good vibes, and it's self-generated.

And it is not someone telling you that you should be stressed, you should be underprivileged because you live. It's a self-inflicted pain. Yeah, absolutely. So there's, there's a certain degree of masochism in Italy that I don't understand really. Cause you know, the work life balance is possible. I mean, I work here in, in Dublin, my days are very full. I have calls, I have meetings, I have things, and I have to prepare budgets. So I have the same degree of stress that I would say that I have in Milan without the stress stressful part. So I get to do a lot more in a shorter time here. Versus what I do in in in Italy. 

But that's, that's also, I think it’s a bit of the difference between let's say the Anglo-Saxon world and the Mediterranean world. Where you have to talk and convince and meet in the Mediterranean world, whereas here it’s a lot more simple in a way. It's a lot more, I wouldn't say directional, but it's like, yeah, we need to do this. Okay, let's agree or let's agree to disagree, and then you just, yeah, do things. 

Stephen Matini: Maybe pragmatic? 

Sergio Azzolari: It’s, it's a lot more pragmatic. That's true. 

Stephen Matini: When people ask me the question, where's home, I never know how to answer.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, we’re in the same club. Okay, well people say home is where your roots are. And that's not a question. Cause I was born in Italy just because of my mom's choice. So my parents at that time were were based in Trinidad, part of Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago. So knowing my mom, she must have gone to the local clinic, browsed around and said ... not here.

So I was born in Como, which is kind of cool, but I never lived there. So, because when I was like a few weeks old, I was already on a plane back to Trinidad. So is home Como? Not really. Is it Trinidad then? I was conceived there but most likely no, because I've never returned after I left when I was two years old. So it's very, it's very difficult to really say where you're from. 

I elected to be from somewhere a few years ago. I never owned any house. My family never owned anything. Like, you know, whatever we owned was like long gone. And so we always rented. I mean, even my parents lived in Milan for a number of years and they rented. So years ago I decided to buy myself a property, a small cottage in the hills, not far from Milan. 

And that's what I call home now, it became sort of my hobby in a way. So I started building and doing things and, you know, designing. I designed the complete house, and designing complete furniture, designed the entire thing, even though I'm not a designer. So working with local artisans and all, and it's, it's like never ending, never ending projects. And that's what I call home. 

Am I from there? No. Do I speak the local dialect? No, I understand it, but I don't speak it. But as home and that's, you know, so people like us, I think at the end of the day we sort of elect where we are from. Cause if we just look backwards and say, okay, where my roots are, okay, they just go everywhere. And then you say, yeah, where were you born? Okay, that's inconsequential. 

Where are your friends? Pretty much all over the world. So it's, it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly where it's home. You know, when you see other people that, you know, they have their childhood friends and you know, they have the family, they have, you know, all the certainties around them, and you don't, in a way you be jealous. But then again, you're not ... say, okay, yeah, well I'm free for Christmas. Put it this way.

Stephen Matini: In hindsight, were there any sign back then when you were a kid of the person you would become?

Sergio Azzolari: Signs? I don't know. I mean, probably like ... Look, I always traveled, but I always wanted to travel. I always wanted to accomplish something. Everything that I did was always with a certain degree of commitment. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. So I wouldn't do something. I would  not try everything if it's not my cup of tea, but just give up the same day. 

So I cannot play guitar. Biggest regret I cannot play music. And I said, okay, that's fine. I mean, I'm not good at it. I won't be good at it because, I mean, it's probably not in my DNA set to be a musician or anything. So just, but everything that I did was with a, with a full on commitment. 

So I played rugby for 32 seasons, and I played rugby internationally, I played rugby at the highest standards even before the professional year, or at the beginning of the professional year. And it became one of the first professionals. I started, and I graduated early because I wanted to get my PhD out of the way. And actually I started working even before getting my PhD. 

I wanted to be one of the first foreigners in China who could speak the language. And actually that kind of helped and that's what I did. So everything that I did was with a certain degree of commitment. Did it, did I, did I have the big picture in mind? No, not really. 

Like for instance, I'll just give you this example. Well, I, I studied economics and I studied Chinese. And I went to Beijing actually in 1989, it was Tiananmen when I was there. And so I was set up to be like probably an economist or working in that kind of environment. And actually I did my thesis on joint ventures in China, because back in the eighties, that was early nineties, that was the only way to do business in China. Joint ventures were local enterprises actually, or govern-owned enterprises. 

I started working for a legal firm you know, making contracts, or like studying them, the ways to do contracts for joint ventures. The idea that I would end up in fashion? Never. Right? But, so it happened that I was working for the Chinese Malaysian counterpart of what the joint base with Benetton would have been. 

And I was sitting on the other side of the table cuz I was with the Chinese side. And the Italian was just saying, Yeah, but you are Italian. I said, yeah. Why are you sitting there? Cause I work for them. And they said no, that's not acceptable. You can’t, you have to come and work for us. 

And a few weeks later I was folding jumpers in Taiwan and that's, that's how I ended up in fashion. So it's like, it's bizarre because you don't plan these things, so you have to sort of go with the flow. God knows if I refused, or maybe I would've done something completely different. I dunno. But did I set my life goal to be like a you know, a manager, or director, or a CEO in the fashion business? Not really. Did I like that? Yes, absolutely. That's why I commit myself. If I didn't like it, if it was some, a field that I wasn't particularly inspired by, I would've said, yeah thank you, but no thank you. But so it struck some chords, so to speak. And that's how, that's how I ended up in working for fashion.

And then it was 30 years ago or thereabout. And I worked in fashion since, fashion and luxury since. So do I mean that's also what I say to my to my kids. One is 20, he’s studying oenology in Italy. He wants to work with wine, and it's a great opportunity because there's very few people who do that.  And the other one is is here in Dublin with me and is, is studying in an international school. But I also chose a school that gives full a full vision of what he can do, right? 

And that’s what I'm telling them. Like, don't, don't put limits. Don't, don't think that what you do now is what you gonna do in ten years. If you do, you get, you're gonna get distracted, or you're gonna get absolutely, you know, disengaged.

Like for instance, I wanted to be an archeologist when I was a kid. And still I'm a history buff, I always went to all sort of excavation areas around the world with my mom, or on my own when I was older. I slept in the great pyramid when I was 15 years old. So I've done a number of things that were like, you know, that's what I want to do. 

I studied classical in high school then. Then you know, reality settles down. Well, if you want to be an archeologist, either you are either very rich, or you have a lot of sponsors, or you gonna be like begging for food. I didn't want to beg for food. 

I said, ok, being big and everything. So I said, Well, maybe not. That's not a career that I could pursue. So I, again, at the end of the day, am I still interested in archeology? Big time. Am I still in history? Totally. Am I doing what I was setting my goals when I was 12, 13 years old? No, absolutely not. So it's, it's not mandatory that you have to follow your heart. Just follow your heart but always mix it with mind. Otherwise you end up doing something that you just regret.

Stephen Matini: Were there any people who influenced your path?

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, I think, I think you know, my advantage has always been that it could relate to people and it could speak their language. I mean, it takes me like a few weeks and I speak the local language, right? So I speak six languages quite fluently. But, you know, I can, I can converse in other languages as well. So by doing that, obviously you, I mean if you break the language barrier, sometimes it helps and you start having conversations with which are a lot more meaningful. 

So obviously my parents were very influential because they gave, I mean. I was the only child, but they gave me complete freedom. So they said, you know, we have your back, but do whatever you like. My father was an engineer, he would've loved me to be an engineer, but hey, you do your your thing. I'll just criticize whatever choice you do you make. But, that was his prerogative. 

And my mom always had my back and she, she was more the humanist in the family. So she told me like, you know, to appreciate arts and, you know, study classics and all sort of things. So they were influential, but not influential you gotta do this, you gotta do that. 

So, and you know, and talking to different people, in different geographies, that also kind of helped. Because all of a sudden you realize like, why did I choose Chinese? I went to China for the second time, actually, the first time, I was only six years old. Second time was eighteen. And I, because of my far acquaintances and all, I had a special visa, all access kinda visa, and I traveled all around China for two months without speaking a single word of Chinese.

And back then, talking about 1987, not many people would speak English, actually very few people. So it was kind of difficult. And then you realize, and you, you start adding one plus one and say, hey, if I understand economics, if I understand the business, I see this potential because it's a largely untapped market, and you get to speak the language, maybe it's an advantage. 

So by talking to people in China, around China, off China around the time, that gave me the influence at least to open up the China chapter of my life. See if I have to, to really list all the people that were influential in my life, I would put, you know, the number in the millions probably because every single person you talk to has a certain influence.

So, that's again, that's where you have to have an open mind. So some people need mentors and tutors. I had great mentors. I, I had great tutors, and bad tutors, and bad mentor, or people that were my bosses. And, and there was more fear than respect in a way, but it was more their fear of me rather than the vice versa. 

Because a lot of people, especially in Italy, at the beginning of my career, not at the beginning of my career, my second job when I moved, when I, my third job when I moved to Italy, I was almost 30 and it was made a director in a company I was actually 29. My, I was the youngest director in the company by far. The second youngest was 12 years older than me, and he was called a kid. So you can imagine. 

And my immediate boss was, was not afraid of me, but it was kind of jealous of me because I could speak languages. I was talking to the President, the owner every day. Cause he wanted to pick my brain about things, and so on and so forth. So it was bypassing it by definition. It was like, it was, it was kind of jealous of my proximity to the sun, right? 

And that influenced me as well. So you might say, well that's that's, that's a bad chapter.  No, quite contrary. I mean, it was very influential because I understood what it means to be, you know, what it means to try at least to be a good boss, that you have to nurture your people, and you have to raise their bar, because if you raise their bar, then your bar raises too.

So rather than trying to keep them low, and that’s influenced a lot of my career because you know, you put that kind of spirit in everyday life. And if you have good people working with you or under you, I always say “with me”, never under, cause you have always colleagues, you never have subordinates. But when you have good colleagues and, you can be their mentor, you can be the one that shines the diamond, you know? And it's actually rewarding. 

So if you have someone who is really good, and you help them with their career, and you don't care about them being grateful, cause ultimately you don't have to care about that, but just, you know, it's more of a self-rewarding exercise than I just held them because they'll be grateful, and then they'll do something in return, right? 

That's the most wrong thing you could possibly think of. But you do that and it actually helps because them, and their career flourishes. They do great things, and you are proud, and you know, and that adds to your, and that influences other people. And at the end of the day, that's the great thing. So I try to influence people, as much as other people influence me.

Stephen Matini: Based on what you say, you're really good at building good relationships.

Sergio Azzolari: Well, I always tried, cause that's also ... probably a bad side of me is that ... there are two people. There's two kind of people in business. People who always to be confrontational, and people who always want to find a sort of win-win situation. I'm very much in the win-win situation area. 

Sometimes I, I know I should be more confrontational, but probably style, breed, whatever, you know, I always despise people who will talk over you, or speak loud, and, I don't, I mean shouting, shouting matches are not my style. So I prefer to go, and look for win-win situations, it helps on the other side, obviously some people think, or some people, some superiors, or whoever, want you to be more aggressive. I mean, it happened a number of times in my life in my professional life. They wanna be more aggressive. But aggressiveness is a different thing. 

Cause I played rugby, I can be very aggressive, but for a purpose, cuz you have to conquer the ball. And in business you cannot just go grab business out of someone else’s hands. So you have to work different kind of aggression in a way. More subtle, more ... sometimes more political, but more win-win. Cuz otherwise, you know, it doesn't work, really. 

So that’s always been one of my characteristics in a way. So I try not to be confrontational. I try to find a good way out. So I'm more of a negotiator than a director and say meaning like, I direct you to do things. But I think the outcome is, I mean, so far it's been quite good, so I can't complain, really.

Stephen Matini: I work with a lot of organizations, a lot of people. What you just said, very often, is probably the hardest thing for people, which is organizational politics. One thing that I hear a lot is I'm just a number. I have a point of view, I have the experience, and the know-how. I know how to provide a solution, but they would not listen to me. And often times people experience this fear, what is it gonna happen if I really say what I want to say? And then if I don't say it, I end up feeling completely frustrated.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Matini: So what would you say to people?

Sergio Azzolari: I'm laughing because it sums up my first big step in my career. I was with Benetton. And that it was really early in my career as I said. Well, I was a newbie in the fashion world, only like four months before I was, you know, like a legal / economics sort of guru. When it came to contracts, I didn't know, I mean, I didn't know much about the business per se, but it was, you know, my logic was more on the, if you do this, that happens, and so on and so forth. So, it was more like a cause effect kind of thing, not really thinking business implications and all. And I was 23 years old, right? And it was the Chief Commercial Officer of Benetton visiting China, and my boss was there. 

I was sent to to meet, and another candidate for a joint venture. And I returned to the hotel late at night and I found a little note, back then it was like, no mobile phones or anything. So I just found a little note returning to hotel by the Chief Commercial Officer saying, “Call me up when when you return.” So I like, okay, fine. So I called them and they said, “Would you think? I said, “Well, these are really good, and they would be much better than those ...” 

So I give my, you know, like my SWOT analysis in ten minutes. So this what you should do. So like an advisor, I put down the phone, had a shower, and so on and so forth. Half an hour later, my boss, my immediate boss calls me, say I need to fire you because how dare you to speak.

Without having your conversation bettered you should have around things past me. I said, Oh, okay, what did they do? So, apologies, but hey, I found the note. I was like very adamant. Following morning, I was like, okay, I, I got fired. Fine. At breakfast, these two gentlemen are already sitting. I arrived there just like out polite, sit together with them and the CCO says to my boss, “Okay, this guy is really a gem. I want you to double his salary and make him a director today.” 

So in other words, you are never a number. I mean you are a number as long as you want to be a number. Cause if you're always afraid and you never want to, you know, pull your head outta the sand, and and just think that things are granted, and because you work there, you should be considered because you're there every day. 

You should be considered because you are in the org chart, you should be considered. And all of a sudden, you know, new hires are put on top of you and so on and so forth, and you complain. And I see that the company like, but have you ever spoken up? 

If you don't agree on something, can you say, hey, yeah, okay, I'll do that because I'm paid to doing that, but I would do this instead. And that's what they tell people, you know? Yeah, you, you don't have to agree. You have to also agree to disagree sometimes. And it's fine, you know, and then fine. And, but that's, that's the direction. It's too late to take another decision. Find point taken. We've taken that into consideration. And then second time around, maybe we'll consult people, that person and that, but that self pity is is another big thing in corporate business.

Oh, they never consider me, I never, I always buy, I'm always bypassed for promotion. B******t. Have you done something about it? Have you spoken to someone? No, just go and back home or to HR and complaining and you just wanting to pay your rise. And that's, that's another thing I probably am wrong because I never got reached. But still, I never worked for money, ever. Not one day in my life. I thought by my salary and all the pay rises that I got during the years were never asked for, in a way. 

People say, well, probably because you're you, you were well off when you started. Not really. No, quite a contrary. I mean, my parents had to work for a living and my father provided, and they gave me an education that they paid for and everything else. It's not something that it was everything given for free. There's no, there's never free lunch anyway. So, but again, I never worked for money. 

Yeah, there's always someone better and someone who pays more, and you can't be a mercenary, which is completely fine. I mean, it's your cup of tea, fine. Or you are always envious, you are always jealous. You always, you know, say, ah, I should make more. Look at the amount of hours I'm putting in. I'm only getting that much. 

And you just compare yourself to others and say, yeah, he's working less than I do, and he has my same salary, so my cost per hour is lower. That's wrong. You know, so you just work, just do your thing. 

And you know, I've been fortunate enough that rewards came and that's another piece of advice that  I give to to my children, especially my son, you know, he is starting obviously his career, and I said, look, before you make a decision, you have to experience everything there is to know about wine. You go and be a waiter, you go and be a sommelier. You go and, and work without a salary. You go and don't even think to be paid. 

Whatever they give you, it is gas money, and it's fine. So don't think about how much you're gonna get today, but if you have a big experience, and you are respected, and you have the right relationships that you built naturally, not forcefully, then the rewards will come naturally. But again, if you work, oh, no, I have to make that much money now, you’re bound be there forever. Especially in Italy, you know, if you start at a certain level, the odds that you're staying at that level for like 20 years. And that's, that's another big thing, I think.

Stephen Matini: Everything you say, If I had to summarize it with one word, it keeps coming to my mind, would be “courage”.

Sergio Azzolari: Yeah. It takes courage and it takes, yeah, it takes ... I mean, everything you do takes courage. I mean, if you always want to be in the comfort zone and, you know, stay home, but even home, it's full of threats. I mean, these are the soap and in the bathtub you can, you know, can slip on it and bang your head. So there is, it takes courage to have a, you know the only non courageous thing to do is stay idle. 

Everything you do, and again, it's a matter of commitment. So you always have to think, if I do something and I'm committed, things will do, will go the proper way. Or not. Unpredictable, but at least you get out of your comfort zone and actually experience something new all the time. Obviously it's uncomfortable the moment any one of us does something that is not accustomed to do.

There's always a degree of, I know I wouldn't say fear, but apprehension. Oh s**t, what am I doing? Am I out of my death? Am I actually, it's funny because it takes courage, but you have to kind of, it's sort of a stage fright. You know, the first time I had, I had a speech in public, I didn't know I had to give a speech in public. I was invited to do this thing to talk about China. And I was, again, 20, must have been 25 or something. 

And so they invited me and, Oh yeah, sure, I’ll come, blah, blah, blah. And I get there and there are 3000 people attending. I didn't know, I, I thought it was just a one-on-one or like a small board run conversation. And at that time I said, well, it takes courage to go in front of people without any preparation or anything, but you take the bull by the horns and just do it. What can go wrong? 

I mean, do they crucify you, or do they, do they burn you at the stake? Probably, but you don't know yet, right? Everything you do in, in many circumstances, yeah, it takes a bit of courage. But if you, if you don't take, if you don't have that little bit of courage, even, you know, the courage of asking her out, or the courage of breaking up some, I mean, it's a lot more courageous. How many people do you know that are very unhappy with their lives, very unhappy with their wife, and the procrastinate the inevitable, and they never divorce? Because it takes courage.

Stephen Matini: You have no idea how long I thought before asking you to be part of the podcast. What is he gonna think, you know? I'm so glad I did, but I thought it for a long time. Oh, no, he is never gonna agree to do this.

Sergio Azzolari: Whenever I can, I know I I like to have conversations. I like to and I don't mean to say, or I don't even mean to be someone to look up to or someone, I'm just a guy who's had, who's having, still having a very interesting life, which is Confucian-Chinese, ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, that's a curse. 

So I'm cursed in that. If you do things and life is interesting, it's a threat. I'm blessed that I'm cursed, you can find time for everything. That's another life lesson that I've learned. It's very hard that I say I don't have time. I don't have time, maybe today, tomorrow, the after the month in a year. But I will always carve out some time to do something meaningful, anything that is maybe not a long time.

So if you ask me, can you spare an entire day I’d say ... s**t. Okay, look, let me look at the calendar, probably in two years. Can you spare an hour? Yeah. This will mean that I'll need to work longer hours today. Yeah, it's fine. But what's the deal? You just organize yourself differently and then you get an hour later because of things that happened before. Again, that’s another thing. You know, pity party, pity party over, I don't have time. No, no, you make time. You decide. It's, it's only up to you.

Stephen Matini: When you're going through a rough spot. How do you summon the courage to move on?

Sergio Azzolari: I always reflect on the outcomes of things, right? So probably one of the things that I've learned especially my first experiences, was always to weigh consequences. So the what if scenarios, right? And that's where some courage is. Well, okay, there's a risk-benefit ratio in everything. And if the risk is worth taking, then courage comes naturally. 

I wouldn't stand on the top of a building and roll on the ball of my feet because I know the risks and there are no rewards basically. So, I mean, the reward is not to fall off. So that's stupid. That's not courage. That's, you know, that's a different thing. But in a, in everything that you do, just think, you know, just sit down, think past. Cause if you think too long, that other other things come in, into, into place and come into the picture. So don't think too long. 

First thing is think, but don't think too long. Think about the risks things, think about the benefits. Think about if, if it that doesn't work, what happens? It's more than a risk. It's actually what happens in broader terms to yourself, through your business, through your immediate people. 

And so, so of course, so think of the chain of consequences that you set in motion, if this works or if this doesn't work, but be fast in thinking. And that's what I do. Like, I, I think fast. I try to think fast and I regret later. So there's always time for regretting anyway. 

In a way, you have to sort of combine your gut and your brain, and with a bit of heart, and then you take decisions, and that's where sum the courage, really. So it's always a calculated courage in a way. It’s always with a pinch of salt in. 

Stephen Matini: And my wish for you is to be cursed for eternity. 

Sergio Azzolari: Thank you. In a way it means that there's never rest. I actually, you know, my wife always teases me because when I'm resting, when I'm doing something, I cannot just stay idle and watch TV. I have to do another three or four things at the same time. Can you just stay quiet? No, it’s a curse ...

 

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The word resilience pops up everywhere these days. It has become a catchy term often abused and misused to indicate the importance of being flexible, stern, and adaptable.

My guest today is Dr. Linda Hoopes, which I affectionately refer to as the Goddess of Resilience. Linda represents one of the most influential voices for researching resilience and helping people become resilient. 

For Linda, “Resilience is the ability to deal with high levels of challenge while maintaining a high level of effectiveness and well-being.” Linda believes everyone has the seeds of resilience and that learning to weather life’s storms with grace and skill is crucial.

Linda spent 25+ years in business psychology and organizational change, and then she gravitated toward resilience as the focus of her professional work. Linda has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology with a minor in Statistics/Psychometrics.

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini. Let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company. 

Hi everyone, I’m Stephen, and welcome to Pity Party Over. The word resilience pops up just about everywhere these days. It has become a catchy term often abused and misused to indicate the importance of being flexible, stern, adaptable, and all sorts of things.

My guest today is Dr. Linda Hoopes which I affectionately refer to as the “Goddess of Resilience.” Linda represents one of the most influential voices for researching resilience and helping people become resilient.

For Linda, resilience is the ability to deal with high levels of challenge while maintaining a high level of effectiveness and well-being. Linda believes everyone has the seeds of resilience, and learning to weather life's storms with grace and skill is crucial.

Linda spent 25+ years in business psychology and organizational change and then she gravitated toward resilience as the focus of her professional work. Linda has a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology with a minor in statistics and psychometrics.

Please welcome to Pity Party Over Linda Hoopes.

Stephen Matini: I was thinking, you are the goddess of resilience. You know to me you are you represent such an important figure. And so I was wondering, as you think about your life, were there any specific people you looked up to? You know, specific events in your life that somehow have contributed more than others, to shape who you are today?

Linda Hoopes: Gosh, that's a great question. So I would say I'd have to start way back. I grew up in a family where I had some good role models for resilience and also so my dad was a logistics engineer, and my mother was a musician. My mother is still alive. And so I got this sort of whole right brain left brain really curious about the world, you know, applied things.

So I got into applied psychology as a field because, you know, business world and also human beings and so ... then going to grad school in industrial and organizational psychology exposed me to a lot of the quantitative and qualitative ways that we understand humans in the world.

And then I went to work for a consulting firm that did work in organizational change. So Daryl Conner, who is one of the early thought leaders in the change management space has been one of my mentors for a long time and in fact he was writing his book called “Managing the speed of change,” which had resilience at the center of it.

And so a lot of my work was stimulated by that environment and thinking about how humans go through change. And then over time I've come to broaden my interests outside of organizations and change and think about all of the different kinds of challenges that we face. So that's kind of the short version of the story.

Stephen Matini: Was there any specific moment that you understood? Oh this is my talent, this is my thing.

Linda Hoopes: I can't think of one moment, but I can think of making the decision to leave the consulting firm world and then take this piece of work that I've done and start my own company and then write the second book and the “Prosilience” book.

And so it's sort of become clearer over time that this is a unique thing that I have to say and that I have some perspectives on it. That might be valuable to people.

Stephen Matini: In my conversations with clients. I often hear people wondering what their lives would be like if they had their own business. Is there anything that helped you make the jump?

Linda Hoopes: Probably two things. One was midlife crisis. Somewhere along there I went to massage school and decided okay, you know like I just need to pursue this thing. Uh and then the other thing was actually the situation around me. The company I was in was changing their business model and becoming less of their business model before was more of a training and transfer models for teaching other people to do things. And they were moving more towards a traditional consulting firm model where they would have teams of people come in and I'm much more of a teacher.

I'm much more of, I want to teach you how to do it. That spider plant in the background is my metaphor for what I do. You know? It's like we plant plants out there and then they grow new plants. And so I really just not cut out to be a road warrior consultant who goes and you know since at a client site for four days a week, for months on end, that's just not me. And so as they were moving there, it became clear that I was I needed to shift something. So so that's what happened. 

Stephen Matini: You also were an adjunct professor?

Linda Hoopes: I was an actual professor before I got into consulting. I taught at several universities and in psychology and business, in statistics research methods. And and so I did that and then at some point I went to work as the research director for this consulting firm and that's sort of how all of this got started.

Well after that I became sort of I did the adjunct thing too because that world is is fun. You know, it's fun to be in an environment where people actively want to learn. So I was in a an organization development program teaching uh master students in as an adjunct professor. And yeah, it's it's really fun, isn't it? What do you teach?

Stephen Matini: I teach Organizational Communication at N.Y.U. here in Florence. This is a main course for our business students. I belong to Stern School of Business and I had this fabulous group of professors that teach the same course all over the world.

So we get together, there's a lot of exchange of information, and the specific slant we give to the course is very organizational development. I’ve been teaching the course for over 10 years and it's been great working with students, most of my students, are 20 years old, you know, so this is the their second year,

Linda Hoopes: Yeah, you know, every now and then I'll have a student come to me, a graduate student, usually in a master's program or a doctoral program wanting to know if they can use the resilience tool that we have and so on in the research. And I always try to find a way to say yes, because I like to encourage that way and we learn things that way.

I don't have the wherewithal to do a lot of direct research myself right now, but I love participating in studies that other people are doing and contributing my thinking too, that it’s, it's and working with the students that are finding their way through that I agree.

Stephen Matini: A fun fact about you that I learned from the Prosilience website (https://prosilience.com), your website, is about the fact that you like to simplify complex things. So I thought it was really neat. How do you do that?

Linda Hoopes: So there's a quote that I really like that is from justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the US justice, that it talks about the simplicity on this side of complexity and the simplicity on the other side of complexity. So, and he talks about how he would give his life for the second one?

The first one is not worth much. And so there's like stupid simplicity and then there's the simplicity that requires really working through complexity, and that requires just sort of sitting with it, understanding it, living with it going off on tangents, getting the big picture in mind and then you figure out how do I boil this down into its essence, into the things that are most critical for people to understand.

And I really love that, you know, I really love um figure, I mean I really do think of it as distilling as thinking about like how can what is the simplest way to express this that captures the power of it that has elegance to it. And you know, you living in Florence all the art that's around you, does a lot of that, you know, really good artists do that with human forms with buildings and all of that. I like doing it with ideas.

Stephen Matini: Well, complexity is a huge topic with all my clients. One of the struggles that people go through is the fact that there's so much information and very often is difficult to understand in this jungle of information, which one which piece of information comes first, which one is more relevant, which one is not as relevant. So I like the way you said that you distill. Is there anything specific you do to distill information or is more of a natural ability you've always had?

Linda Hoopes: Well, I can give you an analogy, I'm also a musician and um and one of the things I love is Irish music and so I play several instruments and so I, but in the summertime I go to this summer music camp and there is a beautiful fingerstyle guitar player named Robin Bullock and he teaches a class.

And one of the things he teaches is about how you learn a song by ear and he talks about finding the corners of the tune. So like a lot of Irish tunes, the notes are, there's a lot of fluidity around the ornamentation of it, but just listening to what are the sort of the core things that sort of make the shape of the tune, and then you fill in the bones from there and then you fill in all the stuff around that.

And I think that's kind of what I try to do with ideas, is like, what are the corners? Like I write down the four or five things and then I figure out sort of how do you embellish it around that? How do you embellish it around that? And some of it comes from making outlines, you know. I remember once upon a time in school we had to make outlines of things, you know, what are the key points and then what are the supporting points? And just even thinking that way is a really helpful process. So I think I just kind of do that with ideas.

Stephen Matini: One topic that comes up a lot is the notion of boundaries in the workplace. People oftentimes find themselves in this weird predicament between basically two opposite needs. On one hand, they feel like being a pressure cooker if they do not set healthy boundaries, and then on the other hand, they feel fearful of what might happen to them if they say no to people. So, what has been your experience in with setting boundaries and to help out clients with boundaries?

Linda Hoopes: Well, first of all, as you know, priorities is one of the resilience muscles that I talk about, and this idea that resilience is about energy. And so if we're not setting boundaries, then our energy might be going all over the place. And so so so it has a role in helping us focus our energy.

I think my experience is that we are always saying no two things. It's just a question of whether it's conscious. Everything that you say yes to, is no to something else. You know, every time I choose to be home with my husband, I'm choosing not to go out and play music. Every time I choose to go on a trip, I'm choosing not to be home.

And so if you don't set boundaries, then you're letting other people decide what you're saying yes and no to, and so I think some of it is just really um you have to start to learn what does yes feel like inside me and and and recognize the cost of not honoring that yes, because you're saying yes to all the other things.

And so to me, it really becomes doing that work of figuring out what's most important to you and then practicing in small ways. I mean this is not like setting a big boundary first, right? You just practice them. There's a no muscle that you use. And so you practice the no muscle in little teeny ways. Um and and polite ways. You know, this is not about being rude either, it's about, well, you know, let me get back to you on that. 

Buy yourself a little bit of time, think about it and then come back to it. But it's a it's a self-respect thing and I've also found that people respect you when you respect yourself. So if you find ways to set a boundary, you're actually increasing people's esteem for you because they can see that you value and honor yourself and that you're that you see your time is precious that you see yourself as a worthwhile resource. 

And so I think it's it's really I would ask the question what happens when you don't set boundaries, then people feel like they can take advantage of you walk all over you. They, you know, you can't they can't respect you anymore than you respect yourself. So that's that's sort of where I would go with that.

Stephen Matini: Probably what is behind all of that is fear. Typical questions that I hear from people are, what is it going to happen to me if I say no to my partner, to my family, to my boss. There is often a big fear behind that. You know, what I find brilliant about your approach is working with expectations. Sometimes I may need to change how I view issues. Other times I may need to accept them or use different actions. Often times all of us, you know, we wait and wait and wait and analyze the same situation a million times. We may have the impression of moving forward, but what we are simply doing is just to have a greater understanding of the dynamics without any traction. So really nothing improves. So my question to you is, how do you choose the right strategic combination of changing expectations, accepting what is, and putting in place some actions to finally move forward?

Linda Hoopes: So as you know, that's that's one of the building blocks is what are the strategies that I choose? When do I take something on, when do I accept and so on? This has been a problem for people for as long as there have been people right, you know, and I went back, so you are you familiar with the “Serenity Prayer”? I went back and looked at the original version of that.

So the serenity prayer was authored by an American theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr. And it’s, it's been useful in 12-step programs, alcoholics, anonymous and other kinds of things. But the original wording goes like, this father give us courage to change what must be altered serenity to accept what cannot be helped and the insight to know the one from the other.

And he wrote that back in the 1930s. And so you know, for as long as there have been human beings, we've been struggling with this issue of what can I control, what can I control? How do I get up, how do I stand up for the things that I need to stand up for. And I think it comes back again to the thing we were talking about before, which is having that clear compass inside you knowing what's important.

I remember a situation where my brother and I were facing a common challenge and his, his impulse was to try to fix it. And my impulse was to try to just work around it and figure out how to how do we deal with this just being the way it is and neither one of us was right or wrong. It's just, it's just different choices about how we spend our energy.

I think the self-awareness to say. I'm saying I'm saying to too many things, it's okay, just the way it is, like I'm not standing up enough, this one kind of self-awareness and then there's the, I'm banging my head against the wall and trying to fix things that I have no control over is another kind of self-awareness.

So I don’t, there's not one right answer, but being aware that there are multiple strategies and that we need to choose our battles and that were possible. We need to reframe things as uh to find ways to see them as hopeful as full of opportunity rather than as problems. You know, all of those things are our ingredients in the mix. How do you do it?

Stephen Matini: Ah! Well, I'm not someone who likes that much arguing, I don't like to get into conflicts, like probably a lot of people and I had to learn how to set boundaries because I felt that my life was all over the place in terms of interpersonal relationships. And so years ago it was a professor, his name is Enrico Cheli, he's a professor at the University of Siena in Italy. He's a psychologist and sociologist who taught me how to do it how to set boundaries and the importance of say no, but to answer your question, I believe that you set boundaries because it boils down to the person you want to be and the life you want to have and I agree with you, there's no correct or wrong answer, let alone giving people advice on what they should be doing or living.

But I can definitely say that the moment that I began setting boundaries, my relationships after a while improved, they simplified, they became much simpler, essentially more functional. So I truly believe it boils down to a choice. Is this something that I want to be part of my life? Is this an experience I want to give to myself? Is this how I want people to treat me? Is this how I want to treat people at the end of all? It's all about happiness and people's happiness, those are really paramount to me.

Linda Hoopes: You know, there's another, I'm gonna take this off on a little bit of a tangent. But one of the things I've been talking to people about lately, I don't know if you're familiar with the model that I have in the “Prosilience” book that's called the challenge map that talks about all the different kinds of challenges that we face. There's the challenges that we choose the things that we step up and decide to do in the world. There are the challenges that just happen.

You know, the weather, I just, my family is down in Florida and we just had hurricane Ian that came through there and you know, all of that, that stuff happens. And then there are the challenges that come from people in the world who are seeking to harm us, you know? If you live in Ukraine, right, there's there's people in the world that are out to take your country over well.

So one of the things that I talk to people about is that the benefits of the resilience work are that if you can use less energy on all the challenges that come from out inside of you. You have more energy available to do the things that are particularly meaningful for you to choose those challenges that you want to step up to in the world and the world needs that, right? You know? 

And so the more resilient we can be and use our energy effectively, and as you say, say yes and no to things um that come at us, then we have we can be more choice more intentional about where we put our energy into the things that really matter.

Stephen Matini: At the beginning of this year, I've done some reframing as you taught me to do, there were some professional relationships that somehow I found really aggravating after many, many years of trying to make them more productive, and truly not seeing anything changing. 

And so at some point I really felt frustrated, and I got tired of feeling that way and I said to myself, I don't want to feel this way about anyone. And so what I did, I made the deliberate effort to appreciate what worked. So feeling grateful rather than obsessing about what the relationship was never going to be, and then I thought, well, I need to seek elsewhere different dynamics that could be more representative. 

So that was the choice. And it did the trick because what it did, it freed a lot of energy which was consumed in frustration and I invested it in other activities, which definitely were more productive. Like, you know, this podcast 

Linda Hoopes: Absolutely freeing up your energy and I have found to that decluttering things, you know, just taking the time to just we'd the things out of my life that I don't need, whether it's stuff or people or whatever. It opens up space for new things to come in and it's beautiful.

Stephen Matini. I noticed from your LinkedIn profile, which are also an appreciative increase practitioner. I love appreciative inquiry, it's one of the tools that I use the most with clients. And over the years I met many appreciative inquiry practitioners whose approach focuses on strength as it should be, and positivity,

On the other hand, I believe that there is space for feeling bad sometimes about yourself. It is about positivity is about focusing on strength, but I strongly believe that if I want to move on, there's a space for everything in your opinion, is there anything positive about having a pity party?

Linda Hoopes: Oh my goodness, that's a great question. So, um so, I actually, in preparation for this, I had to look up, sort of the whole pity party thing just to make sure that I was understanding what this is about, and you know, this gets into the whole zone of of what some people are called toxic positivity, you know, sort of this idea that oh, it's all supposed to be happy.

I've never seen positivity that way to me, positivity is really recognizing that I have a choice to pay attention to the things that are going well and right without denying or dismissing the bigger picture, but that I choose to focus my energy on the things that are healthy, healthy and that I want more of, rather than focusing my attention on the things that are that are sick.

And that's that's kind of the whole thrust behind the positive psychology movement. It's thinking about what is health look like, what is flourishing look like? Uh you know, and how do we get more of that? And so, um and so part for me.

So there's this other resilience muscle that's that we label creativity that is really about polarities, it's about both, and it's about recognizing that there's many ways to view a situation that there's many layers to things, and I think that's that's a muscle that's really useful here too, because I think we need to recognize that the world can be both terrific and awful at the same time. That there can be beauty, and there can be sadness, and that there can be all these many things that are going on.

And I think acknowledging that letting ourselves move through those feelings that we feel, not saying, oh I'm not supposed to feel that way. I mean I grew up thinking I wasn't ever supposed to be angry and then at some point as an adult I realized no anger is a gift. It it helps me see where I need to set a boundary.

And so being able to sort of recognize those emotions and let them move through us without taking us over is a is a really powerful skill. And so I would say bring on the pity party if that's what you need to do, right? You know, if if you need to just sort of um let yourself spin for a while, but the idea of a party is great because it has a beginning and an end, right? 

So this is not the pity life, this is not getting in the emotional spin and get and staying stuck, it's about saying, okay, I feel like crap right now, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna let myself feel that way for a while and you know, eat the extra ice cream and you know, do whatever I need to do. 

Um but I would say a couple of things about pity parties, one is if possible, make sure it includes some dancing because getting, you know, getting up and like putting on some music and moving around while you're having a pity party, even if it involves, you know punching things. 

Um and the other thing is like don't invite the whole world, you know if you need to have one or two people at the pity party with you but you don't need to inflict that like negative emotions are super contagious. And so um and so just be careful about you know sort of who you're inviting to the party. But you know I think pity parties are a great tool for resilience because you know we like we have to acknowledge that sometimes stuff just is terrible.

Stephen Matini: This past two and a half years have been very challenging for everyone. Is there any specific resilience muscle somehow that in your opinion takes the front seat during these difficult times? 

Linda Hoopes: So I would say that one of them is connection. So this idea that resilience is a team sport, we don't have to do it alone. And I think um one of the things that's been very difficult with all of the covid stuff and everything that's going on is the isolation. Humans are ... so so one of the you know the first building block of resilience is around calming is around being able to bring ourselves to a calm place.

So one label that psychologists use for that is self-regulation, visibility to regulate ourselves, but we also co-regulate humans co-regulate, we see each other's faces the expressions, and the masks hide that it's hard to read people's expressions and so finding ways to be together with people to connect with people.

We've gotten so clever about using Zoom to talk to people halfway around the world. But resilience, we draw other people have physical, mental, emotional spiritual energy that we can draw on. And so recognizing the communities that were part of, nourishing them is a tremendously important muscle.

And then the other thing I would say is one of the ones we've already talked about, which is priorities. Which is this idea that being um choosy about what you do. I mean I can only sit on so many meetings a day, right? And I know like I had a woman come to my office yesterday for a meeting even though she doesn’t, she lives a ways away. Like it took her a little time to to drive, but she's just tired of zoom meetings and she decided it would be better to meet in person and it was, it was great. I would say priorities and connection are super important at this time. Not to say that they're not all important.

Stephen Matini: Priority is a critical factor. That seems to be an issue with many professionals. Managing time and stress gets challenging even for seasoned professionals. They all struggle to understand what comes first, second ... would you have any tips for them?

Linda Hoopes: So that actually brings in an additional muscle, which is the muscle of structure and that's the muscle that is about estimating and planning and getting into the details and figuring out, you know, what needs to come first, what needs to come next. And that muscle is about efficiency, it's about not wasting your energy on the things that are predictable.

And um you know, I think that sometimes just taking a few minutes to think to sit down and think about what's most important, you know, whether it's a journaling practice or reflective practice or just taking five minutes at the beginning of each day to think what's most important for me to be doing right now.

The other thing that I would, the other thing that brings up for me is the is the impact that leaders have on the people around them and the way the culture can either support or not support resilience. So that's that's an area I'm doing some thinking about right now.

There are some organizations, have you ever been on an airplane where you were stuck in a middle seat? You know, and you just can't move for anything right? There are some organizations that are like that with your resilience muscles. You can't move, you can’t, you can't say no to things, you can't take risks. 

You can't like all of these things that we try to do to be creative to come up with ideas to, you know to say no to things to prioritize and when leaders set a bad example or when the culture doesn't reinforce that, like think about the experimenting muscle which is really about curiosity and trying things and taking risks.

There are some cultures that just beat that out of people, you know because you have to be right 100% of the time and you can't afford to fail. And so so I think that leaders have a huge impact on the positivity, the confidence that people have really all of that and with priorities being a great example because if a leader doesn't set clear priorities then it's not okay for the people that report to them to come back and try to set boundaries and say, hey boss, you know, you just gave me the ten thing to do. Tell me which three I should do.

Stephen Matini: Well what you just pointed out is politics, and I have to say that it is probably the one component that people struggle with the most. So often I see people struggling with the nuances of politics, they do not fully comprehend the levers of power surrounding them. I observe great ideas that slam against cement walls, you know like you cannot do this, you cannot do that. So I was wondering in your studies, have you ever researched how resilience applies to politics within organizations.

Linda Hoopes: Yes. And what I will say is that um those are specific kinds of challenges, those are dealing with relationships and sort of and also how the confidence that I have in my own abilities and the circumstances that I'm in. So when I do some coaching with people around resilience, it often gets very specific around dealing with a boss who doesn't value me or whatever, and so then you sort of have to go through and say, where's my energy going? What muscles am I using? How am I working through this? 

I would say that in my own experience, confidence is the muscle that's really important there knowing I'm gonna be okay because I think in my, when I've seen people who have dealt with all of that effectively, what they've been able to do is to get to a place where they're okay if they leave, so they're not afraid of getting fired.

I that that happened to me some years ago when I was in a situation that I wasn't particularly happy about, I just came to a point where I decided, you know, I'm gonna just say what I need to say and if it means that I'm gonna have to make a choice, like it wasn't about, I'm out of here, it wasn't at all, it was like if that's what happens, I'll be okay with it, you know, I know that I can survive this, I know this is a challenge that I could take on, I'm not, I'm not looking for it, I'm not seeking it out, but it gives me the courage to say what I need to say.

And, and so, and so as as a strategy for, as a resilient strategy, recognizing that I'm a person that brings value, that I that there's a lot that I can do, that I've dealt with challenges before that, you know, the challenge of looking for something that's a better fit for me is a challenge I can take on. And so there are some people who are using the resilience work in career um development, so in career planning and, and just thinking about, you know, how do I step up to the next level? 

How do I stretch myself in a job that I'm not big enough for? Um or that that's that's not big enough for me and you know, like how do I decide the next thing? How do I deal with this coworker?  All of this are the, you know, these are the challenges that we face every day that that call on our resilience and our energy. So 100%.

Stephen Matini: A big chunk of your work is about energy, which I personally love and few people talk about it in the business world. Often times is seen as something that doesn't quite fit. So I have been practicing mindfulness since I was 18 and I sometimes use mindfulness in my, in my work, what is your favorite way to calm yourself, to center yourself? 

Linda Hoopes: For me, so I also raced sailboats. So getting out on the water in a boat is, you know, so breathing is the obvious one and you can do that anywhere. But for me, getting out of nature, whether it's a walk or getting out on the water is one of the centering kinds of things that I like to do. And sometimes it's getting a hug or listening to music, but there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of tools we can use.

And I think as you say, um, what a mindfulness practice does is it gives you sort of the experience in bringing yourself back, returning yourself to that place of feeling grounded and centered and, and, and that’s, that's very powerful. 

Stephen Matini; You know, you're the second person this week that, that tells me about sailing, so maybe that's a hint. I've never done it. 

Linda Hoopes: Come on over, I'll take you sailing. Well, there’s, so there’s, there's a place I'll go. So one of the things that you just said brought up something I learned in massage school. So, um, and, and so they, they always talked about, um, don't work on clients who drain your energy, you know?

And so, so how that's translated to me in, in the non massage world is spend time with people who nourish me. So there are people who nourish you in various different ways, whether it's mental. You know, you have fun just with the ideas with them or emotionally or spiritually or, or even physically people that you just feel physically good around and you do activities with.

And so I really try to be attuned to what is happening with my energy when I'm with this person, if it feels drained, like if I start to feel an energy drain when I'm around somebody, I really intentionally try to make sure that I spend less time with that because I don't have any time in my life for people who aren't nourishing me in some way. And I try to be that sort of a source for others as well. 

Stephen Matini: It is a matter of choosing those situations and people we want to be part of our life. So these days I hear people often saying they don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do that in your opinion. How can we find the time?

Linda Hoopes: I don't think you do. I think what you do is you reframe, you reframe the world as your resilience gym. You know, when you're in traffic and somebody cuts you off, you say, oh resilience practice. So you don't look for time to do separate things. 

You just find every day in every moment a chance to do things that lift your energy that lift the energy of the people around you. Um, I've started focusing more on this idea of how our energy spirals and so, you know, often times mental health issues can result from a series of symptoms that just get into a spiral that feed each other.

And so resilience is about breaking those patterns. It's about seeing things in a different way. It's about taking that moment to pause and have a different reaction. And so, um so I've really gotten um focused on this idea of micro challenges that the little challenges, you know, you're on the phone and the customer service representative is really crabby.

So your job now is to see if you can make them laugh right. Um or you know, you just sort of start to see resilience challenges and opportunities for development every place. And those are the things that start to rewire your brain. And so uh so, you know, I think it really is a different mindset around it.

It's not how can I go find time for a meditation practice? Although I will tell you that my meditation practice when I do it is about six minutes long. I have a timer, you know, it's like, I don't have 30 minutes to go do it. But um but you know, you just, you just do do little micro bursts, just little things that are in the moment that that enable you to become more aware of how how your resilience in your way through the world.

I see resilience as a verb anymore. You know, these days I see it as a verb, it's the motions that we go through as we deal with the challenges in life. And so you're always resilience sing. You're always dealing with large and small challenges. You're choosing challenges, you're doing that.

And so so some of it's just bringing that mindset to it and just seeing it all as practice because every now and then the final exam comes, you know, every now and then the hurricane does knock your house down, um, or a loved one dies or something like that.

And and you really have to deal with all of that. But the more you practice, the more you built those muscles, the more you built that capability, the more you have to draw on when, when the big test comes.

Stephen Matini: Linda, have you always been resident?

Linda Hoopes: No, there are days when I'm not resilient at all! But I, I often, you know, I'm always able to see that it'll come back like on the days when the tide washes out and I'm just feeling drained and crabby and blah. You know, I recognize that the title come in, you know, that this too shall pass and you know, whatever it is. And so I'm sort of a little bit more able than I used to be to recognize that, you know, there’s, there's an ebb and flow to it all.

And um, and there, there, I mean there are times in my life I've been, what we say in the southern us here. I've been a hot mess, you know, like I've just just done stupid things and made bad judgments and all of that but you know it's all part of the road that's gotten me here and so yeah, no I'm not always resilient now even though I've been teaching about it for so long.

Stephen Matini: What’s gonna be next for Linda?

Linda Hoopes: Well, so some of the stuff that I talked about leaders, about the role of leaders in creating an environment that supports resilience. I'm actually working on a blog post right now. That's about the fact that um some environments are more challenging than others because of the physical environment or because of the history that we bring or because of the level of psychological safety or you know there's there's all these contextual factors that make it easier or harder for people to um to bring their resilience to the table.

And so I'm really kind of interested in that because I think it speaks to issues of um power and influence and justice and all of that there, you know there are people for whom walking through the world every day has an extra layer of challenge in it because they're disabled or because they carry a stigma of some kind or because they are in a minority in the group that they're in or whatever it is, you know and I think we need to figure out like how to we both equipped people internally to bring their best resilience to the table and to resilience their way through and also create environments for people that that let them flex those muscles that let them bring their best energy to the world and give them the opportunity to build and replenish that energy when they need it. So that's one thing I'm working on. 

Another thing that I'm working on is I am um I have a project going. I have my great grandmother's journals that she wrote starting in 1927 in rural Iowa. And she wrote all the way through to like 1955 just before she died.

So they went through the depression, they lost their business, their farm, all of that. They went through World War II and she wrote every day of the world. And so I'm working on having those journals transcribed and publishing them in a weekly installment with comments and things. And so I'm learning so much about history and about the resilience challenges that people have faced throughout, you know, my family's history and other people's history and so so that's another thing that I'm working on is figuring out how those stories get told.

My um my great aunt um taught school in Iran and in Thailand um and so she left Iran before about the time that the that the Shah fell and the and the current administration took over. But they went and traveled.

They, you know like that part of the world will never will never be the same and will never see it again in that way, I'll never be able to go over there and experience some of the things that she experienced and so there's part of that like there's this set of so stories that I want to tell that that are there related to resilience in a way?

Um that's not, that's not why I'm doing them, but ut there is this relationship to recognizing that history comes and goes and stories, you know, people have faced different things in different times and that there are ways to find light and hope and possibility and curiosity in so many ways 

Stephen Matini: Linda, this is wonderful. Are there any questions I did not ask you that you wish I did?

Linda Hoopes: One of the questions that you wrote down for me was this question about how do we replenish our energy? You know, when our energy is feeling drained, how do we replenish our energy? And one of the things that has become clearer for me is that um the question is not always about how do I do less?

Like how do you like if I'm feeling spread then drained whatever oftentimes our first impulse is to stop doing things, you know, is to do less is to take things off the table and conserve our energy. I actually find so the metaphor I've been using for that is, here's my phone, if this phone, the battery is drained on this phone, I can't possibly turn off enough apps to recharge it, you know, what I actually have to do is plug it in.

And so the question that is as human beings, what is plugging in, look like for us, you know, what is it that is a power source? Like what, what does that for us? And sometimes it's really just a posture like, like for people in the military standing at attention, you know, or if you’re, you know, if you're a yoga practitioner doing some sort of opposed that causes you to stand strong and firm, a tree or a warrior or something like that.

You know, sometimes we recharge our batteries by doing things that engage us in the world, you know, and so so so thinking about what is your power source, you know, for you? Um it might be your meditation for me, it might be my sailing. Um, but recognizing those things that feed us that feed our energy and not sort of succumbing to the temptation to get into a spiral where we're doing less and less because that is not necessarily going to recharge us.

So I have this wonderful group, global group of resilience practitioners that have been through the training that I do and we do, we do calls every quarter to get together when the, when the pandemic started, We met every week because we just needed to support each other and then it sort of stretched out now we're doing them quarterly.

But on one of our calls, we did a dis discussion about what do you do to recharge. And so I captured some of that, you know, you we were talking about elegance and structure. I sort of captured that into a set of things for some people. It's work for some people.

The work that they do is energizing enough that engaging in and that's true for me to to a certain extent I can't ever imagine retiring because I like what I do and so it and it nourishes me but for some people it's just watching stupid movies on TV and laughing out loud you know, and so there's there's you know, there's just different ways that we do that and nature is a big one for people. So yeah, so knowing what your replenishment strategies are is a is a good thing too, good thing to work on.

Stephen Matini: Linda thank you so much for spending time with me, I'm so appreciative. So happy to meet you finally and thank you for all these important bits and pieces. Thank you.

Linda Hoopes: It's been my pleasure. It's great to meet you and thank you so much for inviting me.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. In the episode Linda covers a lot of aspects pertaining resilience. She points out that resilience is a verb, and by that she means that resilience training is something that has to occur every single day around small tasks, so that we can be prepared to face significant life-changing events.

For Linda resilience is a series of muscles that entails seeing possibilities, recognizing our capabilities, understanding what's essential, thinking creatively developing connections, structuring activities, and being willing to experiment.

Sometimes we can reframe a challenge by changing our expectations. Sometimes we can change it through specific actions, and other times we can accept that we cannot control anything. 

Developing resilience entails becoming mindful that our energy needs to be managed, from the people we welcome in our life to the tasks that consume our time. We are always saying no to people and things. It's just a question or whether it's conscious.

If you have any questions about the content of this episode, you can contact me via email, LinkedIn or Twitter. Please check the episode's notes for information. If you enjoy this content, please subscribe to the Pity Party Over podcast available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and many podcast platforms and apps.

I invite you to browse our managerial and leadership development programs at alygn.company. ALYGN is spelled A. L. Y. G. N. dot company. 

Be happy, be well, and until we connect again, thank you for listening. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakfastwithstephen.substack.com

Business people tend to think of their jobs as results and efficiency. However, whether we like it or not,  professional and personal relationships strongly affect performance.

This episode explores the best way to care for ourselves and those we love, family members, friends, and colleagues, near the final days of life because of illness or age.

My special guest is Charlene Shaw, a physician with 20+ years of experience providing care to vulnerable geriatric and terminally ill patients.  Dr. Shaw points out that not knowing how to deal with mortality hinders our ability to be compassionate and caring towards others and ourselves. 

Developing a deeper understanding and awareness of this natural process has the healing power to turn grief into growth: we become advocates for our loved ones in their most glorious moment to provide relief and peace.

Dr. Shaw earned her medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Miami.

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Pity Party Over, the podcast for people teams and organizations seeking practical ideas for results in greater happiness. I'm your host, Stephen Matini, let's pause, learn and move on. Pity Party Over is brought to you by ALYGN, A L Y G N.company. 

Hi everyone I'm Stephen and welcome to Pity Party Over. A lot of business people tend to think of their jobs as results and efficiency. However, whether we like it or not,  professional and personal relationships strongly affect performance.

This episode explores the best way to care for ourselves and those we love, family members, friends, and colleagues, near the final days of life because of illness or age.

My special guest is Charlene Shaw, a physician with 20+ years of experience providing care to vulnerable geriatric and terminally ill patients. 

Dr. Shaw earned her medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Miami.

Stephen Matini: I cannot think of a better person to do this with, someone I've been knowing for a long time. Would you mind sharing where you come from, how the whole idea of becoming a doctor, a physician, came into your life.

Charlene Shaw: Thank you for having me on your podcast. And yes we go back quite a ways. It's a beautiful thing that we can do this together. 

So how did how did this whole doctor thing come about? Well I was born in Trinidad, then we moved to Miami when I was I think about eight years old. But the thing is is I've always wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a little kid.

I remember watching Marcus Welby, like laying on the living room floor with my grandmother watching Marcus Welby. Maybe that left an impression, but since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to be a doctor. There was never anything else. 

Interestingly enough, um ... as a a little girl and growing up in adolescents and so forth, there were no life changing events, so to speak. That you know, a lot of people, they go into medicine because they lost someone, and they want to know how to help people,  how to keep people from dying, or dying too soon, or dying necessarily and things like that. I've never had any such events. 

It was a true desire to be a physician, to be the person who understands how the body works, and helps people manage what's happening with them, or prevent things from happening, and so forth and so on. It's just been an internal desire. 

Now is another story because as you know, I just lost my mom. While I understand all the medicine involved, it's just a devastating loss.

Stephen Matini: Yes. And you were there when my mom went away. As you studied to become a physician, then you started working, how did you choose the focus of your career?

Charlene Shaw: That's an easy one. I always wanted to be an O.B. guy, you know, an obstetrician, so I would be delivering babies and and and dealing with gynecological issues and so forth and so on. But when I did residency, I had O.B. guide rotations. I couldn't wait to do these rotations. Once I started and I saw what was truly involved, I had to stop and think, okay, is this what I really want to do for the rest of my life?

It's a beautiful event bringing a child into the world, but, but ... everything that happens before that, you don't know until you're there. So women that are in labor or they have false contractions and things like this at two o'clock in the morning as the new doc in the group, guess who's gonna be constantly at those kinds of situations?

So, once I saw that it's not just about, oh this beautiful baby is brought into the world or oh these women need this kind of care and that kind of care, it's a lot more involved.
I suppose I romanticized it as I was growing up that this is how it's gonna be and this is what I'm gonna do. And the reality of it is quite different. 

The hours the time spends and what the time is spent doing. It's a lot of preparation and look and see and know you're not ready in three days and four days and five days. And you know, it came down to a life decision: is this the way I want to spend the next at least 10 years before you know, I become let's say a senior partner or something? 

This is not how I envisioned this particular specialty of being. And so no, this is not how I would like to spend important years of my life. The meat and potatoes of obstetrics, it's still very appealing to me, but it's all of the business around it and and the on call schedule and, and having your life being literally on hold while other things are happening, not really being able to live my own life because I'm bringing other lives into the world.

Stephen Matini: You went from thinking of focusing on the beginning of life, to the other side, to the other end. What appealed to you, the omega, the ending.

Charlene Shaw: It was a process. It wasn't okay, that's what I'm going to do next. It was actually a process. In the last year of residency, you need to apply for your specialty. You know, if you wanted to sub specialize. I got an invitation. It all began with an invitation.

One of my senior residents said, hey Shaw, come and check this out. I'm like check what out. And she says, I'm in the, I work with nursing homes. I'm like, oh God no. And so she says just come, come and see for yourself, and then we can talk. 

She was one of the people that sort of held my hand and then I looked up to. I meant to her, her name is Kim. So I went on a rotation with her through these nursing homes, I was completely, completely blown away and humbled by what I saw and what she did. 

It was a building filled with people, an incredible need of care. I suppose up to that point, I was still living in this very romanticized idea of what medicine is and what patients are and what they need and and so forth in my role with them.

And when I walked into the nursing home and I saw these people, they're all vulnerable,
terribly ill, frail people that needed a lot of care, that needed attention. It was that was it. I was done. I'm like this is where I'm going to be. These are people that need significant help. And I decided in that moment, yes, this is what I'm gonna do. 

So once residency was finished, I signed on with her team because the population of people that I was seeing were elderly, it made sense that I would go on and become board certified in geriatric medicine.

Like you see these TV shows where you know, death is never an option. Never, ever. People are jumping on other people's chest, they’re doing CPR and they have this magical, oh, oh I'm alive and it's like, oh my God. That is so far from the truth! 

But you know, society and television, they don't prepare you for the end, they don't prepare you for what's next in old age. They just don’t, and so people live with this idea that they're never gonna die, they're invincible, and so they become ill, and the end of their disease approaches, the end of their life approaches, and they have absolutely no idea about how to deal with that or accept it. 

The families are saying, do everything that you can, and you look in the bed of the person who is just simply in agony and suffering and nature is taking its course and this person is in the process of dying. 

How do you let that happen in a compassionate way, in a caring way? And how do you help decrease the suffering that's involved, not just for the patient in the bed, but also for their family, because they're struggling with the idea that, oh no, this person is leaving us, this person is going to die. How are we going to carry on? It was just a complete full circle chain of events that led from internal medicine to geriatrics, to hospice and palliative care.

Stephen Matini: What would you say are some of the most meaningful lessons that are with you as a result of all these experiences?

Charlene Shaw: Oh my gosh humility. It’s, it's humility. You walk in and you step into a room, and in that room is a 90 something year old person, who has lived their best life and they've had tremendous experiences. 

They look at you and, you know, I just melt, and people look at the elderly and take them for granted, and don't really give them the time of day, and you know, things like these people have tremendous amounts to contribute in terms of, you know, telling stories of their lives and telling and sharing their own experiences. It's just very, very helpful. I feel um I suppose honored to be the person that is there to take care of them.

Stephen Matini:  What we're talking about is reality for all of us. These moments are moments that truly demand for you to become the leader of your family. 

When I acknowledged the fact that my mom was not gonna make it, it was truly the help of one specific physician that helped me gain the right perspective, and to make the decision that eventually has given me peace. And even now when I think about those moments, and that horrible decision which was to let my mom go, I feel such a sense of pride. I feel so courageous the fact that I was there until the end. 

Is there anything that will be in your opinion important for family members to know to face those moments?

Charlene Shaw: Recognize when their loved ones are dying, or in the dying process, and be the person who's there as their advocate for them in a loving way as opposed to no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't die. This is this is not how this goes. 

It's a lot easier for that process to happen, because the person who's dying gets to sort of have some relief, to know that their families are there by their side, they understand what's happening, and they will carry on, and that they will be okay.

I think the most important thing is for people to know that this is natural, this, that it's accepted or recognized, the easier it is for both the person who's dying because they understand and they're here, and their family is there, and you know, like this, and also for the people who are left behind, like this gut wrenching and heartbreaking, but can still go on and represents or be a part of the one that you just lost.

Stephen Matini: You share with me that the loss of your mom has changed a lot of things. You became interested in other facets of your profession, like the use of medical cannabis in palliative care. Also you mentioned second opinion, which may have the critical influence on the diagnosis and treatment. 

Charlene Shaw: For all the time I spent doing what I love to do, taking care of the elderly, seeing them through all sorts of, of illnesses and diseases and talking with their families and things like this, it was a beautiful thing, that I felt humbled and honored to be able to do. 

But when it came my turn to deal with that and it's still difficult so ... it was impossible ... to continue to do that ... So ... I needed something else ... cannabis .. woo

(laughter)

Stephen Matini: You know, I never tried it.

Charlene Shaw: Believe it or not, me neither. It's not something that I do or did. It was okay, here we are. The State of Florida legalized this, um, legalized medical cannabis, not recreational. And it's always something in the back of my mind because being in hospice, I saw patients who used cannabis that were a bit better off in terms of managing pain, managing nausea, and um even though it's the end of their life, they're still able to embrace this overall sense of well being. 

And it was hard to deny that it was hard to ignore that. I went to some lectures, I, you know, became better what it does, how it does. It let me just do the certification, if I use it, or if the opportunity comes around, I'm prepared. So I did the certification. And lo and behold there it was, I got an offer that I said yes to. And so there went my other direction to medical cannabis. 

Seriously, it was just, I could not continue with hospice, not for any reason other than I was personally grieving. I was not able to give myself to other families and other people that were in similar situations because of my own grief. So it was a way to continue medicine on an entirely different level, entirely different level. And so that's what I did. 

Stephen Matini: Cannabis and weeds, are the same thing?

Charlene Shaw: Yeah, weed is sort of the slang term for cannabis. So there are so many things on this plant that have shown medicinal benefits. We can talk about things like cannabinoids which is the CBD and the THC here in the States. The CBD is determined to be sort of like an agricultural commodity, so you can buy it over the counter as long as there's less than 0.3% THC by dry weight, then you can buy this product over the counter just about anywhere. 

THC is the component in the cannabis plant that is not federally legal, and so each state has taken it upon itself to determine, yes this is a benefit, this is not a benefit, we will allow this but not that. So anyway, long story short THC is the component in the cannabis is what it's the cannabinoid that provides relief for a great many things, as does the C.B.D. 

You put those two things together and you get an impressive response. The THC works directly with pain. It works directly with depression. It works directly with insomnia, directly with anxiety, directly with nausea. CBD, on the other hand, works exceptionally well with inflammation, it works with seizures.  The FDA approved drug PD L.X, which is CBD for children. 

Cannabis has the smell, right? And the thing that creates the smell, it's called terpenes and the terpenes themselves have medicinal benefits. It's a world of potential. So we find that patients with Crohn's disease greatly benefit from cannabis use, patients with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's actually also greatly benefit from cannabis use.

You know the Parkinson’s, the tremor can become significant. Some of these patients we've seen where they take a dose of the cannabis sublingually, which is a liquid that they put under the tongue, and they give that some time, and the tremor goes from very rapid, to practically non existent for some period of time. And it's the same if they smoke the cannabis, it tends to stop quicker.

As far as second opinion consultations. There is a clinic, the VIOS clinic (www.viosapp.com) that is set up, and it's an international clinic, and the idea is they have a pool of physicians from multiple, multiple specialties. Usually what's involved in a second opinion is not simple. 

Okay they're looking for a doctor who is an expert in the field of. So if it's a cancer diagnosis, obviously they want uh an expert oncologist. If it's like multiple sclerosis or a. L.S. or something like this, they want an expert neurologist.

They're looking for an expert that can give them a second opinion to corroborate the information they got from their primary doctor, from their local doctor. The idea is they would call in get this expert. They have 30 minutes to discuss whatever they want to discuss it can be as soon as they want. So if if they want a second opinion tomorrow, then ideally you can call in and get that second opinion tomorrow.

And it saves all kinds of time scheduling because the expert is not usually in the same town. So they don't have to travel first of all, they're sick in the first place, right? So they don't have to book hotel, book flight, take a long drive, go somewhere else, and it's like two months, three months out before they get the appointment in the first place. 

So all of these things are just like chopped off. Telemedicine has problems quite a nice long way since Covid. There is a feasible way to to continue this telemedicine process to help those patients or those people who are limited, who cannot simply get on a plane or get into a car.

Stephen Matini: For those people who are not familiar with second opinion, why would you say is important to get a second opinion? 

Charlene Shaw: I think peace of mind is the best answer. If somebody tells you carrying on with your best life and then something happens, you're in the hospital, they do diagnostics, and they find let's say a mass or a tumor, or they find something, that you are not expecting, you're completely devastated. Most people don't just want to say okay and carry on. Many people do. But not everyone.

And so if you're not settled with the opinion or with the diagnostics or the result of your your visits, then yes. You can get a second expert opinion, to help you feel secure or more in charge of what you do next. 

Let's say the cancer diagnosis, and it's a terminal cancer, or the cancer has spread or something like this, and the doc says, well in these cases people, the five year survival is only 35%. A second opinion can just kind of, it's never easy but at least if you decide to go to treatment, you have some idea of what to expect. Or if you decide, I'm not doing anything because ... whatever your reasons are, then you can make that decision knowing that okay, this is what I can expect. and just kind of gives people some peace of mind to make whatever decision they feel they need to make.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever listened to Lady Gaga's song The Edge of Glory?

Charlene Shaw: Probably.

Stephen Matini: The song is about her grandfather, when he passed away. The edge of glory is the most glorious moment in life, when you decided that it's okay to go. You don't have any more words to say -you know she says- more business, more mountains to climb. You're on the cliff, you tip your hat to yourself and you go. You finally move on to the next chapter.

So, you chose a job that is stressful, to say the least. When you feel down, you know when you feel really in a massive pity party, which all of us had the right to feel ... 

Charlene Shaw: Right.

Stephen Matini: What is something that helps you overcome it? That's what I call a pity party over, like okay enough is enough, I move on.

Charlene Shaw: I sit quietly. Silence is an amazing tool for me. Everything becomes crystal clear at some point. So I sit and I meditate. Sometimes I listen to Mooji, he uh he as well as Sadhguru are two gurus that have been very influential in terms of being able to handle life and the, you know, making lemonade out of lemons and things like that. 

But the act of simply being silent and letting like unfold, rather than forcing it, or trying to live by my projections, is a remarkable tool.

So pity party over, I just sit quietly and contemplate and and just be, and look for a different way to express what is happening, or just look for a different direction to focus, and silence usually brings out. 

Stephen Matini: Which is often counterintuitive. Particularly I see it a lot when I work with business people, you know, it's all rush, fast, you need to get things done and often times that is associated with them not being productive. Instead for me, just a different way to manage your time.

Stephen Matini: Thank you so much for all your thoughts. This is ...

Charlene Shaw: Oh, you’re welcome!

Stephen Matini: This is really wonderful.

Charlene Shaw: It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Stephen Matini:  You really chose an incredible job. You've got to be a special person to do what you do, seriously, on a daily basis and to do anyway, that is humane,
thank you for sharing all this because I think a lot of people can definitely benefit from this.

Charlene Shaw: I appreciate it and thank you. You know, as a physician, it's demanding,
there's no way around that, it's very demanding and I have to bring my A game every time I walk into the door, there's no letting anything slip. 

To keep that going, requires a good deal of effort. To keep the humanity and the vulnerability, I think going back to that silent place, really makes a big difference. So when I made my life choice about what part of medicine I wanted to participate and I was true and honest to myself, how much of this and you know, how do I want to show up? How do I want to to be? I think I chose well because it all needed a balance, there has to be a balance.

Stephen Matini: And silence shall be.

Charlene Shaw: Silence shall be.

Stephen Matini: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pity Party Over. 

Dr. Shaw points out that not knowing how to deal with mortality hinders our ability to be compassionate and caring towards others and ourselves. 

Developing a deeper understanding and awareness of this natural process has the healing power to turn grief into growth. We become advocates for our loved ones in their most glorious moment to provide relief and peace. 

Keep in mind that many resources optimize the quality of life of patients and their families, including palliative care, and second medical opinion.

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