Ripples of Change: How we Use Ourselves as Instruments of Change

In my recent Ripples of Change podcast, Bob Faw talked about getting in touch with his authenticity – and when I asked him, “What does it take to get there?”, he said – “Improv comedy”, especially the “YES, AND” activity, as in:

Person A:  I think we should invite our marketing colleagues to our product launch party…

Person B:  YES, AND – we could invite them to talk about the beautiful ads they created for the product!

“Yes, and” is about accepting the premise (the “gift”) that your partner gives you, rather than dismissing their idea as stupid or even correcting them.

When Bob’s comedy mentor told him: Your job is to make everyone on the stage look good, Bob said, “it changed the way my brain worked” –  and he immediately wanted to apply this new method.

The result? 

“I went from sometimes having power struggles with clients to having much more rapport building, really listening to them, seeking to understand.”

That’s a perfect illustration of the benefits of Improv as a relational practice.  The stance toward not-knowing, and being responsive to other’s ideas clearly generates rapport and connection.

In addition to using this approach with his clients, Bob has also been using this exercise in his trainings, which led to this inspiring feedback: “I feel like you embody what you’re teaching us.”

Wow.

What a gift to hear that – and a confirmation of authenticity!

How can we all get more of that in our lives?   (in case you’re still wondering…)

Watch the 3 min. clip here, or pull up a chair to watch the 30 min. interview.

We often talk about how trauma shows up for individuals, in our coaching – but we seldom talk about how it shows up in organizations.

In my recent podcast, Bob Faw, organizational consultant and Positive Change agent, talks about the fact that organizations go through trauma as well.

For example, when the Red Cross laid off a few hundred people in 2003 because “the demand for blood dropped dramatically due to technological advances.”  You can’t really blame anybody for that.

Bob proposed a different framing on the metrics of success: instead of “hitting the numbers” of blood donations, which is difficult in this new reality, Bob suggests:

“We should make sure that our heart is in everything we’re doing, and that we’re not just saving lives with the blood products – we also want to save each other.”

Wow. Saving each other.

I’m just sitting with that idea…

What would that look like?

As Bob suggests, what employees need is to make this a normalized conversation – where it’s ok to discuss it, and to talk about the impact on themselves. Training people to listen compassionately, with empathy – serves his desire to normalize this and to make this a prized skill in organizations.

Bob’s rendering also offers an inspiring call to action, to adopt this as a mission: “We’re not just saving lives with the blood products, we also want to save each other.”

It’s a mission that places care for one another at the center of the work.

There’s something quietly radical in that invitation.

Watch the 3 min. clip here, or grab your coffee to watch the 30 min. interview.

Have you ever thought about how others experience you – either as your role or your human self?   

In a professional setting, we think people usually see us as our role – and connect with us based on the expectations of that role. 

Being a chaplain in a hospital may blur that distinction, as Simcha Zevit, Coach, Rabbi and former Chaplain explained in my recent podcast.  She describes how she connected with people “human to human”, as opposed to approaching them as her role. 

I think my own comfort in my own skin in that role –  and just greeting people, just human to human  – as opposed to role to role, caretaker to patient or, you know, just heart to heart, human to human.

What’s especially interesting is that she was aware of how her presence manifested in these encounters – the fact that her comfort being in that role enabled her to connect “heart to heart.” 

It’s quite moving to hear how she – and perhaps the patient – experienced that connection:

There’s a sacredness to it – to create that space where people can be very real.

That sacredness is also a signal for both of us, that “we feel a deep privilege that somebody’s sharing something with us that’s so important to them.”

Get comfy and watch the 30 minute interview.

The world is facing many global challenges, such as: climate change, poverty, unclean air – to name a few – and the UN has developed “Sustainable Development Goals” for the world community to address these challenges. 

A group of people has created the “Inner Development Goals” (IDGs) which focus on “cultivating inner capacities such as empathy, resilience and critical thinking – in order to address global challenges.”

My podcast guest, Coach and Rabbi Simcha Zevit, created the Global IDG Coaches Network to bring coaches together to explore how they can integrate the IDGs into their practice and into our lives. For her, the key question is:

How do we pay attention to our inner and relational life in order to make the kinds of changes in this world that we want to see?

This isn’t just a theoretical question, as Simcha shared:  I feel the emotion coming up just talking about it, like, we need to – something has to happen here, something has to shift. It’s like a consciousness shift.

The emotion, she explained, is a “sadness and yearning for something different.”

Hmmm –  I’m curious if that’s a shared sentiment, and if it is: What do we do with the sadness and yearning?

Grab your coffee/tea and watch the 30 minute interview.

I’m always curious about how people “discover their path/ calling.”   I often hear stories about a hero’s journey – a set of trials, or experiments – only to be redirected to a different path.

So it’s noticeable, and inspiring, hearing from someone who had a different journey – as I learned in my podcast interview with Joanna Brody, an expert on PR and crisis communications.

Turns out:  Sometimes a path isn’t discovered through a struggle — it’s recognized through resonance.

For Joanna, it was about growing up immersed in a set of values that her parents embodied –  working for the social good, aiming to have an impact – and finding a professional form that allowed her to live out those values.

Joanna’s father was a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, who went on medical missions around the world – and her mother was a therapist, as well as an occupational therapist.

They were always out doing good beyond their own personal professions.

So when she discovered “social marketing” – taking the principles of communication and applying them for good causes – she knew it was a fit.

Feeling curious?  Join me for this inspiring 5 min. video where Joanna explains her professional path.

Or – Grab a cup of tea and enjoy this 30 min. interview

Have you ever wondered what happens with the leftover produce at an outdoor market?  It sits there all day – and it turns out they can’t sell it.  But it’s still edible.

You’d think there’d be a way to give that food another life, right?

My guest Joanna Brody, who is a PR and crisis communications expert, discovered how to use her communication skills to get people to use that food, by giving it away – they just needed a mechanism to collect and distribute it, which is what she worked on.

Joanna’s lesson: “I can have impact on the world” and ”a direct healing on the community.”

We often wonder what impact we have, or can have, on our community – so it’s wonderful to know that one’s work had a healing impact. 

Wow.

Pull up a chair and listen in to this short clip as Joanna describes using her skills that lead to “healing on the community” – or watch the 30 min. interview.

The food saving program: “From the Wholesaler to the Hungry: Developing A Charitable Food Distribution Program”

A facilitator asks a Japanese team:  What’s your favorite color? 

Most of us would respond quickly with: Red – Green – Blue.

But this team didn’t.
Their answer? “We need to consult with one another.”

That’s not indecisiveness. It’s culture.

What this reflects is a consensus-based culture, where even simple choices are made collectively.

Mainstream culture in the U.S., by contrast, shows up as an individualist culture.  You can easily see the contrast between an individualistic expectation (“Red, green, blue… just pick one!”) and the team’s collective response (“We need to consult”).  

My podcast guest Eric Hicks, who worked in Japan and in other consensus-based cultures, shared this and a few other stories of teams who tend to use consensus.  He once found himself in a challenging position as team leader trying to get the team to make a decision:

Early on when I was trying to move a team to do something – when I thought I had locked down the logic that would help them make that decision – I was frustrated that the decision wasn’t being made.  And as I worked with them and got to understand it, It wasn’t that I didn’t have a good case – It was that everyone there had to be absolutely on the same page before moving forward.

Perfect example of a cross-cultural misalignment!  As Eric says,

It’s not right or wrong –   it’s just a different way of thinking about how you want to be individual – or how you want to stand out in a group or have consensus…

Take a few minutes to watch this short excerpt or watch the full episode (link below).

Grab a cup of tea and settle in for an engaging interview. (30 minutes)

I had this personal laboratory at the University of Life that taught me that, when you’re bold, when you stand up for values and principles about our common and shared humanity, our Ubuntu… I met people across every part of the political divide. — Anne Pratt

Imagine growing up in an anti-apartheid activist family in South Africa –

Wow.  That’s pretty scary.  It would be enough to make me hide and not want to challenge the apartheid system. 

While you or I might feel afraid, that’s not how my podcast guest Anne Pratt reacted.  She embraced this oppressive environment and personal disempowerment as her own “transformation laboratory,” where she learned that “those self-created false beliefs about what divides us is a myth.”

After years of praying for Mandela’s release and dreaming that one day she would meet him – she met this visionary leader.  Mandela’s capacity to forgive people – and his profound realization that “in order to be truly free, he needed to leave his bitterness and hatred behind” – deeply moved Anne.   

Mandela’s model of forgiveness and reconciliation led her to a key leadership development theme: the need to recognize our own resentments, and to ask ourselves, “What parts of my interactions do I need to own?”  It is that inner work that became the basis for the leadership work that Anne is now involved in.

Having learned at the foot of a master of reconciliation, Anne believes that in order to achieve societal transformation:   

“If we want people to wake up, we have to take them out of their comfort zones and expose them to opposing and conflicting people, ideas, and environments.”

That’s a lesson for the ages.

Ready for a spark of inspiration? Tune in to this short, thought-provoking conversation.

Listen to the complete interview below

When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison in Robben Island, South Africa after 27 years imprisonment, he had already decided what he needed to release in order to be truly free.

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” ~ Nelson Mandela

Mandela’s insight offers a powerful leadership lesson: holding onto resentment confines us. Letting go is what allows us to grow, lead, and shape a different future.

I was reminded of this valuable lesson in my recent podcast, Ripples of Change, with Anne Pratt, who grew up in South Africa and worked with Mandela.  Mandela knew, she said, that in order to transform himself, he needed to do that work in order to enable him to lead a nation. How many of us smile in recognition of the truth behind his words?

“Changing myself was much harder than changing a nation.”

The lesson for all leaders, Anne says, is that, “when we hold on to resentments, often the other person or entity does not know, but mostly, they don’t care. So who does resentment hurt?”

“It hurts us“

Anne also tells a humorous story about attending a training where participants had to count the number of resentments they were holding.  I laughed at myself when I reflected on the grudges that I’ve held on to. 

Prepare to be moved- and maybe to smile in self-recognition – when you watch this short excerpt:

Watch the full interview here.