Get free chapters of my book, Good Talk, and master the art of conversations big and small: https://www.danielstillman.com/good-talk

Please support the podcast!

💌 subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3QzcPAW

💌 iTunes: https://apple.co/4ifh6pb

or with a monthly contribution here: https://bit.ly/support-tcf-monthly

one-time donation here: https://bit.ly/support-tcf-once

Check out the episode page for the full transcript and video highlights. https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/founder-led-sales-with-parallel-health-ceo-natalise-kalea-robinson

We break down: 

• The Importance of Deep and Authentic Conversations and unpack how Natalise fosters honest and open conversations and has worked to build a company culture that reflects these values. 

• Intentional Co-founder Relationship Building: We talk about how Natalise and her co-founder, Nathan Brown, approached building a strong relationship intentionally by having regular in-depth conversations and retreats together in some of their favorite spots. She shares some of her favorite questions to bring into these co-founder conversations. 

• Founder-Led Sales and CEO as Science Translator: Both Natalise and her co-founder Nathan are actively involved in explaining their product to both investors and consumers. We talk about how she approaches adapting her message for different audiences, always striving to put the science ahead of marketing.

• Highlighting the Potential of Phage Therapy: We dive into some of the science behind phage therapy and its potential as a precise and sustainable alternative to antibiotics.

• The Value of Open Feedback and Continuous Evolution: Natalise encourages feedback from all levels within her company and believes that good ideas can come from anywhere. She also emphasizes the importance of ongoing communication and alignment between co-founders.

Key Chapters

00:00 Exploring the Depth of Conversations

03:01 The Ambivert Spectrum: Understanding Social Dynamics

06:06 Creating Safe Spaces for Honest Conversations

09:01 Feedback Culture: The Art of Positive Feedback

11:57 Building Authentic Relationships in Business

14:57 The Journey of Co-Founders: Nathan and Natalise

21:01 Navigating Vulnerability in Professional Relationships

24:17 Navigating Co-Founder Relationships

30:14 The Art of Communication in Business

37:45 Understanding Phage Technology and Its Impact

46:02 Building Strong Co-Founder Foundations

Links

https://www.parallelhealth.io/

Parallel Health on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/20/parallel-health-takes-a-biotech-forward-approach-to-skincare-with-custom-phage-therapy/

Video Highlight Links

👀Giving Praise with powerful Specificity: https://youtube.com/shorts/5zwdVyJr_mc

👀Leaning into Difficult Cofounder Conversations: https://youtube.com/shorts/MjeDjSIUeDM

👀In Founder-Led Sales, the Marketing Serves the Science: https://youtube.com/shorts/fp6oKVhq-FQ

Master the art of conversations big and small - both inside yourself and in your teams and organization.

Get free chapters of my book, Good Talk: https://www.danielstillman.com/good-talk

Please support the podcast!

💌 Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3QzcPAW

💌 iTunes: https://apple.co/4ifh6pb

or with a monthly contribution here: https://bit.ly/support-tcf-monthly

or make a one-time donation here: https://bit.ly/support-tcf-once

For the full transcript, video highlights, and more show links, check out the episode page here: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/the-inner-work-of-leadership-with-carole-robin-phd

Every conversation - especially the hard ones - is an opportunity to learn more about yourself, to learn about another person and to learn about interpersonal dynamics - if you can set aside judgment and be open to curiosity. I’m SO excited to share this epic podcast conversation with the "queen of Touchy Feely" - Carole Robin, PhD. Carole taught the most popular elective at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Interpersonal Dynamics (mostly known affectionately as "Touchy Feely"!) for nearly 20 years and is co-author (with co-teacher David Bradford) of the excellent book Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues.

She has a vast reserve of wisdom to share. We discuss the importance of navigating vulnerability and intentional connection as an essential leadership skill and unpack some of her most powerful principles of effective communication. We also talk about Carole’s conversations with her own personal AI, trained on all of her past writings and course notes…and how it helped her evolve how she tells her own story!

Building exceptional relationships is work that’s done one conversation at a time. Carole’s insights can help you unlock the potential in each conversation.

Key Moments

00:00 The Art of Greeting with Interpersonal Dynamics in mind

03:00 AI and Personal Narratives: The Evolution of Carole’s Story in collaboration with her personal AI

06:01 Leadership Lessons: Emotions in Business

09:06 Vulnerability vs. Strength: The Leadership Paradox

12:04 Transparency in Leadership: The Balance of Sharing

14:58 Strategic Authenticity: Navigating Vulnerability

18:01 True and Kind: The Principles of Effective Communication

20:50 The Importance of Self-Care for Leaders

21:59 Navigating Emotions in Leadership

23:49 Vulnerability and Authenticity in Leadership

30:07 Self-Management and Emotional Discipline

32:59 Curiosity as Leadership superpower

37:57 The Work of Building Relationships

Download free chapters from Good Talk and master the art of conversations big and small

Please support the podcast by subscribing on Spotify or iTunes, making a monthly contribution here, or making a one-time donation here.

Check out the episode post for the full transcript and video highlights.

Dr. Anjan Chatterjee is a renowned professor and the founding Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He's a leading expert on how our brains perceive beauty and art, and author of an engaging book on this topic: “The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art"

In this beautiful conversation, we explore:

• the intersection of beauty, conversation, and the human brain
• how our biological evolution has left us in a world that often feels disconnected from our innate ways of communicating
• the aesthetic qualities of conversations, the biases we hold toward beauty, and how cultural representations influence our perceptions
• the importance of awareness in mitigating biases
• how to embrace complex ideas, rather than simplify them

Links

Dr. Anjan Chatterjee and the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics (PCfN) online

PBS News Hour feature: ‘Brains and Beauty’ exhibit explores how the mind processes art and aesthetic experiences

The PCfN 2024 Year in Review

Dr. Anjan Chatterjee on Bluesky 

The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art

If you want to change the game, changing the rules and incentives of the game is a powerful approach.

Few people who watch the news - or those folks who avoid watching the news! - would say the political system in the United States is going according to plan. The founding fathers, if they were alive today, would be aghast at the unbridgeable chasm that seems to have developed in our political culture, making dialogue, compromise and progress nearly impossible on some of our most pressing issues. 

In fact, our founding fathers warned against the rise of what they called factions in their time, and what we today call political parties. 

All of this is happening at a time when the majority of Americans agree that common-sense laws for guns, healthcare and other issues are badly needed. If you look at the numbers, we’re closer together on more issues than you’d think. Research shows that our leaders are often much more polarized than we as a people are. Meanwhile, the US and local governments get less done, eroding our confidence in our democracy.

What can we do to change the game? Some people say “let’s get rid of the electoral college!” but such large scale changes are hard. My guest today has a simple solution that starts at the local level to change the political conversation.

Nick Troiano is a civic entrepreneur based in Denver, Colorado, and is the Executive Director of Unite America –– a non-partisan organization that seeks to foster a more functional and representative government. 

Nick has been a leader in the political reform movement over the last decade, beginning as a founding staff member of Americans Elect in 2010. Nick ran for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 10th District in 2014 and drew national attention as both the youngest candidate that cycle and the most competitive independent U.S. House candidate in nearly two decades. He subsequently worked for Change.org to launch a mobile application to help voters cast informed ballots. 

In 2016, Nick was named to the "Forbes 30 Under 30" for Law & Policy. He earned a Master’s degree in American Government from Georgetown University. He has spoken on the topics of political and fiscal reform to dozens of groups across the country, including along three national bus tours that collectively visited over 40 states. Nick is the author of The Primary Solution an *excellent* book that explains the challenge and a viable set of solutions to political division in America, and a producer on the 2024 film Majority Rules which lets you watch political change unfold in real-time.

I highly recommend watching Majority Rules - you can rent it on Youtube now! You will see partisan politicians learn to navigate a different political game as the rules are changed - and become more issues-focused instead of attacking personalities, and more inclusive than divisive. I also highly recommend supporting primary reform in your region - it’s a non-partisan issue that can help us become less partisan!

Listen to the end where Nick and I discuss how he leads his organization and builds coalitions while living his leadership and political values.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Primary Solution

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Primary-Solution/Nick-Troiano/9781668028254

Majority Rules. 

https://majorityrulesfilm.com/

David Mayhew’s Book “Congress: The Electoral Connection”

Warning - this episode uses a specific curse word - a lot. And once we started using one, we started using more of them. So…if f-bombs, sprinkled like salt are not your cup of tea, this is a good episode to skip!

My guest today is Rebecca R Block, PhD, who is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.

She also wrote a book with the word “Shit” in the title…or Shit, with an asterisk where the “I” goes, which actually makes her book a bit hard to google!

The book is titled “Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life,” and she teamed up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator. 

In the opening quote Becca outlines the ABCs of Motivation. These ABCs are true for children and adults - we’re basically the same species. And the work of luminaries such as Peter Senge and Amy Edmondson make it clear that great working environments are great learning environments - places where we can create and sustain positive feedback learning loops with ourselves and others. So it’s essential for anyone leading or managing others (or themselves!) to understand how motivation really works. 

We also talk about Becca’s essential values when it comes to co-creation - that is, making a systems change along with the people in that system who will be affected by that change. Co-creation is not just a good idea… it leverages the truths about motivation that Becca shared in her opening quote. People are much more likely to want to participate in change that they’ve taken part in forming, rather than going along with something forced on them.

Two Levels of Systems Change

We also talk about the need to work on at least two levels when engaging in systems change:

Helping people, now

Helping make a bigger shift, over time.

Given that Becca knows how challenging it can be to transform a system as complex as education, she focuses her work in this book on helping people, now, to work to create change for themselves, within the current system. This perspective is helpful for anyone leading a team in a larger organization or anyone leading an organization within a larger industry they are hoping to transform.

Listen in for Becca’s deeper breakdown of the ABC’s of motivation, as well, summarized here!

The ABCs of Motivation

Ability Belonging Choices

Ability: In any situation where you want someone (or even yourself!) to have sustained motivation, you need the Ability to do (or learn how to do) the things you want to do. Indeed, whenever you find that someone isn’t doing something you have asked them to do, it’s important to ask - is this an issue of Will or Skill? In other words, can they do the thing? If they can’t yet, do they have the confidence in their ability to learn the thing?

Belonging: Real relationships help us accomplish things. I show up for my Spanish lessons (partly) because I’ve paid for them, and partly because I’d feel bad for standing up my tutor, even though the classes are online. Ditto for my exercise classes. Real relationships create real motivation. In a recent episode, I spoke with Robbie Hammond, Co-founder of the High Line, who talked about how his relationship with his Co-Founder Josh David kept him going through a difficult decade of bringing their dream to reality - talk about Relationships = Motivation!

Choices: Having real choices means you have the autonomy to determine for yourself what you are going to do. “Liberty or Death” isn’t much of a choice - although it is one many have taken. Becca suggests that dysfunctional workplaces create crappy or fake choices, and functional ones enable everyone to see how the work fits into their own personal why.

I connect these ideas to my recent interview with Ashley Goodall, author of “Nine Lies about Work” and most recently “The Problem with Change." Ashley says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” This is what every human (and teenager!) actually really wants, if they can connect to the ABCs of motivation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Get the book here

BeccaBlock.com

Becca’s podcast

CanYouHelpMeGiveA.com. 

If you want to be on her podcast: fill out a form here!

Sometimes the bold goals we set out to achieve actually happen, and sometimes something even more amazing happens - something better than we can imagine.

Usually that happens because of the people we meet along the way, the conversations we have, the unexpected connections we make that open up new doors - in a word, Serendipity. I had always wondered about what amazing, powerful and sustained conversations led to the High Line Park in New York City becoming a reality.

Have you walked the High Line? Literally millions of people a year walk some of its 1.45 mile length, enjoying expansive views of the city and hundreds of local plantings, as well as amazing art installations. But it was slated for demolition and considered an eyesore and a relic, as long ago as the 1980s.

Built in 1933, it was at the time a revolutionary elevated train line that was colloquially called the Lifeline of New York City since it was regularly bringing millions of tons of meat, dairy and produce by rail, directly into the warehouses and factories of lower manhattan for preparation and distribution. The rail line wasn’t just a lifeline because of the food it brought, it also moved the rail lines safely above the city’s growing traffic - in the 1910s, hundreds of people were killed by the ground-level trains that ran in the middle of the bustling 10th avenue!

By the 1960s the line was growing obsolete due to the rise of trucking, and by the 1980s, it was a hulking relic of the past.

In 1999, Robbie Hammond, my guest for this conversation, co-founded the Friends of the High Line along with Joshua David. The two met at a local community board meeting where the High Line’s future was being discussed. Rudy Guliani, NYC’s mayor at the time, had signed an executive order for its demolition - many property owners wanted it gone so they could take back the land occupied by the tracks and build bigger buildings - a dream of greater square footage and increased rent rolls.

Currently Robbie is the President & Chief Strategy Officer for Therme Group US, where he is leading an initiative to bring large scale bathing facilities to the United States. He also currently serves on the boards for Little Island, Sauna Aid, Grounded Solutions Network, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

When I was a little kid in NYC in the 80s, I looked up at the hulking tracks and thought “what the hell is that doing in the middle of the city?!” Many adults thought the same thing.

Robbie and Josh looked at the tracks and thought “we should really do something cool with that instead of tearing it down.”

In 2009 the first section of the high line opened to the public. In 2019 and 2023 new sections were completed.

Against all odds, “two neighborhood nobodies” (as one writer described them!) created a coalition, learned to raise money and garner the favorable attention of local politicians, and persisted and succeeded. The park is maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and is run on donations.

There are many amazing angles to the story of the Highline:

Maybe you DON’T need a coherent or complete Vision or Mission?!

Robbie makes it clear that they didn’t even have a clear vision or strategic plan for some time…just the idea that the elevated line was worth saving and doing something with…they discovered what they wanted to create along the way. He actually credits the vagueness of the mission with creating a “big tent” that attracted more people to the organization.

From a conventional dream to something better than anyone could imagine

One surprising insight is that the property owners had a rather conventional dream - tear the elevated tracks down so they could build bigger. Turning the High Line into a park seemed like a low-value, impossible pipedream - sex workers and drug users congregated under the overpasses, after all! But the High Line’s millions of visitors have transformed the value of the area far beyond the addition of a few extra square feet.

The High Line as a symbol for dreamers of impossible dreams

One of Robbie’s greatest points of pride is that the High Line now stands as a symbol to many “crazy dreamers” who find inspiration in the story of outsiders persisting and accomplishing more than they ever dreamed possible. The High Line is now a global inspiration for cities to transform unused industrial zones into dynamic public spaces. But Robbie loves the personal stories of folks who come up to him at talks, who are working on all sorts of projects and who find inspiration in Robbie and Josh’s “keep going against all odds” story.

The importance of Talking to People

Robbie talks about how he was always willing to pick up the phone and talk to anyone - the fearlessness of someone raised in sales. But the Friends of the High Line were also willing to host conversations with community groups and listen to them, and learn from them and communicate with them about why they were listening to their ideas and why, in some cases, they weren’t going to. Open lines of consistent communication made the High Line possible.

The Alchemy of the Co-Founder Relationship

In this conversation, Robbie is bracingly reflective and shines a sometimes harsh light on himself. Here at the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Highline and the 25th anniversary of the start of the project, the founding of the Friends of the High Line, Robbie looks back and is refreshingly honest about his own challenges and shortcomings, as well as missed opportunities along the way to do things differently.

What was truly surprising to me in this conversation is that Robbie was so open about his challenges as a co-founder, and is so open-eyed about how essential this most intimate of relationships can be…and how much he and Josh were willing to invest (in time, energy and resources) in that relationship to keep it intact, functional and flourishing.

The Energy and Anxiety of Creation

Robbie suggests that it is common for creative people (which includes entrepreneurs, and anyone that starts anything) to have a drive to accomplish their dream - that is what keeps them going… but that there is often “an undercurrent of anxiety”. Meditation helped Robbie reclaim a higher level of happiness as the High Line approached realization, but it took him years to undo the deep grooves anxiety etched in his psyche. It's a worthwhile lesson for anyone listening out there who's creating something, start taking care of yourself sooner rather than later.

You can follow Robbie on Instagram at thehighlineguy and stay in the loop on Therme’s projects at https://www.thermegroup.com/.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.thermegroup.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thehighlineguy

Therme post (2021) 

Robbie’s Book: The Highline:The Inside Story

https://www.thehighline.org/history/

Early documents from the highline: Reclaiming The High Line: A Project Of The Design Trust For Public Space With Friends Of The High Line (2002)

Talks:

Rail Yards Talks 2011

"High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky" - Richard Hammond

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_hammond_building_a_park_in_the_sky

Art has the power to change and even lead the conversation, to spark curiosity and fuel real engagement.

But what comes first in a powerful creative project?  The idea and the message? The tools and the talent? Or The Funding, that can make or break it all?

My guest today is Benjamin Von Wong, who creates art on a grand scale that goes beyond awe.

He is an Artist focused on amplifying positive impact. He does that both in the process of how he creates his art, through community, and in the images it produces, finding visual metaphors that stick with people, long after they’ve seen the work.

His mission is to help make positive impact unforgettable. For the last seven years, Von Wong and his team, under the banner of “Unforgettable Labs” have generated over a billion organic views on topics like Ocean Plastics, Fast Fashion, and Electronic Waste for organizations like Dell, Greenpeace, Nike, Starbucks and Kiehl's.

In this opening quote you can hear him wrangle with the dance between art and marketing, and his new mission to find ways to create sustainable funding streams that allow him to create message-shaping art in times and places where the world is gathered to solve some of our most pressing challenges. 

It’s a move that can make his work more deeply sustainable - for himself and for his team. Von Wong’s The Unforgettable Project leverages the collective power of philanthropy to help build broader campaigns around environmentally net-positive innovations worth spotlighting - instead of waiting for corporations that are seeking eyeballs and leveraging their funding for good, he’s building a funding source that actively seeks the next project that needs to go viral.

Some of his notable work includes the Giant Plastic Tap which used trash from the slums of Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, to demand that corporations #TurnOffThePlasticTap. The Giant Tap was displayed prominently when 193 different countries and 1,500 delegates came together at UNEA 5.2 in 2022 to discuss what was then termed the “Paris Agreement For Plastics” and was eventually used in the United Nations official Plastics Report while raising over $100,000 for the Human Needs Project.

Recently he installed a grand sculpture at the Highline in New York City in collaboration with Kiehl’s to raise awareness and drive adoption of refillable products in the beauty world. Von Wong, along with a large community of volunteers, collected and assembled 2 tons of plastic bottles into a “single-use hydra”, seen by nearly 300-thousand visitors and close to 3 million social impressions for their message of #DontRebuyJustRefill…but as he points out in this conversation, most of the people on the High Line don’t have the leverage to change the system - which is why he seeks to place his epic art in places where the system changers meet.

I learned about Benjamin's work through his wonderful talk at Creative Mornings (a global, IRL community of creatives that hosts monthly talks all around the world). His presentation spoke to some beautiful topics - like the importance of nurturing the conditions of success (like inner narratives and cultivating community) vs chasing success, and the notion of sifting your feelings from reality when it comes to deciding what is enough - personally, financially, and in the work - ie, is my work having enough impact? Von Wong shared the ways in which he’s rewriting his inner narrative to balance his personhood and his purpose or impact. I found the talk profoundly moving and beautiful and highly recommend watching it.

In this conversation, you’ll find:

Ruminations on Creationships - relationships that exist to co-create something wonderful together (4:09)

The Importance of an Interface or a Container to foster Conversation (7:47)

Benjamin’s perspectives on going to where the conversations are already happening to have the deepest impacts. This is certainly true for the large scale work that he creates, but it is also true for anyone looking to change a big conversation. Making people come to you vs going to them means the activation energy of change is that much lower. (13:18)

Benjamin’s thoughts on Community Building and Co-creating art with a community (16:43)

The polarity Benjamin is threading right now: Balancing Speeding Up (to do more work and have more impact) and Slowing Down (in order to build deeper creationships) (26:21)

The difference between an Audience and a Community (32:44)

The power of creating a word that summarizes and defines an idea that people flock to (which we might term the Rumpelstiltskin or Le Guin Rule (as she famously wrote in A Wizard of Earthsea “To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out.” (33:39)

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.vonwong.com/

unforgettablelabs.com 

https://www.thevonwong.com/

How I made plastic pollution more shareable with a Mermaid and 10000 plastic bottles - 3/3

https://creativemornings.com/

Benjamin Von Wong Featuring Possibly Poet: "Is activism sustainable?"

Today my guests are Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, the co-authors of the powerhouse 2014 book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! I devoured this book 10 years ago and I think you might enjoy it, too!

Lisa Kay Solomon is currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c core curriculum. She has also been named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and is one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020.

Chris Ertel is a managing director of Deloitte Consulting LLP with a specialist role designing and providing high-stakes strategic conversations for clients and priority firm initiatives, in the Deloitte Greenhouse® signature environments. Chris is an innovation strategist with 18 years of experience advising leading organizations. He holds a PhD in demography from UC-Berkeley.

We talk about 

• What it really means to be a facilitative leader, and why it’s so impactful. As Lisa and Chris say in MOI:

“At these critical moments, everyone will be looking at you, not for all the answers, but to help them unearth the answers together”

• The Five Core Principles of Moments of Impact, which can form a Design Process

1. Define your purpose  (your design intent!)

2. Engage multiple perspectives (with your facilitation skills!)

3. Frame the issues

4. Set the Scene

5. Make it an experience (even an intense or challenging one!)

• How designing conversations is different from facilitating them: Lisa makes it clear that Conversation Design is about intent and purpose while Facilitation skills are the tool that helps orchestrate those Moments of Impact.

• Why Conversation Design isn’t taught to leaders but should be (Lisa also tells us why it’s so hard to teach, since it brings together strategy, psychology and emotional intelligence)

• Why Chris always coaches leaders to condense and delete content from their strategic meetings (to 10 slides!) instead of making what communications expert Nancy Duarte calls a “Procument” (something that’s neither an easy to use and digest presentation or a leave-behind document!)

• How crucial discussing decision-making rights are - as Chris suggests many leaders want to keep their options open and wind up creating an “air of democracy without the reality of it” 

• Why You should start becoming a junkie of learning theories

• The importance of balancing humor and levity with challenging-ness and sparkiness to create productive environments

• The importance of knowing that the “yeah buts” will come when we’re hosting challenging conversations as in: 

yeah, but, that won’t work here! or…

yeah, but, what will we be able to report next quarter? Or…

yeah, but who’s budget is going to cover that?

And so much more! If you have Moments of Impact that you need to shape, design, and lead and you *don’t* have Moments of Impact on your desk - get it!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Get Moments of Impact! 

https://www.lisakaysolomon.com/about

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/certel.html

A plan is not a strategy: The short video from Roger Martin we were talking about!

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.

Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. 

His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls  “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.

I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).

What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work. 

This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:

Loss of Control Loss of Pride Loss of Narrative Loss of Time Loss of Competence Loss of Familiarity 

All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:

1. Make space 

2. Forge undeniable competence 

3. Share secrets 

4. Be predictable 

5. Speak real words 

6. Honor ritual 

7. Focus most on teams

8. Radicalize HR 

9. Pave the way

Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.

Ashley is very clear: companies need to look beyond wellness initiatives and corporate cheerleading and shift their focus to the fundamental environment of daily work.

The effects of a corporate life caught in constant change are more than clear to anyone who’s been through it: uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging and of displacement, and a loss of meaning

As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.”

Also - do listen for an extended exchange around minute 40 where we talk about the power of praise and the Paul Hollywood handshake - if you’re not a Great British Bake off fan, there’s still time to watch a few episodes to get in the mood - or at least witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here.

Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed which is a blockbuster

Take a listen to Ashley and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback utterly wrong.

Canon in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short, and the work is plentiful…It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. (Pirkei Avot 2:15-16)

My conversation today with Jerry Colonna closes with him paraphrasing this powerful notion - and the work we are discussing is the work on yourself and the work to create a better world - one where everyone feels like they truly belong. In a world where many organizations are retreating from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives, I’m grateful that Jerry is leaning into this conversation. I see the work of antiracism as firmly in the realm of what my peoples call Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

It’s absolutely essential that men in positions of power and especially men who present as White, do not neglect this work. 

Jerry is a graduate of Queens College and a Brooklyn native.

Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. (2023)

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” Jerry’s second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don’t want - the systems of oppression that those who have eyes to see, can see.

Reunion is a highly personal book that asks us all to examine our history of longing to belong - and the ways in which we have been excluded or excluded others.

Key Threads in the Conversation

We discuss Jerry’s Journaling practice and how it is an essential conversation he has with himself, each morning.

We explore what it means to be a “good man” - and how in his first book, REBOOT, he questioned whether he was a good man, while in REUNION, he built upon the assumption that he is a good man and explored (and expanded) what it means to be a good man in a world where there is division and polarization.

And I get Jerry to coach me on one of my favorite questions: understanding the disowned parts of ourselves, exploring the reasons behind disconnecting from them, and the importance of integrating them back without denying them - very much in line with the process of REUNION. All while working to authentically grow in ways that matter, without self-abuse or denial.

Those parts of ourselves we wrestle with wrestle back at us. Many leaders I coach want to be feel or been seen as more or less of some quality or another - they, like so many of us, feel they must be other than they are in order to belong.

In my experience, fighting against our parts without understanding and loving them is a losing battle. Jerry asks us to understand the stories behind our self doubt, and to honor the ways that part of us has sought to care for and protect us in the past.

I find great empathy and lovingkindness in spending time nurturing my denied parts and my clients do, too. I’m so grateful to absorb Jerry’s approach to self-integration, and to expand our inner work towards creating not just a life we love, but a world we want to live in.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Reboot

Jerry’s profile at Reboot

Some other solid interviews with Jerry:

On Being with Kista Tippett: Can you really bring your whole self to work?

Noah Kagan, from AppSumo, interviewing Jerry on being a better human and a better leader