Where Genius Grows

"It is 100% based around the idea of making dreams come true and going above and beyond the regular steps of service to build an experience that will be a memory that lasts a lifetime."

— Nitiya Sin

We've all experienced moments in which time seems to stop. It's as though we're transported. To better understand what these experiences are made of, in this conversation we learn from someone who creates them. Nitiya Sin is a hospitality professional who most recently served as Concierge at the Washington, DC restaurant minibar.

"I can project, I can whisper, I can do all these kinds of things. But when I'm code-switching, there's a mindful approach to how I want the information to be received and how I want to be perceived by this person. And I want to create connection."

— Alma Molina

How we communicate is highly dependent on where we're communicating and with whom. The work we put into tailoring our delivery can range from hyper-intentional to largely unconscious. In this conversation, Dewey Square Group principal and multicultural communications strategist Alma Molina shares her experience in code-switching.

If you enjoyed Alma's interview, you'll find fascinating this conversation in episode 50 with Angela Hayes on respecting and appreciating diversity.

"Don't be too quick to say 'Ah, that's the issue,' or 'That's the issue with the issue.' It's just to be uncomfortable, to be ambiguous, to stay in that space until it is uncomfortable, because great awareness comes with — especially in the task-based society we live in these days — having the patience to listen."

— Magda Mook

The work we do day-in, day-out over decades shapes our bodies, our minds, and our souls. International Coach Federation CEO Magda Mook and International Coach Federation Global Board of Directors Chair Jean-François Cousin discuss with K Street Coaching founder Gideon Culman the profound impact that the work of coaching has on the coach.

If you enjoyed this interview, you'll love this conversation in episode 65 with Jennifer Garvey Berger on Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps.

"When we don't understand ourselves well enough and when we don't understand the ways we trip up consistently, we act as though we haven't tripped up, and that gets us into even more trouble."

— Jennifer Garvey Berger

Jennifer Garvey Berger writes in her new book Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps about unhelpful patterns of behavior that we fall into without noticing that we've fallen into them. These are behaviors that treat the uncertainty, ambiguity, and change around us as though the world were more understandable, more predictable, and more constant than it is. In this conversation you'll discover some of the counterintuitive ways we can act that would be much more helpful, given the complexity and dynamism of the world.

Jennifer's latest book:

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: https://amzn.to/2w4oE93

If you enjoyed this, you'll absolutely love the first Where Genius Grows conversation with Jennifer in episode 56.

"Just because it's rare, and just because somebody says it's the best, doesn't mean you even have to like it."

— Sarah Jane Curran

Sarah Jane Curran is the host of the podcast Beer Me! She has focused her studies on beer in culinary school and grad school, she has been a beer director at Eleven Madison Park and the general manager of DC's Churchkey/Birch & Barley, and in this episode Sarah Jane shares with us some of the many ways in which beer makes the world a better place.

"The complexity we face is actually an evolutionary pressure. We evolve or we die. And we're there. We're there as a species, we're there in organizations, and we develop or else. And that's harsh, but it's also a spiritual bootcamp. It's a kind of evolutionary pressure on us to evolve into more complex ways of knowing, understanding, and relating, and so on. And so you can not not be in a gap. It just is the territory. And that normalizes it. It levels the playing field. There's nothing wrong with you because you're facing limits and meeting limits."

— Bob Anderson

Bob Anderson is the founder and chairman of the Leadership Circle and the Full Circle Group. His new book with Bill Adams, Scaling Leadership, shares surprising information about how senior leaders view leadership. In this conversation we discuss which strengths create the most effective leadership and which strengths undermine it. Bob contends that, no matter where we are, we always find ourselves in a feedback rich environment. Our challenge is to harvest the bounty of feedback and grow.

"If you do the work to get yourself and your group to Stage 4, where you're actually truly collaborating, you will be given offers in life to step in and participate effectively at Stage 5. This does not happen, this does not occur for the people at Stage 2 and 3. At Stage 3 they're too caught up in 'My need to dominate and control people around me' and at Stage 2 in my kind of worldview that 'I'm a victim and I can trust no one'."

— John King

John King is a rogue scholar and a founder of Cultural Architecture, Inc. as well as John King Partners. He is an author of the book Tribal Leadership, about leveraging natural groups to build a thriving organization.

"I always knew that this is a very complex issue and that I don't want to go for the easy victory. And I think this is what you can very much see in the structure in how we run Germany Close Up."

— Dr. Dagmar Pruin

Every year Germany Close Up brings 250 Jewish Americans to visit Berlin and get a close up look at a country that plays an outsized, terrifying role in their history. Learn in this interview with Dr. Dagmar Pruin about the experiences that led her to launch Germany Close Up in 2007, how over 2500 participants have added complex nuance to her views of German-Jewish relations, and the critical role this program plays in a time of fraying transatlantic ties.

"If you have been to a hockey game or a baseball game . . . you see a phenomenon where at some point in the proceedings a military person is recognized for their service. Always for their service. And I'm not meaning to denigrate the service that the military make, and certainly a very significant service. However, they are not the only people who are giving service to the country and to the community. Development workers often go to equally miserable places and they don't bring guns, and they're not wearing helmets, and they don't have a long supply chain to take care of them. They're living on the frontlines in khakis and a baseball cap and they get killed as frequently as military people get killed. I would love to see a day in which the Washington Capitals, or the Nationals, recognize a humanitarian relief worker for the service that they're making to their country and to the world and for the risks that they're taking to do that."

— Jerrold Keilson

Jerrold Keilson is a historian of international development. This conversation details Jerrold's project to capture in a way that is immediately useful to people active in, or just entering, the field of international development the vast body of knowledge held by development pioneers who possess decades of experience. How can accessing this experience acting on it make a better world for all? Listen in and find out.

"Let us not kid ourselves: These 22 volunteers alone are not going to transform the transatlantic relationship. And yet! Through their individual relationships that they build here, through the experiences that they get here, they are hopefully learning about discrimination, they are hopefully learning about political action, they are hopefully learning about the importance of intercultural communication and this transatlantic relationship that we're talking about, and they're taking it back to Germany, where they become part of a pool of people who share those values."

— Mark McGuigan

Mark McGuigan is the US Program Director for Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, an organization formed in 1958 so that Germans could offer volunteer service as a means of atonement in countries affected by Germany's role in World War II. Mark and I discuss the history and significance of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace on the occasion of its 50th anniversary of volunteer service in the United States.