Speaker 1: I think that's what we's in life right is seeing
Speaker 1: below the surface, which is really insight, understanding, awareness, the
Speaker 1: depth of it, and beyond the seeing the bigger picture
Speaker 1: of the interconnectedness of all things. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity and self pity, jealousy or fear.
Speaker 1: We see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest this week
Speaker 1: is Eric Kaufman, and if that name sounds familiar, it's
Speaker 1: because it is. We've had Eric on before, and we
Speaker 1: had a wonderful conversation where we talked about his book
Speaker 1: The Four Virtues of a Leader. Eric guides leaders to
Speaker 1: make better decisions and achieve better results. He has consulted
Speaker 1: for hundreds of leaders, including executives and teams at Sony,
Speaker 1: t Mobile, Genentech, Alcon Labs, and Tara Data. He is
Speaker 1: the founder and president of Sagattica, Inc. And serves on
Speaker 1: the board of the San Diego Zen Center. And here's
Speaker 1: the conversation with Eric Kaufman. Hi, Eric, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, and I'm devilighted to be with you. I
Speaker 1: am happy to have you on again. You are a
Speaker 1: second time guest. There are there's a few of them
Speaker 1: out there, but not a whole lot. So welcome to
Speaker 1: an elite club. And uh, and we'll get we'll start
Speaker 1: talking here about more of your work in a minute.
Speaker 1: But let's start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Oh Man, I love that the parable.
Speaker 1: I was really listening as you were describing it. Um,
Speaker 1: I think two things come to mind. Eric. One one
Speaker 1: is that you know the one you feed is there's
Speaker 1: a critical component relative to you know, what are we
Speaker 1: intentionally doing? Right? So do I do I feed? And
Speaker 1: I would use the word feed and sure right to
Speaker 1: do I nurture the inherent seeds of love and compassion
Speaker 1: and kindness that are within me? And how do I
Speaker 1: do that right? So that's one set of practices. The
Speaker 1: other thing that occurs to me is that the very
Speaker 1: nature that there are there are elements of us in battle,
Speaker 1: is in and of itself a practice because I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: while it's important to feed the one that you want
Speaker 1: to cultivate, right, the good wolf, I guess making peace
Speaker 1: with the shadow of us making peace with and making
Speaker 1: peace means really learning to habitate with greed and fear
Speaker 1: and hate, because I don't know that it's something that
Speaker 1: I've successfully extracted from my life or that other people have.
Speaker 1: But if I can learn to live with it in
Speaker 1: a way that it isn't start reading, starving, mad, trying
Speaker 1: to kill me. But I know that it's there, and
Speaker 1: so that I can tend to it, and when it
Speaker 1: rises up demanding food, I can figure out what is
Speaker 1: the least amount of sustenance it needs to not take over.
Speaker 1: And so I want to I want to feed and
Speaker 1: nurture of the inherent love and kindness. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to pretend that anger and hate are not part
Speaker 1: of my shadow side too. And I think much of
Speaker 1: the challenge of some of the work that's been going on,
Speaker 1: you know, in the last fifty or six years, has
Speaker 1: been this effort to eradicate sort of that part of us,
Speaker 1: rather than send love and nurturance to that dark side
Speaker 1: as well, not in order to sustain it, and not
Speaker 1: in order to sort of feed it and make it
Speaker 1: pro but in order to suit it. And so what
Speaker 1: does that look like for you in practice? Can you
Speaker 1: give me an example of of an instance of this
Speaker 1: in your life, and maybe how you've done that, how
Speaker 1: you've tended to it. You I mean, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: an immediate example to me nice doing that last night
Speaker 1: the night before I came home. I have two daughters.
Speaker 1: My older daughters out of the house traveling world, and
Speaker 1: my younger daughter is a junior in high school. And
Speaker 1: in my mind, I have this, you know, expectation that
Speaker 1: whatever was Tuesday night, she and I gonna have dinner
Speaker 1: to get there, and then we're gonna go for an
Speaker 1: evening walk the dog and I would have some time
Speaker 1: with her, you know, because it's it's kind of a precious,
Speaker 1: rare thing to spend time with my high school daughter.
Speaker 1: And uh, and she came home here, she was out
Speaker 1: with friends. She came home later and I said, okay, great,
Speaker 1: and she said I want to eat first. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: but if you eat and we're gonna go for a walk.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. Bottom line is She's like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go for a walk. And I kind
Speaker 1: of sat there going, man, I am so bombed. And
Speaker 1: so how did I practice with that? I literally, instead
Speaker 1: of like projecting over her and saying you promised, you said,
Speaker 1: I went off to the other room for a moment,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know it sounds like a still
Speaker 1: an example, but it was so a line for me.
Speaker 1: I went to the other room and I sat there,
Speaker 1: and I breathed, and I dropped into my body and said,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? What's going on here? Was one
Speaker 1: expectation to a little bit agreed. I wanted time with
Speaker 1: her for myself, and so, you know, sitting there and
Speaker 1: just breathing into it and recognizing the story and labeling
Speaker 1: it and saying this is, this is what's happening, and
Speaker 1: allowing myself to literally digest the emotional reaction. And took
Speaker 1: about three four minutes. I go back and just be
Speaker 1: with her and hang with her and enjoy the time
Speaker 1: I had with her. I was actually surprised at the
Speaker 1: strength of reaction and disappointment that I had. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's a very simple example, but it's so real.
Speaker 1: It's it was just two nights ago, and it's being
Speaker 1: present to the experience, getting into my body, labeling it
Speaker 1: in my mind, and then allowing myself a few minutes
Speaker 1: so literally that chest and pass so that I can
Speaker 1: engage with her in my way that I want to
Speaker 1: engage with her. Yeah, that's a great example of just
Speaker 1: not making a situation worse, Like you could have made
Speaker 1: that situation worse by getting upset or angry with your
Speaker 1: daughter and driven more of a wedge between you and
Speaker 1: you found a way to sort of process that in
Speaker 1: a way that didn't do that. And I often think
Speaker 1: I've said this a lot lately, and I sometimes think, like,
Speaker 1: when we're upset, sometimes the best thing we can do
Speaker 1: is we just don't make it worse. Not the most
Speaker 1: optimistic message ever, but it's a pretty good thing if
Speaker 1: we don't make things worse. In the tradition that I've
Speaker 1: been practicing the last many years as a practice, it's
Speaker 1: called refrain and return, right, So so don't make it.
Speaker 1: Don't make your horses refrain right. So the first thing
Speaker 1: is kind of like just pause, refrain from escalating, and
Speaker 1: then return to your body, your breath, to present state,
Speaker 1: and to the the experience of half. But I think,
Speaker 1: don't make divorce. It's not insignificant and that's huge. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: let's turn our attention to some of the work you've
Speaker 1: been doing lately. And you know, a big focus of
Speaker 1: your work lately has been conscious leadership. So why don't
Speaker 1: we just start off by you telling us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what conscious leadership is. Conscious leadership is
Speaker 1: it's combining an unrelenting commitment to results with an unyielding
Speaker 1: regard for spirit. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: that you know leadership. And that's true whether you're the
Speaker 1: CEO of a business or the head of a department,
Speaker 1: or supervisor on the team, or just you know a mom,
Speaker 1: a dad, a team member. Leadership is really about influence, right,
Speaker 1: but at some point it's about results. It's about getting
Speaker 1: things done that happened that don't happen on their own
Speaker 1: and won't happen without an effort. So there's a leadership
Speaker 1: in particularly as in regards to getting other people involved
Speaker 1: and getting things done. So an unrelenting commitment to results
Speaker 1: means that you know, in the leadership prole we have
Speaker 1: to be really focused on getting something done, and usually
Speaker 1: these are difficult things that don't happen organically, right, But
Speaker 1: you combine that with an unrelenting regard for spirit, in
Speaker 1: other words, not just doing it as an automaton or
Speaker 1: robot or just for the purposes of achievement, but really
Speaker 1: with regard for the spirit. And the spirit is you
Speaker 1: know that conscious spiritual element that is both within me,
Speaker 1: between us and all around us, and having that as
Speaker 1: a love. The term source right, that the idea of
Speaker 1: being connected to source and operating We don't always operate
Speaker 1: from source, but with this intent to really listen deeply
Speaker 1: to what life wants, what spirit wants, and how do
Speaker 1: we serve that even as we're driving for the results
Speaker 1: that we're driving for. And how tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you've seen this work in practice, whether
Speaker 1: it be within an organization with a particular leader, how
Speaker 1: are people able to do both of those things? Um,
Speaker 1: I have a I have a great example of a
Speaker 1: company where one of the practices that the CEO and
Speaker 1: put into place was that they were going to provide loans.
Speaker 1: Was a manufactured company and they provided loans and microhones
Speaker 1: of folks in order to help improve their lives and lifeliholds.
Speaker 1: And there was a woman who came to the you know,
Speaker 1: came to her manager and said, I needed a loan.
Speaker 1: And this was a loan to help her mom was six,
Speaker 1: She had three sisters and all the sisters were contributing
Speaker 1: except what this woman who really wanted to contribute, sos,
Speaker 1: you wanted the loans that you could help contribute to
Speaker 1: the family. And when the manager and this woman had
Speaker 1: this conversation, he eventually ended up turning her down for
Speaker 1: the loan. So you're probably thinking, how this is an
Speaker 1: example of conscious naship. The reason he turned it down
Speaker 1: was that he was he listened really deeply to her needs,
Speaker 1: to her family needs, and to where she was coming from.
Speaker 1: And where she was coming from was a sense of
Speaker 1: inadequacy and fear and wanting to look good in front
Speaker 1: of her sisters. And so rather than give her the loan,
Speaker 1: he came up with his coaching plan as or and
Speaker 1: helped her upper education, improve her English skills, and generally
Speaker 1: made her more of a competent, effective professional. And while
Speaker 1: in the short term it was frustrated she didn't get
Speaker 1: the loan, and the long term, this manager was actually
Speaker 1: able to through being present to her, present to the
Speaker 1: bigger picture, applying some level of courage and wisdom still
Speaker 1: connected the heart, helped her have this result that was
Speaker 1: much bigger than her initial request. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of a simple application, but it's so powerful
Speaker 1: because it was really him dropping into a place of
Speaker 1: deep listening, care, courage, and her going to a place
Speaker 1: of growth and unfolding and being served in the process.
Speaker 1: That's a great story. I think I read that in
Speaker 1: one of your articles, and is a really good example
Speaker 1: of listening more deeply, not just what somebody says they want,
Speaker 1: but what they might need. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: conscious leadership is that you know, he was being aware
Speaker 1: in real time of reality and connection and implications. And
Speaker 1: and the reason I say courage was because it actually
Speaker 1: took him, you know, I talked to him. It took
Speaker 1: him some real courage to say no to her because
Speaker 1: it's so difficult. Right, She's in a needy place, her
Speaker 1: mom is sick, or sisters helping out. To face value,
Speaker 1: this was something that anyone should have said, yes, do.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't just looking at face value, right. He
Speaker 1: was present, he was conscious, he was aware, he was alert,
Speaker 1: and in that way he was able to serve her
Speaker 1: in a much bigger way than the immediacy of her pressure. Right. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what the three pillars of conscious leadership are.
Speaker 1: So I see the three sort of initial hindrances being
Speaker 1: conscious and there often discussed in Buddhism as the three
Speaker 1: poisons of the three fires. And they referred to as ignorance, greed,
Speaker 1: and hate. And actually, when you describe your terrible of
Speaker 1: the two wolves, I think you use almost those exact terms.
Speaker 1: You can talk about greed, anger, and fear right right,
Speaker 1: and so ignorance, greed, and hate are sort of the
Speaker 1: three fires or the three the three poisons, and what
Speaker 1: these are is essentially the building box of our egoic
Speaker 1: state of being. So from an ego perspective, ignorance is
Speaker 1: really not understanding how the world works, not understanding of
Speaker 1: permanence and into connectedness. Greed is sort of this pervasive
Speaker 1: desire to have things for myself, and hate or anger
Speaker 1: is kind of pushing things away and and being dismissive
Speaker 1: or downright artful to others. And so those to me
Speaker 1: are the ones that are parading, you know, consistently as
Speaker 1: the fundamental challenge of what it means to be an
Speaker 1: awake person, a conscious person. And it's the building blocks
Speaker 1: of the ego. And so in my structure, the the
Speaker 1: three pillars of the three elements of conscious being conscious,
Speaker 1: whether it's a leader or a conscious husband and conscious mom,
Speaker 1: a conscious sister, conscious friend, is being able to sort
Speaker 1: of activate an align wisdom, love, and courage, and those
Speaker 1: to me are the three the three pillars of being
Speaker 1: a conscious person, right, Wisdom, love, and courage. Let's walk through,
Speaker 1: walk through kind of each of those. What they how
Speaker 1: you're using them. What do we mean by wisdom? Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: I guess let's start there. Let's start with wisdom. So well,
Speaker 1: my favorite the definition of wisdom is mistakes plus time.
Speaker 1: But that's not really the you know that that and
Speaker 1: that works. That's a lovely definition, but the I think
Speaker 1: where I'm really going for in wisdom in this case
Speaker 1: is seeing below the surface and beyond the obvious. I
Speaker 1: think that's where sort of the wisdom lives, right, is
Speaker 1: seeing below the surface, which is really insight, understanding, awareness,
Speaker 1: the depth of it, and beyond the seeing the bigger
Speaker 1: picture of the interconnectiveness of all things. And so wisdom
Speaker 1: is one of the ways that we begin to both
Speaker 1: understand ourselves deeply and transcend ourselves. And so there is
Speaker 1: this capacity for deep insight and deep understanding and seeing
Speaker 1: the big picture on the perspective, and you can see
Speaker 1: from a leadership perspective that's really critical. But it's also
Speaker 1: trying to I mean, at some level the fact that
Speaker 1: my daughter, you know, said no, and I got upset
Speaker 1: and I walked away and did a little formative practice,
Speaker 1: was in itself some wisdom, right, because I could see
Speaker 1: below the surface. I don't want to be caught up
Speaker 1: in my own disappointment and greed, and I was looking
Speaker 1: beyond the office, right. I don't want to make it
Speaker 1: worse with my daughter. I want to stay connected to her.
Speaker 1: So let me practice something, you know, use that wisdom,
Speaker 1: walk away, do something, and come back thinking I do.
Speaker 1: Wisdom is such a It's a term that I think
Speaker 1: we all aspire to, and as we start to talk
Speaker 1: about you realize how nebulous it can be. How do
Speaker 1: you know what's wise in a certain situation? Well, that's why,
Speaker 1: that's that's why the first cut, the first definition of
Speaker 1: sort of mistakes plus time, right is it can really work, right.
Speaker 1: But I think, how do you know what's wise? Is?
Speaker 1: I mean a big part of what it means to
Speaker 1: be wise means to be present, to be paying attention,
Speaker 1: to be aware. I think awareness falls well within the
Speaker 1: scope wisdom. And I think that much of our social
Speaker 1: and relational and sort of almost biological orientation as towards
Speaker 1: being distracted unaware. I mean your work. You know, what
Speaker 1: are you doing. You're spending your whole life essentially helping
Speaker 1: people become more aware. And I think that's part of
Speaker 1: waking up to our being wise. And I don't think
Speaker 1: wise is something you've achieve as an end state. I
Speaker 1: think wisdom. That's why I said it's a practice. Right,
Speaker 1: there's this constant practice of cultivating wisdom, and there are
Speaker 1: sort of subsets of wisdom, right, Like, mindfulness is a
Speaker 1: fantastic practice for cultivating wisdom because you get to experience
Speaker 1: reality in the present moment. Humor is a fantastic element
Speaker 1: for cultivating wisdom because it gives me perspective and distance.
Speaker 1: Awareness is a way to cultivate wisdom. It's a way
Speaker 1: to pay attention and notice what's really happening. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's an end state to it, right, Right,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. Let's talk about courage then, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: um so courage is so my simple definition of courage
Speaker 1: is that courage is walking towards what you'd rather run
Speaker 1: away from. Let's use the workplace as an example, right, So,
Speaker 1: courage is something that a lot of management teams would
Speaker 1: hope that people have more courage. And the basic mood
Speaker 1: of our ego is fear. It's just the basic mood
Speaker 1: of the ego if you just look at you know,
Speaker 1: and that's at the ego level. At the neurological level,
Speaker 1: we're wired towards being vigilant, and fear is sort of
Speaker 1: the manifestation. We are the descendants people who have survived
Speaker 1: because they've listened to their fear. The people who were
Speaker 1: fearless and did really silly things died, went off the
Speaker 1: gene pool, and we don't have their offspring. And so
Speaker 1: fear is like both software and you know, both software
Speaker 1: and hardware for the human being. And I think that
Speaker 1: the capacity for courage and is really significant. And I
Speaker 1: think in the workplace's kind of three types of courage
Speaker 1: that I'm particularly looking at right the courage to speak up,
Speaker 1: the courage to care, and the courage to commit. I
Speaker 1: think the courage to speak up is is it okay
Speaker 1: to show up and really put myself on display and
Speaker 1: not be afraid of humiliation or being belittled, being somehow
Speaker 1: perceived a stupid And that's not just in the workplace,
Speaker 1: that's everywhere, right, We often don't speak up, and we
Speaker 1: don't really get to shine, and it's because we're afraid.
Speaker 1: The courage to commit is a big deal because many many,
Speaker 1: many present company included myself, right, and a fear of failure.
Speaker 1: I don't want to fail. I don't want things to
Speaker 1: not go my way. I want to control things. And
Speaker 1: so we don't commit wholeheartedly because we want to, you know,
Speaker 1: either stave off the possibility of favor, not engage with favor,
Speaker 1: or control it more deeply. And so that the courage
Speaker 1: to commit is kind of a big deal. And the
Speaker 1: courage to care, there's another one, because the last thing
Speaker 1: we want is to be rejected or pushed away or
Speaker 1: abandoned or hurt. And so many of us are trained
Speaker 1: to be hard hearted and too. In a professional setting,
Speaker 1: in particular, we call being a professional. What doesn't mean
Speaker 1: to be a professional means that you shut your heart
Speaker 1: and you behave in a way that is disconnected so
Speaker 1: that you can do things that are often unkind. And
Speaker 1: so the courage that care is a big deal, you know.
Speaker 1: So those are the kind of the manifest expressions of courage.
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not jumping off a roof for
Speaker 1: you know, swimming with sharks. I mean, yeah, that's courage too,
Speaker 1: but that's just that's fun pleasure swimming sharks, probably long
Speaker 1: and still not open my heart to another being, right, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I think courage in those ways is often harder than
Speaker 1: some of the outward manifestations of courage. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and there are ways that fear manifested, particularly in the workplace,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like fear. So for example, um, I
Speaker 1: was in the meeting not that long ago, and one
Speaker 1: of the folks in the meeting turned together personal meeting
Speaker 1: and she had made some comments. This woman made a
Speaker 1: comment back to her that was super sarcastic, like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen that, right, You've heard that, like
Speaker 1: super sarcastic. And everybody laughed because what do you do, right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the reaction to sarcasm. But I kind
Speaker 1: of I kind of stopped the meeting and said, well,
Speaker 1: what that a second, you know what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Because my my take is at sarcasm. You know, it
Speaker 1: comes from a Greek word sarkazine. It means to rend
Speaker 1: the flesh. Sarcasm is designed to do what to cut
Speaker 1: somebody down. And so while it was a little you know,
Speaker 1: it took a little courage for me to say in
Speaker 1: the meeting, but I really wanted to highlight you know,
Speaker 1: sarcasm is a mask of some kind of fear. There's
Speaker 1: other woman who was being sarcastic, was using sarcasm to
Speaker 1: to cover up her own fear that she was not
Speaker 1: going to look at you know, that she was looking
Speaker 1: bad with this because of the other comment. She used
Speaker 1: sarcasm to cut this woman down out of her own
Speaker 1: fear of humiliation, of failure. So sarcasm, a little bit
Speaker 1: of sarcasm is funny. It takes the sting out of
Speaker 1: the room and kind of light that moved. But it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, it's kind of like I love
Speaker 1: Thai food. I don't know if you're in the thaipe
Speaker 1: food I got the Thai restaurants say how hot do
Speaker 1: you want? Right? So if you order one or two,
Speaker 1: it's kind of you know, it's it's tasty. If four
Speaker 1: or five gives you a little charge, and nine or
Speaker 1: ten you're freaking burning. And I think sarcasm, you know,
Speaker 1: one or two is kind of funny, But you start
Speaker 1: getting into the seven, eight, nine tenths, sarcasm is actually dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's threatening. So that's one example. I have other examples,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think courage is it's a requisite
Speaker 1: for life. I mean this soccer is said that courage
Speaker 1: is the first of the human virtues because it's the
Speaker 1: one that makes all the other ones possible, right right, yep.
Speaker 1: I think that's a very very true statement. And I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about the role of humor in in all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and you mentioned a little while ago
Speaker 1: humor as a real aid to wisdom, and trying to
Speaker 1: think about, like, well, when is something When is humor okay?
Speaker 1: When is it not? And made me think back to
Speaker 1: an episode he had a long, long time ago with
Speaker 1: a guy named Paul gil Martin who hosts a show
Speaker 1: called The Mental Illness Happy Hour, and he basically said,
Speaker 1: humors find except when it's used to deflect vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: I thought that's a pretty good definition. Is the humor
Speaker 1: bringing us closer together or is it driving us further apart?
Speaker 1: And I think that's a useful way to sort of interpret,
Speaker 1: you know, whether a joke or even some degree of
Speaker 1: sarcasm is is okay, what's it doing to the room,
Speaker 1: what's it doing to the people around I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that, And your point I think is so
Speaker 1: spot on because that vulnerability, right, but I call sort
Speaker 1: of courage to care. Right, We're terrified of being vulnerable.
Speaker 1: And the workplace often has kind of a there's a
Speaker 1: high competition in many workplaces. And the idea that's really
Speaker 1: popular right now. And if you've seen in Eric is
Speaker 1: this idea of psychological safety. Have you come across that research?
Speaker 1: I have? I have. I just interviewed somebody last night
Speaker 1: who wrote a book about the rules of emotions at
Speaker 1: work and and talking about psychological safety a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you told me down there. So psychological safety is
Speaker 1: basically the idea that you can show up at work
Speaker 1: without fear of embarrassment or threat, you know. And so
Speaker 1: why do we need psychological safety because that's how we
Speaker 1: operated our best in many workplaces are not psychological state
Speaker 1: because people are just not aware, they're not conscious there.
Speaker 1: And to your point about humor, I mean, humor is
Speaker 1: such a beautiful thing. You take a room, crack a
Speaker 1: joke and everybody's laughing. As soon as people laugh, they
Speaker 1: kind of a box together. It's a wonderful thing. But
Speaker 1: you can also use humor and sarcasm to totally deflect
Speaker 1: from your sense of vulnerability. And and that's not a
Speaker 1: courageous act. And I think, I mean, I was in
Speaker 1: I was in a meeting Monday, I guess it was Monday,
Speaker 1: and the CEO and actually had some issue with one
Speaker 1: of the other executives. And for the first time, She's
Speaker 1: like said, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna be bold. She
Speaker 1: so she stated it, right, I'm gonna be bold, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say this. But you know, Susan thought that
Speaker 1: that so was on, you know, and she went on
Speaker 1: to say what she went to say, and her voice
Speaker 1: was quivering, and she wasn't making direct eye contact with
Speaker 1: the other executive, but she delivered it in a in
Speaker 1: a kind way. It wasn't wasn't mean. It changed the
Speaker 1: vibe of the whole team in a positive way because
Speaker 1: Diane went out and did something that was courageous. It
Speaker 1: raised the level of willingness and honesty in that team
Speaker 1: to to have a deeper, more meaningful conversation. And I
Speaker 1: think so the number one challenge of all leaders is,
Speaker 1: you know, the ego gets in the way. The number
Speaker 1: two challenge of all leaders is that there's not enough meaningful,
Speaker 1: genuine conversations about topics of matter. And Diane went there courageously,
Speaker 1: voice quivering, not making eye contact. She allowed her own
Speaker 1: ego to be unsafe and therefore kind of raised the
Speaker 1: vibration of presence in the room and she opened up
Speaker 1: a meaningful, real conversation. You know, that was a beautiful,
Speaker 1: active courage and super useful not just to her but
Speaker 1: to the whole team into the organization. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great story. And I do think when when people are
Speaker 1: able to go a level deeper at work, I have
Speaker 1: found that over and over that it creates something new
Speaker 1: for the people that are there, and it it unlocks possibilities,
Speaker 1: particularly of teams coming closer together or people coming closer together.
Speaker 1: I've told this story before a little bit about how
Speaker 1: I used to go to work really with UM I had.
Speaker 1: I had my vision of what a professional person would
Speaker 1: do and say at work. I kind of tried to
Speaker 1: stay inside that. But what that ended up doing was
Speaker 1: cutting off, at least in my case, a significant part
Speaker 1: of my character, because I you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: a lot of my character would be outside of that
Speaker 1: little boundary. And as I began to bring more of
Speaker 1: myself in. You know, again, all this within reason and appropriateness.
Speaker 1: But as I began to take more chances and sort
Speaker 1: of show who I actually was and some of the
Speaker 1: things about myself that might have been quote unquote a
Speaker 1: little weirder or odd or out of the normal. Or
Speaker 1: I took chances emotionally and shared how I was feeling
Speaker 1: or things that had happened to me. I noticed that
Speaker 1: I got better at work in all regards because my
Speaker 1: relationships with people went a level or too deeper, And
Speaker 1: as they went a level or too deeper, suddenly it
Speaker 1: changed the dynamic and we were able to work together
Speaker 1: more closely. And it was just funny that as I
Speaker 1: took those chances, I actually became better at work. I
Speaker 1: thought I was doing it to be more true to myself,
Speaker 1: which I was, but what it actually ended up doing.
Speaker 1: I thought I would be making a trade, We'll be
Speaker 1: a little bit more true to myself, but that might
Speaker 1: be damaging to me at work, but okay, I'm willing
Speaker 1: to do that, And it turned out to be I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit more true to myself,
Speaker 1: and I actually got better at work. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: just love that story, you know, because what you just
Speaker 1: shared in such a beautiful way, and I think this
Speaker 1: is what I hope people really listened to and take
Speaker 1: eat right. Is that in my contract that this is
Speaker 1: under the courage to speak up, right, um, and we
Speaker 1: can broaden that as the courage to show up. I
Speaker 1: love what you said because we do have these sort
Speaker 1: of concocted notions of how we should show up, you know,
Speaker 1: and and we put these great boundaries and restrictions on ourselves. Right,
Speaker 1: I couldn't show this. I have one guy that I
Speaker 1: talked to is Ryan. He's a fantastic, awesome leader. And
Speaker 1: the way he described it is when we talked about
Speaker 1: it was a very similar thing to what you described
Speaker 1: because he was withholding himself essentially right, And that's I
Speaker 1: think what you're described a certain withholding based on the
Speaker 1: notion of their goal. People would really not accept this
Speaker 1: about me. And we came up he came up with
Speaker 1: the term and then we used it together. He said, um,
Speaker 1: he called it bringing the weird. Right. He wanted to
Speaker 1: bring the weird, and he started bringing the weird and
Speaker 1: his experience was much like it us and actually much
Speaker 1: like mine, right, which is we're all quirky. If you
Speaker 1: show up to work dressed like you're in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: that might be a little too weird. But but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that that's that it's that dramatic. I
Speaker 1: think it's more. What I use is the courage to
Speaker 1: speak up, with the courage to show up. And the
Speaker 1: more courage you apply to bring more of yourself to
Speaker 1: speak what's meaning to you, to engage in what is
Speaker 1: enlightening to you. The more you are enjoying your work,
Speaker 1: and the more people enjoy you, and remarkably, the more
Speaker 1: fun it is. Much of our energy at work is
Speaker 1: lost because we are restricting and containing ourselves. It takes
Speaker 1: energy to withhold, It takes energy to maintain my my
Speaker 1: my shields. You know, I'm you know, started the enterprise.
Speaker 1: You know, when they when they turn on the forward shields,
Speaker 1: it sucks most of the energy away from the other
Speaker 1: aspects of the ship. And when we go through work
Speaker 1: with our shields up, that energy is not available to
Speaker 1: other things like creativity and connection and even efficiency. And
Speaker 1: so just showing up, even though it takes courage, ultimately
Speaker 1: has more energy on it. I agree. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great way of putting it. The amount of energy
Speaker 1: it takes to sort of put on a certain face
Speaker 1: is really tiring, tiring and unsustainable, right right, you know?
Speaker 1: And then and then what people turned around it was it, oh,
Speaker 1: they just don't know. I had a great example because
Speaker 1: I was. I practiced the same center and have for
Speaker 1: many many years, and for being there for about ten years.
Speaker 1: At that point, I gone to the teacher and I
Speaker 1: went to the Dyson dice on as these interviews with
Speaker 1: the teacher, and I went in there and I said
Speaker 1: to him, you know, i've been your ten years. I
Speaker 1: think I'm done. And he looked at me and said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, say more. I said, I've practiced here, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure diligently. I go to all the treats and
Speaker 1: not all, but I go to in re treats a year.
Speaker 1: I have a home practice. But my relationship with you
Speaker 1: was it's just it's not fulfilling to me. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me and said, you say more, And he
Speaker 1: said what do you mean? And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't think you know me. And
Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, well, have you
Speaker 1: made yourself known? Mhm? And I really kind of paused
Speaker 1: for a moment. You know, the nice thing about Dyson
Speaker 1: early like ten fifteen minutes long, and then you go
Speaker 1: back to the cushion, right. And then I went back
Speaker 1: to the Christian I reflected, and I realized, no, I
Speaker 1: have been to some degree. I had a notion of
Speaker 1: what a Zen student behave. So I had this like
Speaker 1: a Zen character when I showed up at the zendo,
Speaker 1: and when I talked with the Zen teacher, you know,
Speaker 1: I had this whole kind of concocted story and I
Speaker 1: his question, have you made yourself known? It was really
Speaker 1: brilliant because I realized all the ways in which I
Speaker 1: was withholding and and and so it changed a tinge
Speaker 1: of nature of my experience. And I'm still there and
Speaker 1: we're still obviously working together. And I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: of the quick story of her mind because in the
Speaker 1: same thing, go ahead. I was in a week long
Speaker 1: intensive psychodrama program a year or so ago, and after
Speaker 1: I don't care I've done. Psychodrama is super tripy, you know,
Speaker 1: it's people acting out their childhood things. It's really reallyant.
Speaker 1: It's a week long man, so it's like there's no
Speaker 1: escaping the weird. At the beginning of the second day,
Speaker 1: I got together with the head facilitator and she said, well,
Speaker 1: how's it going, And I said, well, to be honest,
Speaker 1: it's a little boring. And she looked me straight in
Speaker 1: as she goes, well, then you must be a little boring.
Speaker 1: And I thought, that is a fantastic answer, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's on me, like, what do I want to have
Speaker 1: in this experience? And how do I have both the
Speaker 1: courage and the care to bring myself to it so
Speaker 1: that I have the experience. I mean, so anyway, I
Speaker 1: think these these stories are all stories and to something
Speaker 1: recourage right there, the courage to show up, the courage
Speaker 1: to care, the courage to commit um, and the recognition
Speaker 1: that I am I am a co creator of my reality.
Speaker 1: If I find that I'm bored, then I must be boring.
Speaker 1: If I if I if I think he doesn't know me,
Speaker 1: that I'm not making myself known. And those are some
Speaker 1: degree functions of how do I allow my my whole self,
Speaker 1: my spirit, my weird, my beautiful everything to leak forward
Speaker 1: and show up in spite of the fear. And so
Speaker 1: it is walking towards what I would rather run away
Speaker 1: from Yeah, that is such a great Those are two great,
Speaker 1: really great examples of what we're talking about. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about before we run out of time. Here the last
Speaker 1: of your pillars of conscious leadership. Let's talk about love.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, So it's your point right now. It was
Speaker 1: at the eighties of the nineties where they had all
Speaker 1: those umper stickures love is dot dot dot, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember that that they feel in all that love is.
Speaker 1: It's one of those much like wisdom, right, how do
Speaker 1: you actually define it? So the operating definition for me
Speaker 1: around love. You know, what works for me to think
Speaker 1: of in terms of love is wanting to do for others.
Speaker 1: I think of love as as an expansion. I think
Speaker 1: of love as an inclusion and love is um not
Speaker 1: just an expansion and inclusion of connecting with others. But
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about what does my heart want?
Speaker 1: I mean, you coach people, I coach people. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the great challenges that people run into is
Speaker 1: had a conversation with with Oscar and super sharp guy,
Speaker 1: I mean Harvard gret while the successful consultant and he's
Speaker 1: feeling rather stuck right, and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what does your heart want, because there's an element of
Speaker 1: love that is as expensive. Right, what does your heart want?
Speaker 1: What is your heart moaned for? We're working on it. Right.
Speaker 1: He's very caught up in his head, very educated, very smart,
Speaker 1: and so it's all about launching for the heart is
Speaker 1: pressing for something in that same part expands and I
Speaker 1: think love is expansive and inclusive and connected. And I
Speaker 1: think in the workplace, in the home, love is the
Speaker 1: man infest of wanting to do well for others, as
Speaker 1: this impulse of tending to and caring to providing for
Speaker 1: another without having to have some kind of you return
Speaker 1: or payment as it were, Right, it's wanting to do
Speaker 1: well for others. And I find that to be. You know,
Speaker 1: even somebody who has great wisdom and wonderful courage but
Speaker 1: doesn't have love, I still don't think they're operating as
Speaker 1: a fully conscious being, because I think conscious is all
Speaker 1: those it's both understanding and it's moving, and it's a
Speaker 1: sense of connection, connection with my what I'm called to,
Speaker 1: connecting deeply to what life is calling forth in the
Speaker 1: universe and the grand expanse of spirit, and connecting with others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a great thing. And how do you
Speaker 1: talk about love when you're bringing it inside a corporation?
Speaker 1: You know, when you're bringing this conscious leadership inside what
Speaker 1: what are the ways that you talk about? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that the kind of terminology used like we just
Speaker 1: used there. So I I find that there are things
Speaker 1: that get in the way of love, right, and we
Speaker 1: can sort of address what gets in the way of love.
Speaker 1: So for example, um, Mike, the way he's behaving with
Speaker 1: his peers is arrogant. He's arrogant, um, he's you know,
Speaker 1: he walks around being you know, I'm the best, I'm
Speaker 1: better than you. And I think what happens when, you know,
Speaker 1: he displays his arrogance, is that this assumption that I'm
Speaker 1: better than others blocks love, right, is it is the
Speaker 1: opposite of love. It is an exclusion, it's disconnects, It belittles.
Speaker 1: And so of course you can be an expert, you
Speaker 1: can be very good at something, but arrogance becomes kind
Speaker 1: of an ego posturing, and it's hardhearted things. And so
Speaker 1: what's the counterbalance of arrogance, right, So it's humility. So
Speaker 1: how do we cultivate a sense of proportion and humility
Speaker 1: not taking away from our expertise, our genius are brilliance,
Speaker 1: our beauty, but understanding how it is that we fit
Speaker 1: into the pick a picture. That's one way've talked about.
Speaker 1: Another one that's really really common in workplaces being judgmental, right,
Speaker 1: humans in general. You know, I again, having good judgment,
Speaker 1: What do we want from from a leader? I want
Speaker 1: a leader, and as good judgment as a huge big deal.
Speaker 1: But being judgmental means that I'm sort of critical, right
Speaker 1: that I'm determined that somebody just isn't measuring up, not
Speaker 1: good enough. And so converses A is compassion and I
Speaker 1: can have a good judgment and you know, this is
Speaker 1: something and that's where wisdom comes in in a big way.
Speaker 1: But I want to also have compassion. Compassion is seeing
Speaker 1: where other people are struggling and moving towards helping alleviate
Speaker 1: their challenge. So those are a couple of examples in
Speaker 1: the workplace. That's awesome. Well, we are nearing the end
Speaker 1: of our time here. Um, it's funny you talk about
Speaker 1: the three pillars of conscious leadership being courage, wisdom, and love.
Speaker 1: And whenever I hear the words wisdom and love in
Speaker 1: the same sentence, I always think of I can never
Speaker 1: say this guy's name. Niz Nick's niz Ge darda Indian
Speaker 1: sage who said, wisdom tells me I'm nothing, love tells
Speaker 1: me I am everything. Between the two of my life flows.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. That Yeah, it's one of my favorite lines.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to continue this conversation for
Speaker 1: a little bit in the post show conversation where we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about purpose. You have some really interesting
Speaker 1: ideas on life purpose, so you and I will continue
Speaker 1: that listeners, if you'd like to hear it, you can
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net slash joint and
Speaker 1: you can become a member and get access to all
Speaker 1: the post show conversations and lots of other goodies. Eric,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to come on again.
Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you're making the effort to put forth
Speaker 1: this this great material. Thanks for having me my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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