Turning Grief into Growth with Ian Ziskin

Welcome to the Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, change makers and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live, work and lead with more joy, health, love and meaning. Ian, I'm so excited to have you on our Happiness Squad podcast, my friend.

Great to be here, Ashish. Wonderful to spend time with you and thanks for the invitation.

Look, I can't wait for our listeners to read your book, Lives Lost and Leadership Found. And you know, the book is all about how loss can transform us. I want to start with a personal story or a turning point when a significant loss reshaped how you lead or live. Ian.

Yeah, I think maybe this story goes back actually quite a few years. It probably shaped me more than anything as a human being. So when I was about 11 years old, so obviously quite a long time ago, my father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Even though it took quite a while at that time for them to figure out what it was, over the course of a couple of years, he really had a fairly steady decline and passed away when I was 13. He was just approaching his 47th birthday, so fairly young. That I would have to say is probably the most defining, shaping moment in my life in terms of, you know, both as a human being, but also even beginning in those days to think about whatever role you might play as a leader over the course of one's life. Because it really got me thinking about two things in particular. One was forking the road around letting that type of traumatic experience crush you, or deciding how to turn lemons into lemonade, if you will, and take from it, you know, something positive that might fuel me for the rest of my life. So even at that, that age, even though I probably didn't have full insight about myself and my motivations, I do remember thinking very specifically about how am I going to respond to this and can I use it in some way to make me a better, stronger person? And others, I guess, will better judge whether I've been successful over 67 years of my life in doing that successfully. But I, I do remember very specifically having gone through that experience wanting to make that type of positive outcome happen from something that was clearly a very negative experience at the time.

Yeah. How old were you, Ian?

Yeah, so when I, when my father was first diagnosed, I was 11. And then 13 when he passed away. So fairly young.

Wow. Very young. Oh, my God. Right. We are just forming our. We're just becoming young adults. We're coming into our own. And in that moment, you know, there's somebody in our community who I know who's actually. His father just passed away. He's a friend of my son's. My son is 15. He struggled for a long time, and his mother's diagnosed now with terminal cancer.

Yeah, very difficult.

And. And it's. I think, I can't just even imagine, right, what he must be going through, but also what you went through, you know. You know, at an early age. So I'm curious, what were some things that you did right, fork in the road. You didn't probably even even have the language of the fork in the road back then, but here you are, you know, you're 11 when you find this out. You're 13 when your father passes. Walk me through for a moment. Take me to that moment, if you can, of what you were experiencing and what were some things that allowed you to take the less trodden road.

I think the. The most clear I have of that was thinking about what my mother and brother were going through. My younger brother, who was four and a half years younger than me and my mother, who'd obviously lived through the trauma of dealing with my father's illness and trying to help him for the couple of years before he passed away, and very consciously thinking, the last thing I want to be doing in this moment is creating more headaches and problems for my mother and for my brother. So what. What is it that I can do to take responsibility for myself, which I think ultimately translated somewhat pragmatically into continuing to do my best to be a good student, continuing to do my best to be a good human being and supportive not only of my family, but my friends and the like. So a lot of the emphasis was on, you know, what does it take to, you know, still be a good person, even though you're carrying around a certain amount of, you know, emotion and trauma. The other thing was being very conscious not to spend time feeling sorry for myself, because that was not going to change anything. You know, the only thing that I could control was my own emotions and reaction to the situation. I couldn't control the situation. And I tried to be very conscious of take a negative, turn it into a positive, take something difficult, learn from it, grow, and try to be a better person. Which, of course, when you're 11 or 12 or 13 years old, probably has different meaning than it does now, reflecting back on it many years later. But I still remember being very conscious and intentional about that, which even today, this whole idea of intentionality, which we might get into a little bit more as we continue to talk, has actually been a valuable life lesson for me.

Yeah, I love those three moves that you highlighted. Right. Even as, you know, as a young child, but from all my research, from all the conversations are really important elements of kind of navigating something that hard, that young. Right. This notion of your first immediate orientation was to the other, not to the self. We spend so much time looking inwards rather than saying, how can I help them? How can I make sure at least if I can't help them, not be a burden on them? Right. So there's even an extreme suffering orientation to the other. The second you mentioned is emotion. And like, I'm in, you know, mastery of emotions. I had a conversation with Ethan Cross will release a podcast soon on his book Shift, which is emotions are what we feel, emotions are not what we are. And we have a choice to shift if those are not serving us, not to ignore them, not to run away from them, but to be able to kind of work with them more masterfully. And I think that's a little bit of what I heard you say as well, is rather than just feel sorry for yourself, you said, you know, I can actually. I can still hold it, but I can let it not hold me back. I can still hold grief, but I don't need to let grief hold me back. I'm still gonna move. And then the third is what you know, all the way from Viktor Frankl's work on Search for Meaning. And one of the ways in which people make mean meaning is in suffering. When something happens, how do we give meaning to what's happened in order to achieve something, to grow into something? So I love those three. I think there is so much wisdom there and wish I had you as a friend. My friend at 11 or 13 do.

Have me as a friend now, so. Exactly.

Because I don't think even at 40, I was, I had that level of wisdom and insight.

We all learn and grow, don't we?

Right. But I have to tell you, you said, I don't know if I've taken those lessons and become somebody. Well, my friend from my time over the last couple of years, getting to know you, seeing the community you've cultivated around you, how you support others, how selfless you are, I think the universe will smile kindly and I think you'll be proud as you approach your 80s and 90s. Look back, you've touched so many lives, Ian, and you've made so many lives matter. So, yeah, I'm grateful to have you as a friend. Look, so from that moment, right, you've really spent decades advising leaders, you know, teaching, writing, coaching, you know, leading the HR function. I think you were at Northrop for a fair part of your career. I'm curious how your understanding of flourishing, right, flourishing in the workplace, flourishing as humans evolved over your career, personally and professionally, and maybe even start with a few. What is flourishing mean to you today?

Yeah, if I, if I start, you know, from where I'm at now to your question, and maybe work backwards just a little bit now, I'm kind of at an age and stage of life where the mantra that I'm trying to live by is, do what I want, when I want, where I want, with whom I want. And so to ask me the question, you know, what does flourishing mean to me now? That's actually what it means to me is, is having the, not necessarily the balance, but the reconciliation of all of those things. So every, every day, every week, if I can do a little bit of all of those four things, I actually feel like I'm flourishing now. I didn't always have necessarily that perspective. So if I look back over the course of my life and I think back to this incident, you know, of my father passing away that we were just talking about a few minutes ago, you know, flourish in that moment meant, you know, continuing to move forward, not be devastated or knocked down too severely or too permanently by difficult circumstance, and continuing to be there for my mother and my brother and other family members and for myself. That is really what flourishing meant at that time. The years in between, you know, over the course of my life and career, I know a lot of people talk about the idea of balance, you know, between work and personal life. I've tended to think about flourishing maybe in a slightly different way, which is not necessarily the idea of balance, but the ability to again, reconcile the competing priorities of things that are, you know, focusing on you, yourself, your own well being, the well being and the flourishing of other important people around you at the same time, being able to, you know, give your fullest and your best to whatever career or, or job pursuit you might be in, and being passionate, you know, about all of those things. Because I can certainly tell you as a, you know, longtime HR person and somebody who's focused a lot on leadership these last 43 years, I'm very fortunate to love what I do. But I do spend a fair amount of time around other people who do not, you know, they're kind of miserable or they ended up falling into life and career circumstances and they feel trapped by that and they don't know how to get out of it. So to me, flourishing has a lot to do with the reconciliation between the things that you're passionate about and you love, along with the things that you're reasonably good at and therefore can make a living and contribute to society. And of course, most importantly, I think doing that, what's best for and being there for family and friends and other people that you care a lot about. If you can get some sense of a reconciliation of all of those things, even if it's not perfectly balanced, I think you've done pretty well at achieving flourishing as we might now. Think about it.

Yeah, no, it's beautiful, right? This orientation of finding meaning, loving what you're doing, using your strengths, serving others, being there for family and friends. You know, I feel, you know, work, life balance. This notion of balance, I think is an illusion. It's an illusion, right? I think it's. And I always think about it this way, you know, I think I'm curious. I'm actually going to look back at the history of when we first talked about work and life balance. I want to go back in the analysis and look because I find it really interesting, Ian, because I wonder the origins of work life balance is where this seed of work as suffering probably got sown because we don't create boundaries when it comes to life, right? Like, life is not just life. Life is time with myself, time with family, time with friends, doing things I like, doing things I don't like, right? We don't break out. There are a lot of things we do in our life that are not enjoyable, right? Shopping for groceries, paying the bills, right? Like for some people, gardening for others might not be taking the trash out, fixing things, you know, like, these are not necessarily enjoyable things. There's some of these things that need to be done, right? For some parents, taking their kids to kind of baseball games and whatever all weekend long is joyful. For many, it's a chore, right? But they just do it. It's something they do because they think it's the right thing to do. But we don't boundary. This is the time for, like, I'm giving to my kids to take them to school. This is the time I'm doing this. But somehow when it comes to work, it's the same story. There's not all aspects of Work people don't like. There's some things they like, there's some things they don't like. But we only draw the boundary between work and life, and we try and balance it rather than really think holistically and integrate work and life. I'm curious what you think about that.

Well, you know, A, I completely agree with you, but B, I would also say, I guess we're all subject to, you know, continuing to, you know, learn and grow as we, you know, age and mature and experience different things. So I'll give you a very specific personal example of what we're talking about now. I have three sons. My middle son has lived in Sweden for the last three years. Our daughter in law is Swedish, and we have two fairly young granddaughters who also live there who are almost 5 and 3. And so my wife and I spend quite a bit of time now, on average about every three or four months, going to Sweden to visit our family. And one of the things that I've discovered as a result of being exposed to Swedish culture over the course of these few years is that, you know, there are different ways of thinking about balance and, or integration between work and life. And the Swedish environment is quite a bit different from what you find in the United States. To oversimplify it, I would say that more people have a tendency to think about they work to live rather than living to work, you know, and they have a high priority that they place in society on whatever their definition of balance is. But the other thing which has also been very instructive, and I'd say quite impressive, is that whether or not you personally, any, any one of us who's listening in personally adheres to the idea of, you know, live to work or work to live. One of the things you see in Sweden, which I find fascinating, is that a lot of public policy and law is very well aligned with and consistent with what they say are the stated values of society. You know, the orientation to family, the orientation to some sense of balance or reconciliation, if you will, between work and life. And most of the policies and laws that exist in the country actually reinforce that philosophy, as opposed to other places that you might live, including the United States, where, you know, we have very, a lot of positives about this country, for sure. But we also say that we have a lot of stated priorities that are not necessarily supported by or reinforced by public.

Absolutely.

Or law. Right. And so it's a whole different way of thinking about this integration that you were talking about earlier and how you reinforce the things that you actually say, are important in your life. And even though it's true that, you know, most of us who are part of this conversation and your listeners may not have control necessarily directly over public policy or law, we all do have control about our own priorities and how we spend our time and what we make, decisions we make in terms of the level of importance of those things to us personally. And so you can make, make choices. And I think.

Yeah, I think, you know, I had, I had the benefit of working with a client who was Swedish in my last 18 months while I was at McKinsey. And so, yeah, very firsthand. I have several friends in Sweden. We went in 2022, actually spent a couple of weeks in Sweden. It is, it is one both, you know, this notion of in the summer taking everybody shutting down for a certain period of time, I think it's such a beautiful thing because, you know, often here in the US when people take vacation, emails are still piling up like we don't really. And then we don't take enough. Right. But really being able to spend that time in nature, I think has a really beautiful thing. So, you know, we shape systems, systems shape us. And I think here, at least in the us, I see this, you know, literally individual against the system, rallying so desperately trying to, to carve out that boundary because I think we've lost boundaries and it's become this battle between work and life when in a normal, different structure that might not need to be in place, and then we need laws and others to enforce it. No, I get that so much. So listen, I have another question for you, Ian, and I think you are very uniquely positioned given just your rich experience in hr, your heart, your own leadership journey along the way, and this is the following, right? If we look at the state of flourishing at work today, 20% of people are thriving, 22% are burnt out, 60% experience stress daily. Only 19% of people in the frontline find meaning at work. Our workplaces have become one of suffering rather than flourishing. You know, it's less likely to find. You know, I often tell people when they say I'm really struggling and I want to find something else, I'm like, it's less likely to find something out there. Go fix this here, right? Or what you control versus not. But my question for you is a slightly different one. It's not about the individual. My question is the following. Most HR people I know are highly people centric. They get into this field all the way from young graduates who are getting in, who I mentor to People who've been long in this. In these careers. Right. I'm curious, as somebody who's long tenured, what is your perspective on what is going wrong? Why are those dreams that people go into HR and people functions with get shattered, that our workplaces do not look anything like our manufacturing sites or tech centers, et cetera, where 70, 80% utilization of assets is what's happening. And here we've got 20% of people who are actually doing well. What do you think is going wrong?

Yeah, of course, you know, complex question and a lot of different issues which I'm going to try to oversimplify here as we, as we have this part of the conversation. First of all, you know, even though I'm not denying the data that you just shared, because I think it's very accurate, one of the things I do see, however, is a wide disparity between, you know, individuals and organizations in terms of their level of engagement, level of flourishing, level of enthusiasm for the environment that they're in versus other places where it's probably less than 19 or 20%, you know, it's closer to zero, you know, where people are, you know, completely miserable. And I think, you know, there's a couple of distinguishing factors here. Whether you're an HR person or whether you're just somebody trying to thrive and flourish in the work environment. It's part of it's systemic and part of it's more, you know, individually based. I think at the individual level, the single most important thing that we can control or influence is trust. Do we spend time building trust between ourselves and other people? And do we also spend time demonstrating that we trust other people? And probably a good. This is just one example, but it's a current example. Ever since COVID of course, organizations have been wrestling with this idea of, you know, almost immediately overnight moving to remote work in order for things to get done. During the COVID epidemic, then you come out of COVID and now organizations are still struggling with, you know, do we want everybody to come back to the office, so to speak, Are we okay with people working remotely? What about hybrid work environments? And there's all kinds of battles now going on of companies trying to encourage, or maybe better said, demand that people come back to the office? And there's a lot of, you know, rationalization and explanations for all of that, but to be honest with you, I think most of that is baloney. I think the real issue is fundamentally as a leader, do I trust you? Do I believe that if I can't see you and we're not. And you're not sitting or standing next to me every day that you're actually still working and still being productive. And, you know, until we get our arms around fundamental trust between human beings, it's tough to get to the place of flourishing that we're all striving to get to and getting those numbers above, you know, 20%. The other thing, though, is a little bit more systemic, which is the fact that, like the Sweden example that we were just talking about a minute ago, I think in organizations our stated priorities don't necessarily align with the practices and processes and the culture and the environment that we actually have established. And we have to get comfortable at changing those things to better align with what we say is important. You know, what we typically say is important is performance and results, and we usually mean that. We also say it's important that we have a culture or a work environment where people feel valued and where they can be themselves and where they have an opportunity to flourish and grow and learn and. And we're not nearly as good or consistent at doing those things. We pretty much.

Or even measuring them. Right. Or even measuring. Or holding people accountable.

Yeah, yeah. To even know whether we're doing them and whether we're doing them effectively as leaders and oh, by the way, the leaders that are not doing those things effectively, we're generally a lot better at measuring and holding people accountable for business results, financial results, operational results, as we should. I'm a firm believer in accountability around those things, but I'm an equal believer in accountability around culture, work environment. To what degree are we causing people to feel trusted and valued? And we don't do nearly as good a job of measuring those things. And because of that, we don't do a very good job at all at holding people accountable for those things. And that's just an imbalance that has to be improved if we're going to increase the level of engagement and sense of flourishing in organizations. I think that's kind of the core problem that we need to get our arms around. Much better.

Yeah. You know, the other thing, Ian, I think those are. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think trust for sure is so foundational. Right. Trust of the employee with their boss, trust of the employee with the company. Both ways around. Right. Ebras is trusting employees. Right. That you're going to do the right thing. And if you don't have trust, how can you actually do great work? And I do agree the back to work movement has so much to do with workplaces where that trust is broken.

I think so. The other thing, if I could, just to add a twist to this, just so people may not misunderstand my intent here in what I'm saying, by building trust, I don't mean, you know, I do what you want me to do and make you happy, even though I'd like to make you happy. What I. What I really mean by trust is I do what I say I'm going to do, and I also treat you with dignity and respect as I'm doing it. That's not the same as, you know, do what you want or do only the things that you know that make you happy. I think we just need to be better at some, you know, fundamentals, which include, I tell you with truth, what's really going on and what you need to know. I let you know what I expect of you. I hold you accountable to that. I reward and respect you when you deliver on those things. I give you feedback, including negative feedback, when you don't do those things. And so you can trust me to be direct and clear and honest and transparent with you. That's the kind of trust I mean. As opposed to sometimes people, in my opinion, misinterpret trust to mean you do what I want you to do, make me feel good, and therefore, I trust you.

This conversation is brought to you by Happiness Squad, where we help leaders build new mindsets, new habits, and transform their ways of working to truly flourish. If you're ready to unleash the untapped human potential in your organization and operate at your best, come Visit us@happinesssquad.com and start your journey today. Yeah, I'm reminded of this really powerful short clip I saw from Amy Edmondson, right where she said, psychological safety is not softness, it's not absence of conflict. It's being able to have conflict in a way that that actually is about the problem rather than the person. Right. Like we do need to actually hold ourselves. No, I'm. I absolutely am aligned with that. So I'm going to ask you another question. I've been very curious about this, right? When it comes to our physical assets, we measure data every day, every hour. We often take actions. Kaizen events are run monthly in most high performing companies. Why do we look at data for people once a year, maybe six months? And why is it that we don't do Kaizen on the way? We are collaborating the level of trust within us, you know, priorities, Are we clear? Are they not clear? Why aren't we Kaizening work the way we Do Kaizen, you know, any materials that flow through our work processes on the factory. I'm sure it's not a new idea but yet most engagement surveys, most kind of any kind of surveys have these much longer cycles in corporate world. I'm curious behind that, what's behind that? Ian?

Yeah, I wish I had a great answer. I don't. Other than to say that I think we often make the mistake that the more data we collect, the more scientific we're being in our approach, which I actually beg to differ with. And you mentioned engagement surveys. This is a perfect example of this where the entire engagement survey movement I think is well intentioned, which is to try to get a better sense of how people are thinking and feeling the work environment that they're in. But somehow or another, you know, we and consulting firms and the rest over complicated the process to the point where we went to, you know, 80 and 100 question surveys and six and nine months of analysis before we were able to get back to people and say this is what we learned and then this is what we're going to do about it. As opposed to, you know, measuring three or four or five things on a much more regular, consistent, shorter term basis, being very transparent with people about what we're doing in response to that data, holding leaders and others accountable for addressing those things and being able to demonstrate measurable improvement over time. So a much shorter turnaround cycle over a much shorter list of things that actually make the biggest difference. The whole analytics movement is a, you know, is a broader example of this where, you know, I'm a, I'm a big believer in analytics but what I see a lot of organizations do is they put together, you know, particularly people analytics on, you know, 20 and 30 things at the same time and they don't have the capacity to address, well, all 20 or 30 things. So why bother collecting the data and then they diffuse their own momentum by trying to do too many things simultaneously and can't hold people accountable for the few things that actually matter the most. So bottom line message I think if we're going to get better at this is simplify dramatically the number of things that we're measuring and collecting data on and increase dramatically the level of accountability that we're holding people to for actually addressing and improving those things. We can do that. We'll make much more progress than measuring 100 things and making no progress at any of them.

Yeah, no, we are so like minded on this and that's a little bit of the journey that we are on the third thing we are kind of also integrating with more frequent cycles and accountability is actually putting the onus like we do in manufacturing transformations or digital transformations with the team. Give the team, rather than make engagement be an evaluative score, make it a tool where as a team, and again, it goes to the foundation of trust. Because a lot of people say, yeah, but are people going to really tell you what they think? Well, if you have trust that you're collecting this data to help each other flourish and rise to the challenge of the performance through well being. Yes. If you don't, then no, people are not going to do it. Right.

Well, I have a very, very strong opinion about this. So if I'll just give me 10 seconds, I'll share it, which is, you know, if you, you ask people what they think and, and over time, you know, start to establish some credibility of listening and being responsive, you at least have a 51% chance of people telling you the truth. If you don't ask people what they think or how things are going, you basically have a 0% chance of people telling you what they think. So it's, it's imperfect, but I'd rather have the 51% chance than the 0%. I think we just need to get better at that along the way.

Yeah. I mean, this is amazing. Look, I want to go back to your book. I want to go back to lives lost and Leadership found. It's really a compendium of so many different stories from different people. Right. Because this is not just an Ian story. This is actually, you know, a story. We all have losses in our lives. There is no human. I'm reminded of the story Ian. A mother came to Buddha and said, hey, you are the venerated Holi. You know, everybody comes here. Can you help my son? Can you give him life again? You know, he's very young. He was very young. And Buddha said, yes, I will help you, but here's what I need to do that go into the village and get me a bowl of rice from a house that hasn't suffered a loss. And of course, the woman was so grief stricken, she didn't actually get what he was asking. So she said, okay, I'll do it. And she went house to house. And after the 20th house, she realized the learning that everybody suffers loss and life ends. So my question to you is the following. What sparked your. What was the idea that you had about this is so profound? What was. Why did you feel this was a story? This was a book that needed to be written and These were stories that needed to be told.

A very specific couple of events that happened in 2023, when first my brother, who I mentioned earlier was four and a half years younger than me, passed away rather suddenly and unexpectedly from metastatic cancer. And then six months later, my mother, who was 93 and there obviously, therefore, obviously, maybe a little less shocking that she would pass away suddenly passed away from cardiac arrest after experiencing some severe stomach issues and then her entire system shut down. So she went to the hospital and literally within four or five hours had passed away. So these two losses within a six month period of time, obviously, you know, for anybody who's experienced that type of loss, you know, is jarring, of course. But I also found myself almost immediately thinking, just like I did with my father's death, you know, don't spend a lot of time sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. You know, what can you learn from this experience? Which then got me to thinking not only about a book, but maybe more importantly the idea that of course I was not the only person who experienced loss, as you just said, and therefore there might be other people who have stories to tell about things that they learned from a lost loved one, which then caused me to reach out to various people in my network to, you know, test that hypothesis. And lo and behold, what I discovered, not surprisingly, was that there were quite a few people who had stories to tell. Never been asked to tell their story, but actually saw this as an opportunity for a little bit of catharsis and to, you know, honor the person who they'd lost. So the fundamental premise of lives lost and leadership found is really about life and leadership, lessons learned from lost loved ones that. And that became the fundamental crux of the book, if you will. And the rest is history in terms of creating, as you were alluding to a minute ago, something that was a very collaborative kind of passion project that wasn't just about Ian's view of the universe as the lead author, but, you know, incorporates a lot of other very diverse perspectives, stories, lessons learned from a very wide variety of people who provided.

Input into so beautiful, again, action and orientation of how do you make meaning through your hardship, your suffering, and tuning into, recognizing it's a shared effect. Right, I'll. I'll add a story, Ian, to, to your story of lives lost. And this was actually, I think it came at a time where even though I was not very spiritual and religious, I've always had a deep feeling of inter being and kind of wonder in the universe. And this was one of those moments that Actually created this for me. So when I was born, I almost died. I could not digest any milk, my mother's. So, like, I just couldn't. Like, there was nothing that would. No, no formula would work. Formula, milk, nothing. And the doctors had given up on me. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, I was one of her dearest grandsons because she healed me back to life. She always said to my mother, and she was like, you might have given him birth, but I have given him life. Right? So we always had a very tight bond. We were always really, really close. She doted on me. I doted on her. At 23, I moved to the US and a year and a half after that one night, I was in my sleep, I dreamt of her. And she came in my dream. And I still to this day, you know, 28 years later, remember walking down this beautiful path with her, with her holding my hand. And, you know, we said goodbye and she left. And right as she left, the phone rungs and it's my mother calling from India. It's 2:30am in the morning in Chicago, and she calls to say, your grandmother just passed away. And it had literally happened that afternoon. She had gone to sleep and she hadn't woken up. And I knew at that moment, you know, like, about. And I said, yeah, I know. And she said, what do you mean, you know? I said. She said goodbye. You know, she came to me and this notion of life is more than just what we experience out there. And there is something divine and fundamentally, you know, continuing nature of life beyond kind of the physical was something I lived with, even though I not quite interacted with that. But that always was present for me and has been a driving force. So that's a Life Lost leadership journey found right from. From a young age to add to your collection.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sharing that story. And sorry. Sorry for the. For the loss. But, you know, listening to you tell that story reminds me quite a bit of what we experienced in putting this book together. Because it turns out that even though the process of writing an essay about a lost loved one has proved very cathartic and emotional for a lot of people who contributed, what fascinates me is that some of the people that are being written about and featured in the book, you know, passed away fairly recently, a matter of months or maybe a couple of years, you know, like my brother and mother, other people were sharing stories of people who've passed away, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, still with the same level of emotion and release from, you know, writing about this person and honoring this person up to and including the fact that a number of people have shared with me that this is really the first time that they really feel like they had an opportunity to grieve, you know, and process the loss. So I. I learned a lot about not only these stories, but also the value of creating, you know, safe space and a platform, process maybe for people to be able to express themselves and what they learned from somebody that they really cared about. I actually think it's a very valuable aspect of self discovery and, and learning by being able to think about someone else who's had a huge impact on our life, who, you know, maybe they've passed away, but even if they're still living, I think all of us have people in our lives who've had, you know, profound influence on us, just like your. Your grandmother did. And there's a lot to be learned and captured there if you allow yourself.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I can't imagine how difficult the last several years must have been for you, Ian. You know, just losing those loved ones, your brother and then your mother. So I. I feel that deeply, and I am so grateful how you've turned that immense suffering that you must have gone through into this gift, into this gift, you know, for others and through collecting all these stories, inviting others to use writing as a tool, even if nobody else reads it. But you do tell the story as a way to really process slowly, you know, that loss and maybe through that, find your way through. Right. Integrating that. I don't think we ever overcome the grief of the loss of a loved one, but we can integrate that and make something of it. And that's the invitation you're giving us.

It actually led us to include a section at the end of the book that wasn't originally anticipated because I was getting so much feedback from the contributing authors about this catharsis and sense of release and the ability to honor a lost loved one. We ended up including at the end of the book, some guidelines for people to write their own essay. And we're actually encouraging people to write an essay about a special somebody that they may have in their life, passed away or still living. And that person who chooses to write the essay might choose to write it just for themselves, or they might choose to write it for family members and friends and others who also might remember that lost loved one. But in either case, just the. The process of going through and thinking about your own learning life and leadership lessons and what that person meant to you actually has some cathartic value. Anybody who chooses to pick up the book and take a look at it, I would encourage them also to think about the idea of maybe following the guidelines a bit and writing an essay that honors somebody that's important in their life.

Yeah, beautiful. Look, there are several themes you highlight in the book that was kind of the. The, you know, as you look through all of these, you know, courage, resilience, compassion, and relationships. You talked a lot about curiosity and purpose, and then you talk about the smoothie effect. What's the smoothie effect?

Well, I. I use this analogy in the book. Having experienced lots of people in my life who are somewhat addicted to smoothies. You know, most people have had the experience of, you know, eating or drinking a smoothie from time to time. I don't consider myself a smoothie aficionado, but here's what I've kind of learned about it as an analogy. You know, first of all, you know, it's a. It's about a $12 billion global industry expected to go to about $30 billion by the year 2032. So it's not an insignificant part of life and economy. But what I found was that there were some overlapping themes between, you know, putting a smoothie together and the idea of processing the loss of a loved one. So just a couple of examples of that. You know, first of all, you know, smoothies are kind of this concoction of ingredients you. You learn a lot about, you know, in life and leadership, also about the ingredients of surrounding yourself with really good people and what you put into life, also what you get out of life. That's true of a smoothie as well. There's also a lot of blending, if you will, of seemingly disparate ideas and feelings that you deal with when you're. When you're going through a loss that are actually quite similar to the disparate tastes of, you know, chocolate and whey, power powder and blueberries and all kinds of other things that you throw into a smoothie that you might not necessarily think about consuming all at the same time. There's also this whole idea of slicing and dicing and chopping and crunching and mixing and mashing and bashing you know, all the various ingredients together. And so you end up feeling like you're kind of in this chaotic spin cycle, much like what people will describe about their up and down and spinning feelings of dealing with loss, you know, where every moment of every day is kind of this crazy cycle of waves of feeling.

Absolutely.

And the last thing that really struck me about the analogy was this idea of intentionality. You know, the way that you deal with loss, particularly if you're trying to do it in as productive, positive a way as possible and learn something from it, has a lot to do with the intention of approaching it that way. Just like putting together a, you know, a good, healthy, yet taste, tasty smoothie. Smoothie involves a lot of intention and planning and not only the selection of the ingredients and the chopping and the slicing, but also this. You know, if you think about the. The blender, right? You know, the blender's going, you know, and then it stops and there's silence. And then the blender again goes, and it stops in their silence. Very much the way you deal with the waves of emotion when processing a loss, not only immediately, but over an extended period of time, where all of a sudden feelings just come to you and you have to process those feelings and think about it in a very intentional way in order to come out the other side with some positive learning from the experience. So that's where the. The concept of the smoothie effect came from, was that there's a lot of overlaps and consistencies between that process and the process of grieving. Even though I certainly don't mean to diminish in any way people's personal feelings of loss by oversimplifying it in terms of thinking about it as making a smoothie.

I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant. I can. I absolutely love, love the analogy, intentionality, different pieces coming together and this notion of like, yeah, it is a cycle. It is. But coming out of it, you can have something really good. Right?

Right.

But if you don't do it intentionally, you put some things that are not good. You might not have a healthy smoothie or a tasty smoothie. Right. Your life can be. It's about the intention and what you choose in addition to what is in there to put into it.

Yeah. Well, maybe the single biggest aha for me out of all of that was that, you know, that old expression, time heals all wounds. I actually am a believer that while time is helpful, I think intentionality heals all wounds. I think the process of thinking through in an intentional way. How am I going to work my way through this process? I have feelings that I need to acknowledge and deal with and process, but I also have some specific objectives, if you will, of coming out the other end, taking something negative, turning it into a positive. What can I learn from it? How can I grow from it? How can I be a better person and perhaps a better leader as a result of going through the difficult experience. That's all about intentionality, not just time.

My friend, I am so grateful for you to put this together. Keeping an eye on the time. We'll wrap with this invitation to our listeners to really think about intentionality. Get a copy of Ian's book Lives Lost and Leadership Found. It is filled with beautiful stories. Write your own. Write your own. We all have losses, by the way. We don't have to just process loss of a loved one. You can process the loss of a relationship, the loss of a job. I think the idea about reflecting on the loss with intention of learning and making something out of it, I think is a powerful tool I'm taking away as a way to kind of give meaning to suffering. Ian, thank you for being a guest for us. Thank you for being a friend and for all that you do for the world.

Wonderful to be with you. Ashish, thanks so much.

Thank you for joining me on the flourishing edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share it with someone who's ready to flourish too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected for more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.