Courage to Leap & Lead with Jared Fishman, part 2 - Episode 149

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Let it roar.

Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody. It's CB back with Jarrett Fishman. Right? I'm always nervous I'm going to get the last name wrong.

You know, so far so good.

Okay. If you missed part 1 of this interview, please go back and listen to it because we're now doing part 2. This man is so fascinating. And, you know, I just love talking to his brain. But we didn't have a chance to talk about what failures he's had amongst all of his great success. And how he turned those failures into success. So this is what we're going to talk about for part 2. Jarrett is also the author of Fire on the Levee, which is— I just, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna call it a drama mystery with the truth, based on truth. It's about a man—

Someone best described it as a social justice manifesto disguised as a true crime thriller.

That's it.

My hope is to bridge both worlds, is to take people who want to know more about law and order and crime in our communities, but also understand, hey, there's stuff we can all do collectively to make it better.

Well, you know, they say that there's nothing stronger than real life when you watch these dramas on TV. I said, yeah, well, compared to real life, I guess that's You know, the secret sauce behind the Law and Order series, right?

Well, it's— there was, there was a show called Treme by— from David Simon, who is one of my favorite, one of my favorite producers. He also made The Wire. Um, and the show Treme in, in seasons 3 and 4 carries the early days of this investigation as one of its plot scenes. Uh, and I was, I was down in New Orleans watching this, and I, you know, with all due respect to David Simon, who I admire greatly, Reality was way more interesting, um, than, than the fictionalized version.

I think that's why we've gotten so much into reality TV. And a lot of what we watch, we don't consider to be reality TV, but it is, you know. So, um, okay, let's, let's get to this. Tell us about something that other people would, could have, would have considered to be Failure in your life?

See, I was thinking it from the other way— something that everyone thought was a success that I deemed a failure.

Okay, work it that way too.

Um, I think it was probably the biggest victory of my career felt like one of my biggest failures because all of a while in life I'd been working towards this thing, which was to do this case that would bring justice. and that I would do it in a very particular way. And there we were, we had done this thing, we convicted a police officer for the murder of a man who was running away. And as I stood there, I just remember thinking, like, so what? Like, what is going to happen next? And it just felt like our system, it was the pinnacle for me of understanding how the system itself had failed, and I had been a part of that. for so long, and now I wanted to do something different.

So the fact that you were a prosecutor and you wanted to do something different, that's really—

I mean, it was— no, no, but it was, it was more fundamental than that. It's understanding one's place in the world that we reside, right? Systems are all about interactions between humans, and we can use those interactions to produce a positive outcome, or we can use those interactions to produce negative outcomes. And I think I reached that point where I was realizing that the way we were doing and what it took to succeed inside an adversarial system, which is to attack, which is to bring people down. And for me, that wasn't how I wanted to operate. That was a failure to have achieved success in my career and have not what I want to show for it because what I would like to show for it is that I somehow contributed to making the world a better place, that the world is a little bit better because of what I have done. And I think realizing that one's role is limited at that point in making a real change, that's pretty huge because I think so much of what we do in life, really what we consider failures, is just because we have a limited worldview. We're operating in the world with limited information. It's affected by the people that we surround ourselves. It's affected by the entertainment we watch or the news that we read. And we are inherently limited. And I think so many of, so many of my failures were really just I was operating on way too narrow of a worldview and that there was actually more that we could do if we thought about some of these problems. Like if And so from that point on, my goal was to see, all right, how many worldviews can, can I meet over the course of my lifetime? Because in each and every one, whether or not you're talking about post-apocalyptic New Orleans and the way that those people are responding, to dairy farmers in the country and the way they confront their problems every day, um, everyone has very different worldviews. And the more that we can use to open our minds, the better we'll all be.

Well, you know, it's an interesting dichotomy because to you, to reach success was to help society correct itself in a different way than you were doing before. But in both cases, both sides, you were still helping society correct itself, whether it's locking them up and putting them in jail or exposing what's wrong or Trying to right-side the what is wrong. So in all cases, you're still helping society. It's—

I always want to get more. I think everyone wants a better return on investment, right? I mean, I think maybe, maybe it's reaching middle age and recognizing, you know, there's only so much time left. I want to use that time wisely.

You're still a babe in the woods, kiddo.

So I'm, you know, I'm hanging in there.

But, but I, I like the story because what it points out to people is having the courage to say, you know what, I'm doing what I want to do, but I'm not doing what I want to do. I'm successful in what I'm doing, but I want to be successful in doing something else. That takes—

Well, I think, well, we've let other people set what that goal is.

Right.

Anyone who works in a corporation, there is a set part of a ladder that you are supposed to achieve if you are achieving success. Inside government, inside my— there's a set thing of things that you're supposed to achieve. I happen to be someone who achieved one of those things. And then you get to the top and you're like, you look up and you realize, oh no, there's still a lot more out there. And in fact, it's way, way worse than you thought. That's, I think, the world that we are operating in. And it takes people who want to take it on. I think we have to choose our own destinies. And that's a combination of what are the things that I'm good at? What are the things that I find interesting? What are the questions that I'm currently trying to solve? You know, I think if I look at my career trajectory, I chose jobs because every one of them allowed me to try to answer a question that I thought was interesting and get paid for it. I mean, I'm not— this isn't altruism. I got paid for my labor. But the reality was every job I chose was trying to tackle a question that I thought would say something interesting about humanity at the end of the day. And when you do that and try to answer interesting questions, you're always going to have interesting work. And I think for so many people, it's trying to shape, you know, for, for as kids, they always tell you, you know, they always ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? I realized at middle age that was the wrong question, and we shouldn't ask kids that question. The question that we should be asking them is, how do you want to be when you grow up? Because if you have an idea about the answer to that question, then you're going to make very different choices. About how you pursue your career and your interests and your relationships.

Yeah, I hear you. I, I know that when I started my career, I wanted to be creative. And so I started out as an interior designer. And then I said, not making enough money. No, don't have enough perks. So I went into corporate, corporate It was the worst years of my life. Although I was very, very successful. I won awards. I, you know, it's all this and that. But I said, it's just, it's just not, you know, it reminded me of a song by a woman by the name of Peggy Lee, when she said, is that all there is?

Yes.

I said, okay, what next? And then I decided to be a coach, and then I decided this, and then finally I came to understand that it was not just coaching, it was helping people see what they don't see. I'm like, okay, how do you— You label that so that you can make money with it. I'm still trying to figure it out.

Well, I mean, that's what we're doing. I mean, that's the heart of what we're doing is helping decision makers inside the justice system see this problem that they are just not seeing.

Yeah.

You know, one of, one of the first intervention points, I was like, oh, we should be doing something right there. Like, why not doing something right there? That's like the obvious place. And, and they just didn't see it. And then as soon as they saw it, they're like, oh yeah, that was huge. Why weren't we doing that?

But getting them to see it, I mean, you know, my platform is courage. Well, why aren't our leaders more courageous? Why aren't— why isn't our government more courageous in taking action that they know will support better growth and relationships in community?

I think a big part of it is what's happened to our media in the last 15, 20 years.

Tell me about it.

Well, you know, we don't, we don't have a shared sense of responsibility for our communities. We don't have a shared view of reality of what's happening. And we come after politicians and attack them as hard as we can. And sometimes they're fair and sometimes it's not, but it's, it's destroying the nature of problem-solving discourse in this country. And so what I think we need—

It's not destroying. It's not only destroying that, it's destroying the art of conversation. So this idea of cancel culture, where you can't say anything that anyone will disagree with, or you automatically are erased off the board of life. To me, that has created— it's been the anti-courage.

And yeah.

The same thing in your world. Well, we, we love the idea of change, but if we change it, what if we don't succeed? And what will people say? And how will they evaluate? And what will happen on Facebook and Twitter?

Well, even more importantly, I mean, if you look at the way a lot of very reasonable reforms have been dislodged around the country, there's an amazing amount of work in DC to rewrite their criminal code. That was incredibly thoughtful, and it got dislodged with one misconception about one provision of the whole thing. And, and we, we see that kind of attack because fear is a very effective way to change people's mind. And, and the more punitive, more policing, more let's arm ourselves to enforce the rule of law, the more that you go down that track. It actually destabilizes the community. You know, everyone wants to live in a world that is safe and healthy, right? Everyone wants that for our families, and we all agree that in order to have that world, there has to be some degree of rules to keep that society in place. That's why people like laws and rules and things like that. But, but the reality is If you live in a place where those rules are deemed legitimate, you're able to have people follow the rules without an amazing amount of force, right? You don't need large policing systems because people believe that the rules as they apply are, are fair and are being implemented effectively. Well, the less and less trust people have in that system, the more and more force you have to use in order to make it function. Except for the more and more force you use, the less and less trust you have, and the less and less legitimate that system seems. What's happening, in my opinion, is we continue to spiral downward, and someone has to stop the spiraling in order to flip it back in the other direction.

You know, after COVID, there were a lot of people, a lot of leaders that were saying, oh, I want to be authentic. I want to have— I want to build alliance. And they would go off on a tangent. I had a client say to me, well, we have rewritten our values for our company. I said, this is terrific. What do they talk about? They talk about inclusion. They talk about alliance. And it's just a long list of words. And I said, What are you doing about trust? I said, because you can't get to where you want to go to unless people trust. And they said, is that our missing piece? Yes, it's a major missing piece. Because without trust, people don't hear. They don't feel. So where are you going to go in creating alliance? Let's just look at—

Where do I go?

No.

Well, I mean, someone wants to solve a problem. I think there are— I think there's like 2 types of people out there in the world. There are the problem solvers, and then there are the not problem solvers. I think the key is to go and find who are those other problem solvers because You know, more and more people are realizing that we're operating in a super complex world. And if you want to reform the justice, if you want to take a data-informed approach to reforming, let's say, criminal justice like I do, well, those are 2 very different skill sets that historically have not come together at all. The data sciences, the people who can do the engineering and the coding and the backend computer stuff, and the lawyers who understand the way the system is currently structured and set up. In order to use this process, you have to have both people coming together. And right now we have not. We just don't do that. And so a big part of what we do is we, we help the lawyers understand how to work with the data scientists. We help the lawyers understand about coaching for, for, for decision-making. We help, we help different people broaden their their toolbox because the reality is all of them also have limited worldviews. And the more and more we can begin to understand, oh, it's actually better for me as a leader to have access to different information that I didn't normally have access to. It's like, honestly, I don't understand control and command and control leaders because to me that is the most stressful way to run an organization. Because that presumes that you're gonna get it right every time, that you alone can get it right every single time. Which, I mean, I know a lot about probability, and it— that just isn't the way the world works. The reality is we get it wrong plenty. And so, but what a better way to have decision-making when I can have someone who is running the numbers. I've got another person who's studying the communications. I've got one person who knows how the system works in reality. Then I've got the one person who's really good at making everyone have good relationships. Like, we need all of that. And the reality is it rarely resides in a singular person. And so if you can build a team that has that, that then acts with the trust that you need in order to make better decisions, that's how you begin to change an entire dysfunctional justice system.

But you have to have the courage to build that team, to allow for differences, to hear differences, and to accept them. So You know, I want to ask you, you told us one thing about failure, but it really wasn't failure. I want to know, come on now, I want to know, what did you really feel fail at and what'd you do about it? Give us the 411 now.

What was my biggest failure? It's, you know, I think of a lot of little failures. One of One of the things that I think I did early on was I made small risks. And so, you know, when you fail at a smaller risk, it doesn't really feel like failing if the goal is like, how do I do it better? I think earlier, I mean, I just think of just things that I got wrong, like got wrong about humanity and understanding how they functioned, really like missing pieces of the puzzle that when you see them, you're like, oh wow. But I don't know, like, to me, to me, that's not failure. I don't look at them that way.

Okay, in your personal life, what have you failed at, Jarrett?

Oh, I, I don't talk about my failures, which are, which are plenty.

You're not playing the game correctly now.

No, no, no, I'm out on that one, CB.

All right, how can I reword this? How about as a young man, which you are, what do you wish besides your career that you talked about that you could have done differently?

Back then? You're talking about— I mean, I think one of the hardest parts of doing this job and traveling around the country was that meant that when I left, I left my kids, I left my wife, I left a whole world that, as we all know, is difficult. It's difficult raising a family. And so I think there were definite moments where there was that tension between career and family. And there's been moments in my career where it's broken one way to the detriment of the other. And there's been ways that it's broken the other direction. I think when I look back at failures, it's, you know, it's the moments where it broke away from family. I think that is, it's hard not to look back at those times with longevity and say, you know, the hurt to family when we prioritize our work is pretty profound, even when that work is super, super important. And I, you know, I think that's the tension. I never believed that work wasn't important. I believed it was super important. Read the book. You can tell me if you think it's important too. But that often comes at consequences to people we love. Now, is that a failure? I think it's a time when the alignment didn't work out in the direction that I would've hoped for. And you try to correct for that over life.

Yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about. So how do you recognize It's time to make a change or tweak. And then how do you go about doing that?

I mean, for me, it was knowing, okay, I've been tackling this problem of the individual, and now I want to tackle the problem of, of the system. How do you do it?

Right?

Part of it was, oh, I had this particular solution that I thought could work. But good ideas are not sufficient, right? Like, there's plenty of good ideas out there. In order to make something happen, you have to be able to pay for the idea. You have to be able to get people together to implement the idea. I mean, I think it takes courage, but for sure.

But I'm talking about, like, for example, you talked to— you mentioned something that a lot of people face, particularly men, and you've got to travel. For your job, um, to make a difference in the world, and it can affect your personal life, your marriage. How do you know? And I think this is so important for men because they keep things inside. How do you know, to quote Simon and Garfunkel, you're on troubled waters? Do you just wake up one day and say Oh, I had an aha moment. I need to fix this.

Or— Yeah, I mean, I think, I think there are moments. I think there's always a learning moment. Something big happens in one's life that you're forced to deal with. That's usually what happens is something major happens in your life that the current, you know, the status quo doesn't allow you to address. And so you have to change the status quo by virtue of this new thing that happened. And it could be trauma, it could be the loss of a family member, it could be the loss of a parent, it could be problems at a school, it could be a health issue, it could be someone losing their job. For people involved with the criminal justice system, it could be someone in your family being incarcerated. Like, these are moments often where you're like, there's that moment of truth. And for my wife and I, it was the birth of our second daughter. There was this moment of— there was a moment of truth where we were having another child, and it was clear that the way I had been living my work life for the first 6 years wasn't going to be sustainable for the next 6 years.

How many children do you have?

I have 2 daughters.

Okay, so we know the story about daughters and dads. Dads are in the palm of the hand of the daughters.

Maybe.

Yeah, okay, that's the reaction most men give. Yeah, maybe. Yes. So giving advice to other men, Who find themselves in a similar choice. First of all, what would you say to them to really pay attention to? And then second, what would you say to them to do? And I think this is, you know, we've been laughing a lot and we've covered a lot of serious things, but I believe that Men have heart attacks because they don't say anything. They keep it all in. They don't have buddies that they talk to about things like this. They talk about the news, the abs, the this, the that, playing this and that. What advice would you give men to speak up, to stay alert, and the freedom To change?

I mean, for me, you know, I think about my relationship with my daughters and what metric one wants to use as to whether or not you're successful. You know, when I was writing the book and I got to the end and I was writing my acknowledgments, I wanted to write to my parents. My mom had passed away many years before. My dad was still alive at the time. And I realized the thing that I most wanted to thank them for was that I never doubted that I was loved. And I think, you know, when I think of what it takes to be successful in the world, like if you like Maslow and his hierarchy of needs and we've got these basic physiological and then we've got things like safety and security, but the next level up is love and belonging. And what I see so much in the world is that the reason people are struggling is that they're missing the love and the belonging. Like they may have their basic, needs met. They may have a ton of money, but I often see there's a lot of missing of that love and belonging. And I see a lot of people out in the workforce, the people I know who are successful feel loved. There is no doubt about it. And I think in my mind, like, I want my kids to grow up knowing that. And so every day when I drop them off at school, I let them know, don't forget that you're loved and you deserve that. I think as parents, I think as parents, if our kids come out of our lives feeling loved, then that's, that's a big win. Everything else, everything else I think is secondary.

You're gonna make me cry. I mean, that was so beautifully said. And I love that you say that to your children because A lot of men think, well, you know that. I don't have to tell you. Growing up as a woman, I could tell you that is the most important thing for you to say to your daughters and to the men, to the guys. Because we know our fathers are tough, but we also need to know that they're soft in the right spots. So thank you for saying that. Really appreciate that. So guys, before I tear up, we have to end. Garrett, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate your honesty, your trust in me interviewing you, and I really appreciate your book. And I suggest that everybody gets a copy of it and reads it. Let's support Jarrett in really trying to make a change in our justice system. And give us the name of your organization again.

My organization is— whoops. Sorry. Sorry, fans. That's my next meeting. Justice Innovation Lab, www.justiceinnovationlab.org.

Thank you. Thank you. And can everyday people be part of it?

Yeah, I mean, anyone can donate through our website. We're still growing in a way that trying to figure out how to involve different parts of the community. In the past, we've had people who are leadership coaches volunteer to help provide leadership support, not only to the people we're working with, but also members of the community. So there's potentially There's potentially ways. We're always looking to find people who want to support the mission. We find skill sets where they exist, and then we try to figure out how we can use it to make the world a little bit better.

Tara, will you send me a note on that? Because part of the certification that we do for corporate executive coaches includes volunteerism. All right, well, you credit, and I'd love to share that with our members.

All right, sounds great.

Thank you.

Bye.

Take care. Bye.

Bye, everybody. Don't forget, Tuesdays is the day where you have a lot of love and learning from Courage to Leap and Lead, the podcast. Bye now.