Lift As You Rise: Purpose-Driven Approach to Leadership with Ellyn Shook

Leadership is contextual, and I think leadership has to change as the context changes. But I have certain beliefs that leaders have to continue to learn. And I do believe that leaders have to be able to advocate an inspiring vision to move people and the world forward.

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training, a high performance psychologist. This is a series of conversations we've been having with global leaders in human resources. They are at the forefront of helping define modern leadership and what it takes to attract and retain and build the next generation of leaders. From the shift to and from hybrid work to the integration of emerging technologies like AI, these conversations highlight the leadership capabilities that will help teams thrive in the modern workplace. Today, as part of our Modern Leadership series, I'm really excited to sit down with Ellen Shook, the former Chief leadership and Human Resources Officer at Accenture, to explore the evolving landscape of leadership and workplace culture. Ellen is at the forefront of shaping environments where people do more than simply work. They grow, they connect, they thrive.

So we just started saying progress is greater than perfection, so that the expectation is we're going to keep moving.

She's been instrumental in driving Accenture's people first approach, people becoming their very best, and the power of human connection.

In high performing organizations, we engage the most influential people. And it's not like the people up here that are the most influential. It's the most influential people who has influence. That's how you make things work.

Ellen's insights are are not just for business leaders. They're for anyone looking to lead with purpose and empathy and impact. So with that, let's dive into this week's conversation with the powerhouse, Ellen Shook. Ellen, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. I've been wanting to do this for a really long time, and so thank you for spending the time to be able to do this together.

Thank you for having me. I'm so really excited to do it with you.

Awesome. Okay, so let's just start at the beginning.

Okay.

What is important about your journey for me? To best understand who you are and how you've arrived here.

It really started when I was in second grade, which is really odd, but when I was in second grade, my dad was superintendent of schools and he signed the integration orders on the school district I went to school in. And what does that really mean? That, like, might not even mean anything to people who are listening to this thing. What it meant was before that happened, where I lived, which was 60 miles outside of New York City. White children went to one school, and black children went to a different school. And my dad signed the integration orders at the request of the Commissioner of Education. And it meant that we were going to have black children and white children go to school together. And not only did he sign the orders, but he made sure that the orders were executed. And that was super hard for him, and it was super hard for our family. The white families were not happy, and neither were the black families. And when I look back on my own journey, that probably was something that did really shape me, but I never really fully understood it in that way. But it did shape me because I looked at my dad as a role model throughout my whole life, professionally and personally. And I talk a lot about compassion being the combination of empathy and action. And my dad believed, believed in his head and in his heart that education was the great equalizer. And by doing what he did, he was. He was able to make a difference. And to me, that was really the beginning of my journey.

Okay, so let's open that up just a bit here, and we'll work backwards that you've got a really clear definition of compassion, empathy, and action.

Yeah.

And it sounds like your dad embodied those.

Yeah.

And you tied it to the story about him making a decision and then being responsible to put that decision in action.

Yeah.

And I do remember, like, not as a kid, not understanding it, like, it's fine, you know, But I didn't understand, like, how I couldn't. Why I didn't get to go to school with kids in my neighborhood. But it was. That was kind of the. The only issue. I like playing soccer with these kids. How come I don't get to play, you know, with them at school?

And.

And I remember learning about it later, like, the grand idea is that we're just going to all be one larger melting pot, and we're going to know people from our sister neighborhoods. And you're suggesting that there was more tension than maybe I was aware of at the time. But more importantly, your father led with empathy in action.

He continued to do it. You know, coming over here today to prepare for this, I was thinking about. About him, because I always do when I think about myself, because he was such a role model. He. He passed away more than a decade ago. And I read. I know this sounds really weird, but I read his obituary again for the first time in a long time, and I was reminded that he not only did that, which is always the thing I remember, because I remember sitting at the dinner table that night that that happened. But I was reminded that he put a high school education program into our jail system, our county jail system. He also created an education program for pregnant and parenting teens. So he really believed that education was an equalizer. And he took those beliefs and he created things that enabled people to have an equal and level playing field. And frankly, that's what I did my entire last decade of my career, or tried to aspire to do, was to create a level playing field for people.

Very cool. Okay, so when you were younger, what was your idea of leadership then? And I'm wondering if that changed over time or if the original spark stayed true for the last handful of decades.

It definitely has changed. To me, leadership was being the first one to do something. Fast forward to my career. I was working on a project. Wickcentra was going public back in 2001. I was selected. I was pretty young at the time, much younger than I am now, obviously. And I was working with one of the most senior partners in our company, a super smart guy named John Conahan. And we were tasked with figuring out how to distribute the equity to all of our people in the company. I had very low self confidence in math because I had a seventh grade math teacher who told me I was stupid in front of the whole class. So I chose a major in college where I had to do very little math. I hid from math. You know, I lived with that limiting belief that I could not do math. So John and I were sitting in a conference room in Accenture's New York office and he said to me at the time, were you a calculus major? Five words. It changed my life. It changed my life. John Conahan in five words changed the trajectory of my entire life because he recreated belief in myself that I could do something that I didn't really know or believe I could do. And that became leadership to me, which was helping people unlock their potential. And so for a time, that's how I modeled my own leadership. I wanted to unlock people's potential too, because it felt so great. And I suddenly became something I could never imagined I could become. I moved to Paris, I worked in France, and I brought my family there. And we became. We learned so much and we did so much. You know, it was just such an enriching part of my life. And then when I became the chief leadership and HR officer of Accenture, that required a whole new idea around leadership. I mean, that really became a whole new paradigm for me, seeing great leaders experiencing leadership, having to define what I believed great leaders were and so I know this might sound shocking to you, having been the Chief Leadership Officer of Accenture, but I don't think there is one static model because I do believe that leadership is contextual and I think leadership has to change as the context changes. But I have certain beliefs that leaders have to continue to learn. I have a belief that leaders have to practice compassion, which is my definition of empathy and action. I believe that leaders have to I have this research that I did called Net Better Off. I believe leaders have to leave people net better off to be great leaders. And I do believe that leaders have to be able to advocate an inspiring vision to move people and the world forward.

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Yeah, they are. And NetBetter off has its own net better off. If I may just explain what that definition is. We actually did a piece of research. I did it together with David Rodriguez, who was the chro of Marriott at the time. And we were kind of in search of how do you unlock potential in people at work? And there were four things that unlock 2/3 of people's potential at work. Are people healthy and well physically, emotionally, mentally and financially? Do people feel a sense of belonging, belonging and trust? Really? Do they feel a sense of belonging and trust? Do they wake up every day and have a purpose? So not are they connected to the purpose of the company per se, but do they have a sense of purpose every single day and do they have market relevant skills? So if you can fire on all four of those things, you can unlock 2/3 of someone's potential at work and leave them net better off. So that has a very specific definition. And I believe that lens leaders need to look at people holistically like that.

So this is under net better off. So the, the company or the leader is helping others be better than when they started the relationship with you.

Correct.

And there's, there's a wellness component, there's a belonging and trust. There's you help them with their purpose and then you made sure that they had some relevant skills that were transferable into other markets if they wanted to go into.

Correct.

Does that sound right?

Yep.

Okay, so it's really close to self determination theory as well, which is that people are internally driven and motivated when there's a sense of competence, they have a sense of autonomy. And that one isn't quite kind of listed in yours. And the relationships are well intact, both the relationships with self and others. So there's some crossover in there. And then on the purpose side, if we drill into that just a little bit, how do you help people? Or what is the best practice to help people know their purpose in life? Which is a really. It's a big, monumental bit of self discovery that goes in my mind so far. So how do you. How did you help people do that?

People at Accenture, anyway, seem to, like, figure this out, like, what their purpose is. And it was. Was really intimidating to me because I never could say, like, oh, this is my purpose. And it was like, made me embarrassed of myself. Like, I couldn't say what my purpose was. I remember, like, the first four two most powerful women's dinner I went to in New York, and it was at the Mandarin Oriental, and I was so excited to have been invited. And lo and behold, there was a sports speaker. And I am not. I'm not a sports lover. It was Courtney Banghart. She was at the time the winningest coach in the NCAA men's or women's basketball coach. And I was not that interested. So I kind of picked my phone up, looking at the phone, and I heard her say something about her dad. And I, like, put my phone down and started listening. And she said that when she was 12 or 13, her dad said to her, hey, Courtney, you have something special you need to remember to lift as you rise. And I'm like, oh, my God. Lift as you rise. That is my purpose. That is what I do every day. That's why I go to work. That's what I do for my family. That's what I do in my community. That's. That's my purpose. And I, like, literally went home that night and just. I feel it now. Like, I start to cry. Like, I figured out what my purpose.

Was and it was like a lightning bolt moment for you.

Yeah, it was. It was.

Sometimes that happens. And what is happening in your body right now? What am I hearing?

You are hearing, like, I'm back at that. Like, why did. Why did it take Courtney Banghart? I don't know. I think, honestly, the. The one. I don't want to call it a regret, Michael, but the one piece of advice and my friend Arianna Huffington tried and tried and tried to get me to do this more and more and more, but I couldn't figure it out, and I didn't see it until now is to give yourself more space to be. I never had it. I never took it. And I don't know. I think that's why, Michael, that I never could find my purpose. And I think it's why I had to have the lightning bolt moment, because I didn't have the space to figure it out.

Okay, so slightly shifting gears.

Okay.

I mean, Accenture is a massive organization.

700,000 employees, 774000.

How do you think about bringing the best of 774,000 people? How do you think about bringing the best of themselves forward?

I try never to think about the mass, you know, like the number of people, because that really does not matter. And I think knowing yourself and being able to know others is super helpful. And so it's a hyper individualized approach. In a very, very large company, we also listen deeply to our people. We have a very sophisticated listening framework that allows us to listen to individuals, to teams, bringing that aperture out wider and wider. And people are empowered to take action on what they hear, which is how you make things move forward in a very large company. And. We have a few sayings in HR and Accenture. First is, progress is greater than perfection. The greater than sign is part of the Accenture thing. We say progress is greater than perfection because there's a lot of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of engineers that work at Accenture who. Who like perfection. So we just started saying, progress is greater than perfection. So that the expectation is we're going to keep moving. But with that comes the requirement to listen and get the feedback and adjust as we're going. And then the other thing that we put into place that I love, and it seems so obvious, but no, it really wasn't. And I don't think. I don't think it's obvious everywhere. Nothing for our people without our people. So everything we do for our people is designed with our people. Like, we don't, like, sit in a back room somewhere and make some design of something and then roll it out to our people. They're involved in the creation of whatever it is for them. And that's how you make things work. The other thing is how we do change at Accenture. We engage the most influential people. And it's not like the people up here that are the most influential. It's the most influential people who has influence, and we bring them into whatever it is that's going on, tell them all about it and send them back out. And so they are armed and equipped with the truth and they can share the truth and bring back the reaction so that we can really make sure that we know what's going on and again make adjustments if we need to or if we can. We can't always make adjustments, but at least we know the reactions. And that is very valuable to trust in a very large organization.

What was the big, the large hurdle for you? Was it the, was it middle management, what people call the frozen middle? Was it alignment of leadership? Was it cascading ideas and relevant trainings to make those ideas true? All of the above. But is there something that sings above the others that was really important for, or really challenging for you to, to get your arms around?

I think the biggest thing was, you know, when we repositioned ourselves from being a fast follower to being a market leader. So our positioning changed in the market trying to figure out how do we build talent ahead of the market? You know, how do we do that and how do we become a destination for talent before, you know, we're really even doing big business in that area? Look at what we're doing in Generative AI right now. You know, doing this agentic workforce with Nvidia and all these amazing things that we're doing. We had to build Gen AI talent ahead of the market to be able to do that. That is super hard. Intellectually, it's hard. Investment wise, it's hard. Um, you know, it's just, it's just, it's really hard to do. And the good news is, is that, you know, that fourth piece of net better off people want to have cutting edge skills and so they run after that stuff if you make it available to them. But you, you have to be first and you have to be fast and it's hard.

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You have to be great because when.

You think about human resources, you know, if I just started with like, what is a human resource? How do you answer that? I think for me, it's a hard, it's hard to reduce it down to a couple sentences, but it's your expertise, not mine. So when you think about human resources, what does that mean?

There have been like five times where I thought, should I just change the name of this? Because I don't like the word resource. I don't like the word human capital. I don't like, I hate, like chalk, like nails on a chalkboard. When people call their, when leaders call their people assets, the most important assets. People are not assets. They're human beings. So I stopped wasting cycles on what my team and I called ourselves and just focused on what was important, which was our people and their humanity. So I don't really know what human resources is or are. I know that our human beings in Accenture are amazing. They're smart, they're ambitious, they're caring. We care for them. And I don't care what we call ourselves.

Yeah, I appreciate the tone because early on I think human resource meant how do we help the humans be a resource for our productivity? And what I hear you saying is, no, I want to provide resources to be able to support people, to be their best.

Yes.

And, and you know that extracting the best of people and at the, at the altar of productivity feels like that is long gone. And I hear it in your tone. I hear it in your Language that no, I really want to resource people properly so that they can flourish in their life. And was that hard to get through across Accenture? When there is a, I mean there's a high stakes, high pressured condition to make sure that the bottom line is met and the whole thing is productive and profitable. Was that hard to do or was the leadership team well aligned with that?

Well, it did start a true decade ago with our previous CEO Pierre Nanterre, when he was shifting the company from being this large scale systems integrator to being. His vision was to be the leading provider of digital related services. And we needed to dial up our innovation, we needed to become more diverse so we could be more innovative. And I said to him we are not known for innovation, we are not known for diversity and we need to change who we are as a company and an organization to become worthy of attracting that talent. And he said he was a super smart guy. He said to me, Aline, he was French, we are going to be the most truly human company in the digital age. We will help our people achieve their aspirations professionally and personally. He said that just like that. And that paved the way for everything. And you know what, we wrote a talent ambition around that. And you know, I'll just say, because this is something I'm super proud of going back to the very beginning of the discussion about my dad. We said at the time we were going to be the most inclusive and diverse company on the planet. And we were not diverse at all a decade ago. We didn't need to be. Everything was standard. Standard rules, tools and schools. And I think it's five of the last seven years we've been number one on refinitiva. I guess it's FTSE now, refinitive change to FTSE number one on their inclusion and diversity index. It takes those almost like my dad, like an audacious statement and then working the building blocks. And like every decision you make and every action you take has to be taken through the lens because it is in service to what you want to be as an organization. And we wanted to be the most truly human company in the digital age.

So wait, wait, let me pause there. You want to be the most human company in the digital age, truly human. And you also want to be profitable. You also want to create change for your customers. So is this a and statement?

I mean we have the proof to show you cannot be innovative. We have to innovate to be a market leader. And you cannot innovate if you are not diverse.

Okay, so that truly Human is sits above the diversity idea or the diversity idea sits above. Okay, so truly human. And what does that mean? That means that we've got diversity of A, B and C. And we need diversity of. We need both of those principles.

Yeah. Cognitive diversity, thought experience, lived experience, geographic experiences, you know, gender, race, ethnicity.

And those two together creates innovation.

Yes.

So if you have those two, then you create, with the right systems and practice processes, you create a profitable business.

Yeah.

Am I oversimplifying it?

You have to oversimplify it in a way else people don't understand the equation. And if, I mean, if you look at what we do for our clients, reinvent, working to reinvent their companies, it's all about innovation.

What's a working definition for you for innovation? Part one and part two is when I go back to diversity is, I'm finding it hard to find the diversity that I would like to have and at finding mastery. And we're doing okay on some metrics, but not great on others. So I'd love for you to just kind of open up what maybe one of the unlocks for diversity is. And then equally as important is how are you defining innovation?

First you as the leader have to believe you need diversity to do your work for your clients, and then you, you need to be able to have a place where people feel like they belong, where people feel like they can be healthy, where people feel like they can trust you and that you trust them. You know, all the things that we've been talking about this whole time, and that is, that takes work every single day. And it takes a lot of humility. There has to be a lot of humility because things don't always go right. And you have to be able to say, I made a mistake or I thought we were on the right path, but we weren't and we're going to change course. And that happens.

Okay. It's really reinforcing.

And if you need help. Reassuring to hear, I will help you. I will spend time with you.

I love that. Ellen, from one of the gurus in the field, like, yes, I am definitely going to take you up on that. So thank you.

We have hundreds of thousands of people, Michael, that work for us in India. And many, most of them are technologists. And we just rang the bell. 50% women in India. And when I started going to India in 2003, everyone was saying, there are no women in technology in India. And my colleague Bhaskar Ghosh, who was the head of technology, said, nonsense, there are women only engineering schools. And he created these relationships and our leaders went and taught at those schools and now look at that, 20 years later were 50% women.

Okay, innovation, okay.

I mean I think innovation is new ideas that can be executed to move organizations or products or services to a place that they weren't before that can help them win in the marketplace.

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This is my true belief. I don't think you can engage people at the enterprise level. I only think engagement happens where you show up to work every day. Have you ever heard, like, HR people talking about moments that matter?

Yes.

Okay. It drives me nuts. Drives me nuts. Because moments that matter may happen, like, once or twice in someone's career, like when they're hired and when they leave, like, it may, they might never get promoted. They might never have a baby, they might never, you know, they might not have another moment that mattered. So when we looked at this, we said, okay, there are signature moments like those things like you get hired, you have a promotion, whatever those are. But it's the. So those are signature, signature experiences. But it's the everyday experiences that are the difference makers. So I tried a little experiment. I. My office is on the 67th floor of our building, and every morning I'd get on the elevator, I go to the office every single day, get on the elevator, and no one would be talking. So I thought, I'm going to start talking to people at the elevator. It was like game changing. People were so happy, like, what did you do last night? And people just started to come alive. And so I know that's like a weird example, but I just think engagement doesn't happen here. Engagement happens in the moment when you're working. And so what I would advise other companies or organizations to do is to get rid of the Enterprise Wide Engagement Survey and figure out how to give your frontline leaders or managers the tools to measure engagement and act on engagement every single day where they work. And I think you would see a big difference.

What you're pointing to for me is the relationships.

Yeah.

And I love the differentiation you have between big moments, signature moments, and this moment. And I make a case, and it's not a very popular case in elite sport, and I try to cross that into enterprise companies, is that there's no such thing as a big moment. And in the sporting world, it's almost blasphemy. When I say there's no such thing as a big game, I go, what are you talking about? This is a defining game. This is the Super Bowl. This is the finals in whatever, or this is a world championship. I say, if we're going to see that, if we're going to frame that, this game is the biggest game of your life. Now, the day that you arrive, you're unprepared because you haven't practiced being in any situation that's even going to be remotely as big as this one, because you've made it to be so big. And so I used this reverse chaining idea, which is if there's no such thing as a big game and every game is. Has equal weight, this is an idea that I hold. Not everyone gets down with it. So, you know, and every practice, there's no such thing as a break practice. This is the most important practice. There's no such thing as a big moment. It's this moment. And so the job is to be Fully tuned to this moment. And when you do that, you end up stringing together being great in the present moment. Whether it's a practice, whether it's game day, whether it's a game that has a lot of people watching and a lot of media, or it's just another game. If you're practiced at being in this moment, well, then it all kind of takes care of itself. And I know that not everyone does agree, but that idea that every moment is equally important because it's the only one you get helps me be at home with this moment because I can be here now. I can do this moment, and I don't have to worry about if I can do a later moment. I can just keep practicing doing this moment.

I love, love, love that I've worked.

Across four Olympic Games and lots of world championships. And I do ask athletes early on, I say, how do you want to frame it? This is my philosophy. But how do you want to frame it? Do you want to see the Olympics as the biggest game of your life, or do you want to see it as another game? And let's talk about the pros and cons of it and that we train accordingly, if you will. And not everyone wants to see it as just another game because they feel like it'll take the specialness away from it. But I want to go back to your big statement about being the most truly human company in the digital age. And how would you integrate psychology, good old basic mindset skills, mental skills, psychological principles? How would you take that and infuse that into the rhythm of your business?

I do believe that psychology, whether basic or not, plays a very significant role in, I would say individual, but more importantly, team behavior, resiliency. Just look at these last five years. Forget about a decade, this last five years, dare I say, the country we're sitting in right now. What's going to happen over the next week? Resiliency at an individual level, at a team level, at an organizational level, at a country level is important. I think, if I'm not mistaken, psychology plays a big role in resiliency. Is that right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, 100%. You're. Yes.

Building a resilient organization and building resilient teams is super important. I think in any organization would know that. Are they called limiting mindsets where people like. Yeah, that is also so. I mean, you can imagine in an organization like ours, I talked about mine, you have to understand and help people understand what that is, what they're. Get them to understand that they might have them. We're not going to help them explore their own, but they need to understand that maybe they should explore their own and give them pathways to do that so that they can contribute fully.

You are right on the money with like one of the, the great unlocks is to know where they get in for me, to know where I get in my own way. And if I can't see it easily with, you know, limiting mindsets and invisible mindsets, they're just so tricky. And we end up looking outside of ourselves, of why we feel a certain way or why something's not getting done in the right way when oftentimes we hold more power than we even recognize or feel. And you know, we are capable of high agency, high power. And oftentimes like the thing that gets in the way is not other people. It's the way that we navigate with our own thoughts and the way that we limit what we think we're capable of and limit the amount of, let's call it internal power that we feel to make the changes that we'd like to see in the world. And sometimes the world is in this team or in the, you know, the company culture or the, the larger world outside of the company even. Okay, final, final, like little two parter question here is you're a global leader and there's a lot of jobs that you're going to help prepare people for for the future that do not exist yet. And I'm squarely pointing to AI in this new generation of roles and skills that we don't even really know where it's going. We've got some sense, but it's unfolding underneath of ourselves right now. So one question is, how do you prepare people for jobs that don't exist? And then part two of that is what are you considering to be the most essential or the most foundational or the most important mindsets for people to thrive in this new world?

I think they go together in a way. So first, this concept of truly committing yourself to be a continuous learner and really seeking out all the opportunities to learn. And I don't mean just like going online and taking training courses, but like practicing things, doing, learning, doing, learning, doing and making a commitment to yourself that you're going to do that. But because it's AI or because it's generative AI also make the commitment to yourself that you're going to do it responsibly, which means learning the principles of using technology responsibly. This is to me, this whole next generation of leadership and responsibility that all people, all people, as you're learning new things, you need to couple that with the responsibility of truly understanding how to use it responsibly. Because I'm an optimist and I think there are going to be unlimited new jobs. I think the people who are willing to learn and do so really learn, and people who are willing to learn how to use the technologies responsibly are going to be winners. But they have to come together.

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I don't think it's a binary question. I think we need to figure out. I think everyone needs to feel responsible for the responsible use of AI. And there are frameworks and principles and guardrails already in place that are not regulatory. So I think that exists today. People just need to educate themselves and organizations need to practice it. I've not spent a lot of time thinking about it, but it did just worry me, brought it up about what happens if people don't have human connection. I don't know what would happen in evolution if there is limited human connection. That really is scary to me. So I hope that there's a resurgence of the community that people find human connection through things other than work.

Yeah, there's a fatigue already taking place, which is, can we meet in person? You know, there's a fatigue. There's a. There's a comfort to be able to be able to, like a convenience and a comfort to do something digitally, which is cool, but there is. There's a fatigue of it. And I hope that that trend is accelerated in a way where I'm. And you hear some leaders say, listen, let's get back in the office. Let's get back in the office. And there's a primal craving. Of course, our brains are hundreds of thousands of years old, that we need to be around each other. There's something primal about that urge and that request. And there's something nice about maybe not coming in on Fridays, doing some digital work on Fridays. I hope that there's a fatigue that takes place of the hybrid digital thing that starts to swing in the other direction. I don't know if that's just something that some are feeling, if there's enough of a critical mass.

The thing that we learned is bringing people into the office and changing nothing else does not create human connection. People come in, they put their headset on, they get on teams, and there's no human connection. What we did was we created these what we call stackable experiences so that when you come in, there's. On any given day, there's training, there's an open door session with an executive, there's a social thing, there's a community service thing. So when you come in, there's something to create human connection. Our offices are full almost every day of the week, and there's no mandate to come to the office.

Yeah, I love the insight that just being together doesn't create connection. I love that. Okay, so keep going on. Mindset. You talked about, like a continuous learner, a beginner's mindset, if you will, A curious mind. What are some of the other mindsets that you think are really important?

Well, we have this thing in Accenture called Building Bridges, which is when, you know, people need to come together around something that happens where there may be disagreement in or differing point of views around a topic. The first one we did, for example, was when Philandro Castile was murdered. Julie was the North America CEO, and she and I did this thing called Building Bridges. We made it up because we had people that were very stressed about coming to work, and nobody was. We had. Actually, one of my mentees, Darnell, said, I cannot come to work. I am worried. I'm going to get shot. I'm worried my son's going to get shot. And nobody is talking about this at work. And so that was really stressful for me because he's such a great employee and. And he still is such a great employee that we convene this conversation. So that's what building bridges is. You need to come to a building bridge session with a mindset to listen and to contribute. And that's not that easy, but it's a mindset.

A mindset to listen and to contribute? Yes.

Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, it does. I'm thinking like the contribute part, a mindset to contribute. Is that about the relationship or is that about contributing to solutions? Is it about contributing to the relationship between the two people?

It can be solutions also. I mean, it can be whatever we make, whatever the people make it. And that's a rule. Like we have very few rules around the building bridges we have that listen and contribute. Also, if it's a topic where you are convening and building bridge, where you're not an expert, you need to ask for us to bring in an outside expert. So we do that. Yeah. Because it has to be productive.

What an apt title even for this conversation. Ellen, I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for the leadership that you provided, the thoughtfulness and the wisdom and the sense of peace in this conversation that I felt and the clarity of your ideas. To be able to discern the most essential pieces of a very complicated set of questions about things that are completely invisible. Not once did we talk about the measurement of the invisible. We talked a little bit about assessments, but to use those, to be able to have better insights, to be able to have better relationships, to be able to have a deeper sense of well being and so we can be great for each other. I've just really appreciated the way you've characterized and you've simplified ideas that are actually quite complicated to wrestle with. So it's not lost on me that you were leading 774,000 people doing that wild challenge at full scale and pointing to the intimacy between two people or small group of people in the conversations that happen between them for real connection. I just want to say thank you. I'm inspired by you in this way. And again, this has been a great.

Conversation for me and for me. Thank you very much for inviting me. I appreciate that.

Okay. I know that we have Dr. Carolina Reese Oliveira coming up. This is really good.

I'm really excited for this one because she's talking all things anti aging. I needed this one.

I mean, we're all aging. We're all definitely aging. You might not have heard of her work, but she's got an amazing story to tell. And she went from working as a stem cell researcher in Brazil to a bottle biotech founder and CEO in Silicon Valley. And she's got this really clear, bold belief that we can slow and even reverse the biological aging of our skin. So I want to encourage you to tune in as we talk about the science of aging, purpose, self talk, and the courage that it takes to leap into the unknown, to really go for it, to build something meaningful from the ground up. And we hope to see you soon. All right, thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Hunch over to findingmastery.com newsletter to sign up. This show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously and the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals@findingmastery.com sponsors and remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional, so seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode. Be well, think well, keep exploring. Come on.