236: We're All In This Together—From Blame to Belonging with Mike Robbins

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am so grateful, delighted and overjoyed to have my longtime friendor Mike Robbins here on the show. This is a terrible mistake on my part that it's his first time on the Pivot podcast because Mike, I don't know if you know this. This summer celebrates our ten year friendiversary.

Oh my goodness, is that so? Wow, that's right.

Decade of knowing each other.

Gosh, a lot, A lot has happened in the last decade.

Yes, and it feels like a decade has passed in the last six months of 2020. Let me give listeners a brief bio for you. Listeners, just listen to the title of Mike's five, yes, five books. Bring your whole self to work. Nothing changes until you do. Focus on the good stuff. Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. And his fifth book, the new one just out. We're all in this Together. He also hosts a podcast of the same name, We're all in this Together. Mike is a sought after keynote speaker and facilitator and really, truly such a heart based business owner himself who does work with mega clients like Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft and so on. He was also on the Stanford baseball team growing up. Grew up in the Bay Area. He's been incredibly, incredibly generous with me with no reason to be, in a sense. So Mike, thank you for being you. Welcome to the show.

Oh you're so welcome. It's an honor to be here. I'm grateful to know you and amazing that we've known each other for a decade now.

I know we were talking before we hit record. First of all, your collective combined book titles read like such a great life prescription.

Just the titles alone. I have been watching and listening to you. It's one of those friendships where I listen to your podcast, and so I feel like you're here with me every day, every week when I listen, but especially now. You've been such an advocate for Black Lives Matter and inclusion and belonging on your podcast and in your work and your workshops for so long.

I want to turn it over to you in terms of where to start. The name of your book is We're all in this Together, and it was supposed to come out in May. You and the publisher actually pushed it up to April, seeing everything that was happening with the pandemic and now with Black Lives Matter. So how are you doing right now during this time, and what's been most important to you?

Gosh, I mean, I'm doing. Look, I'm doing fine, personally. My wife Michelle and I and our girls, Samantha and rosedy, who are 14 and 11, we're incredibly blessed. And, you know, we've been sheltering in place here in our house in Marin county in the Bay Area for the last couple of months. And, you know, like most everybody, I've been on an emotional rollercoaster over the last few months with the pandemic and the last few weeks with everything that's going on in our country. It's been.

It's hard to even describe. Like I keep saying to people, I think at some point when we're on the other side of all of this, we're going to look back and go, oh, my God, did that really all happen all at the same time? Like, what the. You know, and so it's kind of hard to know that for me personally, just the forest, for the trees, if you will, with everything that's happening in so many layers of things. But the last couple weeks in particular, with respect to race and racism and Black Lives Matter in our culture, to me, has felt like this really feels like a moment of reckoning, the likes of which I can't remember in my lifetime. The only thing for me, Jenny, that even remotely feels somewhat similar emotionally is I was a senior in high school in 1992. I grew up in Oakland, California, and the four officers who were on trial for beating Rodney King were acquitted in early May of that year. And there were protests that turned into riots, primarily in Los Angeles, but in other places around the state and around the country. And I remember that experience. I mean, I was 18 years old, but just going to the high school that I went to, that was incredibly diverse.

Being a white person who was in the minority in my social group and in my High school. And it was such an interesting. I remember having. And here I was. I was senior class president. I was on the baseball team and the basketball team. I was, like, very well liked and well respected in my school and had a ton of friends across all racial lines, but particularly had a lot of African American friends. And I remember the level of anger that I had never quite experienced and felt, and this sense of almost, like, from some of my really good friends, like, you don't get it, man. You don't know what's going on. And I was upset, and I was hurt, and I was confused, and I felt. And I remember my friend Sean said something to me that had a huge impact on my life, and I'm trying to understand it. And he said to me, mike, what did your mom teach you about the police? And I said, what do you mean? He said, what'd you learn? You know? He knew I was raised by my mom at home. What'd she teach you? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, I could barely remember. Like, listen to the police. Like, don't get in trouble, something I don't. And he's like, yeah, that's not what I learned about the police. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And he said, look, every single black person, particularly as a boy, especially if you grew up in a place like Oakland, you get to talk and you get it early about the police. And then he broke down sort of what his mom and dad taught him about the cops and how to interact or not interact or how to stay safe or how to trust or not all of the. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, we talked about and dealt with issues of race in my high school and growing up in Oakland a lot, but, like, I never really got until that moment that my friend Sean, who I knew and loved and was really close with and played ball with and was like, I knew him and his family. His experience was so different than my experience. And we were peers, and we lived in the same place and ran in the same circle. And so, anyway, this last couple weeks has been feeling like that to me in a different kind of way of like, wow, my experience walking around the world as a white man is so different than a lot of other people's experiences. And so I just feel like it's incumbent upon all of us, even if it's uncomfortable, to be willing to really look at that and talk about that and learn more about that and try to figure out what can we do to make things better and it's, it's overwhelming, but it's super important.

Yeah, you've, you've been so great about that on your podcast of being vulnerable and open and willing to feel uncomfortable and be messy. And we know that, like we were even saying, our black friends are saying, yeah, get uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to live in America. Okay, white people, you're uncomfortable right now.

Wow.

Long overdue. You know, looking at their watch. So one thing you said to me, even a year ago, we recorded an episode for your podcast on how to know when it's time to pivot. And you said to me, it's so important that white people talk to other white people about dismantling racism and building anti racism skills. For someone who's new to that piece of this conversation of why and even why you're here on the pivot podcast and the two of us are talking about race.

Why.

What is important about that?

Well, look, I mean, I think one of the challenges is for, look, a lot of us as white people, understandably, and this was, and in a lot of cases even growing up the way that I grew up and some of the things that I learned, I mean, I went off to college, went to Stanford to play baseball, didn't know what I was going to study, had no particular, like, oh, I'm going to go major in political science or major in biology or major in. I had no idea. And I literally just took classes that were interesting to me. And by the end of my sophomore year, sorry, I was going to my junior year and they said, you have to pick a major. And I was like, oh God, what do I pick? And they said, well, you're like 2/3 of the way done with American studies. I'm like, what's that? And they said, well, it's like history and poli science, ethnic studies. And they said, and you've actually already fulfilled the requirements for getting a degree in American studies with a specialization in race and ethnicity. And this was just, Jenny, for me, choosing classes that I wanted to take the first two years I was in college because those were the things I was interested in. But learning all of that growing up, where I grew up, all of this to say that most of us as white people, especially those of us good intentioned white people, progressive, woke, whatever you want to call it, like, I'm not racist, like I'm, I'm good, like I, you know, I don't. But there's this overt, you know, we think of racism as like, oh, it's people that use the n Word. It's people that are overtly nasty and discriminatory and people who like march in neo Nazi route and just say horrible things on. I mean, yes, those are all racist, but that's like an extreme, overt notion of racism. There's so many aspects of racism that are so much more insidious and kind of under the surface that we don't even see, that we don't even notice.

It's like the air that we breathe, it's the, you know, and so what I think happens in our culture and one of the things that Robin Diangelo talks about in her great book, White Fragility, and she's a professor at the University of Washington who's been studying race relations and whiteness in particular for a couple of decades, that she said this thing, and I quoted this in my book, we're all in this Together, that the accusation of racism to a lot of white people is seen as actually more offensive than actual racism itself. Meaning to be called a racist. I'm not racist. I'm not racist. How dare you? How dare you. Like we've been having this debate about, like there's a debate that goes on even politically, like, well, is the president racist? And you know, it's like, how are we even having this debate? I believe at some level we're all racist. And part of our job is to learn ways to be anti racist, to dismantle the racism within us and then look at how it exists in the culture around us and see what we can do to address that. And a big part of that, Jenny, and this is where it's uncomfortable and kind of weird. Even here, you and I are two white people talking about this. It's like for white people to talk to other white people about how this impacts us and how can we potentially use our privilege to impact the system that oppresses other people?

Part of that too is not always asking our people of color, communities of color, to do that work for us. How exhausting must that be to in every room, every space, every community you're in, have to raise your hand and say, hey everybody, can you just stop for a minute and look at the water you're swimming in. That's exhausting. And it has a term, emotional labor. So I think that's part of the request too, is that we educate each other because it's too easy to ignore it and kind of go about your day to day life if it doesn't directly impact you. If your mom never had to have a conversation with you about the police and how to act if you get pulled over.

Exactly. Well, and that's. Look, and at some level, I mean, this is what sort of the fundamental aspects of privilege. Like, when I first started hearing people talk about privilege, white privilege, like, at first I had a little bit of a reaction, I'll be honest. Like, privilege, like, I think of privilege as like trustaforians. Right. Well, it, like, so I went to Stanford, right? The kid that sat next to me at my American Studies graduation at Stanford is, was literally a Rockefeller. Like, he's from the Rockefeller family.

That's a book anecdote right there.

I know. And I'm like, you know, and I'm. And I knew this guy Charles Rockefeller was actually a nice guy. His dad was a senator, but he's from the Rockefeller family. So when I think of white privilege or just privilege in general, I think of like that, oh, I'm not a Rockefeller, I'm not a Vanderbilt. I didn't, you know, I'm not from some legacy family. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I mean, I'm like, you know, poor kid from Oakland, raised by a single mom, like, the furthest from privilege on the surface, but then starting to understand more deeply, oh, white privilege isn't about being rich and having access necessarily. It's about, oh, my life isn't dictated by my race in the sense in a negative way, like me being white isn't somehow detrimental. Like, there's, there's no white person, white American, at least that I know, or that can honestly say, you know what, my life would be way easier if I were black. Or even if we talk about it from a gender standpoint, I don't know a single man that can honestly say, oh, my life would be way easier if I were female. And so again, it's like realizing, oh, this thing again. And part of what privilege is about is that you and I don't have to really address these things unless they're up in our face. And for a lot of white people, again, even think about along gender lines, as a man, I don't walk around in life all that cognizant of my gender. I'm aware of it, obviously. And I'm married to an amazing woman, have two daughters. So actually my gender, I grew up in a house with my mom and my sister, so it was more apparent to me. But in general, the world is sort of oriented around me as a man. And for us as white people, that's just the way the culture that we live in is designed. And I was talking to Eric Severson. I've had him on my podcast a couple times. He's now the chief people officer at Neiman Marcus. I met him when he was the co head of HR for Gap Inc. When I interviewed him, he's had a couple of jobs. He worked, he ran HR for DaVita. Really interesting guy, super smart. I've learned so much from him over the years. And he said, you know, and he's someone, he's, he's white, but he's gay. But he's been an advocate for diversity inclusion in every organization that he's worked for and done a lot of incredible work over the years. And he said one of the ways to think about privilege or sort of white privilege is to think about it, he said in a more benign kind of way. He said, think of the world as handedness, meaning the world is basically oriented for right handed people. And I think it's about 10, maybe 15% tops of the population is left handed. And if you're right handed, you don't think about the world being oriented to right handed people. It just is what it is. You just pick up the scissors and use the scissors back and school. When we had those funky desks, you just would write and it kind of worked for you. If you're left handed, by the way, you do notice that the world is designed for right handed people because you have to do things the other way or opposite or turn or be mindful of like, okay, I'm sitting here, I got to make sure I don't bump my elbow into someone when I'm eating or whatever the heck it is. And it's sort of relatively benign and nondescript and it's not that big of a deal. But if you're left handed, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're right handed, you're like, what? Oh, I didn't even know that was a thing. Do you know what I mean? And so that's kind of a long way around to answer your question of that's why it's so important for us as white people to pay more attention, to have conversations with each other, to do some of that emotional labor, work with one another. Although I will say, and what's tricky, and you and I were talking about a little bit about this before we hit record. It is a challenging thing that I'm finding at this moment that on the one hand I've heard from a lot of my friends and seen this online, especially in the Last few years from African Americans, people of color. Like, don't come to me with every question you have about race. Don't come to me. Right? And I totally get that. And at the same time, there's also the, like, you know, but don't think you know what you're talking about, or don't go and white splain it to me. Or it's like, well, okay, what do I do? Don't be silent, but don't say the wrong thing. Do the work, but make sure you're doing the right work. Or read the book. But, you know, and so there's a lot of, like, how do we actually get into dialogue and conversation? I've had some really interesting conversations with some of my African American friends over the last couple weeks. I've been mindful of not calling them to say, tell me what to do, but at the same time wanting to check in with, a, how are they doing first and foremost, and B, if they're open and willing to have a dialogue with me. Not that they have to do my work for me, but I do need some reality checks, and I do need some feedback from people that I trust, who know me, who can call me out and say things that I'll really listen to. And so I think it's about, can we build those kind of partnerships and relationships in our lives so that we can have authentic conversations about this and not just be yelling at each other on Facebook or Twitter or whatever?

Even on that front, one friend posted like, you know, if you haven't reached out to me, you know who you are, and that's very hurtful. And then within a couple hours, I saw an editorial. Whatever you do, don't text your black friends and ask how they're doing. Like, so here was two totally different perspectives. Sometimes the result can feel paralyzing. And I know this pales in comparison to an experience of being black in America. But it seems to me that one problem on all sides is psychological safety. And you talk about this as the first pillar in your book, even before the chapter on focusing on inclusion and belonging. And it seems like regardless of kind of quote, knowing the right thing to do, I mean, right now, I know you and I both are doing a lot of listening, as much listening as we can, but. But it seems like there's so little psychological safety all around. Like, what I'm hearing from my black friends in communities I've been a part of is, you haven't heard us, you haven't been listening, or you're not giving us the space and care that. That we've been asking for for years, not just because of the events recently, and then among my white friends and community I'm hearing. And not that I have a specific community for either one, but. But, like, what I'm hearing and seeing is I don't know what to say. And then that's hurtful because if you don't know what to say, start somewhere, be imperfect, but. But that even individually, social media is so scary now. You know, cancel culture. And that gets a primal urge to fit into the group. I mean, this goes back to our tribal days of this primal. It's almost survival to not get canceled. And yet now it's so tense from the pandemic, from the protests, from everything. And I think that that lack of psychological safety, it can be utterly paralyzing. And I can't speak for anybody other than myself, but how do we work on that? How do you work on that with the organizations and people that you coach?

Well, look, it's. I mean, I think there's a lot of layers to it because, look, I mean, psychological safety essentially is group trust, right? It means the group, Whatever group that we're a part of is safe enough for me to do what? Speak up, disagree, dissent, take a risk, say something stupid, try and fail, knowing that I can do all of those things. Not that there's no feedback, not that there's no consequence, but that I'm not going to get canceled, I'm not going to get kicked out of the group. I'm not going to get shamed and ridiculed and sort of shouted down. The truth is that social media, by its nature, is not psychologically safe. It's just not. I mean, unless you have a closed group of, you know, hey, we're all starting this group within this group that we've all. You know what I mean? Like, it's not so. Like my Facebook pages, even. I have a professional one, and then I have a personal one, and the personal one has a bunch of friends, and I've accepted all those friend requests and everything, but, like, the truth is, you know, it's not everybody there. I don't feel 100% psychologically safe that I can say and do anything that I want. And I'm not 100% sure that that's really the nature of social media. And that's part of the challenge now with our families, with our teams, with the people that. The real people that we interact with, we can absolutely create that sense of psychological safety. And it takes work. I Mean, you can do it to some degree on social media if you're really clear about your boundaries and what you're speaking about and all of that. But in general, I think it's important for us to realize there's kind of our online world and our offline world, and they very much interact with each other, especially right now, while we're all at home. And that's part of what's adding to so much of what's going on. But I do think that ultimately how we build more psychological safety within our teams and our groups is by being authentic and ultimately being vulnerable with each other and sometimes messing up and sometimes saying the wrong thing and sometimes putting our foot in our mouth, not intentionally trying to hurt people. But that's ultimately what makes it safer. If I can say something within a group and say, I don't agree with that, or I don't understand that, or I don't see it that way, or can I try this, or can I offer this? And the group, even if there's pushback and people don't necessarily get on board with the idea, but we know that we're safe enough to do that, then we're more likely to do it again, then we're more likely to have deeper conversations. Because the truth is, with so many of these things, it's not terrible pun, it's not black and white, it's not either or, it's not right. And that's the way part of what happens with social media becomes this binary thing. Did you use the hashtag blacklivesmatter or not? You're either in or you're out. And that does really trigger this place in us. Look, it's on Maslow's hierarchy, right? It starts at physiological, it then goes to safety. The third need on Maslow's hierarchy of five needs is belonging. Like we have a human need to belong. And so therefore, what happens is if I'm afraid I'm going to do something or say something that's going to have me not belong to my family, to my work group, to my community, whatever that community is, I'm not going to say it out of sheer self preservation because I might want to belong more than I really want to speak up. And that puts us in a really difficult conundrum at a lot of times in life. And this is one of those moments where a lot of people are really struggling with the need to belong and also the need to really speak up and speak out.

That does seem like the call of this time is you can no longer stay silent. Speak up. And you and I were saying before we hit record, it's even this reckoning for people of what side of history do you want to be on that? Even if you've never tried to ruffle feathers in the past, that that is gone right now.

Our country is in such pain in such a raw state, and there's such a reckoning moment. And this call to say, be clear. We need you to be clear where you stand.

Yeah, well. And look, I mean, it's in some ways, if you like, thinking about your work and thinking about pivoting, right? This is a moment, this whole pandemic. I've been thinking about you a lot. And word, we all got pivoted the.

Last few months, the globe for every single person.

And in some ways, we got pivoted in the sense of, like, oh, my gosh, I can't go to work, I can't go out. I can't do the things I normally do. So I have to pivot how I work. Some people have lost their jobs, which is really, really hard and scary. Many of us, me and you as business owners, it's like, oh, my goodness, like, the majority of what I do in my work, Jenny, you know this, right? I go out like you do. I go out and speak to groups of people at gatherings and events. None of those are happening. Like, oh, gosh, I'm going to have to pivot and do my business, do my work and reach people in a different way, virtually digitally, you know, people inside of organizations having to pivot and, oh, I have to adjust to this. Oh, now I have to. Like, I have kids and they're at home, and I have to. I mean, all of these pivots of how we operate, but this moment, with respect to what's happening in the country, pivoting around issues of race, do I speak up? Do I not speak up? How do I speak up? Do I engage? Do I listen to it? Like, whoa. Like that, to me, actually is. And it's tricky because it's not so much a doingness, although there's some doing, you know, what do I say and how. But there's also kind of a way of being about this, if you will, that one of the things about privilege, right, is again, what I was saying earlier, it's like, you and I, as white folks, don't have to engage about race unless we choose to or unless it's right up in our face. And this moment is now forcing a lot of us again. Oh, the world is calling for My friends, my community, people around me are calling for me to say something, do something, because again, silent violence. And it's like, whoa, that's uncomfortable. And again, what I remember saying to a lot of men, particularly white men, back a few years ago when the whole me too thing really exploded on us in the fall of 2017, I was talking to all these men who were like, oh, man, now I'm like, I'm uncomfortable, man. I don't want to say anything and I can't make a joke. And what is. You know, And I was like, hold on second. Here's what's happening. You're feeling uncomfortable for being a man. You probably have hardly ever felt uncomfortable about being a man for most of your life. Now we're getting a tiny, tiny inkling into what most women probably experience all the time just based on their born female versus born male, suck it up, get over. I mean, I was trying to be compassionate about it, but knock it off. This is a moment to really be humbled and to take a step back and listen to every single woman, you know, if they're willing to share it either online or personally. Every woman has a me too story. Most of them have multiple, and some of them, they're way more gnarly and intense than most of us. Even those of us who thought we were paying attention are. And it's like the same thing is happening right now where it's like, oh, wow, I'm uncomfortable in my own skin. I'm uncomfortable. People might be judging me or looking at me or whatever. And it's like, well, welcome to the world of being. Being non white all the time. Do you know what I mean? And I do think there's a way in which. When I think about this from my work and this notion of. It's so interesting too, Jenny writing a book called we're all in this Together that comes out right in the middle of this pandemic that now in the middle of what's happening with us socially and culturally is. I didn't write the book knowing that any of this was going to happen, obviously, but I felt really compelled to write this book and I wanted it to come out in 2020 because I had a feeling this year I was thinking more along the lines of politics and leading up to the election was gonna get pretty gnarly, which it has, and it probably will as we get closer to November, that we here in America and in our world have gotten to this, like, such intense us against them energy which has existed for a long time. This is not about Donald Trump. This is not about even the moment that we're in. It's been there for a long time. It just seems to be exacerbated. And there's this sense that I've had for most of my life, without being overly Pollyanna or naive about it, that there's a paradox at play, always. That, yes, we're different, yes, we all can do more work, especially some of us, to understand and pay attention and have more empathy for the difference. And simultaneously, within all of our difference, there's so much that binds us together. There's so much that connects us as human beings, and we're intricately dependent upon each other. Especially in a place like America, where.

This does impact all of us. Clearly, it impacts some of us more than others. But, like, I think of it in the context of a team, and a lot of my work is with teams. It's like, you can't have a team where everyone's out for themselves or people don't care about each other, or I'm trying to beat you and think that the team's going to be successful over time. It's just not going to work that way. And we've all been part of teams where it's like, oh, there's a bunch of really smart, talented people, but, like, people don't get along and people don't care about each other and people don't support each other, and the team sucks. It's not because the players aren't any good. It's because the team hasn't figured out how to work that out. And, like, I became fascinated by this as an athlete and realized, like, oh, the team dynamic is as important, if not more important, than the talent of the people on the team. And that's a different set of skills and a different sensibility and a different sense of awareness. How do I think about what's good for us collectively instead of simply just what's good for me?

I love what you said many points ago, but you were saying, like, be willing to be messy. And in your most recent podcast episode, you said, be careful of the traps of blame and numbness. And I would also add shame whether. Cause I think you mentioned this in the episode, shame of shaming others, but also shame in oneself. And I know there are terms like white guilt and. And coddling, but I wonder what it's like because you do work with so many white men because they're leading most of the ones leading Fortune 500 companies and without overly coddling or projecting. But it Must be a tough time to be a white man in a sense. Like, and, and I know so many would say, yeah, good, about time. But I also know that shame is never that productive like that if, if they don't have the tools. I think you said it. It's like we, this moment in time is asking us all now to pivot around issues of race and identity and wake up, wake the f up and listen. And yet so few of us truly have the skills. And so we're all going to be building not just anti racism skills, but psychological safety skills, team dynamics, all of this. And I know even in myself, like when, if shame or self flagellation gets overwhelming, my tendency is to numb out. And yeah, and it's like the reason I say that about white men is just they're getting it on all sides in a sense. And I'm again, I'm not trying to coddle anybody, but if we just say, yeah, you're the problem, you're the enemy. I see some of my white male friends who are successful in business and where it's, it's tough. Like in a way I get, maybe the request is like, yeah, take a backseat, it's about time. But I also know that taking away people's voices can't really be the answer for the collective healing and the world in this together. So I'm just rambling again, as I do on these topics.

Well, you and I both, I mean, but look, it is tricky and I think on the one hand, even, you know, as a straight white man, like, I'm not needing or expecting anybody to feel sorry for me or, or the rest of us, if you will, because it's not about pity, but it is about awareness. Right to what your point is. Oh, this is an interesting moment for so many of us. And the difference. I love Brene Brown's distinction between shame and guilt. That guilt is I did something bad. Shame is I am bad. And that seems subtle, but it's profound when you think about it. It's like, oh, can I feel a sense of guilt for something that I've done or even collectively that we've done, like that wasn't what I. Or we wanted or that had a negative impact? And can I take whatever level of ownership I need to take to atone for and amend for and apologize for that? I mean, even just think about it. I think about this like in my marriage. My wife Michelle and I are about to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary tomorrow and we've been together for almost 20 years. The number of times that I've screwed up and done things that I've regretted and said the wrong thing and hurt Michelle's feel like I can't even begin to count all of those. Right. I mean, that's part of being in a relationship. Right? I love her. She's amazing. And it's messy, and it's hard, and we've gone through a lot of stuff.

I love on your podcast. Just real quick, you were like, I've been married 15 years, but the last three months, I've been an asshole. Yeah, you're like, basically like, I just been moody. I forgot how you. You, exactly.

Oh, my God.

You're like, I've been moody. I've been stressed. I've been up and down. And it doesn't mean I love my wife or my girls any less. I'm still committed to this marriage. I still love them all deeply. But, like, I've had to apologize.

Oh, my God, It's. Yeah. I mean, look, it's been super stressful. You know, our girls are 14 and 11. Like, being. Doing everything I can to be a good husband and a good father is, like, the most important thing in my life, and I screw it up all the time. And when I get really stressed, as I've been the last few months, with needing to pivot so much in the business and being really scared about things and then impacted by all the suffering in the world with respect to the coronavirus, and now in the last few weeks, with respect to everything going on in the community, particularly the African American community. I mean, not an excuse, but it's taken a toll on me. Like, I think it's taken a toll on a lot of people. And one of the ways that'll manifest itself is, again, doing or saying things with the three people that are the most important people in my life, who I love and am more committed to than anybody, I can sometimes be an asshole. Not that I'm intending to. I don't wake up in the morning and say, hey, let me be a real jerk to my wife and really, you know, snippy with my girls. No. But it happens. So therefore, if I go to a place of shame about that, oh, I'm bad. Oh, my God, I'm terrible. And this is why I know I never should have gotten married. And I was scared, and my parents split up, and all of I go down the whole rabbit hole of, like, what's wrong with me and how screwed up I am, which I can do, and we all do as humans, but if I can acknowledge oh my gosh. I did that thing like last night, I had an interaction with Samantha, our 14 year old, that I was not proud of. And a few minutes later, after she stormed out of the room and I walked away and I was a little annoyed and she, I walked, honey, I love you. I'm really sorry because I said something that I wish I wouldn't have said again. That's guilt. Shame is where we sort of lock ourselves and then when we get into a shame spiral, oh, I'm bad, I'm terrible, I'm wrong. Then we go into numbing out, or we go into blaming why we're not or what's wrong. All kinds of guilt can be really healthy. And so again, when you think about things that have happened, look, in some ways, as white folks, I don't know that it's you, your responsibility, my responsibility as white people to take ownership of 400 years of oppression of black people in America. However, I think it's important to be aware of that and understand the history of that and understand the impact of.

That and how we've benefited. I think that's part of it too, is not just saying, look how broken the policing system is. It's actually saying, oh, you went to Stanford, my mom works at Stanford. Were the wheels greased for us along the way in ways we didn't realize?

Yes, totally. And the thing is that it's like I think about my life and my journey, my own personal story. And again, a lot of challenge, a lot of struggle, a lot of difficulty along the way. And realizing that now, I mean, I look at my life now and can see all of the white privilege. When I was younger, I didn't see it in the same way because I didn't even understand what that meant. And there was more.

I was younger too. I was like horrendous. I, I, I feel like you have a teenage daughter. I was a horrible person when I was a teenage daughter. I look back as, like, that was the worst. I didn't have hard skills. I have now around just being a good, gent, kind person. Sorry, go ahead. Right.

Well, no, and some of it is, again, it's like understanding and having empathy for ourselves as human beings. I do believe at some level not to give everyone a pass, but most often in life we're doing the best we can with what we have. Right. So you, as a teenager, you were doing the best you could with what you have now. Does that mean probably your parents and other people got annoyed with you, but you're learning life and that is, again, back to privilege. Part of it, I think about the mistakes that I made or the times that I screwed up along the way. And the more privilege we have, the more lenience the world has for us to make mistakes and still be able to come back.

Absolutely.

Do you know what I mean? And that's part of what's unfair about it. But just to be able to acknowledge that and the benefit again. So can we have some sense of. Not that I have to. Because this is the other thing, too, about privilege. I think a lot of white people in general and people. Privilege gets used as sort of in. And the truth is the privilege is something to be honored and respected and utilized in a way. There was an example that I found when I was writing my book that I used that I thought was really great. This high school teacher talked about how he teaches about privilege in his class. And he said what he does is he gives all the kids in the class a piece of paper and says, crumple up this piece of paper into a ball. And he puts the trash can in front of the class by the board. And he says, okay, this can represents making it in our American culture. So from your desk, I want you to throw your paper ball and see if you can make it into the can. And if you make it, you've made it. Congratulations, you're rich and famous, whatever. And if you miss, sorry, you didn't make it. And he says, okay, now go. And immediately, you know, but you got to sit in your seat and shoot from where you are. Everyone kind of at the same time, let's go. And then immediately what happens is the kids in the back of the class start complaining. Wait a second. This isn't fair. We look at how long. Look how long the shot is. Look how far it's like. And then. And the kid's up front and he stops. And he said, usually what happens is he'll stop the class and he'll say, now let's just take a look at this for a minute. This is the land of opportunity. Everybody has a shot. Not everybody's shot is the same, though. And notice who's complaining the most. The people in the back, because they have the hardest shot. Now, the people up front, it's not like it's a slam dunk. You still got to throw the thing. You know, a certain amount, it's not a guarantee you're going to make it. It's just easier. But you probably weren't thinking about all the people behind you and how much harder it is for them and how lucky you are to be up front. You're just looking at, how do I make this shot? Isn't that great? Then I end the lesson by saying, look, education is a privilege. Not everybody in the world gets an education. So you all are getting an education. And part of what you can choose to do, if you so choose, is use your privilege, in this case education, to empower and support people who may not have access to the same privilege. And when I read that, I thought, well, first of all, what a great high school teacher and what a great way to take it out of even the realm of racial dynamics and politics and all the ways it can get and just go. So, again, that's a long way of saying, I think there's a lot of things for us to look at and be able to apologize for within ourselves and take ownership of from a place of healthy guilt, but not walk around and feeling like, look, both things can be true at the same time. I can have a lot of privilege, which I do, and I can also have worked really hard in order to create the success that I have, which both is true. Now, again, if I were black, if I were gay, if I were disabled, if I were a woman, if I were any number of things, you know, any minority group, not straight, white, male, like I am, my story and my journey would have been much harder. And it's a very, like, it's very likely I would not be in the same position that I'm in right now. Now, we don't know that that's a hypothetical. But again, I can't imagine. I say, you know what? If I were female and lesbian and disabled and African American, I bet I would be absolutely crushing it in so many other easier ways than I am right now. No, I don't think anybody would think that that's a likely scenario. It's possible. And so, again, just being able to acknowledge that and hold those things and not necessarily then have to feel like, oh, I need to apologize for myself, or I need to feel bad about this, or, no, no, but just be aware of it.

I think it also allows you to acknowledge yourself and your journey and both the. What was this given to you by nature of your birth? You know, winning the birth lottery and you've worked hard, and that enables you to keep moving and to keep using your voice in the way that you are, which I can say I've found your podcast very comforting and helpful and think that's so important. Like Ruth King, she wrote a fantastic book called Mindful of race from a Buddhist perspective. And she says the process is going to be messy at best. And inherently, what you said about social media rings so true that we're all so public now, even people who aren't, quote, thought leaders or authors or podcasters. You're so public and exposed just on your own Facebook page, if you use the platform, as soon as that number grows to More than your 10 trusted Most close friends and family. The book was so transformative for me, nonviolent communication. And I know, of course, even to raise the idea of nonviolence right now is very nuanced because nonviolence hasn't been working. P.S. and who's been the most violent white people, essentially for pre America. But what I did appreciate in that book, there's a chapter on nonviolent communication with yourself. And that healed me in a way that I've read hundreds of personal development books, but that one did it. And the way he talks about it and. And he's such a. I forget his name. Maybe you remember Marshall Rosenberg. Yes, thank you. Marshall Rosenberg, who has since passed. But yeah, he's so beautiful and graceful with how he suggests that we speak with each other and when we talk to ourselves, that if we are violent with ourselves, you're not good enough. This is all or nothing. You either are the perfect best ally, you know, or the idea of token minorities where they feel they have to be the best, if they're the only black in the room or Asian person in the room, they better represent for their whole race. Or if you have immigrant parents or, I mean, the list goes on. Where we could shame ourselves into perfection. And I'm. You could call it fragile. I'm. I feel I'm extremely fragile. Like, I'm emotional, I'm highly sensitive, I'm empathic, I'm introverted. There's like so many things that make me a fragile person, and I. I try to work on that. It's why I wrote Pivot, to work on my resilience. But I admire people who have the courage and the grit and who just get out there and make their voice heard and don't care who they piss off. And, man, I admire it so much.

Yeah, well. And listen, I mean, I think part of how we get there ultimately, though, Jenny, I believe is what you're saying. And I think doing the inner work, not just understanding and learning more, we're talking a lot about racism and bias and privilege in all of this, but also just how we relate to ourselves.

I love the notion of we don't see people as they are, we see them as we are, meaning that we're all different. And so of course, I don't know what it's like to be anything but me. Not only identity wise in terms of race and gender and orientation and all that, but just like I see the world through my own lens and to the point of Marshall Rosenberg's work in nonviolent communication. It's like that conversation we have with ourselves, about ourselves all day long is the most important conversation we have because it colors everything. So if I'm being hypercritical of myself, which a lot of us are, I'm going to be hypercritical of the world I'm going to be looking for. And so a lot of what happens to and with conversations around race that are so emotionally charged, there's a lot of projection that goes on and there's a lot of people understandably spewing anger as well as defensiveness and all of the things that happen. But to me, so much of the journey with respect to me, learning more and more about how I show up in these moments and trying to be of service and trying to say things and do things that I think are positively making a difference even with my fear and all this stuff that comes up is that I feel like it's both an inside job and then it manifests itself outwardly. And part of it is trusting ourselves. I think of something. When Michelle, my wife, was giving birth To Samantha, our 14 year old, she had a really hard labor and she chose to do it naturally, no drugs. And we had taken all the classes and we'd been very conscious about it. We did all this stuff, but in the labor room and as she's giving birth, it was like, you know, it didn't look like the videos and I was freaked out myself. I mean, I can't imagine what it was like for Michelle, but in the midst of it, she was having a really, really hard time. And the midwife grabbed her at one point and just said to her very sternly but very clearly, like, trust yourself. You know how to do this. And I remember thinking in my head, I'm glad I didn't say it out loud. What the hell are you talking about? She knows how to do this. She's never had given birth to a baby before. Right. But there was something about her saying that in that moment that was like. She wasn't saying, like, trust yourself personally, like you've done this before, but like, as a woman, as a human, as like it's in your DNA. To know how to deliver a baby, so what you gotta do. She didn't say all this, but what I heard was her saying, like, get out of your head, get into your heart and into your body and just trust and, like, let it happen. And ultimately her saying that, like, shifted the labor. And Samantha was born not that long after that. But I remember that moment, and there was something so profound and so wise to me in that. And it wasn't just about having a baby, which was this huge transformative experience, obviously for us and for our family, having our first child. But thinking about this, in the last few weeks, I have had moments where I feel completely incapable of showing up for this moment. I just feel like I don't know if I have what it takes. This is so overwhelming. And this whole last few months has been so overwhelming. And I remember back to what the midwife said to Michelle, and I think to myself the same thing. I've never been through this pandemic. None of us have. We've never been through this moment of history. However, within us, individually and collectively, we have it. We just have to listen and learn and dig deep and be willing to screw up and make mistakes and get called out and fumble around as we're trying to make our way through it. It's not going to happen if we just sit at home and shut out the world and end up in the pantry and watch Netflix all day. Look, I've been in the pantry and watching a lot of Netflix. That happens. And I have moments of that. And then I need to pick myself up, get off the couch, and then go get back in the arena again and again. Part of the privilege for me and you and many of us who don't have to be in the fight, so to speak, is that we choose to go in. That doesn't make us somehow holier than thou and better than anybody. It doesn't by any stretch. But it's like it can give us some leverage and some perspective and some ability and some wisdom to have some influence, maybe in some ways that some people can't. And I just feel like, back to the. We're all in this together. Like, we're all in the same storm, as people have been saying, but different boats, and my boat looks different than yours, and my job is different in my boat than in yours. But, like, I just want. Personally, I just want to show up and do whatever I can and try to inspire people to show up and do whatever they can.

That is so beautifully said. It is clear you're a KEYnote speaker of 20 years.

Mike, thank you so much. Wow, wow, wow. Trust yourself. You know how to do this. Thank you for sharing the story of your daughter's birth and the midwife. And I've heard that from midwives who've said to my friends, women have done this since time immemorial. You know how to do this. It's in your body. It's in your bones. And I appreciate that reminder for all of us to get out of our head and into our body that we're all in this together. So beautifully said, Mike. Thank you. I know I got to let you go. Thank you so much for being here and doing this work and being willing to have an open, authentic, messy conversation with me. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. Well, thanks for having me on your show and thanks for the great work that you are doing and have been doing. I'm grateful and honored to know you and to be your friend.

Likewise. Thank you, Mike. Thanks everybody for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode at Pivot Method Podcast and connect with me on Twitter @jennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.