264: Embrace Your Onlyness with Nilofer Merchant

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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 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 my friends. I am so excited to be here today with Nilfer Merchant. She is ranked as one of the world's leading business thinkers and has personally launched more than 100 products, netting 18 billion in sales. In 2013. She gave a top ranking Ted Talk sitting is the smoking of our generation. And her most recent book that came out in 2017 is one that has jumped off of my proverbial shelves for years. It's called the Power of Make youe Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World. And Dilifer, I'm so excited to finally have you here because your book has been speaking to me from the shelves, from the title alone and the handwritten font on the COVID in the bright colors. So welcome to the show.

Oh, I'm glad to be here, Jenny.

I am thrilled to have you. And I'm curious to know that we're here now, several years after the Power of Onlyness came out. How has your conception of onlyness? Maybe you could give listeners a quick primer and just. I'm just wondering how it has evolved in the time since the book has been living and breathing out in the world. Right.

It just changed. You understand it so much better after you've published a book, you understand your own ideas so much better. Like a couple years later and you almost want to go back and be like, can I rewrite that section? Yeah.

Or like what little I knew because the audiences interact and ask questions and challenges. Like the book is only the door opening into that topic really well.

And it's a chance for so. So let me back up and say I first coined this word onlyness back in 2011, 2012 and I was trying to get to this one particular thing which was how do each of us standing in that spot in the world, only one stand in? Right? How do we actually get valued for that? Because most of us are ignored or silenced in rooms, right? That it turns out, in fact, in the research I did, between 50 and 70% of ideas are lost not because they're considered and deemed unworthy, but because the person bringing the idea is deemed unworthy of being heard. And so I coined this term because I was like, oh, we're centering the room. That means, right? We're centering this space where a whole bunch of us are seen as other, whether it's by gender or by age or by race or by whatever. Whatever way in which you're seen as other. And if we could center correctly on that source of ideas, you're going to tap something beautiful. And so that was 2011, 2012. I ended up thinking, well, gosh, you know, that can't be so hard to write about. And. And I'm shrugging my shoulders. You can probably hear it in my voice because I was like, I'll just find 20 stories and write down 20 stories and talk about how we do that. It turns out that all the pioneers of people who are using networks to affect change, because now connected people can do what once only large organizations could. They didn't know. Like, I would sit there and go, well, what are you doing? Right? You know, And I'm almost like thinking about myself a little bit as a sonographer. Like, let me write it down and, and share it with other people. It turned out not one party knew what they were doing, right? And so I ended up spending the better part of several years researching 300 examples to get to 20. And, and the big insight, Jenny, back to your question was this. Even when I started the process, I thought, oh, it's how do you overcome the barriers? How do you organize people? How do you. And I thought about it as the singular you, not the plural of you. And the plural of you is what matters here. So it's not. The reason most of us are not affecting change is not because we're psychologically not confident enough. It is because the context of the rooms in says, actually we're not going to listen to a word you say. And so this book and then my resulting work has been how do we understand that, yes, the agency part is not just how you conceive of the world and yourself. It's how you put yourself in the right rooms.

I love that, and thank you for making the connection to otherness and those who feel othered. In different rooms and contexts and how that connects in here to onlyness. And I just love that the antidote to otherness, as you said, it can't, it can't always be, oh, just get more confident. Just leave your imposter syndrome out. It's that there are rooms if someone's not listening, but that this idea of onlyness is about really embracing and finding those rooms that I know you've talked about finding those rooms where they are excited to have you there. They do want your voice. I also love how in the book, when you define onlyness, there are these crucial footnotes that you say you, you contemplated using words like talent or uniqueness, but that those weren't going to cut it. Can you explain a little bit why this transcends talent or even uniqueness?

Yeah, let's do uniqueness first. So uniqueness, if you just think about it for a minute, unique compared to what? Unique is always a relative word. If you look at usage. And so you'll say, I'm unique. And like, I remember one time I was in a board, corporate boardroom, a publicly traded company board, and somebody turned to me and I'd been trying to get the floor for something that was like, you know, a while. And finally somebody else was like, no, has been trying to get our attention. Why don't we let her speak since she's a woman in the room. And I just remember having to bite my tongue so hard. And here was all the backstory to what was going on in that room. I was, I'm an expert in go to market stuff in figuring out how to solve. How do we, you know, take our product, match it to the marketplace. That's my, you know, 20 plus years of tech experience. The conversation in the room at that moment was about that. And the guy says to me, let's listen to Nilfer because she's a woman. And I won so badly to say something like, did you know that 52% of the people in the world are women? And by the way, the reason that I actually have commentary that's actually relevant to this room that will save this company has nothing to do with the 52%. But down to the singular person who has launched over 100 products and therefore I have a perspective. Very few people, by the way, have launched 100 products. Right. That is an incredibly rare person. And so when I saw him using the word and he actually used the word unique, I was like, oh my God, that is such a strange word. Because he's not actually centering on Me, he's centering on the room, and he's saying, Gosh, there's 11 men in this room and one woman. So what makes her unique is this thing that, by the way, is 52% of the population. I'm like, that's the least interesting thing about me. It's the least interesting thing.

And so did you say that in the moment?

No, of course not. Because, of course, I'm like, you know.

I gotta figure in the moment.

And also, like, it's a distraction. And that's. You know, there's that beautiful phrase. And I wanna say it's Maya, but I. I'm trying to think who said it. But the cost of racism or sexism or any of these things, any of the isms, is it distracts you from your own work. And so in that moment, I didn't want to acknowledge his bigotry. I wanted to get the work done right, because that's why I was in the room. And that's the hardest part, is you let things slide. But because I don't have time to educate every single person, that would take a lifetime, and I don't have that time. I have my own work to get done. So that was the uniqueness piece is just realizing how relative it is, and it can be related to other people. Then seeing you as different instead of celebrating your distinction. That word. And then talent. I noticed. So I. When I first coined the term onlyness, I was trying to figure out, how do we center correctly on that spot in the world? Only one stands.

Right?

So I was trying to use difference from only one to onlyness. And I was going, how would I define that? And I realized talent was one very small element of what someone has. Right. So talents in the original sort of definition would apply. But most ways we use talent is we think about it as the way you were educated, Jenny, or.

If I could certify you as an artist, then you have that particular talent. And I was trying to say, what is that place, that history and lived experience that you bring? But also, what is that hope or experience you bring? So something maybe you see that no one else sees as even possible. How do you claim that for yourself in your onlyness? And so I was trying to find a way to capture something that was invisible to anyone, unprovable to anyone, but true to you.

Oh, I love that piece of invisible to anyone. True for you. I feel you must get this question all the time. I bet it's one of the number one questions, which is people struggling to see their onlyness or know what it is. And there's this phrase, you can't read the label from inside the jar, or at least that it's hard to do that. And we have so many terms, whether it's talent, we've rolled out talent, uniqueness, zone of genius. Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach calls it your unique ability. And I wonder how do you help somebody really tap into their onlyness when they feel discouraged that they just can't land on it like that? No amount of sort of effort is leading them to a sense of clarity. And I know you do some one on one work around this, which I'm excited to talk about.

Yeah, no, so in fact, just yesterday somebody wrote me and said, you know, I realized something because I wrote this piece from the weekend on my column and I do an advice column and somebody had asked me about they were going and running for political life and they were asking, they said something like, I know for whom I do this work and I want to know how to find the people that I want to talk to, blah, blah, blah. And I made this shift in language for whom or with whom. And I got a bunch of private comments. So I find this very interesting as an advice column is how many people will say things in public and how many people will say things in private, especially if it hits too close to home. And I got this comment that said, I want to claim space, but I don't know how. And I said, well, until you center yourself, like, you know, look at the gravitational pull of like if you're drawing circles, how many of us don't even count that inner circle of self? And go, first I gotta get in integrity with myself, like, who is this? And the thing is we can't see it. So your point about you get a label from inside is beautiful metaphor. A friend of mine, when I was first developing the idea and this was now, gosh, it has to be like 10 years, said it's like a light bulb that's over your head and when you're in the room, the whole room changes to that color because by the way, you're there. That's so true, right? And, and so she said, I love that metaphor. It really makes sense to me. And so one of the reflections we can ask is, hey, when I'm in the room, what's the room like? Because I'm there so that someone else can describe if it's, you know, cobalt blue or mandarin orange or whatever the beautiful shade is that is so true to you so that you can start to get your own signal ratio back of like, ah, this is what I care about. So asking people to be in those conversations with you helps you to name it. And I think the other part that I've learned in these many years is.

Our eyes look out, right? We don't look in. So and that's a beauty of the world. We can actually witness each other into being. But we have a hard time doing that for ourselves. And so we need to really be intentional about who we put in our circle, especially our inner circle. And do they know how to reflect us back to us to ask that question and say, hey, what does that mean for you? Or if you were going to be successful, what would that look like? Or what are your values in this situation? Right. Whatever those questions are that might get us to name something for ourselves, those are ways in which our inner circle can essentially context, right. Can help us hear ourselves more fully.

Speaking of inner circles, there's a common business trope that I've been scratching my head at recently and I'm so curious to get your take. It is the famous adage that you are the five people you surround yourself by or the average of the five people. What do you think about that?

Oh, absolutely. You know, when I did the sitting as a smoking talk, I was learning from that. So for those of you that don't know, I gave this talk that has since been quoted, I think it's 400 million times if you google it and making it one of the most referenced talks. And it was literally a three minute talk on sitting as a smoking of our generation. And I was saying that we were being so unintentional about this and I was teaching at the time at Stanford University, a bunch of very over.

Privileged kids, overserved kids might be the better word. And what I noticed was I was earning something like, I want to say a thousand bucks for the course. Honest to God, it was like so little. And all these kids were managing to get on my calendar and so like every single day I'd have all this like non client related activity and I was like, what the heck is going on? Like why are these. And it was basically because they were asking. They were being super persistent and asking and I hadn't set up any rules about they weren't allowed to just fucking overtake my whole calendar, excuse my language. And. And then I finally thought, oh, okay, so what I need to do is actually create a boundary. And I realized I was probably a size 12 back then. So I was doing a really good job of running a business and Take care of clients. Really good job of taking care of my team and making sure they got life balance and stuff. And I noticed I was actually the one who wasn't taking good care of me. And I thought this is one of those situations where if I don't choose differently and set that circle up correctly for myself, I end up being the last person at the table. And so what I said is, because these kids were taking over my calendar, I said just make it the last appointment of the day. So it's a 4 o' clock or 5 o' clock appointment. Make it. So we change shoes. And my office at the time was relatively close to a walking trail. And I said, we'll go for a walk. And what I started doing was essentially surrounding myself by people who were fitter.

Right.

Because I was being fitter. And I dropped from a 12 to a 6, which, the number's the irrelevant part. But it was finally a way of saying I'm going to surround myself and design my life so that fitness becomes a bigger priority for me. And so whenever we sit there and think what in our life is not right? Just literally look around and realize it's actually everywhere around you and then you can change and change also their behavior too.

Yes. And also that they are probably grateful not to be sitting in yet another room. I used to do that at Google. I would do walking coaching sessions with my clients. And why not? I mean, we were at the Vaylands too. Really nice environment.

In fact, I had a Google team, right. And a Google team actually came to me after and said, hey, we're going to redesign our campus. We're going to. And we're going to integrate your stuff. So they actually created maps. So I don't know if you ever saw these, but they actually created maps for each building. That said, if you want to do a 15 minute meeting, a 30 minute meeting, an hour long meeting, here are walking paths.

I love that.

And so they just enabled that kind of healthiness. Right. So here's the thing, is that those five people though, is really intentional of who is that inner circle of people who will literally like say to you, hey, I remember you saying this five years ago. So it really sounds like you're on mission like that people who will actually reflect you back to you. You gotta figure out how to do that. Otherwise you know what, you're doing all the work yourself to figure out who you are.

That's true. And it is a really special friend or family member, anybody who can add to your onlyness, who can See it, reflect it, celebrate it, enhance it. You know, like, this is actually kind of rare. And not to mention those that would detract or just SAP your energy. You know, I picture the light bulb you described of. Everybody has this light bulb that we walk into a room with. And it's sometimes no matter what you're doing, you walk into a room and the other people, it's just, they just, they're like light absorbers. You know, like the room could be wearing white and bouncing the light off, or the room could be wearing black and the light has nowhere to go. It's just.

Yeah, right, exactly. So how do we. So when I was running a business, one of the things I was really good at was making sure my team was taken care of and making sure that, you know, I know that a lot of your listeners are that business owner. And we're sitting there thinking, how do I live out my values? And so I demonstrate with my team, I demonstrate with my clients, etc. I noticed I never demonstrated it back to me. So I would say, you know, you gotta take care of your life. And then I would be the one doing a 2am final slide deck for a client because everyone ran late, right? And then I was like, what am I doing? I'm not actually modeling the behavior because then other people basically know that I'm a liar if I say work life stuff matters and then I don't live it. I have just finished teaching them that I lie and that's not my set of values. And so figuring out how do you really just draw those circles? How do you live in integrity first with yourself? So what is it you value and how do you live it? How do you surround yourself by the five people? And I mean, like even on the fitness front, for example, yesterday I was mentioning to a really dear friend, different conversation and saying, you know, I haven't been able to run. I just haven't felt motivated and I keep gaining weight and I'm not taking good care of myself. And the thing is, it's perpetuating, like I can't run, so I'm feeling bad about myself. So I eat more like it's going in this weird vicious cycle. And she said, okay, so by the way, before we get off the call, I want to hear in the next 30 days how you're going to be able to do something. So all you have to do is put together a plan. It can be, I'm going to run for five minutes every day. It could be, I'm going to get to A mile by the end of the month, whatever it is. And she says, you owe me a plan. And I thought it was the most beautiful gift because it means I have an accountability partner who says, I heard you. I heard you say you're in pain. And now I want to sit here and hold that space for you so that you can solve this for yourself.

It is such a gift that people who do that, like, I have to give a shout out to Michael Bunge, Stan, your mbs. He did that for me with. With my next book. I just couldn't write, wasn't doing it. And he said, send me a thousand words twice a week. And when I failed at that, he said, Send me 100 words tomorrow. And he. I just love how he stayed with it. You know, I could have just. In my head, I had my gremlin saying, oh, well, I failed my accountability.

You know, Michael's wonderful for that. He's such a gift. And the thing is that I love him. So I definitely shout out to Michael. Yes. And I want us to recognize that this is a. You've helped enable that relationship.

Well, I really appreciate that.

Right. So the joy is, okay, you get to do that with Michael. And it's not just Michael. Michael gets to do it for other people. We can all start doing this for each other. So think about. Just, you know, just think about, like, how do you do this for other people? And then how do you ask for it in your life? How many of us don't even, like, signal correctly that, gosh, I would like other people to care for me, too?

Going back to your TED Talk for a minute with this, like, crazy success and viral virality of it, did. Did things change in your business and in the influx of communications that you were receiving? I'm just so curious. For people who have these, like, real zingers of a talk or a book, what. What changed? Like, just what kind of serendipity popcorn came from that?

Well, so there were some really lovely students from Stanford University who were doing some research already. They were thinking about going in this direction, but hadn't really finished their thinking. And they saw the talk, and it had gotten on the front page of LA Times and a couple other places. I had written it first as a HB article, which had gone pretty viral. In fact, I got so chastised by ted, right? They're like, we're supposed to go viral after you give the talk, not when you write it out. And I was like, okay, well, dudes, you know, I just found that very funny. Because I think first in prose. And so these Stanford kids had come in, like, in their early 20s, so I'm saying kids, but. And they had said, hey, you know, we're thinking about doing this research about this. Can you help us shift?

And I did. I spent some time really helping them think about research because my background's qualitative research.

And that research turns out to be quoted instead of my talk, which I find interesting to observe, because now when the citations go out, they don't quote me, they quote the research. Interestingly enough, I could probably tell you the gender of the researchers and I can probably tell you a couple other things about them that meant that I got displaced.

And moved to the side and in the background, and the other thing got put in the center.

So that's what happened.

How frustrating. Wow.

I mean, here's the bottom line. That was purely a talk of avocation, right? That was not like, that's not my thing. I was doing it because the TED team asked me to do it. They had all changed their behavior. So not all, but like, you know, like a big portion of the team. Because I was advising the organization back then on how to go. At the time, they had something like 14% of all the speakers were women and or people of color, total 14%. And they wanted to change that. And I was spending some time really thinking about how to build out their networks and stuff. So as a result, every single time I was doing these strategy meetings with them, I would say, hey, you know, as long as we're standing here, why don't we go for a walk? And so we would walk around the building or walk around the streets of New York or whatever, wherever we were. Edinburgh was one location. And they all went back to whatever location, location they were in and started doing the same things. And so at some point after a year, they had realized every single one of them was tracing this new behavior of action, new change of behavior back to me. And they said, oh, wouldn't it be amazing if you could come give this talk on stage? It would benefit everyone. So I did it as a service, and I'm grateful to do it as a service. I just notice how much that happens. That. And so this is where my lived experience.

Keeps growing, right? How much women and people of color get negated.

And their work contribution negated and credit given to the next group of people. I especially notice it now when it happens to black women. Like, wow, oh, that's that behavior. That's that behavior. And so it just. It's a chance to kind of notice it and go, oh, that's not right. No, it didn't. You know, Jenny, you and I are fine, and I'm going to keep doing the work I need to do and everything, but for someone who's had as much impact as I have in the world, I'm kind of. There are just days when you're like, oh, we could have more impact if, you know, it wasn't negated so much.

Yeah. And it's so true. And your awareness, your experiences of this, you know, I know that you are very discerning now about the rooms you put yourself in and looking at just the makeup and who are you surrounding yourself by? And I know that's a huge part of how you're taking those steps and kind of saying what you will and won't sign up for around all of this too, which is so powerful.

Although, you know, it's just so hard. I feel like it's like a daily, weekly process of noticing, oh, my gosh, am I really letting people walk all over me? Am I really doing that? And I just had an experience with a colleague, and we were working together, and he would show up late to nearly every meeting. He would not do the things he said.

He.

He botched a couple of big things, and I didn't let him go. Only after a while did he finally say, you know, I'm thinking of leaving. And he had his own supposed reason for it. And I. I watched him go with real joy, like, oh, thank goodness. But I was like, why didn't I call that one sooner? Why did I allow someone to do this other thing? And so that's just been like the latest moment of, gosh, I let myself carry more of the load by not creating accountability with my colleague. And I'm processing that out loud with you. To realize it isn't ever like, you have to be vigilant, you know, constant vigilance, as the Harry Potter story would say.

You just have to kind of go back and be like, oh, where am I doing that again? Where I'm not letting my values guide my own actions. And then because, of course, that shows up in how we create value.

I wonder, too, how that connects in with the other story you shared, where. And I feel this way too sometimes. I just. I also prefer to withdraw my energy as opposed to invest the time in explaining it. If I. I'll sort of make a calculus of, do I think this person can really hear it? Are they willing to change or are they so. I don't know. It's just. It's like what I heard you say in the earlier example is you're really discerning about who's going to get your energy of explanation. And I wonder.

Yeah. You have to decide, like, how much is your work about teaching someone else and how much is your work about doing your work.

Right. And then just letting. Yep. Letting these people go, like, where. If he's not respecting you. Which. The time thing is so frustrating. I mean, no matter who's doing it, it's like, just get it together. I don't know. Right. I feel it's so disrespectful and it's.

On some level, like, I mean, I sh. The other day I accidentally slept past an appointment and I. I couldn't even. I felt so bad for doing it. And. And yet, you know, so I know mistakes happen. Like, obviously we are human beings, we make mistakes, blah, blah, blah. And. And creates one of those ands. Are we doing it just once in a while? Are we doing it all the time? Are we living? You know, and I. And I feel like that's the. That's the dance or the. It's almost like the double Dutch.

You know, when you've ever watched people play on a playground, Double Dutch is a relationship between many participants. And somebody can just sort of jump into that rope game and ruin it. Like, it'll just be over in a second. It could have been going for 20 minutes and all of a sudden it's done. But if you start to get in a rhythm with people, then everyone starts to have more joy, more fun, more playfulness. Not only the people who are holding the ropes, but the people who are then jumping in the game and the people who are coming on the playground to share in that joy. And whenever we're letting ourselves live out of our values, we're actually kind of ruining that cadence of the game. That's the piece I'm sort of starting to get my head around myself is I got to own that more because it's affecting the game. Not just my own sort of personal relationship to the game, but the game.

That's powerful. That's so powerful. Yes. That it's. It is interrupting the flow. And. And then what starts to happen is there's this. There is a palpable kind of resentment or withholding that you can tell, like someone who's not living with their values or even as you described, with your own body. And I've had that happen too. Where I look at my body is sort of showing me, telling me, you're putting yourself last. And it is visible. I think that's what's. What's so important about what you just said, is it. It is visible to the outside world when we're not living with our values, like, our energy is dimmed. Maybe my body. Me too. I gain weight very quickly, or I'm sitting there kind of my. My face. I don't know about you, Nilaper, but my face. I can't hide a damn thing.

Right? Terrible poker player. Yeah.

Horrible poker player.

Yeah.

So it's.

Yeah.

People are seeing it, even if you're not saying they can feel that. That disharmony or the. I don't know. What's the opposite of resonance. I know there's a word for it, right?

It's a. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is. So. So you're right. It shows up in the body. It shows up in our space. And so as leaders, we have to sit there and go, okay, what was the thing? I was trying to center. What was that thing? So going back to that notion of how do we center correctly, Right. Our needs count, our values count, and are we living in integrity with that integrity being such an interesting word? Integral. Right. Integral. So are we living in integrity? So wholeness. Integral being wholeness, and then going, okay, and then how do I choose people around me? I had a. I had a girlfriend who actually was a work colleague. When we first met, I was an outside consultant with a firm, and she was inside and one of the partners I had to work with. And I'll never forget the first meeting we ever had. This is now 20 years ago. She cried in the meeting. She cried because she thought I was, like, threatening her work and her job and the fact that an outside party was being brought in. And I remember looking at this person and thinking, I hate your guts. Like, it's just like, what the hell are you doing crying in this meeting? You know? And over the years, though, I realized that was her stress response. And over the years, though, I realized, like, we had a ton of things in common. And so at one point, I actually approached her and said, you know, I really value your values. I really value how you raise your children. I really value how you have work ethic. I really like the way you build cultural, you know, culture in the team. And I wonder if we could be closer friends. I actually did like, the sort of, like, I'd like to date you equivalent of friendship, you know, and we had known each other, maybe had seen each other, like, once or twice a year. And I was basically saying, I'd like to see more of you. It was such an awkward conversation because basically I was trying to make her one of my five. I was trying to put her in my, like, more inner circle. And she basically walked away. Like, she didn't respond positively to it. And I'll never forget that moment because I. I kind of, like, slunk away, like, oh, she doesn't like me the way I like her, you know? Such an awkward moment.

Yeah.

And I felt so awkward even having said it, because it was still, like, trying to figure out how to say, like, hey, I want to be friends, you know?

And.

And years later, she said to me, I didn't feel worthy of your friendship. And I was like, oh, my gosh, think of all the years we lost in that process. And now we're super tight. But it's really taken this evolution of being like, you care about health, you care about the way you raise your children for mental health. There's all these variety of ways in which we have this beautiful overlap. And so now when we are friends, we joke about, gosh, all the times we've not been there for each other because we couldn't even be there for ourselves. Like, she didn't know how to say back then, gosh, I don't even feel worthy of being a friend.

That's. I wonder if she even could have articulated it even at that time.

Right. And so the funny part now is whenever I have that sense of, like, the thing, I'm not saying I tried harder to say it. I said, this may not come out. Right. Right. Because then I'd like to shortcut that. I like to be more real with myself and then find a way to be more real with other people. Because that's ultimately, I feel like we can't claim our own space. If we don't claim our own space, it just becomes the modeling behavior. And so that's where I am showing up more present, hopefully, to myself, more real to myself, even, just. But I'll tell you, it's not. It's not like, the easiest thing. And that's why I'm saying it out loud, Jenny, is I feel like this is the one thing that if I'd understood this 20 years ago as a business leader, I would have changed how I ran everything.

What would you have done? Any specific things come to mind?

Oh, you know, I think the biggest thing I did was when people said they needed me. I felt like, oh, they must really need me. They must really, like, need me to pick up this work or whatever. And what I never asked was, are you just doing this because you think it'll make me feel good? Like you're making me feel more valuable or something? Or like. And so just being able to say, do you really need me? What do you need? And. And because I think what happened was work flowed more my, like, more the impetus for the creative work and strategy flowed my direction. And I actually always felt like I'd hired really, really smart strategists. So I was like, what the heck is going on? And I look back and I'm sometimes like, did I just feel like I needed to feel like the most strategic air quotes needed? And what. Why didn't I just sit, push back and no, like, have you taken as far as you can take it? Which would have given them more room to run harder on their own field and it would have lowered my burden. And so I probably learned this lesson. Like, I don't know, towards the end of my consulting life, I had this one sentence and I. And I told them I was going to say it to I. It didn't sound as callous as. As it's going to make it sound. They would come to me and say, I'm done. I need your review. And I'd say, have you done everything you need to do? Have you taken as far as you need to go? And they would always, like, look at me really sheepishly and then pull the thing off my desk and go work on it some more and get it to a much higher level before they turned it into me. And it sounded so like. I remember the first couple times I said it, I was like, what the hell? I sound like such a bitch. And yet what was really interesting was how much they were not carrying the ball as far as they wanted to go because they thought somehow I needed to do like a check in.

I have a big smile listening to that story, just imagining them. Let me take that back.

Yeah. And so if that's the only thing, thing, by the way, that the listeners get from this conversation, it's like, how much do we take on because we're not letting other people own their part.

Oh my gosh. Over functioning in every area of life. I just finished reading the One Minute Manager meets the Monkey.

Oh, I've never even read that one. Okay, tell me more.

Well, it's William Onkin, because this kind of ties into the book I'm working on. He wrote one of the most, all time, most popular articles for HBR about the man, the monkey, and that people come into Their manager's office with a monkey on their back.

On their back.

And when they leave, they leave the monkey on the manager's desk. So the manager is managing a whole zoo of monkeys, meanwhile everyone else. And it's basically just a metaphor for people kind of dump the problem or the project onto their manager's desk because it's safer that way. It's more comfortable. So everyone was coming to you saying, here's my monkey in Oliver, right? You were thinking, I'm a good monkey wrangler. Yeah, I'll take him. Right. And I love, I love this shift you've just described, which is. Oh, what a great question. I mean, that is such a gift of this whole conversation. Is that question for anybody who's working with others is because I love the way you framed it. Have you taken this as far as you want to yet? As far as you can not? Is this good enough? It's like getting people to dig deep. And it reminds me of what a good personal trainer would do to say, I know you have 10% more in you, or I know you have 20% more in you. And it feels good when somebody can see that and call that out.

Right. And it gives confidence and capability to the people and reduces how much energy you're putting into everything. Which, by the way, there's only so much energy to go around. You got to manage that. And most of us are so exhausted. I remember one of my favorite professors in grad school taught me this 5% rule, and so I'll pass it along in case it's useful. The 5% rule is if you're running at 105%, there is no amount of creativity you are bringing to anything because you're just so all out. And every one of us as leaders thinks we need to be running at 105. And he said, now think about just the opposite of that same 5%. If you're running at 95%, right? And he was actually like doing the metaphor of running. And he goes, think about how different you feel. The difference of just being able to like, coast it in a little and like, you can breathe, your breathing is working, you can notice your surroundings, all these different things. You're actually enjoying the run at 95%. He said, that's the difference of 5%.

That's so powerful, right?

And, and, and he's pointed out that basically none of us can innovate if we're doing that all out, because we're just trying to figure out how to keep going at that all out phase. But if you change that one thing, you can kind of look around and go, huh, I could do this better. Or I could tap that other person's capabilities or whatever it is, right?

Well, it's like, okay, if we stick with the double Dutch metaphor, one person is, like, furiously trying to turn the ropes, and the other one's barely getting to getting a chance, and they're sweating and they're burdened by this. Like, how fun is this game when one person is working so hard and then in martyr mode because of how hard they're working? And then also, what's so important about this is, like, if we're at 105, 110, 115%, there's no margin. There is no room for any life or work surprise. Which we know there will always be, right? There's.

And by the way, no creativity shows up at that 105, 110%. I'm sorry. Even if you think you're being creative, you're running on fumes at that moment. And so just really, you know, in fact, I. I do a silent retreat. In fact, I'm about to go on one in a few days, and I do a silent retreat probably, like, once a quarter, if I'm lucky. And then sometimes I push that off. So maybe it's once every six months. But I always come back, like, just all filled with ideas. Just filled. And I'm always like, boy, that was only a couple days of reading and quilting and running and quiet, right? But I basically created the internal space to reprocess everything that's going on and kind of get a fresh perspective on it all and just take, like, a little timeout, you know, it's almost like someone, like, not having to do the double Dutch thing. So, like, to. Oh, they get to play. They get to watch for a little bit, maybe, and just reprocess it all. And then I come back, and I. Literally, everything for the next, like, week or two is just, like, done things that might have taken me a month done. And I'm always like, gosh, you think I'd learned this?

I know. I was just gonna say, you would think, because even 95% is almost more than I. I even want to do right now. Like, I found. I found after 2020, coming into 21, my life personally, just having more complication than it did, let's say, 10 years ago. It's like, I just want to. I just want to be at a cool 60 where I'm super creative and spacious and I have Buffer. And I'm not overly stressed, and I know there's plenty of margin and find a way that that doesn't mean that it's actually more creative, more successful, more, quote, productive. But this in the US Especially, we have such an obsession with, like, pushing ourselves to 95 or 100, and there's no evidence that it produces better work like these Churn and Burn, you know, Nilafur, you've been in them as well and consulted with so many, like, tech companies. They're not bad companies, but the culture is so intense that it's very hard for anybody to sustain that for any amount of time.

Yeah. And I used to love it. I used to feel like my value ADD was being able to do that, you know, like I can tough it out with everything. And now, of course, I'm like, okay, toughing it out is not a strategy. It's. I mean, it's a strategy. It's not the strategy, I believe.

Right. And it doesn't have to mean that you're lazy if you're not at 95.

It's not the opposite. Right. Yeah.

Because I love the silent retreat for me, too. I was. Oh, my God, I felt this. So just like a fish dropped back into the ocean. I was like, this is the most blissful experience. I just. Oh, my gosh.

Well, and the spaciousness. Right. So I. I often have this thing where, like, I'll be reading along and be like, oh, is it evening yet? And I'll. I'll find a, you know, watch and be like, oh, like 30 minutes had passed, you know, some. And. And I'd literally thought, like, oh, I had gone from like, sort of lunchtime to dinner time or something. Like, oh, how much time has gone by? But it's the. It's without distraction. Like, there's a spaciousness to it. And the spaciousness is actually an interior spaciousness of. I will now give my. Myself the room to actually just be, not do, but to be. And from that state of being, I can create. I love that.

And that. That strikes me as so much of how you define onlyness as well. And the real gift you bring to this conversation is that it's so much less about creating some perfect personal brand that you present to the world.

It's.

It's being yourself that we are born with. Our onlyness. It exists within us. We have this light bulb period. It's. That's what I love what you're saying. It's like, we all have it. It's not this thing we need to Go manufacture.

Yeah. And, you know, I. The.

Can I.

Can I tell you one more story? Tight on time. When I first coined the word, I was modeling it off of how my name is structured. So nilfer.

It translates directly to, like a water lily, a lotus flower. And my grandfather had named me. He named all of his grandchildren, but he apparently, like, did astrology and did all these different things, like name his children and try to find, like, the perfect name. And one time he. He told me why my name was what it was. And so every now and then, I kind of returned to it. And he said, you know, you grow in mud. Every. Every lotus flower grows in mud and thinks that that darkness will stay forever, but then you will interact with the water and see yourself seeking your own light. And all of a sudden, that light is not just one light. It is just wherever your light grows you. And you will go from this thing of darkness to this absolute bloom. And it's not because, you know, something made you bloom because. But because that's who you are. And so when I modeled onlyness and I said to you, I said it was your history and experience, as well as your visions and hopes, even if someone else can't see it. I was modeling that rootedness of where you've come from, but also the light of where you grow, too. And I was trying to get both sides to be reflected in the definition, because I think sometimes we limit ourselves to who we've been. Right? Like it's an archeology dig or something. Like, oh, here's where we've been. So here's who I am. And I'm like, no, you get to claim for yourself the light.

I love that in the dimension, like lotus flowers have, I don't even know how many hundreds of petals I've always loved. What a beautiful gift from your grandfather. And the lotus flower has particularly resonated with me too, that they grow in mud and just how much good we can find and the way you've just described it and how it ties in with onlyness. It's so beautiful. Amazing. Thank you so much, Nilipur. This has been so fun to chat with you. Where would you like to send people if they want to learn more and keep in touch?

Yeah. So my new project that I'm really enjoying is I've got a column, it's called At Work. It's really about. We shortened it when we first started it because we couldn't figure out if we should say fully alive at work because it seems so long, and yet that's what the project is, how to be fully alive at work.

And so, and I'm on, you know, all the. I'm everywhere just in terms of, you know, just my first name. N I L O F E R.

I wanted to ask you, do you have another book project in the works?

I have a feeling this column is a project and I don't see anyone else really, you know, deconstructing what it means to be fully alive at work. I don't think we understand what's getting in our way, what the interior work is, but also what the contextual work is. So I have a feeling that's what this is. But I, you know, it's, you know this Jenny, better than anyone who's written, you know, multiple things. It comes when it comes, and it becomes clear what the Christmas is. But I have a feeling that's what this work is because certainly it's my calling and I'm noticing so many other people really finding value in it.

Wow. How exciting. I know. Well, I can't wait to read it. Thank you for the Read the column. And it's so true. It's like sometimes you write your way into whatever it is and it sounds like there's. The seeds of it are definitely emerging. Thank you so much, Nilafur. I really appreciate this. I'll put all the links in the show notes and just what a joy to get to chat today. Thank you for all the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

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.

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