Clarifying Your Personal Perspective

Welcome, everybody, to JLC Media. My name is Ray Jorgensen and I'm joined by three of my colleagues. Each of them just introduce themselves and say who they are and what they've been up to recently. So, Colleen, how about you?

Sure.

My name is Colleen Sullivan and been working with Jorgensen Learning center for about 12 years now. A couple things that I've been up to is I've got a couple new executives on my executive coaching roster. So I've got some new clients that I'm working with and really enjoying discovery conversations to learn what they're working on.

That's great. And we are primarily executive coaches and team developers, so it's really nice to hear these new people jumping into the game with us. So, Vince, who are you? What have you been doing lately?

So, good afternoon, I'm Vince Starks and I'm another GLC associate. I've been with the company about a little over a year, and I'm a conformed recent military executive. I was an officer in the military for 30 years, and now I'm doing new things and exploring new horizons, trying to help people continue to build good teams and to develop themselves.

That's great. Welcome. Really good to have you here. Julie, how about you?

Hi, I'm Julie B. Wise, and I've been with the Jorgensen Learning center for three years. And for those of you who've been listening to our podcast, you know that I have struggled being stuck at my house for the COVID So I actually got out of my house. I have both vaccines. So I drove from Pennsylvania down to Florida Panhandle and had a little vacation. But while I was down there, I still continued to work with a few of our clients virtually. So it was really the best of both worlds. And mainly a lot of my learning and conversations has really been about resilience. And because it's been a year since we started all of this and people are now ready to sort of look around and think about, okay, what did I learn? What do I want to do differently? Moving ahead.

That's magnificent. And our first few podcasts on resiliency have been about reflection, taking stock of what's going on, and thinking about how to respond, not react. In fact, the last three had a component of that in each one. Today there'll be some of that because we're going to talk about a very interesting nuance around resiliency. And we actually got the idea of the title from one of the mistakes that popped up in an HBR article. It's like traps to building Resistance. And that is to keep working. As Dr. Deming used to say, making working okay instead of actually focusing on the end state or the bigger goals that you've agreed upon. So that's why we're talking about this, so that I and my colleagues and those of you that are listening can start to recognize what am I doing every day? Am I just getting my to do list on or am I, you know, what am I doing right? So that when we're done, each of you will have an opportunity to take stock of your day to day activities so that you can either, if you choose, shift into the more challenging work about building new artifacts and new structures to move to an end state. Vince, what did you hear me say we're going to work on?

I heard as you were talking, what I was thinking was we're going to have some discussion today just to talk a little bit about things that in our day to day operations, things that we think are important. We're going to explore opportunities. If you find that they perhaps are not quite as important, what should we as leaders be thinking about considering so that we can make sure that we stay focused on the bigger picture and the instincts that we ultimately would like to achieve?

Yeah, it is true that we have a tendency to take our to do list and say, I'm going to get this done today. And there are some shifts in us that can happen where we look at all of our activities and start asking questions like are each of these activities moving us toward an end state or are we just refining the current reality? Julie and I have dealt with this with a school district directly and a lot of our work comes out of this direct contact with people. The superintendent said to the group while we were working with them, I guess I can keep refining my current practical knowledge, but I may not have what I need to get to the end state. They were working on that modern day curriculum, thinking about a kid succeeding in the 21st century. This is really a very interesting construction. Thank you so much, Vince. Colleen, what are you thinking about?

Yeah, I think what I'm thinking about is sometimes we create our own silos. And so if I'm, to your point, busy doing, working or just focusing on my day to day or getting it done. And that's, I hear a lot of leaders say that I'm a hard charger, I get it done. Well, that's nice. However, is getting it done moving you and producing evidence that you're moving in the right direction. And those are two different things. So I think that it's important to hold not only your current reality, which is we want to be effective, we want to be hard chargers, we want to move forward and get things done. But how do they connect to our overarching strategic goals and what it is we're trying to accomplish?

Okay, that's outstanding. I mean, I've heard commanding officers and executive officers give directions about taking care of the current reality, problems and issues. And you should, no question, the danger is that I end up becoming over enthused about taking care of the current reality, problems and issues. We create a funny little feedback loop which I'll talk about in a couple of minutes. That's really good, Colleen. Thank you. Julie, what are we working on here today and what are you thinking?

Well, what I'm thinking is personally for me, and I know my therapist comes up often, I am one who gets shit done. And what happens is I have no relationships at the end because I'm busy getting shit done. And so I've had to work with my therapist to sit there and look at the list of things and any task that had to do with relationships that was more of a priority than doing the laundry, doing the dishes, going to the grocery store, because for me, I wanted to get the shit done so that I could be with the people that I wanted. And she was like, flip it. What would happen if you were with the people first and then when you had time, you did all of the other stuff? How would your life be different? So I hear what Colleen's saying and I hear what Vince is saying, and there's a little bit of both need to happen of the relationships and the outcomes.

I love it. And Julie and I have been reading Fred Kaufman's work on conscious Business, and there is a sense there that people say to him, he shared this story. People say to him, well, I want to do work, life, balance. And he goes, I don't know what that is because you're just living. Part of your life is work, part of your life is family. Part of your life is fun and enjoyment. You're just living. You're having a life and it's a journey moving forward. And today, to your point, Julie, we talked actually in our team meeting about the fact that sometimes we need somebody else to help us see what we don't see. So a little bit of today is in the opportunity to deal, to become more and more resilient, see what we don't see in order that we can move forward and get to that end state that you mentioned, Colleen, and certainly make sure that we don't lose that along the way. So I'm going to tell you a story and I want to tell you what the story means. You tell me what the story means to you, and then I'm going to ask you to find an example in your own life. I have many. So the story is about a gentleman. He's in a city. Pick wouldn't pick your closest city or pick one you grew up when, or pick one you live in right now. So he's in the city, it's around midnight, it's dark out, and a police officer is doing neighborhood patrol. He's walking down the block and he sees this gentleman hunched over on the ground and he's obviously looking for something. So the police officer stops and says, are you okay? He said, no, not really. I can't find my keys. I lost my keys. And the cop, being just a good guy, gets down on his hands and knees. Now they're both looking for the keys and looking for the keys. This goes on for about 10, 12, 14 minutes. And the cop looks at him. So we certainly don't seem to be here. Is this help me understand how you lost them? He said, well, I lost him over there about 50 yards away. But it's dark there, I can't see anything over there. So I came over here. Okay, I saw you all laughing. So Vince, had that story land on you, my friend?

So it reminds me of something that happened to me professionally as well. So I guess the best way for me to tell you what it is to tell you what happened to me, if it's okay, please. So I was in charge of a command and I would have people who would come in on a daily basis and provide briefs to some of our oversight, our programs that made the organization run. And I got into a routine of hearing people coming in and saying, sir, everything is great. And they would give me that kind of metrics, we're doing great here, here, here. And I was so encapsulated and I felt such a sense of pride that things were going so well that I didn't stand back to ask piercing questions to validate and verify that information. Only later to learn that when I had an outside observer come in, things were not going well and I was way off the mark. And so as you told the story of thinking about the keys, the guy is looking for the keys here, but the problem was 50 yards over there. That was me caught my day to day thinking that everything, my keys are right here and my keys were 50 yards away. And it took Someone else to come outside the organization. Tell me. So that's. The story was resonating with me clearly as I was thinking about my own real life, personal example of that.

Vince was too busy patting himself on.

The back, going, yeah, I felt pretty good.

Yeah, we get lost in the good feedback, right? Don't tell me any bad news, please. No bad news. And I guess what you just developed was a beautiful picture that you were holding on to. The illusion of control. Yes, right. The illusion of control. That was. What a great story that was. Julie, what did you think about when I told that story?

So I was thinking that for me, personally, I was laying in bed. I can remember this. I was laying in bed at night and I was thinking, oh my gosh, I have so much that I need to do. I think maybe if I get up now and clean the garage and then if I go like, this is literally. Seriously, I'm laying here, I can't sleep anyway. If I clean the garage and then I'll clean out the cabinets and then I was going through all of these things. And my family knows that during the day, if I'm out cleaning the garage, if I start there, something's going on. I'm avoiding something, I'm stressed about something, something didn't work out for me, and I'm just trying to get something finished that looks nice and in place so that I can feel like, okay, my garage at least is clean. Whether it's 2 o' clock in the morning or 6 o' clock in the morning. That's what I tend to do. And that's a sign for everybody to come to me and say, mom, what do you need to talk about? What are you avoiding?

Okay, thank you. Because now I know to do that. So there's so much in this for us, right? So for me, and I'm, you know, I'm an old guy, so I used to have legal pads and I'd have all these things to do in the legal pad. It felt so good to cross things off the legal pad that, you know, there could have been a fight in the cafeteria, There could have been an accident on the way to school, There was a bus issue. There's a parent protesting on the front door. And I'm working on my to do list. In fact, if I'm not careful, that's spend every day of my life working on my to do list. And things aren't going the way expected. So. God, I love that. Thank you, Julie. Colleen, you got one for us. What resonated with you around that story, Sure.

A lot of things. I mean, I think that each one of us can see in our own behavior, you know, that sense of control is an illusion. And I really feel like, you know, I can think of so many different times with the kids, right, where I talk a lot about, you know, my two boys. And I think one of the specific times, you know, I took the whole summer off, I was focused on my family. And, you know, I had two teenagers, so I wanted to make sure I was there. So, good, Mom. I'm staying home. I'm taking them, you know, to different places. I'm making dinner every night. I'm doing all these things, wanting to control my environment, to have the best possible upbringing for my kids. Well, you know, school starts, and guess what happens? I'm sitting there patting myself on the back, thinking I'm doing such this great job. Principal calls me, you know, my son, possession. He had some marijuana on him. And I'm like, oh, my God. And I instantly. My whole. Just this vision of perfection that I had created in my pea brain. I was like, damn, how could that be happening on my watch when I have been doing everything to create this amazing environment for my family? So, needless to say, in one foul swoop, I'll never forget, I was at the gym, and I was like, dropped the phones, started crying. I was ready to go murder him. Almost wrecked pulling into the school parking lot and showed up and had to go talk to the principal, and it was not a pretty sight.

Hey, Colleen, what did your son have? Was it Purple Kush or was it Superman?

I don't know. It was several years ago. Now they have the new strains and the dispensaries out here, but that was probably the, you know, the shake.

Right?

So they were not really. It was not medical marijuana, correct? Yes. Okay, good. So. But notice all of us create inside of ourselves a little illusion about how things are going. And then we try and figure out, well, if we don't have somebody, we might stay in that illusion for a long time. And that's probably the greatest gift. A coach, a therapist, a colleague, we give it to each other. It's probably one of the most important things we can do. So with that said, I'll start with you this time, Vince. What did you do in order to recognize that you had blind spots and then start to work past them? What did you do personally?

Yeah, so what I did was I took a moment of pause and. And I gathered my triad. My number two, my number three person, and I went back and we Just sat and we had an open, reflective conversation about where we were and where we needed to go. And then I had to be very open and honest and ask for some thoughts and opinions about my behavior and my outlook in terms of how to get there and what. What we rested upon was. I needed to really step back and maintain focus in three critical areas. And for me, that was my job, was to create focus for the organization, to provide recognition for the men and women that I was responsible for. And then thirdly, to create an environment, a discipline environment for change, meaning that I needed to make sure that I was there to provide the people the resources and tools that they needed to elevate and to be competent and to achieve our outcomes and keep us focused on our outcomes in our end states. So just stepping back and realigning, getting out of the weeds of the day to day, focus of what I thought was important, helping the organization step back and to keep that vision going, I was able to achieve success and results with the team.

Yeah, that's very interesting. And I know Colleen and Julie, you noticed some of his language. He needed to create a reflective conversation. And our little company, we use the idea of the mirror all the time. And sometimes when we hold up our own mirror, it's cloudy, I can't quite see through it. And you use two trusted allies to help you step through that to another place. So, Colleen, what did you hear Vince say and how did that resonate with you about his sense of the reflection?

I think what resonated with me was this sense of, go away. Sorry. This sense of just. He talked about. He reflected on his current reality. But I heard him say, what are the necessary resources I need to support my team to move them into their desired space. So I think what resonated with me is this sense of, how can I help those people around me to move them forward.

Well, also, that's beautiful. He talked about the necessary discipline to embrace change. And, you know, we've done a little bit of this work when we worked on the idea of relationships and results, that I get kind of stuck in what I do every day, and I will eventually become homeostatic, comfortable. I'll stay inside of a range. When you hold that mirror up and you begin to take the clouds away, you begin to notice, wait a minute, there's something else here. And if I'm really interested in achieving end state, I need to clean up that mirror so I can kind of see what am I doing. And what is the entity that I call the leadership team doing to get to the next space. Thank you. Colleen, what did you hear in Vince's words that struck you? Joe?

I heard that he, although he widened his perspective to do a reflection, he then narrowed again to three specific areas that he really needed to focus on. So instead of just haphazard, what's going? Well, tell me what's going on? He was able to say, okay, these are the three that I really need to pay attention to. And I'm going to. And make sure to talk about those more often.

Yeah. So you made me just think then too. Like when I would wander around places where I was the leader, right. And I would stop, somebody say, how you doing? And they would go, fine. My tendency was to move on. I eventually learned that fine could mean different things. And so I'll use a more G rated use. Okay, so F for frantic. Right. And you know, I for intense. N for neurotic. E emotional. So I'm fine. And once I taught that to the people that I had the privilege of being in, in their. In charge of their care, they would always smile when they told me they were fine. And then I stopped and said, wait a minute, tell me more. How are you doing? So this sense of using conversational leadership, everyday leadership conversation, because anytime you stop somebody anywhere and say, how are you? We need to mean it. If we don't mean it, then it's just going to turn into one of those quick, good, bad, right, wrong, fine on. And we miss those other opportunities to get there. So, Colleen, I'm going to go to you here. So I'm sure that you worked very hard and I thank you for bringing that story up. I know how personal that story is. And how did you help your son widen his aperture so he could see a little bit more about the potential unintended consequences of what he was up to. What did you do specifically? And I'm going to ask Julia and Vince to weigh in at the end because we all have exactly the same story with different names and different substances. Right. So tell me, how did you construct that conversation?

Well, I think after I was exceedingly.

Upset, mad, he is still alive. Right. You didn't kill him, right? He's not dead. Okay, good. Continuing.

I think it was having, to your point, a true authentic conversation, because you mentioned I can say, hey, Cole, how you doing?

Fine.

Oh, awesome.

Yay.

And I run away because I don't want to hear him bring up anything that's going on that now I might have to dig into. And I think sometimes that's how parents are. It's it's awesome. I look at your grades, you're doing fine. Okay. Everything's awesome. Do whatever you want. Because we assume that then their behavior is also, you know, in alignment with their grades. And I'm telling you, that's not necessarily the case.

It's probably never the case, but thank you for that. So, Julie, how did that land on you?

Yeah, I think a lot of times the assumption of everything's great. And also, as a parent, we don't know how to deal with other things that are happening or we knew how we were as teenagers. And so we think if I don't know, then don't ask, don't tell sort of thing. Right. I survived, so I'm sure they'll survive. And so we don't go into it, and we may be the one that they need to talk to.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Like, how to go deeper. Just what Vince was saying. He was getting all these great briefs. Right? Okay, we're good. All is well. Thank you. Pin a rose on me. And then all of a sudden, an outsider comes in and takes that mirror and cleans it up so he could actually see through it. That's really good, Julie. Vince, how about you? How did Colleen's story land on you?

Yeah, so what I didn't really hear was the specifics of how she interacted with her son. I heard her say that she had to calm down and then create that reflection. So I was a little bit curious. Colleen, if you can go back and just tell me what that interaction was with your son, that will really help me shape and clarify my thought. Is that possible?

Absolutely. And I think it's a lot of kind of what your experience was. It was cleaning up the mirror and holding it up to him and saying, what is your vision of success for yourself? If you could look two months down the line, Right? Two months. At the end of this semester, it was going to be summertime. Where do you see yourself? What's your summer look like for you? And I really wanted him to paint a picture of, I'm out with my friends, I'm driving. I have my driver's license. I'm driving the vehicle. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. So then I could say, wow, me too. I want that vision as well. How can I support you in getting there? Because I wanted to connect the fact that his day to day choices were not in alignment and weren't going to bring him forward to that super fun summer driving a car because the trust wasn't going to be there. He needed to put in the work, clean up his mirror and make some different choices.

Beautiful. Okay, Ray, so now that really resonated with me. Thank you, Colleen, for clarifying that. So, yeah, what I heard was your ability to talk to him about his decision, his choices and those impacts and getting him to reflect and then having him to articulate what he wanted to see and what he wanted to achieve. So spot on. I thought that was a really, really good point. I assume that's where you went, but I wanted to clearly understand that.

That's beautiful. Final thoughts on that little piece with Colleen. Julie?

No, I appreciate the example. And I know for 100% when I first started working with Colleen and I share with her some of the crazy stuff that my daughters were doing, she always would remind me to ask them, you know, what is their. Their vision for the future and is their daily actions in alignment with that? And so then we didn't have to be the one to tell them, you have to this or if you don't do this, blah, blah, blah, because it's coming from their mouth. And that was one thing that I definitely learned from Colleen and she always still reminds me to do that. Have you asked them what you think their future is?

So this is really the work of conversational leadership, is about helping somebody identify the journey after they identify the end state and then for us to walk with them for a while so that we can help them see what they can't see. And isn't that they don't want to see it. Right. It's just that they're building some kind of story that things are fine, mom won't care. This won't be a big issue. The boss is happy with me. All of this kind of story creates a kind of passive coping. I know I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. It's not that bad. It's not that big a deal. I can't tell you how many parents would sit in my office and say, oh, all he did was hit him. All he did was something else. I mean, it was on and on and on. And that was a way of a protecting self as parents, right? And not keeping that mirror nice and cloudy about my kid. And then part B, it allowed me to ignore necessary behaviors on my part in order to deal with the mirror, deal with the reflection, make it clear so we can see an end state and a way forward. You guys were great today. Absolutely magnificent. As always. Those of you that are listening, we stop with and we do this all the time. We are constantly trying to learn. Learning for us is everything. We believe that these podcasts themselves that we're producing help each of us learn. We learn collectively, but individually makes us stronger. So I really want you guys to dig in here, really dig in. Tell me, what is a big takeaway from this conversation for you, personally and or professionally? What is a big takeaway from this one? Julie?

Kickin the thing that I'm taking away is being willing to dig deeper beyond just how are you beyond. Tell me what's going great. Beyond looking at things myself and assuming, but to really connect and to stay still and have a deeper conversation to find out what's really going on.

Julie, it's brilliant because if we're not careful, we'll create an illusion of control and an illusion of success. That is really magnificent. Thank you so much. Vince, how about you? What's your biggest takeaway?

Yeah, what's really resonating with me when I'm walking away with is the ability to give myself permission to not have it all figured out. You know, it's okay to know that I don't have it all figured out and to be able to accept that, to visualize that will help me to see things more clearly and help me ultimately get to the end state and the desired outcome.

Are you out?

And I'm out.

I will tell you, Vince, the thing that attracted me to you as a potential client and a member of the JLC team was the way you conduct yourself professionally and personally is as a learning leader. And this work of conversational leadership is for me to get better as a learning leader. But for anybody that we coach or interact with, those who are listening, I want you thinking about your own takeaways from this as we go forward. Colleen, what's your biggest takeaway?

My biggest takeaway is as I think about resilience and strength, I think it's the strength, the inner strength, to clean off my mirror. So I'm truly looking at what's really there. And I think the other piece, at least in my experience with my story of the resilience is asking for help and knowing that it's okay. You don't have to. To Vince's point, you don't have to have all the answers. We have to remember that there are people around us who love us, who care about us, who aren't going to judge us for whatever they found when they looked around or because my son got suspended. So that's. I think that part of resiliency is inner resilience. And cleaning that mirror off and then also stepping up and asking for help and I'm out.

So you just, you know, beautiful, beautiful ending for us. Colleen, to be really resilient requires vulnerability and networks. So who is in my trusted network that I could call up and say, I need to talk to you about something? And who loves us enough, trusts us enough, that they feel they could walk into our space and say, are you sure you want to jump off that cliff? That may not be the best way forward. You have evidence for our audience and for me certainly, and for one another, incredible vulnerability, heartfulness and recognition that it is these relationships among the four of us that allows us to leap back into the game, even when we get knocked down. Thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. Appreciate you listening and using that asset that we call time to spend with us. You can find us on your normal podcast channels of Apple, Spotify and this will also be on our JLC YouTube environment. For more or learn more about us says and this is who we are. We are all executive coaches. We coach ourselves. We coach one another. We coach our clients. Stop by and see us@gojlc.com thank you again. Very grateful for time spent.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversation Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our Events page@gojlc.com.