356 - Great Facilitation Requires Professional Risk with Rob Evans

What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Myriam Hadnes, and with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show is a returning guest, Rob Evans. And actually, this show is a little bit special because I initially recorded it for my new podcast, unprofessionalism. But since Rob is such a master facilitator and we covered a lot of facilitation practice in this conversation, I thought that the Workshops Work crowd will actually appreciate it as much. We speak about the not knowing of a facilitator and to surrender to that, how to deal with the emotional energy in the room, and last but not least, also how we can learn to surrender to the fact that even facilitators are human beings that sometimes simply need to rest. I'm sure you'll enjoy the show. Thanks for listening. Bob, it's so nice to have you back. Welcome.

Thank you.

I'll just start with the invitation for you to share a story when you have been unprofessional.

Is it okay if it's a story in a professional setting when I was somewhat Semi or even unprofessional?

Oh, this would be a beautiful story.

Okay. All right. The year is 1996. I had just moved over to build up the European operations for a US-based consulting company that was focused on total quality management. And shortly after I got there, my boss said to me something like, Rob, we're in some financial difficulties here. If you need any money over there, sell something.

Total—

wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I moved my family to the UK and I'm cut off? Well, not completely cut off, but yeah, you get them, you get the message. All right, okay. So I got an invitation out of the blue to come talk to the engineering group at Lufthansa. A guy has worked with them, had heard about me doing some other things, and they invited me to present TQM with the possibility of being their total quality management consultant. And I went, all right, the odds of this playing out are very small. So basically I said, so you're an airline, right? Okay, you get me a ticket and I'll see you in Hamburg. And so we did. I walk into a room. The 20 guys heading up Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa's engineering group, are seated in the usual U-shaped table. And I come in with my little briefcase full of overheads. Remember overheads? Oh my goodness. I had overheads and a flip chart and a marker, and I do my song and dance, and I'm doing my thing. And I was kind of like lighthearted because it seemed so unlikely. I wanted to get to know these guys. Who are you guys? You run a wonderful airline. You're superior engineers. What's with you? So I do my thing and then they say, Herr Evans, would you please step out of the room? Okay. I'm out in the hall for maybe 10 minutes and they invite me back in. And in that very German way, they're all rapping on the table, which is applauding me.

Lok, lok, lok.

And they said, Herr Evans, we have decided you will be our total quality management consultant. And I just started laughing. I said, okay, I need to ask you a question. Why would a great German airline want to pick an American? You know, I'm an American, right? Why would you pick an American to be your quality consultant? And they said, well, to be honest, we would rather have picked the German. But of all the ones we interviewed, you were the only one who had any fun. Like, I had no idea that was a criteria. And apparently, they didn't either. But there was something about the lightheartedness of it that allowed them to overcome some of their own Bickering. German companies love to bicker. They have their own internal debate about what are we going to do? What should we do? So there was something about the humor that helped them come to an agreement, and weirdly, an agreement about me. And so we did, and I worked all throughout the company. We had a great project, great results, and that. put the company on the map in Europe. And from that, we were able to build out a great company. So I don't know that it was strictly unprofessional, but the, the lightheartedness is certainly not what, what you would expect from a professional interview.

Yeah.

With engineers, with German engineers.

And I would be curious.

What have I got to lose?

Yeah, I would be curious to learn more about that. How conscious you were of the— did you take a conscious risk? Were you aware of the lightheartedness?

Oh yeah. It's hard for me not to be lighthearted. So that is the risk you get when you invite me in there. So is it risky? Yeah. I mean, humor doesn't always work. and cross-cultural humor, it has more of a chance of failing than otherwise. What makes it less of a risk for me— so maybe it's not a risk, maybe we need to find something scarier— but what makes it less of a risk for me is, uh, warmth and heart. Now that alone is unprofessional, um, to come— And not exactly as the, uh, English saying goes, with your heart on your sleeve, but to be willing to be warmly humorous rather than caustically or sarcastically humorous, I think is more of a risk. Sarcasm is safe.

Yeah.

Let's make fun of that guy over there. Oh, okay. But then when is it my turn for you to make fun of me when I'm over there? That's the downside to it. And warm humor is just warm humor. You know, like our conversation. Do they know we have conversations before this starts? Which probably I'm going to like—

You can let them know.

I'm going to break the third wall here and let them know. We had a conversation before we started. And the idea of warmth and heart, I really think is the essence of the human. So if, if, if unprofessional is roughly defined at being more human than otherwise in a professional setting— I just made that up, but that sounds like it's what you're talking about. Are there risks in that? Totally. Absolutely. I mean, because then if it doesn't work or you're rejected, Mm-hmm. it can land a little harder. A little— a bunch of stuff can bounce off the armor. Unless you take the armor off and it bounces off you. And that's just a different deal.

So the lightheartedness, showing a part of yourself that is truly you. And then the rejection is the rejection of you and not the rejection of a professional version of yourself.

Exactly right. It's not the little, the hand in the puppet. It's not the little puppet version that I, that I, uh, would otherwise You know, here, hello, I'm here to talk about total quality. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, the combination of humor and being willing to follow my own curiosity seems somehow unprofessional in as it's mostly defined.

What makes you say that?

Professionals have mastered, well, I don't know. Let's, let's, let's talk about it. Professionals think. They're on the scene because they've mastered some craft or body of knowledge or a technical skill, and they're getting paid for that. So what do you mean you don't know what to do? I'm paying you to know what to do, is the dilemma many consultants find themselves in. And the dilemma consulting finds itself in, and why I love what I do as opposed to that is it's based on curiosity and discovery. What I do is based on curiosity and discovery, which can be very unnerving for a client when I'm so confident we'll find an answer and I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is, but I know together we're going to find that answer. One, because we have to, and two, because we brought the right people together.

Would you say that to a client, that you don't know the answer yet, but you're sure that you'll find it?

Totally. Oh, absolutely. I'd say, look, I don't know the answer. We got to put together a room of people out of which the answer will emerge. I know how to get us there. And I know how to hold the room together when people want to bail because they don't have an answer yet. I can do that. And we'll hold it together long enough to get the answer.

How do clients react to that?

That's a great question. You should probably ask them. They usually still hire me. Which is probably a good thing. They know that I've gotten a lot of people into, into the promised land through this process, into a promised land better than the one they came there to get. And I can put my clients-to-be in touch with clients who will vouch for that.

Mm-hmm.

Along the way, like one client said to me, Rob, your confidence is excruciating.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, I think by that they meant they were semi-panicked because I, I lead large group workshops, Miriam, than your, uh, your listeners. There's 50, 70, 100 people in the room, all on the basis of some individual or group that said, come together to do this seemingly impossible thing. And as one of the top guys at Ford once said to me, and forgive the language, he said, Rob, I'm bringing 90 people together for 4 days. This is a top Ford guy. He got a multi-billion dollar budget. I'm bringing 90 people together for 4 days. If this doesn't work, I'm going to look like a shithead. And I just started to laugh. I said, Carlos, given who you are, If you end up looking like a shithead, you're going to kill me. So we're here together. All right, we're in this together, and we're going to get through this together. And there's at least one or two times where I'm just going to say you got to trust me on this. And you can trust me or not. It's easier if you do. It's easier if you do. And he became a fast friend afterwards. We know we would call each other up just to see how things are going. But it's that element of risk that feels unprofessional to managers who are facing that risk. They would like to manage risk. They feel that's part of their job is managing risk for the company. And they're right. They're right, of course. But sometimes it's risky to manage risk, really manage risk. Playing it safe is not a good way to manage risk in every case.

Mm-hmm.

Doing what we've done. Where do you think those risks came from? They came from the fact that we've done it that way forever. Okay. So to change that, ah, boy, that's a different deal.

Because otherwise, it's funny, if we play it safe, we always have the excuse, I couldn't have known it better because in the past it has worked.

Exactly right. Exactly.

And then we're back at the image of the armor. Then if it, if it lands, it lands on the armor. If I try something that hasn't been tried before, it lands without the armor.

And, uh, 30, 40 years ago, there was a saying in management that IBM sales consultants would use. They would say, ah, my friend, no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Well, it turned out not to be true after a while, but it was a great line at the time. Just go with me, and that manages your professional risk in selling this internally to your organization, which is always a big deal.

Yeah. And what I hear in the, in the story was taking the risk and taking the, your client by the hand and say, okay, we both don't know how to do that and we'll do it anyway.

Something like that, right?

I can still hear this lightheartedness. In there. Yeah. And I would love to understand what you mean by that. It seems like your superpower where you walk into a high-risk situation with a light heart. What do we see or hear Rob do or say when he is performing with a light heart or being with a light heart?

Probably, that's a great, that's a Thank you for that. I think that's exactly right. I don't think you can do lighthearted. Then you're performing, right? And you've got a pretty good nose for when somebody's performing. People are performing all the time. We know when we don't believe it completely, right?

Mm-hmm.

If it's performative. In fact, that's a pejorative now. Uh, it's performative. You're just going through the motions. That the posts people put online are so painfully performative. God, they're almost not worth reading anymore because it's, I'm showing you a version of my life and my work and everything's always great, which is why your podcast is so brilliant and why people tune in.

Mm-hmm.

Because they know It's not like that all the time. They know it's not like the last guy's last LinkedIn post.

Hopefully.

They just know it.

Yeah.

But how do you be what you know? That's the question you're asking. How do I be when I know I actually don't know, but I know how to know. I know how to learn.

Hmm.

And I know how to hold a group together while we learn together what is, uh, in my wife's wonderful phrase, what is longing to happen in this situation. So it's— we, we're kidding each other about always going kind of lofty and woo-woo before. So this is what we talk about before we get online. We say, well, you know, we always go up So this is a little like that because what's longing to happen is tapping into what's really real in a group and in yourself. And what's longing to happen for me is not to be fake. And to when I then hear myself being fake anyway, going, hmm, hmm. Wow, I wonder what that was about. And what's realer? What's What's more real than that? You know, it's not like there's any— there's only one of us. There's only one person. Each of us is like a, like a gem with many different facets. There are many different Robs, many different Myriams, and some are more— I was almost going to say acceptable— expectable in a professional situation.

Mm-hmm.

The others are there. We all know the other— that the The other facets of the person are there. So let's just turn that around and see what kind of light comes through that facet into this situation.

Yeah. And then, and still you used the word fake. So there is a distinction between the different facets of us that are all true. And I think, of course, we are adjusting our language, our being to the context. I think that's part of emotional intelligence or social intelligence. And then there is the code-switching in the maybe almost dangerous sense where it becomes fake.

Yeah, yeah. When you're obviously code-switching and adopting language and adopting a stance and But so, uh, all of that, it becomes, we call it code switching because we can see when people do it. Uh, and we, and we get the inauthenticity of it.

Yeah. And I love that you mentioned that you catch yourself. Maybe this was in the past. I do catch myself, um, usually out of an insecurity. I, there are some podcast episodes that I listen back to and I'm sitting there with excruciating shame.

Ah, ah, no, no, I did that on, oh, and it's, oh, it's out there now.

Because I can hear how I am just performing the smartass. Although, of course, I have no idea what I talk about compared to the person I'm interviewing. And then the question is, is that a part of me or is that fake?

Well, that's a great question. And if it is a part of you, is that okay? Are there any facets that's just not okay? There's some that I'm ashamed of for sure. Okay. What does okay mean? Okay to who? Right?

Yeah.

Okay in this situation? Yeah. There's some things I do that are are not helpful. St. Paul, in one of the letters to one of the churches, said something like— he said it in Aramaic, so I don't know what he said, or Greek, but he said something like, all things are permissible, but not all things are helpful. And a version of that that I like modern days is Suzuki Roshi's, you're perfect just the way you are. And you could use a little work. So that paradox of, that's the paradox of authenticity, I think.

Yes. And while you were speaking, would— no, let me first ask you, what do you mean by the paradox of authenticity?

Well, who's the one that's being authentic? Who's being authentic? Honestly, Myriam, when We were talking about facilitation and another thing. The most powerful lesson I ever got in facilitation was working in a jail, doing a performance in a jail with my teacher, Brother Blue. Now let me show you Brother Blue. Brother Blue is an African-American man, was an African-American man.

Brother Blue, you're showing a picture of an African-American man with a butterfly on his palm.

With a butterfly on his sleeve.

And a very colorful—

Very colorful.

Uniform.

Barefoot.

Barefoot.

We were doing a performance in a prison and I would drum for him. I heard the rhythm in his stories and I was so taken with this guy. I went out and bought a drum, big old tumba drum, and just showed up one day on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would tell stories. And just started drumming with him. And we became good friends. He was actually my spiritual godfather in so many ways. He's the actual godparent to my children. He's passed now. He's gone on to some more blessed realm. Or he came back to be Brother Blue again some other place because what he was here for was help people find their own story. So we're, we're on stage in a prison and it's like all hell is breaking loose because who the hell is this guy? The, the African Americans are going— they were a little embarrassed by this guy dancing around looking like that, telling stories, and they're trying to be so tough. And the white guys are going, what is that white guy doing up on stage with him?

And drawing.

And the Latin American guys, all the Hispanic guys are going, When they kill the white guy, can we have his drum? It's like, and I'm, I'm, uh, just going, what are you doing here, Rob? Did you, why did, what are you, what were you thinking? Did you come to save these people? Well, forget about that. If you're here in some kind of, uh, liberal guilty thing, you're, you're gonna get killed. I mean, you're— Not physically killed. Maybe, but psychologically they're going to rip you apart. I've worked enough in jails to know that's what happens. It's ripping people down if you can, because it's better than being ripped down yourself. And, you know, ripped or rippy, you ripper or rippy, you pick. Oh, that's the only choice? Yeah, ripper. Uh, so that's the choice people make. What happened to me on stage, Miriam, is I felt like, uh, The thought came to me, if you're here for you, you don't have a right to be here, and they have a right to do whatever they want to you. If you're here for some higher purpose, which Brother Blue was, then get out of your own way and just be here. And I felt like I'd lived in England and I'd seen old cowhorn lanterns. So cheaper than glass. So you would make lanterns out of animal horns so that it's— they're translucent. But to really let light out, one of the doors would swing open so you could shine the direct light on whatever it is you wanted to illuminate. Well, that's what I felt happen in me. I felt something happened in my heart that swung open a door. And I felt like there was a light coming through me that wasn't me. And that's okay. And that was a good thing. All I had to do was get out of the way, get Rob out of the way. And so what is really authentic? I think what is really authentic about all of us is that inner light that is not ours. And it is ours. It's in us, but also through us. That's what's really authentic. And anything else is just one of the sides of the lantern, to use another kind of facet metaphor.

Yeah.

But we do have the capacity of getting out of the way and letting light come through us that really warms and illuminates. It's not us. It warms and illuminates Those who are around us. Well, now that's worth doing.

Amen.

So that's all by way of what's authentic. The light is authentic. And anything else we just need to recognize is a form. A lot of spiritual traditions would say an illusion, a dream. Okay, it could be a good dream, it could be a bad dream, but what's really Real is the divinity of all of us.

Hmm.

My, my, my wife's late husband, I went to divinity school with, curiously enough, that's another story, would say God is that which is greater than all and present in each. So God language kind of puts people off. So the divine, the sacred, the, the really real. Is greater than all but present in each. And that's authentic.

So when you pull all the, all the shields, all the protections, all the wounds, all the ego, pull all that back.

Yeah. Which is really hard. I mean, that's a lifetime's work. Yeah.

And then it sounds, and I think that's something that I have come to the conclusion to, that being authentic is the most difficult thing ever.

I know.

Being truly us. Because then we're back to the beginning of your story. That's where you're so vulnerable because every criticism is on us.

Right. And how can, I mean, can you be authentic without feeling you need to be loyal to who you were a second ago?

Ooh.

Do I have to defend who I was yesterday? I'm not even that guy anymore. But we do. I mean, we feel obliged to— we feel we need the continuity of a person, a professional persona, for example.

Yeah.

I can be Rob the Consultant. I can put that on. I can give you chapter and verse. I got a CV up on the web. I got blah, blah, blah, blah. I got a LinkedIn profile. I got all that good stuff. But do I have to be that when I show up? People want to check that out to see if I've shown up anyplace else and they didn't kick me out. Yeah, once or twice they didn't kick me out. Uh, okay. But then I, then do I have to show up like that every time? Hope not.

I, I think I now can put my finger on the lightheartedness. And if I read it correctly, then it comes from this radical self-acceptance.

Of a higher self, right? And the one that was here doing the best he can.

Because I think only when you totally self-accept yourself, and that's what I hear and what you describe, is, okay, I might Maybe who I was a minute ago is not the same person I am today. Trusting the inner light, trusting your intuition. And then you don't have to take yourself so seriously.

Wait, I wish I remembered that more. Send me a copy of this. I may need to watch this sometimes because, you know, I'll wake up and I'll be an absolute worm. I'm like, oh my God, I can't do anything right. I'm out and out and out. Everybody goes through that cycle of up and down and up and down and up and down. And when I say lighthearted, I mean actual light.

Ah, you mean the light as you described it.

It's not just my heart isn't all heavy and weighs. No, it's lighthearted, which is not something I've ever put together before. So thank you very much for that.

So as I understand this lightheartedness, still shows up in all the work you do. And that's—

In my best work. Yeah, in my best work.

What are the factors that might turn, that lead to you turning off the light?

Great. That's a great question.

Or closing the door.

Yeah. For me, often in my work, it's a, it's a sense of professional responsibility. When I feel I'm required to be responsible for something and I don't do it as consciously as I would like, I get cranky or I'm, I'm critical of the work of people around me in ways that don't recognize they're probably doing the best they can that day too. You know, it, I'm sitting here at my desk. It's early in the morning. I'm still being caffeinated. You know, it's good. I just had a hot tub, I had a swim, and then I rushed in to get ready to come here. It's been a good morning and I'm not tired. So here I'm 74 years old and what I discover is working 16-hour days takes a different toll than it did. And it actually took a toll when I started doing it when I was 45. I just could ignore it.

Hmm.

The jet lag gets me harder and longer than it used to. So fatigue is a, is a thing. Managing the physical body, uh, staying in shape, uh, dealing with the natural inevitable degradation of the body that happens over time, no matter what you do, uh, Just accepting that and, and, um, for me, Myriam, factoring that in so that I'm not— you've heard of hangry, where you're angry because you're hungry? Yeah, there's probably a tangry version of that. You're angry because you're tired.

I think new parents can write books about that.

Good point. I mean, you have people who have little— watching this who have infants at home. God bless you. I remember that. I have kids with grandkids. I remember it. And boy, am I glad to turn the grandkids— I love my grandchildren. And I'm not sorry when they go back to their parents because I need a nap.

Yeah. And you chose the word endured. And enduring, endurance is something that is such Highly regarded professionals. We can endure.

The old Timex commercial, takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

What price did you pay for the 16-hour days?

Great question. I'm still probably learning what price I paid. It brought me a— so being able to be physically Uh, I could take a lot of damage physically and still in the moment, let the light come through and be energized by the group and energized by the situation. So extroverts, as an extrovert, maybe that's an extrovert strategy that, uh, allows me to— now when I say be on, it sounds kind of performative, doesn't it?

Mm-hmm.

But on in the sense of turned on and the light coming through when it's required. And then when we're done, base plant, you know, it's like, oh, exhausted. Or even knowing that I need to, and I've been doing this forever, don't tell my clients all the time, but I would set up venues. And when I led the accelerated solutions environments for Capgemini and Uh, Ernst& Young before that, we would always have a secret room in the venues that we built and created. And we, when we could, that would be the nap room where the crews who started at 6:30 in the morning and might go until 11 o'clock at night and then come back in to start at 6:30 could disappear and take a nap during the day.

Why did it have to be secret?

Why indeed? Because we were also pushing our clients. We should have given nap rooms to them too.

How unprofessional.

How unprofessional. How thoughtless of us to give ourselves affordances that we didn't give them.

I thought the other way around. How unprofessional to even think of a nap room, that people might need a nap.

Oh, well, good point. Maybe that's why it was secret. We'd often have big stuffed animals around our centers for various reasons, one of which is they made good pillows when you took them into the nap room. And having a pillow kind of gave it away, you know, it's not good. So, but you could take a stuffed animal in for a while. So your question was, what did the endurance cost me? I think part of what it cost was the fiction that my body didn't have its own requirements. that I might have listened to a little more carefully. And that when one is just gritting through it and enduring it, you kind of turn off the messages from your body, don't you? You just go, I'm sorry, I don't have time for that right now. We've got to design this new module on the fly because the last one didn't get the results we wanted. So we got to do something different than we thought and all that. So it's, Endurance is an override of the body, of messages from the body. Slow down, take a break, sit down. Will you just sit down for a minute? Meditate for 10 minutes, see what happens. Can't. Gotta go. Gotta keep at it. And so the distance from the real— what's authentic? I mean, what's most authentic is not I think, therefore I am. It's I've got a body, therefore I am. Hmm. And curiously, most of our brain is designed to run our body. According to Michael Pollan and his new book on consciousness, it reminds us most of the brain, it's all about getting— keeping the body going. Well, where does the thinking happen? Good question. Interesting question. Not clear yet. Not clear yet. Do we think it all happens inside the skull? Not really. Not anymore.

The body knows it all.

The body knows the score. That's right. The body keeps the score.

Yeah.

The body knows, then the emotions perceive, and finally the brain comes along and makes sense out of it. The brain is always the last to know.

How present are emotions in your work and the work that you do?

Yeah, they're very present. And I I would put it, I would frame it a little differently and not just emotions, but energy. The energy of the room is the emotions of the room, the aggregate average emotions of the room. But managing the emotions of the room is a big deal because that's how people change. People change because you talk them into it. No, they don't. People change because they have an experience, an emotional experience But change is necessary and possible.

And why is it that it's easier to communicate about energy than about the accumulated emotions in the room?

Because it's so unprofessional. Are you kidding? To talk about the emotions of a company? Why, you can talk about the energy and it sounds vaguely scientific. Unless you're from California, and then it sounds, well, that's pretty woo-woo, Rob. You're from Marin County, aren't you? Oh, of course he's talking about energy. It's a cloak in a way, but it's also more than just the emotions. If emotions are, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling bad, or I'm angry, I'm happy, those are emotions. But there's something at a more fundamental level than the emotional flip show.

Hmm.

Emotions are constant. They're fleeting in a way. And there's something more substantial about energy that are maybe the source of all emotions reflect the body's energy of one kind or another.

Emotion being energy in motion.

Energy in motion. That's very good. I like that. I might use that. May I use that? I'll give you full credit.

I didn't invent it.

Well, yeah, I know, but I didn't hear it from whoever did. I heard it from you. So I'm giving You credit. You're going to go in my book of black quotes, my black book of quotes. Um, you want to know what you're coming after?

Yes, please.

You're going after a great wealthy guy, successful organizer, says the success of an intervention depends on the inner state of the intervener.

Hmm.

That's good.

Somehow related.

I know. So this is, this is, this, you came right at the right time. Wisa Hesser said, if I'm not in on the takeoff, don't expect me on the landing.

Oh.

That's good, right?

Yeah, beautiful.

And then my friend William Muri said, if it's predictable, it's preventable. He's talking about international conflict, but it works all sorts of places. If it's predictable, it's preventable. Yes.

Yes.

And you get, and next comes Myriam. Emotion is energy in motion.

I could go on and on there. I still have a very long list of topics that we haven't even touched upon that I would be very curious. I hope that you'll be back.

You touch on anything and I go off and I go off on something.

But it's beautiful. And I would like to close with a question. What is an unprofessional advice that you would Give to the listeners?

Well, that has something to do with fun. I would put advice about fun in a bunch of different ways. One of our axioms in the Design Shop world that Matt and Gail Taylor came up with is, if you can't have fun with the problem, you'll never solve it. And I would use that, I would put that axiom out there and say, look, we're not here to have fun, but are you willing to have some fun? And I'll do it in a kind of a teasing way and invite them to think about that. So if you can't have fun with the problem, you'll never solve it. Um, and my wife Carolyn Buckloose, who invented something called the Decade Game, as one of her axioms is, if you're not having fun, it's because you're playing somebody else's game. That's good too, huh? So have fun. Try having fun. Try having a little more fun. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much fun did you have yesterday?

Okay.

What would it take to increase by 1 point today? How could you have just a little more fun today? You don't want to push it. You know, you don't want to burn out the system having too much fun. But how could you increase? How could you increase your level of fun just a little bit?

Yeah. And by adding, by making it a little bit of our own game.

By asking, whose game am I playing here?

Yeah.

See, that's what I love about you. That's why you're doing this. I mean, you're doing this podcast for all kinds of reasons, but one of the things I take as a good reason to do this podcast is you invite us to remember that whatever we think, professional means, it's probably somebody else's game.

Yes.

Probably somebody else's game. What if it were your game? What would that be like? Wouldn't that be cool?

It beautifully connects back to the story with which you started. Hmm.

How do you see that connection?

That you walked into the room, you didn't expect to get the job. You were lighthearted, with an open heart, but also with the fun, having fun with it, joy with it. Um, since you didn't expect anything from them, you were playing your own game.

Good point.

And this left such an impression that they chose you over everyone else, over the German engineers.

Who, who knew? As they say, who knew?

And what I find the most remarkable in that is That they even admitted it.

They did.

They didn't find all of the reasons why you would outperform the others. It was like, no, you, you bring fun.

Yeah. Turns out they were fun too. They might not have admitted that either at the time.

You are. It's always, it's always a blessing to be in conversation with you.

Well, I feel the same way, Myriam, and I know that you're Your viewers feel the same way about you and your persistence, your insistence on moving to conversations that matter. And that's why I love talking with you, because I feel like we don't— it sounds like we don't have fun. We don't mess around, Myriam. We get right to the, the, the funnest stuff. And what— but, and this, by that I mean, uh, the most true stuff.

There's a—

you have a quality and you bring a quality to your conversations that invites the people you're talking with to really step up to what's true for them and cut the BS. I really appreciate that about you.

Means a lot.

Until next time.

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