Becoming You: The Process Continues (Part 2) How Knowing What You’re Good At Changes Everything

Okay, if you're in a car, what I'm about to say is not for you. What I'm about to say is for everyone except for the people who are driving. And if you are driving while you're listening to this podcast, by the way. Hi. Thank you. But just imagine doing the instructions that I am about to impart. Everyone else hear the instructions, grab a pen or a pencil, grab a piece of paper. And now write your name with your non dominant hand. That is, take the pen out of your dominant hand, put it in your non dominant hand and write your name. Just try it. It's awful. It's awful, isn't it? I mean, I don't even have to be watching you and I know it's incredibly awkward and you're groaning and you don't like it. And look, you could practice it for five years. It's gonna look really ugly if you manage to get your whole name out. You could practice it for five years and eventually you'd get okay at it. But it's never gonna look like how it looks right now. If you put that pen in your dominant hand again for everybody who's not driving or changing a baby or washing dishes or whatever, put that pen in your dominant hand and now sign your name. And that's easy peasy. And it feels very natural because when you sign anything with your dominant hand, you are leaning into your hard wiring. You're operationalizing a skill that you were born with, which hand you should write with. All right. It's a metaphor. Alert. Aptitudes are the dominant hands of your brain. Aptitudes are the skills that you were born with and the ones that you should be leaning into with your work and your career. And aptitudes are our fun, fabulous topic today on part two of a three part series here on Becoming youg, where we are actually doing the becoming you process step by step with two fabulous human beings. Fabulous is today's words. Fabulous human beings, both becoming you alumni here in our studio, Kristin and Max. And you met them last week when we excavated their values. And now we're going to excavate their aptitudes. Theirs and yours. Even the people driving. I am your host, Susie Welch. I'm thrilled that you're here. And this is becoming you. The show where every single week we travel the journey to discover your very special, very wonderful and very important purpose. All right, ready?

We are ready.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to becoming you. Let us first say hello to our guests, Kristen and Max. Hi, Kristen, how are you?

Hi. Good.

And also we've got with us. Max, how are you? Fine. Very happy to see you. Okay, let's just backtrack and then we will go locomotive life forward and tell us a little bit about yourselves. Just briefly recap who you are, how you found becoming you. What were you looking for? Kristin, we'll start with you.

My name is Kristin Bedard Johnson. I grew up in Arkansas and I came to New York because I was an actress and I had landed this national tour, the tour of Greece. And I played Jan with Frankie Avalon. And I was like, oh, I'm an actress. Everyone's from New York. I'm going to move to New York. And I just was. I mean, I was so green, I just was eaten alive. And I met my husband. I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna live here forever because he is the man of my dreams. And I ended up in a temp job in advertising. And so I thought, well, I'm not bad at this. So I guess this is what I'm gonna do.

You stayed on that conveyor belt. Oh, we do. Yes, we do. Then some children came along.

Yeah, two kids. Oh, yeah, that's an important part.

And you stayed in that lane.

I've stayed in that lane. Cause I was just grateful growing up. Everyone's like, you're an artist and you're not capable of anything else. And so I just felt so lucky that I found a career and I could make money. And we have a 13 year old daughter and a 9 year old son.

But something called you to the becoming you process. And it must have been a feeling of incompleteness or dissatisfaction. You took it, and on the NYU campus, I teach it in three day and one day open enrollment sessions. We call these the workshops, the intensives. Something landed you there. What was it?

So there was a joy and a relief of I am capable of something else except painting and acting. And then that would subside, but then I would be given a bigger job and a bigger title. And I thought, well, now I should be grateful. Now this is what success looks like. And then I got to the point where I was a partner at a production company. We made it an award winning company. I was making great money and I still felt like I just wasn't in the right place. That's when I realized I need answers. To what? I don't know.

You still hadn't found what I'm looking for. Okay, all the youngsters don't know that that is a U2 song. Did you know that?

Max, do you want me to answer honestly?

Or no, please answer honestly.

I did not know that.

Oh, my God. That's like an absolute anthem. Okay, but I think it maybe was made before you were born, but.

Okay, Max, let's not litigate that because I don't think any of us want to know that answer.

Okay. No, but. Ok. How old are you, Max? Let's start there. Let's start there.

So I'm 25.

Okay. Wow.

I'm turning 26 on the 25th of this month, if that makes you feel any better.

I was making really poor decisions when I was 25.

All right, so you grew up in Detroit and you're. You have an amazing story. You are a very young entrepreneur. You ended up on Shark Tank. You got your company funded on Shark Tank. Take us from there to landing in my classroom at NYU Stern School of Business. Go ahead.

That's exactly right. So I got a deal on Shark Tank with Mark Cuban, which is a remarkable learning experience.

And you were just a kid then.

I mean, Yeah, I was 18 when I, I think 18. I filmed 19 when it aired, like really young.

Yeah.

By the time I was 20, it was a 5 year old mature company with significant revenue and we were able to sell it. And I was very fortunate in May of 2020, like right after the pandemic hit, to sell the company to another Shark Tank brand. And I sit back and I'm like, oh, look, I have really nothing going on. There's nothing to do with. I have always been focused on this company and now without the company, I have to kind of figure out who I am. And I spent a lot of time on that. And I think I'll focus on the professional side of it, which is that I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

But you ended up in business school.

I ended up in business school. So, like, fast forward, graduate college, go to a company didn't feel right. Go to another company didn't feel right. Get an mba, Start another company. Starting the next company didn't feel right. And at this point, I have worked jobs that I didn't enjoy. I started another company that I didn't enjoy. And when I say didn't enjoy, I mean they were bad. It was not a good situation. And I was like, this can't be right. I'm a hard worker. I'm a smart person. I have to be able to figure out what I'm going to do and what.

Lo and behold, there's a class that literally says, come here, young youth person. And we will help you figure out what to do.

That's exactly right.

You know, one thing I loved about you, Max, is that you were one of those students who always sat in the first or second row, and you nodded a lot when I was speaking. Okay. You know, you got your A and everything like that, but you deserved it. But I love a student who looks me right in the eye. It was hard for you, Kristen, to be looking me in the eye because you were crying so hard all the way through.

I cried a lot.

It's true.

There was so many epiphanies.

All right, to summarize, you both landed in Becoming youg because you still hadn't found what you were looking for. We're not gonna sing again. And last week, we talked about the first part of the Becoming youg process, which is to identify your values. And you both went through that process. I'm gonna highly recommend, if you haven't heard that episode, to go back and listen to it. And you went through a journey to discover what really mattered to you and how close you were to living those values. Values being the deeply held beliefs and motivations that we have in our heart, in our soul, and our mind about how we want to live. But listen up. One of the most important things about the Becoming you process is it does not tell you to go do what your values are telling you to do. But when it comes to careers, if it was just values, everybody would be chasing exactly what they wanted to do. But there's a small factor you must take into account, and that is what you're good at in becoming you. We test for aptitudes four ways, and we're going to go through each one of those tests and your results, and they're described in the book, if you want to take them yourself. The first test we take is called YouScience. You can take it online@youscience.com I have absolutely no financial arrangement with this company. I think it's an incredibly good aptitude test. I will tell you that it costs $40 and. And that's not in everyone's budget. And I get it in my book. I have sort of a version of it that's free, but if you can afford it, it's really worth it. And here's the underlying premise, just to remind you that social scientists have identified eight significant cognitive aptitudes. They're really the software that's preloaded into your brain. And a really good example of this is whether you're a generalist or a specialist. A generalist is a person who wants to know a Little bit about everything. And a specialist wants to dig very, very deeply into topics. And look, it doesn't it make sense that if you're a generalist, certain kind of work is very relevant to you, and if you're a specialist, other kinds. And what's really hard is when you have a specialist's wiring and you're put in a generalist's job or vice versa. And you both took this test, you found out where you were on the eight cognitive aptitudes. Here's how I think about it. When you find out your cognitive aptitudes, it is not necessarily saying to you go and do work that meets your needs as a specialist. It does two other things. It says the work that you're called to and the work that your values drive you towards doesn't match your aptitudes. It's almost more of a screen. Okay. And the other thing about what you find out about your aptitudes is if you're at a job and the job is requiring you to be a specialist, and it's not making you very happy because you're a generalist, you can ask for sort of a transfer to do work that's more generalist versus specialist. But what I really want to do here is just introduce the concept even that some of us don't even know, and I probably didn't know until too late in my life, is that we are pre wired with certain cognitive proclivities. They're pretty set scientists, social scientists, believe by age 15. And it's really good to know yours because it explains a lot about kind of work that's easy to you and harder to you. In youscience, Kristen, we found out that you're an extrovert. That's introversion. And extroversion is a cognitive aptitude. What a surprise that you're an extrovert.

You guys surprised me.

I know. Max, you're also an extrovert.

Shocker.

Yeah, shocker for all of us. And then you're both future focusers, meaning that if you're going to run a marathon, you think about the whole race. I'm just using this as a metaphor, not that you're running marathons. You think about the whole race and you sort of have a strategy for the whole race, whereas present focusers are kind of planning it out mile by mile, and they think, I'm going to think about the next mile when I get through the first mile. I don't want to run through all of these because there's a lot of them. Kristen, you're a specialist, Max. You're a generalist. Any. Did this make sense to you when you heard it?

100%, absolutely.

Yep. And it's a good thing to think about with your work, you know, and in fact, I think you are in work. You were in work, at least that was really specialist focused.

Yes.

Still. And that's maybe why you were so good at it, because you were really good at it.

Yes.

She made television commercials. Okay, what was your best television commercial?

Oh, Farmer's dog. It was nominated for an Emmy.

Oh.

It made everybody cry.

Oh.

And actually, so we might be jumping ahead, but learning that I'm a sequential thinker.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Changed my life.

How so? Oh, you're both sequential thinkers, by the way. Let me just explain what sequential thinking is to our listeners, because we all say, speak the language of becoming you. One of the cognitive wiring. One of the cognitive aptitudes is a continuum, and it's called sequential reasoning. That's the umbrella name for it. And some people are sequential thinkers. They have a very linear way of putting together a lot of different information. And their minds are like filing cabinets, almost automated. They can take a lot of information. They can say, this is the way we have to do it. I am to solve this problem in my head and. And in some work, it's incredibly necessary to have it. Okay. And at the other end of the continuum in this cognitive aptitude area is what's called a person who's a process supporter. And that's a person who tries to keep. Who likes processes that are already set. They don't want to figure out how to do things. They're so much better at just once processes are set, keeping them going as they're going. And look, there's no better or worse. Why don't you go ahead and explain what you found out about sequential thinkers.

Learning I was a sequential thinker changed my life when it came to that commercial. Supporting my director. Understanding that there is a linear way that we need to be sharing this story in order to invite the audience in was something that was my specific way of contributing to the commercial.

It came so naturally to you.

So naturally. Yeah, but people will tell you who you are and you believe them. And I was a happy, carefree, extroverted person. But when it came to a certain way of doing things, I would end up in conflict sometimes because people are like, no, no, no, that's not who you are. We need you to continue to be this thing. But I actually scored very high in sequential thinking. And it is the thing that I find incredible joy in. And so when that was discovered, it was like, I didn't even know that sequential thinking was a thing.

That's right.

So when that was laid in front of me, it just. I was so delighted to see myself.

There I am.

There I am. And I understood why I was of value.

That's fantastic. We'll have more with our wonderful guests, Max and Kristin in just a moment. This Is Becoming youg.

Hello, again. This is Suzy Welch, and this is Becoming youg. This week, we're learning about the journey of two Becoming youg Alumni, Kristin and Max. Max, you're a brainstormer. So on this continuum, Brainstormer. This is somebody who just has a lot of ideas. They come up with ideas very, very quickly, but they also have low ego attachment to those ideas. They don't care if somebody says that's a dumb idea. You just keep on going with your ideas. And at the other end of the continuum is where you were, Kristen, which is, as an idea contributor, a person who gives birth to an idea, and you like to think about it, you like to ponder it, and then you will share it, but you're not spouting ideas. And different kind of work needs different kind of brains. It's really hard, for instance, to be a social media manager and be an idea contributor, because your currency of your job is just to have idea after idea after idea to be an ideator. So.

So if you want to know why this makes sense to me, I think we have been in this. We've now, I mean, been recording two or three times.

Yeah.

And every time I've been in here, I've been sitting and looking around the room like, suzy, you should do this podcast. You should do this video. I've been giving you all these suggestions.

I know. We've noticed, Max, for which I have.

No stake, by the way, to be very clear. Like, absolutely zero steak. And I then, like, crawl back that night. I'm laying in bed asleep, but I'm like, oh, my God, the producers must think I'm insane. Telling them to do this episode and this episode and this. And even in class. Like, we were sitting in class. And he's like, does anybody have any recommendations for.

Yeah, I could always count on you coming in.

And my hand would shoot, shoot up. And I was like, susie, I know exactly what you should do. I have this idea and this idea and this idea.

Right. And that's perfect for some work and it's perfect for some people because I'm also that way. But there are Other kinds of work, where if you're that in a company that really just values everybody having laying one good egg a year, it's countercultural. And so it is about finding the work. That's right. All right, so this is the first thing we test. We test your cognitive aptitudes. You both found out a lot about yourself. Were there any surprises?

Sequential thinking?

Yeah, these. But it surprised you in that. It explains me.

It explains me. I didn't even know that that was something to understand about yourself.

Well, it's just like values, right? We talk about values, and one of the big surprises about values is they exist, okay? Because most of the biggest thing about values is people think they're virtues. But then you get to aptitudes, and people are like, oh, wait, like, I've got certain intellectual proclivities. They tend to think with aptitudes that it's all learned. Okay? And some of it is learned, but those are skills and their expertise. Some stuff we're just wired to do. In many ways, it's easier when you have an aptitude that the eye can see. Like, that kid's just super good at soccer.

But you know what this is, I think something interesting, and it's something that really stood out to me in becoming you, is that we learn so much about ourselves when we're kids. When we're in elementary school, somebody's like, oh, you're really good at this. You're really good at that. You learn all these things about yourself, and then for some reason, at some point, you just stop. You just stop learning new things about yourself. Like you fall into these buckets that you establish in 8th, 9th, 10th grade.

Right? Right. Look, I'll tell you why you stop, okay? You stop because of the Four Horsemen. Please, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go listen to the podcast episode on the Four Horsemen. These are the things that stop us from living. Our values, expectations of your parents and society. Expedients. It's just easier. Events, life happens, and economic security, the desire to make sure you can pay the rent. But let's move on from our cognitive aptitudes, which are incredibly important to understand. Another way that we understand our aptitudes is we take a test called the Enneagram, which is a personality type indicator. I don't talk a lot about the Enneagram on the podcast. I love the Enneagram. I teach it to all my students. And I don't write about it in the book because I think Enneagram is a very difficult Thing to do, not facilitated. When my students learn about Enneagram, they take the test, which you can take online. There's a good version of it for $14. Make sure you use a version that's called the R H E T I version. But the problem is it gives you three personality types you might be. And then you have to do a lot of digging to find out which one you actually are. And I think that's fine for a classroom, but in general, you can be mistyped. And I think the. The percentage is very high that like 80% of the people are mistyped with Enneagram the first time they take it. But let me say this about the Enneagram. It is ancient. The first use of it was. Has been traced back to Assyrian times. It has then since been scientifically validated. It was kind of adopted by Latin American academics in the 50s. I then traveled up to Berkeley and then went over to Harvard, where a bunch of academics got really excited about it. I like the Enneagram so much that the first academic conference on enneagram since 1990 is going to take place at NYU at the initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, of which I'm the director. That's how much I like the Enneagram. But let me say this as an umbrella statement about the Enneagram. It helps you understand your personality. And that's the key thing. We must know our personality because it is one of our aptitudes. And the reason why I say that is you can be fantastic at a job because of your personality, and you can stink at a job because of your personality. And the Enneagram is a way to help you understand your personality. And the beautiful thing about it is it tells you about your personality when you're very, very good, when you're healthy, okay? When you're. And I mean emotionally healthy. It tells you how your personality type kind of starts to fall apart and present itself when you're stressed. And then it tells you what that personality type looks like when you're in your destructive mode, like when things really stink. And for this alone, I do think that if you're listening to this, you're curious about your personality. You should take the Enneagram. I'll say one other thing about personality. Your personality is not the words you use to describe yourself. This is one of the hardest lessons I talk to my students about. I'm sure you both recall me saying this because I get very somber and my voice gets very low. And I want you to hear it. I want you to hear that Your personality is not necessarily what you say it is. I'm kind, I'm compassionate, I'm a good listener, I'm loyal. Well, maybe you are. But your personality is how the world experiences you. And for that reason, one of the aptitudes that we take as part of the becoming you methodology is a test that solicits and aggregates anonymous feedback from the world about how it experiences you. Max, you went through it with a product called the lmap, which is a very expensive product. We do it because NYU helps us foot the bill for our students and it takes five weeks. And, Kristen, you went through it using a tool that I invented that's incredibly inexpensive and cheap, which I created. It's called Pi360. I created it because Lmap, which is an excellent tool, is simply too expensive for most people. The purpose of both of these tools is the same, which is to find out about the difference between who you think you are, personality wise and what the world tells you. So what did you both find out from the different tests you took? Max, we'll start with you. What was your big takeaway? How did you feel the day you got your results back? What do you remember?

So when you were telling us about the LMAP and you were teaching it, you said, you know what? For sure, I'm going to have to get on the phone for three or four of you and call you and say you're about to get really horrible feedback. And the whole time I was sitting there, I was going, it's gonna be me. It's gonna be me. I'm gonna be. It's gonna be 11 o' clock at night. I'm gonna be laying in bed and the phone's gonna ring and it's gonna be, hi, Max, this is Susie Welch, and it's gonna be you telling me very politely at 11 o' clock at night that everyone in my life hates me. Fortunately, that was not the case.

It was so not the case. And let me just back up and say here.

So positive. And it was so positive and glowing. I think that so much of it was constructive and helpful and made me feel actually really validated in a lot of sense.

The LNAP evaluates you on 13 different personality dimensions.

Some number of students who rate themselves incredibly highly on almost all of the dimensions. And then their results come in again, they're anonymous, and they're aggregated from usually between 12 and 20 former employers and colleagues and whatever you can send out to family members if you want as well. And they get A message that's extremely difficult. And those students, I call them personally beforehand because I don't want them to be in the classroom getting these results. And I'm sorry that you got scared. Your results generally said that said very positive things about you. I don't know how recently it has been that you looked at your results. I looked at them this morning. I would say that one thing, that the people who rated you did not resoundingly applaud your level of collaboration.

Yeah, that's probably so. Look, I think that that.

Sorry to remind you of it, but I mean, I think that you got a wonderful review, Max. You got a wonderful review, Max. Okay.

But I mean, by the way, I'm here voluntarily of my own volition. Don't. I can walk out right now. I'm just kidding. No, I actually think this is a really great point. And it's something that tied back to before, which was the sequential thinking piece.

Yeah.

Which was that I need to go through step one, step two, step three, step four in my mind to understand how we arrive at a conclusion.

Right.

And I will do that so incredibly fast. Arrive at the conclusion of it and then say, susie, I have an idea. This is what it is. And you'll be like, stop. Yeah, walk me through it. Why?

This is why it's really good. If somebody was to ask you beforehand what your personality was, you probably would have said, I'm very collaborative. And the feedback basically says, people are not experiencing you that way. Let's shift to Kristen. Do you remember the surprises, if any, that you had when you got your feedback? Now, you took a tool that looked at how well you got along with people. P. That's the P and P. How original your ideas are. That's I. And then how well you get things done. That's E. Execution.

Yeah. I thought I had pretty good ideas and that aligned with the feedback. I thought I could probably have improvement with how I execute it. And people actually thought I did better at executing than I actually thought I did. And I thought I am amazing with people. And I scored lower.

This is what I mean about the gap between what we think about ourselves. You know, this is the self awareness gap. You actually get a score on the Pi360. And what your self awareness is. Self awareness is the work of our life. And it's. You know, so much literature is about this moment where we find out how the world is experiencing us and the becoming you process. I hate to use this word, but it's true. It demands you look in the face of what people think you're good at and what you're bad at in terms of your personality, not just your cognitive aptitudes, but also your emotional aptitudes. Let's go to the fourth test that looks at your aptitudes and becoming you. And that is what we call the Career Traits Compass, which very simply looks at how much of a leader you are. And we live in a society and a culture where the imperative is be a leader. Little Johnny goes off to kindergarten. And remember, as a parent. Kristin. Oh, if the teacher tells you your kid's a leader, you go, God done good, right? Everybody's supposed to be a leader. Leader, leader. Some people are, A, not cut out to be leaders, and B, just don't want to be leaders. I'm so frustrated by the fact that everybody is shoved into saying, I want to be a leader, where companies could not exist unless there were followers and individual contributors. And so I created the career Traits Compass, which, again, you can get my website. It's just go there and look in resources and look for the Career traits Compass. And what it does is it says there's four basic groups of personality traits, slash aptitudes, emotional aptitudes that make you more of a leader than an individual contributor. And it asks you to go through. It takes about 10, 15 minutes to take the test, and you get a leadership quotient score. There's no judgment in this. Not everyone should be a leader. I will refer here to an incredible story about my son Marcus. He was a very good swimmer, and of course, I really wanted him to get into college. And so very early on, I started telling him he had to become captain of the swimming team. That was how we were going to do it. Swimming fast was not enough. He had to become captain of the team. This is how we had gotten Roscoe into college, and this is how we were going to get him into college. And he kind of blew me off. He didn't look very happy, but he was generally kind of glum every time I came at him about sports. And one day he came home from practice, and I said, did you do x, y, and Z? Basically what I was asking him, did you suck up to the coach? Okay. Like, he did all sorts of things. And he looked at me and he said, you know, mom, I don't want to be a leader. I don't want to be captain. I don't want the responsibility. I just want to swim as fast as I can. And I felt like I had failed as a parent. I've come a long way since then. And now I really believe the truth, which is some of us are individual contributors and some of us are leaders. And it's based on these personality traits. Well, I'm here to report that both of you scored very highly on this test. This is a hard test. And anybody who gets over certain percentage of the career trades compass has got very strong leadership, either potential or they're already presenting as leaders. And you both were very, very high on this. Let me ask you for your reactions to your leadership scores, Kristen.

I felt like it was accurate.

Do you want to be a leader?

I do not want to own my own company. I like being a leader within a company.

This would tell me you're sort of a natural leader and you have some leadership. But you're saying, I don't really want to be that much of a leader.

I want to be a niche leader.

Okay.

I want to have my space that I'm good at.

Yes.

But I don't want to run everything.

A lot of people. And you know what, your score would just basically say you can do whatever you want. If you want to be a niche leader, you can be Max. You also got a very high leadership score and you want to be a leader.

I do want to be a leader badly. I actually find being an individual contributor to be.

Like considerably less fulfilling than working with other people in a collaborative way and leading them. And I think that that's just, you know, ties into this. But I really want to do it and I think that it's.

Well, these are good news. This is both good news for you. I want to. Just quickly, before we move on and wrap this up, I want to just talk about the four bundles of traits that go into that are tested. They correspond to the coordinates of a compass. So let's start with the north coordinate and it's called nerve. And nerve is comprised of some traits. One of them is stamina, your mental and physical stamina. The other is radical candor, your ability to give hard messages from a place that does not hurt people. That's really, really hard. And finally, edge, the ability to make yes or no decisions before your back is up against the wall. So that's the first one, nerve. The second one is soundness. And that is comprised of positive energy, which you both are oozing. Self awareness. Very important to be a leader, to be self aware. Accountability. And that means you do what you say you're gonna do. You both are very high on that. And. And resilience. Resilience is really important as a leader because when you're a leader, not only look, everybody gets kicked down. Even individual contributors have failures. The problem is that when you're a leader, the whole world is watching. And so you need a lot of resilience for that. We're going around the compass here. I know we went east, we went north and then south to soundness. Now let's go east to E. And that's elasticity. That's comprised of your adaptability, your ability to learn new stuff, constantly upgrades skills and understand what skills are needed. And also what I call irregular relationships. Your ability to have meaningful relationships with people who are not like you. And when you're an individual contributor, you can be in a group and be with people just like you and be surrounded with people just like you. But if you are a leader, you have to have a comfort with relationships. People up and down the ladder, in and out of your company. And so you need a high. There's a higher demand for you to have a comfort with your, what I call irregular relationships. And finally, we're going to the W, the west. And that's wonderment. Part of that is just sheer curiosity. Very important in this economy to be curious because there's a lot of questions you got to answer. But the other is currency. And that's how up to date you are on events and trends and staying current. I always say your currency. How current you are is your currency. Your worth. Clever. Your currency is your currency. Did the career trades compass ring true to you? Just as a way of thinking about leadership.

So I'm sitting here thinking, and I actually want to go back on my do I want to be a leader? The answer is yes. And I'm a mom to two kids with special needs and my husband owns his own Broadway production company. And so I also have to take my values into account of that. And so I'm specific about how I want my leadership to be. That also fits into the rest of my life.

Yes, that's the beauty of the method, is that it all eventually has to overlap and fit together.

So that feels more honest.

Okay, Max.

So one of the components of nerve which really stood out to me is edge, which is, you know, the ability to make yes or no decisions. And I think that I've always been very quick with decision making.

Right.

And tying back to what you said about sometimes being perceived as non collaborative. This clicked literally an hour ago as we were talking about this, which is that I will make a decision within five minutes and I will have thought through every possible contingency, every situation at least I'll think I have.

Right, right.

And I'll.

There's some self awareness. I love that. I love that.

Truth is, I probably haven't, but I'll.

Oh, more self awareness. It's popping out all over the place.

I will then say, we're gonna do this right, and people will be like, whoa, why are you steamrolling over us? I'm like, I'm not steamrolling. I just had this idea. You can say no to the idea, you can push back at me. But like my level of collaboration I expect from people is them to have the same. I'm sure this is like this. I want them to push as hard as I'm pushing.

You want them to have the same edge as you are. And one of the great things, let's end here with this thought. You've allowed me to just come to this absolute, very important thought about this, which is that becoming you is about painting a self portrait of yourself standing still. You find out your values, you find out your aptitudes. Next week we're going to talk about your economically viable interest and we're going to put it all together. But you find out this stuff about you, but you guess what the best part is? It allows you to understand that stuff about other people. The minute you know your aptitudes and then you're sort of having trouble working with someone, you say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Maybe the problem is I am being my sequential thinker self and they're being their process supporter self. I mean, it gives you so much compassionate self awareness, all understanding your values and your aptitudes and your interests, but it gives you compassionate awareness and of others. The minute you get why you're acting the way you are with your personality type or your brain type or a certain value, you can start to open your aperture to why people are acting the way they are. And I just think that, you know, the bigger purpose of becoming you is just people living more harmoniously. And this really plays out in values. You know, for many people, the moment they realize that somebody they love is not a workaholic but has high work centrism and they simply have lower work centrism and there's no right or wrong is the same equivalent over in the aptitudes. Part of the becoming you process is when you realize you're a generalist and you keep locking horns with a specialist or you're a brainstormer and you keep just, you keep on bumping into somebody who's an IGEO contributor but what we need to do is respect that we're all loaded in different ways and we make up a beautiful mosaic together. And I've got to believe, correct me if I'm wrong, did that happen for you when you went through the process? Did you understand other people?

Kristen, what you've talked about becoming you is about learning a language. And oh my gosh, I'm going to start crying. Please and please stop.

And it's not only a language for yourself, but a language of understanding others. And it eliminates so much conflict to be able to speak this language. And it allows everybody to have empathy for each other.

I one time actually had an executive in Washington, D.C. go through the whole Becoming youg process. I was teaching becoming youg at NYU's Washington campus, and I had her do it so that she could come in and I could do a live Becoming youg with her in front of my class. The minute she went through it, she had her entire executive team go through it because she was like, I can't keep this information to myself. There's a great philosopher, Wittgenstein, and believe me, it's not like I'm reading him. But when I was guest teaching at Stanford, a student came up to me and she said, it's like that Wittgenstein quote, the limits of my language are the limits of my world. And once we have the language for ourselves, we have it for the world. And that is a beautiful thing. And I think you both experienced that. All right, this is wonderful. Thank you so much, Max and Kristin, for going through aptitude. Such an important part of the Becoming you universe and what we do. And I'm excited that you're going to be joining us for one more session where we're going to talk about the last part of the Becoming you process and put it all together. We're going to hear the ends of your stories. One of the great joys of being in Becoming youg is being a teacher of it is I get to go along on these stories and they're all so beautiful and I appreciate you so much. That's it for today. Please come back next week. Thank you for staying with us this week. This is Becoming youg.

Becoming youg is produced by Jessie Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muskan Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Elisa Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul, and Tanya Jogi. I'm your host, Susie Welch. And this is Becoming you.