Being Better Leaders (Jerry Colonna)
Listen now (54 mins) | "Human beings trigger other human beings, right? My teacher and friend, Parker Palmer, likes to say, riffing on Socrates, 'the unexamined life may not be worth living,' but..."
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Jerry Colonna is the founder of Reboot and one of the most sought after CEO coaches in the world. Before he began coaching executives, Jerry was a burnt out VC, convinced that there must be a better way to impact the world—and also convinced that if he could influence the upper reaches of corporate structures, if he could help leaders heal, he could vastly improve the lives of all the employees. After all, he had observed the ripple effect of unhealed emotional wounds being taken out on other people—specifically people with less power. This is the focus of Jerry’s two great books about leadership: His first one is Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up and his second is Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong, which takes a probing look at power and privilege and how it can alienate those who already don’t feel like they belong. In today’s conversation, we talk about all of this and specifically one of Jerry’s main queries. This passage is from Reunion: “While necessary, it’s not enough for us to do the inner work of unpacking our childhood wounds and, with fierce radical self-inquiry, free ourselves from the need to reenact the old stories of our pasts. Radical self-inquiry that stops at the question of how we have been complicit in creating the conditions we say we don’t want—a core tenet of my coaching and my book Reboot—is insufficient if it fails to look out to the world as it exists and ask how it could be better.”
MORE FROM JERRY COLONNA:
Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong
Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up
Follow Jerry on Instagram
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
ELISE: I’s interesting post Covid. So you've moved farther out into the woods, and are you still coaching or engaging in the real world with the same intensity?
JERRY:
Yeah, in fact, I was actually in Dallas this morning. I was at a client company down there. I flew out on Sunday, work with them all day yesterday, and then I'm off to Barcelona next week. I teach at a business school there about every six months. And then I'm running a retreat. There's a group called Conscious Capitalism, talk about polarizing. There's a group called Conscious Capitalism, and I'm leading a retreat for them for the Barcelona chapter of that. And then I come back and then I have to go to Missouri. There's a company there, the client company that I'll do some work with.
ELISE:
So you're in it still. I'm excited to talk to you about work and our relationship to it and reboot and reunion. But it's interesting as someone who's still, and I am somewhat engaged with companies, but post covid, I am no longer a full-time employee anywhere. So my relationship to work has obviously shifted dramatically, but I feel like the world has, it felt like there was a significant course correction obviously with Covid to in part forcing many of us to reassess our relationship with this parent, even the way we would talk about work. And I'm curious about how it's changed.
JERRY:
Well, I would make a couple of observations about that. I think that for many of us, identity came from the things that we do and the titles that we held, especially those of us socialized, like me getting a kind of sense of self-worth from this ephemeral thing. And I'm thinking back now to my days when I worked at JP Morgan and I had partners who would go into each other's offices and count the ceiling titles to see whose office was bigger as a status symbol. I mean, that was within my lifetime. But I think, and I wonder if you are in a similar zone. I just turned 60 and what I actually feel right now, and this sounds a little bit, I don't know how it sounds, but I feel more so than ever in my life that this isn't work. This is vocation. So I can't name the client, but the client I was at yesterday has 130,000 employees. And if I can positively impact the most senior people there, the people who have the most power, either by dent of their body and the way we treat white, cisgender straight men or by economic status, if I can impact them and tilt them more towards that better human status, by extension, I'm doing some sort of mitzvah. I'm doing something for the 130,000 employees. So that feels really sacred to me. It feels calling.
ELISE:
Well, it's interesting to think about it in that context because you can look at this in two ways. So I have friends who are coaches or who see the world in that way, if they can impact one person of power that the trail of that is significant and I don't disagree with that. And then there's this culture that would suggest that, I guess I could bristle too against this idea that I think is put on employees or people of the workplace should be sort of the ultimate place for you to work your stuff out or must serve all of your human needs. Because I think that that's, and we get into that and I feel like people are better about this, but it used to be so familial, right? Your family, I mean, some people are estranged from their families, but you don't just lose connection in the same way with your family. It's not an at will relationship in your, I don't even know if it's even that much of a paradigm shift, but thinking about it as the more power you have, the more responsibility you have to be a better human. And finding that balance between not having that be, where's the line, I guess, where the emotional work doesn't belong to the employees.
JERRY:
Yeah, I have to say that in all the years I've been talking about things like this, you're the first person to draw the connection between the two threads. One, which I would argue is healthy and one I would argue is unhealthy. And I think you're seeing a connection there. So I am of the group of people who think, as I wrote in my first book Reboot, that leadership presents an opportunity to complete the process of becoming a fully grown ass adult.
And the reason I think that that's important is because I think that one of the challenging tropes is that we should leave our personhood at the door when we come into the office. And when we do that, we place unrealistic burdens on our interactions and our own people. And so I think we contribute in a sense, certainly to burnout, if not to full-blown toxicity in the workplace. And I think you're making a really important point here. It's a mistake and an unhealthy one to work is going to be the all and end all source of that which will heal you and by extension think that you can complete the business of say, your family of origin issues in the workplace, which is another form of toxicity. And to that, I would say, and people going to do that anyway, it's the power of the unconscious to turn people into objects of our projections, screens for our projections, objects for our transference. So I would argue you better be conscious of your tendency to do that so that you can get it under control rather than pretend it's not happening and then kind of flail your arms around and knock people over with your unprocessed shit and getting activated.
ELISE:
I would think as someone who's been a leader in organizations and many people lived at every level, and yeah, there's also the instinct to project or to assume that I can or should resolve or solve these bigger issues. I guess my job, and I'd be curious to know from you then is how to practice being with myself so I can be with other people without getting stirred or activated. Is that sort of the job of a Grownass adult?
JERRY:
Yes. Yes. I mean, that's it by the way. That's not just true for the workplace, but if you've got family or romantic relationships or friend relationships because human beings trigger other human beings. My teacher and friend, Parker Palmer likes to say, riffing on Socrates, the unexamined life may not be worth living, but if you choose to live an unexamined life, please don't take a job that involves other people. And in classic Midwestern, Wisconsin brilliance Parker's got it. I mean, because what he's saying is that we all have a responsibility to tidy up ourselves as we interact because we've all been in relationships with people or had encounters with people who are kind of a mess. I often visualize little kids in adult clothes swinging their arms all around saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait to use a Gerry, use radical self-inquiry to confront the parts of yourselves that you'd really rather not think about so that you're less likely to project them onto other people and cause damage. And if everybody was doing that, we might create better interpersonal relationships, whether it's in a home or in a workplace.
ELISE:
I know one of the refrains of your work is to draw attention to how people become complicit in creating or recreating conditions that they say that they don't want. And do you find as someone who works in corporate cultures with teams that that's the easiest place to diagnose it or for it to be present? Why is the workplace so potent?
JERRY:
First of all, I'll answer that this way. It's my work. There are a lot of potent places to do it. I'll tell you a little story about that. Many years ago, as a way out of my own broken heartedness in my thirties, I ended up studying Buddhism. It was a way to confront the depression that had plagued me my whole life, the depression that led me to walk away from being a venture capitalist. It was that whole world. And along the way, I became a student of Ani PMA Chore, and many people know her most famous book When Things Fall Apart, which was my gateway drug when things fall apart. One day I was in a retreat center in northern Colorado for a retreat, and through a series of circumstances, I got to have tea with pma, which is a cool thing. And I sat down with her and I was saying to her, well, the board of directors at this retreat center, they've asked me to join the board of directors and oh, Ani pma, I just want to sit in the back of the classroom.
I just want to be a student. And in classic fashion, she said to me, boy, your ego is doing a number on you. I was like, no, no, no. You don't understand. I want to sit in the back of the classroom. And she said, no, no, no. You don't get to play that game. Your karma is to lean into this weird thing of business. And the dharma and the path to happiness doesn't lie in running away from your karma. And when I say it's a calling because I can speak that language, because I can understand that world, I do feel a responsibility to bring in a certain level of consciousness into that realm. That's why it's so powerful for me. That's why it's the place to do some work.
ELISE:
It's interesting too, just listening to you talk about this and the vocation is that I think people look at those top tier leadership, and maybe this depends on the industry, but people look at top tier leaders and whatnot, and there seems something mechanical or hyper-rational or reasonable about it in my experience of people with power. In some ways, it's not to say that it isn't misused power, but that it's almost the opposite where they tend to have the most psychic mediums on speed dial the most. I think it would be shocking to people really like how intensely that those people lean on some sort of spiritual or unseen world as part of what they're bringing through. But it also comes out in really unconscious and shadowy ways, or we haven't quite cracked the code. I was just interviewing Ken Wilbur and he talks about how sort of growing up and waking up are not the same thing. So I think some people achieve some sort of spiritual breakthrough or unlock and think that that means that they're special and anointed and that all their psychological work is resolved. And meanwhile it's like, well, no, that's a whole different process this growing up business.
JERRY:
Yes. I love that you've woven together these connections. So first of all, yes, so much of my early work in particular was with the venture backed venture capitalist backed technology companies. I mean, I can't tell you how many of them have been to Peru to do ayahuasca.
ELISE:
I was going to say those technocrats are really into the psychedelics, right?
JERRY:
And psychedelics now and looking at the correlation between AI and consciousness. And so there's a whole theme there that is not necessarily the widespread belief system in let's say corporate America, whatever that means. And if you ever watch that HBO show Silicon Valley, which I think is hysterical and so on point, I will often laughingly think of myself as that Malo wearing pretend Indian guru. It's like, oh my God, am I coming across that way? Oh, that's a problem. Okay, so that is funny because it's true, and there's that, and many of those executives have read Ken Wilber, so there is that connection. Okay, for sure. But I think that there's phenomena which is kind of even behind even that wish for almost a transpersonal experience, and that is my experience. Many of these folks are scared shit, and they have not, especially if they've been socialized and gendered in a particular way as men, they oftentimes lack the language to even identify what it is that they're feeling. And so anxiety tends to be turned into an aggression and those who have less power pay the price, and that is not a behavior that's limited to the realm of corporate power. We see this in political power all the time. I don't know what to do with not knowing what to do, and so I'm going to lash out.
ELISE:
Well, and I think that there can be these spiritual or hyperspiritual experiences or this, I'm going to harness ai, and these people are often brilliant, and yet it's ungrounded. It's not integrated, it's not realized. And so I think that being a portal or a bridge between the spiritual egotism of, I'm going to engineer away all of these problems, I'm going to disrupt this and disrupt that and solve this and solve that, which is clearly seen on the planet as like this is new prophecy technology. But to take it and say, okay, not so fast, you're special, but everyone is special. And how do you coach that into relationship, which I think is one of the cores of your work of you have to ground this, integrate it, realize it, live it, and that's the hard part is living your dharma.
JERRY:
Yeah. Well, look, delusion is everywhere, and it is delusional to think that a hyper intellectualism, which is often correlated to a kind of libertarian hyper individualism, is going to lead us to create what's going on north of San Francisco. Now we're going to create a utopian community by buying up all this land and somehow what give it over to chat GPT to figure out how we're going to interact with each other, that is as bypassing as the spiritual bypassing that goes on with handing over your own responsibility to grow up to a guru. To go back to it for a moment, the last line of my first book reboot is, and with that I mastered the art of growing up. What I didn't say is, and with that I grew up because this is a lifelong practice, just speak about myself for a moment. My capacity to delude myself knows no end. That's the way ego works. So I have to be vigilant in making sure I'm not bullshitting myself or surround myself with people who will say, yeah, that's bullshit.
ELISE:
Yeah. When you go into a company or an complex organization, are you generally, and I'm sure it varies, but as we know, the fish stinks from the head, right? But do you go in to crack the ego or anticipate what is the moment? What is the trigger in which people say the leaders of these companies say, I need Jerry? Is it in anticipation of a crack or a fissure, or is it that things have started to go completely out of integrity or alignment? When do you typically find yourself being brought in?
JERRY:
When there's suffering and the suffering might manifest in a kind of surface level, like this team is not working, and by the way, because the fish stinks from its head, I want to work with the head because that's where you can create transformation. A quick story, I was on CNN years ago, Laurie Siegel did a short piece series called Mostly Human. She was doing this one docuseries on mental health and Silicon Valley and the depression and anxiety. There had been a series of suicides in the experience. And so she reached out and we were talking, and at one point I asked her, in a very Jerry pointed way, why are you doing this story? And she gave me an answer and I said, well, yeah, that's bullshit. And she said, oh, I want to help. And I was like, no, really? Why are you doing this story? And then she kind of broke down and started crying and told the story about her aunt who had a nervous breakdown in her fifties. And the aunt had been kind of a role model for her, for a woman who seemed to be in charge of her life and really pushing it.
And then all of a sudden this happened to her and she couldn't shake this feeling that there was a connection there. God bless Lori because she left that episode in the finished edited piece, really revealing her own experiences as a reporter, but also bless her because there was a woman who saw that who's in charge of HR at a very, very large software company who called me and she said, Jerry, the way you have a way of cutting through and saying in a sense that's bullshit that will work with my colleagues, we need you in here. And I said, wait, wait, I don't understand. Your company has a reputation for meditating and all of this stuff. And she says, yeah, it's bullshit. If you go into the meditation room, you're going to get fired. I was like, okay. She said, but what we really need, and this stuck with me to this day, what we really need, what's really going on is that healthcare claims for depression and anxiety for the teenagers of the senior leaders had been up 35% in the previous year, and this is pre pandemic, that there was something going on internally within the organization where the children were paying a price.
Now we don't know if it's cause and effect, but the fact that there was a inquiry process into that, that's the catalyst that they said, okay, let's look at this guy. Maybe there's something else going on here. And I would argue it was that very dichotomy between what's presented in a spiritual bypassing kind of way. Ooh, we're all going to meditate and you better not actually be suffering because you're going to get fired.
ELISE:
Yeah. I feel like two, that the cognitive dissonance that sometimes shows up in companies where I'm thinking of one that had this culture of napping or that's what they professed to care about was sleep and napping. And it was a joke amongst people who worked at the company because obviously nobody was napping or there was an expectation of complete overwork and a lack of boundaries. So it's almost like as soon as you establish this idea of caretaking or becomes part of your brand, I'd be curious actually, when you think of companies, and I'm sure you've seen a range of the ones that profess to be more conscious or more loving or caretaking towards employees, whether it's almost better to be a mechanical tool creator where people are like punch in and punch out where nobody's pretending that they're more than that. That sounds jaded, but I'm curious. Well,
JERRY:
It sounds like someone who's experienced the cognitive dissonance and the undermining of trust that occurs with that. So I just want to pause and recognize that. And the truth is we are all capable of that kind of cognitive dissonance that you're speaking to. Carl Jung said, the closer to the light you get, the deeper the shadow. Some of the most challenging organizations that I have ever worked with have been those that are intentional. And that's not to say that one should not humane mean altruistic values.
That does not mean that what we should do is adopt a Frederick, is that the right guy? The time management guy kind of notion where everything is measured with a stopwatch and we don't throw that away. I think this is going to sound simplistic, but I think that there is something to this notion that I try to encourage, which is, as long as you're conscious about what's going on, you're better off. So if you say for example, listen, I said this to a client just this morning, who's about to hire somebody? Look, you need to set the expectation. What is your expectation? If you send an email on a Saturday morning, what is your real expectation about when you're going to get a response? And he said, by that afternoon, I said, I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is you pretending that that's not your expectation, and then passive aggressively attacking somebody because they didn't meet your expectation. So you're about to hire this person, you better be clear what the expectations are, and then they get the ability to say, yeah, I'm in. Or No, that's not the place for me
ELISE:
You mentioned Carl Jung and the idea too of shadow vows and covert expectations and transactional relationships because I feel like in a workplace inherently, you're sort of trading your creative power as an employee for money, security and form benefits and hopefully a sense of being part of something that's bigger than yourself. That's all great, I think and fair. But I think as you were just saying, thinking about the covert expectations that we bring to both our employers and to our employees, that's never spoken and never acknowledge. I mean, part of it is it lives in shadow. I mean, we can certainly think about that in our romantic relationships. Many of us enter into relationships with this covert expectation of my partner is going to underwrite the expense of my life, provide ultimate safety and security, or my partner's always going to be there
JERRY:
Or heal my wounds with my parents,
ELISE:
Heal my wounds. And so I would imagine it would be powerful just to get all those covert shadow vows and expectations on the table.
JERRY:
Look, let's talk two steps. It's incredibly powerful to put those covert things on the table in front of the individual.
I mean, you and I are already operating, maybe we're speaking from our shadow right now. We're already operating from a zone where we can recognize that we have a shadow, that we have placed things in the shadow, that we pretend to not be doing something when in fact we're doing something. We know that we do that there are people who have power who pretend that they don't even know that. And so step one, getting somebody to, and this is why a question that I ask, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want resonates so much for people. I mean, I wish I had trademarked it and copyrighted so I could get 5 cents every time. But it works, I think partially because I use the word complicit and not responsible because the first impulse is actually a kind of defense mechanism.
The first defense mechanism is it's not my fault. The second defense mechanism is it's all my fault. And neither of those are really true. But that kind of an inquiry question allows the possibility that it's not all your fault that you inherited certain belief systems that you're living out, but you do have some act ability to affect that. And just that process with an individual can start to shift a culture. Then the second step would be to begin to get an entire group of individuals, again, ideally those with power again within an organization to acknowledge that so much of this is operating all the time so that you can then put everything on the table and say, okay, are we, for example, if conflict avoidance is a major toxic trait, are we avoiding anything right now? Are we not talking about something that we should be talking about the product doesn't work or that our finances are in the toilet or that?
ELISE:
And is that, I mean, you asked some of these questions in the book, which are I think quite powerful around what am I not saying that I need to say? What am I saying that's not being heard and what's being said that I'm not hearing? And is part of your process when you go into an organization giving people the words and the container in order to have those very scary conversations? Yes,
JERRY:
That's precisely it. And to give credit where credit is due, there is one woman tweeted at me, a fourth question, which I like to use now, which is, what am I hearing that's not actually being said?
ELISE:
That's a good one.
JERRY:
It's a really good one. But yes, that first question, what am I not saying that I need to say was actually given to me by my psychoanalyst in my late thirties when not only was I working through some powerful depression, but one day I had suffered this debilitating migraine and I had just made a positive change in my life. I had just launched a new venture capital firm. I was working with a great person, and that's when I was struck down by this migraine. And in exasperation, my therapist said to me, what are you not saying that you need to say? And I was like, oh, Jesus. That's a tough question because I had grown up not saying things I needed to say. When we apply that in organizations with safety, with true welcoming intent, it's transformative. People start to grow into their full adulthood.
ELISE:
How do you prime the receptivity to that and around the fear? I mean, I guess this is work of masters. It might be painful to hear without getting activated all the things that we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation and without wanting to sort of murder the messenger.
JERRY:
Well, sometimes they do want to murder me for sure. I spent a weekend working with a client and his brother, long story I can't go into, but I was pushing back and pushing back and pushing back all weekend on one of the two brothers and on Monday morning, and I kept saying to him, he was frustrated because his brother wasn't being enlightened. I was like, okay, you got to stop that. So Monday morning, send me an email and he says, you annoyed the shit out of me all weekend because it seemed like you were questioning my motives. And you have to understand, I love my brother and I just want to make him feel better. And I said, okay. He said, but then I realized what you really were asking me to do was what part of me was I trying to fix by trying to fix my brother? And I said, okay, bingo, go to the head of the class. So yeah, sometimes they do want to murder me, but I think whether it's from a coaching angle or from a therapeutic angle, I think the way this kind of inquiry process works is when the person who's holding the seat that I'm holding in that moment is willing to go first,
Not by narcissistically taking the experience away from the person, but so much of the coaching stance or so much of the work stems from how you hold yourself. What's the stance you're holding yourself? And I am not a sage on the stage, no matter how much client may want to project onto me that I have the answers. The benefit really comes from is me acknowledging my own work.
ELISE
What are you channeling in those rooms? Are you standing for the 130,000 employees who can't, challenge probably isn't the right word, but who are not able to speak into dissonance or what might be present and felt by everyone at the company, but not owned, stated, heard, said. Are you standing for them? Who are you in that room?
JERRY:
It's a really great question. I think I'm multiple people. I think sometimes I do feel a responsibility to speak for those outside that room, but I also feel a responsibility, and this may sound a little woo woo, but to speak on behalf of the kid I see inside the adult in front of me, I think that the number of true sociopaths in the world is actually low. What I see is a lot of toxic behavior that stems from deep and profound wounding as children. And that's what I feel like I'm speaking to and with. And perhaps even
ELISE:
And I guess there's no way to answer this question, but how much do you think that you get access to of that wounding? How good are people at disassembling or hiding what's present or do you feel like you can see it all even in their best attempts to sort of impress you?
JERRY:
I chuckle because my ego would say I see it all, but I don't obviously, but I will joke that I see it all. I'm going to respond from a kind of journey of self discovery that I've been on for the last couple of years, meaning that there is something, even when I was a reporter in my early twenties, there is something about my presence and how I approach conversation that is different. I've come to understand that, and it's hard to see that because I'm always in the room that I'm in, right? It's not like I know what the room is like when I'm there and I have learned to trust my intuition in maybe a way that is a little bit more so than the average bear. And so I will ask a question that might not be asked. I'll speak about us in this moment, and I won't ask the question, but if we were in that moment, I might ask about your experience in work and what that relational experience was like, because part of my intuition, and I will confess, I also read your book, and so it gives me insights to you, which by the way, your book is brilliant and beautiful,
ELISE:
Thank you.
JERRY:
And partially not only for the intellectual gift that it is, but because you are actually in the book.
ELISE:
Thank you, thank you.
JERRY:
But knowing that I can almost empathetically, I hope it's empathetically, feel like I can stand shoulder to shoulder with you and say, yeah, weren't they fucking crazy? And I don't even have to know the details, but that's what I mean when I say it sort of intuitively. And so as I say that, how does that feel?
ELISE:
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because in so many ways I would change nothing about any part of my life, and every sort of rock that I came into was refinement. I think about some of my early bosses, one who would throw pens at her heads and give me an
JERRY:
Hour with them.
ELISE:
I know once she said to me, I mean, I was young editor, and she said, you're either the smartest dumb person I've ever met or the dumbest smart person.
JERRY:
Oh God.
ELISE:
I know I loved her though. I mean, I loved everyone deeply. I think that's why these relationships always end up becoming so complex in part because of this. And I think that so much of my work similar to you has felt like a vocation. And the way that I think about it now is my Shakti, that vertical dharma and then my Qi and a lot of, I've ghostwritten so many books, I've done so much for other people and feeling conscripted and willingly sort of taking the bridal to go to our mutual love of horses or my love of horses and your wife's love of horses, but in a way that I think has left me angry mostly at myself. But in terms of who do I ride for? I need to ride for myself first and foremost, because we all need jobs and we need money and safety and security. It all makes sense. But I think that when I think about creative capital or Q that I've spilled into the world, I would take some of it back probably.
JERRY:
See, I am so glad I trusted my intuition and asked that question because I feel it's not that you weren't present, you were so present. But I feel honored. And I will say, because I was emailing you while I was reading your book, what you just shared, parts of it were available in the book, not directly, but if you read between the lines, you could feel it and parts of it, part of what you just shared enriches the book. And I am thrilled for that part of you that is so clearly a talented writer. You wrote your book,
ELISE:
Thank you. It took me a long time to get to that point.
JERRY:
Amen.
I've been there. I remember when I was starting reboot, we had just signed the contract with the publisher, and we had a meeting in my agent's office with Hollo Heinbach, who is the world's best editor at Harper Collins. And she shows up and she's got a stack of my blog posts, and she's printed them out and she's like, okay, now what are we doing? And I realized in this moment, and I said this in the introduction to, I realized in this moment that she was going to let me write the book that I needed to write, not a book according to somebody else's prohibition of what a successful business leadership book was going to be about. And I burst into tears because nothing I needed to do more in my life than to give voice to that little kid inside of me who was constantly observing the world.
ELISE:
Beautiful. I resonate with that as an observer, and I love watching people. What I think too, thinking about sort of the evolution of your work to write a prescriptive book in some ways, belies what you're up to, which is letting, and if I would imagine if I were in a room with you, watching you coach and watching you work with a group, and I feel like gifted coaches or gifted marriage therapists recognize that the patterns, it will naturally emerge if the questions are right, the provocations are right, conflict comes up. We sort of lose our ability to disassemble or act right or pretend like we really have it together. And that if you can be present in that moment, and I'm in a group with a coach, with a group of women, and it's just so interesting to watch everyone's eruptions almost like clockwork, but with the right provocation,
JERRY:
You said it, and it has to be an open in that you don't know the answer to the question, honest question that stirs people.
I remember years and years ago, 11 years ago, my wife and I, we were then merely co-founders, or this is even before Revu, the company was launched and we had designed this weekend retreat. Her name by the way is Alison Schultz, Allie Schultz. It's important for me to say that. And we co-designed this bootcamp, we called it, and it was an extraordinary experience. And the first night I've got my shoes off and I'm quoting poetry and I'm crying, and they're crying and everybody's like, what the fuck is happening to us? I asked a question that was something like, who would you be without the story of yourself? And one of the participants was so moved by that question that afterwards she allowed herself to transition into the gender that she truly was, and she's one of our coaches. And to know that a question, who would you be without the story of who you are could unlock question or an identity such something so essential to me, speak to the power of a well asked question and a container that would allow someone to really ask themselves that question.
ELISE:
Yeah, I'm with you. It is the questions and nobody can really answer the questions for you. Unfortunately, you have to live it. No one's going to give you the answer as much as we live in a culture that suggests otherwise
JERRY:
Or as much as a client wants me to give him an answer. I remember after Reboot came out, I was on stage with a client with whom I'd worked for maybe seven or eight years. It was at a customer conference for his company. And he said to me, I finally understand why you drove me crazy and you wouldn't answer my questions about what to do. And I said, because if I gave you that, it would reinforce your self perception that you don't know. And it might make my ego feel good. I mean, you work with a coach. It's not what the engagement's about. It just reinforces this weird little codependency that's not encouraging you to grow up.
ELISE:
No, no. And to always looking to external authorities for answers. Yeah, it does foster a lack of knowing or trusting of oneself.
So Jerry has written two books. The first is Reboot and the second is Reunion, which is really about this idea of belonging and fostering belonging in companies. And I think this need that we have to belong to something bigger than ourselves, as well as a need to feel psychologically safe and fully seen and embraced. And it's a fine line I think, between wanting or this expectation that maybe we're beginning to really, shed post Covid that a job as a family or that a job is an end all be all. And yes, they're so core to our existence and our identity, but I don't know. Honestly, it's one of the questions that I have about whether a job should be so consuming or should have so much responsibility in any individual's life. I think Jerry's point of helping leaders grow up is incredibly important because implications of someone who has not grown up, who's easily triggered or projecting or whatever it may be, can really have an impact on not only the people who work at the company, but our wider culture.
So I think that work is really important, and it's interesting to me that so much of it needs to happen at work that that becomes the safer playground or sandbox in which this can be addressed. Not that people don't also get their own therapy outside of the walls of work, but I do think that there's more and more of this happening in companies and corporations to foster healthy relationships in part, maybe because this is where we get to practice the most, I don't know, curious to hear what you all think about this.
Jerry wasn't at all an effective university board chair, in my opinion. Makes me wonder if he's effective at anything except narcissistic dialogue.
Very insightful conversation, and extremely emotionally and intellectually stimulating. There is so much to unpack in this that it will likely take several listenings to do it justice. Thank you both.