Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Embracing Identity and Purpose Beyond Titles
Discover how to lead with authenticity and purpose as we welcome Katherine Lazaruk, the visionary founder of Lazaruk Consulting, to our latest episode. Catherine shares transformative insights from her upcoming book, "Executive Being: Humanizing Business, One Leader at a Time," urging leaders to rethink traditional notions of success and explore their true selves beyond professional titles. We challenge you to consider your own identity outside the confines of career and societal expectations, and to embrace a leadership style that values both personal growth and inclusivity.
Our conversation takes a closer look at the essential role of personal connections and social responsibility in leadership. We tackle the pitfalls of hustle culture and explore the necessity of slowing down to foster genuine connections and prioritize self-care. Katherine and I dive into personal stories about the journey toward self-awareness and the power of pausing in our hectic lives, underscoring the importance of balancing well-being with leadership responsibilities to drive meaningful community change.
Navigating the complexities of diversity and personal growth in today's workplace, we explore how leaders can foster environments where individuality is celebrated and diverse voices are heard. Katherine emphasizes the importance of mentorship flowing both ways and adapting to evolving workplace dynamics. We discuss how embracing change and recognizing the agency of others not only strengthens leadership but also creates harmonious and effective workplace environments. Join us as we unpack these vital topics, leaving you inspired to lead with integrity and empathy.
Connect with Ron
Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
Learn more about Global Core Strategies
.
.
.
.
.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Well, good afternoon. This is Ron Harvey. I'm the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for GlobalCorp Strategies and Consulting, and welcome again to another episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, where, you know, we talk about leadership. There are no prescriptive questions. I don't know what I'm going to ask next. My guests have signed up to say yes, even though they don't know either what I'm going to ask.
Speaker 2:We figure it out as we go, but one thing we do tell you is we'll be transparent, we'll talk leadership, we'll have fun and I'll tell everybody that's watching this. You know, don't take yourself so serious, just enjoy the conversation. If there's something you want us to put on a podcast, send us an email. We'll be happy to bring it up in conversation and have fun with it, but also help you grow and develop professionally. So join us. We'll see what happens as we go through. What I want to do is hand the microphone over to Catherine, who's joining us, and she'll get to tell you what she wants you to know about her, and then we'll ask whatever questions we think we don't know enough yet about throughout the podcast. So let me give her the microphone.
Speaker 3:OK, thank you, Ron. It's really nice to be here. I am Catherine Lazarek and my company is Lazarek Consulting, and I help leaders and their teams walk the walk, talk the talk and look the part. What do I mean by that? I started out my business in straight up image consulting, which is an interesting choice for me, considering that I hate shopping and I don't care about fashion, but what I do care about is authentic and true self-expression, and image is a part of that, and it's a vehicle that you can use to advance your life, because my personal belief is that whatever container you showed up here in is the perfect container to do whatever you're meant to do on the planet, and the sooner you make friends with your container, the easier your life is going to roll. And we're here to talk leadership today, so let's do it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it sounds like Kathy, you said it really really quick Learn to like who you are.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, right, that's the best advice I can give anybody, and sometimes that's an uphill battle.
Speaker 2:Yes. What makes it an uphill battle though? You think leadership and people work hard. You get your degrees, you get your position and even when you get to that level, you're still not happy with where you are or what you have. Yeah, come down as a leader because it happens.
Speaker 3:how do we address that? As a leader, I have plenty of leaders that I work with that are have achieved a certain level of external status and they are not happy because what they did not do in their pursuit of excellence was think very clearly about what pleases them as people and what their values are. They didn't understand themselves. I mean, it takes time for us to understand ourselves. That's the journey, right, we're here. It's mystery school, we're figuring it out. But sometimes people chase that external status and titles and promotions and material success without really plugging into source, without plugging into what am I here to do? What is my purpose? Who am I? What gifts can I bring to the world? And I think that's why it's sometimes an uphill battle for people, because they're trying to fit into places that don't fit them.
Speaker 3:for people, because they're trying to fit into places that don't fit them, or if they have an environment that's good for them, they don't always know how to leverage that and they don't know how to disconnect from it either. So a lot of their identity and a lot of their ego and a lot of their personal worth is tied to their position. And because the world is changing so much and position doesn't mean what it used to mean, people are going through this identity crisis, particularly my. Very experienced leaders are just having some challenges right now with this kind of seismic shift of the leadership model.
Speaker 2:That is true in this space. The higher you go, you can lose your identity. And you know we do this activity when we're doing workshops, of introduce yourself for two minutes and you can't talk about your career, you can't talk about your family and you can't talk about your education, and people struggle, yeah, like you take everything that they've become and say that's not the conversation these two minutes, and you got to speak for the whole two minutes about you and people like how dare you I say yeah, how dare we ask you to talk about you for two minutes because you can't lose it. I mean leaders that you chase education because the world say you need it. You chase the titles in these positions, you chase the house or the car, you chase certain relationships or your church. There are just things that we think makes us whole or complete that we get there and realize we're not.
Speaker 3:No. In my upcoming book Executive being Humanizing Business, one Leader at a time, I talk a little bit about this philosophy of it's very difficult to be fully present, whole as a whole person, if you are not whole, if you're not integrated. And the world is crying out for leadership that is integrated, that is balanced, not too masculine, not too feminine, not too aggressive, not too submissive, like nicely integrated, balanced leadership. The adults in the room right Responsive leadership as opposed to reactive leadership, inclusive leadership as opposed to hierarchical leadership. And I think if you are not doing the personal work as a leader to disidentify from your ego, to disidentify from your title, to investigate who you are when you're not working, then you're going to be left behind.
Speaker 2:Wow, and there are a lot of horrible examples. Regardless of where you start, you know, with leadership, If we're local and we're trying to do something about like because there's so many bad examples, how do we begin to help get it right versus complain about it?
Speaker 3:I love that. Are you going to complain about it? Are you going to do something about it? Yeah, because if you want to vent, we can do that. You can pay your vent for a bit, but then what?
Speaker 2:are you going to do? It's just going to get deeper.
Speaker 3:Right, I know I love this idea that people like to complain about society. Well, society is this and society is that, and I look at it and go, but we all agree what society is and is not. We agree. So if we can create first within ourselves this microcosm of what does it mean to lead myself well, am I parenting myself? Well? Maybe, if I got great parenting, I have good voices installed in my head that are helping me make great decisions. If my parenting was missing something, if maybe my parents were really great at meeting my physical needs and education needs but weren't really great at meeting my emotional needs, how do I manage that internally? How do I keep myself strong and healthy? How do I keep myself tuned in to my intuition and tuned into my emotions and tuned into the people around me? How do I do that? Start there and then that kind of energy is magnetic, that kind of energy is attractive.
Speaker 3:So you begin to be in rooms with people who start resonating on that same level. And when you are with someone who seems very different from you, you always can find some common ground. So, for example, let's say you're very far apart on the political spectrum. If you both have kids. You want the best for your kids. You might disagree on how to do that, but you have some common ground. And then the next important thing is to remember that you are neither higher nor lower than anyone else, regardless of the external societal markers. Maybe someone has more money, maybe they have more sort of agency that money gives you. Maybe they have have higher degrees, maybe they have a high school education. It does not matter. It does not matter.
Speaker 3:When you're connecting with someone on a personal level. You're connecting on a personal level. You're connecting to their heart. You're connecting to what they love to do. You're connecting to what turns them on. You're connecting to what their concerns are. You're not talking to their degree. So find the common ground, speak to them as a person. You're a person, they're a person. We're equal.
Speaker 3:No matter how high you get, there's always someone struggling with something. So start to add value and as you create that sort of in yourself, and then you create it in your family, if you can. It can't change anybody right. Have to agree on that but then you start to influence and start to build communities of people that want the same things you want in terms of making a better world for all of us. And that's how society changes when enough people stand up and say, hey, this is how we want it to be, and you can see it shifting Right. It's like we are in interesting times right now. Oh boy, right, 20s all over again. Let's hope it doesn't just fascism and it goes to a more positive direction instead. But again we have a responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yes, because we do have a responsibility as leaders. You know, as leaders, you don't really get to stand on the sideline and just be a cheerleader or throw rocks at everyone. How do you help people, like, get back to who they are, like what matters to them?
Speaker 3:The first thing that I do is get them to stop Sit still.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what does that look like?
Speaker 3:In my practice, I actually ask my leaders to book time out. So my C-suite leaders, it's like we need a full day, sometimes two or more. I want you to invest in yourself. I want you to book this time out, or more. I want you to invest in yourself. I want you to book this time out, and often we'll book a hotel, like a suite, so that we can do some work personally, or so that they're not in the boardroom, that they're not physically situated in the place where they work and they're not at their home. So it's a neutral location. And they book that time out, no distractions.
Speaker 3:This time is for your growth and your development, and you're so busy investing in other people and being so concerned about the company you're not spending time with yourself. So the first thing I ask them to do is stop. Come out of their regular routine, go to a different location. And then we start. I start asking all the questions, all the questions about listen, what did you like to do when you were five? Who were you when you came into this world, before someone told you what you should be? What was your childhood like? What messages did you hear?
Speaker 3:And we start getting into this depth of work that helps them come out on the other side. So it's like what's the current situation? What's everything that's happening, just the facts. Here's what's going on. What's everything that's happening, just the facts. Here's what's going on, what's working, what's not working, what's missing such that those things aren't working. And then where are your opportunities? What are your next steps? So it sounds really basic. It's like a basic debrief framework. You probably do something like that, but it's the quality of the questions and it's the quality of the investigation and it's the quality of the investigation and it's the connection I really want to connect with my leaders on a deep soul level.
Speaker 3:It's like I'm talking to your heart. What do you want your legacy to be? What do you want for yourself? Like some of my leaders want more time with their family and I'm, like you, are allowed to have that. Yes, I'm very anti-hustle culture. I have a good work ethic. People want to work, people want to contribute, and there are many roads to roam. There are many ways to contribute, and sometimes it's not about answering one more email. We need to scale back a little bit. Stop, sit still, get clear and then move forward from a place of clarity.
Speaker 2:How do you help them settle down with that? Because the world is moving so fast and they feel like they're going to miss out on something. And the one more email or the one more phone call and I can't take two days away. There's just so much that I have to get done and I'm responsible for it, so I can't take two days. How do you help a leader get past? You can't afford not to.
Speaker 3:I often use the analogy. So you're going to keep driving and not put gas in your car because you're too busy to stop.
Speaker 2:I love that you can, but you're going to stop eventually.
Speaker 3:Right, you're going to stop eventually, and sometimes I'll share my own personal journey. I was really busy in my teaching career Actually, this is before I started my business this is many years ago and I was teaching elementary school elementary school music, because my training is in the opera. So I was singing part time and teaching elementary school, and those jobs look like dream jobs, but they have quite narrow parameters and I'm not a very good small box person. So I was diagnosed with a lung tumor. Because I refused to listen to myself, I was like it'll be fine, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm good at it. I should just keep going.
Speaker 3:No, the body says no eventually. So before you get to that point, it's better to just slow down, and when someone says I can't do it, I'll be like okay, how's that working for you? You want to keep going? You want to do what you're doing or you want to change it? If you want to change it, it requires some investment, and your time is a valuable investment and you deserve to spend some of it on you. But to be honest, I'm not here to convince anybody. Either you want to change or you don't.
Speaker 2:Yes, and oftentimes something bad is happening for us to change, you know, instead of the micro level. But the society is that way. I mean I watch in society where, when something catastrophic happens, we find all the resources in the world to right yeah, instant we have all the resources.
Speaker 3:It's the choices that we make on what to do with those resources that make the difference. Yeah, right, like, for example I mean, if we're talking really large scope leadership, poverty is a policy choice. Yes, other countries in the world don't have the rates of homelessness that we see in North America. They don't see the suffering that we see in North America because they have appropriate tax rates and because the government is there as a check and balance on capitalism to say, hey, wait a second, this unchecked greed is not healthy.
Speaker 2:Greed gets us in trouble in promotions and relationships and life in general.
Speaker 3:And I think our best leaders are the ones who are able to stand up and say what we are doing is not healthy, it is not for the good of everyone, it is not kind or responsible or fair. And sometimes, because popularity is a thing, what happens is people confuse entertainment with policy. Yes, in companies, in our own homes, everywhere, we default to the entertainment because it feels easier in the moment. Yes, right, rather than being truly nourishing. And I have nothing against good entertainment, like I love a good show, I am happy to play video games, like I love entertainment. In some of my world, I'm an entertainer, right, when I'm singing or whatever.
Speaker 3:But it's the choices that we make with the resources that we have that make all the difference. And we can make different choices, but we have to have the grit and the internal desire to be of good service to the people that we're working with and to care to care about other people, not just to care about our own well-being. Right, seven generations forward, seven generations backward, there's this broader view. I think that has been lost in this drive towards individualism. Right, we need to have some kind of pendulum shift. We've gone really far into individualism. I get mine. So screw you guys. Yes, you know.
Speaker 3:And then there's other societies that are highly collective, which functions in a good, but it's like where do we find the balance? Where do we find that nice middle ground where everybody is well served, where our infrastructure isn't crumbling, where our programs are adequately funded, where people get to eat, where people get to sleep, where it's not criminalized to be poor, where we don't have, like prison, labor, slavery, where we don't have those things Like those are strong policy choices and we need strong leaders to face the challenge of the easy, because we fall victim to what's easy and expedient instead of what's the right thing to do, and it's hard to have debates about what the right thing to do is sometimes One of the things that's shown up is a lot of leaders are not good at receiving feedback without taking it personally.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I'm that person that needs, how do I become better at receiving healthy feedback, critical feedback, that I need to get better, without taking it personally?
Speaker 3:I think the first thing to do is I call it with my clients. I'm like you have to practice Q-tip, quit taking it personally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I use that acronym.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, everybody right, it's, it's common knowledge for a lot of people. Q-tip it's this idea that it's de-centering yourself in the conversation. But, more importantly, I think we need to address the response in your body to criticism, because your body is going to have a reaction and then your mind is going to make sense of that reaction. They're going to label it as anxiety or they're going to label your mind will label it as fear, your mind will label it as anger or whatever it is. And it's this chain of events and it is not possible, I believe, to control our bodily responses unless, like, we have to deal with them at some point. The body is there. So I think when someone is sensitive to feedback, generally I help them by addressing the body first. So let's take a look at what's happening in your body. What is that emotion? How do you interrupt that pattern so that you can take a breath and remember, like bring your frontal cortex back online yes so, ah, this person is trying to help me.
Speaker 3:I'm reframing this feedback. This person is trying to help me. Like we're all imperfect human beings, sometimes we have to seek feedback from places that are going to be nourishing for us as well, not people that are just going to shine us on like this. We don't want that. We want people to tell us the truth, and we also want to understand that their truth is coming maybe from a completely different framework than ours. So it's this idea of what's happening in my body. How do I calm my body? How do I bring my mind online? How do I respond to this? Do I say to someone hey, I'm learning how to take feedback better. I need to step out of the room for five minutes and come back. Or, hey, I'm learning how to take feedback better. Could you put it in writing and then we can talk about it? Or well, also, writing sometimes is the worst way to communicate things. Face-to-face is often better. Or I'm learning how to take feedback better and I'm monitoring my own internal response to it.
Speaker 3:And then some of that's related to your childhood. Right, if you grew up in a dysfunctional home, your reaction to criticism is going to be pretty strong. That's going to be associated in your body and in your emotional world with that person who had power over you before and it's easy to forget. Oh right, I'm an adult, I have agency, and it can kick us right back to being five years old, called out on the carpet by the principal.
Speaker 3:I'm in trouble, and a lot of it is learning how to short circuit that response and reprogram, reprogram, reprogram, reprogram, and that takes a lot of effort and energy. So some people just don't do it. But the really brave ones, the people who are really interested in becoming whole, they're the ones that will keep going. And I want to say too it's okay, I don't have any judgment about that it's okay If it's hard and you want to put it down for a while. That's okay. If you're okay with the station that you're at, it's okay. It's okay to make the choices that you make, even if it doesn't look like maybe it's not getting you what you want. Then you get to decide. But it's also okay if you just stay like I.
Speaker 3:Have some people in my life that I know that have a tremendous capacity for enduring discomfort yes and it's usually work related, like they have a job, sometimes they have a marriage or a relationship that they're in where it's not bad enough to leave. It's like you know that analogy about the dog laying on the porch he's mowing and yeah, and the old guy says, well, what's the matter with the dog? And it's like he's laying on a nail. Well, why doesn't he move?
Speaker 3:well, his nails not, doesn't hurt enough yes, doesn't hurt enough right, and so I just want to say I don't have judgment about. It's okay. You're allowed to be wherever you're at, and when you want to make the change, I'm ready to help you with that.
Speaker 2:I love that because I've made the mistake. I want to help someone that wasn't ready for help.
Speaker 3:Oh, I understand how that feels. You're like I can help you, oh, I know. Oh, don't you? You could get in there and control everybody, yeah, but I know what to do. I know what you mean, right? Yeah, it's like let me just help you and that, I think, as leaders, is a personal management piece.
Speaker 3:Yes, you remember, I cannot remember. I cannot control this person. I need to accept people as they are and if they ask for help or they're asking for change and they're asking me, then I am open to helping them Because they have their own agency. They're adults. They can make their own decisions.
Speaker 3:I can't force my help on someone. I've tried. It doesn't work. It's really horrific and it happened to me recently. I end up really dysregulated. I end up not making the situation better and I just need to back out to get myself right again and remember to stay in my lane.
Speaker 3:I'm responsible for my life. I am responsible to the people who ask me to help them and I need to understand that if they don't want my help, that's not personal. It's their journey. They can take it or not. So I think, as a leader, when you find yourself trying to force solutions, that when it starts to get sticky and tricky and you're like, oh, what's this person? That's a signal to you as a leader to step back, get back in your body, get back in your emotions, get back in your lane and be like, right, right, I need to accept people as they are. I need to change the one I can and the only one I can really change is me and then, by extension, people around me will change, because once one person in the relationship changes, the relationship changes.
Speaker 2:Yes, Phenomenal great feedback. So when you think about where we are now and developing leaders to be prepared for the world is changing fast, oh yeah, we get leaders to the place to embrace change in a healthy manner, because nothing's going to stay the same. And some leaders are struggling how fast it's changing. Like AI, people are like, well, it's going to replace humans. Okay, well, that's an argument. That's one way to perceive it, or it's going to force me to retool and reskill myself. That's another lens. But how do you help leaders that struggle with embracing change? How do you help them address it more effectively?
Speaker 3:I talk about that in my book as well, because I think that the rise of AI is a thing, right For sure. We're going to have AI taking over different kinds of jobs, and I think that leadership used to be based in a more industrial age kind of form right, so it's hierarchical, it's authoritative, it's compartmentalized. Now that we have machines to do those things, we do not need to act like machines, right? And so I think the antidote to fear of change is to lean really hard into being human, to lean into your emotional world, lean into your sensory world, lean into the connection that only humans can make with one another. Lean into that really, really hard. And so in my book, I actually have seven practices to lead people into centering into themselves so that they can connect with others as well, because we are not alone.
Speaker 3:We don't live in a vacuum. We do need to be aware of our impact on others. We need to be aware of our impact on ourselves, and I think the only way to navigate change is to get super solid in yourself, because then you know that your source is not outside you anywhere. None of your worth and none of your validity is tied to what's going on around you. You're plugged into your own soul and your own heart and your own connection to whatever your source is. But I guarantee, like your source is not your Ferrari, your source is internal and I think that's certainly back to what you said earlier about people attaining a certain status and not being happy. It's because you're not really paying attention to who's inside you and who you are as a person.
Speaker 3:So I think the way to navigate change gets super rock solid and who you are and what you believe and in your ability to be flexible and to take it in, to be like okay, this is coming at me, I don't need to react right away, I can just let it come at me and I can sit with it and go okay, what's the next right thing? But I cannot figure out the next right thing If I'm in my monkey mind, if my brain is spinning, if I'm in a really strong emotional reaction can't do it. Or if I'm detached. I have some clients who are basically like ignoring their meat suit, completely yes Running around in their heads and they wonder why it's not working. They wonder why they're overwhelmed, they wonder why they're anxious, they wonder why they're not happy. Like cause, you are not embodied. You are not here. You're somewhere else in this created world of your mind and you're not here. Okay, you want to navigate, change, get solid.
Speaker 2:I hear a lot in the workforce about our generation saying the new generation doesn't want to work.
Speaker 3:They want to work for you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you hear like this generation doesn't want to work and they want to show up late and they want to leave early and they want the front office and just hear a lot of things that I'm sure they say about every generation.
Speaker 2:The generation before always says how hard the next generation is. How do you help leaders realize that there are five generations in the workforce and we all do it differently and it's not that they don't want to work. They may want to do a different type of work or do work differently. How do you help leaders like me adjust to? That's what we're going to encounter, especially when we got our ego in the way like I'm the boss. They ought to adjust to me. Good luck with that. That is in the way like I'm the boss they ought to adjust to me.
Speaker 3:good luck with that. That is not the way it is. So the issue is this comes up in diversity people seeking diversity in companies as well. What happens is companies say, okay, we want diverse people, we want people to show up as their whole selves. Okay, we're going to promote, we're going to look for people who are diverse, we're going to invite them into our sandbox. And when those people show up as their whole selves, then the company goes whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, not like that, right. And so they want people to adjust to their sandbox. But they don't realize that that time is over. The sandbox needs to change because the prize is not the prize anymore.
Speaker 3:People are not necessarily in it for the money, they're not in it for the title, they're in it for what's my personal growth in this? What's my contribution? Yes, you need, and yes, you need to be paid, and I actually, when I did my first draft of the book and I sent it out to my first readers and they read it all I was just talking about how difficult it is, as an experienced leader, to make the change and was kind of tongue-in-cheek going. You know, it's the old white guys that are having a hard time right and the women that have been trained to act like old white guys along the way, because those are the people that have historically defined how things are for the moment. And they said it'd be really great if you could tell them how.
Speaker 3:And so I wrote a section that was seven special appendixes for my old white guys. Read these first before you read this book, because otherwise this book is going to make you crazy. Who does happen to fall into that demographic? And he was so angry, he hated the book and he hated being stereotyped because, right, we all hate being stereotyped.
Speaker 2:Everybody hates being he was. It doesn't mean it's inaccurate, you just don't like it right.
Speaker 3:I was like thanks for proving my points. However, I did take his feedback seriously. I'm like okay, I don't want to alienate people and you can be a little bit tongue-in-che'm like when I'm face to face I can be playful, but in writing got to be careful, right, and you don't want to alienate people and there's a place at the table for everyone. First piece, I think that's. I'll just give you the first piece. That's really important, except that it might not be your turn anymore and that your role needs to change in your company, that you might need to step back and go. Wait a second. I need to get some feedback from the people that are younger than me so I can understand how they're thinking, so I can understand how our company needs to adapt to make it okay for everyone, and this is the thing about adaptation. In this way, it can also be applied to like disability action. So, for example, if you put in your building ramps and you put in the buttons to open the doors and things like that, that benefits everyone. It benefits the person with a load of stuff that they're carrying, it benefits the person that actually has like a wheelchair, like a disability, but it also benefits all the other people that use that feature too. And I think this is what people are missing. It's like when you make those adaptations for a smaller group of people, everybody benefits. Everybody benefits once you open things up and you make everything more accessible.
Speaker 3:I was actually at a fat camp they called it which was like a workshop to understand fat politics. This is years ago and this is my first exposure to kind of political activism or of any kind or that kind of thought, and in this room there were really big heavy chairs, there were small thin chairs, there were chairs in different areas of the room, the lighting was different, there were some mattresses like mats down, and so all levels of physicality could be accommodated. And at first I was like whoa, this is like the weirdest discussion I've ever been part of. And then I thought, oh, what voices and important perspectives are we missing in our boardrooms? Because our spaces are designed the way they are and they don't accommodate everyone? And what difference does it make if you're in the boardroom and laying on a mattress because your back is sore? You're still there, your brain is present, you're still able to have a voice in the room. What difference does it make? And that can be really uncomfortable to think about. Oh my God, like in the boardroom, could I?
Speaker 3:I stand up and like I had one client who really needed to move when he was thinking and he was like paralyzed by this fact, like, oh my god, I'm in a board meeting and I've got to sit and he goes. I can't think, and I said so, just let people know what's happening for you. And I had another client who did have some pretty severe back pain. I'm like, well, first of all, you should be at home and resting no, justin, but whatever Healthcare Right Healthcare and then make these accommodations. So I think that the very experienced leaders first of all accept it's not your turn and get yourself a mentor under 30. Get someone who you're going to listen to, who's under 30, who's up on the current zeitgeist, and really listen to them. Let them help you. Because mentorship isn't just a one-way street anymore. It's not just senior to junior. It now has to flow both ways. It has to go junior to senior. And I've often thought that leaders don't always do a great job of listening to their frontline people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very accurate. I mean Undercover Boss was real, I mean they made a TV show.
Speaker 3:That's because it was happening all over, so they turned it into a television show you as a leader, do not have insight, you don't have a sight line into those things. Yes, and sometimes leaders don't want to hear it. I have one client in a company that's doubling down on like just assigning and assigning and assigning, and more work, more work, more work. And the culture that they've created has a group of employees that feel unable to say no absolutely that's.
Speaker 3:That's brutal, whereas in places like I think it was germany recently, maybe it was france or germany, I forget which one, but they literally shut the company email down at five o'clock. Nobody can access it and they penalize you if you answer emails or answer the phone after five I'll tell you I learned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I work for an organization in DC and I love their policy. When we were there, they had what they called all hands on deck hours and what that meant was between the hours of 10 and 2, if you wanted to do anything where you're going to mandate that someone had to be available, you can only do it between the hours of 10 and 2. Right, because they had so much flexibility. If you need to come in earlier, then that's great, but you can't schedule a mandatory meeting and expect everybody to be present if it's outside of 10 to 2. So it was four core hours. Is what they really call the core hours Anything on the opposite side of those? Whatever you need to do for it to accommodate your lifestyle, they were totally fine with it. They had those. Four hours were four hours actually.
Speaker 3:It worked well of course it worked well, like it's common sense. It's just like 10 and 2, four hours yes, and I also think that you know you think somebody's there for eight hours. They're not working for eight hours. Humans don't work like that. Humans work in short spurts of attention. Like we know so much about psychology now, we know so much about neurology, we know so much about education and how people learn and how people work, and I cannot believe that leaders are not applying the science.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it's a testimony to how difficult it is to change or get people out of the way, or their titles or their positions out of the way. Yeah, as you look across the landscape and think about your journey, what's the mistake that's taught you the greatest lesson you've ever learned about your own personal growth? Oh, I've made so many mistakes. Yes, we all have. If only there was a camera following me, I probably wouldn't be in this position.
Speaker 3:Right, Right, If I could get the hell out of my own way, it would be good, I think the well. Let me think what's the biggest, biggest, biggest mistake? I think the biggest. I don't know if it's a mistake. It's something I wish I'd learned earlier. Does that count?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Okay, one thing I wish I knew earlier was how to be emotionally regulated, because I as a person came into this world with a wide emotional range, which means my highs are high, my lows are low, and I love all of it. I love all of it. I love it when I'm like, yeah, invincible. And I love when I'm like, oh, I'm a sad burrito crying because I'm alive. Right, I feel the tears on my face. I love having all of those colors in my life to work with, but no one my parents did not know how to help me with that.
Speaker 3:Our world at the time wasn't super up on emotional life and I wish I had learned sooner that a I need my like the way that I am. I need to go through an emotional wave, because that gives me lots of information and then my frontal cortex, my brain, comes online and I'm able to make a really clear decision. But if I don't honor my emotional journey, then I get in trouble. I get in trouble, I try to force solutions, I try to think my way through things, and I don't operate that way. I feel my way through it and then I can think really clearly. So I've got both, but it took a while to learn how to do that and to learn that, like people say, well, your feelings aren't facts. Well, okay, and they do give you information. Yes, if you're not accessing your emotional, like your emotions or your body's feeding you information all the time, and the science is now showing that actually it's 80% information from your body to your brain, not the other way around. And I'm doing some work right now with a woman named Kate Northrup and she has this program called do less and heal the way you work and relax, money and all these different things. Anyway, she's great, but she talks a lot about that too, like about how important it is to be embodied and to deal with your emotional life.
Speaker 3:So I think the big mistake that I made early on was succumbing to hustle culture and not trusting myself, not trusting that I'm an artist, I'm a creator, I'm an expressive person, and that is okay. That's an okay thing for me to be and it has value. But it looks very, very different from the traditional climb the ladder, write the books, buy the car, buy the house. It just looks really different from that. And coming to a place of acceptance of the difference and the validity of that was a big, big learn, and I'm still learning it. I really had to come to a place of acceptance around that, and that's what I mean when I think it's really important for people to get in touch with who they are as people.
Speaker 3:What do they love, what do they need? What do they want? Because, even materially speaking, I am a person who doesn't need a lot of space. So I personally love living in a small condo in a big city. I have great neighbors, I can walk away, I can travel, I have a lot of flexibility, I have low maintenance, I don't mow the lawn, I just love sitting here and listening to the landscapers do their thing in my scottifees. Good right.
Speaker 3:But someone might look at that like. I've had friends that are like, hey, when are you gonna upgrade? When you're gonna buy the house? I'm like, why would I want to do that? I don't want to buy, I want to take the house. I'm like, why would I want to do that? I don't want to. I don't want to take care of the house. I don't want to pay that kind of property tax. That's not what I value, and I think people get caught up in what other people value and what they think society values, and they forget about what they value. Yes, like what is enough? What is the right thing for me?
Speaker 2:And it's tricky right when you think about your values. Sometimes they hand it down to you and you don't always. It's not always yours. It's like what my parents valued and what I valued is actually different now.
Speaker 3:Right, my parents are super safety oriented. I wouldn't say they live in fear, but they are safety oriented. They get the steady job, get the steady paycheck, get the pension, retire, and that's what they've done. They've lived very successfully that way, and so it was hard for them to deal with a very risk-tolerant child.
Speaker 2:I can only imagine around that household like what is she doing next? Can you imagine all of this in a three-year-old Like? How hard that would be to cope with as a parent. No, it was trying to be, but it's happening in organizations. Leaders have to recognize that people like you are going to show up in their workforce.
Speaker 3:That's right. And then what do you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you do with it? I'm glad you're sharing it because, yes, three-year-old child, but you've grown even more intuitive and embraced it more and you show up. And how do people work in an effective, collaborative way and appreciate what you're bringing, versus look at the challenges that she's bringing?
Speaker 3:The secret is, again, again, the common ground yes, the common ground and to think about oh, this person is expressing something in a really different way, but what's the core of what they're looking at? And how can I be curious about what they're saying and how can I monitor my own reactions and, like, honor my own reaction, but also honor that it's my reaction. Oh, this is my reaction to what this person is saying. So I can make up a whole bunch of stories about what their intention is, but I have no idea what their intention is. So I need to ask. I need to ask questions, and I think my mother went to see a psychiatrist about me when I was three, because I was so like just crazy headstrong and I don't know who that shrink was. But bless her, because what she said to my mother at the time and my mother told me this story, of course I don't remember she said okay, number one, you're expecting her to be six and she's three, so it's not developmentally appropriate what you're expecting her to do, which I think in the workplace we often expect people to do things like we would do them, or we expect them to do things that they're really not trained to do. The school has not prepared them for that the work. Like we're expecting something and they're just we're setting them up to fail because they don't really know how to do it and it's our job to then train them or to find some work for them or to coach them, to help them right. So you have to watch your expectations. So, expecting her to be six and she's three. Then she said you have to give her some power, some choice that's appropriate to her level. So, for example, do you want to wear the red tights or the blue tights? No question about wearing tights. It's cold outside. I was born in like a Northern town in BC. It's cold. Red tights or blue tights. Personal power, giving power where you can, giving choice.
Speaker 3:And I think in the workplace sometimes leaders don't give enough autonomy and enough power to their employees to do what they need to do. So it's about giving the thinking of okay, what's the appropriate delegation of budget or what's the appropriate level of management, or what's the appropriate level of management or what's the appropriate level of responsibility, like what are these people in my company really responsible for that? They own 100. It's on them. And then we look at when there's an issue. We work the problem, not the person. Well, sometimes you have to work both, but you right, we look at like what's the situation and how does that need to change?
Speaker 3:And then the last thing that the shrink said to my mother was do not break her spirit, because she will need it. Wow, and I think in the workplace we have to be careful that we're not breaking people's spirits, that we're treating people with kindness. And it's funny because my ex-fancy coach, he used to say to me he's like you talk to people like they're broken. And I'm like well, I don't think people are broken, but I do think sometimes they're a bit squished and we can change that. We can change that as leaders, we can change that in ourselves.
Speaker 3:But I would love to see a world where we all get to be in the right environment doing the right thing for us at any given time. I'm an idealist. Whenever I get really depressed, I just go Google solar punk. Solar punk is an alternate version of the future where people are like putting science to good use for like growing food in different ways or interacting or living in different kinds of communities or whatever. So if anyone's feeling really bummed out, I encourage you to Google solar punk and dive in or donut economics. That's another good thing that I sometimes Google because it talks about sustainability, yes, and everybody having enough, according to like everybody has enough.
Speaker 2:Yes, everybody has enough. Yeah, Phenomenal conversation. I mean you're super transparent. I love it. I mean love the energy and being able to tie stuff back to leadership. So, for all of our audience, if someone wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way for them to contact you?
Speaker 3:And then how would you summarize today's conversation that we've had? That will help leaders to be the best version of themselves. Okay, the best way to get in touch with me is to go through my website, lzrkconsultingcom, and contact me there. All my contact information is there. You can call the office. Claudia will hook you up. Actually, claudia's leaving. She's going back to Ireland. I'm so sad Her visa's expiring. She's going back, but Liv is taking over.
Speaker 3:So you know, pick up the phone, give a call. They'll get you set up with some time with me, and I love to talk to people. So, if you think that you would like to do some work, if you want to get real I do real better than anybody, you know I 100% can get you real and get you embodied and get you out there to be the kind of leader that you want to be. So definitely, give me a call or email. However, you want to contact me Website, lzrkconsultingcom. If you want to get the book, order it on Amazon, and if you send me a screenshot of your receipt, then we'll give you a nice little thing. We'll send you something. How do we summarize the conversation? Okay, leaders, get real, get connected, get out there.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Catherine. Welcome to all this. For everyone that's listening, of course, I tell you we bring people from all walks of life that share phenomenal information, and they're transparent. Nobody knew what we were going to talk about. We just have a real conversation about what our experiences are, what we're going through and what we're seeing. Hopefully you found value in what we did, Hopefully it makes a difference in your life, and please share the link to the podcast, Share it with anyone that you think will be useful of something that you know, Catherine and I discussed. And until next time, Catherine and I are going to sign off. Until you have a wonderful day, Enjoy your journey and take care of your team. The only reason that we get to lead is because people are willing to follow us. Never take that for granted. So thank y'all for joining us and until next.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
