Friction to Fuel: Turning Team Difference Into Unstoppable Strength

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Relise Cortez.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with patchen Er Prize since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for training in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor LEAs Cortes. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy. I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, workforce advisor, vistage chair and the founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I live by is much simpler. I traffic in energy, not the service level of motivation or another engagement initiative. The deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared admission in the clients we serve. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com, or visit my personal site at least Coortes dot com for information on my speaking and books. Getting in today's program we have with us today.

1:48 Susan mckenti Brady. She is a leadership educator, executive coach, and CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. A Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Susan's work focuses on the human side of leadership, emphasizing self awareness connection and the relational skills that drive performance. Known for her real practical guidance, she helps leaders navigate difference, strength and trust, and lead from their best selves. She's the author of several books, the latest of which is All the Difference six Leadership Actions to bridge perspectives, strengthen teams, and create value, which we'll be talking about today. She does it today from Boston. Susan already, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's such an honor to be on your show.

2:30 Well, let me say thank you for bringing this into the world, this beautiful book that you co author. Here. I I'm one of those people that like the physical book. I want to hold it, touch it, hug it, highlight it, which I do so. As I told you before I got on air, there's nothing in the book that I don't align with and can't endorse and support. So thank you Susan for bringing it together so beautifully. Well I share that with my co authors, which is a whole story about how this book came to be. But yes, yes, well, well let's do this. Since you brought that up. Let's first start just so listeners of viewers who don't know you yet the way that I have some glimpse into you, let's just hear a bit about your life's work and what it is that you've been doing with yourself and why it's so important to you.

3:13 Well, Uh, thank you for asking that. You know, I think we share we share some life work I think in common at the At the core, my work has been about helping people, oftentimes leaders. Uh. And I find I find the people I work with at work and uh, my life's work is about helping us all return to a place of respect and compassion and understanding for ourselves to get gentle with it. So my first two books were about navigating how do I coach my inner critic? And my inner critic just isn't critical of me, it's actually also critical of the people around me. And that's a losing strategy if we want to work together effectively.

3:57 And uh, and then what does it mean to thrive? And how can we find what really lights us up in the world and give of our gifts in a colossal see of difference and frankly complexity at work? So how do I bring my best self to work? How do I return to my best self when I get triggered in a myriad of ways. How do I not shrink back and play small? How do I not be big and power over? So? How do I show up as a grounded, effective leader that knows my own value and really appreciates the value of others. I would say that in totality has been my life's work, and I've had the privilege of coaching many, many different types of executives, working with many different types of executive teams around the world, and doing a lot of speaking about my various books along the way.

4:54 Well, align with so much of that, And then I want to also showcase what you also say. You say that in recently you are exploring the question that feels a special relevant in an AI enabled world, what capabilities remain uniquely human and how can leaders develop them? I'm certainly fascinated with that as well. Well. Look, I mean, AI is the colleague we never asked for. There was no job description, we didn't we didn't even know she was coming. And now it's it's it is a colleague in our daily life. And so this is yet another complex challenge for us at work because our relationship with AI person to person is going to be cast in all sorts of differences. Right, So if I'm if I'm fearful, if I feel like I'm cheating, if I feel like I can't wait to learn more, if I you know, I am not clear about how my company wants AI, I mean it is wrought with complexity.

5:55 And so what we what we need to do is be better humans. And I think, you know, with the human to human relationship, our skills need to be top notch in order to navigate what AI brings it already did. And I know you know this, doctor Cortez, because just the entrance of women at work continues to be so disruptive. And now we have five generations right by twenty thirty, with a myriad of differences in logic paths, in how we communicate and how we want to be rewarded and recognized, and how we engage and how we feel and how we express I mean, you name it, and so I think we have to learn. I do feel like the world craves just a playbook. I talk to a lot of leaders who are like, how do I do this?

6:47 Because there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of avoidance of that tension. There's a lot of behavior that's either covert or overtly not great among people. And our job as teamleaders and leaders is to get people to work together effectively? So how do I do that? So that's what this book is about. Mm hm, well, I want to echo what you were saying. I loved never to anybody say that AI is the call we never expected to turn up. I think that's brilliant and really it really situates it like Tannah, I'm here, guess what. And I want to echo that too, Susan, because one of the things that we did at Gusta Now we're all about developing inspiracial leaders and helping organizations to activate their purpose through their culture. And as we were going along too, we saw the need that we really do need to double down on humanity in the age of AI. So we started the Gustro Now movement, which is just that how do we help develop humans to become their best human self? Which means we are going to work on some of the things that you've been talking about in your book and your work. And I like what you said. In order for us to you to be relevant, we got to bring our best game.

7:52 And so there's a lot of work to do there for us to be able to really develop and realize more of our potential as humans. There's a lot to do. And by the way, here's the thing, as far as I'm concerned, we're all fellow travelers. I mean, I've been speaking and writing about this for fifteen years in some way, shape or form, and consulting and being a leader myself. By the way, being a leadership expert in writing books is a ton easier than actually leading because it's complicated. But the reason why I think we're all fellow travelers is we're not going to get it right every time because to be human is a subjective game. It means, even though I think I know how I landed for you when I said what I said, I'm really not sure. And so it's incumbent upon us to check in with ourselves and check in with the people around us. And that takes a heightened level of interpersonal skill, which starts, of course, with relationship with self. And I think, you know, look, it used to be like fringy, like, oh right, you know you have to have a relationship with yourself and look within and reflect and self actualize and actually, yeah, I think your job stability and growth depends on that how how aware you are of yourself and how able you are to quickly kind of call your own self out so that you can return to a place where you're productive with other people. Again, it is hard. It is hard.

9:22 And if you forget to eat, or you don't sleep well the night before, or you're just blue because it's raining out, whatever it is, right, it's going to be even harder. Right, yeah, one hundred percent, one hundred percent. So and then to echo that here, what I like to do on the show, Susan is you know, since the show's been on there for eleven and a half years, and by the way, you are episode number six hundred, I don't know if that nuver means something to you. It's six hundred. The show is curated, so we try to just you know, build on what we haven't already discussed. I kind of pull things out of your book to kind of add on to that. So I'd love for us to talk about this notion of the land minds of managing different So first, what do you mean by landmines? And then let's talk about the four that you talk about in your book.

10:02 Great, so funny, so the remedy that we came up with with all difference. So if you if you think about the differences in perspectives, in generations, in in our tolerance with risk, you know, there's even extroversion introversion, Like there's a myriad of differences that are unseen, never mind the scene and known differences, right, and for anyone human to to be able to navigate every single dimension of difference perfectly, I don't think is actually a fair aspiration. I just don't think we can get there, you know. And so we needed a playbook that spelled out what are what are sort of the tools of people who do this really well. We call it difference intelligence. And so you know, we we have my co authors Les Smith and Stu Cleiman and I did a fair amount of our own research before we came together and pretty quickly identified six target actions that build on one another.

11:00 And we can talk about that. While we were spelling out and building out and researching and interviewing other people around the six target actions, what became clear is we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot in the same ways. The same patterns started to show up, and they really are like explosives and interpersonal explosives, like if I do this, we can You can bet your bottom dollar that the conversation, the project, the team discussion will not go well. And so it was a discussion with Lesmith, who is our country's sixty sixth Inspector General of the United States Army retired now he's a three star general and he was in charge of like all explosives. It's some fancy title that I don't remember, but I thought we talked about, well, it's kind of like stepping on a landmine. And so part of all the difference is our author team because we come from very different places and I know nothing about landmines. And I said, well, if you know a landmine is there, can you always sort of deactivate it?

12:07 And he said yeah, but you got to be on constant recon. I'm like, all right, I'll go with that, like we can be on landmine recon. So the land mines are there's there's four of them that we identified that are sort of the big the big four, and I'm happy to go into them. What do you think of the analogy though, because it's kind of you know, it might be triggering, no pun intended, but I think it works. I mean, well, I think it is triggering, and I think it's necessary to get people's attention. So the number one landmine is inconsistency. I'm sorry, is how am I doing? The number one landmine is certainty. That's the number one landmine. Certainty means you will always agree with your own logic. I mean, my logic makes total.

12:53 Sense to me mind. And so when we come into a conversation thinking that we're right, the other person strong or really believing that they're missing something and our conclusion really has it, we can guarantee it will shut down learning, it'll shut down risk taking. And if you're the leader and you come in with certainty, it shuts down just about everything, including psychological safety and everything else that we want that creates innovation and problem solving and motion and accountability, all the things that we say we need. So so certainty is the number one landmine. Second landline is inconsistency. By this, what our author team talks about is the delta between our intention and our impact, the space between what we say we value and how we actually behave. And you know, I caught myself just the other day with my daughter.

13:47 You know, I was in a moment of inconsistency, and she knew it and I knew it, and so to be aware of it is to clean it up. And we'll get to that in a minute. The third land mine is the landmine of emotional reactivity. And I know you've done a ton of work on this, and you know it's not just managing your own emotions, noticing and managing, it's also being aware of other people's emotional states and checking in with them because, as you know, the same stimuli could make one person laugh and another person angry and another person you know, cry, like the same exact occurrence, and so we all have different relationship to different things and we can't take that for granted if we want to keep team cohesion. And then the last is justification, which is probably my favorite. You know, we're all inclined to rationalize our behavior. Bottom line, right, it's to say, because I haven't met a leader, I don't know if you have that gets up in the morning to make everybody else's day hard. And so when we catch ourselves in having a you know, an impact that maybe we didn't intend, we will often justify our behavior for why we did it. Whatever. That justification is so so. Certainty and consistency, emotional reactivity, and justification are the four land minds.

15:08 So I thank you, Susan. Beautifully done. Beautifully done, and I hope that really helps our listeners. I views just start to get into the material and the importance of what we're talking about, this whole business of managing difference and in the importance of getting strongly aware of themselves, which is what you situated so beautifully as we started. So let's let them think about that as we take our first break, marinate a bit and what you've shared so far. I'm your host, doctor Lee Cortez. We run the er Susan mckentie Brady, who is a leadership educator, executive coach and CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. We've been talking about the importance of the book and how it came together, why we need it. After the break, we're going to continue talking about the concepts from her book, starting with the importance and a way to unlock your best self. We'll be right back.

16:09 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose, an inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a l Se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:01 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elis corre tes As. I am dedicated to help them create a world where organizations thrive because they're people thrive, and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them find to contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, so one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meeting and purpose can radically enliven your business, and I wrote it to help leaders understand the lay of the land of today's diverse and discerning workforce. What do they want from you to give their best stick around and contribute? And then I offer you twenty two best practices to provide that through your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or at least core test dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is Susan mckentate Brady. She's a co author of All the Difference.

17:44 Six leadership actions to bridge perspectives, strengthen teams, and create value. So, as you alluded to the first in the first segment, here Susan, the six actions build on themselves. So the first action is to know yourself, unlock your best self, and empower others. And I really liked and of course aligned as a lot. I mean, there's nothing in your book that I don't really align with. I like how you provide really a three part mechanism to do that if you want to share that and bring that to life. Well, So the first of all, let me just define best self, because you know, the research we've done at Simmons is actually rooted in best self work, and it's rooted in what we know we need to do to thrive which is very connected to the work and the research that you've done. So what we found we have a thrive index here, and what we found through our indices is that people only need three things in order to have a felt experience of thriving at work. Number one is they want to make a meeting. We all want to make a meaningful contribution at work. Number two is we want to feel valued for that meaningful contribution.

18:47 And number three, we want to learn and grow. And in order to do all three of those things, ideally we come to work as our best selves. And if everybody does that, then we can accomplish those three things very very easily. In theory, the way we define best self is where our strengths and talents meet, where we are called to add value to others. That is also connected to where we experience vitality. And so when those I call it the trifecta. So when I am doing something that I feel uniquely good at, I have strengths capabilities, and other people around me appreciate these strengths and capabilities and my I guess vector for you know, vitality is when I lose track of time and when I'm net energized by something. So I just spent an hour, like talking about concepts with smart people like you is just fun for me. It's energizing for me, right, So arguably even doing an interview like this might be kind of a good way for me to anchor myself and my best self. So the job of knowing yourself is knowing when you're at your best and importantly when you're not.

20:02 So that also the knowing yourself is to surround yourself with people who have different strengths and talents to bring to the table. So all of this kind of makes up the really understanding who we are, and that also includes what triggers me, where do I have maybe some blind spots, where might I get easily annoyed? You know, it's also the shadow side of what robs me of my best self quickly, So it's our job to know that too in the moment. Yeah, one hundred percent. I love this, Susan. Yes, totally align with this. And again, you know, we're all whole world is about traffic and energy, so the vitality piece is really important. I love what you said about the net positive energy. At the end of the day, if we have that, we're probably in the right lane. Yes, yes, okay, So building on here, and you keep me honest in terms of the way I talk about this, but building on this idea of knowing yourself, the next action is return to respect when it matters most, and I really appreciated.

20:58 First let me how you talk about that. But then I would love for you to talk about those four railers that we find in the workplace and with ourselves. So first you know why this one. Why is return to respect when it matters most? Such a key action? Yes, So returning to respect when it matters most, I think is the full crim of the model. My co authors might disagree with me, but there it is all the difference and the reason I think it's the full crim of the model because the model builds on itself. The six target actions build. So if you think about knowing your best self, knowing when you're not, and understanding what you bring to the table that gives you joy and vitality as the sort of foundation of your difference intelligence home, Okay, that's the foundation. What moves us out of being successful often is we think we aren't as good as others, or we think we are better than others, and those are broad definitions. But whether it be feelings of imposter or you know, how many hands have I told someone that says, I'm very worried I'm not living up to this job. I've never done this job before that I'm reminding them, why would you know how to do a job you've never done? Right? So, but I think the smarter we are, the more driven. Especially I work with a lot of very very bright women. Oh my gosh, the critic is alive and well and so constantly, you know, yammering on about what we're deficient in. Right, So we have to return to respect for ourselves. And

22:30 then also, and this is what my first two books is really about are about, is putting getting a mechanism to return to respect for other people too, because look, we bump into people who we just don't like, be that personality wise, be that the way they communicate, or maybe we just don't jibe with them, we don't connect, we don't something. But we also can we run the risk of being really dismissive, especially if we see the world differently. And the more we're advocating our own point of view and not listening for other people's point of view, the more we're you know, looking down our nose at someone and being critical. People can feel that. People feel contempt.

23:12 They you don't have to say a word, they feel judgment, and that will rob all good acceleration of performance. You can bank on it. People don't want to feel small in someone else's company. They don't want to feel like they're not good enough, and they'll smell it off of you, right, and then their reaction is one of two things. Right typically is to then feel bigger and better than you back or to shrink back, and both are losing strategies. So returning to respect matters. And I see four ways people really really get this wrong. You know, these are different than the landmines, but since you mentioned them, I spent a long time sort of observing group work and how folks get derailed, and then also doing with the executive coaching work that I do. And the first way we shoot ourselves in the foot, you know, we have we work with people who are I call them the work around ers. You know, these are the people who sit down in the meeting, agree on a path forward, you think you're aligned, and then they go off and do whatever they wanted to do anyway, and it's it's kind of the energy is like very dismissive, but they don't talk about it because it's like talk to the hand.

24:31 Another way we derail progress with respect is you know, more overt like the bully behavior. So these are the people who slam their fist down, or who rant and rave, or who will dominate a meeting loudly and aggressively to get their point across. Everyone knows who the bullies are, whether they're whether whether we talk about it or not. The third way, and in no particular order, are the people who quit but stay. So these are the folks who will tell you it is futile. Nothing is going to change around here anyway, so why even bothered, you know. And they can become toxic over time, of course, because they basically give up, But they are there to talk about how nothing's going to change. And last, but not least, are the worry to comminators. And the worry to comminators are those of us who go to work every day to make a difference, to add meeting, to be our best selves. And then we might over do it in order to prove ourselves, and so the impact on others can be overwhelming. The impact on others actually can create more work. I don't know if you've ever had You've asked for someone to do something and they like overdo the project, and it's like, wow, I have to untangle this now because you took it to a place that didn't it didn't need to go right, Like I just wanted this now you maybe like five times that. And so all of these behaviors which we are all also capable of, not only rob us of our best selves, but they really erode productivity at work and in our teams.

25:58 Yes, yes, yes, the last one I really recognize. I have a group of people at a company that I'm coaching and one of them is definitely she is that last one that you were talking about, and she and the great thing is Susan. Through our discussions, she began to recognize it and she had, you know, stressing herself out and complaining she didn't have fowers in a day, and then she realized, oh my gosh, it's me, which is amazing, Right. I see this a lot, especially if you're in any way, shape or form, someone who would I self identify as not being in the majority. I see this behavior like we're really just trying to add value. It comes from a place of wanting to add value, and then we create this overrowing effect which creates waves and all sorts of you know, turbulence, and then we were defensive. You know.

26:46 Then then you get to the point where like I'm just trying so hard here, and it's. Like, okay, yes, yes, the problem right, Yes, it's a trap. It's a trap, and it's just you know, once you start to get what's so beautiful about this work I get to do by hosting this podcast, reading the books in advance, et cetera. Is when listeners and viewers start to hear this stuff and they start to recognize now it brings up into their consciousness and they can do something about it right when it becomes conscious. And that's the beauty of so much of this stuff. Just well it's funny, you know, like you I want to move into, you know, the frontal cortex of someone's mind to have you can borrow me a second consciousness for a while, which means, oh, gosh, you know, I heard about this best self thing as Susan Brady. I don't think I'm being my best self and I know I'm not speaking respectfully in my mind and myself, like, good, good noticing is job number one. Just now noticing.

27:39 Right right, right, right, one hundred percent. Okay. So our third action to build on the other two is to activate honesty, tell the truth, and listen to build trust. Let's talk about what that is and why it's important. Yeah, So, I mean, look, the leader brings the weather, and so as it's just I love your quips, well your weather. The leader brings the weather. Right, So if we if we want people to lean in and give their all, we have to demonstrate what truth looks like, what how to build trust, how we can be a leader worth following. And I think that that begins with after you know, you understand yourself and you're leading from a place of respect, which I didn't say what that is, but it's kind of like how we got going. You bring a lot to the table. You have read books, seen movies, traveled places, had discussions, had accomplishments that I have not. And I have done all that too that you have not. So I meet you with I'm enough and I got I bring something and you know you're awesome, and you bring something and we get to now work together effectively to tease out some ideas like this is what I'm talking about. So I'm interested in your work, and I'm I have a podcast, and i'm I work hard on not like interviewing the interviewer. So I'm I'm thank you for keeping me on track. But the activating honesty is telling the truth about what's hard, is about saying what's so? We ache for it. We want authenticity.

29:13 We want leaders who tell the truth, and you are, you can sniff out someone who's not. And so even when I can't express the answer to my team because maybe it's confidential, or even if I don't have the answer and I'm frustrated that I don't have the answer for whatever they're asking for the direction they need for whatever, I'll say I'm really frustrated that I can't answer this in a way that lands for you. I am, I own this and I'm working on it right. That's activating honesty. I'm using myself at all times as an instrument of learning for my team and the people I work with. By saying what's so. I like to tell you, Oh, go ahead, Susan, No, I was going to say.

29:54 Doing that from a place of standing in respect for self and other is paramount right, because if we if we activate honesty, if we say what's so, and we talk dismissively while we're doing it, like why would you why would you ask that question? You know it's going to kill all things good in a conversation or a meeting or energy or you know, engagement. And then you know, if we are critical of ourselves while we do it, it's probably going to make the people around us feel uncomfortable. So going back to the leader brings the weather. We have to anchor ourselves in a place of taking a breath and a space to show up in a way that is that is real and doesn't spray our stuff around for other people to contend with like a weather.

30:44 I have been working with a leader for ten plus years. She is somebody that she has continued to stoke her own education and development system. This is something she's committed to. It's an amazing ten years and she has this thing that she's where she this is something she's learned, Susan. She she will say, when she's about to get into something tender, she'll say, this is me being vulnerable. And as soon as she says that, the person is leaning in on every word and any any any movement that she makes, and that's when she she'd share something from the heart that's real and hard and she doesn't have the answer to and it just melts people. I yes, any you know, even the word tender. I mean, it's funny. Some people ask me about language at work, and you know, what's okay to say, what's not okay to say? And I think, you know, I think it's okay to say things like this. May you know this is making me uncomfortable and I'm going to do it anyway.

31:39 If you don't like the word vulnerability, but it's this, it's it's a beautiful strategy because it gets people to lower their own guard. You know. Yeah, the leader leads the way we model. Yes, yes, yes, it's just been amazing to watch her continue to unfold. Okay, so let's let her listeners and viewers. Marinida on the things we've been talking about so far. It was first three actions. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. We've run the air with Susan McKenty brady, who is a leadership educator, executive coach and CEO of the Simmons University Institute for inclusive leadership. We've been talking about three of the actions she talks about in the book to bridge perspective, strengthen teams, and create value. After the break, we're going to cover the last three. We'll be right back.

32:35 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to Working on Purpose.

33:27 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. If you'd like to learn where you are on the Gusto Leadership Spectrum, go to LinkedIn, find me Elise Cortes and scroll to the featured section. There you will find the free assessment called the gust To Leadership Spectrum. You will learn a lot about yourself and the spectrum of potential awaiting your ongoing development, and be sure to connect with me while you're there if you haven't already. If you are just joining us, my guest is Susan mckinti Brady. She's the co author of all the Difference six leadership actions to bridge perspectives, strengthen teams, and create value. So continuing on so we can be sure we get through the last three here. The next one is see the full story and honor multiple perspectives. This one is just so yummy, And as you said at the beginning of our conversations, Usan complex times. I mean, this is all of these actions are hard to do. But if you could speak to what this one is and why it's important, I'm.

34:25 Going to just give you a quick analogy that I offer to all your listeners and to everyone that I coach and work with and that is if in every conversation you picture a prism hanging down from the ceiling or even the sky, a pretend prism, and a prism casts light. Right, So if I'm on this side of the prism, I might see a yellow hue. You're on the direct opposite side, facing me, you might see a green hue. We could argue all day long that the light that is cast from the that is above us is yellow. I'll say yellow, and you say green. Right, if we've got people on the right and the left, they might see orange, they might see red. People argue from the level of conclusion. We know this from lots and lots of research about how people quickly reach conclusion.

35:18 And the opportunity with seeing multiple perspectives is kind of like literally getting up out of our seat and changing seats to see that the light that's cast from a prism actually is a different color depending upon the view from which you see it. And honoring multiple perspectives is assuming that every situation is more complicated than any one person can see, and any person might be more complicated than anyone person can see. And so it's what we don't see, what we don't know that matters, and I do think my wonderful mentor and friend, Richard Leer, says, you know, the future belongs to the learners, not the knowers, and so we need to be professional learners, all of us humans. While AI gives us more data, faster analyzes, synthesizes, does the hard work on all the information gathering, we need to be professional learners and to do that requires humility and intellectual humility. I might think I know what, still might I not be seeing. That's the essence of this target action.

36:29 I appreciate it that you did talk also about humility and also empathy to do that, you know, being able to really reach across the island and try to understand the other person's perspective, experience, desires, frustrations. It's just so so important, and it is a really big job. And it's hard, especially if we think we're right, if we're certain, or if we're reactive, if we're having a feeling about something that's uncomfortable, we don't want to we don't want to seek another perspective, So we have to come back to center, back to respect, and then regroup and proceed. Unlesseners and viewers keep in mind that We're still building on these actions, right, everything this who has been talking about that, These are all building actions. And so now we go into number five, which is ignite together, just harness the we, and of course I love that. Tell us what that is and why it's important.

37:20 Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, it's one thing for me to get up out of my seat and see a different hue of light and be interested. The leader's job is to help other people do that too, and so you know, creating togetherness and creating a culture of learning and growth requires us to stay out of the eyes I think I am. I used to have somebody who worked for me who spoke in eyes about, you know, a multimillion dollar business she was running, and I was like, this isn't your business, it's ours. So it's even in language, share the responsibility with others because we can, we can be very exclusive even in how we express our own value, you know. So it's harnessing that, harnessing the we. We're talking about bringing people together to you know, joint problem solve together, which really requires the first for target actions on everybody's behalf.

38:22 Yeah, if we can there's an extend this a little bit here, this whole notion of igniting togetherness. It's part of what I also speak about is, which is some things that I've learned in this podcast is the importance of instilling a sense of belonging, that felt sense that I belong here right. And then, of course, you know, in our world, work so much about helping people within organizations to align over the purpose of the organization and how their individual role is connected to that, which also brings unity in alignment. So if you could maybe speak a bit to the notion of mattering and how that's connected or maybe not connected in your view, in terms of igniting to betterness, well. Give you a real example. So we interviewed twenty two phenomenal executives for the book, one of whom is the former leader of Animal Kingdom for Disney Dwan Rivers. Before he was at Animal Kingdom, he had an assignment to do the hard work with Disney Cruise Lines to try to mend the fences between the classic maritime culture which Disney partnered with to kick off their cruise line business and the Disney culture. And you know, when he came on the ship, it was not going well because there was fundamentally differences of opinions about how to run a ship and how the Disney folks were all about creating the joyful magic and the experience and having fun, and the maritime culture was all about safety and protocols and you know those those things are kind of rigid. And

39:52 Dwan came in and the first thing he did was he put on the maritime whites. He dressed the part of honoring the maritime folks who, by the way, Disney was dependent on to make sure they were going to be able to win at the cruise line business. And you know, I think Dwan would tell you, of course, it took an army of people, but he walked into something that was wrought with mistrust. People were not communicating. There was all sorts of stories about you know, attribution to the other side that some of was true, some wasn't. So he needed to model the way with which is our six target action with actually starting with bringing people together.

40:34 And it's really about knitting together the differences in a way that helps people open their hearts and minds to working together effectively. And as we know, it's an unbelievably success like successful story for Disney. They actually just announced you probably saw. They're doubling their fleet, and they've invested billions of dollars and they're expecting it to be a continue growth business for them. Powerful stories, and I mean that is so so powerful. And boy, how many organizations, how many people can bear witness to what it feels like to try to merge organizations and merge those cultures and that, I mean that is really hard work to pull off, especially well in a way that allows people to thrive, to use your terminology, So thank you for sharing that. That's perfect. Okay, Well, let's be sure and hit our last action here, commit to action, be accountable, and bring it all together. Let's talk about what that is. And before we do that, I want to celebrate your opening quote in that chapter is from a Room Gupta, who is the CEO of Noble Reach, who was a guest on the podcast just a couple of weeks ago. The quote is, you can't mend a trust. You build it through consistency, follow through and creating outcomes people can believe in. So if you could talk about this last one, commit to action, be accountable and bring it all together? What is it and why is it important?

41:56 Yeah? For me, it's the leader models the way. Don't expect other people to do what you are unwilling to do. And so I got to model the way. And and even though this rubric is new, it's meant to be a playbook. I want people to use the language of the book because it solves also for language. We need to create more alignment in the world right now because we are in polarizing times. And so how do I model the way? The sixth target action is I hold myself accountable and I demonstrate what that looks like for my team. So I'm not I'm not asking you to do anything that I'm unwilling to do. From understanding yourself and knowing when you're triggered and knowing when you're not your best self, to returning to respect, to you know, activating honesty and showing up with with some fair amount of vulnerability when when the time calls for it, you know, to to bring other people together to you know, connect and communicate and and you know, we have to model the way. We can't expect other people to do what we're unwilling to do. And so and it's a vulnerable thing because we're not going to get it right all the time. That's that's the thing. So this is really about accountability. Uh yeah.

43:12 One of the things you're reminded me of Susan that I see so often and a lot of the leaders that I end up working with, you know, in our leadership and culture development work, is there there's a fair number of leaders that we find ourselves working with who are they really They violate this one terribly. And part of that is, you know, it's this notion of they don't say what they're they don't do what they say they're going to do. They haven't held themselves accountable, and everybody knows that they're not going to do what they said, and it's like it's just an understood thing and it's so sad. We have to work so hard to get that present to them so they can see, you know, this is what you're doing. I know you don't mean to, but you're forgetting all these things that you say you're going to do and it means the world to your team.

43:55 Why do you think that perpetuates? I have a theory on this, and I also have some research on it, but I bet you did too. I great question. I think I think part of it is that they don't have a good system to capture what it is they said they were going to do. I think that's one of it. I think they mean they mean, well, they intend to and it comes out and they want to, but they don't have a system to capture what they said they were going to do for their team members or whoever else. Yeah, that's the first major one that comes to my in my mind. Now you have. You know, Look, I think I think the more power you have, be that on the team or in the organization, the less people tell you the truth and the more the harder people laugh at your jokes. And so I think there's an insulation that comes from my title that oftentimes is not conducive to getting the feedback that we need as leaders.

44:47 Oh one hundred percent. Boy, we all know this, right. So he's in the further up that you go, the less information you're going to get, and the less you know, peer information you're going to get. Yes, so yes, and that that's that's just why it's so important. Have you know, spaces where you can get that mirrorhill back up to you and you can you can see what's really so because you won't get it directly from your team most of the time. Okay, So now I have to ask you this, Susan. You know this is beautiful. This book that the three of you have created is it's powerful, extraordinary, and it's let's just call it what it is, a crap load of work. What do you hope your readers get from it? Look, you know, I I want I want people to live, you know, a life of mattering. I think I think I think we're meaning seeking as humans right now, and I think we're I think we're connections seeking in the meaning.

45:41 And in order to do that, we need to we need to build our muscles on how to learn from people who are nothing like us, and and also create value from people who are nothing like us, and also learn how to return to a place of respect when people who are nothing like us irritate us. And these are all skills that I think are going to be required in the AI era. And getting better at being human puts you and I in a very important role in the world right now. Of a calling that helps a new form of intelligence. We call it difference intelligence, and it's different than emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence help leaders understand people. Difference intelligence helps us work together effectively to create value together, and I think that's the call of the day.

46:38 That's so beautiful. Once again, you know, that is a contribution that we haven't had curated material, difference intelligence. I love that. So now we've come very close to the end of the show already, and I want to give you a chance to close the program as you like. I think you probably know that the show is listened to by people around the world and they tune in for various reasons. But whether that's to become a better version of the human themselves, to become better leaders, to work on their organization, their culture, what would you like to leave them with? You know, I want to leave them with something we didn't talk about, which is actually in every chapter, and that is the power of reflection. There is no chance we are going to get better at being human in an AI era if we don't spend some time reflecting, reflecting on the meeting, reflecting on the conversation, reflecting on a relationship, spending time reflection in reflection. And so we offer reflective questions at the end of every chapter, and I would invite all of your listening audience to even you know, without our questions to spend time reflecting and also writing their reflections, because that's how we get better at anything. We look back at it and think how to go what worked well, what would be even better if?

47:55 And how can I do better next time? And it also gives you great material to be real with your team. So that's what I would leave people with. Susan's so grateful that you stepped into my world and I got to know you through your book and have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for writing the book and for coming on working on purpose to talk about it Alli. Thanks for having me. It's been a joyful conversation for me, and thank you for. Me as well. Thank you listeners and viewers. You were going to want to learn more about Susan Brady, the work she does as a leadership educator, executive coach and the CEO of Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership, and the various books that she has out, including the one we discussed today, All the Difference. Start by visiting her website, leading All Thedifference dot com and also find her on LinkedIn as well. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast or wherever you find them. We were on air with Merod Nassari talking about negotiating from the Highest Self, where wisdom meets win when we talked about his spiritually grounded approach inspired by Eastern Wisdom traditions and how you can apply as eight guiding laws to bring greater awareness into tuition and creativity into your negotiations and transforming them into opportunities for alignment, trust, and shared success. It was a very chewy, yummy conversation. Next week, we'll be on the air with Ingo Jody Thompson, a future work pioneer, talking about her book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It The Results Only Revolution. I think the name speaks for itself as to what we'll be talking about. Since so see you, then let's continue learning how to help more people flourish,

49:26 elevate your operating system as a leader, and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four C. Why Together We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on purpose.