Leading to Heal and Unite Your Diverse Team by Addressing the Ache for Belonging

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 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 its 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.

0:45 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 Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program. Great to have you, Thank you joining it in this week. This program has been on air since February of twenty fifteen, and it is a pride and joy for me. I'm glad to have you with me along the journey. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes, And if we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and log with therapist, speaker and author. And my team and I at gusto Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose, building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace.

1:34 There people are interestedly motivated to perform at their best, can grow into their former potential, and are committed to stay and dynamically deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gustodashnow dot com or my personal site, Atliscortes dot com. Now getting into today's program with us is Jerry Kolona, an executive coach who uses the skills he learned as a venture capitalist to help entrepreneurs. He is a co founder and CEO of Reboot, the executive coaching and leadership development company, host of the Reboot podcast, and author of Reunion Leadership and The Longing to Belong and Reboot and also Reboot Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. He joined it today from Boulder, Colorado. Jerry, A hearty welcome to Working on Purpose.

2:15 Oh, thanks for having me, and what a delight it is to be with you. Likewise my new friend. As I told you before we got on air, I loved, thoroughly enjoyed every decadent word in your book, and I think the world desperately needs this beautiful book that you created. So I'm very happy to share it with my listeners across the world. So I want to start by just jumping in one. How wonderful that your forward is by Parker Palmer. I'm very envious that you have him as your forward and your friend and also fellow mentor. It sounds like but what I thought was really beautiful, and I think this is so important to start here, Jerry is there's a quote in the beginning of his forward where he talks about you and also talks about some of your work and you in your Reboot book, and I think it's really great that he's also emphasizing that what you say is the leaders of the world need today that you argue and I agree, will come only as they learn how to work with their wounds in ways that make it unnecessary to work them out on others. Yeah, Parker has a way with words, says ay that is so compelling. And you know, one thing that I've come to in my own work, Jerry, it is maybe like a bit like your journey is That's what I've come to understand.

3:28 We're all walking wounded. It's just the extent to which how we work the stuff out, and certainly if we haven't, what a disaster that is as a leader. Yeah. Well, I think the world is rife with examples of people who hold power who are using that power inappropriately to somehow heal the wounds that they carry, and the result is that they create more toxicity and more pain and more wounds, rather than doing the hard, hard work of you know the subtitle my first book, Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, doing the hard, hard work of actually growing up, becoming a full fledged adult before you try to wield power. Yeah. I think it's so critical what you're talking about, And of course we know what this is unconscious.

4:24 They don't know the extent to which they're wounded, which makes it even worse. So I really applaud and we'll get into some of your radical self inquiry later because I think it's really powerful. But you know, as we were, as I was putting together what I wanted to talk with you about in this program, I was thinking, if this is a book about belonging, we can't really talk about belonging if we don't first talk about other ing. So will you share your perspective about what's othering. Well, it's important to recognize that I learned the term othering from the important work of the scholar John A. Powell and'a has done some tremendous work in codifying and explaining a process by which those who might have less power in a certain situation are pushed to the margins. And it goes beyond race, it goes beyond gender identity. It really speaks in the broadest possible terms to the experience, this experience of being made to feel that we are other than that which is dominant.

5:36 And there's a close experience of dehumanization that can occur with the other ring that we so experience beautifully articulated. I think it's so important to have access to that idea of other ing. And then, of course, as I mentioned before, one of the other things that I thought was brilliant about your book and now I'm getting access to your work, is you talk about the need for practicing radical self inquiry and there's a couple steps to that which if you could share those that would be great. Sure. I mean, first, to describe it. I coined the term a number of years ago to try to describe what it was that I was doing in this odd combination of coaching, Buddhist meditation, psychoanalysis. What is this thing? And it really comes down to this notion of skillfully and compassionately stripping away the mass that we wear to keep ourselves safe, so that there's no place left to hide, even from ourselves. And the important thing to recall about the phrase is it's the notion that it's radical. It's radical for us to ask a question like how have I actually been complicit in creating the conditions in my life? I say, I don't want complicit, not responsible. It's not about inducing guilt.

7:13 This is about inducing curiosity with the intent to create transformation. A corollary to that would be to say, how has it benefited me to always feel completely depleted and busy? Oh? Well, it makes me feel important. Maybe I should work on feeling important before I try to change the outward behavior what's going on. Those are good examples of what I mean by radical self inquiry. And of course I really appreciate the work that you do to help steward that along. And I really also appreciated it the way that you explicated that how workshops are so useful to help people will gain access to that emotional realm, maybe in a way that wouldn't happen in a one on one conversation or even in one on one therapy. And so you know, most of us need help along this journey. Yeah, most of us need help growing up, don't We We do, including coaches and therapists, that's for sure.

8:18 And it's a forever process, right, We're just really never done, That's right, And I find I find that compelling. I think of the word practice. It's a practice of growing up, just like my meditation practice is never done. I'm not okay, I'm enlightened, I'm done. No, no, no, It's just something I do every day. I brush my teeth every day, I sit in meditation every day, and every day I try to grow up a little bit more. And some days are better than others. That's just the way life unfolds. Mm hmm. And and yet it's I think there's there's such value in the reach to try to grow up every day. They're a commitment an intention that I celebrate, Browning said Robert Browning. The poet said man's reach should exceed his grasp or else what's a heaven for? I love that in your book. I saw that.

9:18 I of course, so I take a lot of notes as part of the way I do my research for my own writing, et cetera as well. But yeah, I just ran out of pages with you, Jerry. So okay, So this is another thing that I really want to celebrate about your work and what you're doing in the world, Jerry, And that is that you're really calling for a leadership revolution anchored and belonging. And there's a lot to that about what you're calling forth and really, you know, certainly it's going to require a good amount of courage on all of our parts. And I am completely aligned with you how necessary it is. And so will you talk a little bit about what does this leadership revolution look like? Well, I think that we carry this internalized notion of leadership as being a either a function of being the one to direct, being the boss, which has its own problems, like it induces in the person who's in that role an imposter syndrome because they can't possibly know all the things to tell people what to do.

10:28 It carries with it a belief that we're somehow supposed to create this output, this constant sense of the outcome has to be better. A company isn't succeeding unless it's not just profitable, but growing profitably constantly. And while those notions are really important, what I'm challenging business leaders to do right now is to expand that definition, to understand that they have more power than that they pretend that they have, and that they have a moral responsibility to speak up for those who have been othered and to add to the work. And yeah, it's hard, I get it. But the responsibility to leave the world better than what we found it. This is what our elders in every wisdom tradition has taught have taught us. And so yeah, it's a bit of a revolutionary concept, but it also feels quite old, meaning rooted in wisdom traditions where those who hold power had a responsibility to care for the whole of the community, like we're coming back home almost, Yes, trying to come

12:01 back home. Yes, thank you for that. Yes, it's a homecoming, isn't it? M M? And I appreciated you, know how you Now if we juxtapose the beautiful language that you just put there, now, let's put it into today's up against today's parlance, and let me quote from your book, because it really juxtaposes the difference and why there is such a need for this revolution. Then you go on to say, when you're talking about this, you say it's no longer sufficient to measure success by financial return on investment. A good leader, I contend, uses the experience of leading others, of wielding the privilege that comes with power to confront their own demons, which could otherwise create toxicity for those they lead. But a great leader actively confronts other ring wherever it sprouts, including from their own inner demons.

12:48 That's definitely revolutionary. I suppose it is. And when I started writing the book, which was in the summer of twenty I saw the need then when I what I did not envision is that the need would be so much greater three four years later and here we are. Well. That brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about, which you so incredibly delineate in your book. It's incredibly eye opening as the role of dehumanation in othering. And you go on to share a passage about past President Trump who is talking about Mexican immigrants, and you say, you quote, you wouldn't believe how bad these people are. They aren't people, These are animals. Animals.

13:41 Dehumanization is a pillar of systemic othering, and for such dehumanization to take hold, those who have assimilated must forget the oppression, the othering of their ancestors. This is how those who are othered are complicit and benefit from the othering of others. So there's a lot in that, But the first part that I wanted to really call out is the importance of the aspect of dehumaniation dehumanization for othering to occur. Yeah, it's you know, anyone who studies genocide, for example, will identify that the first step is dehumanization. And we hear this in language unfortunately every day right now, whether it's migrants on the southern border of the United States, whether it's you know, children in urban neighborhoods, whether it's the victims of substance abuse, whether it's people of a different religion than the dominant religion in a particular region. There's this constant refrain of dehumanization, of failing to see that the person in in front of you loves their children, is a person is scared, wants nothing more than to feel safe, wants nothing more than to feel that they belong. And when

15:16 we lose sight of that, horrible, horrible atrocities are possible. You know, I'm a Buddhist, and I fundamentally believe that the core of human being, the human existence, is compassion. And the thing that works against compassion is to no longer see that person opposite you as a human being. As they say in the book, that dehumanization makes it possible to look past the experience of our ancestors, to look past what actually they will happen to them, and instead of seeing a kinship with those who might be a climate refuge or an economic asylum seeker, or a political asylum seeker, or a thirteen year old girl looking for healthcare because she was raped. Instead of seeing the person in that, they become an object of ideology, less than human, dangerous, very dangerous. Now, on that note, let's let our listeners and viewers just kind of let that sink into on that a little bit.

16:45 We'll take our first break. I'm your host, doctor or Lee's Cortez. We've be on the air with Jerry Colonna, who's the author of Reunion Leadership and Belonging to Belong and also Reboot Leadership in the Art of Growing Up. We've been talking first about the notion of and dehumanization. After the break, we're going to start talking about the power of inclusion. Stay with us. Will be right back. 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.

17:44 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 Lise at a Leastcortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to helping create a world what people realize our potential at work and are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world.

18:26 I keep writing my own books. A lot of my research comes from my guest on this program, and one of my latest, which came out in March of twenty twenty three, is called The Great Revitalization. How activating meeting and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand how much the world had changed in terms of what their workforce wants from an organization and then give them twenty two best prejudices to try to create that in their culture. You can find it on Amazon or my website at leastcoretest dot com. If you are just now joining me. My guest is Jerry Kolona. He's the co founder and CEO of Reboot, the executive coaching and leadership development company, and he's also the host of Reboot Podcast. So, now that we've set up just how problematic othering and dehumanization could be, let's move on to the good stuff of inclusion, shall we? So?

19:12 I love it. I love how you talk about how your work has also been informed by your beautiful daughter Emma, and how she helped help you understand with the idea of But it's not enough just to be an ally, but we need to be co conspirators. So would you talk a bit about your perspective on inclusion, what really it is when it's at its best and its power. Well, the term that I started playing with when I was writing the book is systemic belonging, and people like that term. I came to that when I started thinking about systemic oppression and systemic racism as expressions of othering, and I realized that systemic problems requires systemic solutions, and that there are limitations. There are clear limitations in what we have done collectively to advance the sense of inclusivity through most of our diversity, equity and inclusivity programs, and what was missing from my perspective was the work required by those who hold the most power within an organization and by leaning into something another. Friends said, not just the brilliant advice from my fierce daughter, but this notion. In

20:44 my first book, I wrote about this notion of us being motivated but for the pursuit of love, safety, and belonging, and that those really drive so much of our behavior. And a good friend, Justin Scott Campbell, who himself is a wonderful DEI consultant, he wrote to me and he said, Jerry, inclusivity is the felt sense of love, safety, and belonging. And it just knocked me on my butt because that's it. You know, what's missing in so much of our efforts is that felt sense of love, safety, and belonging. And so I think that the reach here is to create a pervasive sense of belonging that is system wide, that even when the organization fails to live up to that aspiration, it remembers that aspiration and goes right back to it. That's what I meant when I talked about being centered on belonging. So I do want you to distinguish if you would trust city Line. But before we do it, we must do this, Jerry.

21:59 One of the things is that I just loved that you shared in your book is that you're known as the man who makes people cry. And the reason that you do that is because you make them feel seen and heard. I dare say that what you just uttered right back there about that felt sense of inclusion, which includes safety, trust, and belonging, probably made it people cry because they probably went for the yes, the man gets it. That's what I've been wanting. I can almost guarantee, ladies and gentlemen that if you are tearing up you are you're definitely part of the right community here. And Jerry, I love that you make people cry. I like doing that too, for all the right reasons, you know. I also thank you for saying that I appreciate that I don't set out to make people cry.

22:47 I understand. I set out to help people feel right. I understand we share that. And one of the tragedies of our modern life is that when people feel they often cry right because what they feel deeply inside is sadness. And you know, so much we struggle to make space for feelings like sadness. You know, I will joke with a group and I'll say, all right, you want to know the secret to making people cry? I asked them a really, really tough question. I ask them, how are you? And I ask it like I care, And the simple act of caring how somebody is, more often than not, unleashes those tears. I would the way I see that, Terry, is also that you've touched their heart and soul. And most people don't get to touch that beautiful, privileged part of a person today, but you know how to do that. And I would offer and venture that that's also what's happening, is they feel touched by you. Well, I can take that in. I only know one

24:18 way of being and it's real. And I have learned that when someone holds their seat with presence and care and can with compassion be with someone else's feelings, magic happens. Agreed, And it is precious, beautiful work to get to do. Amen, we are lucky, aren't we. I count my blessings every day and it's probably gonna move me to tears because I'm so grateful for it. Just beautiful. So well, let's do this. While we were talking about that, I do want to. I had a question here that I wanted you to to distinguish the relationship between trust, safety, and belonging. Since we've already cued it up, let's go ahead and treat that well. I usually use the term love, but trust works. When I describe it, I will say, we want to love and be loved.

25:25 We want that exchange that goes there. We want to feel safe physically, emotionally, spiritually, existentially. Yeah, and through that we can finally know to whom and to where we belong. And I always envision just resting, you know, when you're in that tight mode and your shoulders rise to your ears and you're just and I just imagine that the belonging just drops the shoulders down and you can take a deep breath, a parasympathetic, nervous system reset.

26:07 I just go Okay, I can kick my shoes off and I can feel at home. Mm hmm. Yeah, that sounds like the kind of world I want to live in, Jerry and help create. Isn't it the kind of company we want to work for? Mm hmmm. It certainly is the kind of company I want my daughter to work for. That's right, That yeah, uh you there's a powerful Uh. This just goes to the other. The other reason why this is so important to help work on this is you have a quote again from Parker Palmer's assertion which I just just knocked me back, Jerry. It was violence is what happens when we don't know what to do with suffering? Right? Is that Parker? Again? You know, I offer and think of children when I think of that quote, and I think of children growing up in environments not knowing what to do with the tears, with the sadness, with the suffering. You know, I can, I can usually make a room full of people cry just simply by saying, oh, you're crying, I'll give you something to cry about, and it takes them right back to childhood. Yes. Oh, I wasn't expecting you to go there, but yes, right. And that's and instead of being taught what to do with suffering. Oh you're crying? Are you

27:42 okay? The world must feel overwhelming to you. I'm right here, we got you're crying. I'll give you something to cry about, right, or variations on that theme. And then that child becomes an adult, and that adult gets power, and then what happens you know what happens warm, Right, we ban people from a particular country because of the religion, or we fight about humanitarian aid when we have two more of everything, as Tracy Chapman once saying, right, we allow children to get to try to crawl through razor wire to try to get to safety. We have four hundred million guns in a country with three hundred and thirty million people gun violence. Gun violence is the number one cause of death for children age seventeen and younger in the United States in twenty twenty four. Because violence is what we do when we

29:17 don't know what to do with suffering. I want to go back, and I had pulled out a passage that what I thought was so incredibly compelling, and I think it bears sharing at this point because I want our listeners and viewers to really understand how this idea of belonging that we were talking about has such huge ramifications when it's not present, and it's going to expand to what you just said there, Jerry. So this is in your Wages of Separation chapter, and you illustrate the catastrophic effects of other ing and also that suffering violence that happens when the suffering we don't know what to do with the suffering, So you say this is incredible. We fly the flag at half mass every week. Every week, another shooting each week. It seems we bear witness to horrific manifestations of our deep fear of the other. Worshippers and churches, temples, and synagogues murdered because of how and to whom they pray, or sometimes its revelers and a nightclub murdered because of who and how they love.

30:17 Sometimes it's supermarket shoppers, perhaps a black grandmother picking up produce, targeted because the shooter believed lies about white people being replaced. Sometimes it's students college, high school, middle school, fourth grade, or God help us, kindergarteners preparing for summer break. And sometimes it's an unarmed black man stopped for a traffic violation or killed because the hoodie he was wearing, even the Skittles candies he was caring seemed threatening. Yeah, yeah, that that's a hard passage for me to even hear. And I wrote that in the weeks following the shooting in Uvaldi tech Us, and I wrote that trying to grapple with how can we live in a world where babies are shot, and what is my moral responsibility as a person born to this body, white, straight, cisgender male with power and privilege. What is my responsibility in a world like that? And you know, we focused on dehumanization before, let's also focus on the numbing. Yeah, that happens, because I think that one of

31:55 our safety mechanisms is to be numb ourselves, to kind of normalize what is extraordinarily atrocious. And maybe what's revolutionary about what I'm doing is or what's certainly uncomfortable about what I'm doing, is to say there's a through line that connects all of these activities, including activities that would deny human and civil and healthcare rights to our brothers and sisters, or the ability to find the medical care that they deserve because they are trying to sort through who they are in the world. Yeah, because we're so frightened, we're so threatened by something that seems different, beautiful soul, let's also take our last break for all people, sit and chew on that. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

33:09 We've got to an air with Jerry Colonna, who's the author of Reunion Leadership and the Longing to belong and also the book Reboot Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. You've been talking a good bit about what it looks like in the rapifications of othering into humanization. After the break, we're going to invite you to come with us to elevate yourself and grow up and embrace belonging as a way of leading. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez 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 infuse 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 lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for sting let us and welcome back to

34:40 working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. I mentioned in the last break that I put out my last book, The Great Revitalization for Business Leaders, in March of twenty twenty three. What I did for you is I created a three page assessment that you can download from my website to ascertain the extent to it your organization is actually providing a culture that would actually attract and want to keep the kind of people that are looking for and wanting to work today. What today's workforce wants. You can find it at Gusto dashnow dot com if you are now just joining us. My guest is Jerry Kolona. He's the co founder and CEO of Reboot, the executive coaching and leadership development company and the host of Reboot Podcast. So for this next and last session section here Jerry, what I wanted to focus on is really situating what we can do now. So we've I think made a very good case for why this is a problem and how it's affecting the world peace and our health and vitality. So for this next segment, I wanted to put forth that that invitation, and so first I want to read this passion or this passage that you that you set forth here because we talked about it just before we got on air, and I want to situate it for as an invitation for everyone that's listening and watching. You say this is and I say, this is true leadership. You say I try. I tried, just by knowing that I may fail. But I can't be a bridge if I am unwilling to be trodden on. I must feel the dirt and mud of potential imperfection. I must risk the privilege that comes from white supremacy. I must

36:12 be willing, as poet Donna Markova says, to risk my significance. Yeah. There's another quote in the book that I find incredibly helpful and hopeful, and this is really important. This is the hopefulness that's implicit even in the word reunion. And the quote is the epigraph to chapter seven, which comes from the Talmut, and in it, Rabbi Tarfin says, it is not yours to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect the work. And I think you combine that passage that you're talking about, what am I willing to risk? I am real to risk being set straight and told that I'm wrong as part of the process of me not neglecting the work.

37:15 This is leadership at its best, leaning in trying the hard thing. You know, as I often counsel to people, Yeah, I know it's hard to build a profitable business, and it's really important. But it's also important to build a business that has purpose, that has meaning. And then I'll joke you can walk into your gum. At the same time. It is hard, but it is worth it, even if you fail, even in the moments to use your framing, even in the moments when a company loses connection to its purpose. So lot was my Buddhist teacher, Sharon Solves work would say, begin again, right, begin again, reconnect to that purpose, go back to what it is. This is essentially what reunion is about. You know. In the last chapter, I quote from the brilliant Beautiful Bell Hooks and her poem when Angels speak of love. When angels speak of love, they tell us all things are union and reunion. There is no separation, there is no end to paradise. Now, what that brilliant elder tells us in that poem is that the possibility exists for us to be

38:45 together again, and we have to try, knowing that we will fail because the stakes are so high and it's so worth it. I think it is a profoundly and radically beautiful use of your one precious life. That's what I think, Amen. I wanted you to talk a little bit more about your reunion process. I was completely dazzled by the way you describe it in your book, and if you could just talk a little bit to it, I know you could. Probably we could spend a whole podcast on that process, but if you could describe a bit of what that means or how you steward it the Satis. One of the insights I got was that there was a I did not know to whom I belonged. And I realize that I have been walking through the world with power, exhorting people to be better human so that they might be better leaders. And I realized that there was a gap in my own understanding of to whom to where I belong or, as Parker writes in the forward, whose am I not? Who am I? Right?

40:07 And so for me, part of the reunion process, and what I think may be different about what I'm proposing, is that part of the preliminary work to creating a systemic sense of belonging is for those of us who hold power to reconnect with the experience, the reality of the experience of our ancestors, can induce a greater sense of empathy for the world as it is, and to welcome in the disowned parts of ourselves that very important shadow work, so that we welcome in even the bits of our family trade, even the parts of our own experience that we might not be particularly proud of, so that we can stand from that place of deep and profect on empathy and then look out to the other and reunite with the kins the kinship and the kinfolk who live outside of our own experience. That for me is the reunion process.

41:17 Your story that you weave throughout the book, Jerry, about your own family, your own family that you grew up in, and of course your grandparents and then you know, going back and claiming your your your grandmother in Ireland biological grandmother and I biological grandmother. It's just so powerful. And the story that you talk in the book about the woman CEO who couldn't figure out why everybody was quitting and they all were leaving because of pay and she and you helped her understand, you know, how she how she could connect back to her previous ancestors who had been slave owners. Incredibly powerful, Jerry. I've never seen anybody do this kind of work. You know. My last chapter in the Great Organization is on spiritual intelligence. And like you, I'm waiting for somebody to come running up after me saying there's a business talking about U intelligence in the business world. Yes there is. How's that? Yes, there is. I'm gonna I'm gonna say, I'm gonna call my friend Jerry so so so. I just think that's stunningly beautiful. And you take it further though, Jerry, and when you talk about your reunion process that I just thought was so incredible, you say, what's needed for true reunion and therefore lasting transformation are visceral somatic experiences coupled with repetition, revery, active imagination. Art such as poetry, all draw people into their bodies, into their hearts. Then the energy that has stirred up becomes the fuel for transformation, connection, and reunion. That is why beauty and art are needed.

42:47 Reunion, like welcoming the unwelcome, begins with a broken heart. Yeah, yeah, Well that that little bit of wisdom comes to me from my teacher and friend on a PEMA children but his nun who always talks about starting with the broken heart, and that particular passage, by the way, was spurred by someone wrote to me and asked me what I find to be a really funny question. He said, why do you write so beautifully? Yeah? I said, I don't know how else to write them. But then I gave it some thought and I realized that transformation cannot just occur at the intellectual level. It has to occur at the artistic level, at the soul level.

43:49 So to go back to your question of why spirituality marriage matters, spirituality matters is because that's our catch all phrase for that which moves the soul. Yes, we do not create magic in businesses because it's intellectually correct. We do so because we're creatively inspired. I completely agree, and that brings me to the next thing. I wanted it to serve up to our listeners and viewers, and this is really it's a profound invitation. It's a heartfelt, soulful invitation to come with us and to build a company. As Jerry says, that your children would want to work for that, my job would want to work for that anybody's chid would want to work for, and you can do that. And actually, what I'm very heartened by, Jerry, is the work that I get to do and the people that I associate with.

44:42 I see more and more companies and leaders working and reaching to try to do just this. It's so heartening, it's so encouraging. So this is happening, And so I was really just there were so many things about your book that I just really thought were so fresh. But you know, building an organization as people can belong, not just wealth creation for investors, but this organization becomes the purpose of build, for the purpose of building healthy, profitable containers. I've never heard anybody use that word of containers, but that opens something really beautiful. It's way bigger than culture when you use that word container.

45:22 So if you could speak a little bit about this invitation that we're putting forth here to build these kinds of companies, what does that look like? Sure, So I often speak of the container of an organization and I'll hold up a coffee mug of some sort, and I'll talk about how important it is that the mug not leak. It kind of defeats the purpose. And so it's really important to have an economically viable container to have a business that has a tomorrow. But I'll point out that a container that lacks content lacks meaning. Yeah, and content that lacks container is useless. And so you need both. You need to be able to drink the tea that's in the cup as well as being able to lift the cup, lift the t to your mouth, and so the two go hand in hand. That one of the misunderstandings, one of the myths that we carry in business is that purpose and the business of the business are in opposition. Right, They actually go hand in hand. They create a much more enjoyable hole and they give meaning

46:58 to the content to the container in a way like nothing else. That is what purpose is. That is mission. Well, there's a couple more things I want to get out of you if we possibly can. But I think we would be remiss if we didn't talk about this idea to achieve this, or to at least contribute to achieving this, of creating cultures of going first where the leader starts this process. So can you just speak a little bit where maybe we're about maybe a minute or so, yeah, even less. I mean, this is why I'd go deep and tell my story of searching to understand who my father's biological mother was. See, I understand that I have a microphone. And if I go first, and I do it in a way that creates space for the other, I am making it safe for you to go. So leading going first means taking that risk, being vulnerable, being the first to say, here's what happened to me. Yeah, you say, you know, when those who hold power in any community share their story with a genuine attempt to say the unsaid, unwelcome things, you know, I want to create possibility of the connection implicit with and your story is my story, but we foster a safety that may make it possible for those with less power to share their stories. Yeah, that's it. Well,

48:31 Jerry, it is as I think you're quite. I think I've conveyed to you that I'm really a beautiful I'm just I'm heartened by your work. I'm grateful to be connected with you. I'm really happy to share you with my listeners and viewers around the world. Just in our last bit, maybe thirty seconds, what would you like to leave our listeners and viewers with hope the world can feel like a dunster fire, disunion and pain and suffering, but do the hard work of seeing kinfolk. You know, we are all, as I describe in the book individual fingers. On the same hand, we are all interconnected and interdependent. We need each other. That's how we're going to solve the problems together. Community, beautiful soul. Thank you very much for being on Working on purpose. Listeners and viewers, we're going to want to stay connected to this man. You can find him. This is Jerry Kaluna again. You can find him on his website Reunion dot reboot dot io. Let me say that again for you. It's Reunion dot reboot dot io. Check out his books, check out his work, and if there's a way to follow him, I'm sure we're going to want to do that.

49:50 Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it rev recorded podcast. We are on with Brad Dutzer talking about the same topic of belonging, but viewed from the lens of five actions he advises the to include in their leadership from his book Belonging Rules, and those actions are turn into the power Listen without labels, choose identity over purpose, challenge everything, and demand one hundred percent of the truth. Next week will be on the air with Roger Feierstein talking about his Solve the Real Problem book, Because what you think is the problem is usually not the problem. See you there, and remember that work is one of the greatest adventures that we have and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So 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.