Good Life Project - Alex Jamieson & Bob Gower | How to Have Hard Conversations

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Question - how do you talk to friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances about things that matter - hard things - in a way that leads to each person being seen, heard, acknowledged, and treated with dignity? How do you get to a resolution, and sidestep the hurt, the wounding, the rage, and reactivity? How do you have conversations, in work and life, that lead to genuine understanding and change, and leave you feeling respected and at-peace, even when you still disagree? That's where we're going in today's conversation with Alexandra Jamieson & Bob Gower, partners in business and life and co-authors of Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life (https://getradicalalignment.com/book). Alexandra Jamieson is the bestselling author of five books, and co-creator / co-star of the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me. She is a highly-sought-after success mentor and motivational guide for thousands and has made it her mission to empower women to create epic lives. Bob Gower is a New York-based consultant, writer, and speaker. He contributes to Inc. magazine, has lectured at Columbia University, NYU’s Stern School of Management, the Berlin School, and worked with leaders at Chanel, Ericsson, Ford, and GE to non-profits like New York Public Radio, the Studio Museum, and the Wikimedia Foundation.Learn more at: Radical Alignment website : https://getradicalalignment.com/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So question, how do you talk to friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances about things that matter, hard things, in a way that leads to each person being seen, heard, acknowledged, and treated with dignity? How do you get a resolution and sidestep the hurt, the wounding, the rage, the reactivity? How do you have conversations in work and life that lead to genuine understanding and change and leave you feeling respected and at peace even when you still disagree? Well, that's where we're going in today's conversation with my guests, Alex Jamison and Bob Gower, partners in business and life and co-authors

of Radical Alignment, how to have game-changing conversations that will transform your business and life. Alex is a bestselling author of five books, co-creator and co-star of the Oscar nominated documentary, Supersize Me. She's a seriously highly sought after success mentor, motivational guide for thousands, and has pretty much made it her mission to empower women to create epic lives. Bob is a New York-based consultant, writer, speaker. He contributes to Inc. Magazine, has lectured at Columbia, NYU, the Berlin School, worked with leaders at companies like Chanel, Ericsson, Ford, GE, and all the way to nonprofits

like the New York Public Radio, Studio Museum, and Wikimedia Foundation. And they have spent years deconstructing how to have healthy, positive conversations. We need these insights right now, like never before. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Play ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

I feel like in the last year, you know, I've done a lot of dietary experiments in my life and I've always had like, you know, trying to gain muscle or lose fat or heal my gut. And I've been, I've been gluten-free, I've been keto. I, you know, I've gone through all the, and now I, I, I'm not really anything anymore, but I'm very happy with myself and I'm very happy with my diet. And I don't know that I would have gotten here without having gone through all of those very definitive three-step processes and all the things that I learned about myself and learned about my body along the way, because I'm like, oh yeah, sort of, I understand keto. And now I understand

kind of why it doesn't work for me. I understand, you know, I understand all of these little pieces. And so part of the journey maybe is trying things that feel definitive for a little while, try them on. It's like there's the form shuhari, right? Like you crawl, walk, run in martial arts, right? You work the kata over and over again, like these regular forms, so you can eventually break free of the forms, just like jazz musicians play scales over and over again so they can be fully free and break free from the form. And I think maybe a lot of life is like that behavior for you to play with, rather than like, this is the one way to do this one thing and i feel that's more what you're talking about yeah yeah yeah and it's like dating you have to date a lot of different people to find your person but then once you find your person you both change and become different people along the way too

and it's the same with diet or frameworks like you have to try a lot of them out and then eventually you find your version of it or you dance back and have to try a lot of them out and then eventually you find your version of it or you dance back and forth between different things that work at different times for you. Yeah. There's a difference between dogma and approach or patterns or frameworks. I think one of the things like writing the book for us, you know, it's a framework that we've been using, you know, for close to a decade now. like we didn't write about it for the longest time because it just felt so simple. You know, it just was like, oh, it's just too simple and too obvious. And so why would you bother writing about something that's so simple and so obvious?

And it wasn't until we would be talking to people who are going through something and we would offer it to them and they'd be like, wow, that's amazing. And it was hard for us. I think it was hard for me to see that something so simple and so obvious actually could be valuable to other people. But in many ways, that's all that's valuable, right? Like me talking to you about what's simple and obvious for you. Like I know you're such an amazing marketer and amazing audience builder and even like an audio technician. Like I've talked to you about so many different things over the years. And I have the sense sometimes that the things you're telling me seem very simple and obvious to you. And yet to me, they're just not in my realm and they really have revolutionized the way I've thought about

different things. I mean, it's interesting also, as we are having this conversation, I'm working on my next book about the sparkotypes and was literally just working on the chapter about advisors, where the impulse is to advise, to mentor, to guide. And one of the things I learned along the way is that sort of an entry-level advisor in the early years, it's all about telling people what to do. You know, once you graduate into sort of ninja-level advisors, you just shut up. It's all about the powers of awareness and observation and appropriate questions and prompts and frameworks. And you don't give any answers anymore. And so it's fascinating to kind of see the evolution of all of that. And by the way, that wasn't just an ad for the book, but there's way

more in there. Come with that. That makes me think of my dad, actually. He was a high school principal for 25 years. I think he is that ninja level advisor. He doesn't tell any of... There's four siblings. He has four kids. He doesn't tell any of us what to do or how to think or how to be. He only asks questions, but he would be so perfect for this chapter. But it's honestly, as a child, I'm like, dude, just tell me what you know. Just tell me your wisdom. Just give me the stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what we're talking about. We all crave certainty and just want the answers. But along with that comes dependence, which at the end is a disservice.

Yeah. I was thinking about Dolly Parton. She says that she never offers advice to people who are coming into the music industry. She just sort of says, hey, this was my experience and you might learn from it or you might not. And that was kind of a big light bulb that went off for me. And then recently I've kind of closed down sort of an aspect of my business, which was much more about strategy. And actually the last client I had really expressed some dissatisfaction at the end because they were like, we really thought you were going to tell us what to do.

You know, like we really thought you were, you were going to analyze the market for us. And I have no idea how they thought that because nothing in my contract said that that was what I was going to do or the team that I had was going to do. We did say that we had experience in their vertical. And so we could bring that to the conversation. We could have opinions, but that the conversation was really theirs. And what we were there to do was to lead them through. And then she also said, the client also said at the end, and I think we had exactly the conversation we really need to have, but I can't help but being disappointed. And I was like, okay. It was a great experience on the one hand because I felt like, okay, we got them where they needed to have because it was really about them having,

they really had a very fundamental, difficult conversation they needed to have that they just weren't having. And frankly, market analysis was going to lead them away from that conversation rather than towards it. It was going to allow them to kind of pretend that they were aligned without actually having the deep conversation about power and authority and ownership and where cash was going in this organization, which was all messed up and all out of alignment. Yeah. They needed to know who are we as a team? How are we working together? Not what are we going to do out there? That'll happen eventually, but the team conversation had to happen first. But the team conversation had to

happen first. It was almost all about intention, really. Like one person's intention was to make sure cash flowed in one direction. Another person's intention was to disrupt the market, who, by the way, had been hired by the first person, you know, like, but they just weren't, you know, like, so they all had like different and they just kind of kept bumping into each other. They would make plans and then not do them. And it was because they were, they were, each thought the company was, had a different purpose than, than, than the other one thought. Yeah. So I guess this kind of gets us into our topic of conversation also, which is conversations, often hard conversations, but really, really necessary conversations like you guys shared and, you know,

you sort of developed the framework that you've been using with each other for the last decade or so as well as you both have your own independent businesses with clients colleagues we certainly are in a moment now culture-wise where people are finding it harder to have any conversation, let alone hard conversations, even people that we care about deeply. Sometimes it's family. And I'm curious actually, would you distinguish between conversation and argument? We were just talking about this.

Or were we arguing about it? Yeah. Yeah, we talk about discourse and debate kind of as the distinction that we've been making recently. And debate is really, you know, you're there to kind of prove the other person wrong. You know, it's very common in social media. It's one of the reasons I'm not really on social media now is because I found myself participating in debate with people that I was never going to convince. And it was sort of inconsequential even if I did convince them, like I didn't even know them very well. So why was I spending time like trying to convince them of things? But really, I was trying to just prove

them wrong. I wasn't trying to learn anything. I wasn't there to be changed by it. And I think when it comes to discourse, or maybe it's just sort of positive argument or good argument, you come in willing to learn because you understand that you don't have the full picture of the topic. Like they're all viewing the world through like a pinhole of perception and that if we're going to really understand something that we need other people, we need people to kind of share in that thinking with us. Am I capturing the spirit of our conversation well? Yeah. And we were also talking about what makes a conversation or what

makes communication hard? What makes it tough? And for us, we came down to two main things, is it highly emotional? Are you already feeling already in, you know, feeling a lot? Some people will say triggered, but I feel like that doesn't give the respect that we deserve as humans, that we are emotional, physical creatures. And besides being emotional, like, is it a high stakes topic? Do you feel like something really fundamentally important is on the line? Like, is somebody going to lose something? Is somebody going to win something? So emotions and high stakes, those felt like the two really important parts of what makes a conversation tough. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

And when you weave that into sort of like the distinction between discourse and debate, I think you can have those two things, right? Emotion and high stakes can be present, whether it's a debate and you're just trying to prove the other person wrong or whether it's a discourse and you really want to have an open conversation and see if there's a possibility of resolution. And yet it can get really emotional and the stakes are high what pops into my mind is either there will be some people listening to this or there were some people listening to this who know people who love to debate it's their sport yeah

and this so you get into a scenario where it's emotional, but one person, this is their sport. They are an athlete and all they want to do is provoke emotion and create that in the name of winning. And, but on their side, they are completely emotionally detached. It's just fun. It is 100% sport. I have actually a friend of mine who is in the practice of law. It was a litigator, very successful, loves, loves, loves what they do. And part of it is because they have found a professional outlet

for this thing where there's no emotional investment yet part of their their love is to provoke emotion on the other side especially you know when the stakes are really really really high in the name of winning and i wonder what what you do when you find yourself interacting with someone where you're you're in it from a deeply emotionally involved state and the other person, it really is just sport.

Can we talk about in good faith? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Honestly, I didn't join the debate team for a reason because I don't enjoy that kind of sport. I do get very emotional or it feels very important. Like important conversations feel deeply important to me. And so to trigger someone purposefully doesn't feel like fun to me. So we've gotten really into this idea of, are we both in this conversation in good faith? Are we coming together for a clear outcome that serves both of us? Are we really willing to listen to each other, be changed maybe even by each other?

Are you that open? Are you willing to really be present? So I had an experience a few months ago where it was a very emotional topic with an old friend. And I realized, oh, she's not coming to this in good faith. And I asked for a timeout. And that was really appropriate to ask for it. Like, hold on, let's really examine how we're communicating here. And that required a pause. Yeah, I was thinking about it's really examine how we're communicating here. And that required a

pause. Yeah, I was thinking about, it's sort of like the relationship to truth. And as you were, as you're both talking, one, I've sort of stepped out of relationships because with people that you're describing, Jonathan, you know, like who just want to argue. And I think there's maybe two different reasons. One, as I know people who are just contrarian, and really they just kind of enjoy the game and they enjoy the case. They sort of just take pleasure in things getting kind of stirred up, which I don't. And I think there's another side, which is sort of when you look at our legal system, the idea is that each side is going to beat the hell out of each other side. And then one side is going to win and be happy. And one side is going to lose and suffer. And that's how we find the truth of the

matter. That's how justice is served. I mean, that seems to be sort of the underlying, in litigation, that's like the underlying philosophy. But I think what we're talking about, and I think the kinds of conversations that I prefer. Maybe we may come at it from very, very different angles and have very strong, different opinions and very strong, different mindsets and ideologies. But the goal is to have a relationship with the person on the other side and actually do something with them to reach some kind of sense of alignment, whether or not we disagree. It could be that we're going to disagree and commit, because we work with a lot of business teams that if one person loses and feels really bad, they can sabotage the project in a variety of very subtle ways, which I've seen

over and over again. They can quit, which then you have to bring somebody else back in. And also, they may be bringing some really vital perspective that if we just shut that person down, shut that person up, keep that person from contributing, we then miss out on. We don't get their brain, we don't get their being working on the problem anymore. So I think when I think about difficult conversations are the kind that I care about, because there's so many different kinds of conversations I would classify as difficult, but the ones that I want to engage in are the ones that have a purpose to them. Like Alex and I may argue about, you know, everything from personal to professional to,

you know, kind of direction of the business to direction of the family to where, you know, but we're committed to each other, you know, like we're going to be together. So we have to figure this thing out and we have to come to some kind of agreement. And so it's okay to lose, you know, in quotation marks from time to time, you know, I don't have to get everything I, everything I want, because what I want ultimately is for the relationship to be vital and healthy and for the relationship to move forward. Yeah. And I think having that meta lens is something that sometimes is not the easiest thing to access. To zoom the lens out and say like, what's really going on here?

And at the end of the day, who had the quote, do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? And it's probably not the exact quote, but it's, yeah, I think that's part of the idea also. And I wonder, you know, in the context of meeting up with somebody who just loves to argue or debate for the sport of it,

and there's no malice there also. It's just they're fun. Whether one of the things, if you are not that person, you know, if you want to have hard conversations for the purpose of true resolution, whether being able to identify whether the person on the other side of the conversation as quickly as possible is in it for using your language, language debate or discourse becomes a pretty mission critical skill. Yeah. That sometimes you don't figure out until you're in the conversation too. You know, I recently, actually I won't name the person, but you know, somebody who I've known

for years and who I've tried at different times to do professional, we just, you know, we share, you know, a love of each other. We share a love of certain ideas. And then after a while, I realized that they liked to destabilize everything that we were doing on a very regular basis. Like that, that was kind of their fun. And I was like, that's, you know, and they're very successful. Like, it's like they create things, but I just realized, like, I don't think we're going to create anything either. I'm not going to have, we might create something great, but I'm not going to have fun doing

it. And that's important to me, or we're just never going to create anything together because i keep trying to create form and you keep trying to create discord or chaos yeah we've also got these basic ground rules that we discovered we were using with each other that we have found so important in those conversations out there in the world. And we, we shorthand is setting the stage, but it's like, when are we going to talk and what are we talking about? And in what state are we showing up to the conversation? And to what end are we talking? Like, why, like, why is it important to both of us to have this conversation? And most people aren't used to having that level of clarity before you get into a topic. Hey, can we talk about X. That level of

specificity is really unusual, but it's been a huge, huge calming sedative to my nervous system when it comes to tough topics. You mean rather than arguing about something in the middle of the night and in a desperate way to resolve it before we go to sleep. Yeah. Not after we share a bottle of wine, not right before bed. Never works. But it's really important right now. It's so important right now. That also brings up one of the classic instructions for you and loved one, which is never go to bed angry. We do not believe in that rule. We do not. I used to believe that. I really did. And then I realized in our relationship, actually, it was

like, oh, why would I even try to talk to you at midnight? I am not my best self. I am not. We're okay with going to bed angry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because I think there's another really important relationship skill, which has taken me a long time to learn. And that's self-soothing because I think often when I was in argument, I was seeking solace through my partner in some way. I was saying like, you know, like when you agree with me, I will feel okay. Or when we reach agreement, maybe even to be a little more generous, but really it's no, it's more like when you see things my way, you know, like that's the, that's the mindset I'm in, then I will be okay. But learning how to, to kind of lie in bed and be

okay with things, feeling a little bit disruptive, a little bit unsure, a little bit and soothe myself and be like, okay, I'm going to be, it's actually, to me, it's a, it's, it's something I've learned rather late in life. I'm, I'm, I'm embarrassed to be, it's actually, to me, it's something I've learned rather late in life. I'm embarrassed to say, but it's, I think, an important adulting skill, right? I think it really only took a couple of time, a couple of instances for us to realize, oh, if we just go to bed, tomorrow there won't really be a problem. Like whatever was up for us pretty much wasn't a problem. We were just tired and cranky. And now, all right, maybe we have a simple clarifying conversation.

Yeah. And that happens like two or three times, right? You let the conversation go, you wake up in the morning, you're like, what was I so upset about? You know, like that, that seems so important last night, but now that I'm having breakfast, just, yeah, whatever. Yeah. I love you. I love you too. We're fine. Yeah, we're fine. Yeah. It's so funny you say that. I noticed that about myself also. And I attribute, I think part of it to a longstanding meditation practice is that there are times where I'm just not fun. There are times where I'm just, I can tell I have a short fuse. I'm not interactive. I'm not kind. I don't create space for people that I absolutely love and conversations aren't what I want.

And I've gotten to a point where I will not always, but most often notice, I'm like, oh, I'm being an idiot. Huh? What's actually going on here? I'm like, is it the topic? No, I don't really care about it that much. Like, is it the person? No, they're being cool. I'm like, oh, it's me. I haven't slept well for three days or I'm really stressed because I'm under deadline. And this is being internally generated. It's not an inter-relational thing.

It's an internal relational thing. This is actually one of the points about tough conversations right now in this climate that keeps coming up for me. And I think social media is an amplifier of this problem. It's so hard for us as humans to admit when we're wrong. It's so hard for many, many reasons, but I think social media makes it hard because you're going to get slammed even if your apology or change of mind is very honest and real, like you feel like you can't win. So a lot of people just double down on whatever their initial assumption or opinion was.

Yeah, we're in a time. And also, I think social media is interesting in that I think about Robert Cialdini's sort of seminal work on influence and he talked about this thing called the consistency principle where, you know, we feel compelled as human beings to act and say things that are consistent with our prior actions and things that we've said. So if we make a little statement, you know, if it's in passing in conversation, then it's out

there in the ether and we can pretty quickly change our mind and have conversation. But we don't even like to do that. But if we make a graphic or a video or something, and then we put it on the socials, and then there's all people who are like, then it's almost like, I feel like that makes you feel like you're more dug in. And that unconscious sort of like bias towards consistency makes us want to keep saying and doing the same things, even if our thought evolution is different, because we want to be seen a certain way. It certainly complicates things. It's almost like consistency of identity or ego, right? We want to be like, oh, I'm still the same person that I was before. I don't know. I think about this a lot with,

we actually had a long conversation about ego over dinner last night about some of these topics and how, you know, I've been on your podcast before and talked about my experience of being in a cult for a couple of years and watching The Vow, which is about the NXIVM cult, which is on HBO. And I'm watching that now and it's sort of reminding me and bringing up a lot of stuff. And one of the things that I really remember about it was watching my own mind adopt opinions or thoughts or feelings that I now don't identify with at all, right? We're highly influenced by the people we're around often. And that's kind of one of the things that cults sort of prey upon. And I highly recommend The Valley kind of goes into this in some detail. And one of the filmmakers talks about this experience a lot. And so it's hard to leave these groups, even when there's a part of you that sees,

wait, this doesn't make any sense. Wait, this is kind of, there's some BS going on here. And maybe I would be happier doing something else. One, you have a community of people around you who are kind of supporting you and kind of keeping you in this thought pattern. But two, it's really, it's your own desire to be consistent. I said this thing and the longer you're in, in some ways, the harder it becomes to turn away. Like I was in only for you know, like I was in only for two years, which, you know, it was both a long time and a short time in some ways compared to others. But when I look back on it, like leaving after two years was kind of hard because I would have to admit that that previous two years was something of a mistake and that I have now

evolved and I've now, you know, and I'm so glad that I was actually in this group before social media was a thing, because I hate to think what are the, you know, I would hate to have those Facebook messages, you know, in an archive somewhere, you know, came out of that kind of thinking. Yeah. And at the same time, I think in the moment you're thinking to yourself, well, I would have to admit these two years had been a mistake. And yet reflecting on your conversation about having, you know, tried a dozen different approaches to eating over the last couple of years and that actually not being a mistake because it's given you these data points

to drop you into a place where you are now, which is really healthy. And I think a lot of times with the benefit of time, we gain perspective and say, well, it was two years that I probably would have done something different with, but it also informed me in a way that dropped me into a place where I am in some way able to pull some benefit from the experience and bring it forward into my life. Yeah. I mean, regret in many ways, this isn't really terribly useful because whatever it is you've experienced has gotten you to where you are now. Sure, if I had this perspective that I have now, having had that experience, if I had this perspective before I had that experience, I might have made some different decisions. Yes. And by the way, we are not making an argument for everyone to run out and join cults.

That is not the point of any of this. No. whether you're in your running era pilates era or yoga era dive into peloton workouts that work with you from meditating at your kids game to mastering a strength program they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals no pressure to be who you're not just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are so no matter your, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what's the difference between me and you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk alex you um you brought up this idea of setting the stage which i think is really interesting just sort of saying instead of you know if there's an issue that you know you need to address, instead of just doing it right then and there, do it in a way where the setting is constructive. You guys also talk about really creating some sort of structure for the conversation itself

when it happens, this idea of intentions, concerns, boundaries, dreams. Can you talk to me a bit about that structure? Yeah. Well, even before you go into those four pieces of a conversation, which by the way, most people don't have structured conversations. So to even bring it up or invite somebody into it can feel a little strange the first couple of times, but how you invite someone into a conversation can really be so transformative in itself. Like the last thing anybody wants to hear is we need to talk. We need to talk now, right? Nothing good is coming after that sentence. And it really is, hey, can we talk about X later this weekend?

You know, I'd like to talk about this with you at a later date, or do you have time now to talk about this? Do you have space and capacity for this? That's actually something that my, some of my friends and I have agreed to in our text chain. You know, we don't use it as an emotional dumping ground because people are really, their lives are full and they have stresses. But we ask permission first. Like, hey, does anybody have space for me to hop on a phone call or can we have a private text about this thing? It's really respectful. It like immediately sets the tone.

Instead of me invading your space with a topic, will you come into a space together about something? Yeah. And then for the steps themselves, one of the ways we think about it is missing conversations. Often when there's conflict and persistent conflict among people, that it's because there's some either information missing. Sometimes the missing conversation is goodbye. We're just not aligned and we never will be, but more often than not, there's some sort of missing nuance to the conversation or some missing information. So when we talk about intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams, what we're really trying to do is get out all of the, let's call it the sort of the high stakes

thinking or the high impact. I'm not even quite saying it. It's more like the emotional, like the stuff that feels really important to us. So for instance, when we started to write the book together, we had the conversation about, because we'd never done business together. We'd only been in a romantic and intimate partnership. And we'd really both had bad experiences in the past combining the two. And we were like, let's not do this. And then when the book became sort of the next thing to do, it sort of came up as like, oh, it seems like this is really the wisest thing to do. We wanted to do it very deliberately. So we sat down and we were talking about our intentions and the intentions were really easy. We want to write a book because

it's good for business and it helps us get our thinking out and it might be fun to create something together. That's really simple. But then concerns, that's where we all get crazy, right? Humans, we just have such a strong negativity bias. I was certainly raised in a household where worry was kind of one of the predominant activities. I would say like% to 80% of the conversation around the dinner table was worry of some kind. And so worry is where I go very, very quickly. And what was really kind of fun is we just sort of got our worries out. And we both had the same worry, which was that this was going to lead to divorce. And divorce was going to lead to dying alone under a bridge, maybe living in a van, maybe not living in a van.

But like some sort of- All my fears end up there, by the way. In a van? Do you have a van? Me alone dying under a bridge. That's where every fear ends. Yeah. But it was just really to make space for that without having, because that kind of fear will come up in a mind. And as soon as it comes up, you're like, well, I can't say that because that makes me sound like an idiot. But it's really when you create space to say that, to say that to each other, then you can kind of celebrate it and you can kind of dissipate it. You know, a friend of ours is a neuroscientist, talks about when we speak things and then there's something about our brain hearing them, which actually changes our cognition in kind of a significant way. It actually soothes that thing, that there is something about bringing it out.

And so when we talk about intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams, we're just gathering information. We're not saying, oh, I have this concern and we better do something about it. What I'm saying is, I have this concern. That's all I'm saying. One of the things we've come to see is so important. And anytime we share this, we offer this as such a, we hope it's such a gift well received that when you share your fears with each other, even if my fear involves you, I'm not like blaming you. We agree to not take our fears personally. Like I'm not saying you're going to do this or that you're fundamentally flawed because I have a fear about you in some way. Like our brains

come up with bizarre fears and worries. And it's not your fault that I have a fear about you or that somehow involves you. And so it really does create this sense of what's called psychological safety. Like, oh, I have a safe place with my partner or with my team where I can share my fears. And then I feel so much calmer because my fears have been witnessed. My brain can now like check that off and I'm still a part of the group. I'm still loved. I'm still accepted. That is so different from the first 35 years of my life. Yeah.

I mean, the notion of safety also, because when I first read those four things, I'm thinking intentions, concerns, boundaries, dreams, and immediately my brain just translated that as safety. Like it wasn't even a conscious thing. I'm just like, oh, so you create safety. Because in my mind, nothing happens without that or nothing valuable happens without that. Plenty of destructive things happen without it.

But if something valuable happens without it, I think it's kind of dumb luck and fairly rare. But with it, it's sort of like you created the container and the context for really powerful and often really hard things to happen simultaneously that have a net positive outcome. Yeah. The beauty of this conversation, a structured conversation like this, where you feel safe is that you're developing empathy for each other, even with someone where you are diametrically opposed on something that feels

emotional and high stakes, you can reconnect and feel like, I understand where you're coming from. I don't have to agree with how you feel or what you think, but I see you. I feel you as a person again. And that's what allows us to maintain relationships, even if we are disagreeing about something. Yeah. And that creates that sense of safety, right? Feeling witnessed, feeling seen, feeling like I can share my authentic self, like what I really feel and what I really think. I was thinking also about the next piece, which is boundaries. You know, the way boundaries I think have showed up for the first like 30 or 40 years of my life, it was, I have a boundary and you better respect it. You know, like it was sort of like, it was almost like this petulant child, you know, like I have a boundary, you know, and it was usually

only expressed after somebody had violated it or crossed it or shown like they were going to. And I needed to kind of somehow prove that I was like, it was almost like a macho, a petulant child, macho, you know, stance. Like I'm going to show you I'm strong by showing you that I have this boundary. And instead we really try to frame the conversation of, well, what do you need? You know, like, what do you need to feel safe? What do you need to feel at your best? And it becomes an exploration. And I think in personal relationships, this is really powerful, but we do this. We do a lot of this work with professional groups too. And it's, it's amazing how often that question has just never been asked.

You know, here you are on a, on a team, which is, which is supposed to be high performing. And yet you've never really asked each other, well, what do you need to perform at your best? Like, and, and acknowledging that different people need different need to perform at your best? And acknowledging that different people need different things to perform at their best. And different people are different stages of their career, have different temperaments, come from different backgrounds, have different goals. So everybody, some people working 14 hours a day may be fine. And then some people like me may have like four at best, it seems these days now that I'm in my fifties.

And boundaries is such an interesting topic. You say that you had that relationship of being a petulant child. I just didn't have any, I didn't have any boundaries for the first 30 years. I didn't know what they were. I didn't know it was okay to have them. And those two questions, what do you need to feel safe? And what do you need to be at your best, are two different ways to help you find kind of different ends of the spectrum. And when we ask this of people, we do say, look, you know, you might not get everything you want. It's not like you're ordering off a menu, especially in relationship. You know, we have a child. Jonathan, you have a child, like, you know, that like, you know, rules, rules and boundaries, like there needs to be

some flexibility in there sometimes and things change. And if I ask someone, what do you need to feel safe? And I don't respect that, or I have said what I need to feel safe and it's not respected, then my sense of safety and my ability to be in an honest, empathetic relationship is greatly changed. So I can't just tell you you're safe here and then you automatically feel safe? Right, right. Yeah, the individual is the only one who can determine if they feel safe. It's not being told by somebody else that you are safe. This is a safe space. Yeah.

So you can't literally yell at somebody and just say, look, you're safe here. Just open up. I mean, it's interesting too, because that question, what do you need to feel safe? I wonder if some people immediately know and they love the fact that they've been asked because they've never been able to actually share it. But then I also wonder if so many people have actually never even considered the question and have no idea what they need to feel safe. Yeah. And I'll give myself as an example. In many contexts, I feel safe having a conversation about tough topics, you know, in real time on the phone or in person. But for other topics with certain people, I feel safe communicating via the written word. You know, I've written back and forth

with family members about certain topics. And that helped me feel safe and led to incredible outcomes. But having to speak the words out loud didn't feel safe to me. That's so interesting. So sometimes even it's the mode of communication that plays a role. So you really have to expand what you think about then. Yeah. And one of the things we recommend, and this is maybe another setting the scene thing, but something that helps me feel safe is we actually time each other. It's the no crosstalk, equal speaking time rule is one of the only things that's been studied and shown to create safety.

Yeah. And not even create more indicative that it exists. In some ways we're trying to reverse engineer by using the timer, you know, and you may know from like Amy Edmondson's work on, on teamwork and, you know, team psychological safety that, and her work was used by Google and all these other people, but essentially that you can, you know, a team has psychological safety when everybody is contributing about the same amount. So they could be universally, it could be a very boisterous team or it could be a very quiet team as long as not one or two people aren't like dominating the whole thing. And it's not universal necessarily, but often when one or two people are dominating

the conversation, everybody else is feeling a little constrained in what they might contribute for some reason, right? So they're feeling a lack of safety in contributing. So it's even asking the question, even prioritizing safety as a thing. Because a lot of people, I mean, there's also, you know, a kind of macho thing often in business, often with men, but like, no, we're just going to like spit out any idea here. This, you know, and I, and I think there's value in it and, and the book radical candor comes to mind and I've loved the book, but when I first heard about it, it just sounded like it was going to be an excuse for these jerks that I worked with to, you know, yell more rather than less.

I'm just being, I'm just having candor here. I think you're terrible. So I think adding, adding in the sense of safety or valuing safety to me, it seems to be somewhat of a new concept in a lot of the places we go to. Yeah. And I think that Amy Evans research is really fascinating too. When you look at the best functioning teams and you could expand that to personal relationships, to organizations really do have a fairly equal amount of contribution because what that tells me also, so I lie very much on the introverted side of the spectrum. I'm in my head a lot. There's a ton of stuff going on in my head all the time, even when I sleep. And so I'm always processing and I'm sort of a hyper aware of what's going on around me for a lot of the time, even though I'm in my head, which is a weird thing to say.

So there's a lot of data spinning in my head. And when it comes out, either as spoken word or written word, it's usually because I've reached a point where I have some type of synthesis that I'm ready to share. But I also, I'm not quick. I'm not the person in a room who's really fast with a line or a response or on a mic. I'm much more, I'm sort of like a slow burn. And I wonder when you think about that, what would it take for me to be in a room with five other people around the table who are fast or loud or extroverted and feel like I have contributed what I need to contribute? And I think it's really interesting to think about,

if one of the measures of really high function is equal time, what would it take for me in that room to feel like I could contribute equal time? I actually don't know the answer to that, but now I want to spend some time thinking about it. I'm the same. I need to think things through. And we both have pretty strong morning journaling practices. And part of why I do that is it helps me get clear. It helps me

sift through, but I actually use the intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams myself by myself before I have a conversation with somebody else. I recommend that a lot with clients. You want to talk about X with so-and-so. Think about these four things for yourself about the topic, and then share the intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams with them. And think about it in advance. Give yourself some time with these four buckets. Yeah. One thing we'll do with teams, especially now that we're, everything is remote, you know, like all of our work is remote. We've been using more digital tools for this, but we'll get just people, we'll give them two minutes or three minutes to journal on the, you know, like just to get the ideas out and we'll use like a virtual post-it note board

and just all the ideas will go up. And even anonymous, you know, we just did it with a team of like 60 people doing in an international sales team. And so they got, you know, we just did it with a team of like 60 people doing in an international sales team. And so they got, you know, so they were able to get all the ideas out. And then what happens is people see that other people actually have the same as they do. They see themselves reflected in what's coming out and then they begin to feel a little more comfortable. As you were talking about that, Jonathan, I realized like I identify and I don't identify with how you, what you're saying. Cause like when I first come into a group, I tend to be extremely quiet

and it can go on for months. Sometimes it can go on for a very, very long time. And I've, and I remember it happening on a few occasions where people are like, where then all of a sudden something will click in. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll suddenly feel comfortable. And then I'll start joking. I'll start making wry comment. You know, like my personality, like people actually have described it as that my personality has suddenly changed. And I'm like, no, actually, I'm just, I think I just felt safe enough now to bring out a certain part of myself. And now I just have this hypothesis. I'd love to prove it, or I'd love to, I'm going to pay attention to it, that I think going through

this intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams exercise may speed that up for me, right? Because now I'm hearing from other people, they feel safer because I know more about them, I have more data, and I see myself reflected in some of that data. I'm like, oh, they share my concerns, they share my dreams, we share our intentions. So I feel I identify with them a little bit more. And I've also been able to get some of my own, some of myself out, you know, those nagging thoughts that I've been just sort of keeping to myself all that time. I've been quiet instead of keeping to the myself. Now they're out and now I can move on. Now I can kind of let myself go a little bit. Yeah. I love that. I mean, if it's, if it becomes a tool to, or a process that

allows you to show up more quickly in an authentic way, I mean, that's a win for everybody. Unless your authentic way is really offensive, but let's work on the assumption that it's not for now. We haven't really, the idea of the dream side of it also, I think is really interesting because a lot of times when you come into a conversation and you kind of have a sense, it may be an argument, it may be hard, there's a topic that, that one of the fears is very likely, and I'm curious because you guys have now experienced this

both personally and with so many different groups, that one of the big fears is that one person's dream or the other person's dream is basically to win. And that doesn't mean win you over necessarily. It just means to dominate, or maybe it's to leave, or maybe it's to end the relationship or the project or whatever it may be. Whereas they may actually show up and like, what they really want is like, can we just get this behind us so that we can get back on a harmonized page and really do good work again? But if you're not explicit about that, I would imagine it wreaks havoc.

So much. I'm so much agreeing with you right now. That's kind of the missing conversation or one of the potential missing conversations that we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. You might discover that you're not in alignment or we shouldn't move forward on this relationship or this project, but ultimately why dreams is so important. And what we see most of the time is that, I mean, we put dreams at the end because it brings you back together. We encourage people to share your dreams for you and for the other person and for each other. It's almost like a meta meditation.

You start moving it out for the world that will be impacted by this decision, for our family, et cetera. dreams, unless their dreams are really dark, which I've never experienced personally, you want the other person's dreams for them. Like, oh, I want you to have that too. And then you want my dreams to happen for me. And then we release oxytocin together. And then we're connected again. We've gotten through the concerns. We've gotten through the tough stuff. But oh, yeah, there are these generative growth-filled energies that we can then attach to to move forward together. It's really inspiring to hear each other's dreams. Or the dreams can even be for us. I dream that our relationship is deeper through this experience or that we come out a stronger team or better. I was thinking about when I think one of the first times we were really using this was we live in New York City

where there are a lot of cocktail parties that you can go to. And we have our introverted moments, we have our extroverted moments. And sometimes they coincide and sometimes they don't, you know, sometimes they line up and sometimes, you know, you're at an event and one person wants to go and the other person doesn't. And so that happened enough times that on the way to events, we would start talking like, well, I have a dream that will be, you know, that will be happier as a couple on the other side of this, which has resulted in a new boundary or a new agreement, which is you can go home without me and that's totally fine. Nobody needs to get impatient with anybody else. And tomorrow morning we will feel like now my dream is that tomorrow

morning when we wake up are really good or we're in the cab going home and we feel really good, but maybe we're going home separately. Maybe that's fine. Yeah. I love that. Little simple things like that feel like, oh, well, that's kind of silly, but then you're like, you know what? But you add them up over the course of a day or a week or dozens of times and different types of things. And it ends up leading up to the big fractures. And very often it ends up all coming out in one explosive laundry list of every wrong that has ever been done and every violation that's ever been made. And whereas if you sort of, and maybe that's sort of something to touch down on here is the notion that where on the one hand,

you're saying, set the stage, like, you know, like create the time, like say, okay, make sure that it's an appropriate time for, you know, all parties involved to actually have this conversation and that you're ready and you're prepared. But at the same time, have it, you know, don't just, because it's not the right time, you know, you know, if somebody is like, well, it's never going to be the right time where they keep blowing it off. It then just piles into like a big, giant explosive mess. Well, that's one of the reasons why I avoided tough conversations for most of my life. Because in my family of origin, tough conversations or important topics meant it was going to evolve into a fight that you then had to be prepared to re-litigate every past wrong. So like everything was on the table. And what we're asking people to do in this structured conversation is we're going to talk about this topic. You get really clear when you set the stage. I want to talk about this thing together. And it's something that you can keep

coming back to, right? It's like a conversation of meditation. Like, oh, we're talking about this. That's an important topic. Like, let's have that conversation another time. We agree, we're going to talk about this thing here. And that is so calming. It's like, oh, I don't have to somehow defend my entire existence in the space of this one conversation. I know what we're talking about here. Yeah. And talking about entering a conversation, prioritizing the relationship over or at least equal to the topic under discussion, you know, like saying that we want to that I want to come out of this with a good relationship, whether or not maybe we even decide that, oh, this thing that we were getting to do together, we really shouldn't do it because

our goals are relatively different or our attitudes are relatively different, but that can preserve the relationship potentially as well. But one of the things we think about is Gottman's Four Horsemen of the relationship apocalypse, right? And I think what you're describing, Jonathan, is like when I'm pent up, I'm much more likely to, if I haven't expressed a boundary, it's much more likely to come out expressed as criticism of the other person, right? Like if I haven't expressed a boundary of, say, I want to go to bed at a certain time, or I don't know. And somebody else kind of violates that or calls me late all the time and say, you always call me late. You're always the kind of person who, rather than expressing the boundary upfront, then it's much more likely to be

expressed in a way that the other person can kind of hear. Right? Yeah. you're not just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are so no matter your era make it your best with peloton find your push find your power peloton visit peloton at onepeloton.ca mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i know you're gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what's the difference between me and you you're gonna die Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary. I have to share a huge parenting win with you, Jonathan. I think you'll appreciate this. Over the summer, our now 13-year-old said out of nowhere at the dinner table, I'm really glad I'm being raised learning to care about other people's feelings. We've been using this style of communication with him for six or seven years since he was little. And because I feel like I've been reparenting myself as much as I am parenting him to have tough conversations in a way where there's empathy and respect and clarity. Like, yeah, dude, I'm really glad you're being raised to learn to care about other people's feelings too. Yeah. And he's just gotten into high school. So we'll see what the next couple of years. We'll see if that still holds next year.

Talk to us next year. We'll see how we feel about this. Capture that moment in time. Just turn on your voice and be like, can you just say that one more time? I need to be able to remember this moment. We've been talking a lot about the container. And we've talked a little bit about what you guys consider the rules of Yeah. We've been talking a lot about the container and we've talked a little bit about sort of like, you know, what you guys consider the rules of engagement. We talked about arguing good faith, brought up Gottman's Four Horsemen. We actually had Julia and John on the podcast in the past, which was a fantastic conversation. I love them both. And it's funny to see, I think I recall I commented during our conversation on the podcast. And for those who don't know, Julie and John Gottman run this thing colloquially called

the Love Lab. But they've been researching love and partnership and conversation for 40 years. And I think it was about 45 minutes into the conversation. And I kind of said, I noticed, I was like, you know, and they've been together, I think, 40 or 50 years, something like that. And I was like, you guys are doing a really interesting dance, even in the studio. You know, because they were really, it was like they were handing the baton between each other in the conversation. And you could, if you were in the studio, you could sense, like I could watch them and see the physical tells of when somebody who was not speaking had something they wanted to contribute, but they were waiting.

And it was interesting to sort of like see how they were embodying the ground rules that you're talking about, their own observations about healthy relationships. You know, there are a whole bunch of other very specific rules of engagement that you guys write about. But one of the things I actually kind of wanted to explore on more of a meta level is the, maybe two things is the idea of awareness and self-care, because in a way I think they kind of go together because I, you know, we're, we're talking about, you know, things that you do sort of in the moment, you know, or leading up to the moment. Here's how we're going to set the stage for the moment. And here's how we interact in the moment. But before you ever get to the moment, what you bring, the state of being, the state of

mind that you bring into that moment, I have to imagine is equally important to constructive outcomes. Yeah, 100%. My mind is going in like three different directions as you're talking about this. One is one of the gifts actually of spending all of my time at home for the last six months. Because I used to travel a lot and I used to work on multiple projects all at the same time. And I still do that. But you know that I would be changing context a lot. And I was actually under a lot more stress. My diet wasn't as good. And when we talk about sort of emotional presence or the presence that I bring to something, I know you're a meditator and the Buddhists will say that it goes back to bodily sensation, right? In many ways, your emotion is an expression of your interpretation of a bodily sensation. And I'm actually reading a book by a neuroscientist now, and he basically says neuroscientists know the same thing, you know, like that

we have a bodily sensation and that bodily... And one of the things I noticed with self-care, this kind of goes back to our rules of engagement where we talk about no alcohol, let's be fed, is that let's pay attention to the bodily sensations we're having, like how we feel coming into something. And that really changes. And I think, I don't actually, I have no idea whether you've noticed this, Alex, but I actually feel like a much more stable person over the last six months than I was before. Like I, cause I get, you know, I identify with some of the things you were saying earlier, Jonathan, about, you know, like I just get in a bad mood or I'm short.

And I've just noticed that happening less and less because I've been much more in control and self-aware because I have this daily meditation and journaling practice. And I know how I feel and I can change. I have kind of strict routines. I wake up, I drink two bottles of water because I know that if I'm not taking care of myself, then I'm just not going to bring my best self to the situation. Yeah. My own, I mean, I have the same self-care rules that you do, but we're also really aware that how we take care of our physical bodies is going to impact the quality of our conversations. And so we have a lot of compassion for each other. Like if one of us isn't feeling great, we're like, you know what, I understand.

Like you're nervous or tired or anxious, maybe like let's talk another time. And I've actually, you know, I've done a lot of work around rewiring my own nervous system. You know, early childhood traumas, I would dissociate during certain really tough conversations because they reminded me of childhood. And I think that's really common. It's really common. And I love that the idea that we hold trauma in our bodies

is becoming more well-known so that we can have more compassion for ourselves and each other in these tough conversations. Like, oh, you might like, again, the word triggered, like you might actually be triggered in your nervous system right now. And that is not the time to have a tough conversation where important decisions need to be made. It's like raising children, right? Like you don't try to teach them anything when they're having a meltdown. You help them get calm. They take a nap. And maybe then you talk about what happened. Like nothing good happens in the intellectual brain when we're emotionally lit up like that. But we do take a much deeper, greater responsibility for how we're showing up physically to these conversations. So I think

actually having these intentional conversations over the last several years has helped me in some ways rewire my nervous system over time. It's become like a new rewiring. So it's almost like you start to realize that the inevitable outcome of these things that you might've experienced as doom and gloom before is like, oh, I can go to that place, but with a different context and it's actually going to be okay, which may, it's almost like a form of exposure therapy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You live through something and you're like, oh, I can live through that again.

That's a, that's okay. Exactly. Okay, so with a set of rules or a framework with an actual approach where you understand that the core of the dynamic is replicable, it probably gives you a certain amount of sort of psychological bedrock to go back to that place more readily as well. Yeah, and I think you've both actually said the same thing in different ways. You were just mentioning it, Alex, when talking about that you help the child calm down and then you have the conversation later. Yeah, you have the conversation later, right? Because I think the tendency is like, oh, the child's calm now, so now I'm not going to deal with anything. And so there is a part of self-care and awareness, which is that enlightened piece, which is, it's like going to the gym. I know if I exercise three times a week that my life is better, even though I don't necessarily want to go and exercise three times a week, right? And just like in the difficult conversations, I know that

my, and this is something, I mean, from we got together in, let's say I was in middle age, you weren't quite there yet, but you know, we were, we had all, we've each had significant relationships. And one of our sort of early rules was we can talk about anything. And there were several conversations, especially early on, as we were getting to know each other in the first couple of years of our relationship, where I was like, Oh, this might end it. You know, like this little thing that I'm feeling, this thing that I'm having. And my tendency had been in other relationships to actually just bury that thing. Well, it's not up right now. So I'm just not going to worry about, you know, it's just sort of like this nagging little thing. So it's not really worth bringing out. And I think what I've, what I learned and maybe some of, hopefully we've captured in this book is no, it's actually now is the time

like I am feeling calm and there is this thing that was nagging me before. And I know enough about myself to know that when I'm low blood sugar and I've had a glass of wine and I'm tired later on, that this is going to come out and it's going to come out in some kind of nasty way or some less than kind way, some way that I don't intend. So now is the time to bring this up and now is the time to have that conversation. And I think a lot of our intent with this book, one of the reasons, because clearly we're creating this like structured linear four-step process for a very non-linear, very organic thing, which is, you know, emotional resonance with another human being essentially. And so one of the reasons we have this is because when you have steps, it's just more

likely to happen. Going back to the gym metaphor, if I have a trainer and a spreadsheet who's told me that one day a week I'm going to be doing upper body and it's going to consist of these exercises and this many reps, I'm far more likely to make it to the gym when I look at that spreadsheet than I am because I have this sort of linear process rather than just saying, oh, you should move more. You should exercise some. Yeah. Which kind of brings me around to the question that I wanted to ask and then we'll kind of come full circle, which is, and I think Bob, you sort of planted that seed, which is you wrote this book when you shared originally,

you both had an intention when you decided to sit down and write this, it would be fun, work on a project together, do something cool. It's good for marketing. It'll help people. But that last thing, you know, when you create effectively a toolbox for a conversation and you offer it out to the world at this moment in time, do you both have a bigger intention around what you would love it to enable? I'm going to point to a few real world examples from friends and clients and readers that, I mean, this might be the first time in my, this is like a 20 year in my career here. This might be the first time where people keep saying, oh my gosh, this is like a 20 year in my career here. This might be the first time where people keep saying, oh my gosh, this is really helping me with some really tough stuff. You know, people are having conversations that they otherwise would never have had or would lead to more problems

in marriages and on business teams and in families and just hearing their feedback that, oh my gosh, I actually have like a great adult relationship now because now I know how to have an adult conversation about tough topics. Or I wrote a letter to my father-in-law and now we're finally communicating about something that keeps devolving into fights whenever our family gets together. It was not planned that the book would come out at this perfect moment. That was kind of the divine luck that you mentioned before. It really was kind of a lucky timing in some ways that it's so useful right now. Yeah. I mean, I'll say I really, I've had, let's just say I've had sort of a rough time with personal relationships through a lot of my life, you know, intimate relations. Alex is my

fourth wife, you know, like my, and, and the best. I'm just very happy with the relationship I have. And, you know, people talk about marrying the right person for your personal happiness and success. And I would just say not just marrying the right person, but having the right relationship at home is one of the most impactful things you can do for personal happiness. So really echoing what you're saying, Alex. And then there's another component to this because our tool can be used in personal relationships and, you know, like private relationships or, and it can also be used in professional and we use it in a professional context quite a bit. My background and my interest has always been in, you know, sort of sustainability and social justice and creating more equitable, creating a more sustainable world. And so I've worked on climate. I've worked, I have an MBA that's focused on

sustainable systems. And I've always been a little. I have an MBA that's focused on sustainable systems. And I've always been a little perplexed because these problems just seem so big and so vast. And I know they're going to be here after I'm gone. We're not going to solve them in our generation, but I would like to solve, at least contribute to solving them in our generation. And I feel like one thing that I'm seeing or one contribution that I can make is helping leadership teams of organizations make better decisions. And part of the making better decisions is hearing from everybody, you know that when people come from different backgrounds, we see the world in different ways. And that almost by definition will introduce more conflict potential or more potential for conflict, right? Because homogenous teams just like, oh, yeah, I get you, you get me, and we're just going to move forward. And so when you look at sort of the team performance metrics, homogenous teams can perform pretty well.

But diverse teams tend to be more creative and have more divergent thinking about them. And so part of my personal mission is to help teams develop what I would call sort of a healthy emotional landscape, so they can welcome more voices. And so they can make better sort of shared decisions rather than this command and control, top-down, smartest, highest paid guy in the room makes all the decisions and everybody else runs scared and does what they say. Because I think that model of organizational development, organizational design has kind of run its course. And I think we really need a new model if we're going to tackle problems like climate change, like poverty,

like racial equity in this world. Love it. So good time for us to come full circle here. So hanging out in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life for each of you, what comes up? I'm with people that I love getting to make stuff. That's fun. And feeling like I'm contributing and helping more people than just myself and my immediate circle. Yeah, I don't know that I can add any.

It's relationships and spending time with people who fill me up rather than deplete me. And it's feeling like my work is good. Like I'm on the edge both. Like I'm scaring myself a little bit. You know, like trying new stuff, making things a little bit harder, stepping into situations where I feel a little unsure. I really love that because it forces me to grow. And then feeling like that work is there for a good reason. Like it is contributing to this project of creating a more equitable and sustainable world. Thank you both. Thank you, Jonathan. It's lovely to see you.

Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so,

be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later

required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been. Charge time and actual results will vary.