The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Call to Wholeness: Empowering Organizations Through Possibility by Ph.d. Byars, Jan, Susan Taylor

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

A Call to Wholeness: Empowering Organizations Through Possibility by Ph.d. Byars, Jan, Susan Taylor https://amzn.to/466rtqB Generoninternational.com Living in a fragmented state changes our hearts, minds, and bodies. Most of us know this as a feeling of overwhelm or burnout. We know the words, but often do not really understand their impact on our lives, our work, the people around us, and our organizations. Thankfully, it just takes a leap of faith and willingness to emerge from a fragmented state to answer the call to Wholeness. Told as a fictional story underpinned by Bohm's understanding of Undivided Wholeness and Dialogue, Jan Byars, PhD, and Susan Taylor combine years of experience in counseling and coaching both individuals and organizational leaders to offer hope and help to those desiring to move from the turmoil of overwhelm and burnout into a peaceful state of clarity and coherence. In a follow-up section enhanced by tools, practices, and resources, Byars and Taylor provide trusted guidance that invites others to plant the seeds of transformation, explore self-care, and ultimately uncover their own path to Wholeness. A Call to Wholeness shares a story about accepting power and recognizing possibility that is enhanced by tools and exercises that guide others into a new paradigm for life and business.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, the Chris Vaughn Show is a family that loves you but doesn't judge you harshly. That's the beautiful part about us. It's a warm, welcoming place where we provide the most amazing authors, interviewers, CEOs, billionaires, White House presidents, advisors, astronauts, rock stars, all the great people with their great stories. Come on the show and share them with you so you know you're not alone. And, of course, as we always say, stories are the owner's manual to life.

So you get some of the best here. Be sure to, for your family and friends, relatives, go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1, the TikTokity. And you can buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com, 4chesschrisvoss. We have an amazing young lady on the show today. We're going to be talking with her about her business and everything that she does. Today we're joined on the show by, let me see here, Susan Taylor. Flipping around here between the screens, Susan Taylor joins us on the show. She is the CEO and co-founder of Generon International.

She works with entrepreneurs and business executives, helping them gain clarity as they shift potentially limiting mindsets and set realistic goals that feel heart-centered and purpose-aligned. She has got 30-plus years as a transformational coach and facilitator, working with some of the most renowned thought leaders in emotional, spiritual, and leadership intelligence. She's passionate about empowering her clients to unlock their potential and achieve potential meaning results in both their personal and professional lives. Welcome to the show. How are you, Susan? Great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

I'm really appreciative of the invitation to join you. Thanks. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. And you're the author, too should mention of the book a call to wholeness empowering organizations through possibility out november 25th 2021 so welcome the show give us your dot coms where do people want to find you on the interwebs okay well they're following they'll find me at generon international.com for sure they'll find me at Your Tailored Wisdom on Insta. They'll find me at Generon

International on Facebook and at Susan Taylor on LinkedIn. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book? A Call to Wholeness. Yes. So I co-authored this book with a friend and colleague of mine, Jan Byers. And the reason why we wanted to put this out into the world is because I feel that in business in particular, we tend to fragment everything. Even coming to work is something different than how we live our lives outside of work. And so this book was an opportunity for us to share about what it could be like to create harmony in all of your worlds in a way that felt whole and complete, in a way that felt fulfilling and meaningful, and in a way that could create possibility through work activities that could enhance your life both professionally and personally. There you go. There you go. And give us some background on you. How were you raised when you start your first company? What got you into the business that you're in?

So what got me to the business I'm in actually was maternity leave. Was it the business of being a mother? Sorry, I had to get you. Seriously. I was holding this tiny little thing, this beautiful baby in my arms. And I, in that moment, felt, wow, something's got to shift. Because up until that point, I had been, since graduating from college, I had been working in the corporate arena. And when I had my first daughter and I was on maternity leave, I decided that I needed to create something different. Because for me,

something was missing in that corporate arena. And the way I talk about it is the human condition, like being human, interacting in ways that felt meaningful and purposeful were missing. So that's when I started my own business. I was 28 years old. I started my own business. I created a bricks and mortar at first. It was a way where people could come to the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area where I lived at the time to have a place of reprieve, a conference room to use, a secretary to hire, and anything they needed while they were traveling on business. So it was kind of like the VA, bricks and mortar, before VAs even existed. Because when I moved from Raleigh, it shifted to a remote online business.

There you go. So how hard was it to start your own business from scratch? It wasn't hard for me at all. Oh, really? Oh my gosh. I felt so compelled. I felt like if even one other person is feeling this way, like what could the ripple out effect be? So I got myself a business partner. We got some capital and we just, we went for it. Ah, there you go. I mean, that's the way to go. If you can get some capital behind you and all that, then that can make a difference.

So what have you been up to since then? How do you help clients and work with them? Absolutely. Thanks for asking. Yeah. So since then, and that was over 30 years ago, that was in 1993, I basically have been taking a lot of the ideas that I learned in establishing that business and trying to bring them to individuals, teams, and organizations in ways where they feel like the work that they're doing is in alignment with who they are and the unique gifts that they bring. There you go. And why is that important?

I think it's important because when I think about burnout, we hear this word burnout like a lot more even than we used to, right? Do you agree? Yeah, I'm burnout from hearing the word burnout like a lot more even than we used to right would you agree yeah i'm hearing the word burnout fair enough i love it i love it i saw what you did there that was very creative yeah i think a lot of people feel like burnout is due to like overactivity right we're on the hamster wheel and we're just going going going all the time but i think a it's never about any one thing and b i think that a lot of us are in situations where we're doing work

that doesn't speak to our heart that doesn't kind of call to our soul and so for me that's a big contributor to burnout there you go i would agree you know i i talk about this a lot on the show because a lot of my early companies, I wasn't fully in love with. I wasn't passionately in love with them. To me, they were just investments, vehicles, and I was CEOing them and innovating them, doing them. I loved them. They were like my babies, but I don't know. They were like somebody else's babies I was raising, I guess. I don't know. I was like a stepdad. You know, they were just, you know, the first business was something we went into as a convenience because it was there.

There was a business model there that we could make and it went successful. The second business I kind of liked, but, you know, it was nightmarish with interest rates, you know, a mortgage company, everything else. And, you know, it was very cyclical and I just, I just didn't like it. And so I always tell entrepreneurs, you know, find very cyclical and i just i just didn't like it and so i always tell entrepreneurs you know find something that you really passionately love that you enjoy doing that's very easy for you to show up for work because i i can tell you you can make a lot of bloody money and hate showing up for work every day it's just it's really true and people don't

think that people would come up to me and they go it's really true. And people don't think that. People would come up to me and they would go, it's really great. You do something that loves. And you're like, I just want to jump out a window every time you say that because I don't do anything I love. And, you know, now I do. I have the great podcast and I do the consulting for leadership. I love that stuff. But, you know, the other stuff, not so much and so i really i really i really support what you're saying because you got to do stuff that you have like you say heart-centered gravity towards

i think you'd agree with me right 100 100 what comes up immediately is i think a lot for a lot of us you know and we're kind of like maybe trained this way through through life i think a lot for a lot of us, you know, and we're kind of like maybe trained this way through life. I think a lot of us see the money as the success or as the end game, as the end game. So I guess the question I ask is, what if you could have that and be doing something you feel passionate about, be doing something that feels completely tuned in to your purpose? The reason why you think you're here and the work that you feel called to do. And I speak to that in terms of authentic wealth, because I think it's one thing to make money and have a job and pay the bills. Absolutely. We need that. It's not either or. I'm looking for the and though. How can I be doing that in a way

where, gosh, I am chomping at the bit to get up in the morning and I'm not dreading the commute to work if we still even do that anymore. I'm just in it because it's on a job. It's part of who I am. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, it makes all the difference in the world when you love something. So tell us about what you do there at Generon and how you do it. Sure. So Generon was formed about 30 years ago. My business partner and I have been at it for about 30 years now. So, three decades.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's pretty awesome. He's 90 this year, so that's even cooler. And he's still in the game, so it's been fun. Good for him.

Yeah, I know, right? Being a leadership guru yourself chris you might know his name joseph jaworski he wrote synchronicity yeah he wrote the book synchronicity i have the album synchronicity there you go i think it's a little different though oh okay the police are very good at that album yeah there you go there you go synchronicity there it's it's good to have on everything.

Synchronicity, the inner path of leadership by Joseph Jorski. Absolutely. Absolutely. So he was lawyer turned leadership thought leader. And all of our work is really based on some of the premises. Yes, in that book, but other things that we've discovered since then. So we started out working with large and supersized orgs as a way to build cultures that were incredibly inclusive and would be able to create some of that meaning that we've been talking about and use work activity, use your day-to-day work activities as vehicles for personal growth and development. There you go. And then taking what you learn and scaffolding

it through the entire organization so that you're literally looking at this from CEO to those in the field in ways where not only does it enhance your work life situation, but it also then ripples out, of course, as you could imagine, into your personal and private life because of how you're feeling about coming to work every day and not only feeling more productive, but feeling more fulfilled and feeling like there's more meaning in what you do. There you go. I'm laughing at that because one of the experiences I was referencing earlier about feeling good about going to work, I was thinking about all the dreaded days. I was just like, oh God, I got to go. Yeah. know you have to kick

yourself a little bit and be like hey you know it is a privilege you know some of my employees used to complain about how with us they would they would go from you know making almost nothing to you know bet being in the 50 tax bracket and they would be upset they'd be like this is bs man I didn't know it was 50 once you get above a certain level. And I'm like, yeah, but you have to think of it as a privilege, dummy. On a scale, you're still making more money than you were, you know, even after taxes. I mean, you know, shut up and enjoy the ride. And, but some people, they couldn't get out of their heads.

There were some people that were like, oh, maybe I should earn less. And I think they would make that decision to kind of earn less. They're like, I don't like paying all these taxes. And you're just like, you're stupid. But, you know, we had those employees. But, you know, you always had to kind of look at life in that way and think, you know, whenever I complain about something, somebody's always there going, you know, you complain about something somebody's always there going you know you really should be you really should be happy and and think of it as a privilege because there's a lot of people who didn't make it this far sure sure and you're saying the s word

yeah the should the should it should be yeah so there you go so general and international what sort of clients do you work with? Is there a minimum sort of client size or balance sheet that you work with, size of company, et cetera, et cetera? It's changed definitely since the pandemic. As I mentioned before that, we were working with really large orgs, even some of the super majors here in the US in particular, but also over in Europe. Today, we predominantly work with individual teams and smaller businesses, let's say about 1,500 or less employees, because, A, it's more penetrable with regard to some of the things that we teach

and how we bring in opportunities to work and live from a place of values, principles, and how those then inform your strategic platform and your operations. And we also work lately with a lot of values, principles, and how those then inform your strategic platform and your operations. And we also work lately with a lot of startups, which is awesome because it's almost like you have a clean canvas from which to create your desired culture. Yeah. Instead of trying to like unlearn and undo things that have been embedded in your culture for the last, you know, 50 years.

Oh, yeah. We were talking about that yesterday on a show about how hard it is to come in as a new leader and take over, especially if there's been a bad culture fit and toxicity and morale. You've got so much cleanup you have to do, and then you have to reset, and then you have to try and get people to believe that,

hey, I'm different. I'm a better leader. It's a tough road definitely so one of the things you talk about is bohemian or bo bohemian bohemian dialogue i've listened to queen and and that one movie way too many times i have a camera in front of me so if i apologize a bohemian dialogue what is that so david bohm was actually a quantum physicist and he was well known for in my own words proving the theory of interconnectedness so this idea that all living things are connected at least in the quantum realm

and so as part of that he was always interested in how human beings communicate. And if we're completely interconnected based on what he was proving through quantum physics, what could that then mean for us in ways around interacting with each other? So he developed something that he called dialogue. He labeled it with a capital D to distinguish it from conversation. Because what it truly is, is it's an opportunity to be able to interact and speak in conversation underpinned by a set of principles but also a different state of being a different way of being with each other and it includes things like slowing things down which might sound very simple and yet in this accelerated world we live in, it makes a big difference when you can slow things down a little bit to truly understand other as opposed to projecting yourself first.

And as part of that, I think the biggest thing I learned from David Bohm is this idea that we can all have these different perspectives and points of view and even diametrically opposed experiences. It's when we defend those experiences that we cause divide. Whereas if we could just hold those differences, that's when you can create harmony. Yeah, definitely. I mean, being able to do that can make things better overall. One of the other things you talk about on your website is source-enabled leadership.

I've never heard that term before. What does that mean? That's a Joseph Jaworski term, source. I didn't read his book. Yeah, he actually wrote a second book called Source, The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation. So as that links to dialogue, when we're in those spaces where we're allowing for the collective wisdom of the group to actually help us emerge something that we might not necessarily be able to create on our own as an individual when we're tapped into source that deeper knowing that again emerges from the collective intelligence that's present in the room

it helps us to create solutions or perhaps consider innovative services and products again in ways where that would not have happened but for those people being in the room operating from a place of principle and values. There you go. I mean, if you can tap into, you know, I learned a long time ago, I'm not the purveyor of all the greatest ideas in the world. In fact, some of my ideas have been really bad and very expensive.

And so being able to tap, like you say, the collective group can make all the difference in being able to help them, you know, come up with innovative ideas, help them fix issues, problem solve, all those sort of great things. And, you know, having an organization that has that kind of, I think what Peter said, and she used to call the learning organization really makes a difference in in you know people people feel like they're like it's safe and it's free to open up and offer up ideas and they won't get you know shamed or shot down or that's stupid that's a dumb idea how dare you come right you know and that shuts down creativity right away so having that makes all the difference in the world i think oh i'm totally with you and you mentioned peter

sange so i've had the privilege to work with peter oh wow oh yeah for sure and two things the first is the reason why generon was formed back in i think it was 1994 95 somewhere in there was because joseph had just finished up on the Shell Scenario Planning Project. And he had met Peter Senge. And Peter wanted Joseph to come to Massachusetts, so that we could start to think about how to form a consulting firm that would help Peter with his Society for Organizational Learning, which back then, yeah, which back then was the Organizational Learning Group that was affiliated with MIT. And so the whole learning organization, fifth discipline,

all of that was kind of at the real early days of Generon when we started. And as part of that, one of our business partners who has since passed, Bill O'Brien. Bill O'Brien was the CEO of Hanover Insurance, which was kind of deemed as the very first learning organization in the U.S. Oh, wow. Yeah. There you go. And I've been pronouncing his name wrong all these years, evidently, too. Yeah, Peter Senge. Senge. I'll have to remember that. His book, The Fifth Discipline, and then the workbook thereafter was really good at helping apply what you know i love the workbook and we used it almost as a manual but he was so

instrumental i probably is he passed away is he still here no no he's still with us for sure i should meet him one of these days he was so instrumental in making me successful as an entrepreneur and all of our companies setting culture. You know, I said what I called the learning culture in our organization. You know, one of the things we had was, one of the rules we had in my organization was the only stupid question is the unasked question. And so that was a way of communicating to people

that please, if you have questions, ask them. You know, if you wonder wonder something you know the the person who never asked questions who slept through training was the guy who cost me thirty thousand dollars right something he was always that guy and you'd be like so why didn't you ask if you didn't understand something or if you missed something in training why didn't you ask i was afraid to that was always the thing and you're like now you're thirty thousand dollars afraid to and it came out of my pocket so now i'm the most butthurt over it yeah that was that was one of those those things that you just oh my god what are we gonna

do what else have we discussed about some of the work that you do how do you do it so i think what you just shared is a good segue to that actually chris because when i think about people maybe being afraid to ask questions that's an immediate kind of trigger for me that suggests the culture doesn't feel safe and so part of what we do is try to help build those cultures that do feel safe where we can come in and not know the answer i mean this is totally almost like foreign or a 180 from, I think, what we're taught, especially in business, especially when you have those higher roles in the organization, right? Because you're paid to know the answer.

So to say, I don't know is like taboo. But what if we could create spaces where we didn't have to know the answer, but instead we could come in with a beginner's mind or an open-minded way of thinking about things to be open to other perspectives so that as a group, as a team, as an organization, we could create the next growth platform or the next, you know, like what Steve Jobs did with the iPhone. I'm not suggesting we get more electronics, but I'm just saying that was something that was so brilliant that came out of his team, not him alone. It was so revolutionary. Indeed. From a lot of different scales. I mean, it really changed the world.

But yeah, the nice thing about that creative process that you're talking about, too, is that it's taken from a point of a blank slate. You know, one of the problems you have when a lot of times you sit down with stuff and you're trying to you know innovate or work stuff out you know a lot of times you're presented with biases you know prejudices of of you know it's that old it's that old adage why do we do things this way i don't know we always did things this way you know it's the old turkey leg story if anyone remembers that turkey leg story did you ever do you know the turkey story i think you need to enlighten me so it's there's a there's a bunch of different variations but i'll tell the one that i heard so a man is this is in the older days and so a man got married his wife was making the turkey for the thanksgiving dinner for their first you know to get dinner together

so he's watching her make the dinner she takes the turkey legs out and throws them in the trash off the turkey and then she puts the rest of the bird in the oven okay and he's kind of shocked because he likes the dark meat of the legs i guess or something and he goes he goes hey what's going on there with the throwing out the turkey legs and she goes she goes i don't know my mom taught me that that's the way we always did it. And so he goes, we need to find out what that's about. So they call up the mom. And the mom goes, I don't know. My mother, my grandmother, your grandmother did it that way.

And they're like, we need to call her and find out what's going on. It turns out they had about three generations alive. My mom's family did that. So it's real. And so they called up a great grandmother who was who, you know, is barely answering the phone. And they say, hey, great-grandmother, why don't we do that thing where we throw out the turkey legs? She goes, well, because in the old days, we had ovens that were too small to fit all that in. Oh, there you go.

And we didn't have refrigerators, so it would go bad. So we'd just throw them. Wow. Wow. You know, here all these times, of course, the ovens have gotten bigger. But, you know, they these times of course the evidence had gotten bigger but you know they're just following that pattern and it's just kind of that it's a perfect example of you know i mean i've walked into so many companies or so many departments and you're like you guys have kind of weird sort of way you process things from a to b or a to z here and there's a lot of log jams and there's a

lot of barriers and there's a lot of uphills that don't need to be here that slow the process down why do you do it this way and they're like i don't know we always did this way i i showed up last year and they trained me to do it and guy before me trained me this way and you know so it's really funny but yeah if you get together in the groups like you're talking about you don't have those sort of biases especially if you get together in the groups like you're talking about, you don't have those sort of biases, especially if you can run from a clean slate of creativity. So I love the story because, yeah, when I hear that question or sorry, that statement, you know, we've always done it that way. That definitely piques my ears. And it's interesting because we always have our biases.

Yeah. We always will. And I think it's why we talk about in these organizations as one example, when we're creating, let's say, different teams around strategic priorities for the organization, the top three things that must happen in order for that organization to thrive and survive. We often talk about using a diagonal slice of the organization. So get the whole system in the room, get the whole system in the room. Because if I'm working for like a manufacturing company, as one example, the person who's running that machine on the shop floor is going to know more about anything that would come up problem or otherwise about that machine than

me sitting at the top as the CEO, right? Oh yeah. Frontline. Frontline. Yeah. I mean, that's the, you, you've got to yeah. Frontline. Frontline. Yeah. I mean, you've got to have everybody on board with the thing.

You can't have one part of the organization running this way. You can't have multiple cooks in the kitchen, as it were. And so everyone's got to sail in the same direction, if you would. Sure. And that makes all the difference in the world. Anything more we want to tease out about your company, what you do, how you do with the book before we go out? No, I think we've covered a lot. This has been amazing. I guess I would just offer that for people who are truly interested, and especially, I'm going to say, the younger generation as they come up to become our next-gen leaders, so to speak, how are we helping them to

learn some of these concepts that might feel a little soft or might feel a little unconventional at times. And yet, like in your words, a few minutes ago, make the biggest difference, not just for them, but for the companies that they're working. And the world too. The world, absolutely. One thing that's interesting about the new generations is they want to do things better for the world and they want to have an impact.

You know, the health of the, you know, they're kind of, they're weirdly interested in the health of the planet and the future that they live in. You know, they like want to breathe clean air or something. What the hell kind of people are these people? But, you know, they want their kids to grow up with opportunities. You know, I don't know about this new generation. Anyway, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, folks. Those are worthy things to go after, so there you go.

Susan, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yes,.com. generoninternational.com All spelled out. There you go. And thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks to Ronitz for tuning in. Go to anywhere you can find good books on the internet and order up the book,

A Call to Wholeness, Empowering Organizations Through Possibility, out November 25th, 2021. Thanks to Susan for coming on. Thanks to Ronitz for joining in. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneschrisfoss, linkedin.com, fortuneschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, and the TikTokity. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you guys next time.