The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 566: Jim Dethmer - Conscious Leadership, Radical Responsibility, Energy Audits, Being Fully Present, and Doing What Most Makes You Feel Alive

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Order and Read our new book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/4btcb1o Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 What do leaders who sustain excellence do? They have the ability to be present for an extended period of time. They are here now. They live a life that creates a sustainable presence. They are fully present. Be here now. Fully here. This makes you available for this creative moment. Play the long game. Excellent leaders play the long game. "Live a life that creates sustainable presence." Space and Place: It's important to know your soul's home: For Jim: Northern Michigan. Quiet, still, simple, in nature... "It's recharging for me." Lead and live intentionally to get to your flow state. Ask: What is it that creates the most "alive-ness" in you? Do an energy audit. Look at your calendar for the last week. What events make your energy go up, stay neutral, or go down? Maximize for people and events that make your energy go up. "Populate your life with what you love." Are you willing to be fully alive? What are you willing to risk to make that happen? Get rid of energy downers. You can do that in 3 ways. Dump it, Delegate it Do it differently Responsibility – By me: I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life, and my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to support others to take full responsibility for their lives. I have to = Victim mindset I choose to = Ownership mindset To me = At the effect of other things. Outside my locus of control. By me = Inside. I am the cause of the experience. Radical responsibility. How am I causing the experience? Josh Waitzkin - Make weather what it is. Play in the rain. Curiosity is everything as a leader. The opposite of curiosity is always needing/wanting to be right. Deconstruct all the places where you want to be right. Most of it stems from fear. There are three fears: Approval Control Security Curiosity - I commit to growing in self-awareness. I commit to regarding every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I commit to curiosity as a path to rapid learning. Candor - I commit to saying what is true for me. I commit to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor. Accountability and Responsibility: Responsibility is not something that can be assigned, it is something that has to be taken. Responsibility lives in the world of integrity and impeccable agreements. Speak truth in love. "We often describe unconscious leaders as reactive. They react from a "story" about the past or an imagined future, and their personality, ego, or mind takes over."

Most people are terrified of being fully alive. It doesn't take long before people go, holy shit, I'm not fully alive. Can you talk about the importance of curiosity? A real simple place to start is to do an energy audit. We're trying to get at is maximizing for full aliveness. You're looking at my calendar right now. Let's do it live and in person. These are really important questions.

Nothing you're doing is by accident. What are the deepest questions you're asking in life? What will you risk for, aliveness and how do you create aliveness. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,

will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about my new book, The Score That Matters. You'll also get the first two chapters for free of the score that matters if you text Hawk to 6-6-866. Now on to tonight's featured leaders. So good. Jim DeThmer has been devoted to the practice of conscious leadership for 45 years. He's the best-selling author of the fifth-sleeleeves. He's the best-selling author of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, a new paradigm for sustainable success. During this conversation, we discuss, what is it in your life that makes you feel the most alive? And as part of that, we did an actual coaching session, Jim to me, where Jim did an energy audit

for me. I think you'll like it. And then what does it mean to move from to me to buy me? and how doing that will help you create an ownership mentality. Then Jim shares the importance of finding the right space and place for you, your soul's home, as I said before, and how finding that will enable you to reach your potential. That's looks pretty deep. And I think I said, like a hundred times during this conversation because I found Jim so profound and useful.

and kind. And I love those types of conversations. I hope you enjoy it too. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the great Jim Deffmer. Jim, what a treat to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thanks, Ryan. It's great to be here. I was in a room. It was probably four or five years ago. And there's a lot of powerful people in this room. I felt very lucky. It was actually a dinner. And the guy sitting next to me, he looked at me and he said, hey, have you heard of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership? And embarrassingly, I had said, no, I haven't. And he goes, it's the best leadership book you will ever read. I'm like, no way, really?

And I haven't heard of it yet. He said, I'm telling you dig into it. And you're going to want to talk to this gym guy because he knew about my podcast. And I've then went on this deep dive ever since then. So I'm thrilled to have you here. You come highly recommended from very high level leaders that are in my life, man. Oh, that's wonderful. I'm curious from your perspective. Because of the work you've done, you've been around some of the

most effective leaders in the world over many years, the ones who sustain excellence over time. I'm curious, Jim, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence? What a great question. Okay, the first thing I'd say is, like everybody else, I have a bias in how I listen to people and watch people. So I'm going to answer the question, but I'm going to answer it by saying I probably unconsciously am looking for certain things based on my worldview and what I think is important. So I want to say that because I'm not here to say I've done an exhaustive study of all sustainable, successful leaders and here's what the data shows.

That might be more Jim Collins. That's not what I'm up to in the world. So having said that, what I see in leaders that creates sustainability, I'd start at 50,000 feet is the ability to be present for extended periods of time and to live a life and do practices that cultivates presence. So that would be the big idea. So what that means to me is great leaders, doesn't matter to me whether they're a special forces person or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or an adjun.

or an actor. What they all have is the ability at the moment when they are in the game to be so fully present. We define presence as being here now, really here now, in a non-triggered, non-reactive way, so that I'm available to this creative moment. and great leaders have the ability to do that over and over again. And then the second thing I said just a minute ago was they live a life and do the practices that cultivates the ability to return to that over and over again. And that's a huge part of the sustainability piece.

Because we all know leaders who have the ability to be incredibly present for bursts of time, but they're not living a life that creates sustainability so they burn out. And the leaders I work with, we're trying to play for the long game. How do you cultivate presence in the now moment over a long period of time? So we could double click on a lot of those words, but that would be what I see as a characteristic of great impactful leaders who do it over a long period of time. I asked you before we started recording about where you are, you're in your cottage.

It's just seems like a warm, cozy place that I want to hang out. And it feels like, though, you're very intentional about that element of where you are, the feel, the space to create this presence. Can you go deeper, maybe now a little bit more personal about how you design your life to ensure this presence? Let's start with space and place. It's not normally where I start because it's not normally what. people are thinking about. I have a funny thing that I say, I'm not sure this is true, but I resonate

with it and so many leaders that I work with resonate with it. I think we all have a place that is our soul's home. Now, by soul, I don't mean anything deeply religious or anything. It's just that you can tell. If I said to you, Ryan, are you a mountain guy? Are you an ocean guy? Are you a river guy? Are you a vast open plains guy? Are you a vista guy? Are you a woods guy? You would have a sense just from the life you've lived.

Do you have a sense which of any of those? You just get there and you just drop in? Oh, man. I want to go hiking. I want to be in nature. I'm going to hike up mountains. There you go. So you want to be outdoors moving your body.

Yes, 100%. I think all of us have a version of that. So for me now, many years, I've known that my soul's home was Northern Michigan, little town in northern Michigan, where there's a combination of water lakes. My cottage sits between two lakes, a beautiful inland lake and Lake Michigan. I'm surrounded by woods and sand dunes, incredible hiking paths. Now, if I keep going, the place where I live is very quiet. It's very still. In the dead of winter like it is now, I can drive into the little town, which is a couple of miles away. There's not a stoplight

in town. You often won't see more than 10 cars on Main Street. There are a couple of bars and a restaurant in a grocery store. People up here live simple lives. So these qualities of quiet, still, simple, deeply rooted in nature, I know to be recharging for me. So I leave here. We also have a home in downtown Chicago right in the midst of the hustle and bustle. And I love it. And I travel to meet clients periodically, but I can never wait to get back to that, which automatically recharges me. So that's place. Place I think is really important.

I think it's underrated in terms of long-term sustainability. Now, one of the upsides of COVID is most of us have now realized we can work often wherever we want to work. So that's one thing. And then I have a whole set of daily practices. that are part of my cultivating presence and sustainability, from when I wake up to what I do for the first hour of my day, to how I move my body,

to what I do with my wife in our connection. All of those things, all of those practices are ways that I cultivate sustainable presence. It feels you are so thoughtful and intentional about this. I think that's the part I'm taking away is nothing you're doing, is by accident. You're not wandering around hoping for the best. It feels like you've really thought this through and then you've taken intentional steps to make it happen because you understand this idea of being fully present is not like a place where you arrive. You always have to work on it.

You always are in this becoming mindset. And I feel like that's a useful thing for leaders to hear is that here's a guy you'd think, hey, he's crushed it, it's got this bestselling book, and he's in so much demand, and yet you're a constant work in progress because you know that's what it takes in order to stay present. Absolutely. You said intentional. One of the things that, it's just a 101 lesson in leadership is leaders who have impact lead with intentionality. They don't lead accidentally. And I just broaden it. They don't live accidentally. Now, there's a different. between accidentally and serendipitously. There's a real big difference between those two, because I live very serendipitously open to the flow of the now moment, to the creative

possibility that could occur in any improvisational dance that I'm in with life. That's serendipitously or in flow state. But flow state or serendipity is often cultivated when you also have a set of intentional practices that set yourself up to be in a receptive posture. So yeah, and when I work with leaders, we're always talking about what are the practices, what are the habits, what are the disciplines, what are you devoted to with intentionality that creates presence and availability to flow state. So I'm not accidental around my meditation practice. I'm not accidental around my journaling practice.

I'm not accidental around what I put in my body. I'm not accidental around how I move my body or how I cultivate deep intimate friendships and relationships. I'm not accidental about any of that. And leaders I work with, we work on just simply asking what is it that creates the most aliveness in you? That's the key phrase to me. I say to leaders all the time, are you willing to be fully alive? what will you risk for full aliveness and how do you create aliveness? Man, when you're doing that, game on. Wow. Let's get practical. Man, I love this, Jim. So let's say you took me on as a new client,

okay? And I'm pretty good at this, but not great or excellent. And so need some help. Let's just do it for real. What's the process like? How do we get started? I'm just fascinated by how you help people go from being pretty good because I would imagine you get the top end of the client base. So what's the process like to help get them to be more present, to be more in flow, to be more intentional with what they do each day? Okay, great. We could pull any of these threads, but let's just start with this one. A real simple place to start is to do an energy audit. So all I'd ask you to do is I just ask you to talk through yesterday with me and last week and last month. And if we're doing it, we'd sit down, we'd actually take out your calendar. And we'd look at everything.

in your calendar. And next to everything in your calendar, I would have you either tell me whether your energy went up, stayed neutral, or went down. So just think about yesterday. I have no idea what you did yesterday. Think about what you did yesterday. When you look at all the events yesterday, just pick a few of them. Did your energy go up, neutral, or go down? Just pick a few. And what do you actually tell you? Sure. Let's do it live and in person. Yeah, I'm actually looking at my calendar right now. I recorded a podcast with an amazing leader named Bill Yuri, William Yuri. You may know him.

He wrote about getting to yes. I wanted Jim Collins, good buddies. Talked about hiking in Colorado there. Energy through the roof because of that conversation. This is when I'm most alive, Jim, being here with you. I met with a marketing company to help me with some stuff for YouTube. I would say it was pretty exciting. A young Brits, actually, three of them that were, had this cool team that I was a little skeptical

going into the meeting and then afterwards actually felt really good. I spent a good chunk of time writing an outline for a potential book. And then I met with a senior leader who actually works at Facebook. He's become a friend. We meet every two weeks to talk leadership because he was a fan of the podcast starting what four or five years ago. And we just have this ongoing dialogue about what he sees over in California and what I see over here. And those are very energizing conversations for me, because we live and lead completely different lives, although we have this same desire to be growth-focused, intentional, effective leaders.

And I like those types of talks. So those are the primary things I would say of the day when it comes to my work. Okay. So yesterday, everything you did professionally was energy up. I would say so, yes. No energy flat, no energy down. No. If you ought to pick a different day,

I probably would have had some of those. But if you talked about yesterday, yeah. Did you ever respond to any emails yesterday? Yes, for sure. Okay. Now, this is the kind of thing I want to talk about. I guess it's not in the calendar, but yes, for sure. I got it.

But we'd look and we'd say, okay, you responded to some emails yesterday. I'd have you go back and show me each email and I would have you tell me with that email, energy up, neutral or down. Okay. Because we would discover an amazing amount. You might discover that all you had to do is look at the sender who sent you an email and the subject line and your energy went down. So we'd explore that.

You'd look at some stuff that were just simply the hygiene of life, energy neutral. Then you'd look at some emails where it went up. What else did you do during the day when you had lunch? Did you eat lunch in such a way that your energy went up, stayed down or was neutral? Did you work out what happened to your energy? Have any conversations with friends or partners? We'd look at everything because what we're doing is maximizing energy. So are you saying when you look at it, let's say you do this audit. And if we picked a day where

there was a lot of downers, boring meetings or things like administrative stuff, I have to, I love my accountant, but it's not always the biggest, hey, you got to write this tax bill. It's not like the most enjoyable thing. Are you saying you want to remove the ones that decrease your energy? What's the plan here? Is it to create days where your energy is always going up or always high? Similar to yesterday outside of some of the emails and things like that that we didn't talk about, but what are you trying to get at by doing the audit? What we're trying to get at is maximizing for full aliveness. So one of the questions I'd ask you is, how alive are you willing to be?

How much are you willing to live in what we call your zone of genius, not your zones of excellence or competence or incompetence? How much are you willing to populate your life with what you love? These are really important questions. And if you're answered to all those questions is yes, then we're going to do energy audit and we're going to say, okay, the first thing we're going to do is start to get rid of the energy down activities in your life. And we say you can do three things with those. You can dump it, stop doing it all together. You can delegate it, give it to somebody else, or you can do it differently.

Sometimes you can do an activity, but if you do it differently, literally, if you do it while listening to music, if you do it while you're out on a walk, I know people who don't necessarily like talking on the phone, but if they combine it with a hike, all of a sudden it becomes at least energy neutral. So we're going to look at your down arrows and we're going to see, do you want to dump it delegated or do it differently? Because all we're looking for is to reclaim energy and get you fully alive. Then we're going to look at what really causes your energy to go up. So you mentioned you recorded a podcast that you really enjoyed yesterday. Beautiful. Now, what I do if I was coaching you is I would deconstruct what is it about recording a podcast that you love so much?

Because there's a lot that goes on in a podcast. Did you love the preparation? Do you love the dialogue? Do you love learning? Do you love co-creating in the now moment? Do you love the technology of a podcast? Do you love the possibility of its impact? There's so many things that could be energy up for you.

Whereas there might be other things related to podcasting that are just neutral. Maybe sourcing guests or follow up with guests or stuff like that. I don't know. We'd explore. And again, we'd be looking for how to get you more and more doing what is your unique contribution in the world. Leaders who have great impact, sustainable over the time, have figured out what is their unique contribution and they are doing that.

and their energy therefore is up and therefore it's sustainable because they're getting energy from their life. So I don't have a normal leadership job. I would bet you work with and talk to others similar like that I do. These are senior level executives at big companies, some of the people that I work with. This is what they do. And that means there's thousands of people that report up to them. not directly how org charts are built.

And so there are always people grabbing for time on their calendar. And when we look at their calendars, it is back to back to back. And a lot of them are downers. Like they're things they just like, I just have to do this. I got to be in that one. I can't. And this is like a fight. It is a fist fight every day.

I feel like with some of these ones. What about for that person? Because that's not me. That's not my schedule. But what about for that person that has that back to back to back to back to back life. That's a senior level executive, a big company with people always wanting their time. What do you do with them? It's so much there. So again, I'd start at the same place. Are you willing to be fully alive? Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not. Maybe that's the maybe it ends right there.

Most people are not. Most people are terrified of being fully alive. Do they say, yeah, Jim, I am. And then when you follow through and you ask questions and you help them to either dump it, delegate it, or do it differently, they're like, no, that's not going to work here. I'm just curious when you get pushed back or does it sometimes just end there or if they're very honest and say, nah, I don't know if I'm really fully ready to be alive. That happens all the time because what I ask is, are you willing to be fully alive? And then the next question is, what are you willing to risk for full aliveness? This is a really important question. Hardly anybody, if I ask them on a scale of one to 100, how alive are you? Give me 95, 98, let alone if we start breaking it down. How alive are you in your body? How alive are you

in your day-to-day work? How alive are you in your relationship with your boss or all the people who report to you? How alive are you sexually? How alive are you emotionally? How alive are you spiritually? I just start breaking down all the categories of their life where I have specific questions to ask that indicate aliveness, it doesn't take long before people go, holy shit, I'm not fully alive. There's some places in life where I'm not optimizing for aliveness. No problem. That's just being a human. Then I ask, what are you willing to risk for full aliveness?

Now, you said something when you reference this typical leader, okay? You said they say, I just have to do this. It's just something I got to do. So on and so forth. That phrase, I have to and I've got to, is an indication of victim consciousness. They are not living as an empowered creator. Anytime the words come out of your mouth, I have to, I've got to. You're not at choice.

You are at the effect of. Now, you might say to me, if I'm going to work in this Fortune 500 company, it's just part what we do. You have to do this. I'd say, okay, let's explore that because that's a deeply held belief that you have and I want to challenge your belief. And then we'd start challenging that belief. And at the end of the day, they might end up saying, I'm going to keep doing performance reviews. I hate them. The people who report to me hate them, but I'm going to keep doing it. Why? Because I want to have a job here. And HR has made it part of being employed here. Great. At that point, you're going to shift from I have to do them to I choose to do them. I really am making a conscious choice.

Now, they still might be energy down or energy neutral, and then we talk about how to do them differently, but you wouldn't be a victim. Leaders, even the greatest leaders in the world, slip into victimhood and victim consciousness, believing that they are at the effect of people's circumstances and conditions. And one of the greatest dampeners to aliveness, to presence, to long-term sustainable impact and productivity is living in victimhood. So I'd catch it right there. And we'd just do exactly what you said. I would say, so tell me all the people who are on your calendar last month. And tell me, does your energy go down, stay neutral or go up? They pick one that it goes down. Here's one of the things I'd say to them. I'd say, about that person,

where your energy goes down, how revealed are you to them? How authentically have you spoken your truth to them? Often, leaders, energy goes down when they're meeting with people that they have withholds from. They're not open, honest, and candid. I've told countless leaders and individuals this. Like, when I work with leaders, I often work with their intimate relationship. And they might say to me, we've been together for seven years or 10 years or 20 years. It's gotten boring and flat.

Here's what I know. They're not being honest with each other. If you're totally candid in your intimate relationship, you won't be bored. It might be chaotic as hell. It might be turbulent. It might even end, but it won't be boring. One of the greatest depressors of full aliveness is not, being authentic and candid in your life. You have withholds. So I just go through the people on their

calendar, their energy goes out, and we can ask dozens of questions, but one of them I would ask is, what have you not said to this person that if you were totally revealed, you'd say it? And then we talk about, why are you not saying it? What are you afraid of? What are you trying to control, manage, or manipulate that you're not being honest? Now, big corporate bureaucratic companies like you mentioned, they're notorious for not being honest places. That's one of the definitions of a company being political. By the way, it can be a seven-person startup. But one of the definitions of political is people aren't saying what they really think, believe, and want. They're filled with withholds. That dampens the individual and collective aliveness of the whole

organization. When we go into teams, like the third or fourth thing we teach is, what does it look like to have a candid, feedback-rich environment. If you don't have that, you'll never have full aliveness. So I'm double-clicking on a lot of stuff with you here, but that's the way I would start to deal with this stereotypical corporate leader who believes they have to do all this corporate bullshit to have a job. That is such a story they tell themselves. I've heard the story.

I get it. It's just a story. It's not real because I can give them all kinds of examples of people who break. those patterns and be the first one to break them in a company and then the whole company breaks them. How often do you start working with somebody and they say, this is not for me? I don't want, this guy's challenged me too much or these questions, this is not for me. Does that happen much?

How often do I work with somebody and then they don't want to work with me because there's too much challenge? I would say at this point in my life, never. They self-select prior to even calling you. No, I select. Before I ever work with somebody, I go through an extent. conversation. The first thing I ask them is, if our coaching is successful, what will you have a month, six months a year from now that you don't have right now? I ask, what are the deepest

questions you're asking in life? If they're not asking the kinds of questions that interest me that I'm perfectly suited to help somebody explore, we're not going to work well together. If their only question is, how can I be a better leader at work? I would never work with them. because the question isn't big enough. It's not holistic enough. And I know that I can say go read these five books on leadership and just do everything you already know to do and you'll be a better leader. But that's not going to get at it. I want to get at the deeper things that are blocking them, the deeper questions of what it means to be a human being.

So they self-select, first of all I'm hard to get to by definition, literally remotely, but also I'm just not a public person. I don't have any social media. I just live a very quiet private life. If somebody does get to me, then I'm very discerning about whether or not I respond. And then if we end up having a conversation, I'm very open and some might say provocative in the very first session to see if we're meant to work together.

And at the end of the first session, somebody's either going, hell yes, or for God's sake, no. So I don't have anybody anymore that I start working with. And after a couple months, we say it's not working. It just doesn't work that way. I love that process too. You've earned it, obviously through being effective and producing great work and helping so many people that now you can be

very choosy on who you want to surround yourself with because that makes a big difference in your life, right? How you spend your time. That's how you spend your life. So you don't want to spend time with clients that it's not going to go well. I have a feeling that's the type of life I want to set up as well. That's why I'm looking at your whole surrounding and your whole setup and your whole business and think, this is awesome. This guy has figured some stuff out. I need to learn from how you've built this thing. Yeah, we're back to where we started. When I look at my calendar for today, I have four appointments. If I look at those this morning, say I finished my meditation, I'm sitting there. If I look at them and my energy doesn't go up thinking about what I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be having a conversation

about changing the nature of the relationship or ending it. I only have people in my life where my energy goes up. I say leaders all the time. Just answer this question. Everybody who walked in your office this week, when they walked in your office, did your energy go up, stay neutral or go down? If your energy isn't going up with 80% of the people who are walking into your office, you are not living sustainable leadership. Same with you. We could have looked at yesterday. Your energy went up in your podcast. Your energy went up in your friend from Facebook. Your energy went up with the marketing people. Your energy went up. Yeah. You get to have a choice. All of your listeners have the privilege, as do I, to create the life we want to create.

Now, there are millions of people in the world who don't have that privilege. I get it. But you and I do. If we've got that privilege, for God's sake, we ought to steward the privilege. You mentioned this a little bit earlier, but there's the shift from moving from to me to buy me. me as part of 15 commitments of conscious leadership. Can you go deeper on that move? Yeah. So the difference is, and when I'm into me, I believe the world is happening to me. I'm at the effect. And I could be at the effect of the weather. So I get up and let's say today I want to

go skiing, but it's a little warm. The snow's going to be slushy. So now I'm in a bad mood. I believe the cause of my bad mood is the weather and the snow conditions. That's to me. I'm at the effect of the weather. By the way, it could be positive. I could get up today and say, wow, just below freezing. We got six inches of fresh snow last night. The sun's going to be shining. I'm happy. But why am I happy? I'm happy because the weather is what I want it to be. In both cases, the locus of control or causation is outside of me. So if we were to get together for lunch and you say, how you doing? I'd say, I'm great because Debbie and I had a wonderful dinner last night and then we made love and it was exquisite and she really seems to be liking me

right now. Again, the cause of my happiness is the food, the lovemaking, and that she likes me. I'm into me. This is where most people live most of the time. The locus of control is outside of themselves. When you shift to buy me, the locus of your control comes inside. You realize that you are the cause of your experience. I'm not the cause of the weather, but I'm the cause of my quality of happiness, peace, equanimity. It has nothing to do with the weather. It's how I'm being with the weather. I'm the cause of my contentment in my marriage, not how Debbie is behaving. I'm the cause of my sense of freedom and security, not how much money I have. So many people think, if only I had X, then I would finally be whatever, financially free. That's locating the cause outside of yourself

in your bank account and your net worth and your investments. That's to me. By me, I go, I'm the cause of my sense of freedom, not my money. They're radically different ways to live life. and the shift between the two, the gateway, is taking radical responsibility. So it's just simply saying, how am I creating or co-creating or causing my experience? I illustrate by language. In other words, you could say, how are you doing it? And I could say, I'm pissed off today. Why are you pissed off then?

I start talking. Radical responsibility, you ask me, I'm doing it. I say, I'm pissing myself off today. I'm saddening myself. I'm scaring myself. I'm exciting myself. Notice, I'm the cause of my emotional experience. Not a circumstance. Radical responsibility is choosing. It's always a choice to be responsible for your experience. So if a person's intimate relationship sucks, most people want to look at the other party and say the reason it sucks is because they do or don't do the following things. When I work with people, I say, how are you creating an unsatisfying relationship? Let's say somebody's complaining about the amount of sex they're having.

I say, how are you creating a sexless relationship? It's not me. I ask all the time and they just say, no, that's still. to me and buy me. How are you doing it? And if they're willing to shift, they go, well, it's a good point, actually. I work about 130 hours a week and I tend to be exhausted. I don't tend to the relationship apart from sexual touch. I tend to be resentful and pissed off towards my significant other. I spend all my energy that I do have at home with my kids. I don't do anything to cultivate positive upside in the relationship. Oh, interesting. You're doing all that,

and you have a marriage that isn't as physically intimate as you want it to be. Well, take responsibility for all that and get out of your partner's business. You stay in your business. People who live in by me stay in their business and they stay out of other people's business and they stay out of God's business with a small G. They don't trouble themselves with things that aren't their business. They keep their attention on their business and take responsibility for it. They have high agency.

They take ownership of their own lives, first and foremost, and that's at the foundational level of everything they do versus it's so much easier to blame, complain, defend, right, as opposed to taking complete ownership over what you're doing and the results that you achieve because of what you do, what you choose to do each day. That's exactly right. I don't blame the Fed or monetary policy or inflation or the fear of. I don't blame the market conditions. Those are real things, but I never blame them. I realize that I am at choice. I get to have agency. Now, that doesn't mean I can dominate market share.

It doesn't mean that, but it does mean that I get to choose my attitude. I get to choose what phone calls I make today, who I meet with, what product I'm going to watch. Let's say I have choice over that. I get to choose those things. The consequences of my choices are often out of my control. I can choose to be revealed, authentic, and candid. How somebody responds to that is out of my control. Going back to the weather real quick, Jim, this is just a personal one.

I want to just surface my thesis and then have you respond, okay? I think words really matter. I care about language. I try to be very intentional, especially as a dad. Okay. And I'm with at the time, she was seven, she's nine now. My daughter, Charlie, and we're getting ready for a soccer game. And it's pouring down rain, pouring. Like no lightning, though. So you play in rain. You don't play in lightning, but no lightning, you play in rain. And the natural thing that some of the other parents and people are saying is like, oh, my God, the weather is so bad. It's so terrible. And when I had a one-on-one with her, I wasn't going to try to make a scene, but one-on-one where I said, weather is not good or bad. it just is. So it happens to be raining. Okay. Now you, I know she's young, maybe too young for this, but I don't think you could ever be too young to talk about language and the importance of words. You have the choice of how you want to play in the rain, not the bad weather, but in the rain.

Okay. And so you can choose to let that rain make you not run fast or be worried about slipping or not be aggressive as a defender, what she is. Or you can say, that is completely out of my control, and I'm going to give everything I've got, regardless of the fact that it's not bad weather, but that it's raining. And it's become like a fun thing now when it rains. She's a young kid, right? When it rains to talk about like her excitement for playing hard, right? It's the same when it's not raining too, but it's because people call it bad. That's where I wanted to get out of this habit, like as a family of saying it's not bad.

that's just what it is. It's just raining. We get to choose how we respond and the outcome will be determined by how we choose and what we choose to do and the mindset we bring to it versus just saying, oh, this sucks, weather's bad. I can't wait to get this one over with. And I think that's a big deal. And I want this because that flows to so many other parts of life. And as you hear that story, it's real life one. I've told it before, but it's important to me that of how we view things that are outside of our control and think about the things that are inside of our control and how we respond to them.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. You're talking to her about agency. So powerful. Yeah, because most parents, it's raining outside or it's cold and they go, okay, we're going to stay inside today. We're going to do inside games. One of my buddies is a guy named Josh Waitzkin,

and he has a radically different view. His view is it's raining outside. He says to his kids, hot dog, it's raining. Let's go outside. Let's experience rain. Let's experience wind. Let's experience cold. Let's experience hot. It's just life force. Let's get into it. Not only is he teaching them that weather just is, which is actually the truth. He's teaching them that they have the agency to make weather what they wanted to be. Think about how that empowers kids. Gail Sears, I'm a Chicago guy and go way back with the bears.

I think Gail Sears loved it when it was raining and muddy because he was a mudder. He played better in the mud because his agility wasn't dampened equally to everybody else. Everybody else goes, oh, crap, it's raining. You know, I only play football, you know, on turf when it's clean and pristine. Sears is going, thank God it's raining. This is to my. Well, what's the difference? The difference is all inside of your kids.

you, Gail Sayers. That's exactly what agency is all about. That's exactly what radical responsibility is all about. Oh, man. This is so good. I meant to dig into these earlier, but we're going to dig into them a few of the 15 before we run, okay? Yeah.

I have to do a round two here. That's so good. So we talk about responsibility. I'm going to go to the second one. This is one of my core values, and I try to live out each day that I think helps me be most alive to use your language, quite frankly. And that is curiosity, right?

about this commitment to growing and self-awareness, commit to regarding every opportunity, every interaction is an opportunity to learn. Now we're getting into some of the 15. Can you talk first and foremost about the importance of curiosity? Curiosity is everything, isn't it? As a leader, being in a high learning state, learning agility,

able to take in real-time information, integrated, learn, adapt, and implement. It's everything. And it just becomes everything more and more. Now, what's the opposite of that? The opposite is valuing being right over being curious. Now, I want to say, everybody wants to be right at the egoic level. We all have egos.

We're never going to get rid of our egos. Ego is just a consolation of beliefs and thought streams. Those egos want to be right. So you said you like to learn. I can see that about you. You're a curious, open person. True. Generally speaking, when the conditions inside of you feel safe and secure, you want to learn.

But I guarantee you, if I got you into a threatening situation, let's call it an interpersonal threatening relationship, where you're having conflict, you probably have some of those in life. wherever there's a little bit of drama, conflict, chaos, and a relationship, you stop wanting to learn and you start wanting to be right. Because you believe that the key to survival is to be right. This is why partners in business, when they get scared and threatened about conditions in their world, they auger down in being right and they start fighting with each other about who's

right. they stop learning they stop being curious so when i work with leaders first place i with this commitment i say where in your life are you still wanting to be right all you have to do is complete the sentence i should or shouldn't just start with the show i should or shouldn't i should have seven percent body fat i shouldn't eat sugar i should spend more time with my kids i shouldn't you'll have a whole list of shoulds and shouldn'ts. You get done with that one. Now just do it all for your kids. They should or shouldn't.

If you have a significant other, do it with her. Do it with your work colleagues. Do it with the government. Just list all the things that you'd put should or should of in front of. All of those are places where you want to be right. All shoulds and shouldn'ts are attachments to wanting to be right. They're not bad or wrong. They're just natural.

So when I work with leaders, we are going to deconstruct all of those places where they want to be right. I work with a lot of leaders, just like you, say, God, one of my core values is curiosity and staying in a high learning state. And I believe them. They wouldn't have gotten to where they're at if they didn't do that. But I'm looking for the places in their life where they're no longer curious. Like I'm talking to them, they say, my dad was an asshole. He beat me and my brother and he was a drunk. And after I empathize and understand the torture.

of all that trauma. At some point, I'm going to say, sounds like you want to be right that your dad was an asshole. It's not that I want to be right. I just am right. Everybody would say he was an asshole. Okay.

That's just a place where you'd rather be right and learn. What are you saying? What I'm saying is, as long as you have to see your father a certain way, you're never going to learn all the things he was here to teach you, whether he knew he was here to teach you those things or not. We all have. places where we want to be right. When I'm coaching somebody, I want to find as many of those

as possible and invite them to explore how the opposite of what they believe could be equally as true. The opposite could be equally as true. Now we're creating a truly high learning state where they're curious about things they haven't been historically curious about. That's the growth edge of a leader. Man, as you were saying that, I started thinking about my closest interpersonal relationships, including my marriage. And I'm thinking, yeah, that disagreement slash fight was because of me not being curious. Like, it's wild, man. Like, that's an eye-opening thing to think about. I wanted to be right. And I wasn't curious. And I sounded like an idiot if I had a camera filming me. What are you doing, dude? I don't know. Do you find people start beating themselves up?

Because that's what I feel like I'm doing right now. That's exactly right. That's why I would say to you, you're not an idiot. You're just a human who's scared. You see, the way we're wired is, if you got curious around that topic, especially if it's a repeating topic that you tend to squabble with your wife about, most of us have repeating topics. If you got more interested in learning, than being right, you'd notice that you're scared. Like, what's at risk if you let go of trying to prove you were right? What's at risk? What would you be scared about?

I'll give you a shortcut. All of our fears are rooted in one of three things. Wanting approval to be liked, loved, valued, esteemed, respected. So you might be afraid that you're going to lose your wife's approval or her love or her respect. rooted in control, wanting people, circumstances, and conditions to be the way we think they should be. If you quit trying to control your wife and just let her have her own experience, you would feel like you were out of control. And the third bucket is security, safety, survivability.

What you discover is underneath all the conflicts you're having in life, you're experiencing a threat to one or more of those three things. wanting approval, control, or security. Why? Because you're human. So you could beat yourself up if you want, but I would never beat you up. I would say, oh, Ryan, give yourself a break. Underneath, you're just a scared little kid.

You're this big, powerful guy on the outside who's smart and capable and successful. But we all have just a scared little kid under there. Are you still a scared little kid? I have so much part of me that's scared and little. A part of me is always going to be a scared. scared little kid. Now, I've learned to know that part, to love that part, to make friends with that part. I've worked diligently on that through persona work and IFS internal family systems and those different modalities to find all the parts of me and let them all be welcome at the party.

If you don't do that, they're just going to run the show from the shadow. So one of the things I work with leaders on all the time is finding all the disowned parts of themselves that are controlling them from the shadow, including a scared little boy who got rejected when he was in second grade. And when you get in a fight with your wife, it's the second grader who got rejected who's running the show with your wife. Now, you could say, oh, stop it, you're stupid. But he's just scared.

And until you learn how to accept and love him for being just the way he is, you'll never be able to be curious in that issue because it's too threatening. This is great. I want to get, can I want to get one more because I want to list out my favorite friends. Okay. My favorite friends and colleagues and people to work with are number four. Cander. They tell me the truth.

They tell it like it is. They're not afraid. And that's just how they go about their life. And this is rare. I'm trying to be more like this. But just being willing to see it and say it. exactly like it is, not being rude or mean or hurting people, but with candor and honesty, those are the people I value and want in my life the most. They just see it and say it versus the

ones who are saying it and then withhold some of the stuff. I want the full unvarnished truth. And so I'm trying to be that for others. So can you talk to me about candor? Yeah. So what you discover is, if I asked you, what is it about those people in addition to that they're so honest and clear? And it sounds like respectful. The goal is not here to scorch the earth with our judgments about the world. There's a great verse actually in the New Testament of the Bible that says, speak the truth in love. That's a good phrase. I'm always saying, how can I say everything I have to say and say it in the most loving way? That's what I want to be. Okay. But what you can discover underneath is one of the things you value about all those friends, they're trustworthy. Yes. You trust them. Because you trust them, you can lean in. You become more open. Now, part of the reason you experience them as trustworthy is because you trust yourself first to be okay with their feedback. Doesn't mean you'll like their feedback. It means that you know you can be okay with it. You can work it through. You trust yourself first.

You create an environment of receptivity. That's the reason they're being honest with you because you show up as a receptive person. Then they reveal and you trust them. Now, you're trusting you and you're trusting them. That allows you to trust the relationship and those become your closest friends. So what's going on in most relationships is we're first of all outsourcing trust. What that means is I call it transactional trust. I'll trust you if I deem that you're trustworthy. That's the way most people live. Now it's conditional. I'm always evaluating whether you're trustworthy. The second level of trust is I trust me to be okay with you. when you just do whatever you do.

Now the trust is much more stable. And what I want from you is for you to be authentic. So that I can really know you and I can know me as you see me. Now the locus of trust is inside of me. I trust you to do whatever you do. That's what I trust. I don't need you to do something for me to trust you. I just trust you to do whatever.

I say to people all the time, here's what you can trust. You can trust people. will do whatever they do. That's what you can trust. Anything beyond that, your trust is not very stable. So you have deep trust in yourself in these relationships. Now you trust them to be authentic, which they've proven they're willing to do. Now you have a high class relationship.

Okay. Most people aren't candid because they're too busy trying to control other people and their experience. Think about that. Again, let's go back to your intimate relationship. I say to people, how revealed are you with your significant other? I'm pretty revealed, except I learn not to talk about these things because when we do, it just turns into a shit show.

What you're telling me is you have withholds. And if I ask why do you have withholds, you'll tell me it's because you don't like the way they react when I tell them what I think. Sometimes, by the way, it's I don't want to hurt them. You don't want to experience them being hurt. Sometimes that's from genuine love, but often it's not just that you're afraid to hurt them, it's you're afraid how they're going to respond once they're hurt. That's what's really going on.

People withhold and they don't practice candor because they're trying to manage and control other people. Once you decide it's not your job to manage and control other people, you grant them the right to have their experience and do whatever they do, then you're taking a step closer to being a candid individually. My responsibility in our relationship is to tell you about me, my thoughts, my judgments, my perspectives. Now, it really helps if we did the prior commitment where I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in being curious. So I could tell you a judgment I have about you, but I'm not judgmental.

I don't need to prove I'm right. I'm just offering you me. Here's what I believe about you. If I'm coming from openness and curiosity when I reveal it and I'm not trying to control your experience. If you get hurt or upset, it's okay. I'll just stay with you while you're hurt or upset. Now I have the basis of candor. Most people don't have that. And you can feel this. In every relationship you have in life, almost all of them, there is something if you move towards the edge that you'd be afraid to say because it would upset somebody. There's almost always

a withhold. And a relationship's a living dynamic thing. You might not have any withholds from your wife last week, but you've lived another week. and you saw the way she interacted with Charlie or you saw the way she interacted here or whatever, and now you have a thought. And then you're going to, oh, God, they're going to be revealed or conceal. If I reveal, we're probably going to have a little squabble. So now you're back at it again. Ander is a living edge in all relationships.

Even with my wife, I've known since we're 15. We've been together for 30 years. There's always an edge that if I revealed it, I would be a little skill. even though I have thousands of reps of being authentic, thousands of times where she's responded, however she's responded. I still get a little nervous because I still have an ego that wants to. Withholds like when she asked you about the outfit, do you tell, this is the thing for me.

Actually, it's become a thing. I said, you've got to tell the truth because then when it's real, God, she feels so good. Yes. So if it doesn't look good, I will not be mean-spirited, but I will say something along the lines of, I think the other pants look better. So that's true. It's all true. The one she's currently wearing, I actually think the other ones look better. Not withholding. And I'm also not trying to be mean by saying, you don't look good in those pants. But she does look good, but she does look better on the other ones. And so I'm just curious how you handle some of those things. And my wife Miranda seems to appreciate the honesty because then when the compliment is given, it's real. It's not a fake compliment. It's legit. And I think that's really important. Again, words matter. She trusts you, which is what she wants. She wants to be able to trust you.

When you're authentic about how she looks in a given outfit, she trusts you. Now, I do want to catch one thing that makes this, in my mind, very potent. If you and I were at the Art Institute in Chicago and we were in the Impressionist Wing and we walked up to Monet's Haystack with this beautiful painting on the wall of the Art Institute. And I were to say, tell me about your experience of that painting. And you say, God, I love it. I feel like I'm transported into an other world. I love the way the light plays on it. I love the colors, the choice.

I love the brushstrokes, on so forth. Okay, good. And now we walk up to another one. I say, how do you like that? God, I hate it. In fact, I want a projectile vomit. When I look at it, every cell in my body just has aversion to it. What have you told me about either of those paintings?

I like one and I don't like it. The other one. Yeah. You haven't told me anything about the painting. Yeah. You've told me about you. Me. Yeah.

I get to know you. If it's not personal, if we're at the art institute, unless I'm really vested in Monet's haystacks, and let's say I'm not, I just want to know you. So you say, I love this because the coloration, the pixelation, the light, the brushstrokes, I hate this. Great, I just like knowing you. What's the difference between that and how your wife looks in the paint? Because when you tell her, I think you look better in those pants and these pants,

you haven't told her one darn thing about her or the pants. That's a good point. Not one darn thing. You've only told her about planet Ryan. On planet Ryan, where you live, here's what I like and don't like. Now, here's the deal. Your wife lives on a different planet. The odds of you both having the same rules on different planets are very small.

So if she's asking you, what do you think about this outfit? If she's a conscious intimate partner, she's saying, tell me about planet. Ryan. Oh, honey, I like beige better than dark chocolate. I like slim fit better than baggy fit. That's what's true over here. You can know me. I'm happy to tell you about me, but I'm not telling you about you about you. And I'm not telling you about everybody else that's going to be at the party, whether they're going to like it or not. So candor is revealing about the speaker, not about the listener. Now, she might say, I love you. And, I'm going with you to the party, so I want you to be delighted. I want you to look at me all

night long and go, God, she's beautiful. So what's on Planet Ryan matters to me tonight? Tomorrow and I'm going out with my girlfriends. I don't give a damn what you think about how I look, because Planet Ryan's irrelevant. That's ownership. That's responsibility. You're not confusing. If you really got that all she wanted to know is what's it like on Planet Ryan, and she did, didn't take it personally, you'd be authentic. But people don't establish that as the ground rules for candor. And you've got to have those kinds of things as the ground rules for candor. Otherwise, it's too risky to be candid.

The cost is too great. Jim, this is amazing. I'm going to just call my shot and say this is part one. And we're going to have to do a part two and maybe three later. But I really appreciate your depth of thoughts and how much you care. that every word that comes out of your mouth is helpful for other people. And I can sense that for me from the second that we connected, even before I hit record. And that is an aspirational thing for me.

That's inspiring to me to be around somebody like that. So I'm very grateful for you. I'm excited to keep talking. The book that I highly recommend people get initially, and there's much more beyond just the book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. It's a life-changing book. And I could understand why it's set up. an amazing life and career for you.

And then you, on top of that, make it even better. So thank you so much for being here, man. And I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. You know, so much fun. Thanks, man. Thank you. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club.

If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jim Dethmer. A few takeaways from my notes. What do leaders who sustain excellence do? They have the ability to be present for an extended period of time. They are here now. They live a life that creates sustainable presence. Jim's question, are you willing to be fully alive?

If so, what are you willing to risk to make that happen? What do we have to do? We have to get rid of energy downers. You can do that in three ways. Dump it, delegate it, or do it differently. Are you willing to be fully alive? What are you willing to risk to make it happen? And how about the shift from to me to me to me is at the effect of other things, things that are outside of our locus of control?

Buy me comes from the inside. I am the cause of the experience. It has nothing to do with the weather. It's about taking radical responsibility. So much stuff to this one. I loved it. Hope you did too. Once again, I say thank you so much for continuing to spread the word,

telling her friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jim Dethmer. I think it'll help you become a more present and effective leader. And because you continue to do that, you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the Learning Leader Show. You also rate it, hopefully five stars, and you write a thought forward you.

And by doing all of that, you continually give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk it soon. Can't wait.