Beyond The Paycheck - Masterclass

Key Takeaways

and welcome everyone. Uh we'll take a minute or two here to allow everyone to zoom in from wherever they are. And so take a moment in the chat if you wouldn't mind and tell us where you're arriving from. Kirk, it's so nice to see you. Gosh, it's been a while and I just saw Welcome. Welcome. Hello, Desri. How are you? Hi, Janet. I'm doing fine. How are you? I'm doing really well, thank you. Great. Great. Great. Thank you for having me here. Of course. You know, connection is one of those uh human needs that's all about breathing. And that person doesn't get to talk to me. Can you guys hear that? That's good. Just me. It's annoying. There we go. Yeah, we don't get enough of it, right? And sometimes I think that uh we think that texting I actually had somebody say to me the other day, I just can't deal with my email anymore, so if you really want to talk to me, text me. And I kind of had one of those, huh, interesting. So rather than resolve the issue of getting too many emails or not having a way of being in your life in a way that balances all the ways you can be connected, you're going to switch to something that's even more speedy. It's right on theme for today. The irony of it. Yeah. Well, I'll I'll throw out the counter on that. It's right in there with the book Smart Brevity is that people instead of leaving leaving a long email will write two quick texts. And that's that's the key to me and think they've communicated even better indeed. Welcome everybody. We're just taking a minute or two to let everyone zoom in from all the places in the world. if you want to take a minute and uh say where you're coming from. Desri Desri is here from Jamaica. Lori's here from Mississippi. Steve's from Portland. Kirk from I don't know how to say the name of your city. Yep. Ryers. Ryers. Ryars. Ryers, Ontario. And I live on beautiful Whby Island, uh Washington State. just uh when I look out my window, I can see Vancouver uh British Columbia. So, pretty close to the border. Ah, and Adawa is here. Wonderful. That's great. Welcome, Ruth. And Tamatada is here from Pakistan. That's okay. Christine, eyes on the road. That would be great. Roger. It's been a while. Good to see you. And Karen from Orlando. Tony from Utah. Awesome. Tiffany, how are you my friend? Good to see you. Yes, we are a zero geography profession, are we not? uh whether you're a coach or a leader or a leader who's a coach, uh human beings uh really require having that opportunity to be in each other's presence and uh the fact that we can do this through technology now is really quite remarkable. I was I was thinking a little bit about um so I'm I'm not afraid to tell you I've been on the planet for a while. Um, I was born in 1959 and in 1959 we still had rotary phones and I suspect there are a few of you here on this call that don't even know what that looks like. I don't think they even ex exist except maybe in an antique store. Um, and you didn't have an exchange at the beginning. You just had four numbers to dial. Yeah. Crazy, isn't it? And wow, it comes full circle. What do we do with text? It's in our contacts. We press the name and poof, we have an instant message that's been sent off. And I think I I share the story to say I think there's so much that while we are enamored with the advancement in technology, it takes a little while for us to catch up that our humanity really requires uh a different kind of pace. I I used to only think about this in terms of the leaders that I would work with and the organizations that were worried about their culture. Uh were we were we attending to people well? Were we preserving the things that had been enduring in our company for 10, 20, 30, 40, some 100 years or longer while technology was changing so radically how we do our business, how we interface with our customers and they think about it in a transactional way. Often what I would see show up on the other side. So check this for yourselves. what what shows up for you with your um with your workforce, with your teams, with your customers, whatever role you happen to be in that at the end of the day, if they weren't connected to themselves, they couldn't see what was disconnecting in the culture. And this is what we often refer to as systemic thinking or horizontal thinking. beginning to understand the the the cadence, the flow, the experience that people have moment to moment on the job is the reflection of the culture. So, if I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off uh from one meeting to the next with no breaks and realizing at 3:00 in the afternoon I haven't had anything to eat, huh? How is my action a reflection of what's actually occurring inside the culture? take it to a different context. Uh we say to organizations that in order to grow, you have to first scale. In order to scale, leaders must be willing to let go of authority. They must be available to allow someone else to step up into capacity and resourcefulness and as a result free them up to be able to look towards the future so that we know what direction we're headed in. And as the team gets stronger, they can have more responsibility and then that leader has more responsibility and lo and behold, more customers are served and the organization grows. Yes, I'm simplifying a little bit. But what was the key point there? I have to let go. I have to let go and I have to believe that somebody else can step into a fuller capacity. I won't do that if I'm defining my success by the results I produce and the results I produce are focused on my transactions, my effort, my productivity. So that's really the genesis. Some of I'm just giving you a little of the background thinking. Um I absolutely grew up that way. I'm a child of two working parents. um three older brothers. I had independence at four. And uh the mantra was um keep your head down, work hard, uh and everything you're looking for will come your way. Yeah. I was in the um seventh year of my professional life and financial services and they had to go to the board to get an approval to raise my salary to the minimum. I was so far below. I never stopped to ask for a raise. I just figured it would come. I didn't know any better. Wow. And I was burned out. So, there were uh many long nights of, "Oh my gosh, this can't be all that there is." And in many ways, I think I turned to coaching uh in 1996 because I began to recognize that if I didn't accept responsibility for discovering what balance meant to me, what wholeness meant to me, what my agency was for choosing the way I was experiencing my leadership and how I was being with my team, then I was going to continue to be in a cycle of burnout. Boy, aren't we seeing this right now? Now, we can blame it on the outside. All the chaos and craziness. It doesn't matter what continent we're we're walking on as a human being. Um there's chaos and a lot of intense complex change going on. But even with that, every single one of us has the power of choice. Are we exercising it? And this is what I found for myself. It's what I find with almost every single leader that I'm working with that they have forgotten that they have the power of choice and how they're relating to their lives personally and professionally. You know, uh the the subline that says uh you know this is the paycheck you can't deposit uh that beyond the paycheck is really where our satisfaction is. And um this was also born out of are many of you Gallup data followers. You guys look at Gallup research. Okay. So um they have been running a a longitudinal study on global flourishing and as it turns out all of this is wide open. So if you just put G global flourishing you guys can find the the research. It's quite extraordinary. um close to 200,000 participants over a 5-year period. And I'm going to tell you what the categories are. And maybe as I read these off, just make a little note to yourself, huh, is that anywhere in my reflection time? Do I think about each of these elements and the choices that I'm making? So, the first one is happiness and life satisfaction. The second is mental and physical health. The third is meaning and purpose. The fourth is character and virtue. The fifth is close social relationships. And the sixth is material and financial stability. And yes, they're in that order on purpose because it's what the data revealed. Anybody want to guess what country on the planet was in the number one position of global flourishing? You can put it in chat if you've got a good guess based on those six criteria. Ah, Finland is in the top 20. Oh, interesting. Norway, Denmark, what part of Africa, Tiffany, that's a whole continent. Sweden, you all are you all going on vacation to Scandinavia? My goodness. Ah, close with Bhutan. Nope, not Singapore. All right, I won't keep you in suspense. It's Indonesia. Now, if any of you have been studying happiness for very long, you know that there is um an inverse correlation between uh financial uh uh financial assets, financial worth and happiness that there is a point when um you get to a a certain amount and your happiness starts to drop. You can probably figure out why that there's a we get activated about responsibility. We sometimes also get attached to our material things as if they are our identity. Consumerism would be a subject we won't talk about today, but uh certainly is an element of this. We start to lose our connection to our humanity and the source of our happiness and we replace it with material things as made possible by our financial wherewithal. But the data is quite clear. Um, and the number, interestingly enough, over the last 20 years has not changed very much. So adjusted for, you know, currency fluctuations, it's around $72,000 USD. As you get over $72,000, you start to chip away at happiness associated with financial security. Fascinating. Ultimately, what they've seen in this 5-year study is there are three things that are super important. The first is inner cultivation. Now, I remember when EST came around in the late 60s and into the early 70s and lots of people on the planet thought these were crazy people looking at human potential, contemplating their neighbors to figure out what was it to be a good human being. Well, many of you probably realize that coaching came out of that. Not directly but indirectly. Coaching manifest as a a beautiful dialogue process through which people began to discover who am I? If I'm not my job title, if I'm not my result, what the heck does it mean to be an adult human being? There was a parallel process going on. um more in Western Europe. Well, certainly it trans it transited itself across the Atlantic that was all about performance. How do we optimize performance? Um mindset now is everything you hear in sports for example. We're realizing that these two rivers of how do I perform better? How do I perform all of myself? How do I bring all of myself have now come together into one river? Coaching is one expression by which we produce that outcome for people. So why that has nothing to do with your paycheck. Yes, clients come all the time saying, "I'd like to get the next promotion or I don't want to work for this company anymore. I want to work for a company that's got big purpose." Okay. What has you being at this company in the first place? Oh gosh, I don't even remember. What is that telling you about the company they work for and how they're attending to culture? Yes, it is a circular conversation. And what's the common denominator? It's us. So the the beyond the paycheck that can't be deposited is right here, right now in this room. Who are you? Who do you know yourself to be? And in what way are you consistently, deliberately, intentionally, wholeheartedly bringing all of who you are at the essence of yourself? That's not my main question for you today, but it's certainly a good one to hang on to. Maybe those six categories, they'll give you some places to reflection for reflection as we go. All right, I think everybody's arrived. Nobody um has come in the room or come for me to admit in the last 30 seconds. So, let's go ahead and get started. So, here's the truth. You've achieved every single one of you wouldn't be here. You've produced in your life and you've climbed. And still, I bet there's a little bit of a whisper. Boy, did I hear it. Is this it? I left corporate life to be an entrepreneur for that very reason. I'm I was the top of my game. I had the house. I had the salary. I had the community. I had the friends. I had the accolades. But boy, I really wasn't that happy. You're not broken. The model is. And that's what we're here to talk about today. It isn't about productivity. It really is about bringing some clarity to the experience you have of your whole life. One of the other things that Gallup talked about is that 83% of the human population in developed countries and that's a little bit of a porative. So more modern economies where we're not um having difficulty finding enough food to eat or shelter or clean water. I'm not talking about the um parts of the country where that is true. Uh sorry, the planet. I am talking about people who have employment and um a basic economic and social system. 83% of them report to Gallup that they're pretty happy with their personal lives. And that's been true since 1979. That number has not moved. 21% is the number for active engagement inside of organizations. What does that tell us? It tells us that there's something out ofd that the the the script, the mantra, the encouragement, the counselor in our high schools, in our in our colleges, the people we look to to mentor us inside of organizations. I mean even the language in the in the '9s and in the early 2000s was do you have a sponsor inside the organization as if everachieving is the most important thing it is partially and I'll come back to that in a minute I think there's an alternative and this is the work we do at invite change what it what is it to live a generative life and begin to rewrite a definition of success that is far more based in the essence of who we are individually and in the collective we choose to keep. You know, uh that great phrase, birds of a feather flock together. I used to think that was a good thing. And then I realized that if I only talked with people who thought like I thought, I was never going to grow. And it also explained a thing or two about why I was always the renegade. I I had more than oh I think nine or 10 different roles in my 14 years at Charles Schwabin company and I started to catch on that they would give me the project nobody else would do. The ones that were too risky or they were um you know handling closing down a business or dealing with a very upset part of the customer base. things that were, you know, a little tough, tight, or tender because I didn't seem to mind. I didn't seem to mind how hard it was. Now, I was still proving something to the world that I was capable and competent. I hadn't found my way home to know, wait a minute, I already am and I do have the power of choice. And when I learned that, it unlocked a different quality of presence, something far more relaxed, something that gave myself space to say, "What do I care about? What's important? What is my sense of life purpose?" And with that came a great deal of peace, which sent me out into the world as an entrepreneur. But by golly, I repeated the mistake again. And about maybe 8 years into being an entrepreneur, I realized that I was living on airplanes. I had no personal life. I had the cool condo on the beach. I had the income. I had all of the trappings of grand success. I wasn't happy. And my physical well-being started to go. So, what's the cost of chasing the wrong kind of success? Not just for you, but for your team, your colleagues, your collective, your family, and your sense of well-being. How are you even defining well-being? I'm going to talk, stop talking for 20 seconds and just let you linger with this question. What's the cost of chasing the wrong kind of success? [Music] What's the way you um experience burnout Cameron? um you don't have to disclose but to be noticing you know all of us have many ways of of recognizing um having having ourselves notice that oh my physical well-being isn't quite right. I I was telling Ahmad earlier I haven't been traveling on airplanes very much and I just had two two trips back to pretty much back to back. Oh, I got to go to the chiropractor tomorrow and I'm doing some body work on Friday cuz my body is like, what is this airplane seat all about? And the time zone change and oh wait a minute. When I was younger, I would be on planes six out of seven days a week pretty much 52 weeks a year. Yeah. The speed that I operate on, the motivation lever lowers. Good noticing, Cameron. Yeah, exactly, Sarah. Um, that kind of the internal competition. Which part of ourselves are we paying attention to that's defining what success is for us? I think there's some cracks in the model. Certainly the one that I learned that my value is divine defined by my activity. Was I high activity or low activity? If I was high activity, I got more opportunities. And more opportunities meant more people to play with, more opportunities for uh promotion. Along with it came money, exposure, relationships, and if I didn't color too far outside of the lines, I might get a promotion. Until I didn't. I got passed over twice and I was like, "Huh, wait a minute. But look at my results." Oh, but it wasn't the only thing that was important. And ultimately uh while I was busy doing all the things that the external world told me was important to do in order to get respect internally I didn't have it. I was pretty exhausted. I actually went through I took a whole year off took a sabbatical sold my interest in the company that I had built and started all over again. And this is why I'm talking about this. So ask yourself, just give me a little chat, yes or no. Have you worked for someone who had the title but not the presence to be credible? Like you knew there was a certain manipulation or that their ambition was more for self than it was for the team or for the organization. someone who kind of dressed the part, but you could never find a place to connect and really get to the quality of connection that we see when when someone vulnerably shares what their life experience has been. If you've Yes, Tiffany. Yes, I remember the story you told me. Um, you may have had the experience of uh working for someone who was congruent through and through. And bless you, I'm so glad that you had that experience. And I know that uh one of the people who was not like that uh was the president uh of Charles Schwab and Company. Chuck was the chairman. This was our president. And uh after he had his heart attack, he stopped yelling down two or three floors from the 28th floor. He stopped stomping in the hallways. He stopped throwing things across the boardroom table. And he was quiet and he had grace. And he'd walk down the stairs and he'd come to your office and he'd say, "You know, I was looking at this last report you wrote. There are three things in here that I'm really appreciating. And I also wonder if you're open for some feedback. It was a measured, calm, very conversational, like this person transformed, but it took having a heart attack and almost not being on the planet before he got there. I think one of the reasons why I'm a coach is because from my point of view, um, we want people to be here. We want them to have flourishing families and be part of community and work just isn't everything. It is something and it's important, but there's got to be a different way for us to be with it. Now, I said I would come back to this connection and growth. And this is you're getting my bias here, folks. Um, but I I just have this I had this realization the other day that to be human, the thing that happens when we're born and we immediately go into the hands of a doctor, a doula or a nurse or all three. And then the next is that the child is placed on the body of the parents. Connection starts from the very beginning. And we have a whole uh group of pathologies around attachment disorder. Terrible thing that we're naming it. And what are we talking about? The absence of connection. Babies who are not touched in the NICU don't make it. There is a wonderful story, you probably can still find it on the internet, of um twins. uh one was not doing well and so they pulled it out of the crib with its partner and uh put it on its own breathing machine still wasn't doing well and the nurse just decided you know what I don't think this is working and she put the one not doing well back in the one with that was doing well and then she turned her back for just like 10 seconds and when she turned back around the one who was doing well had put his arm around the one not doing Well, and the vital signs had already started to change. This is what I'm talking about. That there is a a as normal as breathing need for connection for our hearts to to beat in mir mirror resonance is what it's cocked talked about in neuroscience. The other impulse is to grow. Of course, that's what we do until we take our last breath on the planet. Now, take that concept, right? That's a big concept, big meta idea and make it really practical in your everyday life. We have a loneliness epidemic. CHRO's are talking about mental health and mental well-being as the most important thing for them to address this year and probably a little bit longer as people cope with will I will my job go away or you're a graduate coming out of college and you're being told there will be no entrylevel positions for those of you that want to climb the ladder. What's that? It's all about growth and achievement. So we want this growth can be that kind of stature financial impactoriented things but growth could also be oh I've begun to recognize that I am a creative look at what I do at home in my garden or look what I do when I prepare meals to entertain for my friends and family. Connection and growth are like breath. If they're not present, we do not survive. And we follow people who have presence that have figured this out. They speak more clearly and they're trustworthy as a result. And they also crave bringing calm. These are the ones who can take a very intense environment and provide everybody with the certainty necessary to move in a direction that will have things be better. Another study that came out not too long ago um from uh from Sherm and the four things leaders must must attend to for followers. Hope is higher at 68% than trust at 33. And hope is defined by clarity of direction and creating optimism. Now you can only offer this, right? You can be that voice of presence, that place of clarity that people find trustworthy, that moments of calm in the midst of chaos if you pause long enough to find it in yourself. This is what's beyond the paycheck that you can't deposit. You know, so many high performers uh end up I don't know if this is true for you, but they end up in a in a deep quiet in coaching sessions when they realize that they have absolutely been part cause or agent sometimes, eyes wide open, purposely said, "I'm going to do this thing on a dead run." only to realize it wasn't as satisfying. You know, the the dopamine culture, always chasing, never arriving. Success fatigue is real, and it isn't really burnout. It isn't that we didn't have enough energy to be successful, but we're succeeding at something that isn't aligned with the essence of who we are. So, when was the last time success actually felt satisfying to you? Take a moment and see what just naturally pops up and pay attention to whether your body is actually feeling some stress of that. When was the last time success actually felt satisfying? Here's the alternative. Success 2.0. Presence plus purpose plus people. It's not less ambition. It's aligned ambition. What did I come here for? What is my life purpose? Why did I incarnate into a body? Why am I in the in the time frame that I am, why wasn't I born later or earlier? I'm sure the youth who are looking at the state of uh human impact on the planet wondering why am I inheriting this? How come I'm here now? like the generations before them that wondered about why am I in the Civil War or why am I in World War II? I'm not sure we have answers to those questions. But what we do know is that when we are true to ourselves, to our values, to our principles, to the things that are um unique in our own expression and we're present that way. We are with the people that enliven us and we in turn reciprocally enliven them. What am I talking about experience beyond activity? It's not what we do. It's the beingness. I know that's a little jargony. That's a you know be not do or human beings not human doings. But I think what I've come to recognize in working in large organizations is that uh the people who ultimately sustain for a long time in an organization are the ones who are remembering their own humanity and then they sprinkle that everywhere they go. There's no need to control. There is a desire and a commitment to bring out more in other people to have more to play with. This is what I mean by congruence beyond compliance. You know, all of the research on why somebody goes to an organization says that people sign on because there's something in the purpose of the organization and in the values espoused that aligns with who they know themselves to be. And they go through the interview process and they check to see are the people that I interview with in any way matching to what I read on the website or in the news or on glass door. And then they say yes. They get an offer and they say yes and they come aboard and now the real rubber meets the road. Is the boss that I'm with are the colleagues on my team behaving in the same way that you know the best foot forward during interview shows? My guess is not so much these days because what used to be an average tenure at an organization of 5 to seven years is 16 to 30 months before we move to the next job. So there's much more here about um legacy as I was introduced to it early in my professional life was what will you leave behind? I'd invite you to think about this as a living legacy. Uh you know the the adage of leave something better in a better state than you found it. um that's a living legacy, an acting legacy that's beyond the resume, which is really more about the results or the outcomes. So before I go here about constructing your success to 2.0, I want to just pause and open the space. You can open your uh microphones if you want. You could um use chat, doesn't matter to me. What are you mulling? What are you mulling over with the questions that I invited you to ponder? Oh, come on, Ruth. You can come off mute. Well, I feel like I'm in um um a different situation because I was very burnt out and I recently retired and now I'm studying to become a coach actually. and I'm here because you were a guest lecturer um at my class and I wanted to hear more from you. So, but I'm thinking about the organization that I just left and uh how many people at the level I was at, which was senior management, are um in this state of misalignment with values and what it means for the larger organization and all of the people underneath them. So that's that's what I'm mulling over is the impact of actually just staying in that state on the long term. The impact on me was health and all kinds of other stuff, but but the impact on the bigger picture and the even the public that's being served by that place is huge. Yeah. So you're you're seeing the ripple effect. It can feel like, well, it must just be me. I must not fit here anymore. It must not must not be the thing that floats my boat is. We think it's just us and it's not. We're living inside of a system that's tolerating a way of operating that actually um backfires. It stops producing the customer experience that allows for um prosperity and growth to occur and we don't see it often until it's too late. Um, so you see, you know, organizations that have fraud or they start to have a serious attrition problem that they can't get their finger on the pulse about it. Somewhere along the way, we made activity and effort more important than relationship. Like the transaction and relational aspects of work are way out of balance. It's not an eitheror. We need both of them. And it's it takes the out of balance state before we recognize it. I think in a lot of ways this is why coaching came to be that we we many of us ended up in a coaching capacity because we recognized wait a minute these organizations are too toxic and nobody's seeing it. We're not pausing to notice and name what's actually driving the change in the experience. Hm. What if I could help people recognize the experience they're having? And pause long enough to simply ask the question, is this what I want? It always cracks me up. You know, we every now and then there's something out on social media that says, "What's your favorite coaching question?" And everybody says, "What do you want?" But here's the trap. Nobody spends any time thinking about it because they think they don't have time to think. Uh boy, isn't that a circular argument? Right? So unless we accept that responsibility to pause and pull back for perspective and ask ourselves, what is my definition of success? And I was just with a a group of folks from um in the association world. They serve uh veterinary service boards, science boards, sorry. Anyway, we were talking about smart goals and they could reply, "What do all of those letters stand for? Specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and time bound." And I said, "And how's it going for you? How are you doing with delivering on your smart goals?" And they just all started laughing. And I said, "What's the missing element?" And it took him a little while. As you notice, I'm pretty good with staying silent. And uh somebody finally said, you know, we don't know what it looks like. We don't know what the evidence is. And I said, "How do you know whether you do or don't have it?" Well, somebody else tells us. It's a measure out there. And I said, "So, what's the connection between not knowing whether you are doing something that feels successful and your sense of satisfaction at work?" Oh, well, that opened up a whole other Pandora's box. That's part of why I wanted to take some time to invite all of you to reflect on this first personally. What is your definition of success? What is the way in which you are navigating your choices every day? Am I selecting, prioritizing, investing my life force in things that I know are going to have a positive riffle effect that continues to increase my experience of whatever it is that I use to define success. Anybody else want to add something in here? Yes, Tiffany, it can happen that way. It can go on for so long that you find yourself in an environment that feels so toxic that um you give up. It feels hopeless. And yet, you only know hopeless if you know hope. So, at some point, we pull back to say, "What is one thing I could do differently today that will keep me connected to my sense of hope?" And you've been doing this, so you know what I'm talking about here. You know that the minute you get off a you get out of a team's meeting or a Zoom meeting or maybe a physical meeting and you're thinking to yourself, how could people be so unkind to each other? In that moment, you can say to yourself, who do I want to be more kind with from that meeting? Who could I call on the phone right now and say, I really appreciate that you were there today? Why do we think gratitude practices are so popular? We're all trying to find this rebalancing effect. And it's the noticing that if I know the negative, I only know it in the contrast of what it could be. And in that moment, you're activating aspiration, probably also imagination, and you're getting a little bit of serotonin instead of dopamine, which becomes addictive. And I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll come back to that in just a second. Oh, there we go. Okay. So, here's what I think the shift is. If you're going to construct success 2.0, instead of titles and trophies as the focus of attention, cultivate the experiences that matter. And when I think about experience, it's the emotional feeling, the physical sensation, the the the resonance that um getting the goosebump feeling. am having my mind's eye begin to imagine something that doesn't yet exist but could because my excitement my my whole being is activated by what we're discussing from measuring output to honoring impact. Woo! This is a big discussion right now with lots of organizations that productivity isn't king if the quality of the experience of your workforce does not allow them to produce that same quality when they're talking to their customers. Burnt out customer service people are the worst. Yes. Oh my gosh. I've come to um figure out how to cajul and connect personally with a customer service person before I tell them my story of woe. And it does help, but I can tell it's temporary. So leaders who know how to honor impact help people find their way to what to prioritize based on the purpose of the organization. So rather than performing for approval, we're leading from personal congruence. I came here because there was alignment. Let me be part of creating a workplace climate that matches what we say we stand for. Doing more faster. Choosing what's meaningful on purpose. Um you know, human beings don't have a destination. Human society doesn't have a destination. What we want is conscious, deliberate, intentional, wholehearted living. That means that we've taken some time to think about that from leaving a legacy someday to generating legacy in every interaction. So that's a little bit of a rubric. Achievement without getting alignment with your interior self is erosion. And fulfillment really isn't optional. It is the fuel for longevity. Read any of the stories out there of the people who are in their 90s and now over their hundreds, and they're going to talk about the joy in their life of the people, the relationships, the way in which they were able to serve in whatever way was true for them. Fulfillment is the fuel for longevity. So, as you look at this next piece that I'm going to walk through, I'd like you to notice what beliefs surface for you that you might challenge a little bit. See what is true contribution. This is what releases oxytocin and creates lasting motivation instead of the dopamine addiction which often will result in feeling frazzled and scattered and shortfused and if it's led to perpetuate it can create mental illness. One of the CHRO's saying yeah mental well-being is our number one problem for the next uh at least 12 if not 24 months. accumulation only stimulates momentary highs. This is the I'm going to go buy myself a new suit jacket or um I'm going to go buy a new car or you know fill in the blank. Um in the moment it might be satisfying and then we have to pay the credit card off. Alignment and in this case it's practices. It's not a thing you do once. It's a way of behaving, conducting, relating, focusing, perceiving, evaluating. These are practices that help us access sustaining energy because we're asking ourselves, is this is this choice in front of me, honoring of who I am at the core of myself or not? And ultimately, Soma knows. I just like the way it rhymes. I'm talking about the body. That's what soma is. And it always knows when your work matters. And of course the contrary when it doesn't. So are you listening? Do you listen to your body when it says it's tired or hungry or the headache's coming on because you haven't had enough water to drink today? Yes, I'm talking about really simple things. But guess what? when you're in the middle of a we have to make a decision for this press release to go out in the next 15 minutes to um help our consumers know why this recall is happening and what we've done about it and you're not well hydrated rested and aware going to make mistakes sometimes really costly ones. So, where are you right now in your careers, in your professional lives? What's what's something you have named as a challenge you're facing that isn't solved by knowledge? Sure, large language models and all of the agent tools that are going to be made available to us over the next three, five, seven, 10 years. Phenomenal transformation about to happen. But it's all a history. What we have is ingenuity. As humans, we have the power of imagination. We can have deductive imagination through large language models, but intuitive imagination is the human domain. And what's needed is our authentic whole presence. So, everybody got a challenge written down? If success weren't about you and instead about the impact you generate, what would you change? What would you change in your daily practices if it was about the impact you generate? And just give you a moment to write a couple things down. All right, I'm going to give you an opportunity now to do uh a little bit of a breakout and I'm going to give you something in chat to play with. This is called the hang on a second generative success framework. All right, let me make sure everybody can download that, access it, and download it. It's in chat. It's a PDF, so it should be easy. Just give me a thumbs up so I can see that you've got it. A Lori. Wonderful. All right. Thumbs up. Am I seeing thumbs up? Yes. Yes. Looks like everybody's good. All right, let me go. A look at that. I don't know how to do that. Ruth, you're gonna have to show me. I don't I don't know what happened. Actually, it it was it was raining up thumbs. That was very cool. All right, I'm going to put you into triads so you can support each other to support to explore three questions. You'll have the framework to take away and work through on your own. the the five elements are are included in it. But I want to give you an easier way to drop into it. Um first, what story about success did you inherit? That's the first question to talk about. I told you mine. I inherited. Keep your head down, work hard, and everything will work out. Not so much. Where is that story limiting your joy or impact? I clearly was not getting seen. Oh my gosh. And then the third question, if you could redefine success now, what would it include? All right. So, you'll have 30 minutes together and somebody take responsibility to uh manage time. So each person gets um uh their full 10 minutes. So let's see. Oh, good. That's gonna work out just fine. And let me just do this here. Okay, I think looks like we're in good shape. Okay, you should get a join button now. And I'll put these three questions into the broadcast for you so you have them there in case she doesn't get them written down. Okay, have fun. Like some soup. I thought you were disconnected. Are you going to jump into room Janet as well? Oh, you're muted. If you want to go to a room, I'm fine here. I mean, if you want to go, I can stay here if anyone jumps in. Anyone else invite them? All right. I need to uh just make me co-host before you go. Yeah. We'll do. Okay. What story about success did you inherit? Hi Janet. Hi. Sorry I popped back in. Um I think the other person I'm in the room with is an is not a real person. It might be their their AI taking notes for them. Yeah. All right. Let me Hang on a second here. All right, Hannah, let's see where we can put you. And Derek Desert, the same thing happened to you, huh? We should put you two together. Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps. Yeah. All right. Why isn't That's interesting. It's not giving me a way to do this. Why don't you guys play here? Okay. Does that work? Yeah. Ham and I will go off screen so as you guys have your privacy. Have fun. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I got you. I got you. I And I think this is what the literature is. We're talking a little bit about Maslo's hierarchy of needs. Uh we were just finishing up in our room. So, welcome back everybody. But it's something worth um just giving some airspace to in your reflection that if we start from the premise of belonging oh by the way coaching is based on the premise that we are already whole. Ah we have all the resourceful capable creative aspects as a fully formed human from the day we're born and we spend our lifetime accessing it and learning to express it. uh we belong we belong to the human race. We belong to planet earth and um we're always discovering all day long every single day the way in which that is aligned and congruent with the essence of who we are. And it is from that place that we make choices. So um this notion that you have to have your physical and financial security taken care of um and then you take care of your skill acquisition and then you take care of and then you take care of and then you take care of and then you can actualize. H I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It it's been my experience that um for myself personally when I stopped chasing I was a lot happier and at first I wasn't making any money but you know it wasn't but about five months in of being an entrepreneur I was billing 18 days a month and I was too busy like how did this happen because I was congruent right so I just think that there are some things that we um all the other really good one here is that you know thoughts create emotions create motion in the body. That's not right. The body always knows first. And when I started to listen to the body, I could feel tension. I could feel emotional upset. I could feel harmony. I could feel joy and laughter coming. I could learn to to witness it in other people. And that brought me emotion. And then it had words. it was completely opposite. So, I just invite you to where you have assumptions, um maybe you've got some habits and preferences, what we might call a bias operating, um to give yourself space in your reflection time to say, "What if it's the opposite?" Or what if it's just turned 15 degrees? Then what would I see? Mhm. The more we get comfortable, all of us, and being able to adjust what we believe and realize, oh, beliefs are constructions, which means I can deconstruct the belief and ask myself what most honors the essence of who I am and then reconstruct. Honor the belief, by the way. So, don't don't um don't get mad at the belief. Just don't go to the place of, "Oh my god, how did I believe that all these years?" Yeah. Then belief comes in for a good reason. At a moment in time, it is what we want in order to feel a sense of belonging, well-being, um, uh, safety, which means lots of different things to people. Yeah. And we outgrow them. We outgrow those beliefs. we we grow into more of our wholeness and we realize, you know what, I don't need that protection that that belief is giving me. It's actually holding me back. Now, those of you that are new in coaching, who are thinking about launching an entrepreneurial career and you're you're wondering, will I ever replace my salary that I was making when I worked for somebody else? Well, it depends on how you're defining salary. So, you know, Hannah, you were describing having only two and a half days in your week when you felt like you could be all of yourself. Oh my gosh, look what you're going to the wealth you're going to get back by transforming how you're spending your time. This is what we're talking about. Beyond the paycheck is an opportunity to construct success on your terms. It isn't all about the outer trappings. And in fact, um, I I cycled through this several times before I finally hung up my addiction to productivity and effort in favor of being in my bliss, which I get to do as a coach and as an educator and as a consultant. I'm I don't have a job. And as a result, I have I have tremendous well-being at 66. I feel like I live 30. So, think about it. Just think about the assumptions we all make. Yeah. How about How about the rest of you? I had the benefit of being able to listen in for Desri and Hannah's work together. Anybody else want to share anything that popped for you in the time you got to spend in Break Up? You know, for coaches who who uh are talking all the time, you get awful quiet when you're together. I think we just really my group I was so excited. I had Hideo and Tony in in with me and their presence was just so powerful and I think we all had very similar, you know, sort of awarenesses and what what we've done to bring us to a different place in that presence and in that joy. And um it's it's not only nice to it's it's like I think about this a lot because we're in this this sort of completely different space with each other and it you know people can say it's co but you know we started doing virtual conversations with people long before that right 2007 our entire programs were all our programs were live exactly yeah so but whatever it is it is it is I am aware a lot of the time about how I am with my family or I'm with my clients or team members, but I'm not I haven't seen friends in forever. I haven't, you know, had this experience in forever. I haven't, you know, gone to h to work in a coffee shop like I used to sometimes just to get out of my office. And and so I think we all talked about those things, those little things that bring us, you know, to a to a level of more centeredness or to more um presence with ourselves and and what's working and what we're grateful for. So that was really nice that you know that we all had that awareness. Yeah. Good, good, good, good. How do we value what we give our time and attention to? When we place value or priority, for example, on serving someone else to the detriment of getting enough sleep, just going back to the physical or to the detriment of time with our family, how many times have we listened to a client who had regret because they hadn't been close to their family and somebody dies and they feel the guilt of not having been with that person. Um, Cats in the Cradle is a wonderful song that's all about this, you know, the the dad who who was too busy and um before he blinked, his son grew up and then the pattern repeated itself. So, there's there's something in us in our DNA as human beings that longs for um a a balance an an integration between the transactional and the relational. And when we apply that then in the organizational setting, what do we do? We leave our families. We go to college and we create friends, which is repeat repeating family creation. And we go to work and we do the same thing. We pick a team to be with and they're our family. And then we wonder, how did we get so estranged from our from our nuclear family? Was that really by design or was it the choices that I made? Not good, not bad, just is. It is what we choose. And if we can slow down enough to say, if I chose more deliberately, what would I create? And this is the key. It isn't just, oh, I I'm going to do that because that looks better to me. Grass is greener on the other side. Switching jobs. Well, you're kind of going to that new job, which means everything you experienced on the old job you didn't like, you're taking with you. Hm. Maybe I ought to stop and think about how did I show up not liking it? Like what happened? Was it was it me or was it the system or was it a little bit of both? And when did I first notice that something had shifted for me? Did I give it my attention? Did I give it my care to say, you know what, I could choose something different here. I remember being with a team that was absolutely at each other's throat. It was a very high stakes project. And one day I just brought in a whole bunch of couch balls. Do you guys know what those are? They're um they're they're rubbery and they're fun to throw. And everybody was giggling like within 15 minutes. And I said, "Okay, if you can shift in 15 minutes because of a silly rubber ball, what has you attached to the position you're standing in?" Because you're all right. Everybody's got a piece of this picture that's right. Does it really need to have a person be right? There are always many, many right answers. What are you actually fighting about? And at the end of the conversation, it was, "We know this is a big deal." And we're all feeling really uncomfortable about whether we've really come to the best solution possible. And what is the question you want to ask? And of whom to find that out? Well, it's you. I said, "Is it? What assumption are you making about answers that I have? You're asking whether or not this life and death decision um is supported better by choice A or choice B, right? Uhhuh. Who gets to decide whether it's choice A or choice B? And as the conversation went on, there's a whole sponsor committee that this group was working on behalf of. And I said, "When's the last time you guys did a report out?" It had been 60 days. I said, "No wonder you're feeling uncertain. H how about you schedule that meeting and let's go find out what anybody thinks about what you're working on. So my point here is that we can begin to feel um victimy. We can begin to feel the weight of responsibility. We can begin to feel over identified with what it is we're working on and miss that we put ourselves there that we stepped out of connection and we didn't notice when we first started feeling uncomfortable when it was not such a burden to talk about you know what I think we skipped a step or there's some data missing or we could have interpreted this differently and have that be the normal course of things. All of it ties back to how we're defining success. So, I want to show one page in the um uh guide that I gave you just to show you how you might play with this on your own or your your new friend that you just made. Um all right. Is everybody able to see that? Well, there you go. So, these are the five elements of success 2.0. Presence, congruence, impact, collaboration, and legacy. you just did the collaboration together, which is why I didn't talk about it. That was your breakout room. Um, but this is just a simple form. Uh, what I know is it takes 30 days to build a new habit. And what I'm inviting you to to use this form for, and it's all fillable. Um, one or two activities, practices. Remember, alignment practices that sustain energy. Don't put things on here and carry them as I have to do it. That will not work. You will abandon ship. They must they must be things that you find um pleasurable, uplifting. How would you know? In your body, in your uh your sense of am I excited? Do I lean in like a magnet pulling me forward or am I leaning back and my voice is very monotone? So take for exist existence um impact one of the things that would be in the um impact category for me would be um restoration am I so personally um I'm I'm seeking to feel a sense of restoration every day and so the commitment to action I have to be outside at least an hour at least an hour every day hearing the birds being on the and having an opportunity to to not be sitting at my Zoom screen for God's sakes. Um, another is uh going into the garden and weeding. I know that sounds weird, but I love weeding. It makes things neat and tidy, and I get great joy when I'm doing that. So, for me to have an impact on my restoration, um, those are two practices. And then at the end of the week, take a moment and say, "What did I notice? what did I notice about my experience? Um, so that's the purpose of this is to give you a way to um get clear in the questions that you answered and there's a few more in the document itself that you can play with and give yourself some simple practices to begin to strengthen your habit in those five areas. And on the end of a week, or maybe you do it for a few weeks, print it off and use several pages, begin to see how is this shaping what success 2.0 is for me. That's what we're inviting you for. All right. Any questions about that? And any other comments from your breakouts before we move on? Just have a couple. I'd like to say that I got um the you know incredible honor of meeting Jovidita and finding out that we have had very analogous paths kind of like what you said Lori you got into the group and you could see all of these things and and to see um you know both of us have just this incredible heart for uh elevating women and uh working with women executives and helping them uh and it started really young and um noticing the inequities and looking for opportunities. Um so one of the things we're talking about now that we're about I'm approaching my eighth decade on the planet. She's in her eighth decade is that what's our new dream? What's our new dream? And always having the practice of living from a dream and then creating that reality. What's the new dream? and and being willing to take the time to use some of these questions to really um prompt what's next. So, it's really valuable and an honor to meet you, Jovita. It's good. So, good to see you here, Jovita. It's been a long time. Yes, it has. And I'm glad to be here and and meeting Sarah has been actually a little transformational. Has made me do a lot of thinking. and Janet, it's been a long time and I'm so glad that you're still here doing your thing. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um, so as you heard me say, one of the things that our work at invite change is all about, what is that saying? Yes, please do. Um, is is the generative life and there is a lot to that. Uh Jovita, this will look familiar somewhat familiar to you. when I was first introduced to this idea of uh learning to discover one's essence and negotiating life um intentional uh intentional choices and actions meaning I'm in charge of imagining the experience I want to be having emotionally and physically maybe even mentally and spiritually as if it's already occurring is like tuning my instrument to see the opportunities in front of me and as I worked with this um Fran Fischer's original design back in when ICF accreditation was happening in 9798 and 99 um she had a program called living your vision and it was about clarity action and results and over time we've we've learned more and developed more and so what you're seeing in front of you is the vehicle for generative change that if you are having results you're taking action and having results you don't like stop, pause and reflect. And the first step is alignment, which is what we were doing today is talking about what are the alignment practices. In other words, there's always some basis, some policy or principle or value, something that is strongly influencing the reason you chose a certain set of actions that produced a result that didn't that didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Rather than making the action wrong, the key here is to notice, oh, maybe the premise I had was not taking into account everything that was actually occurring. So that next step in shifting your mindset is getting clear about the beliefs, which is what we were doing at the beginning of our time together. what belief was having me adopt that principle, that policy, that um value, that premise and where might that belief not actually match what's going on. So now we're in reflection on awareness. What was I aware of and I discounted or disregarded or dismissed completely that now that I see it, oh, I think I've outlived that belief. I want a new belief that would have me honor a different value that seems to be far more valuable and influences a new set of actions to produce a different result. I don't know when I do this process whether it's going to happen or not, but it surely won't happen if I'm not being intentional about what is most honoring of who I am. Shifting one's mindset is one of the most empowering human capabilities we possess and it is the key to having something be sustainable in terms of change. So I often get asked the question, you know, what's the what's the difference? Um, and traditional coaching really initiated for performance. How do we how do we get better? How do we achieve our goals? And it's often very transactionally focused. What we're doing in generative work is much more about the quality of presence the experience I'm having the experience I am producing and it's sovereign oriented meaning self-ruling giving we we say in the competencies giving clients the power of choice well that's true for us as coaches too how am I accepting responsibility that I have an inner authority to decide how am I going to relate to my life and in that instant when we ask the question, we have begun a transformative process. So, you've just heard three stories um of aha moments that happened and let's open the floor a little bit. What shifts when you lead with this new success narrative? Desert, I'm I'm I'm remembering what you were talking about as a as an HR professional. What what do you think happens in the organization when you lead with this new success narrative? Are you still here, Desri? Ah, did he go? He's here, but he may have popped in. I know he was in a meeting. He popped in and out. Oh, he might have popped out of a meeting. Okay, that's all right. Anybody else want to comment on that? What would happen? What do you think would happen by living from that new success narrative? I think you feel more at home in yourself. You know, we talk about people who are comfortable in their skin and um just being aware of what makes you feel comfortable and the choices that you make to support you with that is a big part of it. Um, a lot of times people tend to give up their choice or boundary which creates an even more extreme situation at the workplace because sometimes it's like you know I always ask if I may if I suggest something to someone even in training it could be business writing or public speaking or whatever and they would say no we can't say that we'll get fired and I'm like you're not going to get fired for something as simple as that, especially if you're a performer. But there's this ingrained fear of losing the paycheck. Yeah. And people give up their power before they're even asked to give up their power. Yes. Exactly. And that is a great example of the broken success 1.0. So the accumulation that we do that's tied to that financial reward for the exchange of our capability and the organization becomes a trap and we don't know how to get out of it and we don't realize that until we get out of it we don't understand how exhausted we are and so the actions we can take the practices for restoration don't happen. Yeah. At the end of the day we are responsible. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So, this is how we think about what gets cultivated. Whoops. Sorry, my mouse is being crazy. This is what we think gets cultivated when we're living in a more generative way. That that we begin to see what others miss. Our power of observation, when we're not so distracted by chasing something out in front of us, that we're available in the moment. If you're a leader, you're going to turn a team's conflict into deeper trust because you will not let it go by. You'll not ignore the fact that there's a little bit of friction going on. You'll lean into it to say, "What wants to happen here? What's important for us to discuss and clear the air about?" You learn to listen to emotion and energy that helps us when things are uncertain. Okay, what's creating the uncertainty? What could we imagine that would be more certain? How do we all begin that imagination process? We start to produce results from a centered clarity so that we're examining where are all of the resources that are available to facilitate outcomes and evolution. Nothing ever stays the same, never has, never will. It's the nature of a living organism. Not just humans, but everything on the planet in this ecosystem we call Earth. And ultimately, I think what part of why coaching has taken off over this 30 years is it really is about evoking ownership, kind of returning home to being the captain of our fate and the Oh gosh, come on. Help me. U Carol, master of our destiny. Master of our destiny. Thank you, Sarah. Exactly. um Nelson Mandela's um fabulous lines from evictus and this is where we begin to create spaces for identity level change where people realize that from belonging many more things are possible. we see more options available to us and leaders who operate in a generative way are building cultures of trust that there are going to be moments when we are on that trajectory towards burnout and it's up to us to notice it and say hang on a second take a breath pause let's pull back for perspective what else is happening here this is what it means to be generative and um that's our body of work Um, many of you here are quite familiar with this, but we're um we've brought a brand new product to market uh that I just got finished working with a a team of uh 12 with uh conversations made better. how to have every conversation every day, always be available to for generativity and uh then being able to help people to make the transition from the well this is the way it's always been done around here to realizing well maybe not the way it's always been done around here because the longer you hold on to that historical way the less available you are for the change that's happening right in front of you. How do you create adaptability? How do you create resilience? It is about loosening our grip on anything that we think is static because it just isn't. That's not the way of the world. And of course, um, coaching certification, our certified generative coach and generative team coaching and our level three program for those who are on their way toward the MCC development and of course our wonderful main course, authentic self-presence. And then I said to the team, let's do something special for this um master class. I just feel like I don't know if this is true for the rest of you, but it's certainly been my experience that the level of intensity that uh clients are showing up for coaching sessions, whether it's teams or individuals, it doesn't really matter, although teams often amplify it. the level of emotional intensity and the um feeling the need to uh either escape it or figure out a way to get rid of it uh is overwhelming people and we name it as burnout but I actually think it's a harbinger of wanting something else and I think the something else people want is to come back home to themselves to come back home to the core of who they are and that particular program for us is authentic self-presence. So, we've added it to the rotation. Uh we're going to have a a program that we'll do starting at the end of August. And um I've cut the uh tuition. Uh we're going to the full price on this program is$,750, but um some percentage of that I'm going to give to the ICF Foundation. Um their work. I'm I'm just so proud of the ICF coaching community. We now do proono coaching on all continents. Well, maybe not penguins, sorry, six continents and uh for 16 of the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals. There are so many extraordinary projects happening. And so, um, we're going to give a gift to the first 20, um, that's all we can take in this program, uh, for the offer that's happening in August, um, at a lower price point, but take some of that difference and give it to the foundation, uh, in celebration of our 30th anniversary. So, that's what we have for you. And I I left a little one more closing question for you. Couldn't help myself. You know, that's what happens when we're coaches. What's one belief about success you're willing to leave behind because you came here today? Write it down. Circle it. Highlight it. Keep it close. Make it possible for you to put the alignment practices in place to move into success 2.0, whatever that is for you. And of course, keep in touch with us. Um, and I hope we'll see you next month. Uh, as many of you know, we're running this masterclass series for free all year long. And, uh, in July, we'll be looking at the myth of belonging. Hannah, why great cultures embrace difference, not sameness. So, lots of lots of cool stuff for us to play with next month. And that's on July 23rd. And this is a hyperlink. You'll all be getting the uh because you registered, you'll all be receiving the powerpoints and uh the information for how to join us next time. Yeah. Take a nice deep breath. Right. You let yourselves hit pause on your busy lives and you spend a couple of hours investing in you. I'm grateful. Thank you for your time and your attention and acknowledge yourself. It takes courage to challenge our habit, preference, assumption and bias space. And yet the reward is so good when we can live out of the core essence, the heart of who we are. And I wish for all of you that you find some more moments of bliss and fewer moments of feeling the intensity that the outer world provides. Um uh Hideo's practice of uh well I'll let you talk about it but you have some wonderful practices for restoring that sense of calm. Uh calm in the midst of chaos. Uh it is something each of us has the capacity to do. We simply must choose it. All right. Are there any questions, follow-up questions? Anything else that wants to be said? The floor is open. Just hanging with each other, huh? I'd like to hear what you were talking about from Hideo. Sorry. Thank you very much. I know. Sorry. That was a terrible set up. I apologize. I just practiced 15 minutes uh every morning to Yeah, to find myself or just be being present being present. So, uh yeah, that's a very powerful. Yes. For the last 10 years. Yeah, I've been told that which is good. But uh yeah, I didn't do but uh once you start practicing Oh, that's very uh kind of meaningful to me. Yeah. Yeah, it works. Thank you. We have everything necessary to completely alter our neuro system completely through the breath, through visualization, through practices like zazen, practices like taichi, whatever, whatever is your way of quieting and remembering that you're part of an indivisible whole in this ecosystem called planet earth. I find that very relieving actually after I watch the news and think to myself, why are humans not so very nice to each other? Okay, hold on. What I can do is walk in the world in a place of um grounded center and I know that's contagious to others. Yeah. All right, everybody. Please go safely and well. It was good to be with you today. See you in a month, if not sooner. Thank you. Thank you very much.