Ep 573 - Ron Carucci

(upbeat music) - Welcome to another episode of My Wake Up Call. This is a podcast where I find out a little bit, or maybe more than a little bit about my guests, and I wanna share them with you our listeners, because just as they have enriched my life in the world situation, I am certain they will enrich yours. And I'm having Ron Karuchi back. I told him it was 300 episodes ago, since he was last on, and he's always up to something. He's always on the cutting edge of something that the world needs. Let me tell you a little bit about him, and then he and I are gonna get caught up, and I'm gonna get inspired, and so will you, if you're listening in. He's the co-founder and managing partner of Navalent, and he works with CEOs, executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders in industry. He's got a 30-year track record helping executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization, leadership. He covers everything, startups to the Fortune 10. He's a contributor, Harvard Business Review. He's the author of multiple books. He's the most recent one, which you need to pick up, and also why I wanted to call him back, is called To Be Honest. Lead with the power of truth, justice, and purpose. He's a three-time TEDx speaker, and one of which, which was on the topic of power, has been seen 1.3 million times. He's featured everywhere. HBR, it's just one of them, but CEO, magazine, business insider, MSNBC, and he joins us now from New York, and he put a smile in my face, and smiles on my face are good things for me to have. So Ron, good to see you again. - Mark, it's such a pleasure to be back with you. Thanks so much for having me. Always a delight to be with you. - Well, and it's more than mutual. So I wanted to have you back because it's been a time, it's been a while, and your last book, and the power of honesty, when wherever you look, it's missing. And so, I wanted you to bring us up to date about how is that mission going, and kind of how your thinking has evolved since the book came out, and what you're up to. - Well then, thank you for asking. It's been quite a mission, that's a great word for it. I've been delighted with how the book is done, humbled and awed by readers, and their comments, and how they're letting the material, it's not a book to, this is a book that will read you more than you reading it. - A little bit more about that. - And I think when readers will let that happen, you can't help but let it get under your skin. You know, you'll recall, it's a book of heroes. It's not a book of, I didn't want to write about the villains. I think we're tired of those, and to your point, there's ubiquitous, but this is a book of the people I want as my boss. These are the book of the companies I love to work for. And I think what's been fascinating to watch people do as they wrestle with the material, as they wrestle with the findings of the research, who's a 15 year longitudinal study of interviews with more than 3200 people, and our goal was to predict. Could we, could we predict the conditions under which people would tell the truth and behave fairly and serve a greater good and under which they might lie, cheat, and be selfish? And it's always fascinating to watch leaders squirm. When they hear the material and they start really recognizing their own organization in the data, in some form or other. But what's been most fascinating, and I didn't anticipate this, is when I talk about self-deceit, when I ask people how they allow to themselves. And one of the ways I get after that, I'm sure you've seen this in your clinic for decades, I ask people to go back over their calendars for the, this is part of the first finding of being who you say you are. Over the last two weeks, and pick out moments where they would say they probably were not true to the things they say they value, maybe they embellished data to a new boss, or maybe they, withheld feedback from somebody or they were snide to the clerk at the store, or maybe they had a deadline so they brushed their kids off, whatever it was. But what I tell them is, what you'll see if you're honest about those moments, is that they're not random. That we, you'll see a thread of reasons behind why you make those choices. And you'll see a pattern about the conditions that bring you to your dishonesty. And we can't be true to ourself, until we're true about ourself. And we can't be more honest, we'll honest about the things that bring us to our dishonesty. And leaders are often struck to discover, I said at behaviors that they believe is engineering a certain response in other people, or I said at behaviors they believe makes them feel safer, or makes them be seen in a certain light, and to realize that that's actually not what's happening, that the story they've told themselves about those choices is self soothing in the moment, but actually not serving any good at all, in fact probably harming them. And I've been stunned at how eager people are to discover that. They're not resistant at all. I, I, Shay Bersel, are a common friend, and I have been doing the workshop for the last several years called "Designing the Honest Life You Love." And we've been shocked, Mark, and I bet you wouldn't be, but when we ask people to talk about the things, this is the lies they told themselves for years that they've never interrogated. How desperately eager they are to talk about that stuff. And the number of times we hear, I've never told anybody that. The trauma, the anguish, the scars, the self limiting beliefs, the things that they've compiled and perfected over decades, suddenly now under a spotlight, and maybe interrogated for their helplessness, and maybe the chance to re-script those narratives in ways they hadn't thought of. It's just such a liberating thing to watch. So that, for me, as I do your question about how is my thinking evolved? That feels like a beautiful well of undug up wisdom to continue to want to go after. - Can you relate that to the feeling finally the relief from shame? - It's, I think, I think shame is certainly one of the biggest purveyors of those narratives, right? Shame, sometimes even guilt. Certainly some type of self-contempt. That's often introduced by some type of trauma or abuse or reinforced messaging in an environment that wasn't healthy. And suddenly, when people recognize that the shame that has shackled them to a belief system that, which they then went around their whole life and found environments to reinforce, suddenly stops working. It suddenly is no longer serving a need. It's not, thank goodness, not fit for purpose anymore. And they're finally willing to question maybe all I see isn't all the rest to see. And maybe the version of myself that I have long held to isn't accurate. And suddenly, they're willing to relinquish that shame and relinquish all of the unhelpful beliefs that came with it. And the origin stories that are attached to them, right, there's always an origin story. Some, none of that's random. It's all learned behavior. Somebody had to teach you that. And then you went and found other teachers to reinforce it. And suddenly, and the painful part, let me show you see this a lot with your clients, Mark. When suddenly you have to unravel all of history, right? It's not about just this moment of discovery. It's now, I have to reorganize 40 years of my life. And that can be incredibly disruptive. But for those with the courage, or really security, to say, but maybe it's worth it. Maybe there's a different way to frame those stories and those chapters other than what I learned. And what would that do in the service of the next chapters? And I think people, when they have a safe place with loving environments to accompany them on that, it's such a beautiful thing to watch. - So one of the things I ask authors is to let people's appetite to find out more is, and you've already shared some of them, but share more that ideas or notions or nuggets that meet the criteria that when my listeners hear about that, they say, I never would have thought of it that way. Ever, ever, that's relevant to me. I think it would actually work. And I think I could do that. - I love those questions, Mark. There were four findings in the research, four conditions. The one that surprised us the most, and I think often will cause a lot of sweat marks on to people's shirts when we talk about it. was the conditions at organizational intersections, what we call the seams of the organization or cross-functional relationships. The classic ones, sales and marketing and supply chain operations, all the places where rivalry happens. And what we discovered there is that when those seams are stitched, when we other, another function, when we other a teammate, and when we other a partner, we fragment the organization. When that happens, you are six times more likely to have people lie and be deceitful. Because when you fragment the organization, you now fragment the truth. And when we have dueling truths, a single or such truth is no longer the goal. It's a very simple goal now. I am right and you're wrong. And that's what I'm going to prove. And so you fracture the common story you share, and you fracture performance. And so, but in the organizations we studied, where we found that those intersections came together in a holistic way, with the natural tensions and conflict you'd find there can be held well, when there are mechanisms to clarify who contributes to what. And when those people and those seam partnerships understood that one plus one equals three, in other words, we create value together that none of us could do on our own. Now you're six times more likely to have everybody be honest and tell the truth and serve a greater good because now we're part of a shared story. And for every one of the findings, we went out, I wanted to find stories and examples that were far from business because I wanted the world, people to see, there's a bigger world out there. And one of my favorites, maybe my favorite story, in the book was I found two gentlemen in Compton, California, whose their name is Roberto and Malachi. Their gang names were news and spank. They were part of rival gangs, the crypts and the blunts, where you know anything about the rivalry of gangs in Los Angeles area, you know that you could be killed if you just wore the rival gangs colors. Much less you could ever be friends with them. And the two of them grew up in adjacent but rivalry neighborhoods. Without what, as they would say, not too much beefing, but they were in and out of jail. Through their formative years, they were in and out of drugs and prostitution and all kinds of criminal gang activity. They were in and out of jail themselves. They had a, what, this painful story, they told me they had a cut school to go to their friends' females. And at one point, Malachi was not, had come out of prison and he was looking about ways to legitimize his life and not have to go back into a criminal enterprise. And he considered culinary school and he called his mom and said, do you think culinary school would be okay for me? She enrolled them the next day. After they gets he went, learning how to cook, turns out it's pretty good at it. And when he came back from culinary school, he re-hooked up with his friend in the rivaling gang Roberto. And because they were both great drug dealers, Roberto had a phenomenal Instagram following. And so Malachi, they would either go to that gram, one of the gram of this house or one of the mother's houses and cook these phenomenal meals. And then Roberto had posted on Instagram and the lines would form around the block to come and get it. At one point, the cops came thinking that it was selling drugs. And they said, no, it's just food. And the neighborhood nicknamed them trap kitchen after a trap house. They decided that trap stood for take risks and prosper. And the two of them formed an incredible business. They have dozens of food trucks now. They have Rickson Mortar restaurant. They cook. And I went down and spent the day with him in California at their food trucks, just interviewing them. And the food was ridiculous. But what they told me was, we didn't choose to see the differences the world told us we had. We chose this friendship. We chose each other, and it's for life. And we decided that we wanna do this for our neighborhood for our communities, to provide jobs, to provide nutritious food they wouldn't have access to. And it was just such a compelling, awe-stricken story. And I thought, if they can do it, what excuse do sales and marketing have? What excuse does the person in supply chain who's pissed off what the person in operations have to not do it, but they're just such good-hearted men and have done such phenomenal work. For me, it was such a beautiful example of, you can make a they part of your we, if you choose to do that. And so when I ask people, who's your they? Who's the person you see in your color ID when you go, what do they want? Or here they come again. And who's they are you? Who rolls their eyes when they say, you come. You can raise a white flag, you can go to that person with an op-ed and you can say, hey, we can do that. Our people are watching us. Our teams are struggling. What can I do to be a better colleague to you? And you can start by stitching the seams of your organization one relationship at a time. - You know, I love that. So you have already given so much, but the concept of how to make a they part of your we, I'd never heard that phrase. And it is so eloquent, it's painful. Have you written a HBR about because it is so eloquent? It's, it's unknown. - Several pieces on that, on that how you do that. And I think look, Mark, we're in a world that's fighting wars on two continents, right? We're authoring everybody we can. We're all dreading the fact that we're entering another year of a presidential election where the world's going to pull us apart even further. But I think what I'd love for people to understand and I know you have lots of wisdom on this. Is we don't have to give into that choice. We don't have to be put on polarized sides of things. First of all, and this I've learned a lot this from you. The world's so much more nuanced than that. The world's not that black and white. It's not that, more than it were that simple. But we get, we get so reductionist, don't we? In these cases where we, you know, republicans and democrats, you know, Jews and Palestinians, we make these conflicts out to be as if they're complete polar binaries and they're not. And we have to be willing to engage in the messiness of the fact that we do have more in common with folks than we think we do. Now, I think most people fear, be curious to hear your thoughts on this, but most people fear, if I entertain understanding that point of view, does that mean I'm condoning things I don't believe in? Which means, which, of course, you're not. Understanding doesn't equal agreement. It just means, it's just showing somebody grace. And wouldn't it be interesting if you learned something you didn't know? Maybe we'll bolster your convictions about what you believe. But maybe it might make you believe something richer. I wrote an article I think called the fear of empathy. The idea is that to your point, there's a lot of people that are afraid to empathize with the other person because they may have to capitulate their own point of view. If upon understanding the other person, their point of view is no longer valid, but I think you make a great point that you can understand another person's point of view. You can understand their need to have that point of view. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to agree with it or capitulate to it. And maybe you'll capitulate partially, right? Maybe there's a part of you that will capitulate and part of you will be stronger. But the thing I wish people understood it, and I think you do a great job teaching people of this market, isn't that a great experience when that happens though? Like it's such a healthy growing developmental experience to have the experience of having your mind changed. Or if not having your mind changed, of changing someone else's mind. But I think social media and our algorithms have given us this trigger happy, reflexive impulse to refute, reject, and convert. Well, one before you even think. And it's just gross. Like, why did that become the thing we have to do? That I have to reach. We feel what you're saying, reject you as a human being, or convert you to my way of thinking. It's boring, and it's also just cruel. And we don't want to be on the receiving end of it. Why on earth would we, but I think these algorithms and these social media screens give us this illusion of anonymity and allow us to be reckless and objectify people and not see them as humans. And when we're being helped, right? I mean, our echo chambers are being fed by algorithms that only want to tell us what we are. They think we only want to hear. And rejecting, you know, anything that contradicts what we believe. It's the most, I have to believe it's cognitively limiting, stalling your own development and makes you-- it almost makes you learning impaired. When you can't tolerate points of view that are different than yours or you refuse to, it's just sad to me. I want to try something that I sometimes do with some of my guests. As I listen to you from the point of view of my listeners, I would be incredibly impressed by how knowledgeable you are. I'd be incredibly impressed by how you can connect dots, you know, like in real time. And-- but I might not implement anything that you're saying because I would say to myself, Ron is perfect and I am flawed. He's really got it together. He's got his act together. So frequently when I run into people who may unintentionally come off that way, what is something you could get better at? Oh my god. gosh, we could fill hours with that. Certainly my own patients levels with my own intolerance of leaders' flaws sometimes gets the best of me. My inability to be persistent, I tend to get easily discouraged, and so I put my hands up too quickly and walk away from things when they're calling for my persistence in tenacity. I have learned, so my wife falls to me from my willfulness, which is different than stubbornness. Like I could have my mind changed. I don't pursue myself to be stubborn, but I am willful. And sometimes that willfulness benefits a lot of people, but sometimes I'm willful to a fault. Like I don't always have to have my way, but sometimes I act as if I do. And so tempering my willfulness, continuing to temper my willfulness is a place my family would love to see me get better at for sure. So can I give you homework assignment? Please. You don't have to do it, but I think since you seem to be dedicated to lifelong learning, so the assignment is to go to your wife, where your children say, I was on a podcast with a friend of mine, and he knows a little bit about communication. And he suggests that people need to toggle between talking to and with people and toggle away from talking over or at them. And he asks me to ask you, how often do you experience me as talking to and with you versus talking over and at you? And if I'm doing the over and at thing, I have no intention to do that. I have no intention to do something that drives the people. I love either away or drives them crazy. And he asked me to check that out with you. And also, because I care and love about all of you, if I have a tendency to talk over or at, how painful is that? And if they say, well, you're a good person, you're an amazing dad, you're amazing husband. I said, look, don't let me off the hook. I don't want to get to the end of my life. And say, oh, we love dad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it would have been nice to have conversations where it felt like he talked with us and he listened to us with complete patience, even when he didn't even understand what we were talking about. [LAUGHS] So that's a great estimate. I will do that. And because what I love about people like you is you have a real generosity of spirit and deed. You're incredibly big-hearted. You really do care about the state of the world, the state of communities, the state of people. And you want to, in some small, large part, influence them to be the best that they can be. And I wouldn't want you to miss out on that if people feel your willfulness. Here's one of the things that I, when I coach people, I say the problem, especially in this day and age, when we look at some of the leaders in the world who talk over and at people, is you take away other people's choice to engage with you because they have to engage with you. Whereas when you talk to and with them, they get to pause and say, I like what he's saying. I like who he is. I want more of him. And I'm a tremendous introvert. And so frequently, and so listening really suits me. But every now and then, when I get the opportunity to speak, I will pick up speed. It's like a high colonic. I've been waiting to get all this stuff up and out. And I can feel inside like I'm a runaway train. And I feel the combination of relief to be talking all this stuff up and out. And then afterwards, I feel an acute sense of embarrassment. So I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you. It makes a lot of sense, sure. I want to run something by you, because I come up with these crazy ideas every day. And I have a YouTube and a TikTok series called I'm Dying to tell you, because I have a lot to share. And I came upon the power of a transcendent noble good. Recently, very recently, President Biden and with President Chi Jinping of China. And I had this crazy idea that-- and you have a much bigger platform than I do. I'm just very fortunate that I seem to have some platform. But I had this crazy idea that proactively, perhaps it would have to come from Biden, would say, you know, we are the leaders of the two most powerful countries in the world. There's really no other countries really close to our power. India has a massive population, but it doesn't yet have the power of eitherless. And the future is really in a bad place. And I know we have our differences. And I'm not trying to convert you in the way you look at the world to the way I look at the world. But why don't we meet once a month or have a call? And we can each have an advisor there so that the advisor afterwards debriefs us and said, did you have to say that? Why don't we see ourselves as sort of guardians of the future because the future is really in trouble? And I'm not sure what we'll talk about. Hopefully we'll be friendly. It would be real plusively being friends. But I think it's our responsibility to have those conversations. And instead of there being reactive, is when we have reactive conversations, like one of your balloons flew over us, and we did something, it's going to be a very guarded conversation. So that was one of my crazy ideas about the power of a transcendent noble good to maybe help people-- I don't know-- turn the veys into weeds. Yeah. But what an example the two of them could set. Because the vast majority of Chinese people are good. I think the vast majority of Americans are good people. But we continue to get fed lines about the evils of China as a country and the evils of what they do, as if we're purely virtuous and don't do it with any ill-intended things. But I don't know another way to an alliance of a sustainable alliance, then through those kinds of conversations. And I think the importance of the frequency is key. They talk three times a year. It's not really much of a little. It's just obligatory and check a box and something for the press wires. But if they both were eager-- and I think one of the things I think that's appropriate about being guardians of the future, as you just put it, mark is, they ought to be afraid. They ought to be afraid, one of how history will write their part of a story. And they will get rid of the story somehow. And it may not be favorable if on their watch the seeds were found for catastrophe. The leaders at the moment make it initially blamed, but history will rectify that. And if the two of them were the ones that could have put in place, not just preventative measures from a disaster, but actually put in place a pathway where there was a greater noble good, wouldn't they want that to be part of a story? And I don't know why you wouldn't, for that reason alone, want to find a way forward. And I think what you're talking about-- I don't-- I wouldn't categorize as diplomacy. That's a much more nationalistic set of behaviors. But you're talking about true alliance, real coalition. And the interesting thing that would have to happen is their intolerance of our value system and our intolerance of their value system. We have labels for those. We call them human rights violations. We call them whatever we call them. You have to leave it all out of the door, don't you? To go ahead and have a look at it as amazing hypocrites. Oh, we're the free world. Look at all the crime. Look at all the homelessness. Look at, you know, to them, we're the hypocrites of the world. Absolutely. And we can-- and they have to leave that up a door too, right? And so could you leave all that stuff at the door? They're more than biased as their facts. They're just interpreted facts. And then walking that room, looking for that common good, but not with-- I'm checking the box. I feel like that diplomacy. But actually, we're going to look to be funny. it. And that will be once a month. Wouldn't that just be what an example, right? Like like my friends, Spank and Malik, Spank and News, they were determined, right? That could have gone sideways any number of ways, couldn't have. And I would imagine the first three or four months would be really difficult and feel contrived and awkward and superficial. And then at some point, they'd be a moment where suddenly things would shift. And suddenly it would become human to human, leader to leader. And you'd find ideas. And suddenly you'd think about stuff, and you'd have new ways of seeing each other and maybe new ways of respecting each other. Like Reagan saying the Gorbachev called me Ron. Yeah, exactly. I want to share something with you, you're going to, this kind of goes along with the homework assignment. And tell me if you agree with this, I believe that conflicts are inevitable. And the majority of people handle conflicts poorly. I also believe that if you handle a situation with a reactive mindset, there is a likelihood of making it worse, almost 100% of the time. I also believe that you can counter that with a proactive frame of mind. So one of the assignments that I have between business partners, you know, CEOs and their executives is, and between husbands and wives, maybe parents and, you know, their rambunctious teenagers and young adults is that proactively we're going to meet for dinner, you know, once a month. And we're each going to bring up everything that gets in the way of our looking forward to seeing each other with a smile. Because once upon a time, we did. That builds up. And we're going to bring up, and the code of conduct is not to react. It's to make it better between us. And we're each going to bring up the things that we have perceived the other person did or failed to do that gets in the way of our looking forward to seeing them. Because if we look forward to seeing them, we're good to go. And we bring that up and we don't get defensive. We ask the other person to give us examples of when we failed to do something or we did something that was negative. And you bring that all up and each of you listens to each other. And then you seal the meeting with a heartfelt unsolicited apology for something. And when you do that, you then look into the other person's eyes and you will see why you're glad you're married. You'll actually be able to see the person you fell in love with. And that you do this proactively because life has a way of throwing these things out at us and misinterpretations. But if we eliminate everything that gets in the way of our looking forward to seeing each other, we will look forward to seeing each other. When I chat with you, I have kind of a health condition. And releasing these videos, in the first video, was called Michelangelo Dine. And just as Michelangelo saw the angel in the marble and carved the Senate free, what I've discovered when facing what I'm facing is I saw what's important in life and all the stuff that was unimportant. And the stuff that was unimportant was huge. So I just lopped it off. And when I lopped off everything that was unimportant, what is important has glowed. So I know that's sort of a tangent, but this is a conversation. I wonder if you had any thoughts or ideas or suggestions on my improving upon my thinking. Well, I certainly think that any relationship that has both the conviction and the courage to sort of be that straightforward with each other is going to grow benefit. You'd have to maybe test drive a couple of, you know, so it wasn't a big, you know, volume of list of, here's all the things, but maybe a couple of things and practice on a few before going to the, you know, I do agree with you that I think that we tend to be accumulators, a baggage of small offenses. We tell ourselves, well, they didn't mean it about having a bad day. You know, I can have thick skin. And I love them. We don't realize that's like, you know, gunk in the bottom of your oil pen and your car just accumulates and gets thick and moldy and, you know, I think air clearing is always a good thing to do. But you know, in teams, right? Because on teams, you have then multiple dynamics of accumulated gunk, you know, between multiple sets of people. And then the team just comes to a grinding hall and it's, you know, have the executive team anymore. You have the UN of the company and they just can't function. They come, you know, as the representative of the ambassador or whatever they lead. And they just want to get through the meeting. So I think anything to, you know, when there's air to be cleared or in advance of there being like before you have to clear the air, clearing it before it needs to be cleared. You know, how can I continue to be good quality to you or husband or wife to you? How can I continue to be what can I do at the lights you? What would and sort of bank up a lot of equity with someone so that on the unfortunate occasion, when you have to make a withdrawal, it doesn't just drain the reserves. So I think it's, you know, any, any kind of air clearing resolution. I mean, you're absolutely right. Hopefully it isn't evidentable. I also think it's healthy. I feel like it's the raw material of innovation, right? It's the thing that creates the sparks that create new ideas. They have to be differences. I don't, I think we start with the notion, too many people start with the notion that conflict is bad. You need something as wrong. Something is broken. And that, you know, whenever I've seen couples that logger heads, to me that says the marriage is doing what it's supposed to do, right? That's what the marriage system is supposed to do. It's supposed to refine each of you in the process, which means it's going to hurt. And so, but so many couples today assume, oh, we're incompatible or oh my god, we fall out of love or, you know, why are we picking at each other so much? And that's, you know, that's normal. That's a healthy. That means that the marriage is doing what it's supposed to do. Now, if you can't find ways to work through it and it becomes combative and offensive and hurtful, that's life of a skill set, right? But it doesn't mean the marriage is broken, just means the way you're approaching the normal parts of a marriage are insufficient for what is being called of you. But so many people are and told that. You know, we never got that in the mouth. We assume we're going to have bliss forever. I love that reframe about the positive, positive aspects of conflict. I just came up with an HBR article that you should write. Can I give you the title? Yes, sure. The title is oil change, cleaning out organizational gunk. There's so much. We need like, we need like para washing hoses. Well, no, I'm semi-serious. I love coming up with titles, but I see you running with that and and people would be curious, well, what's that about at any rate? So if you could, like you were talking about, but looking into the future to prevent conflicts and just looking into the future, so I'd like you to imagine that it's say three years from now. I'm in Bivalent, it's either one or five, but three years from now and you look back from three years to now and in three years, you're able to say, Ron, it's amazing what a difference you've made or it's amazing kind of where you are, who you are, how you are, how would you look at that three years from now so you can reverse engineer? Well, so with my family, I would certainly, you know, I'm very blessed to have a really wonderful and loving family, both my immediate family and my extended family, but I would hope that, you know, I continue to contribute to their evolving, especially my kids because they're adults now and moving into relationships and careers and so I would hope that the love I've offered them, the help I support what they've asked for would have led to them even being happier and more satisfied in their lives. With my clients, you know, I'm at this interesting intersection in my firm, you know, we're going to be celebrating our 20th birthday next year. None of us can believe it, but and we're thinking about about the next phase of our firm and the chapter that without us and what that will look like. And that's been a wonderful forcing function to look over this 20 year body of work to look at the faces and the brands and the companies that we've helped transform. And because we were forced to do that, I've now approached my clients now, especially new big hairy messy problems with this newfound appreciation and awe of the, not just the privilege it is to get to join them, but to keep a vision of them in mind of on the other side of this, you know, we find them on the worst days of their lives or the worst moments of their careers. But this, the sense of peace about, but I know where the story goes. And, you know, I know where in a couple of years what this will look like. And to sort of share that with them, to sort of imbue them with that hope. That part's becoming really fun for me. And so I would hope that, you know, three years from now, maybe there are some younger practitioners in this field that I would have helped get that point of view sooner in their career about, you know, the privilege it is to accompany a leader and their organization on some difficult journey. And how do you help them see what you're gonna, you should be seeing and help them, you know, believe in that future, whether it's a little hard to see it right now. And maybe a little more writing, we'll see, who knows. - You know, I'm being fairly circumspect about life and things. And one of the things that, you know, I've been sharing with people, which I think is part of transformation is, is to imagine you're at the end of your life or maybe the end of your career or 10 years from now. And look back professionally, purposefully and personally. And for me, what that translates to is, professionally, did I earn enough money to take care of my family, you know, maybe indulge us in trips or things like that? And anybody who worked for me, did I enable them to do the same? Purposefully, did I do an endeavor that I take some pride in versus fewly embarrassed? Oh, we made a lot of money and we knew how to sell people stuff they didn't need. And boy, you know, and so purposefully is, my way of going about it, you know, fill me with pride, did I do something to help the world leave it better? The real challenge is personally, and I can do a lot better in terms of, you know, health, exercise and diet. And I need to pay attention to that. But something I also want to have happen and I'm working on it and is interpersonally, you know, was I emotionally close to the people I love? 'Cause it's different to know you love each other. And it is to feel, know that the other person feels your love. And then you feel their love because the majority of people aren't that emotionally close. Oh, we love each other, but, you know, they didn't really feel known by their, especially their dads, 'cause moms have a way of connecting, you know, as part of their natural makeup. And the dads often didn't feel known by their kids. I used to do house calls to dying patients and many of them, fairly wealthy and powerful. And I tried to help them make peace with their lives. And I remember one person who was beloved in public and iconic figure, but had multiple marriages, multiple kids with drug problems. And people liked that I could be kind of blunt with them. And I remember I was visiting him and I said, you know, you really, you really look like crap. And I don't think it's 'cause you're dying. You've been dying as long as I've known you. What's up? And he said, I don't think I've ever done anything important. I said, you get a hospital named after you, you get all this stuff, and he looked at me. And he said, don't call on a con man, especially when he's dying. I have all the love that money can buy. Then he said, everything I thought was important isn't. And everything I thought wasn't important is, and I've run out of time to fix it. And I think what he was talking about is, you know, I'm not that emotionally close to anyone, and nobody's that emotionally close to me, and I'm not even that emotionally close to myself. And he said, no, honestly, you know, before I got diagnosed six months earlier, I would've thought this was a bunch of BS, but maybe just maybe I got it all wrong. And so I'm always encouraging people, 'cause when I do presentations sometimes to entrepreneurs especially, also raise your hand if you can remember fewer than five completely open, honest, emotional conversations with your dad. Because a lot of times again, moms can connect, you know, they connect on the details. They get excited about minutia, that dad just wouldn't even know what they're talking about. And usually 75% of them can't remember more than five times, and 50% of them can't remember ever. So, you know, I'm just trying to share that out there and to our listeners and to you, you know, if it applies. And I try to practice that, but I encourage people to say to their families, you know, I'm blessed to have this loving family and, you know, and I really want everything to do. Do you feel that I'm emotionally close to you? Do you feel that I understand you emotionally, or I just understand you non-emotion? 'Cause again, I've heard too many stories now of people who are very busy and they decided to stop their life to go spend the last three days with their mom or dad and hold their hand in the hospital. All of these people said, "It's the most powerful moment of my life." - Sure. - It was, you know, and it was why, you know, so I'm just sharing those things because, you know, and plus I love the hundred coaches. And there's so much energy there. And it's so much excitement. And, you know, in life is to be grabbed by the horns and to ride that, ride that bow with all you got, you know? And maybe I'm just too emo, but I just don't want people to miss out on those intimate moments. - Yeah. - So sorry for taking up our time with my holding pulpit here. - Not at all. It's always the pleasant to hear you act eloquent about the important things in life. And you're just a font of wisdom mark. So it's always a joy. So where can people find out more about you, Navalent, your books? - So our website, navelent.com, navaelent.com is lots of fun stuff. There are videos and courses and white papers and all kinds of things to develop yourself as a leader or your team or your organization. To learn more about the book, to be honest.net has all the research. It has, so we got to, we've videoed all the interviews we did with all the heroes in the book. So we turned into a TV series. It's like a news magazine show with a bunch of hosts and really, so you can binge watch 15 episodes of, it's called Moments of Truth. And it's got Obersoli and Vincent Stanley from Patagonia and Rob Ballot, the attorney who took down DuPont and Utipini Janna and Obersoli, just wonderful, wonderful leaders and thinkers of Jonathan Hyte, Kim Scott, Amy Ebbinson, who were generous in giving us their wisdom. So you can enjoy those episodes as a six part webinar, series on the book. I'm just introducing the research and introducing the findings. So have at it. Please check, connect on LinkedIn with me and let's keep chatting. - Yeah, and if you're listening in, if this goes up on YouTube, please follow up because Ron's dropped just a few nuggets, a few things that are relevant to all of us. Also, the list of some of the people that he just mentioned, you know, these are iconic figures. And I think the idea of talking about, honestly, to be honest, is something not to be missed out on. So do follow up with him and Navellent and you'll be the better for it. So thank you and thank you, my friend and maybe 300 episodes will have you back on. - Mark, it's always a pleasure. - My pleasure. Take care, everyone. (upbeat music)