Not Simple

“There’s something very powerful about the fact that we see ourselves in stories.”

Ann Kowal Smith, CEO of Books@Work, returned to discuss Franz Kafka’s very short story “Poseidon” with Wendy and a few colleagues. Together they discover the leadership lessons and complexities within what is, at first glance, a quite simple story.

“There’s one race, the human race. There are cultural groups. There are differences in skin tones and facial features and body features, but these don’t dictate who we are.”

Amiel Handelsman is an executive coach and writer, as well as a semi-retired podcaster. He joined Wendy to discuss the many ways we oversimplify racial identity in America. 

You can learn more about Amiel and his work on his website.

“This could be the year that Americans find out that their simple assumption that we do elections well or right will be forever destroyed.”

Jerry Mayer is a professor of Political Science at George Mason University and a self-proclaimed obsessive about all things election-related. He joined Wendy ten days before Election Day in the US to discuss everything from the Electoral College to the overlooked implications of high voter turnout.

“The reality is that friendships are infinitely messier and nastier and deeper in all sorts of ways good and bad than just two people who like each other and get along and are nice to each other.”

Susan MacDougall, an anthropologist at Cambridge University, joins Wendy to discuss the complexities of friendship, its history, how it has changed in Covid times, and how its rules vary across cultures.

"We’re also focused on your students’ needs, their emotional needs and well being first, before we teach them algebra and physical science."

On the eve of a new school year, elementary and middle school principal Aletha Snowberger talks to Wendy about reopening school in a pandemic. From the logistics of getting kindergarteners to the correct classrooms when parents aren’t allowed in the building to teachers learning how to engage online with new students, complexities abound.

"Getting stuff done peacefully is what most people want most of the time, and so the challenge isn’t to get them to do it but to remove the obstacles to them doing so."

Adam Kahane, a Director of Reos Partners and author of several books, including Collaborating with the Enemy, joins Wendy to discuss the complexity of collaboration.

“I want the doing and the learning to happen simultaneously. I don’t want you to say ‘I don’t know enough and therefore I can’t do anything.’”

Wendy Moomaw, an executive coach and founder of the Conscious Collaboratory, and our host begin their conversation exploring our experience in the collective as the world changes around us and end up discussing what it takes for us as individuals to fight racism. Collective and individual, dominant and non-dominant, internal and external—polarities abound in this not simple discussion.

“What Books@Work has helped his team to do is separate the person from the idea.”

Ann Kowal Smith is the Founder and Executive Director of Books@Work. She talks to Wendy about how using the lens of narrative fiction and non-fiction can supercharge collaboration and inclusion in the workplace.

“People in poverty, people with addiction problems … there are assumptions that those people actually don’t care for themselves and don’t care for their life or their health.”

Stephanie Marrs is a nurse practitioner with a passion for public health. She joins Wendy to discuss how we oversimplify the choices people make about their health, which actually may not be choices at all.

“[It’s] like the elephant has been named. And it’s been claimed. And now we can do something with the elephant.”

Wendy is joined by her Cultivating Leadership colleague Akasha, whose work focuses on engaging across difference, to talk about race in America and the Caribbean--and the ways we do and don’t talk about it.

“What we want to look for is those threads such as behavior that we can both use to forecast but also help seed--how do we help take that thing that we want to be true and help drive the market in that direction?”

A year after she first appeared on the podcast, Elizabeth Mayo, Global Director of Solar Services at UL, returns to discuss how COVID-19 has changed risk in the energy industry and how those patterns translate to life in general.

“I’m thinking about this whole space the way poets think about a sonnet. There are specific constraints. Those constraints mean that most things are impossible, but an artist can figure out how to make great things happen inside the constraints.”

Guest host Keith Johnston has an “in house chat” with our normal host Wendy Bittner and Jennifer Garvey Berger about the challenge of helping leaders to learn in a virtual world. They explore what they have learned and the surprising discoveries that have surfaced over the past two months.

“When emotions are so big, the quick fix is to be violent, use drugs, be aggressive, escape . . . because those feelings are dangerous. And for most of the guys they never learned how to experience that.”

Wendy talks to Dr. Melissa Garber, a clinical psychologist helping violent offenders in a special treatment unit in New Zealand to prepare to re-enter society. They discuss noticing and reacting differently to emotions and environments--and how these challenges (and their solutions) are more universally human than they first appear.

"The really hard challenge when you’re talking about empowerment is it’s a fundamentally different conversation around the way that power is then distributed, the way that power is shared, and the way that power is exercised."

Dean Parkin is a part of the Quandamooka people, an investment analyst with Tanarra Capital, and an advocate for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which addresses the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. He spoke to Wendy about the oversimplification of representation and empowerment of those who have been dispossessed.

"A reframing of what failure is, what it means, and the importance of it can completely transform the way a person understands themselves and the challenges in the middle of a complex situation."

Denise VanEck is owner of Thought Design, author of Failure: Laboratory Workshops, a coach, and obsessed with failure. She and Wendy unpack this “juicy” topic and discuss how to better harness with this inevitable experience that our brains love but our egos hate.

“If we really want to build a web of trust it has to be built on human relationships.”

Richard Whitt, a fellow at Georgetown University and the Mozilla Foundation and founder of the GLIAnet Project, talks to Wendy about human agency in the digital era, the impact of technology in our daily lives, and the uneasy compact we make when we blindly exchange our data for access to unlimited cat videos.

“It’s important to remember as adults that having been a student doesn’t make you an expert on teaching. You should be careful about your memories.”

Katy Shrout, an 8th grade English teacher, sits down with Wendy to discuss the many layers of teacher responsibility, the pros and cons of standardized testing, policies and their unintended impacts, and a slew of other ways that education is not simple.

“We see restaurants and essentially the people in them as vending machines for our needs. We push buttons and we expect things to come out.”

Chef Rock Harper, President of Rock Solid Creative and podcast host, works to empower, educate, and entertain chefs. He and Wendy discuss strategies to allow personal dignity and culinary excellence to coexist in the complex world of restaurants.

“That can also happen in the game! In whatever match it is, it can all be going one way, the momentum’s going, and then suddenly a small event--as in complex systems--tips the system . . . and suddenly the whole game is transformed.”

Keith Johnston, co-founder of Cultivating Leadership, writer, and passionate fan of the All Blacks, and Wendy talk sport(s) as an echo for human life, a way to understand complexity, and a source of fun.

“What’s the gift in the now? It’s so easy to be thinking what’s the next thing, what’s the next thing, what’s the next thing.”

Aenslee Tanner, engineer turned leadership coach, talks to Wendy, chemist turned leadership consultant, about how we oversimplify big life choices and what new questions we might ask to change our focus from choosing the right thing to embracing possibility.