Ron Carucci is a co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, helping CEOs, their executive teams, and senior executives tackle some of the most complicated transformations. He is a bestselling author of eight books, a frequent contributor to HBR and Forbes, and a two-time TEDx speaker. In this episode, we discuss some of the most important abilities that leaders can demonstrate in times of crisis. He emphasizes the importance of honesty and being silent to be able to listen to the deeper needs of others.
With a 30-year track record, Ron is helping some of the world’s most influential executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization, and leadership. From startups to Fortune 10’s, turnarounds to new markets and strategies, overhauling leadership, and culture to re-designing for growth, he has worked in more than 25 countries on four continents. He has helped build leadership pipelines for global Fortune 100 companies, and accompanied executives on major career transitions.
He led a 10-year longitudinal study on executive transition to find out why more than 50% of leaders fail within their first 18 months of appointment and uncovered the four differentiating capabilities that set successful leaders apart. Hise findings are highlighted in his groundbreaking Amazon #1 book “Rising To Power”, co-authored with Eric Hansen. These findings are also summarized by Ron in the popular HBR article that was selected as one of 2016’s “Ideas that mattered most."
In this episode, Ron talks about silence as the greatest value that a leader can offer, as opposed to verbosity due to fear of irrelevance. He says if your goal as a leader is to learn and not to win, then it’s better for you to ask for people’s story and be fascinated with them. He also notes that during meetings, it is important to be judicious and prudent and make sure that everyone’s voice is heard. He says understanding the bigger story that we’re all in and realizing our greater sense of meaning can be a great way to start overcoming our challenges in the midst of uncertainties.
He has been featured in Fortune, MSNBC, Inc., Fast Company, CEO Magazine, BusinessInsider, Business Week, and Smart Business. Watch out for Ron’s forthcoming book “To Be Honest: Lead with the power of truth, justice and purpose” and a 15-year longitudinal study on what conditions predict if people will tell the truth, act fairly and do the right thing, and serve with purpose.
Find out more about Ron’s work on his company’s website: www.navalent.com
Listen to his recent TEDx talk on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v234mvaUQ4o&feature=youtu.be
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roncarucci/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RonCarucci
- I'm Céline Williams, and welcome to the Leading through Crisis podcast, a conversation series exploring leadership in challenging times. Hi, I'm Céline Williams, and I'm here today with Ron Carucci. Ron is the managing partner at Navalent, bestselling author of eight books, and frequent contributor to HBR and Forbes. He's been featured in Fortune, MSNBC, Inc., Fast Company, CEO Magazine, and is a two time TEDx speaker. Ron, thank you for joining me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.
- Céline, what a pleasure. It's been fun to get to know you, and I'm glad to be here with you.
- I, we have discovered that we might be long lost relatives based on our family heritage, so it has been wonderful to get to know you as well.
- You definitely win the award for best podcast pre-show conversation, in the 400 that I've done.
- I appreciate, thank you. I will absolutely take that. So this podcast is all about talking about leading in challenging times, and so you have a ton of experience and obviously, I mean, author of eight bestselling books. That's incredible. So I would love to know really general starting point. When you hear leading through crisis or leading through challenging times, what comes up for you, or where do you start inside of that from your perspective?
- Well, certainly the last 10 months have given all of us a crash course in how many new things that means, right? The thing that I'm most fixated on these days is what leaders fail to understand is that leading during a crisis is not what you do to other people, or for other people. But the first and foremost starting place is not your own agency. It's your own self regulation. What leaders often fail to recognize, and I think this pandemic has revealed this, is that their response to the crisis leaks into their leadership far more than they wanna believe. It shapes their choices of how they treat others far more than they wanna acknowledge. They believe they are hiding and sort of quarantining their own responses more effectively than they ever are. And so the starting place is how are you metabolizing the crisis? How is it affecting you, and are you being honest about what this is requiring of you? Before you can ever get to, what leadership behaviors do I employ to help others? This really is the case where you have to put you own oxygen mask on first, and many leaders start with an assumption of I don't need it.
- I think that's really interesting because I see, or I have seen, I've definitely seen that come to light, and I see it in sort of, forgive the term, traditional organizations where you don't talk about feelings. You have to show up as rational and logical, which is almost in denial of what you're talking about, which is what is your experience?
- Your worst line of defense as a leader is trying to look put together. I have coached so many executives on, one of the articles I wrote was "How to Answer the Unanswerable Question." So many leaders assume that they're the answer ATM. And when leaders ask them the questions that are impossible to answer, they feel obligated to make one up, which is the worst thing you can do, right? The words, "I don't know. "Let's find out together," are your absolute most credibility building and empathic words you can offer. First of all, your people know you don't know, right? It doesn't stop their irrational need to want to know, and you are the person in authority. Therefore you're the most likely person to ask, but you trying to reassure people with reassurances that aren't yours to give, and that maybe aren't even make makeable, is cruel. You're just self soothing. You're calming your own sense of unease and a lack of control by imposing certainty on something that you can't to reassure other people in ways you shouldn't. And it just sets up a vicious cycle.
- I hear you say that and it immediately makes me think of Brené Brown, when she talks about vulnerability versus oversharing, where vulnerability is a connecting, and it helps people feel like they're in it together. And oversharing actually, I mean, I'm really simplifying this, obviously, but basically alienates the people in a similar way. But it reminds me of that difference between, when you think you have to have the answer, and you're giving false hope, you're actually alienating people. You're doing the exact opposite of what I think a lot of leaders, what their intention is, right? Their intention is not that. And yet that's the result of it.
- Yep, it's so true. Oversharing, it's interesting. Vulnerability creates authentic intimacy with people, and that's what you need as a leader. You need to be in cohesion among otherwise fractured organizations, especially in the working-from-home world. Oversharing is an attempt to purchase intimacy, right? And it's manipulative, and people will see right through it. Your best ability to offer hope is so people discover their own. The best question you can ask somebody when you're trying to offer them hope is not telling them why it's gonna be okay. It's asking them to discover that for themselves. Ask the question, what's the worst thing you live through in your life? At any point in that time, did you feel like you couldn't do it? How does what you learned there apply here? Invite people to discover hope. Don't make them borrow yours. Tell them where you have found hope. Tell them what you're doing in your moments of anxiety and uncertainty. Tell them how you're metabolizing and working through the "oh shit" moments. But don't try and tell them how to do it. The minute you become the sage advisor, you're condescending, you're belittling them, and you're making them dependent on you for things they should be self-dependent for. When you don't know the answer to a question about financial risk, or when something's going to change. I had one woman in a client, this is a few months ago before the return to work started to happen. She made the mistake, again, it was in a public town hall. Somebody asked her after after the session, "I don't know how I can take this anymore." And what she was looking for was comfort and empathy. Well, what she made the mistake of doing was saying, well, I've heard they're thinking about actually reopening the office in mid June. Within an hour, she had 30 texts. I can't come back to work in mid June. You know, where's my office gonna be? with questions, she just started a firestorm because of her own need to answer a question that wasn't even being asked. Leaders have to listen for, what's the deeper question being asked? What's the need that people are actually offering you in the question of their words? They may be asking you, how much government stimulus money are we gonna be able to get? What they're really asking is, will I be able to pay my mortgage next month? And it's important that you listen for the deeper need. It doesn't mean you should offer an answer to either, but acknowledging the, I think I hear a different question beneath those words. Am I right in wondering that you're concerned about this? Creates a level of authenticity, and it says to people, it's okay not to know, and it's okay that sometimes we're not okay, and we can be not okay together, and leaders, for all of the facades we've told them to put on about looking in control. As much as we've said, your vulnerability is your strongest place of credibility. Your weakness is your strength. This is the time to prove that. Because if the minute you try and tell people who are scared not to be, or why not to be, or how it's all gonna work itself out, you are gonna be held accountable to those statements. And they're gonna come back to bite you, because the second after your guarantee proves false, they're gonna come at you with pitchforks. And so your best bet is to say, what can we learn together? Here's what we do know. What can we figure out on our own? What can we work on together? What can we do in the meantime of not knowing, right? And rather than grasp at straws, reach for things you do know. Reach for the things that aren't gonna change. Reach for the sense of purpose you wanna create among the people you're working with, and let your, in some cases, relay your foundation when it wasn't that to something more sustainable.
- I think that's absolutely brilliant advice. And I imagine that leaders, when they hear that, a lot of them, not all, but a lot of leaders, when they hear that, don't even know where to start. It feels so scary and new and uncomfortable because to what you said, they're the answer ATM. They have to solve all the problems. That's what they've been sold. The higher you are in an organization, the more responsibility you have, whatever you wanna call it, you have to make the decisions and solve the problems. So for those who are feeling that I don't even know where to start inside of this, what would you recommend?
- Great question, Céline. So I would say in your next team meeting, say something like, you know, like all of us I've been thinking a lot about this pandemic, and when the hell is it gonna be over? Maybe it's never gonna be over, but I was thinking, a year from now, we're all gonna say something about how this pandemic changed us. And it occurred to me that it's not entirely written what the answer to that question is gonna be. And even though we're six months into this, we still have a chance to write that story. I'm curious, I'd love to hear from each of you, what do you hope will be true a year from now about you and us? What do you wanna say? Who do you wanna say we became as a result of this? Because there's gonna be an answer to the question, but until that history is written, let's see if we can decide what we want it to be. I've thought about it, and I'll share my thoughts, but I wanna hear yours first, and just get people talking about a bigger story than the one you're in right today, right? Than today's cash flow emergency, or today's customer emergency, or today's revenue shortfall. Those will be there in a minute, but take time and ask yourself, do we understand the bigger story we're in? And let's talk about that. Another question you can ask that I think is very powerful is, and I think many leaders are facing the fact that the pandemic didn't cause some of the business struggles or the business weaknesses you're experiencing, but it did reveal them.
- Absolutely.
- They were there all the time. And now the lack of cultural cohesion, the lack of strategic clarity, the lack of shared processes that scale, the things that were glued together with chewing gum and spitballs to keep your business operating are gonna run their course now, right? Under the test of a pandemic. So rather than trying to hide those, for goodness sake, use the invitation to fix them. For leaders who had already created a sense of shared purpose and reasoning, who had painted a picture of a greater good to serve, who had had a lot of equity they'd built up with people they had served and invested in, that equity came back to play for you nicely. And that's good for you, but it doesn't mean it's too late to create it. So ask the question of your people, we all come to work for more than a paycheck. If we're honest with ourselves, it's not just to pay our bills we come here, even though we might tell ourselves it is because we may have to work. But the reality is we all want a greater sense of meaning out of this than just a fiduciary one. And I've decided that I want a different relationship with you other than your boss and the person who writes your check. So if we flip the script, and I said to you, let's pretend for a second you don't work for the company. This company works for you. And this company is the vehicle through which you get to live out the reason you're on the planet, that you get to use your 50 hours a week here as a way to leave your unique fingerprint on our world, and go to bed at night feeling proud of what you did and wake up in the morning thinking on looking forward to doing it again, what would that be? What would be the fingerprint that this part of your life gets to help you imprint? Make everybody answer, and get the conversation started. And you as a boss, shut up while they're talking, don't speak. And if there's silence and awkward, whatever, 'cause this is like a, you know, what kind of drugs did he take today? Let it be awkward, that's okay. But people, somebody will start, and then it will build. And you will be amazed at what you learn about these people, what they learned about each other that they had no idea, and for goodness sake, don't waste it. You will get gold about how to create environments that motivate them to do their best work, about how you can support things that they believe in, and about how to maybe shift some of the bull crap work you shouldn't be doing anyway, and replace it with better activities that add more value to your customers and them. You will get a goldmine of insights about your business and you, some of those you might not like, but that's okay. Trust me. You are the topic of conversation at all the dinner tables every night. You should know what the stories they're telling are. And if you don't know, it probably means it's probably not that good. So this is a way to just reorient the conversation with some simple prompts that start people thinking differently about you and the work.
- I think it's a, I mean, one, I think it's an ideal time to be shifting that conversation and using the opportunity that's in front of us to shift the conversation. And I think that the two prompts that you gave specifically are brilliant. And I say that, as you were saying them, I was like, oh, I wish more leaders were asking those specific questions the way that you phrased them, because there is a huge opportunity. And it also reminds me how many leaders struggle to just listen when people are sharing their side of things, right? That again, they have to solve the problem. So if you share that this organization is your vehicle to whatever your purpose is, I think a lot of leaders will struggle with just taking that in.
- Hey, thank you. Thank you. Because they wanna one up. Oh, I feel the same way too. His idea, you know? And then do not hijack the conversation. Do not feel the need to insert your thoughts after every. That's not your job. Just say thanks so much. I learned something new about you, and this is what it was. And then I'm so grateful. Who's next?
- Right.
- That's it.
- Right. It makes me wonder why that is such a struggle for, I mean, people in general, but leaders specifically, to not one up.
- So most leaders, especially those, and most leaders have some version of an imposter syndrome. They have some reason that they fear getting found out, right? At some point you're gonna realize this is an area I'm not competent in to be in this job. Put yourself at ease. They already know. They know better than you. So, they know a part of the emperor is naked. It's real clear to them. They've studied you. Don't worry hiding it. Just don't waste your energy. So to quell the anxiety of that imposter syndrome and to keep the playing field unlevel, consuming airtime becomes a bizarre metric of, I consume the airtime with more wisdom that you think is wise. They probably could care less about. I self soothe my need to make sure I'm still the boss. It backfires. It actually is disrespectful, dismissive, and to use your great word before, alienating. But we still can't control the impulse to fill the silence. And, in a knowledge economy, verbalism is the currency. And so I'm gonna spend the most, when in fact your silence is probably your greatest value you can contribute.
- So I wanna offer an observation here, 'cause it just reminded me of when I started learning to coach. So when I started taking coach training and going through all the formal stuff, and we did classes on listening and whatever, and my default is to fill the silence. So when you ask a question, and if someone doesn't immediately answer, but like one second maximum, I was like, oh, let me rephrase the question or ask a different way, or say something to help guide you to a certain, right? Like that, I have that in me, and I see that. And it's really interesting, 'cause I think of where I was 10 years ago or eight years ago when I started really realizing how ingrained that is in me, and now how comfortable I am just being in silence, to the point that in group settings I'll ask a question, and if no one answers, I'm like, I mean we can sit here for two minutes. It does not phase me anymore. And I love that you, and I say that because the connection you made to the knowledge economy is so real. That is the thing that prevented me from being comfortable with it for so long is if I didn't have something to say, I didn't have value.
- Yep, it's so true. And when you compound the fact that today people's remits are analyses, ideas, imagination, right? You create two problems. One is we're still evaluating people's work apart from the fact that they're, so the contribution is an extension of the contributor. This is, it is, you can't say it's not personal. It's personal, right? So when as leaders, when you esteem somebody's contribution, you are esteeming them as the contributor. One of the greatest gifts a leader can give, people struggle with how to say thank you and show appreciation, and they do all these cheesy "attaboy" crappy things. I've asked leaders all the time, I ask audiences all the time, how many of you have ever received a compliment from your boss that insulted you? And half the hands in the room go up. And I say, well, why was their intention to be honoring of you so offensive? They didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know what it took. It felt contrived. Ask for the story. Just simply say to somebody, wow, you must be really proud of achieving that. I'm sure I have no idea what it took. Tell me how you did it. It is one of the most, ask for the story. Watch them light up. Watch them tell you where they struggled. Watch them tell you where they had new insights and breakthroughs. You are now honoring and re-fusing the contribution as the contributor, rather than trying to evaluate the work as if it wasn't part of who they were. It's a place we're behind in a working economy of knowledge. Second thing is, when it's you and I, when your work is advising, when your work is, you're being paid to have an answer as a consultant, you're really prone to not shut your mouth.
- Yes, yes we are.
- And your sense of obsolescence is easily triggered. And your fear of irrelevance is lurking beneath the surface all the time. And your client has a question, or I don't know that I subscribe to the theory that coaches should only ask questions and be Socratic and never have advice. I think clients pay us too much money. They want answers.
- Agreed.
- And sometimes it's, I just need to tell you what the hell to do. Don't ever say that again, say this. But sometimes you have to let the discovery happen, and when to, on that continuum of inquiry and advocacy, where do you fall? Is often a hard balance, but when you know you're indulging your own need for relevance with your words, and you're not aware that you're doing it, you're pissing your clients off.
- Mm, I really first of all, inquiry and advocacy in that scale and where you put that really speaks to me. And I think that is a great way of thinking about it as, I mean, as consultants and coaches, but also as leaders. And it makes me think that inside of organizations that are promoting coaching conversations where they're working towards, whether they're there or not, but they're working towards a culture that is sort of steeped in the structures of coaching, 'cause there are many benefits, I think that's a really important scale to keep in mind, that even not as a formal coach or consultant, but having that in mind, and when you are speaking, to advocate for yourself or out of that fear of relevancy or ego, just to say your piece of it, that that's not serving the person that you're in conversation with, full stop.
- Yeah, well and I, of course, that's Peter Senge's good work, right? I don't get credit for that. It's Peter Senge's brilliance. But I do think that one of the things that's fun to do in a meeting is to sort of, I do a little hashtag thank you, little marks, is to count the number of declarative sentences people speak in, versus the number of questions people ask. And of course there's a correlation to hierarchy. The higher up you are, the more declarative, so what you haven't got is, there's no dialogue. It's just a series of simultaneous monologues, right? And then you watch somebody declares a sentence. Someone gets triggered to say something else. They hijack the conversation with more declarative sentences. There's no response to the declaration I've heard, even in disagreement, because we're gonna avoid conflict. So you just have this series of declarations, and then meeting over, and so pointing out and holding up a mirror to say, I counted 246 declarative sentences, and only nine questions. And the questions were almost always about, could you repeat the question, the statement? It wasn't about why you said it or why you believed it, or it wasn't drawing out the silent person saying you haven't said much. What are your thoughts? It was just this proliferation of your self advocacy of your own point of view, which means your goal is not to learn. Your goal is to win, or your goal is to be right. And why they're wrong, especially if it's a binary conversation, right? So if the contract has devolved into this either/or thing, and during, by the way, to your original question, during crisis, our proclivity toward binary-ism is much stronger. We wanna reduce the number of options down to two, and then fight over which is right. And in a place where our social media is trying to polarize us, where fear and anxiety at unprecedented levels are are polarizing us, binaries become seductively comfortable, 'cause I get to win, and be right. Even if I'm not. And so your ability to put that aside, get more options of a table, ask more questions. Don't just be curious. That's passive. Be fascinated. When someone says something that triggers you and you think is bizarre, be anthropological. Wow, I had never thought of that. Say more, and get them talking more.
- I'm totally gonna steal your hashtags of declarative statements and questions. I'm gonna own that right now. I'm gonna steal that, and I will always credit you with it. But I think that's.
- All yours.
- I think that's brilliant. And what, when you hold up a mirror and you say, listen, I heard 246, which seems like a lot declarative sentences, I believe it just seems like a lot.
- In a two hour meeting. You can get there in 30 minutes. In a two hour meeting, it's probably bigger than that. I stopped counting.
- Which is astonishing, and nine questions. What is the next step of that? If you say, here's the mirror, here's what's happening, then what? So I mean, I have to tie it back to what is it a diagnosis of, right? So if one of your stated goals as the team was to be more cohesive, was to have greater trust, or just be more effective in your governance, together, your governing body. If I tally up the room, it's probably $8,000 an hour to convene you for three hours. Is anybody getting their money's worth here besides you? And if you never met, would anybody care? So you're here to solve problems. You have this agenda. You're here to make decisions. So in the service of that, let's talk about whether or not 247 consecutive declarative sentences from only two thirds of you, silence from three of you, and only six questions, you tell me, how does that qualitatively impact this agenda? You said you were here to solve for a fourth quarter revenue shortfall. There were 27 declarative sentences on how that might happen. None of the ideas got written down. No one built on the ideas. No one actually tried to land them and said, okay, so here's who's gonna do what. No name got assigned. Tell me how filling the room with your voices without disagreement or without much, or you assumed your next declarative sentence, which subtly was the opposite of what the last one was, which means you're not disagreeing, but you never said I disagree with you and here's why, we're supposed to just accept the fact that that one's off the table and yours just trumped it. Was that an assumption you made? How did you feel about that? Did you feel unheard or dismissed because she did that, or how'd that go? We didn't talk about any of that. So you tell me if, this is what happened in the room, and I'm an anthropologist. So this is the only data I have is your agenda, the time you met, and that this many declarative sentences were made, what would that tell me? What would you want me to learn about you from those data points? Let them talk. We don't listen well. Mm hmm, that's true, because many of the declarative sentences were beginning before the last one ended, which means you were just listening to respond, not listening to understand. Many of them happened at the same time, so they were over each other. So you have the sort of upskilled gift of actually cramming your 246 declarative sentences into the time it takes to speak a hundred. So you overachieved. So tell me how do you wanna work on this?
- I would love to be a fly on the wall of so many rooms, having that conversation after you've observed something like that, because I can only imagine that the reactions and how difficult it is for them to, for people in general, not, I mean, I think this is true in a lot of places, but to hear that reflection, especially when it's put back on them in that way. And I think that's the real power in it.
- Well, thank you Céline, and you're welcome to come and watch anyone you want. Most people are relieved. Most people don't get offended, and sometimes I have to call it the leader a little bit, but I've warned them in advance. You know, I'm here to help create teachable moments for you. Sometimes the teachable moment's gonna be you. That's your job. It's each of your remits to this team, one of your remits for each of you is your own learning moment, right? You're here on behalf of the whole group to help them improve. Sometimes that's 'cause of your stupidity. So welcome it. And so sometimes the leaders, when they overspeak or they speak too much, or they interrupt, I'll do the gentle, "let her finish, stop, "let her finish, "please continue," thing. Or if they interrupt four times, I'm gonna say, okay, that's the last time I'm gonna remind you here. Next time I get the duct tape out. Or if I know, for example, a leader, just, they are so verbose. They just can't, I give them poker chips, and the poker chips have the number 30, 60, or 90 on them. And they have a small set of them, and they can play them whenever they're going to speak. It's a 30 second chip, a 60 second chip, or a 90 second chip. They get only two 90 second chips, and at 90 seconds, I turn the sand thing over, and I stop them. So you gotta be really thoughtful about when are you gonna interject? 'Cause every time you open your mouth, and when you're out a poker chips, you're quiet. You cannot speak any more. So it's a very contrived, but forcing mechanism to say, when you're the leader, your voice carries more weight 'cause it just does. Are you judicious and prudent about when you spend that voice? Because if your goal is not to get the voices of everybody else in the room heard and acted upon, you're just teaching them to be dependent on you. They're coming as spectators to observe you be brilliant and have all the answers. And yet, and then guess what? To actually implement all the answers, too. Because you created no sense of ownership in it at all. So they're just coming here to watch you, or they're here to catch up on their email, while nodding their head at you.
- So one of the things that I hear inside of that is that you are very intentional with how you're showing up, but you're also creating intentionality in them and in the room and in the space of how things, whatever you're working towards, how people are showing up, how they're speaking. And I think that there's a lot of, my personal lens is that there's not enough intention that happens in the world right now, and in general, we tend to be reactive. We don't go in with a sense of intention. And so I think that you creating that and showing up that way and encouraging it then allows it to permeate organizations, other teams, and changes that conversation, whatever, changes the way we operate from reaction all the time to mindfulness and thoughtfulness and intentionality. And that's a whole different way of leading through times of crisis.
- And it's, I mean, whether you ever thought it was a luxury or a nice to have, or a sort of a meta skill of the few sages in the world before, that's not the case now. Today it is table stakes. And if you haven't figured out how to self regulate, now you're in trouble because people often confuse self awareness with self absorption, right? Just because you're think about yourself a lot doesn't mean you're self aware. It just means you're self absorbed. Knowing how others experience you and knowing how you intend to be experienced, and knowing when there's a gap between your intent and your impact is, it's the price of entry to the world today in the professional world. And if you're not, especially for those participant behaviors that you think, here's the thing. If there's a behavior that you display that after each time you do it you say to yourself, why do I keep doing that? Well, there's a reason. It's not some random behavior you chose to be destructive. That means there's a root on that behavior that's historical, and whatever techniques you've employed, biting your tongue, snapping a rubber band, whatever it is, to get you to stop are foolish because whatever that narrative is in your head, it has control over your behavior at any point you're triggered, so if you don't know what triggers it or why that triggers it, that woman across the table just became your high school gym teacher and you're ready to jump across the table, right? If you don't know the stories that formed that behavior, you're gonna keep repeating them. Our unwanted behaviors are not random. They are all reflective of issues or moments in our world, and in our stories, we didn't fix. And so whatever that persistent behavior you reach for, verbosity, your temper, your freezing up, your fear, your fear of what other people think of you, your certainty that people in the corner who are whispering or talking about you, whatever those moments are, those are narratives that you're using to make sense of the world, often inaccurately. And so if you don't know the history or the origins of those stories, you will continue to repeat them. And you will infect others with them.
- I think that that is a wonderful place to wrap this up. I think it is a great way to end what we've been talking about. Is there anything that you would like to say that you didn't get a chance to say, or that you want to reemphasize before we get to the end of this?
- Nothing worth repeating, for sure, but certainly I would say, take a breath. These are hard moments. You have to care for yourself. You have to have your oxygen mask on first. You have to care for your mental health, care for your physical health. Let go of your Herculean expectations that you have to bear this alone or on your shoulders, on behalf of anybody, you're doing nobody any favors. Take a breath, care for yourself, embrace your imperfections, because they are an asset, not when they're hidden, but when you expose them, your vulnerability is your greatest strength.
- Yeah, I think that is perfect. I want to thank you for joining me today. I know that you have a an ebook that's available, Designing the Virtual Workplace, I believe is what it's called. And we will have all the links to Ron and his book in the show notes and available on the website. So thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, Ron. I really appreciate it. And it was wonderful to hear your perspective. I know it's going to be super valuable to all the listeners.
- Well, Céline, it was a pleasure. Thanks so much for you, and you take care, and thanks for your good work in the world.
- You as well. Thanks for joining me today on the Leading through Crisis podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review it in your podcast app. And you can always learn more about any of our guests at www.leadingthroughcrisis.com.