In this insightful conversation, executive coach Jerry Colonna joins The Modern Mentor Podcast to explore the transformative power of empathy in leadership. He shares lessons from his work with top executives, his experiences with Startup Podcast, and his perspective on fostering belonging in the workplace.
In this insightful conversation, executive coach Jerry Colonna joins The Modern Mentor Podcast to explore the transformative power of empathy in leadership. He shares lessons from his work with top executives, his experiences with Startup Podcast, and his perspective on fostering belonging in the workplace.
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email us at modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com.
Find Modern Mentor on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or subscribe to the newsletter to get more tips to fuel your professional success.
Modern Mentor is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/modern-mentor-newsletter
https://www.facebook.com/QDTModernMentor
https://twitter.com/QDTModernMentor
https://www.linkedin.com/company/modern-mentor-podcast/
Rachel: Jerry Colonna, Executive Coach extraordinaire. It is an unbelievable pleasure and honor to have you joining me on the Modern Mentor Podcast. Thank you for being here today.
Jerry: Oh, thank you for having me. It's really a delight to be here. What took us so long?
Rachel: That would be me and my fear of reaching out because. I have held you in an esteem that is somewhat indescribable, and it's sometimes, ironically, a lot of what I talk about on this show is, is taking risks and being bold and having confidence, and yet here I am three years later, I'm glad I finally took the leap, but it took me too long.
Jerry: Ah, well, it, it, it sounds like it's a perfect time for us to connect, so let's, let's appreciate that.
Rachel: Absolutely. So Jerry, I will confess, I have been following you now for some time. I think that I first came to know of you years ago when I was listening to, uh, I think it was called the Startup Podcast
Jerry: Oh yeah.
Rachel: And for context for my listeners, this show. It's an excellent podcast, by the way. Um, and it's a great story about Alex Bloomberg starting up his own company.
And at some point on his journey, he takes on a partner and. At a very high level, they, they have some tension. They're, they're not getting along incredibly well, and so they end up sourcing a gentleman named Jerry Colonna, the CEO whisperer, to come in and, and sort of help them through some of their tension and some of their conflict.
And I will confess, as much as I, I strive to not make too many assumptions. Uh, when I heard a little bit about your bio and I was hearing phrases like, you know, he's done venture capital and private equity, he's been with JP Morgan. I had some very clear assumptions about the energy that you were going to bring into the room the minute I heard your voice.
I was astonished because I, I love being proven wrong in, in those sorts of ways. I was waiting for somebody very aggressive, very egoic, very ready to tell everybody the right way to do things, and yet you showed up with this, like this Buddhist, calm about you and I have just never learned so much in a single conversation.
And so thank you for that.
Jerry: Oh, well that's very sweet of you. My wife and my children will tell you that that egoic person can still show up, especially if you don't put the glasses, the dirty glasses in a dishwasher.
Rachel: That is amazing and I appreciate you sharing that. It is good to know that we are all human sometimes. Um, I will also say, I know that your, your claim to fame is that you are the guy who tends to make everybody cry. I would just like to lay out the disclaimer. You've already done that in your book, so there is no need to go out of your way to move me to tears.
I'm gonna do my best to hold it together today. Um, but I just wanted my listeners to have that background and to be ready to be delighted by somebody incredibly wise, but also just calm and thoughtful and you just bring this incredibly loving and, and self-loving approach to the way that you. Coach, and yet you've worked with some of the most, um, impressive and successful corporate executives out there.
And so I'm excited to to tap into your, your stories of genius today.
Jerry: Well, thank you for that. And I just wanna give a shout out to Alex and Matt, who are the, the two co-founders at Gimlet, which was the original company behind, um, startup, the podcast. I adored working with them for years and um, was with them through the sale to PO to Spotify. So yeah, it was, um. It was a delightful experience and one of my favorite episodes, well, two favorite episodes.
One was when, uh, we reviewed with Alex, uh, the result of his 360 degree. I. Uh, performance review. And boy, howdy. Did he crack open,
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: but then he returned the favor because in 2019, after I released, uh, my first book reboot, they had me on a podcast and I think it was called, uh uh, without. Fail. It was a kind of interview one and that son of a gun got me crying and I still, I still remember that to this day. I've probably done 250 podcasts since then, but that's the one that really shook me up.
Rachel: Wow. All right. I'm gonna have to go back and find that. Thank you for, for flagging that for
Jerry: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: So let's go ahead and, and dive in, Jerry. You know, I know. Um. So you're talking, you, you started with a conversation about a 360 review. That is something that happens pretty commonly in the workplace. Um, I've heard you say someplace recently that one of the most common areas of weakness that you see in 360, and I know you, you've run many, many, many of these over the years.
One of the most common areas of weakness, I think I've heard you say is empathy. Um,
Jerry: Yeah.
Rachel: and leaders really struggle to create that, to create that, that feeling and that experience in organizations. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Jerry: Sure. Um, and I actually wrote about this in Reunion, my second book, um. And the reason I brought it up, you know that book is about the subtitle of that book. The subtitle of my first book was Leadership in the Art of Growing Up. The subtitle of the second book Reunion is Leadership and Belonging to Belong.
And the reason I bring that forward is that there is this universal. Desire for belonging. Um, it can show up in our efforts to create a more inclusive workplace, but it also shows up in this desire for, let's put it this way, an empathetic connection, um, that ends up creating, if you remember from reboot, my, uh, assertion is that what we're really all seeking is love.
Safety and belonging and, uh, um, the, the pathway to inclusivity, the pathway to belonging is when those of us who hold power are able to connect vulnerably to our own struggles so that we go beyond sympathy and into this gorgeous connection with empathy. Now you, you asked about the three sixties one.
One of the things that we came to understand, and when I say we, I mean my company reboot, is that, um, what typically happens in organizations is that what we really want is for those who have power to understand what we're going through. So we want understanding, we want sympathy, but what we really want is empathy.
We want to know that that which we are struggling with has actually been experienced by the other person. The problem is, and Brene Brown has done a fabulous job of talking about this. The problem is that we socialize little children. Such that, uh, we teach them to hide the things that they struggle with. And what gets lost in that brittleness is the ability to connect.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: So.
Rachel: And do you, do you see that shifting with the younger generations as they come into the workplace?
Jerry: The socialization, you mean the lack of empathy?
Rachel: The willingness to not hide things that we're struggling with.
Jerry: I'm usually reluctant to make generational, uh, statements. Um, I think that this said, boy, howdy, these last. 15, 16 years have been difficult in this country.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: Um, and so, um, those, for example, who came of age during the pandemic do seem to have a yearning, a deep, deep yearning for something different in their experience.
Uh, but the phenomena of.
Dismembering and disowning our own struggles seems to be back in full force right now. And to me, the clearest signal of that, of course, is the kind of war on empathy. There's war on compassion that we see being promulgated in the country as if it's, you know, the, it's, uh. Archie Brown wrote a, a brilliant book called The Myth of the Strong Leader.
There is this, uh, glorification of authoritarianism that I fear will drive even further, the natural compassion that is a part of being a human being
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: it away.
Rachel: And what, why is it that, do you have a point of view on why. We seem to have this collective default assumption that success in business and empathy and compassion and vulnerability are somehow in conflict with each other or, uh, contrary to each other.
Jerry: I think if there's a universal feeling behind the feeling, if you will.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: um, it's fear. I think that, um, you know, if we think about the language we use when we talk about vulnerability, vulnerability implies a weakness, right? If I say to you that the wall is vulnerable, I.
Rachel: Well, that's fair.
Jerry: Right. It implies a weakness. It means that the wall can fall apart.
Um, and so it's even embedded in our language. It's embedded in our preconceived notions. Um, and it takes a little bit of an extra beat. For those of us to recognize that being true and honest is the way I like to think about it, um, in fact takes more strength, more bravery, more courage than the false front experience.
But there's nothing uniquely challenging about that right now. I think that this is a universal experience. Um, we somehow. In order to get past the wounds of our childhood, we pretend that we weren't wounded in the first place.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: And this pattern repeats itself over and over and over again. And then as I often point out, and then we give that wounded person power and we're surprised.
How much they dismember and disconnect from the very real experience that they're going through. We've socialized that way.
Rachel: So what, what do. Like, what is one shift you wish you could infuse into an organization that would kind of trigger a change in this way? Like where, where would we begin to start to change this pattern?
Jerry: Well, let's start with a simple. Two or three step process. It's a a little bit of a dance. So if I work within an organization or when I work within an organization, if I come in and say, everybody should be authentic and vulnerable, I'm gonna get tossed out on my rear,
Rachel: Right.
Jerry: right? So. That's not what I come in at.
I come in and, and I say oftentimes I'll say, oh, so we have a trust problem within the organization, and people for whatever reason, are perfectly willing to acknowledge that they have trust issues within an organization. And so when I, when that gets surfaced, I'll ask them, well, are you telling each other the truth?
It goes, oh, no, no, no. We don't trust each other.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: And I say, well then how can I trust you if I don't know that you're telling me the truth? And then I do the little juujitsu move. And the juujitsu move is to help people understand that when they're being honest about the things that they're struggling with.
AKA vulnerability, right? Vulnerable or AKA, you know, empathetic And, uh, and that what's happening is they're building trust. So that when the times get difficult, I can look across the table and say, oh, I can trust you. So even when we disagree,
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: I know who you are. I know what your values are. I know that we have a shared commitment to those values, and so we can disagree without it becoming conflict.
Rachel: Yeah. Which I think is a skill broadly that organizations are really struggling with. Right. I think that we. We, the royal, we tend to see conflict as problematic. We consciously or unconsciously tend to try to avoid it. Um. I think that if we better understood conflict and how to engage in it respectfully and effectively, it would actually move us so much further, so much faster.
Um, either avoiding it on one end of the spectrum or using it. To give ourselves permission to be disrespectful or rude or evaluative of people rather than ideas. Either of those two polls really holds us back where I think we need to be somewhere in the middle, right where we, where we see conflict as opportunity to explore and be curious and learn while being respectful.
Jerry: Yeah, you know, the roots of my coaching practice,
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: um, go beyond, go beyond coaching, um, which may make me a little bit of an odd duck when it comes to executive coaching. Um, so classic executive coach training, but it was really based upon, um, my. 35, 40 years in psychoanalysis. So if, whatever it is that you might experience as me being a little bit different, blame the analysts that I have worked with for years and the roots of, of the psychoanalysis that I have, uh.
Dunn, uh, is um, uh, a lineage called modern psychoanalysis developed by a guy named Hyman Botnets. And the reason I bring it up is that one of his insights was that, and this is gonna sound really nerdy psychological for a moment, bear with me. One of the roots of neurosis, he would say is our inability to deal with uncomfortable feelings like aggression.
Rachel: Okay.
Jerry: And you pointed out one of the most common phenomena that we experience, which is conflict avoidance. Now, there's two sides of conflict avoidance. So we typically have a passive side of it where we do whatever we can to push it away until it starts to break. And then what do we do? We then overreact and we have this active aggression.
Going on and we penate between these two states, passive aggressive, active, aggressive, passive, and we watch systems in organizations do this all the time. The real skill is to learn how to deal with anger, frustration, disappointment. Right. And how, and, and, and in the suppression that happens to us as children, not only are we blocking out empathy, we're blocking out our ability to be empathetic with our own selves.
So my anger is bad, or in my family anger was so scary 'cause it might end up in physical violence that I end up being anxious,
Rachel: Right.
Jerry: right? And so there's this persistent anxiety going on because if I actually tell you how I feel. I might explode. I remember I was telling a client this, this morning. I remember laying on the couch in my analyst's, uh, office, staring up at the goddamn ceiling that I stared at for 20 years and, and saying, and she said to me, well, what would happen if you let people know how frustrated you are?
And I said, everybody will die. What a childlike fear.
Rachel: Did you mean that liter when you said that, did you literally mean that in that moment?
Jerry: Fear that I had childhood, right? Which then fed, and I see this in clients all the time, which then fed not only my conflict avoidance. But, uh, led me to try to squelch conflict and disagreement wherever I saw it.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: Just like my clients
Rachel: Do you think it's interesting then that you've ended up in this role again? If I think back to when I was first exposed to you and you were essentially working with Alex and Matt on confronting and addressing their own conflict. Is that Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jerry: I, I interrupted you. Finish the, the
Rachel: No, I was just, I was just curious if you find that, um, like.
The expected outcome or an ironic outcome or, or something else.
Jerry: This is something I say to young coaches all the time. I've been doing this now for 27 years. Um. For to be effective, you have to allow the work to work you.
Rachel: Hmm.
Jerry: You have to actually show up fully and fully present to all that's actually happening for you. There is literally nothing that my clients go through that I have in one form or another, experienced at least tangentially those feelings.
We started off, you started off by asking me about empathy. Okay. When I as a coach, hold the position that I have the answer and let me just tell you what to do, it's actually a non-empathetic stance. Whereas if in that moment I can connect to the exact same feeling you, you talked about fanboying. Okay, well I can connect to that feeling.
I know what it's like to encounter somebody I admire whose work is really wonderful, and so I can use that as a bridge to deepen our connection. Isn't that great?
Rachel: It is. It is, and I think it's something. A lot of us tend not to do, we, we are almost striving to, to separate ourselves and to show up as better or, uh, sort of inoculated against certain feelings.
Jerry: so, so let's stay there for a moment. Rachel. Use an I statement.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: In what way might that have kept you feeling loved? Feeling that you belong and are feeling safe, and I'm presumptuous with my question. I wanna acknowledge that.
Rachel: So, you know, I tell people I took the reins of hosting this podcast in January of 2020. This is a podcast all about how to define workplace success on your terms and how to achieve it. And in under three months, the entire world had flipped upside down. Everything about the workplace had turned upside down and I felt like the whole world was looking to me to help 'em understand how to navigate.
And I'm looking everywhere else. I'm looking up and down and left and right because I don't know. I don't know how to do this right, like Zoom. It's crazy to me that it was only a few years ago, but. Before I started hosting this podcast, we were still dialing into phone calls on a, on a bridge line with a passcode, right?
Yeah. This whole, uh, working, virtually working, um, in a hybrid way, like all of the rules changed and I was in a presumed position of authority. Um, that was, that was part of the, the value that I was here to deliver. And so
Jerry: How did that make you feel?
Rachel: um. It made me question how qualified I was to host the show,
Jerry: Yeah. That little, that little whispery voice comes up and says, who are you?
Rachel: Yep.
Jerry: Who are you to do this?
Rachel: Yeah, absolutely.
Jerry: Right. And so how did you process that?
Rachel: I really did my best to be as vulnerable. As I felt like I could be. So I started taking the approach of being honest in that I don't know all the answers, and I'm not here as a teacher, but I am here as a person who spends my time in this space, and I'm figuring out things as I go, and I'm sharing with you.
Things I'm witnessing and things that I'm learning and things that I'm experimenting with and things that I've gotten wrong. Um, and I felt like I had to reposition myself in that way, um, that I'm expert in that I spend all of my time thinking about this. So, uh, but I don't have all the answers and I'm comfortable.
Being, um, being messy and telling you something I learned last week rather than something, rather than a philosophy that I established 25 years ago, right?
Jerry: So let's imagine, uh, that those who have power, either political power or community power or corporate power, could hold onto their seat just the way you did and could stand there. The world is a really challenging place, and I don't have all the answers, but these are the values that we share, and this is what we believe to be true.
Imagine a world where that was happening. Yeah.
Rachel: I, I would love to.
Jerry: Yeah.
Rachel: You know, it's, it's so interesting, Jerry. What I'm thinking about now is, so I've been doing this work for many years at this point. Early in my career, part of my practice included something that I used to call. Change management, right. Working with companies and, and the question always being, how do we implement a change?
And so much of, of doing that well, as, as I think people used to believe was about, you know, having a clear vision and defining a plan and communicating it in a really clear way and. I, um, a few years ago completely revamped the programming that I run on leading through change. Um, and I now work with leadership teams on leading through change in a way that is completely collaborative with our teams.
That is completely agile, that is not about. Uh, assessing and defining and planning and telling, but about facilitating conversations so that we are always connected with our teams. I think so much just in the context of change. So much of what's hard about it is that people are continuing to feel blindsided because change is keep hitting them out of nowhere.
And what I keep trying to convince leaders of is when we always have an open dialogue with our teams. We avoid that blindsiding 'cause we're all in the same conversation. You as a leader are consistently sharing your perspective and you're curating the ideas and the experiences and the insights of your teams.
And as a result, you are, you're planning in a, in a co-created way. Um. Which means that it's a smarter plan because it's more inclusive. It's capturing insights from every altitude of the organization. It automatically has buy-in because the people you need to implement it helped you build it. Um, to me that makes so much intuitive sense and yet.
So many leaders still wanna know how do I build the plan and how do I build the communication strategy? And I think the world that you described is, is certainly the one I would prefer to see.
Jerry: Um, as you were describing it, I was wondering what it was that stands in the way, and, um, I'm curious to hear from you, what do you think stands in the way? Of the leader or what? Or or to be more specific, what drives the person who holds power to want to have that definitive answer that you were just describing?
Rachel: It's such a good question. We'll give you the answers that come to mind now. I will certainly reflect on it more later, but what comes up for me is a couple things. Number one, it's history. I think we've just been taught explicitly or implicitly that that is the job of the leader, to know things, um, to set the direction and to tell people what to do.
I think that's part of it. I think another part of it is, um, it's just overwhelm. I think leaders, I think doing it the right way, the inclusive way. It, it takes more time, more time present with our teams, more time, not in update meetings and planning meetings, but actual dialogue and conversation meetings.
And I think leaders are struggling to, to prioritize and, and delegate and create the time for the conversations that are the most important. Those are the two big ones that come up for me right now.
Jerry: I would agree and I would build upon that. Um,
in my worldview, you may, you, you made reference to the ability to connect with the team. As a core component. And I think, and this goes back to even our discussion about empathy to me, what, what stands in the way of our ability to connect with the team? What stands in the way of our ability to say, I don't necessarily have the answers, but I believe in our ability to together to arrive at the answers is a kind of fundamental bravery.
That stems from connectedness to self.
Rachel: Hmm.
Jerry: See, um, in reboot, I talked a lot about this concept of radical self-inquiry,
Rachel: Yes.
Jerry: That's like my coin of the realm phrase, right? And the question that's most dominant is, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want in reunion. I build upon that and that question with how have I been complicit in and benefited from a world I say I don't want to see.
So it extends beyond the self and into the world at large, and what is it that I would be willing to give up? That I love in order to see that world come to pass. Now, behind both of those questions is a really, really important skillset, which is the ability to understand oneself. I can't tell you the number of times I will ask a client, they'll come with some perplexing problem.
I don't know what to do, Jerry. And then I asked a really disruptive question. Well, what would you like to do? Oh, I don't know. Well, isn't it interesting that we're disconnected from self and we don't know what we would like? We don't know what we value. We don't know what we would love because in addition to being socialized that we have to have the answer. we're gonna be, I don't know, tossed out of the tribe. Right? Lose power, lose status. In addition to that, we're also socialized to devalue. A connection to self that somehow it's narcissistic or self-indulgent to be able to express our own needs, to be even in touch with our own needs. And yet, I think the basis of empathy is a self-awareness.
I mean, uh, I, I think, uh, Richie, um, uh. Goldman, I think if I'm remembering his name, who coined the term emotional intelligence, would agree that self-awareness is a core component of empathy. Um, self-awareness and not self-aggrandizement,
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: right? Um, and so this is counterintuitive, but self-awareness becomes a core stepping stone to effective leadership.
Rachel: I couldn't agree more.
Jerry: If we see what ails us, it's the imposition of a false self. It's, I'm gonna lead this way because this is what I believe leaders should be, versus, oh wait, uh, this is what I'm struggling with. This is where I don't know the answer. This is where I might turn to somebody whose down power for me and say, what do you think?
Creating more inclusivity, creating more belonging, creating more safety, creating more love within an organization.
Rachel: So I would love to follow that thread, Jerry, 'cause I think that that's a beautiful. That is a beautiful idea. Um, and I know right now in particular, we're in a season where experiences of disconnection and loneliness and not belonging are kind of off the charts in the workplace for, for a whole variety of reasons.
And I'm curious, how do you see some of what you are talking about in terms of self-inquiry and understanding ourselves? How can. How can each of us be making our own contribution to improving the collective experience around connection and belonging at work?
Jerry: Well, let's acknowledge first of all the truth of what you just said, which is, you know, how challenged all of that is. Um, and if you'll bear with me, I'd like to read a quote
Rachel: Yes.
Jerry: and. Fortunately, I'm not so narcissistic that I'm gonna quote myself, but, but I am reaching for my book and this is the Epigraph to Reunion.
And this is a quote from Frederick Biner,
Rachel: Okay.
Jerry: who is of course a theologian and brilliant, uh, writer. And in the book, uh, the Longing for Home, he wrote. Their lies longing to know and be known by another fully and humanly. And that beneath that their lies longing closer to the heart of the matter still, which is the longing to be at long last where you fully belong.
Oh, right. So. What you're identifying Rachel, is the degree to which that is challenged. You know, as I am want to say, somewhat dramatically, babies are shooting babies. That's kind of where we are.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: And, and care for other human beings is being denied either because who or how they love or who and how they identify.
Um. blithely toss away food aid, right? So we're in a challenging time and your question is, how shall we hold ourselves? And just like the basis of empathy is self-awareness and just like the basis, the foundational component is strong leadership. Real leadership is radical self-inquiry. Why do I do what I do? The root of our response to such a challenged word world is to do our own work. It's our work. What we see in the world at large is a symptom. It's not the cause. We see in the world at large is that we have been disconnected from the things that define us as human beings. And, and I'll, I'll, I'll bring another quote again, not narcissistic, not quoting myself. Um. And this is, uh, from the Talmud, and this is the, the epigraph for the chapter in reunion called The Longing to Belong. And, uh,
I wanna read it because even though I can remember it, I want to get it just perfectly right. And in this quote, rabbi Tarran, who is one of the great telmo leaders wrote. It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. Now, what's powerful about that is that there's an implication that there's work is never done, that there's a practice to leadership.
There's a practice just as there's a practice to growing up. Which is to really stay connected, not narcissistically, to stay connected with our fears, our woundedness, all of the things that both, uh, shape us and are the basis of our empathy and that. It is not, we are not at liberty to ignore that work because when we ignore that work, we give rise to the shadow.
We give rise to, to the symptoms that we see, to the, to the demons that walk the earth right now that would have one group of people try to kill another group of people. Because that's what we're living in right now in an extreme way. And so yes, we stand up for what values are we stand up for what's right. Those of us who hold power have a responsibility to acknowledge this, but we also and always and forever have a responsibility to do our own work. So that we don't contribute to the pain and suffering of the world.
Rachel: So what does that look like for you? I mean, for somebody who's listening and they're bought in and they're actually wondering whether or not they're already doing the work. What does the work look like? How do we start?
Jerry: Well, I have two books you can read. No, just kidding. Listen to this podcast. Uh.
Rachel: is that?
Jerry: I think, you know, there's a, there's a, I'm famous for that question. How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? And what I often point out is the point of that question is not to induce guilt. It's not to devolve into a kind of weird deflection from actually doing the work by saying, what a miserable wretch I am. So what does it look like? It looks like holding onto curiosity. It looks like approaching everything to the greatest degree possible with wonder and non-judgment and with compassion and empathy for oneself to be able to say, oh, I'm afraid to speak up, or on behalf of say, a friend. I'm afraid, and there are reasons why I'm afraid, and so I'm gonna connect with that fear, and then I'm gonna do the brave thing. Anyway, that little maneuver, that's an expression of being a grownup. I. So what does it look like? It looks like, as my Buddhist teacher, Pema chore would say, it looks like sitting as a mountain in the midst of a hurricane.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jerry: It's holding on to that which is most important, and speaking from that place.
Rachel: And I sense that you are talking about. Broadly and our experience of it. Uh, that's certainly what I'm taking from what you're saying. And if I, if I intentionally take it into the context of the workplace, what comes up for me is just the overall. Pace and intensity at which everybody is running. Um, the thing that is the hardest for people to do right now, so it seems, is to be still, and to take a step back and to watch, just to watch for a minute what's happening and just to, to question themselves, their colleagues, their teammates, you know, how much of this matters, how much of this.
Is impactful, how much of this is actually contributing to the problem, and where do we have an opportunity to maybe crack or interrupt patterns that aren't? Serving us. The name of of my business is called Lead Above Noise. Um, and I named it that, I started it 10 years ago and I named it that because I, I really do believe that is the hardest thing for a leader to do, to just take that PO.
A leader or anybody frankly. But to take that step back and just scan, um, and be thoughtful and be intentional because there is so much coming at us constantly and it's, it's. Said than done. For sure.
Jerry: Yeah. To paraphrase Blaze, Pascal. Who said, um, all of our problems stem from our inability to sit still alone in a room. Um, and it's as simplistic as that is, there's so much wisdom and truth in that. You know, about a year ago I was visiting with my dear friend, Parker Palmer, and we were talking about the state of the world and.
You know, Parker wrote the forward to reunion and, uh, uh, so we, we grew very, very close during that process. And, uh, we were sitting on his back porch and we're talking about how to be, 'cause that's what Newarks like us do. And, uh, I said something to him, which I then subsequently printed out and stuck on my computer at home, which was that what matters is what matters. And, um, I think that when we lead above the noise, when we sit still, when we slow down, we get in touch not only with ourselves, but with what really matters. And in a lovely, virtuous cycle, when we stay connected with what really matters. We then become more like that mountain in the midst of a hurricane. And um, you're right, there's a violence in the motion. There's a violence in the noise, there's a violence in chasing the answer, if you will. Um, there's a violence to self, um, but. If we can slow down and ask ourselves what matters, does it matter that a third of the population in the United States is below the poverty line?
I'm making that number up. I don't know what the number is. Does it matter that 20% of the population get some form of government assistance? That is a statistic I do know is true. Yeah, that matters. And what do I wanna do about that? And what is my responsibility as a business leader
Rachel: Yeah.
Jerry: to create the conditions where, what matters is what we focus on.
Rachel: Yes, Jerry, this has been. Game changer of a conversation for me. Um, I, I'm so grateful again, and I wanna be really respectful of your time. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you feel called to share with listeners?
Jerry: Who's gonna win the World Series? No, just kidding.
Rachel: Oh.
Jerry: It's the Yankees, by the way. No, no, I, I, you know what I would offer, not so much as a responsive question. Um, one of the things I've been trying to do lately is find the joy as much as I can. So if I've made a few jokes, it's mostly coming from a place of wanting to find the joy.
Um, you know, there's a joy in having meaningful conversations. There's a joy in the world at large. Don't let the joy go out.
Rachel: That is the most beautiful and perfect call to action. And if people take one thing away from this conversation, I hope it's that I think we all deserve more of it. I think we all need more of it, and I thank you for, for bringing this joy into my day. What a pleasure.
Jerry: Oh, well, thank you. I guess it was worth the wait, huh?
Rachel: Me. Absolutely. Um, I will just say quickly for listeners who are intrigued and wanna learn more, I'm just gonna warn you, there is a, a musician, artist person with the same name, same spelling, and if you Google Jerry Kelowna and you see a picture of a fellow with a big mustache, scroll to the next.
Jerry: So that, that was Bob Hope's sidekick. Jerry Colonna. Dr. Colonna. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up with, in the shadow of him, he passed in 1988, I think. Uh, but yes, yes. I'm not the guy with the big mustache.
Rachel: Jerry Colonna, again, thank you so much for being with me today. It's been a pleasure and an honor, and I wish you a lot of joy in the rest of your day.
Jerry: Amen. Thank you for having me.