Learnings and Missteps
The Learnings and Missteps Podcast is about unconventional roads to success and the life lessons learned along the way.
You will find a library of interviews packed with actionable take aways that you can apply as you progress on your career path.
Through these interviews you will learn about the buttons you can push to be a better leader, launch a business, and build your influence.
Find yourself in their stories and know that your path is still ahead of you.
Learnings and Missteps
Nate Rogers on Empathy and Strategy: A New Vision for Leadership Success
Imagine discovering that the very aspects of your personality you've been told to suppress could actually be your greatest strength. Nate Rogers, founder of Four Eyes Facilitation, joins us to unpack his journey of embracing empathy as a leadership tool. Through his candid insights, Nate challenges the societal norms that often pressure men to mask their emotions and shares how authenticity and empathy can transform team dynamics and leadership effectiveness. This episode isn't just about listening; it's about understanding the unspoken and recognizing the power of being true to oneself.
We've all heard that introspection is key, but what does it actually look like in practice? This episode gives a special nod to Renee Duron, who witnessed firsthand the power of effective planning in Jesse's time management workshop. From leading a transformation team at Ohio Health to embarking on a reflective sabbatical, our discussion underscores the importance of knowing one's intrinsic strengths beyond job titles. The conversation navigates the balance between stepping back to let others shine and the often intangible impact a coach can have on a team's success.
Get ready to rethink everything you know about leadership, feedback, and systems-building. We explore the parallels between the fast-paced precision of a pit crew and everyday business processes, revealing how optimizing systems can unlock hidden potential. Nate Rogers sheds light on how his organization, Four Eyes Facilitation, helps teams achieve clarity and joy through strategic visioning. By the end of this episode, you'll gain insights into the energy dynamics of public speaking and the invaluable role of personalized strategies for individuals with unique traits, leaving you inspired to embrace both your strengths and challenges.
Connect with Nate at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-j-rogers/
https://www.foureyesfacilitation.com/
Make yourself a priority and get more done: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
I think it costs like hundreds of millions, a few hundred million dollars to build. Now what's crazy is we know what that supercomputer does because we humans put the software on. We don't know our software. Validation from others is a drug. Like you get it and you're like yes, I feel great. And then 30 seconds later the drug wears off and you're like somebody tell me I'm amazing again. I watch a few things about other people who succeed in business with ADHD, which I have, and they're like this is how I get through task X. And it's often something that you'd never get coached to do in typical leadership training.
Speaker 2:What is going on L&M family. We're going to have a super awesome conversation. It's like a part two to a conversation that you're not going to get to hear. But Mr Nate Rogers and I kicked this off. I don't know, it's probably been a month or so ago. I was fortunate enough that Megan introduced us and made the connection. We had a conversation. I was like bro, we need to get you on the podcast.
Speaker 2:He's got tons of energy, tons of insight. He is the founder of Four Eyes Facilitation, which I love the name. He's got massive, massive experience in retail and healthcare at the executive level, and I think what you're going to learn is we have the same I'll just call it vice in terms of experimenting, learning, growing and serving others, and so y'all are going to get to know Mr Nate here in a second. If this is your first time here, I'm Jesse, your selfish servant, and this is the Learnings and Mystics podcast, where you get to see how real people just like you are sharing their gifts and talents to leave this world better than they found it, and we are about to learn how Mr Nate is going to do that right now. Mr Nate, how are you, my man? I'm good, jesse, thanks so much for having me, yeah likewise, I'm good, jesse.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise. So I got a simple question you ready, yep? What is empathetic facilitation?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a simple question. It's a little trickier to answer, but I'll hit it up. So actually, when I was a kid, I called this ability called empathy, sensitivity, and so stuff happened on the playground and I'd freak out. My buddies would say, like don't be so sensitive. And eventually, especially as I progressed through my career, I learned that it was actually my EQ, or my ability to empathize with others, and when you read it in the dictionary you're like, oh so this dude can feel other people's feelings and so he's in tune with them.
Speaker 1:Sweet Like it sounds, like we're all going to go out in the woods and have granola and have a nice time. But when it comes to the business world and facilitation, what it actually means is in the room. When I'm helping a group of leaders be their best, I'm reading them. Just because of some of my natural talents, I'm seeing that little tick in somebody's face that says I'm not sure I agree with what that other individual just said, and so it helps me. I'm not sure I agree with what that other individual just said, and so it helps me as I'm helping those leaders know when it's time to pause to say I need you to respond, charlie, to Sally, because she just had something to share and I watched your face. There's something going on. Sometimes it's tone of voice, sometimes it's body language, and it's all learnable For me, I guess.
Speaker 1:I was fortunate enough to be that sensitive kid and so it's a little ingrained in how I operate. In a nutshell, it's just the practice of facilitating people to do more than they ever could before by paying attention to how they're feeling. Yes, like all superpowers, when I was a kid I thought it was a super weakness. It's different in different cultures, right, but at least when I was younger, we were still in the era of hiding your emotions and being more on the macho side, especially as a male. So, being that kid that blushed easily or, in certain circumstances, would even cry, culturally or socially, it felt like a weakness, and people would even explicitly say that to me, right, and so I worked a lot to suppress it. So not to interrupt you, but yeah, it's definitely super strength, but didn't know it for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:For my fellow empaths. You know exactly how exhausting this is, because people look at you sideways so you try to mask it and naturally I'm like man. I got to ask Nate about this thing, really wanted to know how his energy is impacted, and this is what he responded.
Speaker 1:Exhausting, dude. I mean, it just takes a lot of energy to not be you and I feel like we've all been there before, right, and so it's tiring, it's disheartening when you shape yourself more than you should in order to respond to the world around you and makes you wonder like, okay, these people who are close to me, are they really close to me? Me or the version of me I've chose to put out because I think that's what others want to see and frankly, especially as I get older, I think we all do that. I think I spent a lot of time when I was younger thinking I was the only one, but that's just the conversation none of us have with each other, right? It's like there's the version of me I put out there and I think anyone could say a similar story. They just may have different characteristics that they're either shaping or molding to fit in differently.
Speaker 2:Different characteristics that really really stood out to me. It made me curious if he knew that this empathy thing was a strength and that it would lead to the life he's living today. So let's see what he says.
Speaker 1:Throughout my career, at like every step where most folks would say, okay, that's progress or you know, a step towards or a step into success, I've relied honestly on those around me to tell me A that I'm doing well, instead of it just coming from me like saying, oh, I know, I'm crushing it right now.
Speaker 1:But then I think also I haven't always known why I've been successful.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting, I think the more leadership groups I become a part of and the more businesses I become exposed to I think that's a common trait we tend to be better at knowing when we weren't successful and we pick that apart and we know why. But when you are finally sitting on top of the mountain, not everyone, and certainly not myself, can say I know exactly why I got here. I think there's certain personality types that are very linear thinkers and they know the path and they're like yeah, I got on top of the mountain because I chose to deprive myself of oxygen the same way it was going to be when I was on top of the mountain by doing X, y, z and carrying rocks on my back through the park. But that's not most of us. Most of us are sort of like well, there's a million variables going on around me and somehow right now I'm successful, and so I had no idea until, honestly, very recently probably the last four or five years I've been really unpacking it and finally understanding more.
Speaker 2:Are you wondering the same thing? I'm wondering. I was thinking like, okay, so when exactly did you have the aha moment about this magic ability? And of course I asked that's a good question.
Speaker 1:I don't know that it was necessarily a single aha, but it was right around.
Speaker 2:But before that we're going to do the L&M family member shout out, and this one goes to Renee. Renee Duron says I'm so glad I signed up for Jesse's do the damn thing time management workshop. It completely shifted how I'm so glad I signed up for Jesse's Do the Damn Thing time management workshop. It completely shifted how I'm going to handle my time and ideas moving forward. One of the biggest takeaways for me was learning the art of monthly and quarterly planning, specifically to manage my squirrels. Rene, thank you. And Rene gets an extra, extra shout out because he's also the editor of the L&M podcast and so I'm going to make him blush a little bit.
Speaker 2:But he and 14 other people hung out on the time management workshop. I was worried that it was going to kind of be roll your eye, boring type stuff, but a lot of people got a lot of value out of it and we're going to be doing them again in the future. And folks out there, you're listening. You got to know I love the comments, I love the shares, I love the stars, the thumbs up, the thumbs down. Please hit me up with your comments so that I can celebrate you in the future.
Speaker 1:When I pivoted into a role leading a transformation team at Ohio Health, which is a pretty large 30,000 employee healthcare system in Central Ohio, and it was probably the most purposeful time where I was trying to get others to innovate and stepping back myself. So I was more creating the problems to solve and the environment for success and coaching people. But I had to pull away. Usually until that point I was successful a lot, I felt like because I was bringing a fresh perspective or the thinking or the work product I created. I've been leading people for 10, 15 years before that, but this was the time where I really got out of the work and into helping others thrive in the most meaningful way I ever had and that made me start to say, well, all right, if I'm going to help somebody else. Or in this case, it was like I had six directors reporting to me that ran these transformation projects. I was like when we get those six directors to thrive doing the thing that the business has found valuable from me, I need to learn what the heck it is that works and doesn't work right.
Speaker 1:I'm sure a lot of people who've had one moment or another where they've been successful someone said to them. Man, it'd be great if we just had a few more Jessys here. And so this was like literal moment of Nate. Go help us have six more Nates and innovate and transform the way we deliver care to our patients. It's like sweet, that sounds awesome. Who the hell is Nate? You know what I mean? It's like those outside observe you all the time and you're busy watching them and observing them. So I think that was probably the biggest trigger, and then it's been kind of progressive since then, because I mean, when you talked about peeling the onion, it's like once you start picking, it's hard to stop.
Speaker 2:I know that introspection is like super, ultra, ultimate, valuable, and I also know guiding teams effectively takes massive introspection Like for me as an individual and Nate's like no scrub. He's got it going on, so I wanted to really get a sense of how he goes about looking inward and what value he gets out of that.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think that's right, and I think helping coach people through and observe them at work doing the things that historically I'd done well, frankly, it was the most fantastic experiment I could have ever asked for. Right, because it was like I got to watch these folks try the systems I was building for them and the processes and trying to articulate a lot of things that were a bit more on the intuitive side for me prior, and so I'd watch and I'd be like you know what that person rocks the process in a session where they're trying to get people to come up with novel ideas to solve a problem. But they didn't really connect with the people in the room and so the people in the room tuned out Cool. Now we've got to iterate and figure out, and it was like again this whole time. I think I had that role for four years and I think a lot of that time I spent thinking about what those on my team could do in different ways to excel and get better and better and better.
Speaker 1:I don't know that I really really processed it about myself until this sabbatical I took that you and I discussed like just this spring into summer, because then it's like it was about four months that I had off, which I felt so fortunate and grateful to be able to do that. And when it's quiet and you're not creating and you're not managing, it doesn't have to be four months, right. But you start looking inward more and suddenly I was like hang on, a second man. I've been coaching people to do these things and I think we talked about this the first time we met. The past made sense to me like all of a sudden, and I've had a couple of those moments, but this sabbatical I took definitely triggered one, because I was like man, I can think way, way, way, way, way, way back to when I was in year one, two, three, four of my career.
Speaker 1:Although my job titles had nothing to do necessarily with what I do now, I was doing this thing where I got groups of people together. I was the glue, I was helping them thrive in ways that either they were self-conscious about or didn't know about. It was like that's what I've always done. But the wrapper around all my stuff was whatever you know, like manager of internet marketing or director of marketing strategy. Those titles became my thought and my identity. But that's not in those jobs how I was successful, right?
Speaker 2:So one of the things about coaching and facilitating teams, like as the facilitator, it's kind of difficult to know if you did a good job. Now, of course, you deliver value right, but did I deliver on the little nuance, magical things that I really, really want to do, Like did I leave a seed in somebody's mind that's going to grow into something greater in the future is really what I'm looking for. And so, like, the affirmation of did I have an effect as a facilitator is difficult because you're not there. You know a week later, a month later, a year later, and so I wanted to know, like, how Nate dealt with this affirmation thing and maybe resilience of working through with or without it, and he gave a pretty, pretty insightful answer that I wonder if this lands with you.
Speaker 1:I think you know some of that too is just me slowly but surely gaining more confidence and not worrying about if someone else doesn't tell me I did a good job. Then I don't know where I fit in the universe. The more I've become comfortable with recognizing both where I'm not strong but where I am, that has helped me process it more, because I think man, for me at least, validation from others is a drug. Like you get it and you're like, yes, I feel great. And then 30 seconds later the drug wears off and you're like somebody tell me I'm amazing again.
Speaker 1:Right, I just dug up a buddy of mine in high school who I just kind of reconnected with on LinkedIn. We both like Calvin and Hobbes, we were kids a comic and he wrote the creator of it, bill Watterson, and it was like my birthday was coming up and he's like my buddy's birthday is coming up and he super loves Calvin and Hobbes. I don't know, I never saw the letter my friend sent, but I did get back two big pieces of art from Bill Watterson sent in with a form letter, and the one that I just pulled up in my basement literally this weekend. The first panel up in the top left is like congratulations, calvin, you got an A. And that's his teacher talking to him and then most of the big panel is like giant ticker tape parade, like Calvin gets an A, blah, blah, blah and there's like streamers and all this stuff and then the bottom right corner, the end of the comics, like the teacher's saying, okay, moving on to the next topic, and I'm like that's life, dude. Like the way Calvin felt, like dude, I got an A especially. I mean, at least I'm assuming based on his character, he didn't get a whole lot of A's.
Speaker 1:You feel like you're top of the world when somebody else pats you on the head and then they're like moving on, but you get hooked right. You're like how will I get somebody to make me feel that way again? And I think some others, as I observe them, are far better than I am at doing that for themselves, which I think is really healthy. But man, I got super addicted to that.
Speaker 1:I wish I'd been aware of in my 20s. I mean it makes all the sense in the world. It's like. I mean it's funny, like a lot of the things that are key to success and really click for you seem like kind of common sense and what you just said is like duh. If I want to mow my lawn, I have a system of how to get my lawn mowed and that makes total sense. But we don't always do that for our own path and for our own well-being and enjoyment and for those around us. So, yeah, it makes sense, and I have no idea why don't we learn that in kindergarten? Man, that seems like such an important skill.
Speaker 2:Speaking of being in our twenties, nate's story got me reminiscing about the very first time I documented my system for influencing others. Like don't get carried away, it's not super fancy. I found it in a journal that I had written back like when I was in fourth grade. I found it in a journal that I had written back like when I was in fourth grade and it was a story about how I would get girls to chase me by pulling their hair. And I think that falls squarely in the bucket of influence and me being aware of what that system looked like.
Speaker 1:And Nate gives us a little bit of insight into how he thinks of systems in the work that he does. I did have systems, probably, and didn't. I wasn't just as intentional about them. It's sort of like you got a behavior plan, whether you, whether you think you do or not right now. Is it a good one? But zero effort or thought into it's probably, unless you're lucky, not so great and honestly, it's a little bit of a journey.
Speaker 1:I've been on the last couple of years where I've started to create a documented system out of the things that were successful for me this year. That's this new business Four Eyes is all about and it's interesting because it's been a challenge. It's only been a real thing since Labor Day of 24 here, but suddenly having to put on paper these are the tools that I'm going to repetitively use to achieve result X for others, it's a lot of work, man. I mean your process that you you know, resulting in getting chased by girls, was straightforward, like in the business world, with tons of humans surrounding you on top of the business problems. Not so straightforward, right, that's been. Actually the most interesting part for me is trying to I think you put it really well document maybe that system that I use, which is fun. It's hard because it's my system. I'd be great at documenting your system.
Speaker 2:More systems talk. Can you tell that I like systems. Documenting your system is a pain, but you want to know what's harder? It's identifying the things that people appreciate about you, that you're not like doing by design those intangible things. That's something that like is ultra, ultra valuable to me, because, sure, you know, there's some things that I do here's my plan, here's my process and and it works and it conveys the information and I do those by design. But there's a lot of things that I do that people appreciate or want more of or really like that I'm not necessarily doing on purpose and I don't know what it is. And the only way that I figured out how to learn it is by asking, like, super, super precise questions, and I was wondering how Nate does this for himself. So check it out.
Speaker 1:Well, no, I think there are two parts to what you just hit on, jesse. The first is having others who I would coach required me to like figure out my process. But yes, I was fortunate in that same team we were talking about earlier, that transformation team that you know. The rest of my team gave me feedback too, and that was awesome because, to your point, there's stuff that you don't you don't see in yourself, and sometimes that's the most simple, obvious stuff, and you need somebody external. At the end of the day, I think that's a simple, simple, obvious stuff and you need somebody external. At the end of the day, I think that's a simple process.
Speaker 1:Objectively, it's harder to get into a habit, right, but it's like when you do something that feels important, afterwards just ask and I think sometimes so they're like these phrases that you get taught in different training seminars. It's like this is how you request feedback or this is how you give whatever works for you. Man, like I literally like I'll get to the end of something that I believe is important and I need to replicate. That's an important part. If it's one and done, important and never gonna happen again in your life, maybe not the best time to like invest everybody's energy, but something that's important and I wanna replicate or improve upon. But something that's important and I want to replicate or improve upon, how'd that work for you guys? Because I want to know and then sometimes people get stuck.
Speaker 1:There's a technique that, when I was learning about how to run product teams and not like the technology space, so like product originally came from the. You know the way technology companies referred to their software. They sold. But you can use it in all kinds of spaces, right, like your product. I'm a product, like a service we sell could be a product. And one of the organizations who I've learned a lot across my career by, like, hiring great people as consultants and then watching how they work and then trying my best to replicate the things that work the best. Well, this company called Pillar Technologies no longer around they got acquired by Accenture but they taught me the retro, which, again, super basic, right, if you're not getting what you need with, how'd that work for all of you? It's as simple as what works well. So those are the pluses.
Speaker 1:What would you change for next time? And they're little deltas, right, like the little triangle, and then, if you really want to, you have a team that meets over and over again, like in the product world. You actually say cool, what are some of the commitments and who's going to own them? To achieve difference? Right, but at a minimum, just that.
Speaker 1:How about we talk about the good and the not so good? It gets people going right Because one person will say something good and it gives the whole room permission then to give you constructive criticism. But they're waiting. No one wants to be the first one to be like you talk too much. But when someone says you know what, I love the amount of information you provide, that was really cool. Someone else can easily then jump in and say but I wish you opened the floor up a little bit more. So I think that's a nice cheat code. If the room isn't familiar with straight up, how'd that work for you? And they start gushing. Asking a group like that for feedback is like asking your spouse to schedule a touch base. It's like buzzword overdose, right? Nobody wants to talk like that to each other, right? We all want to enjoy each other as humans and, yes, conceptually it is feedback. But I'm with you, man.
Speaker 2:So I was like totally jiving with Nate's perspective on leadership because I could see like just in the way he speaks he practices leadership in the way I most appreciate it. And so I was like, you know, I wonder what he thinks about academic or leadership as defined in the world of academia. And he did not disappoint. Check it out.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a cool question. Well, it's funny. You mentioned so this conventional leadership tactics thing. There are billions of people on the planet, right, and so you can research, sure, objectively, and say like this is what seems to work in general for leaderships, and so we're calling this the leadership system. So go rock it, dude. Well, there are people that's going to work really well for and there are people that it's not going to do anything but backfire on, and there are definitely behaviors that I've been coached to adapt or adopt, and some of them I'm like man, what great advice that was, because it works really well for me and others I'm like I never want to do that again, not because it might be the best thing in the world for you, jesse, but for me, in the way I show up, it looks really obvious you're wearing a mask sometimes when you pull on one of those behaviors and everyone's like who's that guy? We don't need a performer, right? We need a teammate or a boss or whatever it is so far.
Speaker 2:Nate's kind of becoming my BFF, just his insight, the way he thinks about things. So I said you know what? Let me hit him with the curve ball. Let's see how he thinks about social media and if there is or isn't an opportunity, or if it's a resource to like build knowledge, learn and acquire skills through.
Speaker 1:I agree with that and I think so. There's a lot of stuff that I think could be a whole lot cooler about social media, but one of the things I do like about it is you can find these little like micro populations of people that share characteristics, right, and then the algorithm keeps giving you more and more and more. So I have found that, in order to figure out what to keep, what to throw away, what to try, I've been finding a lot of luck in, you know, even on just like Instagram. It's like I watch a few things about other people who succeed in business with ADHD, which I have, and they're like this is how I get through task X, and it's often something that you'd never get coached to do in typical leadership training, but I'll try it. And sometimes it's like, well, that randomly happened to work for that person, whatever, but more often than not, because the ADHD brain sets have some similar characteristics, I'm like, oh, that tip works for me. And similarly it's like, as I find other people who kind of self-identify as an empath, who can understand what others are feeling intuitively, this is how I handle this situation.
Speaker 1:I'm like that I like. But a leader who has a totally different makeup? Is that linear thinker, maybe more of a command and control style of leadership? None of those things are going to work for that person and, frankly, none of their things are going to work for me, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't respect them and understand that. You know this can be useful for them. For me, like whether it actually looks great or not, it doesn't really matter, but like there's a lot of shirts that you just don't feel right in, right Y'all already know I love zigzagging around, I ask a bunch of questions.
Speaker 2:Nate was handing it like a champ, and so I needed to bring us back to like the real human, like inside, internal experience of being in front of the room all the time, because if you haven't done it, rather a lot of it's supposed to be like. The number one fear of all people is public speaking. And then there's wackos like me and Nate that do it for a living and there is an exchange of energy. Sure, when I'm up out there, I'm giving it all and I'm happy and I'm trying to pump up the positivity and forward thinking and all that good stuff, but I'm also receiving energy and it can get heavy at times. So I wanted to get Nate's perspective and you're going to want to get your notepad out for this especially for his insight on dealing with situations that seem to be cursed with the black magic. And if you're in construction, you already know you've been in those job trailers and it's like man, there's some brujeria in here, there's some bad juju, and here's what he's got to say about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the honest answer is, even though I like test as an extrovert, which in theory means I rebuild my energy by being around others when I've had to do a lot of you know human work, where I'm facilitating others, or I mean really empaths, like feel others' emotions, which is really weird sounding right, but thank goodness for Guardians of the Galaxy they have that like that character with wacky antennae. He's like an empath. I'm like okay, now people understand, but like it's exhausting eventually because some people bring big, big feelings, especially if they're anger or grief or just pure sadness that someone's bringing to the table, and you feel your little bit of that Not all of it, right, but you feel your share. I don't use the extrovert recharge path for that. The honest answer is I just crush some Netflix in a dark room by myself. Sometimes I have my dog with me and we just chill. But I need that downtime to recover from it because, even though it is my nature dude, it's a lot, I think.
Speaker 1:Until I realized the strengths and what I thought were weaknesses, I became a master at running away from the weaknesses and putting on facade. So I used to get and I still do, because this is a strength I like to be able to use in some situations. But I'll get feedback of man when the room is going crazy, you just have total poker face like really calm and especially kind of middle of my career when I was successful. They're like you can't be rattled man, that's one of your strengths, like unflappable, and I'm like, yeah, you have no idea, but I mastered my facial expressions and how I carried myself and some of my body language, and so this, for me it was this, and I am a casual, relaxed kind of person. But I amplified that to be like I'm unflappable and none of this hits me, and so I truly just built this other persona to manage it for a long time. But what I didn't realize was it still builds up in you. It doesn't matter what I put out to others. The piece of me that reacts, the way I react, is still happening, and so I was still raking in all their feelings. And then I was like super chill dude.
Speaker 1:And so the boomerang part is well, when I started realizing that was actually making me less effective, I was like turning myself into the corporate robot. I was like this is how I'm supposed to behave. I went to all the leadership seminars you were talking about. Then I was like, uh-oh, well, I went too far, right, how do I shed some of that? And honestly, I screwed that up a ton, man, I would try to shed some of those things. And people would be like, why were you such a baby in that meeting? And I'm like, well, because, dude, I'm trying to like take off all these masks, right, it's unfamiliar territory to kind of get back to you and now I think the boomerangs come full circle.
Speaker 1:I think my biggest tool to answer your question is to just put it out there. I'm feeling some underlying anger in this room right now. Fall it out, because otherwise what I used to do is I took everybody else's anger and I got all stressed out and I mean transparently, man, it turns into like digestive issues, like pain in your gut and other things. It's like when I just say I'm sensing some like anger in this room that's not been expressed, I actually just like let all that out back to the group, and so I'm not the only one holding the anger that I've been feeling from the room. I gave it back to him. I'm like what are we going to do about it? And that has helped me a ton I'm going to nerd out for just a second here, right?
Speaker 1:So when I was in, so I worked in healthcare for about a decade and one of the things I learned was, of all the different specialties, neuroscience has kind of the least certainty of what drives what, like our own minds, which is, you know, in our brains. That's where, like emotions get formed, thoughts that trigger behaviors, all kinds of other stuff. It's the least understood discipline. And then what's crazy is I just learned this a few weeks ago is the latest supercomputer called Frontier, that is on the top of the performance list. It finally has the exact same at least theorized processing capabilities of the human brain. And so you're like, oh no, robots cut up the humans. And then you look at what this supercomputer can do and you're like I'm carrying that supercomputer around in my head. I mean I think it costs like hundreds of a few hundred million dollars to build. Now what's crazy is we know what that supercomputer does because we put we humans put the software on. We don't know our software right. And so, like those neuroscience docs that I worked with, they would say that over and over again and over again. They're like a lot of times we're managing how to deal with symptoms from neurological conditions because the science hasn't caught up yet. So I got a supercomputer that's doing all kinds of stuff, and so does everybody else in the room in that possessed trailer. They do too, and none of us really understand what software was installed. And, dude, you get one program on your laptop that isn't doing what you think it's doing. Your life goes crazy. They update the Microsoft Outlook, like how do you sort stuff Like your day's over, like the fact that you're running different software in your supercomputer than I'm running in mine, like we got to get it out there right, like otherwise your system just spins and goes crazy.
Speaker 1:So to just keep nerding out on brain science for a minute, I just learned in a I was researching for a presentation I just gave where kind of new thinking comes from in the brain. Like creative thinking. I just gave where kind of new thinking comes from in the brain, like creative thinking. And it's the process your brain use actually starts in your hippocampus, which is the same space facts from the pastor store and forward thinking is all it is is novel reconstructions of stuff that's in your storage, and so the way I shared this with the group I presented to was one of the things I do to recharge sometimes is I cook just by myself for myself, and when I open my cupboards in my refrigerator and I've got Cocoa Krispies, marshmallows, ice cream and some pickles, those are my raw materials to create something new. That's going to be disgusting, right, and so it's like the analogy is all right. Well, that's the stuff I put in my hippocampus, that bookshelf of past experiences and knowledge. What's the coolest thing I can create going forward? It's the same raw materials. So it's like if you don't have spices and proteins and other fresh ingredients in your kitchen, you're never going to create something delicious and new.
Speaker 1:Same story with what you just said. Like I mean I've read this on like a couple of different psychology organization websites and Cleveland Clinic had a really good story about it it's like if you don't have memories or thoughts stored from past experience that allow you to have new thinking headed in the direction you want, you're stuck. It's like imagine if there's a place where no one's ever thought of or seen a smartphone. So when they're imagining their future, they don't go back into their data file, their hippocampus, and be like oh well, I could use the touchscreen features of a smartphone to accomplish blah, blah, blah, because they'd never heard of one. And so I think that's where the science supports what you just said If you don't fill your memory banks up with the raw materials to go forward, you're never going to go forward.
Speaker 1:That gave me a new appreciation for this concept of like be a continuous learner. I'm like, seriously, I got to keep being a student forever, but I've been. Now I've shifted my gear to saying, like, I'm continuously putting delicious things in my cupboards, so when it's time to cook something that really satisfies me, I got the raw materials. And you're right, man, if all you've got is, you know, garbage memory stored, let's face it. Like the reality is, some of us have garbage experiences and garbage tastes stored. Let's face it, the reality is, some of us have garbage experiences and garbage tastes. Even I've got some things that I love to do, some of that Netflix stuff that I've been through, probably not so helpful, but at a minimum I can flood my memories with other knowledge and experiences that could be constructive.
Speaker 2:Did you know that the seahorse is my spirit animal?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually so. This is going to sound like I know a lot more than I do, but it's actually named that because hippocampus is the first part of the scientific name for the seahorse. Yeah, it's literally named after the seahorse.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. So Nate mentioned continuous learning, which of course, I'm a huge, huge, huge advocate for, and it just tickled me around this continuous improvement stuff, which you know I am one of the afflicted, and so I said okay, nate, let's talk about continuous improvement. What do you think about it? Have you been exposed to it? And what I like about his answer is the like. The real issue for a lot of us is this like pursuit of perfection or pursuit of excellence, and the way he deals with it is, I think, it's a healthy way to deal with it. Check it out.
Speaker 1:I think it's awesome. One of my favorite slides that I completely borrowed from someone else is like I kind of refocused it a little bit my own way I found a GIF of a pit crew changing tires in real time. Now it's sped up and you watch it and you're like I want to learn more about how pit crews work. Not because I'm ever going to change tires at the speed they do, but there's something in the process, in the system. Those guys communicate with no words in a noisy environment and do miraculous things that none of us think we could. We don't even think we can move our hands that fast.
Speaker 1:Sweet, I may never work in an industry where that's remotely relevant, but the way that they have like and it's got all the sand out of the gears of that process and iterated and iterated and achieve something that blows your mind, you can apply that anywhere, and so that's a cool little piece of knowledge that I found interesting. And so I went down a little rabbit hole and I have applied it numerous times to just be like you know what it might take the average human 30 minutes to change a tire, and it takes these guys, whatever it is, six seconds. What's our version of getting from 30 minutes to six seconds. Right, like it can be done, it's humanly possible. But, dude, yeah, you can't even see all the things that are going on at once, because it's too much yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, all this time I've been having fun with Nate I'm pretty sure you've been having fun with Nate and I almost like completely forgot to ask him about his business, because he does have a business. The name of his business is Four Eyes Facilitation. The link is going to be in the show notes, so check them out. Don't go clicking until you hear his description of what it is that he does, why he does it, because I'm pretty sure after you hear that you're going to be like man, I need to connect with this dude because he can help us, or I know somebody he can help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sweet, so maybe I'll flip the order. So foureyesfacilitationcom all spelled out in words, no numbers is the website. You can get a detailed view of what I'm up to and I'm saying I because this is the first time ever. This is just me and the intent is I'm selling the experience and the skills I've built the first 25 years of my career. Eventually it may grow, but foureyesfacilitationcom and what anyone will find looking on that site or talking to me is my whole goal is to offer workshops, speaking engagements, training that allow people to accomplish things that they never thought they could on the upstream, front end of business process. So making sure the vision is supported by a strategy that is outcome-focused and accessible to all in the organization, and so I'll facilitate strategic workshops, even visioning if necessary, but then all the way through to, we know what we're going to do this quarter, we've got a nice strategy that differentiates us and we know how we win. Now what are the initiatives we're going to hit this year? Let's define them. And how do you resource those things so that not everybody says, oh my gosh, I got too much to do and too few resources, right, like, and then I'm out.
Speaker 1:In a nutshell, it's like I facilitate alignment. But a lot of times it's in a space where we create a lot of myth around strategy and innovation and assume it's only for a special few. Sure, some of us are more intuitively in that space. Some of us are more intuitively creative in building new ideas, but it's all processed that with the right person in the room you can nail, and so you know I have a lot of proprietary tools that I've built, which, by the way, I give away free to all my clients, because I don't believe in charging people for a tool. I'm charging them for my presence.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I use those to help facilitate people through structured strategic development, innovating new products and services, all the way up to all right, we're resourced and ready to go and the goal is, you know, you got a leadership team. That's lockstep on all of that, coming out of the section in the session and lockstep doesn't necessarily mean you know you battled through so that everybody had consensus on everything. Lockstep means we're all committed right, like there might have been something that I proposed and you had a counterpoint to it and our mutual ceo said jesse's idea is the way we're going to do it. Walking out of line means I say I'm in, I'm going to be, I'm going to to be there with Jesse, just like it was my idea.
Speaker 2:Oh baby, this was a good one, and, as usual, I hit him with the finale question, which was what is the promise you are intended to be? And his response does not fail does not fail.
Speaker 1:I am intended to fulfill the promise of helping people realize they've got capabilities within them they never knew about and bring them to life so that they can thrive and honestly, I mean, I know this part sounds a little more on the woo-woo spectrum but bring some joy to their life. And so I think, in a nutshell, it's bring a lot more joy to people's life. But how Help them understand strengths they never thought they had, including how to collaborate with folks of all different makeups?