Coaches on Zoom - Jeff Hull

(interview blurb)

Jeff: If you’re committed to your own development and moving through stages of your personal journey to get to a place where you can recognize your ego, to get to a place where potentially you can be self-authoring, where you’re flexible and more permeable and recognizing an inclusive and less triggered and less driven by maybe some of your childhood narratives or whatever it is from your own, if you are more freed up and more flexible, then, as a coach, you’re going to be much more capable of being present in another level with your client.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of coaching.com and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Today’s guest is the CEO of LeaderShift Inc., a leadership development consultancy based in New York City, as well as the executive director of the Harvard Institute of Coaching. He is also the bestselling author of Flex: The Art and Science of Leadership in a Changing World. He is a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches and a highly sought-after speaker and executive coach featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and more. Please welcome, Jeff Hull. 

(interview)

Alex: Hi, Jeff. 

Jeff: Hi there. 

Alex: It’s great to see you. Welcome to Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. It’s great to have you.

Jeff: Thank you so much. Good to see you again.

Alex: Absolutely. So, as we start all of our episodes, I will ask you what are we drinking today?

Jeff: Cappuccino. You can’t see the swirl on the top but it did have one.

Alex: Yeah, mine did too but not anymore. Although I guess mine is a little bit more like macchiato, so a little kind of like smaller version of the cappuccino. It’s great to have you. Cool. So, Jeff, you do a lot of different things in the coaching industry, and we’ll cover all of those, but I am very curious to learn more about how you got started in the field of coaching.

Jeff: Well, I think the simple answer is I’m a failed therapist. Yeah, sort of like third try is it. When I look back on my career, I did the corporate thing and then I did the therapy thing and the third time was successful when I started to do the coaching thing. That’s the simple version. But, yeah, I mean, early in my career, I started in corporate HR so I worked in human resources for a couple of major companies, software company, hotel company, went to school to get an MBA, sort of did the early-stage corporate path. My final stint in corporate America was with a major consulting firm, one of the strategy consulting firms that everyone knows and loves but I’ll leave it nameless because that way I can pick on them without getting in trouble, but a major consulting firm and I was director of HR and it was during that time that I realized I really enjoyed counseling. At that time, we called it counseling, we didn’t even use “coaching” as the term really. But I also realized that even though I had taken psychology courses in college, I did not have a really deep background to handle some of what I would call complex, even occasionally toxic leaders that I was working with. So that led me to decide I wanted to go back to school, get a PhD in psychology, and be a psychotherapist so I went that whole route and it was a great journey, great learning, lot of wonderful experiences, but, at the end of the day, having worked in corporate America, I was pretty results oriented and not that therapy doesn’t get results, because it certainly does, but it tends to be long term and I realized that I was goal oriented, I tended to get my most satisfaction out of a more short-term focused counseling approach. Just to make a long story short, at a certain point, I decided that I would be better suited to go back into the corporate space where I had grown up and that translated back into leadership development and, ultimately, executive coaching. So it’s a long arc but I landed in a place where I love and I’ve been there ever since and it’s been great.

Alex: That’s wonderful. And you keep busy. You’re writing books. You’re the executive director at the Harvard Coaching Institute. So, in addition to those, do you spend a lot of time doing coaching, one-on-one coaching, group coaching? Tell us more about your coaching practice.

Jeff: I do, yeah. I mean, I consider my actual practice to be foundational to my work, so having worked in the field for over 20 years, I mean, I have maintained a coaching practice and it’s continuously evolving in terms of industries, focus areas, but I do a lot of work with senior executives in a variety of industries and everything from finance to software to pharmaceuticals. Recently, having moved to Europe, I’ve been getting involved in auto manufacturing company. So it’s great. I enjoy the variety, I always learn from my clients, and I think if you look up the other things that I do working in the nonprofit at Harvard in the Coaching Institute, writing, speaking, all of those things are generated from making sure that I’m still up to date in the world of the actual work so it’s really foundational to my career to stay active in coaching. I would say the only thing that’s really evolved in that space is I do more team coaching and group coaching than I used to do but that’s because I think there’s been a great evolution in our profession, where more of us are able to work with different levels of people, a more diverse population and sometimes teams, groups, virtually, as you know, of course, coming out of the pandemic, so it’s just more varied than it has been.

Alex: One of the things that the Harvard Coaching Institute stands for is more evidence-based coaching because you’re at the center of a lot of that. How do you apply research when you’re doing coaching? Like the research findings and such.

Jeff: Well, that’s a great question because I think that, first of all, there is now a lot of good research available on leadership effectiveness, high performing teams, wellness, and psychological safety in terms of organizational cultures that are innovative, that are really aligned and have higher levels of engagement. So, there’s good evidence, there’s good research being done in all of those domains and the challenge is that most of our clients in that space do not spend their time reading academic papers. The research is there, the academics are doing great work, but our job as coaches and my job, I think, at the Institute of Coaching is to translate that work into something practical. So, a lot of what we do at the Institute in terms of sponsoring research and then turning that research into education is to help coaches apply it and also to give them resources. So, we do things like what we call a research dose, which is a mini article, you take a real academically rich article on a particular topic and you try to pull it down to the core elements of the research and then key takeaways that can be used in the coaching and that’s what I think is super valuable because it gives a resource to both the coach and the client to put into practice the latest science.

Alex: That’s very interesting work because the sign when you read an academic paper on coaching, it’s dry, it’s just the nature of scientific work, and then coaching is so vibrant and it’s very human oriented so to be able to bridge that gap and bring some of the learning that you get by understanding science and how it translates to practice to be able to put that into practice is incredibly valuable and that’s how the field evolves. I think a lot of the focus on coaching is to create best practices that are ultimately based on research and it seems like we’re in the very early stages of being able to both do really solid research that continues to evolve but also to provide practical applications for coaches to be able to actually leverage those findings and the best science in their practices. 

Jeff: Right. 

Alex: Yeah, it’s a fascinating evolving field, for sure.

Jeff: Yeah, and we’ve come a long way. I mean, when I first started, the topic, for example, of emotional intelligence was just emerging on the scene as something that effective leaders needed to become aware that there’s more than just IQ, there’s EQ, and the early days of that evolution and that expansion of knowledge, you think about Dan Goleman in his book, which is now 15 years old, 20 years old, what has happened in the meantime is there’s been a lot of really good validated assessments that have been developed to help leaders get their arms around what does it even mean to be emotionally intelligent. There’s so many different components, there’s different domains. Obviously you start with self-awareness, you start with emotional sensitivity, you go to emotional communication, you go to decision making that have emotional components, but that’s just one example of where there’s now pretty robust studies around what makes emotional intelligence a key success factor for leaders. And the same thing can be true in a number of different domains.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Emotional intelligence and its popularization about 20 years ago or so, maybe a little bit even more now, it definitely, I think, opened up people to think about intelligence differently too. And then you have Howard Gardner’s work at Harvard, multiple intelligence, it’s one of the books in my top 25 books. That’s pretty good book. 

Jeff: Excellent, yeah. 

Alex: Have you read that book?

Jeff: I have, yeah. I mean, not recently but yes.

Alex: Same. But the idea of thinking about like multiple intelligences is powerful. I don’t even think we have the language in culture. Sometimes, to be able to appreciate it, acknowledge the nuance of intelligence, and this, I think, bridges into some of what I know is one of our shared topics, kind of like human development. And when I say we don’t have the language for it, how often do we say like, “Oh, this person’s a genius”? Well, that is such an invalid way to categorize people because we have so many lines of development. And, in fact, geniuses are so extreme in certain aspects of that intelligence that, oftentimes, as a whole, they’re very imbalanced. So, when you look at them from that perspective, we have to redefine what a genius means. Maybe genius means being overwhelmingly beautifully average, where you have this balance between the intelligences. But I think that’s an evolving conversation and one that actually I don’t see popping up as much. We still use like “genius” for all these things. Elon Musk is a genius. Well, he’s a genius in some lines of intelligence and in others, you ask yourself sometimes like why does he act like a 12-year-old? Human development is very interesting and very nuanced.

Jeff: Yeah, and I think you’re pointing to another really good example of the evolution of the science and the research and because even more, much more recently than emotional intelligence, just within the last couple of years, there’s been some good research done on neurodiversity and, in fact, we at the Institute just did a couple of webinars in the last year on the subject of neurodiversity. And so you think about what people think of as a spectrum of intelligence, and the research is starting to show that there is a much more nuanced way to think about intelligence than what we may have thought of in the past. So, some of the things that have been historically or culturally considered sort of abnormal or even problematic, diagnostic categories of dyslexia or being on the spectrum, Asperger’s syndrome, and things like that, what’s really starting to emerge in the neuroscience research is that these are the attributes of particularly special ways of seeing the world and so that rather than judging them as abnormal, we, as coaches, we, even as professionals or human beings, need to broaden our definition of diversity around this because there’s a lot of talent that gets dismissed, that gets disparaged when, actually, some of these folks that have what are considered neurodiverse approaches to thinking and to ways of seeing the world are, actually, as you said, closer to being genius. So we need to leverage that. We need to have more open-mindedness about it in many cases, and stop seeing things as sort of forms of retardation or handicap or whatever dismissive narratives or stereotypes that we may have had in the past. So, research in this area is really important for coaches to be aware that there’s a lot of diversity in the neurological spectrum that may point to intelligence, not to something that we want to diagnose as a problem.

Alex: Yeah, I think that thinking about those topics within the framework of a spectrum is important and I think we’ve seen movies with people that are not high functioning when it comes to, let’s say, social dynamics but then they can remember every single interaction they’ve ever had with anyone. So it reminds me also of how blind people have a completely different sensory experience and some of their other senses are extremely heightened. So it’s that thinking about these areas in terms of diversity and putting him in the spectrum is certainly powerful. And it aligns with, I think, a topic that I want to explore with you that I know we both enjoy, which is around human development, and, I mean, this kind of way of looking at the world is what, in some ways of kind of looking at human development I would say is like the pluralistic or like the green meme, for those familiar with spiral dynamics and that kind of work, it’s really about thinking more inclusively. And like every level, it has its plus and minus, like if you’re obsessed with being inclusive, you’re going to be exclusive of everyone else that is not as inclusive as you are, which creates its own set of problems. But, to me, it’s my favorite topic, by the way, like human development, like stage development. So, let’s talk about there’s — one of my favorite thinkers, if not my favorite thinker, is Ken Wilber and we’ve talked about it when we were in person a couple of months ago, but you recommended a book, The Learning Society —

Jeff: Listening Society.

Alex: The Listening Society. Yeah, I knew it didn’t sound right when I said it. So, I’m actually about halfway done with it. It’s been a busy couple of months. I haven’t been able to get through a lot of books lately. I’ve been doing a lot of audiobooks, because, at the end of the day, I’m tired, so I want to go on a walk and I want to listen to an interesting book, but I don’t want to sit in my couch and do more reading. I’ve been reading emails all day. But I will get to finish it and then I will read your book as well. 

Jeff: But you can listen to my book too and then you’ll have to listen to me for like five hours.

Alex: Oh, that’s great. Five hours is not too bad. I’m finishing one just like 17 hours, but, yeah, no, you have a great voice, it’ll be great. I’ll have the physical version here you sent me and I’ll add the audio version. 

Jeff: Great. I mean, I sometimes cringe when I listen to myself but I have heard that it’s listenable so that’s a good sign.

Alex: Okay, it’s listenable on Audible. 

Jeff: Yes, exactly.

Alex: Yes, that kind of rhymes. So, tell me about this book, The Learning Society. What did you like about it? 

Jeff: The Listening Society.

Alex: The Listening. See, I can’t today, I’m like, yeah, I’m battling a cold so I’m using that as an excuse for my mental functioning, I guess.

Jeff: Well, I think what’s particularly meaningful to me about it is that he, the author, talks about the next stage of evolution in human development that will ultimately bring together all of these disparate components, economic development, socio economic development, social development, cultural development, and human development and personal development, leading to a more inclusive society. He calls it the listening society, but it’s recognizing that there’s a real value, for example, in the developmental stage theories that people like Ken Wilber and others, Bob Keegan and others, have developed that help us see that the learning journey of human beings is to let go of stories, let go of ego, and continue to grow and expand our view on what we see as the way the world works and to be more inclusive, but what he’s pointing to is that we have to actually get to a place where we’re not judging that everyone, that it’s not viewed as sort of an elitist approach where there’s a very small percentage of us that reach the green meme or the blue teal or whatever level you want to focus on but rather that we set up an environment where there’s a lot of respect for where people are and a listening for how we can all grow together so that it’s less about one meme being better than another meme, it’s more about creating an environment of psychological depth and growth for everyone. And I think that it fits with what you read about people like Amy Edmondson, which is in a different psychological space or a different space because she’s focused on organizational dynamics, but it’s really about recognizing that, as you develop in your psychological depth, your self-awareness, you move through stages away from being rooted in your ego needs that you then, rather than seeing yourself as better than or more, as above others, that you start to see yourself as more permeable and open and receptive to others so that you can actually help others along, honoring diversity, recognizing that we’re not all in the same place, that we all come from different cultures, different backgrounds, different socioeconomic situations, so it’s moving toward an environment of inclusivity and if you’re going to use your developmental evolution to work towards embracing humanity and embracing others, then it’s a double-edged sword to consider yourself on a journey to sort of move above, that we want to not so much equalize but we want to lose that judgmental perspective. Then he also includes the whole political element, that part of the polarization of our society these days is because of this, what he considers to be a postmodern kind of elitist view of the world and it’s great to be so-called postmodern but it can also lead to a place of positioning yourself as being a bit above others and that then creates this sort of bifurcation where the left wing or the liberal side of the political spectrum views themselves as better. It doesn’t lead to a sense of cohesion or collaboration, it leads, in fact, to a sense of dislocation. So that’s what this book is really trying to get us to move toward is, yes, you want to develop as a human being to a new level of consciousness, self-awareness, moving beyond your ego, but to see it not as moving above others but bringing people along and honoring where they are, if that makes sense.

Alex: Thank you for that. It does make sense. And one of the criticisms of, let’s say, Ken Wilber’s integral theory is that it’s very hierarchical. I actually like the hierarchical approach. I find it illuminating and I actually like that, but some of the — I think it’s misconstrued because the whole point of development is transcend and include, so as you go from one stage to the other, you have — Robert Keegan said it really well, which is in a way that I think makes sense, so the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next. So when you’re in a stage of development, you are living that reality. You see things through that lens. If you go towards the next stage of development, which, by the way, meditation is like the thing, the one thing that’s been shown by research to help people move through stages which is very interesting. If you go to that next stage of development, where you were before becomes more of an object. It doesn’t control your way of looking at the world. You’re able to distance and differentiate yourself from it. You’re transcending that stage but you have to include it. A lot of the dysfunctions in growth and development come from transcending and denying or negating, and this starts to sound very Hegelian, interestingly enough, Hegel is my favorite philosopher other than Ken Wilber so it’s interesting how it works because it’s not like I’ve studied philosophy extensively in school, I started really just delving into it post college and Hegel just appealed to me and without even knowing what Hegel stood for or the branches of philosophy that follow, I always was — it appealed to me to an incredible extent and then when I read Ken Wilber, I was like this is just everything I like. And then, obviously, after reading a lot of different books in the area and spending years researching and thinking about it, then you see the clear connection between those. So sometimes you just like a certain type of philosophy. So, for me, to your point, the hierarchical piece is very valuable. I think that’s the way the world is. But sometimes, it leads to these elitist perspectives. If you don’t understand necessarily the mechanics of how hierarchies work, then they may sound elitist, but, at the end of the day, it may not be the best vehicle to talk about those things because people think about those in that hierarchical way. But development is fascinating because you might think you’re super advanced but then if you treat it like a religion, then you start to exhibit all those elements of people that are at, let’s say, in one of those structures, like the mythical level of development, so that’s a very defined religious orientation, which is not bad or good, it’s just a level in those hierarchies, but people at that stage tend to — it’s almost like the Crusades, like I see God, I see Jesus, and if I can only get everyone to see what I see, the world will be better. It doesn’t leave room for anything else other than that, and then you see in history the impact that it had, and as people develop over time, people fall under different levels of development. So, right now, there’s a good portion, I think like about 25 percent of people are mythical and then another chunk like that rational and then less people at that kind of postmodern level like that he can go green and people at this point in our podcast are like what are they talking about? But, yeah, so let’s direct it back to coaches.

Jeff: Well, can I add one thing —

Alex: Yes, please.

Jeff: — before we do that might clarify why this topic is so relevant and it is relevant to coaching.

Alex: Absolutely.

Jeff: Because actually it also is a segue to my at least mentioning what I’m hoping to write in my next book, which is —

Alex: I love that you’re taking over my — I don’t even have, I can sit here and just you’re asking yourself the great questions. So it’s perfect.

Jeff: Well, I’m going to make an attempt to summarize a key theme that’s coming up that is relevant to coaching, which is that these theories that are very powerful around self-development, psychological development, tend to be very self-oriented so they’re based around a narrative with an assumption that we are building self-awareness. So, it starts from a platform of focusing on the self and it’s certainly valuable but what The Listening Society points to and what I think is really crucial for our time that we live in now is to balance self-development, psychological development from internal place of the self, with social awareness because we cannot any longer live in isolated bodies, we have to realize that we are social beings within a social context and that social context is the environment, the community, the planet, and we in our developmental stages that we’ve reached so far, on one level, we’re very successful, we’ve had incredible technological developments, we’ve had incredible economic development, or at least some portion of the population, we live longer than we’ve ever lived before, we’re healthier in some parts of the world, but at the price of huge degradation of the planet and of huge inequities in terms of social justice, in terms of the way that the balance is just totally out of whack on the earth. So, we need to find a way to balance self-awareness and self-development with social awareness and social development and I think there is an important role for us as coaches to recognize that, even when we’re working just one on one with an individual and we are maybe very well-schooled in developmental stages like Keegan or vertical development or any of those, it’s all within the context of what is the downstream impact of what you do in the world. What are the communities that you’re impacting? What’s the marketplace that you’re impacting? What are the supply chains that you’re engaged in and how does that have positive or negative impact on the broader planet that we live in, with climate change and everything else? So I just think that it’s really important that we start to — we’ve focused a great deal in the last 10, 20 years in coaching on self-development and self-awareness and this is great but it’s also really important to contextualize it because we’re not isolated selves.

Alex: That’s very interesting because that’s an example of, for example, a rational level of development perspective which things tends to be systems oriented. So, as you’re saying that, you’re really talking about this systemic impact of your actions. So, absolutely. So different ways of thinking relate to different levels of development and understanding. And a pretty high, advanced level of development transcends and includes, and including means that you pick up on the things that are valuable of all those stages and they’re able to deploy them and using even language that’s aligned with those higher stages. And those stages, ultimately, reach kind of that spiritual dimension and Ken Wilber’s latest kind of big book was The Religion of Tomorrow and he’s exploring those stages that are really not even visible in the spectrum of human development yet, then they will emerge, because all these levels that we have today that have been identified through research have been developed, there was a point in time where no one was the rational level of development in the world, and then 5 percent of the population is — well, it’s probably very difficult to be in that 5 percent when you look around you and everyone’s like looking at themselves and the world differently, but those continues to unfold in that what we refer to as that spiral of development. So, now, I would like to focus on development when it comes to coaches, specifically, because I sometimes am a little bit surprised when I talk, and I talk to a lot of coaches, and there hasn’t been a focus necessarily on development when it comes to really thinking about like coaches thinking about their clients, how do you apply these. There’s this whole universe of knowledge about human development that I think is an opportunity for the coaching community to more widely understand, use, and leverage some of these models when it comes to applied practical coaching. What do you think?

Jeff: Yeah, no, I completely agree, which is why the Institute just started today, kicking off today, a seminar series on vertical development in which one of our thought leaders, Jan Rybeck, has put together a series to help coaches ground in the work of people like Bob Keegan and others that have developed pretty rich approaches to stage development so that coaches can see where they are, there’s assessments now that have been validated and are very credibly helpful for coaches to develop a sense of their own individual development because you can’t, as a coach, you’re not likely to take your client any further in their development than you have gone in your own development. So, if you’re committed to your own development and moving through stages of your personal journey to get to a place where you can recognize your ego, to get to a place where potentially you can be self-authoring, where you’re flexible and more permeable and recognizing and inclusive and less triggered and less driven by maybe some of your childhood narratives or whatever it is from your own, if you are more freed up and more flexible, then, as a coach, you’re going to be much more capable of being present in another level with your client. And that gets to your point about the stages of coaching and I think that people like David Clutterbuck and Paul Lawrence and others are trying to help us move as coaches toward a more systemic approach in working with our clients. So, gets back to what I said before, we need to be able to engage with our clients in broader systemic terms, like what are the impacts, the downstream impacts of your leadership if you’re in a senior role in an organization? And are you values driven? Are you aware of the potential role you could have to make the world a better place? And I think coaches have a really profound role to do that and impacting that but they have to do their own work. 

Alex: Absolutely. 

Jeff: I’m very much aligned.

Alex: Coach matching based on stages. I love it.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s key in developing — it’s sort of the good news and the bad news. I mean, the good news is that coaching is becoming accepted as one of the most powerful tools for human development because it’s customizable, it’s confidential, it’s personal, and it’s taking where the client is at any given moment and supporting them to go to a new level of effectiveness, somatic, emotional, intellectual consciousness, all of those things at a very customized level, so this is a powerful, powerful tool. And it’s getting democratized. Your company and many other organizations are figuring out ways to use technology to train coaches so that more and more organizations can use this powerful tool. So that’s a good thing. On the other hand, we, you and I, and those of us that are responsible for bringing coaching into the world also have a responsibility to develop coaches so that they are really adding value to their engagements, and the only way that’s going to happen is if the coach him or herself does their own work to develop, to move through those stages. And so I think that’s what you’re committed to, that’s what I’m committed to, that’s what’s key. Otherwise, we’re doing ourselves a disservice as leaders in the coaching industry.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And I think for just the impact of coaching to be everything we know it can be in the world is going to have to be very aligned with that understanding of stage development because it is really key for unlocking potential. Potential looks differently at different stages and recognize that, but then that brings me back to your point about the hierarchical nature of the stages. There is this stands when you’re talking about, “Oh, higher levels, lower levels,” that could actually be very destructive to our evolution of the use of stage development and coaching because it’s not a competition. Each stage has really great things and really negative things and if you’re at a high level of development, part of that is recognizing those strengths. So what we see in society at large with the polarization we’re seeing, let’s say, in politics is that people are not able to communicate effectively and they’re not able to see each other and the things that unite us, that ultimately make society function. We really are at an interesting point in human history that we’ve accomplished so much and when you look at the world and all the resources we have available to us, I mean, people living 5,000 years ago would find this literally unbelievable, and we have all these comforts and all these capabilities and capacity, yet, we are not able to really connect with each other and to enjoy what we build together and look ahead and say, “Okay, what are we building next?” And, to me, the defining issue of this postmodern world or wherever the hell we are —

Jeff: Meta modern.

Alex: Meta modern, yeah. Yeah, I know, that’s coming from that book, The Listening Society. Now I got it right.

Jeff: And my new book is going to be about meta leadership. 

Alex: I definitely want to talk about that. But I think in the modern world, I think, just to simplify it, in our present times, I think one of the things that I’ve identified as a big problem is we don’t have a beacon of where we want to go. There’s no vision. It used to be that, oh, we want to go to the moon and that rallied the entire society to win the Cold War. I mean, there’s really nothing that I see that unites us all in a common objective in terms of humanity’s development. I think we’re at a point of there’s a lot of really cool things coming from technology and we’ve reshaped the world over the last 20 years with our technological capabilities, yet, I don’t think there’s a lot of clear sense of directionality, “Okay, what do we do with those productivity and efficiency gains? Like what are we in this planet for? What’s the role of corporations in taking us to the next level? What’s the role of us as people, as coaches?” To me, there’s not a lot of clarity as to what that next step looks like that can unite all of us in this globalized world to say this is the objective of humanity to create great lives for people, to respect the planet, to respect animal life. I mean, I think we hear voices here and there but there’s no common united front as to what is it that it means to be alive and what do we do with that individually and societally, like I think that is what’s missing, just a cohesive understanding of where we want to take this.

Jeff: I would agree with you but I guess I will give you the optimist view, which is that we are on the cusp, I think, of being in a place where that kind of vision is available to us and it’s going to be the outcome of breakdown. So, even though I call it optimistic, but it’s —

Alex: Yeah, that didn’t sound that optimistic.

Jeff: Well, but it’s sometimes — I’m a Jungian at heart so the —

Alex: Creative destruction.

Alex: Exactly, the Jungian approach is that sometimes the archetype has to break apart or the narrative that is either individual or collective, collective conscious, individual conscious, it has to break apart in order for something new to be born, and I think one of the things that we are on the cusp of is realizing that we need to save the planet. It’s our home. We are destroying our home. And I think more and more and more of us are realizing that that’s not sustainable. So, it sounds pessimistic but if more and more of us wake up to the reality that this small dirt ball that we live on needs to be saved so that we can break through another level of joy and success as a human species, then that could be a rallying cry that we can all get behind. And I do sometimes feel like we’re right on the cusp of it. It’s unfortunate that it takes hurricanes and fires and lots of what appear to be what are very destructive experiences and a lot of loss, like a pandemic, to bring us all together. But if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.

Alex: But did the pandemic bring us together or shattered us? Because, I mean, you can see it even that political polarization where even the masks become an issue is like you shouldn’t be wearing a mask, you should be wearing a mask, you’re outside, it’s 10 p.m., you’re by yourself but you should be wearing a mask, or people that are in an airport and do not want to wear a mask. So I think that’s part of my point where like where we are today is like the things that you think unite us actually showed us how fractured we are and how do we go about curing that and, the thing is, when you put two people together and they could be from different political parties, it used to be that they could talk about things. And if you talk about politics, it’s going to break apart, but if they talk as people, usually, you find that common bond that we have and it’s like how the you — we’re coming off of like, coming up to 20 years of Facebook starting. Well, social media has really been very disruptive to the fabric of society and we really didn’t understand the systemic implications of just getting your news and information through a feed that might be biased and create little bubbles of information and perspectives. So, I mean, the scale of technology and what we’re able to do today is both incredible for progress but it also could be very damaging and we’re just in new territory. I love your concept of creative destruction because that’s how things evolve. I mean, you see it even in the Bible, not that I quote the Bible a lot, but just like how when the Jewish people came from Egypt and we’re going to enter Israel, well, they led that generation that had been slaves pass away before they got into Israel and I’m probably completely butchering that story but it’s that idea of renewed perspectives and destroying the past to build a better future. It also reminded me when you were saying that of Joseph Campbell’s the hero’s journey and that journey is about destruction and rebirth and new perspectives and it’s really — and you see it in the universe. I mean, the universe, we know that at some point, no matter what we do, the earth will be destroyed by the sun so everything’s on a time basis, everything will be destroyed and will reemerge. And, to me, development is that reemergence is that creative destruction, and it’s embedded in everything else and it’s part of how the world works, yet, it’s all about learning. When you look at like these biological systems, learning is embedded in its core. So, bringing it back to coaches and thinking about development is how do we learn about how people progress through stages so that we can better be attentive to not only the issue we’re talking about in a specific coaching session but to see and connect the points between that issue and the more systemic understanding of that person, where they are in their journey, and where people around them are in their journey so that you can find the right way to communicate and solve problems? 

Jeff: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it’s about moving toward inclusivity, this idea of developmental stages as separate doesn’t have to be the driving meme, it can actually be that the developmental stages are inclusive. And that’s what this book, The Listening Society, is really writing about. I mean, what Hanzi Freinacht, who’s the supposed author of this book, although it’s a pseudonym, we’re not sure who it is, but what he’s pointing to is that it is as you validate the developmental stages that you also validate the importance of inclusivity because you’re constantly cycling through different stages. And even Ken Wilber would agree with that. You’re going backwards and forwards yourself as an individual. You reach a particular stage but you don’t live there. 

Alex: It’s like an average.

Jeff: Well, when life comes along and takes you back down to an earlier stage because you get sick or something terrible happens in your family or something and you go back to a much more security-based mindset, at least temporarily. So it’s never a linear process, it’s really more of a cyclical process, and we want to aspire to moving beyond our boundaries and moving to another level of ego development but we’re always going to be susceptible, because we’re humans, we’re fallible. And so having that kind of empathy and compassion for our fellow humans is really key to creating what he calls a listening society. And he points to the Nordic, there’s another book called the Nordic Ideology that points to the fact that Scandinavian countries have, in many ways, moved in that direction a little better than many others. And, as someone who now lives in a Scandinavian country or close to it in the Netherlands —

Alex: I was going to say, is the Netherlands considered a Scandinavian country?

Jeff: Not technically but it’s on the cusp, I guess, but there is definitely a more communitarian mindset. We’re all in this. Especially when you live in the northern part of the Netherlands where everything is underwater.

Alex: Why did you decide to move to the north of the Netherlands?

Jeff: Well, I think for me personally, it was an opportunity to get a little bit of distance from all the craziness in the United States, like I’m back here in the US quite regularly and I’m an American and I am certainly part of the political process here and will vote and all of that but I wanted to have a little bit of a distance from the craziness and I wanted to experience a different culture and just coming out of the pandemic, I felt it was important to immerse myself and ourselves into a different environment. And I have always admired the Netherlands and some of the countries in Scandinavia with the way they handle social issues so there is more definitely openness, a more collaborative, more a sense — even though there’s fragmentation, like there’s many different political parties as opposed to two warring political parties but there is a sense that they all come together, sit around a table and sort of duke it out and want the best for everyone. So I think, for me, it was an opportunity to just immerse myself in a different culture and see what I could learn. It’s, again, part of my own learning journey. 

Alex: Cool. Really cool. So, tell us about your books. So, your book that we talked about, you have it in the audio format, which is Flex, and then you also have an upcoming book. So, tell us about both and how they connect to each other.

Jeff: Well, the book that you know about that’s out called Flex is basically my doing a couple things. First of all, noticing, over a period of years, a big change in the population of my clients, much more diverse and a need to develop leadership in a way that’s much more variable, flexible, agile, and this was right around the time that the pandemic hit that the book came out so it just became even more crucial that as coaches or as leaders, we really need to be moving beyond what we considered historically to be this traditional, typical authoritative, type A directive, kind of bossy boss, that everyone had to be charismatic and they had to have a clear vision and all of that. And some of that is still valid, I don’t debunk the validity of it or the power of it at certain times, but it’s really more about looking at the variety of different ways that leaders can be effective. And it parallels Susan Cain writing about the rise of the introvert and the importance of recognizing the value of introverts. It parallels the rise of women into the leadership ranks and, sometimes, studies have been done that women are generally more emotionally intelligent, they bring greater empathy, they bring a broader, more flexible approach to collaboration, but there’s absolutely no reason why that’s gender driven. I mean, men can become those things if they are given an opportunity to be coached and have greater self-awareness. So, I was looking at racial diversity, gender diversity, and bringing in what I call a beta style leader as really powerful at a time when we need innovation, we need to get creativity out of everyone. This book, Flex, is really about how to use a coaching approach, the kinds of things that coaches do, which was based on my research with hundreds of coaches to develop that more flexible, agile capability or competence in leaders. And it became even more relevant when you come out of the pandemic and now you have hybrid workplaces and there’s definitely a need as a leader, I mean, I’m giving talks all the time to clients at the top of organizations that are trying to figure it out, “How do we have hybrid workplaces? How do we have — my leadership team is now made up of people from India and Africa and they are not coming into the office anymore. And so, Jeff, how do I get them to be all working together and innovative and creative and how do I create psychological safety, because that’s what Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School tells me I have to do.” So the need to be more flexible as a leader has just become urgent and that’s what the focus is there. The next book is not out, I’m still working on it, proposal is in, but I can give you a quick summary, which is that if we move from the alpha style, which was the traditional, toward a more mixture of an alpha and a beta style leader, which is what I pointed to in Flex, then we need to move toward what you and I have been talking about this entire conversation which is toward a meta perspective, which is beyond the either/or mindset, beyond the mindset that is self-awareness versus social awareness. You need to have both. You need to integrate your development as an individual with your development of your broader collective consciousness, and that means we have to go towards things like a regenerative mindset in terms of the downstream impacts of what we do as leaders. And people will say to me, “Well, what does that mean? What’s a regenerative mindset?” Well, there’s a lot of different definitions for regeneration but the very simple way of seeing it is thinking about everything you do as whether it’s life affirming or not life affirming. And then the next question below that is what does life affirming mean? Well, life affirming means you’re doing your work as a leader in the world to make things better for other lives, and other lives is more than just humans. It’s communities. It’s the environment. It’s animals. It’s the oceans. Like if you really think about the biological place that we do our lives, it’s more than just individual human beings. So it’s a broader perspective and so it’s taking on that meta mindset, stepping up, it’s like putting up your periscope and saying, “Oh, I’m the head of XYZ Corporation. I’m a CEO or I’m a CFO. The decisions that I make every day affect my employees, they affect my customers, but they also affect all the components of the supply chain, which may be in different countries and may be in the rainforest, it may be really far away from my day to day thinking but I need to incorporate that.” And then the reason you ask why do I have to incorporate that? What’s the point? We live in a capitalist society, I just want to maximize my profits. Well, yeah, that’s all great until the profits are useless because the world doesn’t exist. It’s like we have to start to think bigger picture as coaches and as leaders, and that’s my intention. 

Alex: And, ultimately, corporations as well.

Jeff: Yeah.

Alex: I think we want to be optimists thinking about redefining the profit motive and understanding that capitalism is an amazing engine for improvement but you can direct that engine and that machine in different ways and that pure shareholder return formula is myopic in terms of what business can accomplish for the world. And, oftentimes, you see people criticize capitalism but the problem is not capitalism, it’s how we’re directing that machine. I mean, what capitalism does for production and generation of new ideas and products and flows of capital is incredible, the problem is not that, it’s like we have to add a layer there of like, okay, how do we direct? It needs to be values driven. How do you instill those values and move away from that kind of Milton Friedman approach of just really focusing on the profit motive? It needs to evolve. And I think the whole point is if you evolve that, the profit will very likely follow. And, to your point earlier about you being optimistic about where we are, I think that is one of those inflection points, but, at the end of the day, corporations are made up of people so the more we can instill people to be more connected with themselves, with others, to recognize the gains that come from those connections, the closer we will be to be able to direct our economic and geopolitical systems in the direction that will allow us to thrive. 

Jeff: I agree.

Alex: So that allows, I think, to end on a very positive note.

Jeff: I mean, the biggest single shift that could impact everything is to move from shareholder value to stakeholder value.

Alex: Of course.

Jeff: And think about stakeholders in a much broader way. It includes shareholders but it also includes employees and it includes all the downstream impacts to stakeholders across the planet, because, at the end of the day, what you’re really talking about is what is at stake. And what is at stake is our survival as a species. 

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jeff: So that’s why I’m optimistic in the sense that we’re on the cusp of recognizing that that is the existential question of our time. And yet, we haven’t quite owned it yet.

Alex: No, it really is. What’s interesting is when we talk about we’re destroying the Earth, we’re really destroying the ability of Earth to house us because the Earth will regenerate —

Jeff: Yeah, the Earth doesn’t care.

Alex: — and life will continue. Yeah. Humanity might not be there for that but it’s obviously sad when you look at an ecosystem, very sad, disappear or animals go extinct, but that is the way in which the universe operates. The thing is, it’s very regenerative. So I think there’s been studies on what would happen to the earth if humans disappeared. I think there’s a very quick recovery. 

Jeff: Yeah, the earth will be fine. 

Alex: Right, right. So, sometimes, that’s a good point sometimes when people are like, “Oh, I can’t deal with one more person telling me about saving the earth,” well, it is really like about saving ourselves. 

Jeff: That’s the whole bottom line point, which is if you want to truly be regenerative, then you have to include everything, because the earth will regenerate without us. The question is, will the earth regenerate with us? Are we part of the solution? 

Alex: Are we going to be an informed stakeholder where we understand our role in this overarching environment and ecosystem? Yeah.

Jeff: And when it’s not too late. We’re getting close but it’s not too late.

Alex: Well, let’s not be too hard on ourselves. I mean, what humanity’s been through and the acceleration of development that comes with our technological capabilities, I mean, it’s hard. It’s hard stuff. I mean, there’s been amazing changes in the last 50 years, 100 years. I mean, wherever you see, whether you want to look at the child mortality rate or the sense of inclusiveness in society, I mean, it’s not perfect but it’s better than it’s ever been and being better than it’d ever been maybe for a lot of people is still not good enough, okay, cool, definitely, but if you want to be an optimist, there’s ways in which you can look at that arc of history and say, “Look, we’re not perfect but we’re making progress.”

Jeff: I totally agree because think about the — I think a wonderful analogy is the evolution of psychology as a science, as a practice. 

Alex: I like that you’re a Jungian, by the way. Jung always appealed to me much more than Freud. 

Jeff: Well, because Jung included what he called the collective consciousness, which is why I am including collective awareness in my leadership work. 

Alex: The collective unconscious, I’ve always found it fascinating. 

Jeff: Yeah, and it’s about the process of moving those things that are unconscious into consciousness. But to your point earlier about the evolution, I mean, I am optimistic because I look at what psychology was doing in the 19th century, it was all about psychopathology, it was all about neurosis and what’s wrong with people and doing all sorts of weird interventions that, ultimately, evolved on a positive way to create psychotherapy, but now, with positive psychology, we are broadening our perspective on the psyche, in general. It was psychopathology, then it became psychotherapy, and we now have positive psychology, which is informing, and now we have coaching and coaching is really individual support for the broad population, because psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, those were all very elitist, they were only for the very, very top. And so I’m actually very optimistic because I think companies like yours and institutes like mine, we’re bringing the coaching mindset and the coaching approach to developing humanity and humans to a huge growing population. So, there is an opportunity for all of these wonderful scientific breakthroughs around performance and positive approaches to psychological development in community, all of that can now actually reach people through coaching. So it’s actually an amazingly positive evolution. We just need to leverage it. That’s the key.

Alex: Absolutely. Well, I couldn’t think of a better way to end our episode today. So, it’s very positive and optimistic, as we should be. It’s like life sometimes it’s hard enough, let’s look at like all the bright positive angles. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the work that you do. Jeff, thanks for joining us today. I had a great time talking to you and looking forward to continuing our conversation. 

Jeff: Yeah, my pleasure. It’s been fun. 

Alex: Nice.