What We're Unwilling to Feel: John DeMarco on Growing Humans, Not Just Leaders

Executive coach John DeMarco has spent 21 years helping leaders grow — not by fixing what's broken, but by holding up an "inquisitive mirror" to the feelings they'd rather avoid. In this episode of Activating Greatness, John and host Alec McChesney get into human-centered leadership, why leaders can't manage AI anxiety without first facing their own, and a practical mindfulness framework — breath, body, head — that builds emotional intelligence, curiosity, and learning agility. A thoughtful, story-first conversation for any leader who wants to lead the whole human, not just the résumé.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec McChesney, and every episode we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something that you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest. Today's guest is John DiMarco, an executive coach who does work with Velocity Advisory Group. He is a storyteller. He is an individual on LinkedIn that is writing the most quietly honest stuff that I read on a weekly basis. John's coaching practice centers on what he calls growing humans, human-centered leaders. And over the last year, he's been pulling on a golden thread of the feelings that we avoid, what those avoidances are costing us as leaders. And today we're going to get into all of it. I am also very excited for today's episode because every time I meet and have a conversation with John, I leave the room a little bit smarter. Just a couple of weeks ago in our prep call, I had been talking about how I was selfishly doing the podcast. And John goes, Can I go into coaching mode for a moment? And instantly is like, Why do you use the word selfish? And what does this do? And I'm like, John, it's 10 o'clock in the morning. I don't have time. I don't have time for this. My therapist, Lisa, is ready in a couple of hours to have this conversation with me. But that's just the type of individual that John is. It's the type of coach he is. And certainly we are fortunate and lucky at Velocity Advisory Group to have you as one of our coaches. John, welcome to Activating Greatness. Um, I'm gonna shut up for a minute here. Uh, if there's anything that you want to add about your background and how you got into this, uh, I know we're gonna talk about your origin story a little bit, but if you want to introduce yourself to the Activating Greatness podcast, that would be great as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, thank you. For a minute, you made me sound like Jack Bauer. It's like, why are you talking about being selfish? I don't necessarily interrogate when I coach, but hey, I'm open to it.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Hey, sometimes it works. It worked on me, and that's you know, you gotta know when to pull those levers.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, just really honored to be here. Um, just love being a part of Velocity. I'm in my 21st year of coaching, which is hard to believe that time has gone that fast. Um basically my coaching career is the same age as my youngest child. So, you know, a lot of connections there. Um, I've uh I've done this work um full-time in the past in a healthcare setting, uh, in telecom at T-Mobile. And then for the last three years, working independently through Velocity, other partners, just um dozens of different industries and working with some amazing people from every level of IC up through people manager and executive. Uh just really the privilege of a lifetime to have a chance to partner with people to try to play some part in activating their greatness.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

I love it. I love the plug of activating greatness too. I didn't even coach you on that. It was spontaneous, man. It's magic. You had it off the cuff. That's that is I that is too good to be true. And I think I wanna I think I want to start with some heavy hitters right out of the gate because you're you're on LinkedIn on a pretty consistent basis writing, and and you've been doing more writing in 2026. And a lot of it is, okay, if I'm gonna read that, John, I need to be able to sit down with a cup of coffee and maybe maybe a little bit of tears, and I'm gonna get emotional about how I'm feeling in the world because you are you are able to take somebody and and put them in a different light or put me in different shoes as I am consuming that content. And this thread that we talked about, the the feelings, the things that we're willing to feel, the things that we're not willing to feel. It's such a human being concept, but it's so important at the leadership level and with what you do as a coach. So I'm curious, you know, if we go back to kind of the origin of where this started, where did it grab you? Why did it grab you, and why has it become a focus of your coaching this year and certainly of your content, uh, and just kind of your own story as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, thank you. Like anything else that is really important to me, it flowed out of my own life, my own experiences. Um, and as I began to reflect more and more about the growth I've gone through, the losses I've experienced, um, my uh ongoing, evolving sense of my own identity, uh getting more into mindfulness, which I'll talk about later in the podcast. Um, this whole idea of existential nuances kept kept bubbling up. Um essentially the sense that um we make our own meeting day to day, right? Uh meaning looks different for each one of us. It's uh it's impacted by who we are, by our lifestyle, by our background, by our ethnicity, by our religion or lack thereof. And not really everyone, um I'm talking zooming out beyond the workplace, is dealing with their own stories about growth and loss and those sorts of things. And so really it's it's larger than than my profession, it's larger than any one piece of writing. It's a a thread that's part of a larger tapestry I've been, I guess, weaving together for the uh numerous decades of my life. And last fall is when that that phrase, what are the things I'm unwilling I'm unwilling to feel, sort of bubbled up because it always begins with me. Right? Like what ways am I, you know, afraid to peel back some things? How am I using humor as my own defense mechanism? Like what thoughts am I rewarding and what are the proxies, what are the distractions and things that I use to not face them? And then realizing more and more that, okay, if I'm unwilling to fill things, probably so is everybody else. And what does this mean in the business context? And that has led to some of uh some of my writing on LinkedIn that ties into this and certainly led to our conversation today. Let me pause and give you a chance to bat again.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, well, it also leads to your question that I hinted at at the beginning, which was why are you using the word selfish when I was talking about the podcast? And you know, I joked that it was it was way too heavy of a question. And I, you know, I had therapy later that day. Shout out to my therapist Lisa Paredes for putting up with me.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Um she's great, she's great. I called her, by the way. Just kidding. And she called me, not joking, still joking.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

She she probably needs to, uh, because I feel like half of this, half of the stuff I talk about is work-related. But I brought it up and I said, you know, it's such an interesting question. And I think it goes to this concept of what we're willing to feel and we're unwilling to feel. And I on this podcast am so proud of the podcast that we've created and the stories we've told and the 40 plus guests, and you know, kind of the nerves of how do you keep it going? And but I love it. And it does take up a lot of my time. And we went from one a week to two a week, and now we're kind of going back to one a week because reality sets in and you have other responsibilities, but you want to maintain it. And all of that is really nuanced. And a lot of times how I have answered that is just selfishly, I really like it, and selfishly, I think it will work, and I have fun doing it. And there's so much more to that. But if I just say the top-level stuff, we're not actually getting into how it drives me on a day-to-day basis, how one good podcast could lead to four successful business calls because I'm in a better mood, right? Like there's all of this other stuff. Um, and so I'm curious. You you said if you're feeling this, others are feeling it. We're feeling it as human beings. We're going to talk a little bit about mindfulness and the whole human, but how do you then bring this into coaching? How do you bring this into the work that you do on a day-to-day basis? And I'm asking this for two reasons. One, because I'm curious and that's why you're on the podcast. And two, because I think people have a really bad misunderstanding of what coaching is. And a lot of times we think of coaching as, hey, you're on a pip or you're struggling and you need coaching. And that's certainly not the case. Coaching is a way to unlock the next evolution of us. So I'm curious, um, given all that, a very wide, wide-ranging question, but how do you take all of this stuff that we just covered, and how does it actually impact you in a coaching environment?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So let's uh let's zoom out a little bit for context and then we'll drill into a hardger question about how this shows up. Um I think that we need to be honest with ourselves and with our employees and colleagues, and that we are just being slammed by ambiguity, denial, disillusionment, fear, disruption, misinformation, noise, transience, threats, uncertainty, overwhelm. All this stuff is happening to every employee at every level in every context and industry. And across all of it, we have these macro tentacles of artificial intelligence. As leaders, I think it is it is incumbent upon us. We have a responsibility to lean into those feelings as we're experiencing them and to recognize that our employers are going through all this, and that if we are focusing just so much on feeling avoidance kinds of things like busyness, these transactional conversations, the little self-talk pep talks, the mantras that we use, right? The the the uh the things that we put on the wall to keep us pumped up, obsessing over speed and inefficiency and extorting more and more of our critical and creative thinking to AI, we are not going to, first of all, be in touch with ourselves and our own feelings that will ultimately get in the way, and certainly the feelings of our employees. And this is especially important to the um younger generations of people in the workplace. Um, I'm talking about maybe the younger millennials, right? The the the millennials, certainly uh Generation Z, right? I coach a lot of those folks right now, and I have a living, breathing um personification of Generation Z in my household because I have three daughters that are in their early 20s and just launching their careers, and they want more of the connection. They want they want more of the human touch, they don't want to just step into this same grind. Right, and so and so if leaders can begin by um shining a brighter light on their own thought processes, uh processes, on the words they say out loud, they can have some of these epiphanies and get more in touch with themselves. And that's where I think that um coaching really comes in because right now the consequences, the impact of everyone feeling overwhelmed, but no one really tying into those feelings and talking about it and helping each other get through it. I think we have leader stagnation, which necessarily leads to employee stagnation. That leads to negative employee experience, which leads to negative customer experiences, which leads to employee attrition, lower results, shareholder value, right? It goes on and on. Our words have meaning, our words have impact. Um, as a coach, right, the you know, the typical phrase used to describe executive coach is you know, a thought partner. And that's true. And that can mean lots of different things. I think the key thing I try to do is be this inquisitive mirror, to hold up my clients' words to them and shift the angle just enough so they can see their language, so they can interrogate their own thinking in a different way and have that aha moment, like, gosh, you know, I'm not really leaning into the way I could, or I'm telling myself this story, and maybe there's a different narrative that is trying to emerge. And am I really being as impactful as a leader as I think I am when I when I step back, right? Knowing that none of us as leaders can be fully objective when it comes to our own gaps. We need someone like a coach who can who can be that that mirror, who can be that uh neutral third-party person, right? And so, you know, coaching is about, um, like you said, it's not about people who are on a performance plan, it's about taking people who are already good or even great and just like uh exponentially taking them to the next level through this thought partnership that really puts their words on trial in a sense, but leads to freedom, not a prison sense.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

You you said you said so much good there, but I I want to talk a little bit about this. You know, our words have meaning and and who we are, right? And especially when you look at the generational gap in the workforce today, what it means to be a 24-year-old is a lot different than 34, 44, 54, 64, and so on down the line. And what they're looking for is different. And all of this, they're they are coming to it as a individual, as a whole person. And some in the the generations from before, that you know, those that might be at the end of their career have been able to separate it out. I, hey, I work here and I I live here. That doesn't really exist anymore in that in that younger generation. And so I think it's a very curious, um, almost dichotomy or nuance, double-edged sword, whatever, whatever bad phrase that I could come to about how coaching one person and another person needs to look entirely different. And so I'm just curious when you think about coaching, um, how do you get someone to lean in, right? You might have someone like me who, yes, on the outside, I say I'm really excited about coaching and I love 360s. I just did an informal 360 for myself. But then as you start to get feedback, you're like, oh, ah, like I how do I, how do I admit that I'm really good here and I'm bad here? How do you, as a coach, try to show the mirror and get them to have more self-awareness and self-recognition and even self-empathy through this process? You know, I'm not trying to get too practical, but I'm curious about just kind of what that looks like to get these individuals to be able to lean in, especially when one person might be an up-and-coming VP that's 27 and another is a VP that's been in that spot for 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, it all begins really with um with the things that they're saying to me and the things they're not saying during the conversation. To your point, everyone is different. Um the key is that I come into the coaching relationship that with each coaching session with this open mind in terms of I don't have any preset agenda, right? I'm ready to meet them where they're at. Um, and part of my preparation before talking to someone is just trying to attack any any biases or assumptions or things that may be getting in the way possibly of being the best possible thought partner for this individual. And so I've got some examples of actual things that clients have said, and then I could talk about what that inquisitive mirroring looks like, if that if that would be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah. So um I've got a few favorites related to artificial intelligence itself. Um, here's the first one uh actual words from a client in the past. AI is super powerful, super powerful. Like they said it twice. And then they followed it up with, but I only use AI for boring stuff like copying and pasting. Right? Then they maybe start to go on, and I'm like, oh, wait a second, wow. Um that's interesting. Tell me more about you say I AI is super powerful. What does that mean to you? What does that look like? And then they have to really begin to grapple with, oh gosh, um, what if it's what if it's so much more than the boring stuff, the copy and paste? Um, like, you know, like like like where am I seeing the power of AI possibly? And how am I fearing the power of AI? How am I in some ways just trying to manage my anxiety about AI by just you know doing a little spell check or you know, or copy and paste, or hey, check my email for telling, make sure I don't sound like a jerk. Right. So that's one example, right, of just trying to really sort of um tell someone in a polite kind of way, hold wait a second, before we go on, you know, tell me more about this. Um, another one that I heard is uh a client talking about their own their own team. AR is gonna take away 80% of the jobs on our team in five years, but I'll be part of the 20%. And just sort of joking there and you know, going, yeah, I'm like, I'm like, cool. That is great, you know. I love the confidence. Uh tell me more about what you're doing to to ensure that you're part of the 20%, right? How are you gonna be differentiated? Like, what do you think is is the criteria for that?

unknown 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

And then another one, another one, uh, you know, maybe AI, I mean, this is uh can't remember if this was a generation X or millennial leader. Maybe AI is AI is gonna be normal for the next generation. Sort of sort of throw away kind of comments. I'm like, oh, okay, so uh it almost sounds like you're saying you don't have to worry about it right now. Oh well, it's not what I mean. Oh, tell me more then, right? Like what is normal, what can normal look like now? And like what are we expecting this next generation to suddenly get that we're not seeing? Kind of thing. Let me pause and uh Herbert Foster questions that again, that's one slice.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

I've got some other slices, but that's the AI slice that um, well, I think I think the AI slice is the one that people are really interested in right now. I also think that part of this just comes back to the art of asking questions as a coach, right? And and you you you have a comment and you live in that comment, and then someone asks a question and suddenly you're looking at it from a completely different perspective. And I think that one, that's the power of good questions, it's the power of coaching. But I also think within this AI burst that we're in, is it is the most important thing for people to be able to do is hey, maybe AI will be normal for the next generation, or AI is going to take some jobs, but not my job, or AI, you know, like all of these comments are are putting people in in tough positions because even if you are correct, that's still not good for someone else, right? Like there's there's something else that's going on. And so how do you how do you take it out of just being a one-off comment and and actually getting to the root of the thought process? And frankly, uh as leaders, what what are we what are we actually trying to solve within this AI burst bubble, um, you know, power that we are in right now in 2026, especially because it feels like a breaking point, right? Like there are going to be companies and individuals that heavily invest in it and win. There are gonna be some that invest in it and lose because they didn't do it the right way. There are gonna be some that don't and still win, and some that don't and lose, right? And and that's that's always been the case. It was the case with the internet. It was the case, like that's always been the thing. And leaders are the differentiator, right? Like having the right leader, having the right team is the differentiator more so than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, leaders who are who are who are not willing to grapple with how they truly feel about AI, who are stuck in the confusion and fear but aren't willing to address it or going to naturally have have teams, right? The people they lead who have that confusion, who don't know what feelings are valid, right, and which ones aren't. And and and what we need in addition to to leaders who are willing to lean in and acknowledge the distress they're feeling is from that, then coming out of that acknowledgement is getting some clarity around, okay, uh, first for the leader, how are how are leaders like me in these kinds of roles in companies and industries like mine, how are some of them already using AI in a way that is adding value, in a way that is maybe uh mitigating some of the fear, right, in a way that's impacting customers. And then I think the leader as they become more confident and clear, not delusional, but clear about how they can best use AI, then they really need to move into coaching their employees around it, asking their employees some of those same kinds of questions. So somehow turning down the volume of all the fear and uncertainty and assumptions and being willing to kind of live in the gray, the both and, right? Because, you know, there's never any extremes that are that are true in day-to-day life. It's not AI is going to take all of our jobs or hey, you know, AI is the greatest thing. It's that messiness of the middle, it's that iteration of trying and stubborn, but being willing to have the conversation, being willing to acknowledge the feelings and talk through them, that is the step toward greatness. There's no shortcut. You can't you can't text or or DM or find some other way to you know to get around that. You can't operate to the other side of your feelings. You have to go through them.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, it's it's like working out, right? I want to I want to run a six minute mile, but today I'm running an eight minute mile. I can't just suddenly run a six minute mile. I I have to work at that in order to to get to that point. And you said that that if a leader is unwilling to feel and and admit how they feel and grapple with it about AI specifically, it's going Going to set the team up for failure as well. And we talk about this is no longer just impacting you, it's impacting downstream at the individual level, the decisions that the team makes, the decisions of how they're going to perform, yes or no. And one of the offerings that we have at velocity that our CEO Dave Feckman and I have done on a handful of occasions now is an AI and leadership session. And when we talk about this, sometimes people are like, oh, you're going to show us this fancy new AI. And we're like, no, we're actually going to talk about the tried and true methodologies of leadership and then apply them to AI. Because the way that you get your team to use AI is by you using it. The way your team to overcome their fears of AI is by you showcasing your fears and still trying to learn. It's by demonstrating that I don't know everything, but I'm willing to try X, Y, and Z. And when I fail at Y, I'm going to show it. And when I succeed at Z, I'm going to show it. And every time we do this session, there is so much positive feedback. It's like, holy cow. And sometimes I'm like, I love it. I love the feedback, but it is core principles. It is core principles of leadership that needs to be applied in the AI era. Because to your point, like you said earlier, if you're feeling this way, your team's feeling this way. And if your team's feeling that way, we're in trouble. Change becomes impossible. Consistency becomes impossible. And we're certainly not going to be a high-performing team if that's how we are acting on a day-to-day basis. I know that's not a question, more of a statement, but we were going to talk a little bit about how this impacts teams if we aren't willing to feel what we're feeling and be honest and transparent about it. But any any other thoughts on on kind of that angle and kind of how we how how we're feeling about that right now?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

About AI in particular? Or can you well listen?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

If you want to take a full-on detour, we can go on the AI uh in particular. I guess go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, yeah. I've got a few examples in different categories besides AI of things clients have said and and you know uh ways in which I shoved that mirror back in their face.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yes, please. I would love this.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

So, you know, back to younger employees in the workforce, right? Your zeleniaals, your generation Z. Um, truth, you know, direct quote. Younger employees are confused and disengaged. And then, same leader, but it's probably just a leadership communication problem. Huh. Really? Interesting. Tell me what, you know, what are you noticing as far as confused? Like how are they confused? What tells you that? You know, and then really forcing them to impact disengaged and leadership communication problem. Tell me about how better leadership communication solves for that. And I'm wondering what you can as a leader do differently to lean into and engage and provide some kind of coaching to those employees that may be, quote, confused, maybe disengaged, if the if they're if they are in fact that. Or maybe they're just wrestling with some different things and they want to become these high contributors, right? These people in a vibrant career. And so rather than this labeling them as confused, disengaged, oh, we gotta write you know better emails or send better Slack messages or in our next all hands, we've got to you know provide more key points to to motivate them. No, you've got to lead into them, not in the large settings or through technology, but when you are looking at them on the camera or you know, or next to them. So that's that's another one. Uh burnout. I love some of the justifications for potential burnout. Things are just really busy right now. I don't have a choice. And here's the funny thing is that that things are just really busy right now. I hear different iterations of that every time through throughout the year. Right? There's never, it's like, oh gosh, okay, so things are real busy right now. I don't have a choice. So um, okay. It's it's sort of like we can unpack um what the things like if they weren't busy. What what additional choices would you have? And tell me more about the choices that you are not uh reaching out to right now, right? Tell me about the agency that you may be disregarding, kind of thing. Um and then a final one about um a client they had a particularly challenging relationship with their own manager, right? They they start talking about how it's making them feel. They're going on the right path. Then they pivot, saying something like, Yeah, my manager is probably just under the same pressure as anybody else. So they're like letting their manager off the hook, but more, but more crucially, they are disregarding their own feelings in that kind of way. They're not willing to explore how that's impacting them and what kinds of um, what kind of a helpful, healthy conversation they might want to have with their manager. They're just you know dismissing it and just plunging forward. You're I'm busy right now, I don't have time to to care about um, you know, this impact that's having that's happening.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

That that one is so tough because putting myself in that individual's shoe, shoes, you can see the grace they're trying to give to a manager, which is a good, it's a it's a it's a reasonable thought process, right? Of my manager's under the same amount of pressure that I am, and therefore it's okay that I am being treated in this way. And it's, you know, that's it's one step to self-awareness, one step away from self-awareness, and we still have to be able to put ourselves first in this context, especially when we're managing up and managing down. But it does go to the burnout. I can't tell you how many times over the last decade, you know, I've I've historically burned out at three organizations in really fun ways and have the therapy and the tattoos to pay for it. Um, and and at each of those, there were maybe four or five months of leading up to those moments where I was saying, I just have to get through this time period. I just have to get through this. And then I started to realize everybody that I ask, they all say the word exhausted. That's how they describe themselves. I'm exhausted, I'm exhausted, I'm exhausted. And it just becomes this recurring theme of not recognizing that this is a me problem, not a company problem. And when I, this is two organizations ago, but I remember feeling like if I left, all of my problems would be solved. And then I had this kind of looking in the mirror moment where I was like, if I leave in the state that I am in right now, I will fail at that company as well. No matter if it's the greatest job in the whole world, I would fail because I am not in a good headspace as a worker. I have some issues that I need to work through, and the job is the job, right? And so I think that is a good example again of that self-awareness that has to be able to come to the table in order for us to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, we can change the brand, right? But if we don't change our personal narrative, we end up getting those same kinds of results. Yeah. Yeah. Um go on. Yeah, well, I mean, just kind of thinking about, you know, where our conversation um is going, or at least where I think it's going.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Is that, you know, I really I try to coach in a way that equips leaders to become, you know, more of that human-centered kind of leader. And when I'm using the phrase human-centered, I'm being very specific uh about that. Um, at first blush, uh a lot of people might see the phrase like human-centered leadership or human-centered, right? And think, okay, it's it's just about being soft, it's about getting too emotional in our work. It's it's not holding people accountable, it's not focusing on results. When in fact, it's just the opposite. It's the very thing that can give us even better relationships at work with customers, with results, with products. And human-centered to me is grounded in uh human-centered design, which is a discipline that first emerged in uh academia in the 50s and 60s, eventually started showing up in uh local governments around the world, right? Civic kinds of things, um, moved into nonprofits, and then in the 1990s began to penetrate industry through companies like uh IDEO, the Stanford Design School, right? Just um it really caught fire in the 1990s and became this thing, often called design thinking, as far as activities and workshops. But it's really all about a key process and skill set towards solving any kind of problem. And that's whether you're talking to an employer, customer, whether it's about a culture issue, a new development program, um, you know, you know, the latest phone or device, uh, you know, a service, um, any kind of pain point. It really begins with a leader who's able to fully understand and listen and lean into those pain points, not approach them with these predetermined solutions, with these assumptions, but to truly hear people, which uh necessarily requires no multitasking whatsoever in those moments. Right? Um and and from there, but by filling by fully hearing people hearing people and getting clarity on those pain points, from there, you can invite those same people into the solution making process. And by doing that, by being a looter who is not afraid to feel and acknowledge other employees' feelings, you know, here's here's where it comes together. You you create this psychological safety where employees are willing to share their best ideas or even their lousy ideas to brainstorm different ways together how to address those pain points, you know, essentially to improve the process or service or the product, whatever it happens to be. And and from there, then you know, the um all all the collective brainstorming in that psychologically safe environment is really then co-creating those solutions. Uh, just coming up with a zillion different ideas, taking a few to prototype, right? Whatever that prototype looks like, uh doing a little pilot experiment, starting to get results, feedback, iterate, succeed, stumble together, go to market, back up, fix, right? No live, no linear process here overall. Not in a quest for perfection, but making things a little better than they were the day before. And it's that human-centered approach that can be applied in any context. I would challenge you, I would challenge any leader to tell me where, um, tell me how somehow your role, your company, industry isn't all about trying to identify and fix a pain point that is in a way that is relevant and meaningful and gets results for employees or customers. That's human-centered leadership, right? It's not just these loosey goosey words like human and centered in leadership. It is a very intentional process that requires a leader who's tuned into themselves, and it requires three key competencies that I'll that I'll talk about in a moment, but I want to uh give you the floor again.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

I I want you to keep rolling. I feel like I'm in a masterclass right now, and I I'm glad you you addressed one of the questions that I was gonna ask, which is is as a challenge to the leaders that are sitting here and saying, oh, this is just, it's not us, like it's frufrew, or it is out there. But when you think about it, you you brought it back to, you know, the the psychology around human-centered design is not a new made-up term. It's not a thing that we're just suddenly doing to try to create work-life balance or to to safeguard people's feelings. This is this is reality. This is what it takes to be successful. And every leader that I have interviewed on this show has agreed humans are the only thing that matter. If your humans are happy and your humans are good and they're in a happy place, they are going to be more successful. They are going to want to work for you, they're going to want to bring people to work for you. They're going to do all of these things. And earlier in the episode, you said when all of this is working, it also impacts your customers. When all of this isn't working, it impacts your customers. So you said everything that I would have already asked. So keep rolling. Talk about the principles, please. And then we'll move into the last section here. We've been we've been rolling for 40 minutes somehow already. I know. I know it. Keep going.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah, no, I'm glad you alluded to, you know, just I mean, that that extra employee discretionary effort and retention, right? The impact that has on the business. Um, something also that can emerge when when products and services and brands evolve in this human-centered design kind of way. You've got these really powerful stories, like this powerful employee and customer storytelling that strengthens your brand. Yeah. Um, so here's how I here's how I think uh leaders can get there, right? It's it's a combination of uh, you know, having a coach, hopefully, I don't know whether it's me or whomever else that is helping them to hone in more on those things they're actually feeling and explore them so they can better relate to and support their employees. Yeah. But I think there's some things that um there's a key practice that I think a leader can do on their own that really helps them to get to even more of the competency set that's needed for human-centered leadership. And it's um it's a word, it's a phrase that's constantly tossed around, right? It it sometimes risks becoming part of the noise or cliche, but it's mindfulness practice. And it's only it's only a cliche if it's not uh if it's not seen through, if it's not attempted consistently enough to work, right? If it's given up on too quickly. Because I know from my own experience and observing others that when we begin to build some some muscle and rigor around mindfulness, we're able to deal with a whole lot of stuff that bubbles out into stronger competencies. So it's it's all about paying closer attention to some of the key things that are happening inside of you. Um it's what it's once again one of those things that you can't multitask while you're doing it. And there's three key actions in ongoing mindfulness practice. Do you mind if I keep going and call those out? Okay. All right. So uh the first key area of attention or focus is focusing on your breath. Again, right? Not super complicated. It's one of these powerful things, maybe the most powerful tool we have, not just as a leader, but as a human, that is hiding in plain sight, is operating automatic pilot. If we can remember to remember that we're breathing, and you know, in a split second, whether it's a difficult interaction or presentation, trying to make a decision, whatever it happens to be, by honing in on that steady in-breath and out-breath, right? Which we can't stop even if we wanted to, as long as we're alive. Let's stay alive, right, folks? Yeah. Leaders, leaders are alive. It helps you to begin to calm down almost immediately. Helps you restrain maybe an impulsive behavior like a reaction. It gives you more of that, more of that clarity. And you don't what's cool is that this could be this quiet sort of insurrection that's happening inside of you. Like no one else needs to know that you are you know taking a moment to think about your breathing, unless you're like, unless you're like, hang on. Um, right, if you do that, but hey, you know, like you know, like whatever works for you, right? So um, and if you're not used to doing that, like when you first get started, I mean, you're gonna suck at it, right? Your mind's gonna wander after one and a half seconds to everything, possibly the dishwasher, you know, things do at work, you know, um, you know, like why is Ferris Bueller on streaming again? But you know, as soon as you realize that you're not focusing on your breath, you can start again. The slate is wiped clean, the breath is forgiving, the breath does not hold a grudge, it's not affair with a friend. The from there, uh focusing on your body. And this is really where those feelings live, right? The things that we are ultimately having to face. They live in our bodies, right? Our focusing on our breath gives us more of the discipline and awareness to then go deeper into our whole person. There's an exercise that's really popular in mindfulness calls it called a body scan. Again, you could do this quietly and secretly around people. It's simply mentally taking your attention and and dragging it, you know, having it percolate from your head to your toes or from your toes to your head, briefly stopping at each level of your body, right? Your shoulders, your neck, right, your chest, your your belly, your legs, you know, your feet, and and pay attention to, huh? Are there some physical sensations going on that maybe aren't as noticeable unless I'm paying attention? What am I feeling right now in my body that's pleasant? What's unpleasant? What's neutral? And what is going on with these things that these things that I'm feeling? Is there a pit in my stomach? Is there some tightness in my throat, some dryness in my throat? Is there a little eye twitch I get sometimes and I'm doing certain activities like looking at some some data that isn't telling the story that that I want it to tell? Right? So we're becoming more um more fluent in our feelings by really looking into our bodies, because that's where it all really um manifests.

unknown 39:21

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

And then from there, as we are more in touch with those feelings, we can then focus on the place where we tend to always start, the place where we sort of get caught up, right? And that's our head, our mind states, right? The thoughts we obsess over, the stories we tell ourselves, the assumptions we make about other people. And that is really where, okay, I'm acknowledging these things I'm feeling in my body. How am I interpreting these things that I'm feeling? Is there anxiety, anger, excitement, dread kind of thing, right? Overwhelm. All of that, the impact of training our minds to be more focused in this way, we become more self-aware, more self-regulated, we increase our empathy. And all of that really bubbles up into getting stronger at emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence then drives more curiosity because we're getting out of our own way. We are facing our feelings, we are more able to help others, right? And that shows up in curiosity. Curiosity is a powerful form of both self-compassion, but caring for other people because we can lean in more to their pain points, their potential solutions. And then emotional intelligence and curiosity, those combine to form another superpower I call learning agility. And that's really developing the habit of constantly putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations, things that challenge us, where we have successes, where we stumble, getting feedback along the way, learning from it, adjusting, getting better and better. And so the human-centered leader is someone who is increasingly emotionally intelligent, increasingly curious, and constantly learning. And through mindfulness practice, we can develop more of those human-centered competencies, right, to be able to lead in that way. And great coaching can help those leaders to really pour gasoline on those fires of emotional intelligence, curiosity, and learning. Again, the end, you know, the ultimate goal is we stop being afraid of our bodies and our minds. We stop being afraid of the people around us who may be raising uncomfortable things with us. We lean in, we're willing to face things. A fully human-centered leader is a happier leader. We're going to have happier employees, happier customers, happier results. And I'm happy to take a sip and let you talk now, Al.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Uh, John, I the episode could just be that right there. We need to get you on a, we need to get you on a podium. You got me all fired up. Uh you got me all fired up on mindfulness, breeze, body, head, emotional intelligence, curiosity, that learning agility. All of this, uh, every person that's listening to it is feeling some type of way, right? Like I'm on my journey and I'm in stage four out of 12. Or, you know, if it's 100% scale, I'm at a 30% today. And, you know, it's every person is completely different. And I think the big piece with all of this is that this is not a one and done. It's not a set it and forget it. You have to work at it over and over again. And it's okay if you worked at it three years ago and then you lost it. There's still time. There's still time to bring it back. There's there's time for you to be able to build this back into your day-to-day on a consistent basis. So I think everybody that's listening to this is gonna re-listen to it. I'm gonna pull it out and it's gonna be a snippet on LinkedIn. Uh, I've got giant asterisks everywhere. My notes are all over the place. And so um, I do, I've got to get you to the, I've gotta get you to the rapid fire round because we're at that we're at that 45 minute mark. And I knew you and I, uh, what do you call it, the high frequency friends, I think is what the how you described it. I knew you and I would have no problems spending way too much time talking today. And I think it's just a uh a good call out that at some point we're gonna need another, another episode between you and I where we dive a little deeper. With that being said, I've got to get you for the 30 seconds per question, and we need to roll out uh on the the rapid fire questions. There's four questions, and we're gonna get into our positive gossip section.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Question number one is what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day before every conversation, what intentions, biases, assumptions am I bringing into this conversation? What does this person truly need? And what am I prepared to to give them in the sense of how am I going to ensure that I am as present as possible for whatever comes?

SPEAKER_00 43:46

I love it. I don't think that presence has been an answer, which means you get 11 bonus points for that question. It's a big deal. It's a really big deal. I do make up the score and it changes every episode, but it's a really big deal to get 11. Uh question number two. What is something that great leaders uh need to do more of? What like what is the thing that they, if they have, they have to have it in order to be successful in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 44:13

This is going to shock you, but pay more attention to your emotions and the things you're feeling and grapple with them so that you can be more self-aware and help others.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Tying it back to the whole episode, I love it. And and self-awareness is uh, I think it's one of the most recurring answers for this is we have to be self-self-aware as leaders in order for us to be successful. On the opposite side of that, question number three is what's something that we need to do less of? What's something that great leaders need to do less of in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Pushing employees to do all things AI without giving them some context, some training, some coaching, and taking that journey with them.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

I don't need to add anything else to that. That's exactly right. Uh, let's go with the last question here uh on the rapid fire. You've nailed it three for three, under 30 seconds for each of them. Question number four is what's the best piece of leadership advice that you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 45:12

From the the late, great Frank DeMarco, my father, the three Ts, things take time. That's never been proven wrong in my life. Thank you, Dad. Wherever you are.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

I have never heard things take time. Um, and that is the most unique answer that we've ever gotten, which means you get 17 bonus points for that question, which gives you a score of 28, which means for this episode you do win the House Cup, which means nothing for anybody besides Harry Potter fans. Well, that's yeah, that's me on a Tuesday. It's Wednesday, actually. We're recording this on June 3rd. Our last section, John, is positive gossip. This is an ode to our friend Tony Burkhard over at Pfizer Center One, who was like, I love positive gossip, and this gives us an opportunity to shine a light on somebody in your network that is doing great work. I get to send the video and say, John hyped you up, and here's what he said. So who is somebody, who is a leader that we should interview next on activating greatness? Someone that's doing meaningful work, leadership development, culture, team building inside your network, outside of it, someone you admire from afar. Um, but who is that individual that we need to bring on the show here in the next few months?

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Yeah, there's a gentleman named Marcus East, and he is currently the chief over all things digital for Autodesk. Um I first met Marcus when both of us were at T-Mobile. He was the chief digital officer. And what he brings to the table is not just, hey, let's let's fully dive into digital first and what that looks like. But he is um he is so big on the employee experience, on the customer experience. He is not one of those people who just sort of sees all the solutions and all things technology, but you know, what is the human strategy and and the human relationship around technology? Um I can't even fully capture the way he articulates these things. Um it's funny, in the podcast that I had at T-Mobile, I actually interviewed him on that podcast. So I know that he's a great guest. Uh so Marcus East, we can talk offline about how to how to get in touch with him. Um, and hopefully uh he comes on the show because I think he would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Oh, that's great. I'll have to go and uh we'll have to find that podcast for me to listen to. I will certainly uh be reaching out. We'll connect on how to get this video over to Marcus. John, this is exactly what I expected it to be. We talked a little bit about mindfulness, we talked about our words having meaning, we talked about ambiguity, clarity, AI, breathing, body, head, all of the above. We've really covered the spectrum. And I think ultimately, uh for me, big takeaways are the power that we have over ourselves as an individual and the impact that that has. And then also the power of utilizing coaching, using mindfulness, using the tools at our disposal to go from good to great, from great to excellent, from medium to good, whatever it is, we're all on this journey. Is there anything, you know, in the final 37 seconds that I have you here, is there anything that you want to close with? Anything that you want to make sure people know, uh or or just highlight uh as part of all of this?

SPEAKER_01 48:19

First of all, thank you for putting up with just my the whole bizarrness of me. And uh just, you know, go forth and uh let's all just try to be better humans, right? More in touch humans. And it's okay. It's uh we can have those those tougher conversations and we can work through those awkward moments. Everybody ultimately wants the same thing in life. People want to suffer less and be happier. We can help make that happen as leaders, or at least impact that influence it part of the way.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Oh, I love it. That's going on LinkedIn to promote the episode. John, thank you again. Everybody, listen, you loved this episode. Make sure you go and connect with John on LinkedIn. I said at the beginning, he is posting just unbelievable content on a consistent basis. Uh, make sure you connect with him, let him know that the Activating Greatness podcast is where you found him. If you're in love with this episode and you're like, wow, I wish I had more of John, reach out to me and let's get John to coach you. Let's get John to coach your whole darn team. I didn't know I was gonna say that plug at the end here, but now I'm excited about it because I'm like, I want John, you know, in my corner on a consistent basis. So reach out, let us know what you loved about the episode, let us know where you're at in this journey. Um, as always, we are still recording nonstop. We're going on a little bit of a delay from the one to two episodes each week. We're gonna start releasing every Monday again. We just have so many episodes and so much content out there that we're kind of restructuring. You're gonna see a little bit more of a higher touch. The video is gonna have more transitions. We've got some exciting things coming with the snippets and just really trying to polish the content because we have such unbelievable guests and we have such an incredible audience. The unbelievable guests like John, but also the audience like you listening to this that make this possible. So continue to listen, continue to give your feedback, leave the five-star reviews, leave the comments. I know it's working, but it's nice to be able to prove to everybody else internally that it's still working and five-star reviews, downloads wherever you get it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, uh, our website, wherever you listen, you know, you could continue to highlight the great work that's being done on the Activating Greatness podcast. Until next time, we will see you uh and continue being a part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Thank you again, John.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

All right, thank you so much.