Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Bold Career Pivots with Misha Rubin

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 310

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Misha Rubin is an executive “What’s Next” strategist who helps C-level leaders and high-achievers break income ceilings, land strategic leadership roles, and navigate bold career pivots while regaining meaning and momentum. Grounded in 15+ years as a Wall Street advisor and former EY Partner, he’s led $100M+ transformations and coached hundreds of executives to breakthroughs in compensation, clarity, and career strategy. His work is results-focused, built around executive positioning and decision-making, and supported by a proprietary tool that brings vision, clarity, and next-step confidence.

A  Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “We are CEOs of our careers and our lives, and somehow we tolerate not having a strategy for them.”
  • “The slow lane is gone. If you are in a slow lane, that’s not a great place to be nowadays.”
  • “You have to be nimble and bold to meet the needs of the future.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. 

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective.


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Scott Allen:

Okay, everybody, welcome to Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have Misha Rubin, and he is an executive What's Next strategist. So I'm excited to explore that. He is a former partner at EY. Lots going on in his background. You can check out his bio in the show notes for the full bio. But Misha, uh, before we jump in, what do listeners need to know about you? I know you're sitting in New York right now, which is an awesome place. I just told you I was there last week, which I love, love, love the city. My daughters, they they are looking forward to next spring. We are gonna spend probably three days in the city and see shows. But um, what do people need to know about you?

Misha Rubin:

Listen, I I was a partner at Ernsting Young. I spent about 15 years um working with executives from all key top Wall Street firms. So I've seen a lot of corporate world and how it functions and how it doesn't, and I've seen uh how to navigate this world for myself. I also, you know, hired people, promoted people, uh increased their compensation. So I was on all the different parts of equations and seen ins and outs of how corporate world works. And I've always thought that leaders, and I know leadership is one of the key topics and context for our conversation, that leaders in organizations have a lot of responsibilities. They have to deliver, they have to take care of their people, they have to uh be on the top of the knowledge and the latest informations or regulations or technologies. There's a lot of expectations of leaders. And very often, leaders themselves are not being taken care of for their careers, for their own decision making, for them to figure out what's next for them. Are they in the right spot? Are they growing into the right direction? So that's the expertise that I would love to bring to your listeners. Yes. Okay, well, I'm so excited to have this conversation. We have not had an episode and specifically on you know what's next for executives, who's helping them think through? Who are their thinking partners? And so at least I'm kind of thinking of you as like a thinking partner, a coach who can help people really better understand what they even need to be considering when it comes to this space. So, what are you seeing out there? How are how are you kind of making sense of this space right now? What do you see the needs as?

Speaker 1:

Well, one of the things that I see that the world is changing. And um, and I don't think that's being fully appreciated because uh in some aspects of our economy, um, the change might come slower. You know, artificial intelligence is definitely making big steps. I don't think people realize how big the change is going to be, and how how actually all our day-to-day and businesses and how corporations work and how careers are designed, that's all is in the process of being completely revamped. So we're living in these very exciting times. It could be also a little bit scary. I would say that in the past, your a status quo career was a little bit like you know, a slow death, but that could actually go on for a while. I actually think that we're moving into the times when um some of these slow-paced moving, not being proactive, the price will come much faster. So that's why it's you know, I don't want to be alarmist, but at the same time, I want people like, hey, you gotta think about what's next, how you're navigating your career, how you're managing it, how you're preparing yourself for what's next, so you are not left behind.

Scott Allen:

Well, I think it's so incredibly important. I mean, just even in the couple recent conversations I was in, Misha, I mean, one was listening to a podcast with a CMO, and you know, he said, Yeah, we're short about 10 people, but we've got AI. And that was just a very interesting statement. And then there was another uh conversation I was in recently, and the individual said, you know, we're basically paying about two staff members in AI subscriptions right now, but but it's completely worth it. And so just even statements like this that just those two little kind of wow, that's interesting. I hadn't I I think I think you are exactly correct. Uh change is afoot and are we relevant? Are we on the cutting edge? And are we thinking about what's next? Are we thinking about and strategizing otherwise, you know, on the cutting edge or the chopping block, so to speak? Totally.

Speaker 1:

Um, I would say you need to master five things in order to prepare yourself for this career. I don't even want to say it's of the future, I'm just I would say career for the modern executive, you know. Right now it's happening, and um five things doesn't mean you need to master them all at once. You can choose one at a time in terms of based on your circumstances. But I think to build uh an amazing career in the time to come, you do need to master all five. Number one is you gotta be a master strategist. And if you think about any uh company, you know, if if a CEO didn't have a uh strategy for the company, the board would fire them.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

So we are CEOs of our careers and of our lives, and somehow we are tolerating not having a strategy for our career. And strategy means, you know, having a vision, understanding where you want to end up, understanding where the opportunities are, understanding, like even in the industry where you're in, where it's heading, you know, do you think there is a future there, or is there something else you want to do? So there's strategy that would encompass a lot of things, including your inner aspirations, what type of lifestyle you want to lead, for instance, in the next 10 years. And it should include the market conditions and the current world that we're living in. And that's all part of the strategy. So without having that, it's actually very hard to make any decent decisions for anything, I would say, in life, but especially in career, and one of the big mistakes that people have been making over decades is making a lot of circumstantial career decisions. And one of the reasons when you make circumstantial decisions, when you don't have a good strategy and vision of where you're heading. So that's number one.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

Number two, you gotta be a pro fast tracker. And here's what I mean. So, what I mean, but when you're ending up in an organization, any organization, you gotta know how to navigate organization, how to build relationships, how to create your personal brand within organization, how to identify nonlinear opportunities. I'll give you an example, a client of mine, um, this is AI story a little bit, because he came to me and he was stuck and a little depressed. And he's like managing director in a bank, so just doing really well, but kind of really not happy where he was. And, you know, we were looking at outside opportunity, inside opportunity. But part of it, you gotta be keen on and be able to realize that opportunities that are in front of you. So why and where there are opportunities? Either you need to get closer to where business making money, that's where opportunities are, or you need to get closer, another dimension would be strategic initiatives. That's where organizations invest money and resources. So at that time, he wasn't an AI expert, but he was known for the person that if you give him something new, he'll figure out how to do it better than most other people. Nice. And that time AI became a thing, and he suddenly became AI lead, a partner with technology for the whole big financial department. Yep, and that created completely different opportunities for him. Now, that's what I mean by fast tracking, because the slow lane is gone. If you are in a slow lane, or I call it railroad promotion track, where you're waiting for your boss to get fired or retire or move on, that's a slow track, that's not a great place to be nowadays. Yep. Okay, so that's the second one, right? Yes, the third one, you gotta become an expert reinventor. Okay. What I mean that given how fast everything is moving, including the technology and including the uh environment, you gotta know how to reinvent yourself. Meaning that you have certain skills, you have certain experiences, you have certain abilities, capacities, aspirations. You should be able to repackage them and close the gap and move into different roles, different industries. And that's a very important skill that nowadays will just become more important because you will see, we will see some industries will collapse, we will see that some roles will disappear, and the people that have capacity to take and repackage themselves and move, put them in different positions will be the one that succeeds. 100% and the okay, so the fourth one, you gotta be a strategic opportunist. Okay. This is a very particular skill of being able to see the opportunities and to see the right ones for you.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And you kind of need everything, you need all the pieces, you need to be strategic, so you need to have a strategy. You might need to know how to fast track and identify opportunities within your organization. You might be able to reinvent, but it's almost like a whole different lens of things in terms of moving your career forward. And that's like if you're looking, for instance, to make more money, or if you're looking, for instance, to have much bigger impact, you gotta be strategic opportunist. So you identify these opportunities that give you uh uh possibility to do these things.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And the last but not the least, this is, and I and I'm still articulating the name of it, but let's call it hmm mindset slash your slash your energy energy field slash your nervous system. Okay, because it combines all these kind of soft things that people everybody talks about, but nobody knows how to put a finger on. Because if you think about your nervous system, is has a capacity for you know for interacting with an organization, deal with unknown, deal with fear. So it will be a limiting factor in your growth, and you and your nervous system is lives within your energetic field, and you can feel energy, like you can think about asking boss to give you a 50% raise, and you can feel the energy or fear or discomfort coming in. So those are very real things that you can feel, and they're actually part of your broader consciousness that you operate. So, and then inside of that, you will also see your mindset and your belief system that also lives there. And if, for instance, you don't see what's possible for you, right? If you have a limitation on your personal possibility, that will have a limit. If, for instance, you um have a low self-worth, so your own evaluation of your worth and your potential, that will put a lid on your opportunities. If you don't have enough agency to advocate yourself and pursue things that you don't, that will put a limitation of you. So, this these all things live in a paradigm of your mindset, your nervous system and energy, and you know, and an energetic circle, but they all pretty much will create kind of a backdrop of everything that will happen to you. And I would say, in terms of there are two key qualities that will have you survive in any economy and in any environment nowadays, and those are being nimble and bold. So, in this new career paradigm that we're entering, just being competent is not enough because all the knowledge now, you know, people used to get PhDs and you know, go study in law school, and the knowledge used to be very valuable, and it's still valuable in certain areas. But now the other thing we need to understand with AI, a lot of knowledge is easily accessible, that it's available to you on demand, even if you don't have a background in it or you don't know what it is. So I think that's a very profound change when whatever it is you know is becoming less valuable. It's whatever you can create, whatever you can interpret, whatever you can maybe even feel or sense, because there is a limitation to AI systems. They they operate in very particular paradigms and models, and they have certain limitations, how they think. So that's where being nimble and bold will serve you in terms of finding opportunities and figure out how to move forward.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, there's so much good here, so much good here. So I I I have like 17 things going through my head, and so I I love love.

Speaker 1:

Good thing I have a nimble and bold mindset. So I can I'm just I just okay, I gotta be nimble and bold to prepare. What's incoming? Oh man. Well, can I just repeat the five things just so that they kind of land with the listener? Yeah. So number one is your strategy, you know, that's so important. And and I always think don't try to address all of them, just pick one, you know. So strategy would be all always like most obvious for most people. Number two, becoming a master fast tracker, knowing how to navigate organizations, yeah. Number three, being a professional reinventor, and number four, being strategic opportunist, right? Identifying opportunities and being able to pursue them. And number five, this is your kind of the soft part, your mindset, your nervous system, your energy field, and how you develop it to meet the needs of the future. Now I'm ready for your questions.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. Well, and then and then, of course, you are nimble and bold. I mean, you are well, I think for some listeners right now, to your point, you know, this could feel large, but I want to tell a little bit of a story. And I I think probably about three years ago, I was a I was a professor of management at a university. It'd be like Fordham in your neck in your neck of the woods, a Jesuit institution. And professor of management, and I just started paying attention to my energy. I was a little less excited to go to class. I wasn't feeling as energetic, just naturally energetic about the work. I I was feeling a little bit bored. I was getting a little more easily agitated by the normal workings of organizational life. I'd been there for at that time probably 15 years. So the first step for me was just paying really close attention to kind of that energy. It was like, huh, hmm, interesting. And then, you know, I tapped some of my thinking partners. I have a therapist, I have a mentor, my wife, some other individuals that I really respect their opinions. And I just started having some conversations. And, you know, having a partner like you, having an individual who can coach some of those conversations, who can help someone gain clarity. And I just spoke with a friend who's maybe like three years behind me, but is just kind of starting to feel some of those inklings themselves. And, you know, for me, that was kind of the first step of even beginning to develop that strategy. It was, okay, here's where I am. And then as I got more and more clear, I could start to make some decisions, like, oh, okay, let's let's financially ensure that we're in the right space. So we made some adjustments to finances and just started slowly moving some pieces into place so that if there was a decision, there were some barriers that were no longer as big a concern.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Scott Allen:

But this whole, you know, strategist, I I mean, I love all of these because I may not necessarily know where I want to go, but having someone like you and having an expert to help guide some of those conversations, help connect some dots, help me make sense of the opportunities, I think it's invaluable because as you, I know a lot of people who they're they feel stuck, they feel like they're a prisoner, they don't have options, and they uh may not make the bold decision to live into a better version of themselves or the next version of themselves or the next kind of chapter of their career. But strategist, pro-fast tracker, reinventor, opportunist, strategic opportunist, and then you know, your mindset, kind of that operating system, your energy. It's hard to hide your energy. It's hard to hide that, hard to fake that. I just I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it. But for like where you started, kind of where am I headed? What's north? And I might not know that it's exactly north, but I what's the direction I'm moving in? When you're when you're helping someone like I was in that state, kind of gain sense of even beginning to think about strategy, talk about that. I'm really, really interested in kind of that phase. I imagine you get some clients where they're like, I don't know, I'm not sure. I just kind of know that I'm not feeling it's not, you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. First, I want to address what you started about to you, because I think number one, you gotta be conscious of your energetic field.

Speaker 3:

Yes, right.

Speaker 1:

That's what you said, and I think a lot of people, and nowadays when I talk about energetic field, I'm not talking about some woo-woo things. I'm telling you, you feel it, you feel when things are off, you feel when you don't want to go to work, when you um don't feel fulfilled. You know, there's all these very clear, and then your energy level goes down, and you output and input.

Scott Allen:

In the literature, it's called emotional labor. So this is an extreme example, but you might have a prostitute or you might have a server in a restaurant, they have to pretend that they're enjoying because authentically, that's not really where I am authentically. So you have to quote unquote act. I I had to turn it on more, pretend the enthusiasm, the excitement, the energy. And I could feel that, and I knew it wasn't authentic.

Speaker 1:

And for some people, they've been leading for this for so long that they still absorb it into their identity. So I think if there is, and I'm thinking about people who are listening to this right now, that number one thing tune into your energy field and see where you are. You excited about life? Are you making the type of difference you want to be making? You know, are you are you proud of your life? Do you feel fulfilled? Those are great questions. And I think sometimes we resign ourselves that life just has to be like in a very particular box, and we uh stop dreaming. So I think that's kind of to me a wake-up call to everybody who is not feeling 100%, don't wait. Because I all I know that if you wondering whether what's figuring out what's next, whether it's the right time for this right now, my answer is always like you should have started a year ago. If you're wondering about this, then you should have so you're always better off starting when you're in a great spot. In fact, if you're doing amazingly well, this is your perfect time to plot where you want to head. And then, of course, people have circumstances and life happens, and sometimes we have to do it in not great circumstances. But if you have great circumstances, perfect timing. Anyway, so your question was about how so how do you figure out the strategy, right? Yeah, and I would say there is like a bunch of ingredients. I I think about it as like I don't know, maybe a soup. You know, I'm I love to cook, so I have a soup analogy. So, but think about what would be the ingredients of figuring out your strategy. So, number one would be I call it you plus 10. So it would be Scott plus 10. Envisioning life 10 years from now. Yeah, let's let's look at it happened, whatever it is you want, it occurred. Who is that person? Like where they are, what motivates them, how did they make it there? That's an example of a North Star. That and for some people it could look like a very particular goal, for some people it could be blurry, for some it might take a while to get there. But engaging in this exercise of looking at you plus 10 is an amazing way to kind of look at the direction of your life and see where currently are takes you there. Or you and the other thing about a great thing about what I what I say creating a vision, because vision is not a goal. I don't want to think, I don't want to mix those two concepts because what's great about vision, you can always adjust it as you move closer to your vision, might you might change your mind, you might have more or you might adjust it. So to me, it's not like a one-time exercise, it's it's it's a forever exercise where you always can recalibrate where you're going and adjust your steps, right? So that's one piece of equation. The second piece of equation, I would look at you and your criteria. And those criteria, I think about an iceberg here, because some of the criteria could be like, I want to make that much money, I want to work in that type of a company. There are some things that live on its surface and some things that everybody talks about, but then there are things that are hidden from you. So there are a lot of successful people that are miserable, and how do I know? You know, I was one of them, you know. So just because you're meeting some of the surface parts of the iceberg doesn't mean that you're meeting your inner needs. So there are things that actually bring you meaning and fulfillment, there are things that bring you joy. It's important to investigate. There's a value system that you actually developed when you were a child that is guiding you, but because it's not articulated for people and not um not articulated in language and hidden from their view. Very often people say, I know what I don't want, but I don't know what I want.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And and um, so that could be like another set of exercises, really understand what are my criteria for what's next for me. Yes, that's another piece. Yes, the third thing, and one of the and this goes back to my theory that people don't regret decisions, people regret how they arrived to their decisions. And one of the reasons people uh regret their decisions is because they haven't considered all of their options, and this is very important exercise to do this exploration and say, okay, I know where I'm heading, I know that some of my criteria, but there could be a lot of actually different pathways there and a lot of steps that could take me there. Let's explore variety of them, let's explore actually really deeply and widely. And this is where a lot of fear kicks in. Is that people think if they put something on a sheet of paper, they commit to doing something, but in reality, they just really need to explore, right? Yep, yeah. Then another piece of strategy could be looking at external world and seeing where do I think the opportunities are? Where do I think the place where I am, your organization, your role, your your function, your industry, where do you think they're heading? Is there an opportunity there? Do we think is do you are you planning to stay there for the next decade? Or this is a you just transition to something else. Those are very important. You maybe want to look where you want to live geographically, or you want to decide is it a large company or a small company? So this is you gotta look at this macro view, and then if you start mixing all these things together, that you will find things that overlap. You get the misha soup, it's a misha soup, and it's you then condense it, and usually you will get to like um, and I do this what you know, I help my clients make all types of moves, some of them are radical, yeah. You know, and that's how we arrived to some of their ideas. I'll I'll give you an example. You know, a client of mine was this like a big top shot lawyer on Wall Street, making a lot of money, you know, had a big team, was also a mom of three, working really hard, you know, scrambling for time, always trust. You know, when she came to me and like we looked at, for instance, what is her criteria, you know, in her heart, she was a humanitarian. Wow. And what she really wanted to do is also have more time with her kids, you know. So we designed a leap for her where she would make less money by design. It wasn't a coincidence, but it was a very conscious choice. But she ended up being a general counsel in this very innovative foundation. In the future, what she saw for herself running her own nonprofit. So we aligned all these different pieces and explored all these ideas to get to the things that work for her life.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, but I love I love that use of the word design, right? There was there's forethought, there's like there's knowledge, there's there's intentional choice when it comes to design, and you're helping her design what that can look like. I absolutely love the use of that word.

Speaker 1:

But that's really in the source of the work. That's where you can make very conscious choices, very thought-through choices. The other thing what stops people a lot in living a great life is the fear of making changes. Very much normal for humans to be afraid of what you don't know. So if you don't, if I tell you that you got a change and you don't know what it is, and you don't know whether you qualify it, whether you will make enough money, whether you'll be able to support your family, whether your future will be the way you want it, the less the more you don't know, the scary it is. Once you start going through this design type of an exercise, when you start putting things on the paper and all the pieces of the puzzle and looking at them, then you get to a final piece of the puzzles that are actually very realistic. And you can evaluate their risk, your readiness for them, the gaps that you have. And what will happen that you will still have fear, but it will be a fraction of the fear when you deal with something completely unknown versus a very practical idea that you arrive to that you investigating and seeing whether that's the right leap. And what that allows people to make very well thought through decisions. And what is a good decision is the one that stands the test of time. And as I said, people don't regret decision. You know, I'll give you an example. I just went to this conference and I stayed in a hotel. And as soon as I arrived at that hotel, I said, that's a wrong hotel. And I immediately went back. It's like, how did I choose that hotel? You know, how did I make this? That was my initial, because we all want to learn, right? So we always go back to the decision-making process. And what we see in the decision-making process in relation to career, you haven't considered all your options. You were not clear about where you want to take your life. You you had fear and a lot of other things that, in a way, so it's always goes back to the decision-making process. So that's where you want to improve. If you want to have a great career and a great life, make better decisions.

Scott Allen:

Well, and I I I mean, this is kind of where I want to start beginning to wind down the conversation, but let's talk a little bit about time. I imagine you have some clients who, upon some of the initial inklings that they want to be more intentional, they want to be more strategic. Um, they're a strategist, they know they need to do that, whether they're going to stay in the organization and plot their course forward, um, or whether they know they want to maybe make a transition like the example you shared. I imagine some clients of yours are proactive about this conversation and invest in conversations with you because it's a type of an investment. It really is. Um, and I and then I imagine you come across some clients where they've been laid off and it's an emergency. Yes. Talk about those two scenarios where you have the individual who is is a little bit more playing the chess match and and looking forward, whether again, internal or making a jump, and you have time to work with that individual to design this, and that individual who's in the different situation. What talk about those two scenarios?

Speaker 1:

So that's why I will repeat what I said before because this is exactly what comes to the point. Plot plot your future when you're in a strong position. Yes, you have many more options and you have many more possibilities, and you can think much straighter. Yes, listen, when people get laid off and they're concerned about feeding their families, then you know what? Forget about the future. Go figure out how you'll feed your family and give yourself room because sometimes we need to do what we need to do. I think the my philosophy is um how to connect both. You know, the sky is where our dreams live, is their highest aspiration lives. This is where our soul resides and joy and all these things. And then, but then there is earth, right? So just talking about the sky thing and dreaming and fantasizing not going to bring us a great life. We have to bring this on earth. Now, on earth, that means you need practical and pragmatic. Some people have a hard time leaving the sky, some people have a hard time leaving the earth, but the the truth is someplace in the middle, right? So the way I work with my clients, I try to meet them where they are. And sometimes when you have family to feed and you lost your job, you're really on the ground, you're on the earth, and you need to deal with earthy matters on terms of how do I structure my resume, how who do I talk to? And I help people to deal with that. And I try to bring some sky to that to to to the point that it's relevant and it serves them. Uh, or sometimes it's not really the right time to think about the sky. Yeah, it's the time to be on earth. But in my philosophy, my goal is always to bring the sky and the earth together, right? So that's I think where the magic happens, when you can be aspirational and dreamy and bring it into reality and have an amazing life. Yeah.

Scott Allen:

Well, and I I I imagine when it's when it's someone's been laid off and they're kind of in that earth, it becomes more it can be, I imagine, become more important about finding that next job than really potentially living into the best new version of you. Uh for me, that that proactive approach where you can um, as you said, when you're in a position of strength, doing that strategy, doing the strategy then, that is um, it's invaluable. And I think the people who invest in that with people like you, that's invaluable because as we talked about in the very, very beginning, there's a lot of change afoot. And are we staying close to that and staying on the cutting edge and orienting and driving our future versus having that be decided for us? And that's why I mean, a word came to mind nimble, bold, reinventor, you know, do strategic opportunist. Do you have some hustle? And each of us have to be hustling a little bit right now to ensure that we are moving in the right direction towards where things are headed, versus getting kind of swept up in it. And um, you know, anything else that you want to say before we begin to wind down our time together? Or before we wind down our time, I should say.

Speaker 1:

Sure. I I just want to leave people where, you know, when there is change, it's always the time for opportunity. So we need not forget sometimes life could kick us, you know, and we will access this world from change from the bottom, and sometimes we access it from the top, you know. But what do we need to forget? The opportunities are there. I also think about our careers sometimes is the best practice for our spiritual development and our growth. So there's there's just a lot in this life to taste and experience and be bold and nimble.

Scott Allen:

Love it. I love it. I'm gonna call this episode Earth, Sky, and Soup.

Speaker 1:

I don't know whom that will attract, but you know.

Scott Allen:

Okay, so I always close out the episode just by asking guests what they've been reading, streaming, what's caught your attention in recent times. Uh, it could be something you've been listening to, but what might interest listeners in just 30 seconds or less.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so one of my favorite books that I can never stop recommending is Byron Katie, uh loving what is. Byron Katie is like an amazing, prolific teacher. And she developed a methodology that helps you in it the most simple ways question your thoughts in reality. And that's actually what we need right now: questioning our thoughts in reality, questioning our disempowering thoughts, questioning our thoughts about the future. That's one of my always recommended books on the list.

Scott Allen:

Oh, I love it. Okay. Loving what is. I got it. I got it. Misha, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate you. Appreciate your wisdom. Thank you for sharing it with listeners. And until next time, be well. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Okay, before we get to my summary of that episode, I have a special guest, and this is Dr. Marcy Levy Shankman. And we have been colleagues, co-authors, friends since probably like 2006, back in the day, back in 06. She is helping with ILA's dialogue lab. And so, Marcy, tell listeners a little bit about this opportunity and how they can get involved, how they can get engaged. New Orleans in January sounds pretty good to me. Tell us a little bit more.

Marcy Shankman:

So, Scott, thanks for asking me to talk a little bit about the dialogue lab. This is a really exciting experience. It's only offered every other year. We're going to be in New Orleans, as you said. So, this three-day dialogue lab, which is going to be in New Orleans, is focused on dialogue as a form of leadership. So that means we're not going to have panels, we're not going to have workshops, we're not going to have presentations. What we're going to have is true deep engagement. So individuals will sponsor inquiry sessions, and those individuals are the participants themselves. And if you're interested in attending the dialogue lab, you can come and participate as a full-fledged member of the community. This is a full-on, co-created learning community. And if you want to bump up your level of engagement, then you can propose a topic to discuss. And the proposal is simply a question. And that's what we call our inquiry sessions. We're also going to take advantage of being in New Orleans, which means we're going to have this experience grounded in music, food, and civic life. And we'll have opportunities to engage with members of the New Orleans community. So we think this is the right time for this gathering. Dialogue's needed in this time of polarization, of complexity, and of disconnection. And the dialogue lab is uh an antidote of sorts to that. We want people to come who are interested in expressing their curiosity, who have courage to ask deep questions, practice deep listening, express their vulnerability. Expertise is not a requirement. A growth mindset is. So we're really excited to invite your listeners to apply to participate. The gathering is about three days, as I mentioned earlier, January 30th to February 1st of 2026. And all who are interested in leadership are invited to attend.

Scott Allen:

Awesome. And I what I love in there is your you mentioned the opportunity to practice. And we can practice listening and practice engaging and practice discernment and truly being present and mindful. Absolutely love it. So for listeners, there is all kinds of information in the show notes. So please feel free to check that out there. And you know what, Marcy, thank you so much for being a part of the leadership team that's putting this on. And thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope it goes awesome.

Marcy Shankman:

Thanks, Scott.

Scott Allen:

My personal sense is that there's going to be a lot of disruption uh primarily among white-collar workers in the next five to seven years. Sooner than that. People like Misha are out there and serving as guides, helping people even begin to think about transitions, think about what's next, think about how to stay relevant. And I think, as you've heard me say before, having those thinking partners is worth its weight in gold. As Wayne Gretzky said, skate where the puck is going. Are you seeing around the corners? And having people like Misha in your corner can be a game changer. That's the practical wisdom for me. As always, thanks for checking in. Take care. Be well.