4:15: Outside Tues + Tim - Mentorship That Matters

Show Notes

  • Tuesday: Welcome back to our season finale of Season 4. Today we're going to talk a little bit about this season, our final mentor guest Toke Moeller, and a little bit about what you might expect in Season 5 [coming Tuesday, October 4, 2022!].

  • Tim: Season 4 was really lovely. We tried a whole new format this year, based upon listener feedback. We adjusted the structure and style of the pod and have seen increased listenership and engagement. Thank you to those who joined us in Season 4,  thank you to those who have been with us from the beginning, and thank you to those who have come back. It's lovely to have you with us.

  • Tuesday: We really have been around the bend, right? The first season, or two, was kind of like some of our learnings - some of the things we say a lot in rooms and pulling those apart more… like why we don't think people can be Neutral in this place, we know why Depth is important. And then Season 3 was much more of an introspective for the two of us and what was happening with The Outside and what was happening in the world. Then in Season 4 we did these interviews in response to what we heard from listeners. 

  • Tim: It's been a good year and I think this general theme of re-architecting and renewal has been big. It was nice to begin with our mentors and thought leaders and then to end with a mentor - Toke Moeller. Toke brings this kind of connection to what is bigger than you that’s driving and what are the personal practices you can have to kind of reconnect to that and to be part of that.

  • Tuesday: Toke has cultivated a presence and a knowing of himself… for me, he’s the epitome of “the quality of the intervention is reflective of the interiority of the intervener,”right? I just really feel that with him, and I find myself becoming more vulnerable and open when he's around. I was curious what that's like for you to be in his presence?

  • Tim: At this point I just love him in lots of layered and unexplainable ways. When he had the stroke, I went down to visit him and we just did a big road trip together - like it’s that kind of love. The other thing I feel is that he has always been kind of a grounding and opening influence on me.  

  • Tuesday: Toke is an example of that “power among.”  It's like a kind of power that when someone else picks up theirs, we all get power - he's dipping into that well of infinite power and that makes it more possible for the rest of us. He actually cultivates this personal presence, personal practice, personal knowledge, self-knowledge, self-reflection that I think opens the door to other people having that as well. 

  • Tim: His thing has always been with me is he's like, “well, whatever you practice you're going to get better at. So if you practice peace you're going to get better at peace. If you  practice joy, you're going to get better at joy. You've got to practice." You know it's like none of these things happen ‘just because’ or because you have an epiphany. All of it takes practice.

  • Tuesday: I also want to say, because you know those of our listeners who know Toke, and the listeners who know us - and know about our emphasis on equity - might have a question because that's not the lens that he comes in through and so I would just love us to talk a little bit about that because I actually don't find it incongruent or inconsistent in any way. I just find that's not where he is and I don't expect everyone to be where I am all of the time.

  • Tim: Can you tell me why you don't find it incongruent and inconsistent?

  • Tuesday: I think it's because of his ground, right? I never, ever doubt with him that the inherent worth and dignity of all people is key. I can experience and feel a depth; even though he would never talk about difference in the way that I do and might not even understand difference probably doesn't even understand difference in the way that I do, right? But there is a real ability to meet what is - the reality of what people are experiencing, the reality of their having different lived experiences, and also that feels like not how I think about things but certainly right alongside it. He's an elder and like a holder of wisdom so deep he doesn't have to get it; the thing I'm getting and into. There’s something different that he's bringing that isn't negated because I have this particular passion or interest or analysis. What he brings to me feeds that, even if he doesn't go there with me. Maybe people who aren't in the community and don't know us might not feel that disconnect but I wanted to speak to it directly because I think it's really important with what's happening in the world and how we relate to our elders and how we honor that lineage that we came from.

  • Tim: Season 5 is coming up and we're already beginning to start planning the recordings for it which is very exciting. We’ve got quite a cast coming in - there’s a couple that I'm particularly excited about: Zaid Hassan is coming on which is really exciting as he is the author of The Social Labs Revolution. He was one of the founders of Reos Partners back in the day, and he is now the co-founder and CEO of Complexity University. He’s a really good friend of mine from back in the day but also has been incredibly influential, as a writer and a thinker, in the field of systems change and in the field of systems change and equity as well. He’s actually put some thought leadership out there -  which is relatively rare I would say - and just one of the biggest brains I know. I mean, this dude is smart!

  • Tuesday: Well, speaking of big brains, can I just say my big brain friend is also coming on -  Andrew Grant Thomas. I think I'm a fairly smart person… but there's some people you meet and you're like oh that one's smarter than me… Andrew Grant Thomas is one of those people - he has an organization called Embrace Race which is about working with children around race; specifically how do we parent children around issues of race, how do we make the world safe for all of our black and brown children.

  • Tim: The other person we have coming on the pod is Richard Beard. He was one of those invites that I wrote and I was like I don't know if Richard's gonna come on you know and I just finished reading his book, Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England. The whole book's dramatic and it's angry and I LOVE it! It’s a “sensitive and incisive analysis of the British class system has no right to be as insanely readable and enjoyable as this book manages to be.  Engaging and readable powerful and cogent a vivid portrait of the political elite exposed for the vulnerable men and children they are. If you want to understand the aura of entitlement and untouchability shrouding our government class look no further than Beard’s witty unsparingly sharp and deeply moving anatomy of the emotional culture of England's boarding schools.” For me, I truly feel the more I research this area and look into it - the British boarding school system - it is just an extreme example of something that's globally pervasive and so I am really excited to have Richard Beard coming on.

  • Tuesday: Cyndi Suarez is coming back! I feel like we just started with her… she has such a deep analysis of power - but not traditional - her book talks about power from different vantage points and not like just the social worker / social change view of power.

  • Tim: The other person we have coming on the pod is Shaun Rutland. He is the founder and CEO of Hutch Games.  Hutch has gone from really small to really big - he literally just sold it for $375 million dollars… so they've gone from this very small company to this very large entity that's sold in highly iterative loops and his whole thing is about culture. Creating cultures for people to be creative and to be in good relationship and to care about each other, but it's a very corporate perspective in as a CEO and it's in the gaming industry which I find fascinating. Hutch was like, I think, one of the top 5 places to work in the tech industry in the world. I love this one because I feel like it's a very different voice than we normally have on the pod but so connected in how they approach the work - these rapid iterative testing, this focus on the quality of relationship that has allowed them to retain people in an industry that turns over human beings like you wouldn't believe.

  • Tuesday: Then we go from Shaun to Tenneson Woolf and Quanita Robertson who are doing quieter work, with smaller systems, which kind of focuses on individual leaders / smaller cohorts. At the level of conversation; not necessarily at the level of culture or system. Tenneson & Quanita are working across race all the time but they bring in things like ritual, things like conversation. And so I think it will be very exciting to talk with them, especially as we kind of lay out this constellation of people we're going to have next season. It's like it's all over the place and yet there's a real thread.

  • Tim: Folks, it's a really good season coming up and we're obviously very excited. We'll do some of our stuff too - reflections after our conversations. So we'll have some thought leaders on, we’re going to have some people we consider to be colleagues and friends, and we'll have some people who are kind of like clients and partners in delivery with us very similar to last season.

  • Tim: So stick with us folks! There's lots of ways to stay in touch with us as well as we have the gap between this season and the next: There's 4 seasons of The Outside podcast - you can go back and revisit and find your favorites and tune back into conversations, you can follow us on LinkedIn - we're pushing out articles on a bi-weekly basis at the moment, which we're really excited about. And then of course there's the online courses that we've got out there - check out the Shared Work course or the Leading Effective Meetings  course and in a couple of weeks we're going to start recording a “Two Loops of Systems Change” online course as well. 

  • Tim + Tuesday: Thank you for this season, looking forward to next and always just good to be with you in this way!!!! If you are ever in a situation where you need direct support in work you're doing and you think The Outside could be helpful, don’t hesitate to reach out. Take care, friends.


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