5.09: Outside Tues + Tim - On serendipity to success

Show Notes

  • Tim: We are spending our time together today exploring the Inspiration Series. This was a series of three speakers we had who were absolutely rock and roll. The way we run the pod now is we have these series of groups of people come on and then after a period of time we reflect on that.

  • Tues: As I think about these three interviews - Andrew Grant-Thomas from Embrace Race, Shaun Rutland from Hutch Games, and Alex McCann from ONSIDE - what delights me most is that they were so different from each other. Shaun Rutland, born in New Zealand and worked in the UK, Andrew Grant-Thomas, born in Jamaica and now in Ohio and Massachusetts, and then Alex lived all over the world. Alex, a woman of color, coming from a privileged, private education background, Andrew coming from just about nothing, and Shaun coming from a single Mom at the age of 15. I love to learn from people who are that different from each other.

  • Tues: I think they were all delightful in their difference and were kind of surprised where they ended up. But do you know what else I realized as I thought through these last 3 interviews? All of them talked, pretty significantly, about their children and their parenting. I love that, on this podcast about leadership and systems change, people talked about their parenting and what they wanted for their kids and how their kids saw them in the world. For example, Andrew Grant-Thomas has dedicated his life to the world he wants to see for his children. We have to live in a world where kids are able to talk about race and embrace race; to actually be with issues of race, and then Shaun was looking back and going, “wow” as I was building this company I might not have been the Dad I wanted to be but now I'm thinking about that and working with that and figuring that out, and with Alex you get a sense that her kids kind of keep her going. She moves through the world, though innovation and in business, as a mother.

  • Tim: We often invite these people onto the pod because they're big picture change agents;  they're doing something remarkable at a scale that has caught our attention… but it is so interesting that again, and again, the story ends up being so personal. You end up hearing tumultuous stories of personal development that gives birth to these brilliant humans and ideas. There's something in that willingness to be in the personal journey that actually leads to the type of leadership that responds to the changes that are most being called for in the world right now. I think it's a really solid reminder, when you talk to 3 leaders of this kind of caliber, from these different backgrounds, and what they point to is a practice ground that's as intimate as their children. There's something in the personal journey that grounds this in a way we can all relate to it. It makes the ability to be a change agent feel more accessible.

  • Tues: When people give you a view of their kids and their hopes or aspirations for their kids,  their relationship with their kids, that's a real opening. Not everyone lets you in in that way.

  • Tim: A lot of literature about leadership talks about authenticity. Authentic leaders have the greatest impact… there’s a lot of talk about leaders being able to model being vulnerable to create the ability for vulnerability in their teams. What's the right amount? What's the balance between how much you open up and how much you don’t? Are you a bad leader if you don't show that kind of thing? When’s oversharing?

  • Tues: Authenticity has to go with self-sovereignty or having yourself (the ability to hold yourself to bring yourself back to center). If you have yourself and you’re not asking for anything with your authenticity I think it makes a really big difference.

  • Tim: I actually feel like we've picked up on one of the invisible threads that ran through those three pods - the balance between the personal and the professional. This balance between the healing and the well-being and the need to get things done.

  • Tim: I felt like running though all 3 of those pods was almost something serendipitous. How they ended up doing what they’re doing; that sense that things happen to you, or you just happen to be in the right place at the right time, or you just happen to meet the right person in the right moment, or you know you have all these plans and then life gets hold of your tail and swings you around in another direction. Their path to “success” wasn’t a linear 12-step process.

  • Tues: As you say that, Tim, I want to take it back to our earlier conversation of self-sovereignty. I think that it takes some courage to take that meandering path and some belief in your wherewithal to take that kind of path that I would say is probably present in all three of those folks.

Resources:

The Outsideshared work, participatory leadership, systems change