Manage to Engage

This episode is a read and talk on a recently published article on protector styles. We all have them and it's one of the most important things you can learn about yourself. Here's the link to the original article:https://clearandopen.com/protect-yourself-from-change/

It's been a while since I dropped a podcast as I've had a number of other priorities these days, but I do promise to keep it going.I wanted to share a rich and challenging conversation we had in a recent Clear and Open webcast. This was the 8th session in a course we're currently completing called Intuitive Leadership and Living. Some interesting things came out about challenging values, which in most circles would be considered taboo. Unfortunately, this enables people to stay comfortable and not grow.I'm a business coach, spiritual educator, and therapist and I specialize in helping leaders get out of their own way. For more information about what I do or to become part of the conversations you hear on this podcast, please visit clearandopen.com. My next course, Revealing Your Unconscious, begins September 23, 2023, and this podcast actually serves as an intro to that course. It's going to be very much a workshop like what we did in this session, with a focus on outlining and mapping aspects of your unconscious and related principles. This will include the different types of childhood wounding, compensation styles, finding your hidden medications, how to make your unconscious conscious, and much more. For more information on that, go to courses.clearandopen.com

Today's episode is, like the last series, from my course, “The Art of Asking Questions.” We talk a lot about the importance of deep listening and using questions to get to the heart of the matter in this conversation, with some interesting real-time examples.I'm a business coach, spiritual educator, and therapist and I specialize in helping leaders get out of their own way. For more information about what I do or to become part of the conversations you hear on this podcast, please visit clearandopen.com. This and future episodes are available as video at youtube.com/@clearandopen

I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it's my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com

I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it's my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com

I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it's my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com

We begin a four part series today from my course entitled “The Art of Asking Questions”, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com. I'll talk about the nature of curiosity, our poor conditioning about learning and what to do about it, how embarrassment can be productive, and a lot more.

This is the third and final part of the excerpts on excellence from my course entitled Embodied Values and Virtues, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com. In this installment, we relate excellence to the 5 stages engagement, which you may remember from previous episodes, and the dead-end of striving. Then we connect passion work and soulmates to the final stage of flow, the place we're all headed whether we realize it or not. Again, this series is from my course, “Embodied Values and Virtues.”

Today is part two of a three-part series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We're focusing on excellence and apply this to the domains of soul-mates and passion-path today, the person and work that is inextricably intertwined with your destiny.  Spoiler alert: doing your best with what's in front of you is the path to get there, and we're not entitled to anything we haven't yet earned.

This episode is part one of a series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” The topic today and in the next two episodes is excellence, and it's quite relevant to the “quiet quitting” stuff we're hearing about in the news these days. In this episode: why never giving up is bad advice, how will-based excellence isn't sustainable, and the terror of letting go of what once worked, but no longer serves you.

This episode is part three of a series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We continue the conversation about compassion today by deconstructing the ubiquitous judgment of judgment in our world, and how counter-intuitively accepting and investigating your own judgments can lead to authentic compassion.

This episode is part two of a three part series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We continue the conversation about the limits of repressing feelings, fear or otherwise, and the process of dead-ending principles by living them out to their logical extreme. Then we transition from courage to compassion and deconstruct some of the most common misconceptions of compassion that tragically stop us from embodying it.

The last series was excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues,” and we're following suit. This episode begins a three-part series taken from the hour that followed. We talk more about courage and move onto the next virtue on the list, compassion. We talk specifically about the importance of not repressing fear, which is the most common misunderstanding of courage. Related to this, I field a question about how to productively steer yourself into fear, in the name of healing.

This episode completes our four-part series on courage, excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” Today we explore “the cake and eat it too” dynamic, the necessity of diagnosing root causes, living paradigms all the way to their logical conclusion, the red herring of confidence, and finally, to wrap up the series, the punchline: get intimate with your fear. That's what courage really is.

This is part three in the courage series from my course Embodied Values and Virtues.  In this episode, we talk about the similarities between parenting and management and the importance and power of being curious about another's experience. We also discuss the limits of nervous system regulation based models, treating symptoms vs. root causes, western medicine's inability to diagnose and heal emotional issues and a lot more.

This is part two in the courage series from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” Today we talk about the courage it takes to no longer need supervision. The expectation we have to be supervised comes from our school conditioning and unfortunately follows most people well into their adult lives.  We also discuss the courage required to take responsibility for the people you draw and learn the lessons they're there to teach you rather than playing victim.

The next four episodes are excerpted from my Embodied Values and Virtues Course which was live the first quarter of 2022. We spent an hour or so on each of eight virtues of Clear and Open, which I based off of the list created by the Samurai. The virtue you'll hear about is courage, and in this episode specifically what it means in peer relationships where you don't have control. I'll talk about the self-image that people-helpers tend to build in order to never have to be vulnerable, and also the pitfalls of using the written word for accountability.

Last week, we learned to recognize that marketing is not an action, but a discipline. And the discipline of marketing leads to the three activities: client fulfillment, lead conversion, and lead generation. Identifying how it fuels each of those is essential to effective marketing. Advertising is only a tiny part of marketing, and it's a disservice to the art to stop the discussion there. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Most people think they know what marketing is… but they aren't actually doing it. And those who think they hate marketing don't even really know what it is. When we hear the word “marketing,” many of us jump straight to advertising. But that's not right. If we think of marketing not as an activity but as a discipline, the content starts to fall into place. Once you address the beliefs behind marketing, everything else makes sense. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

In the coming weeks, we're going to start talking about what marketing really is and why most people have it wrong. But before we get to that, it's important to understand why we sometimes find it difficult to get our most important work done. We all have a very limited amount of time to do anything to our best ability, and it usually occurs at the same time each day. When we fill those hours with meaningless tasks, it's no wonder we find it difficult to get our focused, more trying work done during the non-optimal hours. It's important to find a balance between what you are moved to do, and what is most important to do: that is the art of living. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

The role of the org chart is to make the responsibilities of each person within the organization as clear as possible. It's crucial that responsibility is not shared, because shared responsibility avoids accountability. Without accountability, you can't have consequences. And without consequences, we negate our whole reason for being. The only way we can learn our lessons is by acting out our truths and experiencing their natural consequences – with some help from teachers along the way. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

to you) brings up all of our deepest existential issues with power and free will. When you try to put someone in a role, it can make their unconscious need for control feel threatened. But, through that friction, and recognizing the consequences of their actions, is where a sense of freedom truly emerges. Our beliefs have to crash with the boundaries of reality in order to discover genuine truth for us. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

There's value in a job well done. Think of the difference between a reward earned after some hard work and one you've treated yourself to. We value the things we've worked towards, but we can often “cheat” our way to the same goal – but doing so isn't truly satisfying. It's a lesson everyone, at any level of an organization, needs to learn on their own. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

As humans, we have an innate desire to be free. But we also don't recognize the realities of freedom. Free will exists: you can do whatever you want. But you can't escape the consequences of doing it. And the role of life is to hold us accountable to reality and show us what happens when we take our truth to its natural conclusion. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Having a vision as a leader is one thing, but successful leaders need to inspire others to invest in that vision as well. To do that, you need to prove to them – through words as well as actions – that your vision serves their own best interest. Feeling as if you know what's best for others can be uncomfortable at first, but it must be embraced. As long as you believe in what you are doing (and allow space for others to tell you if you're wrong), you can become someone worth following. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Life has a way of putting us right up against the change we require, but it doesn't make us any less resistant to adopting it. You have a choice: resist or learn. In order to become who you want to be, you have to look hard and realize who you are not. When we see the stories of great leaders, it feels as if they knew what they were doing all along – why else would they take such crazy risks in the face of seemingly impossible odds? But ask anyone in the midst of their soul's journey if they felt that way and it'll likely be a different story. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

What's holding you back from making the change necessary to step into your truest expression of self? Being our true selves sounds great, but most of us don't live that way. Making change requires parts of our current self to cease, and those parts will fear and resist the change. Facing your destiny can be a scary prospect, but we often see the biggest growth on the other side of fear. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Leaders tend to want their outsides to change without having to change themselves. But the truth is you cannot become a leader without change. Being a leader – the kind that truly inspires people to follow – requires becoming a better version of you. And part of that change is creating a different relationship with authority and instruction. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

The first step of personal growth is the willingness to look at anything (and everything) within yourself. Anything you refuse to look at is only going to create internal division. Facing your weaknesses is a very difficult thing to do, but it's something you become better at with time. Look for opportunities in your everyday life to reveal parts of yourself, and you'll only grow stronger for it. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Some types get a bad reputation due to the worst parts of them, especially in certain cultures. We have to look at the shadow side of ourselves and realize how those actually become our strengths. But that takes finding the courage to closely examine those shadows, deeply understand them, and find out where you stand. Most of the problems we face in life – regardless of what our enneagram type is – stem from not having the courage to bear emotional discomfort. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

We're going to delve back into the enneagram this week. We started this journey by looking at and identifying the best parts of ourselves. Then we took an uncomfortable look at the dark, shadowy parts. The truth may set you free, but that doesn't mean it won't be difficult to look at. That's why we'll be exploring courage – the courage it takes to embrace emotional discomfort, and how we're conditioned against doing that. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Hiring the right people means beginning with the end in mind. You have to work backwards from the qualities you want in an employee and create questions that will reveal those qualities in your candidates. This is where curiosity comes in. If you are not genuinely curious about who your candidates really are, you will never find the person you are looking for. This is a skill that takes practice to master, but it will pay dividends in your business. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

The governing power of hiring is curiosity. It's essential for finding out what drives people, and knowing that is critical in making the right hire. Part of being curious means being prepared to ask difficult questions. Interviews should be uncomfortable. When you're hiring for someone who's coachable, honesty is key. They need to be open about their weaknesses and their flaws, and driven to improve them. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

When hiring, we're looking for qualities that you can't get just by training. We subconsciously hire people who are less capable than us because we feel threatened, or we hire people who have the skills that we could train for, but that we just don't want to. Ideally, we should hire those who could become equal to (or better than) us, but just haven't been managed well enough to get there yet. Candidates can sense the difference, and it's often what they really want when looking for a role – even more than money. It's what you want as well, even if you don't realize it. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

I recently shared the difference between management and supervision. But how does that play out in the hiring process? Supervision is based on content; not context. You look at their surface level skills and rapport with you instead of the context of who they are going to become when they work with you. If you want to hire effectively you have to be present, and, in order to be present, you can't be busy. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

What does it mean to live a spiritual life? Recognizing the fact that you do not always know what's good for you. The spiritual path can often be confusing, but it's pointing you in the right direction. We need to find the edge of where exact clarity and total abandon meet, taking your dreams, ambitions, and purpose and, at the same time, letting it go. The mind can't grasp this – it's a paradox. But the soul can. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

When things get difficult, the ego will steer us away from our next step or halt us completely. Religion often promises spiritual experiences without the difficulties, but that ends up being a false promise. The path to spirituality is one that can only be experienced firsthand. It's a journey into the unknown. It requires us to get out of our own way and to trust the outcome. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Humans have the unique ability to live out of harmony with their own nature. We have free will, which allows us to deny our own needs – even though we can't escape the consequences that come along with it. The downsides of repressing our own needs can come out in the form of resentment, anger, passive-aggression, or even cancer. This becomes even more difficult to manage when we realize that we don't often know what's good for us. So how do we find it? Through trial and error, and deep introspection. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

In this episode, we talk about spirituality – what it is and isn't. One of the topics we are most conflicted about in life, spirituality sits right alongside money, sex, love, power, and death. And like those, it is widely misunderstood. Part of that comes from a misunderstanding of self-interest and the role it plays in our lives. We're taught from an early age that self-interest is bad, and interest in others is good. The truth is that self-interest can come in both healthy and unhealthy forms. We are all a part of the same whole, and the only way to serve the whole is to serve ourselves, rather than sacrificing our own needs in service of others. We have to break free from a lifetime of programming that says we have to spiritually disconnect from the self in order to serve the other. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

At the root of the conflict between supervision and management is the issue of power. People are subconsciously afraid of their own power and therefore want to be supervised. And those who are in management positions, knowing that the people below them can do everything they can become threatening to their sense of power. We all have those voices inside of us. But that's just the ego, and we can't let the ego rule us. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Now we know the difference between supervision and management, and how falling into the trap of supervision prevents us from doing the strategic work that will truly grow your organization. If you catch yourself supervising, don't defend the action—do something about it. It's not hard to figure out what you need to do. It's not even that hard to find the time to do it. What's holding most people back is the willingness to do something uncomfortable. You're never going to find out what your employees are capable of until you put some pressure on them, but most managers get caught up in being the one to know it all that they willingly hold their organizations back. But if you're willing to not be needed, everything can get better. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

The employee mindset—or default human nature—is to exert the lowest amount of effort possible to accomplish the task at hand. If you show someone that every time they drop the ball you'll be there to catch it, then they're not likely to get any better at catching—let alone stepping up for more responsibility. When you build a culture of supervision, the result is that you begin dragging down each and every role in the organization. And if you can just follow the breadcrumbs and see where you continually fall into supervision instead of management, you can completely transform your organization. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Supervision and management are often used interchangeably, but I'm going to make the argument for why that couldn't be more wrong. Supervision means, quite literally, to oversee. In action, that typically means making sure the people who already know what they're supposed to do, do it. That's not a great use of time, though it is occasionally necessary. Management, on the other hand, is about developing people and helping them to evolve. It's getting people to a place where they don't need you at all. I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

You have a choice. In every moment of your life, you choose how to react. That's how we started discussing the idea of excuses, a few lessons back, and to some, that thought is terrifying. Even continuing to live every day is a choice. Instead of being terrified by the idea, let the power to choose empower you. If you want to, you can choose to make your life better. No more excuses. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Excuses aren't all bad news. As we explored last week, the areas in which we make excuses are likely the areas we don't want to look at. If we use that to our advantage, tracking what we make excuses around can be one of the most powerful tools we can use to reclaim our power. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

What is an excuse, really? Making an excuse comes down to denying your role in an outcome. If you had the ability to respond to a situation in any way, whether you did or not, you had a hand in that outcome. To deny that is to make excuses. We always have a choice. And if we're refusing to acknowledge our choices, there's likely a choice we've made that we don't want to look at. That's where the opportunity to learn something about ourselves lies. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

It's quite easy to say “don't make excuses.” Obvious, even. But it's one thing to say something, another to know how to do it, and something else entirely to actually apply it to your life. Knowing something is not being something. Making excuses (or not) is a moment-to-moment decision – one you have to make every day for the rest of your life. You never stop deciding, but you can get better at noticing those moments. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com).

Gaining mastery is a slow process. As much as we'd love a hyper-focused training montage across a week or a month that leaves us at our goal, in reality, mastery requires slow, methodical application of curiosity. Curiosity is essential no matter what it is you are striving to achieve. The downside – or so it may seem – is that curiosity can often lead to discomfort. But you can't grow without discomfort, and once you realize that, you can start to view discomfort as a good thing rather than something to avoid. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Clear communication could solve the majority of problems business leaders face every day. Imagine how much time would be saved if you asked your team to do something, took the time to make sure they understood it effectively, and they got it done on the first try? When you don't take the time to confirm that something has been properly understood, that time gets wasted exponentially on the back end. Following up and even redoing work takes far more time in the long run. A little curiosity upfront or after the fact: did they understand what I asked them to do? Or, if not, why is that? Asking those simple questions changes everything. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

Let's reframe responsibility. No one is inherently responsible or irresponsible. Responsibility is simply the ability to respond to a situation. You have the opportunity to respond in every situation you are in. And the irony of it – what I call the responsibility paradox – is that people who aren't being responsible don't wonder if they are being responsible, because that is the responsible thing to do. One of the most powerful ways of harnessing responsibility is to respond to a situation with curiosity. When you are curious, you start to look at the things you normally wouldn't notice, and that's when real insight can be found. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)

One of the best tools for claiming self-authority is the enneagram. It's one I use constantly. When you learn to understand and use the enneagram well, it is completely life-changing. Rarely do we understand how differently people think until we really dive into this work. And when you know yourself, how you communicate, and how other people perceive you, incredible things happen. This episode was originally recorded as part of the https://courses.clearandopen.com/courses/authority (Claiming Self-Authority course), available at https://clearandopen.com/ (ClearandOpen.com). I'd love your feedback. http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1234688298 (Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.)