Tina Berger - F500 Digital Transformation Advisor | Fixing Toxic Workplace Culture

there's a real need to change the way we reward people if we really want people to take the risk of working that differently for what's been paying their bills what they've been rewarded for what they've gotten as for all their life so let's look at the model is the model somewhere else in the world for how we should do business how we should collaborate i could come up with a better solution probably but would it be a better solution for long is it the better solution no i believe that what we need is a driving vision as somebody who works with change i know that people don't like to let go of things that they love or that they're comfortable or that they know without having the next thing to grasp on to and say this is a better way for somebody earlier on in their career this is a great warning don't close yourself off to other experiences to creativity that things that will long-term make you really happy to be successful was to get your goal and grind that out and then i get there and i go i don't want to do this you know for this is it welcome to success story i'm your host scoclery the success story podcast is brought to you by the hub spot podcast network hub spot does a ton for entrepreneurs and business owners that is why i'm so proud to partner with them for over three years now if you need anything to build your business help desk software payment software email marketing tools cms and blogging tools SEO tools deal management tracking pipeline tracking you don't need more tools to get more out of your business you just need hub spot they're all in one customer platform is a dream come true for every member of your team with best in class campaigns and workflows to generate more leads from marketing category leading pipeline management to help with sales help them close more deals powerful a i chatbot and a knowledge base to help your service team scale and it is built to deliver results to drive revenue faster and to help you grow your business so dump the disconnected tools and the chaos that comes with them discover what hub spots all in one platform can do to streamline your business visit hub spot dot com to grow better today thanks again for joining me today i'm sitting down with Tina burger she is an advisor to fortune 500 companies such as chevron and bp she has had an incredible amount of experience with corporatism over her career advocates for a total reset of the corporate paradigm she holds an mba in global energy she advises fortune 500 through strategic digital transformations having engaged deeply with the challenges faced by corporate executives and staff for more than 20 years she now advocates for a systemic reset a collective re imagining of our economic paradigms such that they serve the global good in the needs of future generations she writes and speaks on the power of receptivity and the power of a co-creative innovation and environment she has a book that she's released coming around surprises and surrender on the path to inspiration and she discusses various leadership in crisis leadership experiences and lessons in that book but she also speaks on the corporate activism like i mentioned systemic reset she speaks on various technologies just a she used to work in finance so an all around very very interesting person very excited to dive into your origin story so walk me through your career wherever you'd like to start okay let me uh so it's uh it's been a fun uh it's been a fun journey and thanks so much for having me on i think i was uh in the in the pre-talk i was telling you i'm a little bit of an odd duck right i'm i have a so this is the context of me i'm super curious about a wide variety of things a ridiculous variety of things so business and finance and investing but also spirituality and awareness practices and long term yoga and meditation practice and our teacher science and which most of my business contacts aren't aware of science and technology and digital media and blockchain and travel and culture and poetry and art it's it's it's every it's ridiculous so you can imagine like when the internet started being a thing it was like the my favorite thing in the world because i could dive in there and uh and learn new things but i got my start as a technical writer in the early 90s uh doing project work for a service company and documenting processes and policies and work instructions uh within large energy corporations so and i live in Houston so that's what there is here that that's the primary um industry in the Houston area in the Houston market so um at the time i just for some context there most of my clients or at least many of my client corporations did not have email or or windows based uh environments and and so a lot of the business processes were still at the time managed using paper and and manual processes and manual handoffs and things like that and i got fascinated um early on with the challenge of new technology platforms and tools and and started developing my skills in that direction and over time that's where my career went i followed that interest and and i built my career as a consultant uh you know advising energy companies and leaders um on how to get organizational support and engagement and adoption of new ways of working and new tools new digital tools in in particular and that's been my niche hi for years and years i think i did my first like what they were calling digital oil field project around 2003 which was really i'm almost kind of a pre-face bookish you know like i mean it was a hurly and so it's just been fascinating work for uh you know 25 years has given me so many different perspectives and possibilities and i've engaged um with lots of different large corporations and how they're seeing how they're similar the similar challenges how they're different culturally um every kind of process within those organizations from procurement materials management into engineering processes and technical design processes and uh and and um and every few months or years my my whole work life changes because i get on a different project and with different people and different opportunity to learn something new through so um i've led businesses and teams and um and it also worked and i currently work as an individual contributor um and right now i'm working with a digital innovation team inside of one of the largest energy corporations in the world and i'm having a great time i i'm working with some but a wonderful people yes so you've been it's you have you been sort of dabbling in individual consulting for the majority of your career and you just that's that's mostly what you've been working on or has it been taken different forms it's taken different forms um i uh early on got interested in digital media and there was a particular um there's a particular issue uh well there was a gap in hiring for a lot of the major oil and gas companies due to uh you know basically the the whole industry died off for a while in the 80s and then the nine had took a long time to start hiring again so there was this big competency gap and so i i teamed up with one of my friends and and and retooled the company to address that so we you know but i was still consulting we were selling in e-learning and digital uh communication and um and a variety of other media projects but also doing services and consulting delivery at the same time uh so um so i've i've run companies um but you know i've i've discovered that i'm a big enough headache just to run myself but actually i really did enjoy that at different times in my life different things have worked and so i've led teams um but currently yes uh and i've learned a lot from the teams that i've worked on and been with um but right now uh for about the last eight years i've been kind of my own um i say that but with one exception where uh one of my clients hired me full time and permanent for about a year and a half and i thought and i really there was there was a lot that i enjoyed about that um but i'm not i'm not by nature wired to be corporate so here i'm putting your out of art and you got pulled in i yeah so so this i did so you're you're working so that's why that this is why you're on on the bleeding edge of all this different tech because this is what like you live it and then you're bringing it in like you said you're working in an innovation units in all of these more more traditional industries some of them are probably have advanced quite a bit but so like for people listening a company like chevron or bp or or a company like that size they they bring you in walk through a project that you would have done with a company that would would walk like what what a digital transformation is for a company like this um okay so um so for example uh there are in the upstream part of the energy business so there's there's there's ways that there's typical um there's certain terminology they use upstream or is the part of the energy business that goes out and finds where the oil is and pulls it out of the ground wherever that is if it's in deep water if it's on land if it's in shell wherever it is so um in the past that work has been done in their in silos for example so there's i'm the person who uh looks at and uh who looks at what we've done in this area and says and and i'm a geologist and i'm working with a geophysicist and we look at this data and i say this is where i think it is and this is how far down it is and i've done that in a particular way um using a certain kind of tool and then i throw it over the the fence to somebody else who takes that and put runs an economic analysis on it and says here's how we can develop that out and here's how we can deliver it over the years yada yada and i think we should do it here's how much risk is associated with it well all of those things were one done in and um tools that were not connected and two were done in processes that were not connected and now we have new technologies that enable all of these people to look at the same data at the same time and troubleshoot and come up with really interesting ways to uh to solve problems that have been problems for a long time or reduce the uncertainties and risks associated with very expensive operations and what we're finding is people are resistant to letting goable tools right and then also don't know how to work together in a collaborative in a collaborative situation tools or note tools so they're trying to get people to adopt new tools and don't often realize that they're asking them to really sign almost a different contract than what they signed on to do so my job is to come in work with the team understand what kind of engagements need to happen and advise people on how to improve the delivery of the tools improve the configuration of the tools and help people learn how to get over the barriers of working together in new way now you do this obviously through digital transformation but some of the some of the things that you speak on seem to stem from your understanding of the nuances of how companies work and how they don't work so even within a company um after building out and sort of transforming some of these organizations for the majority of your career what did you see was broken and that you wanted to or you thought it should be fixed so there's different levels and different barriers what does it work right right right but one of the things that um I think gets in the way so digital tools in order for them the newest ones uh to work well and to and for us to work well with the capabilities and fully realize the value of those tools it requires a collaborative dynamic it requires that people get together and and throw out ideas but also really integrate and listen to the ideas of somebody who has a different perspective and listens well but the way that we historically our systems through school and all the way through in in corporations and and in the way we run business is competitive and it advances people that are assertive um and it doesn't reward people who have learned how to be receptive and integrative uh and so when you need to then shift uh when you're looking at a tool and you say we just need to learn how to do this tool you have you have you have missed a lot a lot of the big picture of um what really needs to change in order for people uh to work better together which is no there's a cultural barrier not just at the corporate level but in our kind of social and cultural paradigm in the US is very individual not communal it's very competitive not collaborative and uh co-creative or um um cooperative um we we do that sort of that's second layer down if you can make it look cooperative do that but know that you won oh and people said it yeah and so I think we miss the boat on that so that's within the corporate context there's a real need to change the way we reward people um if we really want people to take the risk of uh of working that differently from what's been what's been paying their bills what's what they've been rewarded for what they've gotten a's for all their life it's a bigger transformation than what than than just a new tool we're really good at taking letting go of old tools and just picking up new more efficient tools that do the same thing that we're good at but not at completely changing the way that we interact and really learning how to listen deeply and how to really disrupt um processes and um and and and be creative and innovative together because creativity and innovation are not processes they are their emergencies you know and we don't know how to make we don't know how to make space for that we want to know if I give you three days to do innovation sessions you can promise me that you're going to have you're going to have some innovation at the end of that you know but what causes innovation what causes the flash that that opens up a new possibility and it's a little bit mysterious what's the model for what what so you you advocate for systemic reset of a system that's entrenched it's not easy right so let's look at let's look at the model is the model somewhere else in the world for how we should do business how we should collaborate that we should reverse engineer I so love the question because it's a it's a question it's a it's a delicious question because it's the as somebody who works with change I know that people don't like to let go of things that they love or that they're comfortable or that they know without having the next thing to grasp on to and say this is a better way and um I also am aware that um that that we don't know the answer yet I'm not pointing at a different system and saying we should adopt that system and part of the challenge is that's what we want it's that we want a certainty about the future that's not really possible so we keep grasping for that and asking for that and say I'm not letting go of this until you show me and we're gonna hold on to this with all of its destructive um you know damaging impacts until someone delivers us the actual better solution well I could come up with a better solution probably but would it be a better solution for long is it the better solution no I I believe that what what we need is a driving vision which is not a goal that's different from a goal even if you stick it's it's much easier to talk about these things if we look at the individual level because everything that's true about the individual experiences also true about the the collective so if I if I say uh oh you know how we ask people that are just coming out of uh of high school what they want to do for their career and then we make them choose and then they go to school and then they study that thing and then they get in that career and they go oh I didn't want to do this this is not what I want well this happens to people that are not just in school this happens with it people's careers in general is like there's something we like about that so we say that's the goal and maybe it's a five year thing and we start driving in that direction and we get a lot of flags along the way that this isn't really quite it there's something I like about that but I this was my goal so I have to drive here um instead of taking the hints along the way and going what was it about that I want to be in service this way I have a gift to bring this way this is me but this part's not me so much you know I've done that in my life many times where because that's what I learned to do to be successful was to get your goal and grind that out and then I get there and I go I don't want to do this you know for this is it and I've had so many conversations with senior leaders and executives inside of corporations and they say yeah you know I'm here this is what I spent my last 15 years trying to dig go and is this all there is this is it we're just not and it's like we're not good at inspired vision and and and and inspired business you know inspiration comes from being still and going what serves and what serves what I think serves right now is not a bad question to start with what are we trying to serve what are we in service to by saying every year these large global corporations need to be another four or five percent bigger on the bottom line well we're in service to at this point it's right it's so you said you you first of all you nailed it like the the individual you look at the individual situation and then you just extrapolate that and that's the collective situation so you see you know the individual has the goals and the KPIs and the in the organization and those goals and KPIs are aligned with the organization's goals and KPIs which are usually to the shareholder right to the to the stakeholder and and that's and and even if the company's private the end goal is to you know exit and to a higher evaluation or you know have a positive ROI for the investors until they IPO so it's always about the shareholder or the stakeholder that's what drives everything right now that's possible I mean but but from from for a privately held company if you look at like a Patagonia like where that's owned I can't remember the guy's name but that one dude and he gets to say whatever he wants to say you know he'll he'll he'll he'll get big you know pages uh front pages on the New York Times or whatever saying what he wants to say about indigenous rights or what he wants to say about gay and trans rights or whenever he wants to say about what the government should or shouldn't be doing and uh and I've had people say well how come they can do it and I'm like no that's not a publicly traded company it's a private privately held company and publicly traded companies in my view I don't see anybody really owning um the decisions made by those corporations because uh senior leader uh CEO says I'm doing what the investment behavior of the market tells me it wants which is to grow this bottom line to grow the profit line that's it and the reason I know that is because that's the only thing that consistently drives investors to buy this stock and it's fair enough that's true but I think people are unconscious in in general public is unconscious about our investment behavior um and how it drives those decisions so we don't think of ourselves as owning those decisions just because we own stock but when we sit down at the end of the year uh and either decide or buy ourselves or with our advisors what are we going to invest in next year the question is well what's what's going up it's not what does that company do and do I really feel aligned to it um and even my spirit yeah it's what's going to make me the most money so I can get out of this misery faster this this misery that's like it's like a self perpetuating prophecy almost it's totally like that it's completely like that and so it's kind of a crazy it's kind of it's a certain kind of crazy um and you know and I feel like the work that I'm doing right now the work that I'm getting to do right now to come back to the question of of what do we do different because I didn't really answer that I do believe we have to learn how to engage with each other in different ways I do believe that uh so if I say there's a bias towards the assertive in our culture and and that's basically this logical rational um this need to uh to plan things this need to have everything be predictable these are these this need to build things uh and grow things and this need to uh get your point into the room and to win at something these are not terrible instincts these are not terrible um this is not a terrible aspect of being a human that we want to be known for what we do that we want to be heard when we speak that we want to plan things and be able to have some predictability in life that we care about our individual uh needs and the needs of our particular families uh that we're interested in those things uh that we really want to move in the world and and and and feel the earth under our being get things done but they're out of balance with the whole other aspect of who we are as humans so the other aspect is really listening deeply so that we can hear from other people that have different lived experiences different gifts different capabilities and different perspectives on the same challenges and problems and that's really like deeply listening not like how we typically listen where we're rehearsing what we're going to say next while the person speaking is really taking that person in fully um learning how to allow space for spontaneity instead of having everything be planned out and being and this push for uh this constant push for action and this constant push for efficiency takes all of the space out it takes all of the space for breathing out of our systems and so there's no space for spontaneity there's no space for the emotional understanding that you need to get things to be different taking into account the emotional impacts uh and really holding what are what what are what are what is the what is what are our systems perpetuating in the world are we really fully aware like emotionally um the pain that that's causing because we are not just individual we're also fully connected with everything on this planet there's no way to separate us out completely because we're living both of those things both yes we're having an individual experience but we're also impacted by knowing and you can see it in our like I can see it in my kids and they're they're part of why I speak about the things that I do but um they know who makes their smart devices and they know the situations those people are living in I didn't grow up knowing that uh it's painful for them to know that so I'm not surprised by the fact that so many young people don't want to plug in and continue to do what I grew up doing you know so we have to hold the emotional also at the same time as the intellectual it's not just a matter of putting money in the bank it's at what cost and you know what does it mean that we're doing that and uh and also this this um this focus on structure overflow and this lack of space for just being being and um and being in a receptive quiet mode is one of the ways you know that we become receptive so we have to figure out how to do these as individuals first and how to acknowledge and make space for them and when we do this in a group when we learn how to do these things individually and we bring them to a group different things happen and much more creative much more inspiring much more integrated much better solutions are possible when we can do that because we can bring at that point the full value of the gifts and the rim in a way we can't do it if we are doing what we call collaboration which is eight people sitting around a table advocating for the thing that they already knew they wanted to happen when they showed up I now I see I see that the I see why certain spiritual elements are now permeating how you optimize yourself in business and this is I can see that this is like the way that you speak about these two components like yes we have a whole bunch of issues in how we do business but then there's there's a lot of more personal issues that we have to figure out as well that have just also been entrenched in the individual I actually loved one thing that you said before we spoke was very interesting because I want to I want you to maybe talk about how to better yourself and and to and to be a better uh citizen of you know citizen of the world but also like in in your organization and I'm sure there's a lot of lessons and and teachings that you have but um one thing you mentioned was how when people are upset with corporations or people are upset with how things happen um they they advocate but then they aren't aware that they may be owners they may be part of technically part of the problem and I just want you to touch on that so that was a really interesting point you made that people may not be really in line to well I mean so anytime I hear things like I hear terminology like corporations versus groups of people because that's really um what corporations are their groups of people that have a specific job that they're that they're given you know whether they're whether though whether given that job consciously or not they're given that job this is your job leader of a company increase the bottom line forever it we never go oh hey city bank you're big enough you can stop right there and and so will we see over it over time is more and more weirdness in a company that's the size of a city corp um that is making up products that don't exist or finding ways to build for services that have no value in order to increase that bottom line and and so uh then people get angry and same thing with energy corporations I I picked something different but it doesn't matter what publicly traded corporation you're talking about they're all dealing any once they get to a certain size they're dealing with the same problem which is where we're going to get another four percent eight percent on the bottom line and so you know so people are out protesting and they might be protesting any number of things wages bad wages or treatment of employees reduction of benefits damage to the environment pipelines and and my my reflection back to people when they when they do that is to say um are you sure you don't own that company are you sure that you're you don't know that and they say well what do you mean and I say well you know look in your mutual funds you probably own if you actually own any um mutual funds their stock base you probably own a lot of the companies whose whose practices you most derived you know and uh and and that gives them a moment of pause and I only tell them these stories because their stories that I have lived out myself you know and I constantly do challenge myself on how how do I continue to work in corporations that have practices uh and have impacts that I am not in favor of like that I want to stop it's because and I for my and you can only answer that for yourself right so I'm not saying everyone should not invest in the stock market I'm not saying anything global like that I'm saying you should know what you're invested in you should be intentional if you decide um if you decide to invest in these companies anyway be aware of it like I fly a lot I have a huge value for travel but I don't fly without knowing what my impacts are like don't get to tune out to that um and so there are other things that I try to do to to accommodate to compensate to pay that out myself and I don't invest in the stock market and I have that I could be retired multiple times over if I did but I stopped doing that almost 20 years ago because I worked in the stock market and I saw the kind of behaviors and the kind of impacts it was driving to and I'm not going to be there's no way for me to come to come absolutely divest I have my own personal risk profile that I'm managing but I am managing and I am actively holding the impacts and being sad about them sometimes you know and that's okay and being aware that's it yeah that's it and so I don't hold myself as separate or different in any way except that way of look no I'm really trying to be responsible or accountable for my impacts and I'm trying to know them and and that's what I encourage people to do you're you're a risk profile is going to put you some I have I have friends that are beyond me as far as like they've tried everything they can to check out the system having a hard time staying up with their rent and I get it you know it's not how I it I'm not wired to work that way to live that way so it's like well where do you put yourself and I also think I'm more powerful and more impactful where I am working within those structures that I know so well and I've and I've been successful in you know from within and I there was a time where I said now that's a cop out like you're not but actually I I feel that I am now I actually can see can see my impact in a way that I couldn't as a younger person success story is part of the HubSpot podcast network in the network there are other incredible podcasts like the ops authority hosted by Natalie Gingrich every week on the ops authority Natalie discovers actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations you can't ignore backend pieces that have to work together and flow smoothly in order to build a brand grow a movement or disrupt an industry if the operation side of your business is a mess putting out fires will always take priority leaving no room for creative innovation visibility or networking with powerhouse peers or even wannabe powerhouse peers you gotta get your house in order and to do that you have to listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcast you've you worked with some of the largest organizations in the world at what point did spirituality start to permeate your understanding of what it is to be a good professional a good person and and walk me through that transformation and how and things that you teach about that now so I don't I'm not broad in to teach but you mean sorry not so I'm here in a traditional sense but yeah yeah but you know what I mean yeah no but it's it's a fair question I just want to be I I have a service agreement that I am responsible to and I take it very seriously people you know I get called into for particular business problems and so I solve them but I also know that these business problems a lot of the challenges that that I'm seeing reflected in in businesses right now have to do with rigidity they have to do with some of the same imbalances and issues and so if you say hey we have got to get more collaborative we have got to work together we can't just have we can just have solutions that that make us more efficient we have to have step change solutions that move us into a completely different space well you can't do that unless people feel like they can experiment and fail you can't do that unless you can really hear from everybody and create space that is that allows for integration that allows for out of the box and this until because like when you're working in one of those like if you look at oil and gas companies their work is highly risky so they have processed everything down to to try and get the health through human the human risk out of it the environmental risk out of it but they've over generalized that so that now it's like do you think we can can we just get lunch for the team oh I don't know it's like it's not everything it's it's a you know what I'm saying it's not like not everything is like that there are areas where we and we have to create spaces where it's okay to experiment and we have to be real clear about that well and then in order to do that um in order to create containers that allow for uh the kind of exchange and the kind of um inspiration inspiration is like um it's the inhale it is so receptive it's like when you're still in quiet when you listen to somebody you take them in fully you go to sleep you're in the shower you go boom there's that thing you know it it finally got in there and it mixed around with some other things and now I've got this idea that I never would have come up with on my own you have to create safe spaces for people where they're affirmed so you bring in things like um uh unusual things like um and what's that what's what's the word with the oh like improv approach yeah improv you bring in improv yes because if your pattern is to say notice something because it's outside of your experience or you're perceiving it immediately to be risky because not familiar to you then we have to get out of habits like natural habits that continued to maintain the status quo and so yes we can experiment with this and people can have really exciting amazing experiences where they reminded their of their full human expression to solve a business problem and then there's the possibility to apply that outside of the business as well so that's part of how I hold my own vision yes we're going to solve business problems and we're going to have we're going to habituate some new behaviors and some new practices and some new approaches that make us more able to do that outside of a business context and maybe to solve the problem of business as a whole and some more cultural issues that you can see every day on Facebook and Twitter where if you know one's listening no one's really hearing and taking in and everybody's parsing language and no one's really not knowing but you know the the cultural norm right now is just just to be repeating things at each other yeah well I think you've been like a social social media algorithms like further propagate that problem because they create echo chambers but I guess so the best the best interpretation I want to define I think this is very important when I when I define spirituality what I what I really meant I guess was self-awareness mental clarity creativity just being a better person not not necessarily like you know I need to do better in business so I have to go find a religion or something like that's not what I that's not what I meant if you want to find but I meant like just being like a some more self-aware in touch person in my opinion that's a component of a spirituality and self-awareness that you have to have just to because if you're just always in the zone always working and you don't have a concept of self then then you can't you take it to whatever level you want you can't be aware of your strengths and weaknesses you can't be aware of how you communicate or have other people so I think that that being in tune with oneself is like an incredible superpower and that's what I that's I saw you dancing around that I just that's what I wanted to bring out but you nailed it I really appreciate that thanks for the help and also the the the knowing yourself is is and being aware of yourself but also being aware of your own flexibility those two things because I can know like who I am and my limits at this stage of my life and I also know I'm capable of a lot more that I haven't even begun to explore so yes I mean I have some some central gifts and strengths that consistently show up the other thing that practice like when I say practice I mean daily meditation breath all these things that I gotta tight she all these things that I have experimented with over time because I'm naturally curious have created a flexibility in me to be able to navigate projects changes people on my own crap you know with some sense of humor because I know it's you know I know it's just being human but also that I am capable of being better one thing that we didn't touch on really yet which I think would be interesting to get your opinion on because I think this is I think this is the cragment are wrong when I went and looked at your book on Amazon this seemed to be the main theme so success and and I think the main the first line in your book was you thought success would be more fun and I find that interesting so you know we we speak about the assertive people the high performers would whatever okay so say say somebody say somebody has achieved incredible incredible success whatever that definition is you know in their career or whatever they have a certain role they have a certain title they make a certain amount of money but you thought success would be more fun obviously they're missing something so walk me through your your thoughts on on that because that's not the first time I've heard that from people that do have some level of success but then they seem to be the satisfied just oh this is all it is and it seems like such a privilege problem to have which it is but it's something that people do experience when they get to a certain point in their career it's a real issue so I walk me through that you have I'm sure you have some ideas yeah I think it's a real issue when the most privileged people in our culture and in in our so we'll say our our country can reach the pinnacle of what we consider to be successful which is exactly what you said what's your position what's your income you know and and then go this is not I don't feel amazing and I don't feel like I'm fully alive here I feel like so in order for me to become successful and I could I track this in my book I learned how to close off fully half of who I am and I think this happens to a lot of people so what is going to become successful is like so so so so close off so so I was a highly highly sensitive kid and what I learned growing up in our culture is emotions are not useful learn how to work around them learn how to mute them learn how to come from a place of logic and and in rationality instead because you will not get anywhere if you show up with those emotions and that was and still is a kind of an advice advice that people get in the work world don't don't be emotional about this put put the whole case together bring it in a rational logical again I'm not saying that's a terrible idea but I'm seeing if you lose contact with the emotional side of it and you can't you can't pull that together after a while because the only thing that gets reinforced is this other if it so so I learned how to do that I learned how to pull my plans together I learned how to get my voice into the room and to one-up people and to assert my points of view and to get my plans implemented so that means I stopped listening so I've learned us to stop listening I've learned to dismiss people who are quiet and a lot of times you're quiet people in a room are people who are most thoroughly processing all of the information they're slower they despise a brain storm because they're not going to be done interpreting thinking, noodling, integrating by the time the whole thing's over and they will have missed their opportunity to to engage so so we punish you know not it's it's I don't want it to sound judgmental because I don't feel that way I feel like it's just a miss you know it's like our systems our systems are such that they they punish people in an effect they don't they pay us for being a certain way they advance us for being a certain way so then everybody who is that way is promoted into corporations into leadership positions and other people are not which means the whole thing repeats itself and we continue it perpetuates itself so we continue to advance the same kind of people when we really need a much more holistic approach to the problems that we currently have some of which are within organizations and some of which are global but that still doesn't oh well so I didn't mean to interrupt I was going to say I want to bring this back to to finding fulfillment but keep going that's that's all I was going to say well so foot so it's it's very difficult to find fulfillment when you're emotionally closed off and shut down it's like where's the joy and if you're not really holding the emotional impacts and the emotional and the love of the work that you're doing for itself for the connection that it has with people for the way that it allows you to create when do people get excited they're they get excited when there's a surprise a spontaneous surprise that shows up well if you if you've designed all the spontaneity out if you weren't listening for new opportunities ways to do things if you're not having dynamics with people where you don't know what the outcome might be you're missing some real bridge experiences as a person if you can't solve the problems that most matter the the problems that most matter are the ones that are are hurting people the ones that are helping people the ones that are protecting the the people who most need it and not just the people but the planet and the beings that live here the things that inspire us you know if what we're doing is driving towards uninspired outcomes that didn't come from anywhere except for somebody's intellect or somebody's old idea of this of what should what we should be in service to what are we in service to like if my kids don't want us to keep doing this and we keep plotting along the same path and they're like hey how about we stop destroying the planet wouldn't that be cool and you're like yeah oh and I hear many people of my generation going they'll figure it out they're smart and I'm like that doesn't feel fair to me you know I know I'm not I'm not feeling that I think you know to me that's a wake up call if the people that we say we're doing this for on some level or another oh I'm yeah they want their phones or whatever if they're saying no really we we would rather you we'd rather you save some resources for the future we would rather you you know not keep going down this path then maybe we should listen and I think we would find more meaning in our work if there was more meaning in our work interesting and for somebody earlier on in their career this is a great this is a great warning to make sure that fine you want to you want to have you want to have success whatever that again whatever you define success by but you know red flag warning don't close yourself off to other experiences to creativity to things that will long-term make you really happy but for people that are farther along in their career like you said you had to like you said you closed off half of yourself how did you open that back up to find fulfillment in what you were doing well it's an ongoing process because everybody is a work in progress until we die so I don't feel like oh I'm all open then it's all fixed I feel like you know I'm constantly trying to be a better person and some of the issues that have plagued me for my whole life still prop up and plague me but I I think the idea that I think what we have to do is watch our is learn how to watch our internal and listen to our internal navigation you know not just what is considered out there to be successful not just what somebody says you'd be good at and you could make a lot of money at but what moves you what uh and that again doesn't mean that's what you should do right now it just means you should hold that as a knowing and see what shows up for you and follow things that feel correct you know I think there's some ways to to do that yes you can have a goal and if you keep checking on the goal and that's a part of the process it's just like the creative process is both receptive and active so I'm not saying we should do one or the other but receptive is hey what wants to be painted on the page right now it's yellow you pick up then you have to respond with an action you pick up the paintbrush you grab the yellow you paint something on the page then you're back in receptive mode what's next you know and if we consider a little bit of that instead of just driving and grinding a little bit of that you how you constantly have to come back to this receptive place and go is this still right do I still want to be a doctor or do I want to heal people or do I want to be a part of people's healing and then what way do I want to be a part of people's healing what what did I learn this year that I didn't know last year about how I want to be a part of people's healing is it still a doctor do I want to you know so am I liking school am I liking these classes or am I hating them and really it's a different direction so those are the kinds of things that I would I encourage people to tune into again it doesn't mean don't be a doctor it just means understand and be aware of your choices every day it doesn't mean don't invest in publicly traded companies it just means hold and understand and be aware and be accountable for your your choices there um yeah so there's all kinds of I say you know you follow the instincts and intuition intuition is widely of what ignored in our culture is like we know a lot internally about what wants to happen what we want to be a part of and we're constantly closing that that down and I think the more you learn we learn to listen to that too that the more fulfilled we can be because even if we can't do all of those things in the workplace we can find ways to work with that energy and and that knowing until we figure out how to bring it into the workplace I'm a much better consultant than I was 20 or even 10 years ago because I listen better that you know even if nothing else came of the the spiritual practices that I do and the meditative and awareness practices that I have experimented with that right there is worth very very very smart very smart um I want to I wanted to ask you some like lessons from your career but was there anything else that we went into we went into system system race that we went into digital transformation we went into uh being aware of of your role in in the world in companies we went into you know professional development personal development touched on spirituality self-awareness I was a lot of a lot of topics and I was very good is there is there is there stuff that you anything else that you bring up in the book that would be a good knowledge nugget or or learning for people that are listening or is did we cover most of it off already there's one piece that I want to come back to because everybody's asking well what's the there what's the next system so you're saying we should be done with this one that's all profit and what what I would like to see is exactly the same thing that we've been talking about as individuals is that we come up with a system that works for the challenges that we have now and we acknowledge that we are in a dynamic world and that means we constantly have to revisit what we do so we don't have to pick a system that works forever we have to pick a system that solves at least some of the problems that we have right now that are showing themselves right now and we have to get the right people in the room that have the different perspectives the right perspectives and and figure out how to integrate those perspectives and co-create the new solution together you can't wait for somebody else to bring that to you because it won't have you in it and if it doesn't have you in it you're not going to like it because it won't reflect your gifts you know so it has to have enough of but it has to have enough of the right um enough of the perspectives and enough of the gifts that people can find themselves in it and go yeah that's inspired yeah that's what I want to be a part of um otherwise it's just it's just somebody else's idea of the next best thing and it might be a little better but it's it's not going to be the solution so I think we modified things I think we got to get out of this is the anchor thing it's like there's so many I think that obviously I love the fact that you have like everybody building this but I think it's first like step one is to even so it's like step one is to get companies to understand that there's other ways to do things which we're seeing shifts slowly of course over the past two years I think shifts have sort of sped up a little bit and expedited a little bit but then after that then you you have organizations that hopefully adopt more of a bottom-up approach and just their policy making in the way they interact with the world their customers their stakeholders and then when and that's like it's just like going down this path it continues to going down this path and then I think the evolution of that would be when you have a more bottom-up psychologically safe work environment you also touched on this then that's when the ideas that are coming from people that are at every level of the organization and with all these different experiences and you know very all at different points in their life from different backgrounds that's when you have an organization whose policies towards everything start to shift but it definitely takes like you have to you have to enable that that psychological safety so people feel safe you know putting their opinion in you know yeah and real hard to do when you've got a bunch of people that you've promoted because they're not like that so so this is the this is a bit of the challenge and not and these people are not just in corporations they're also in government you know leading our country or people who have been trained to argue to the debt you know that they're attorneys you know and that's again that's just the job that's not like that's not who they are as people although I'm sure you know like over time we all get anchored to certain things if we're not careful so you know so I think we need to move to a much more dynamic you know system and way of working together which is uncomfortable to people so that's the that's the collective view that I have on we've got to get braver we can't keep holding on to things because we're not brave enough to live with the uncertainty of what's next I love that very well said okay I'm gonna I'm going to ask you some career questions to pull out some inspiration for people um you've had a very interesting career obviously a lot of a lot of different aspects to your career um what was the biggest challenge of your of your career and how did you solve it um so I'm not a I'm not a fast learner in a lot of ways and so I have had to uh I so I'd say the the things that have been the the thing that's been the hardest for me is letting go of the fact that in certain situations I just know better because I'm an expert in this thing letting go of expertise uh well enough to allow other uh other perspectives to inform me has been one of my biggest challenges and I'm I have uh I've learned that lesson the hard way enough times that I'm much much better at it now I I it forced me to surrender uh at a point and I was doing a lot of uh this this I would call them old school leadership things anytime you hear someone talk about buy-in that's an old school leadership term it means I know what we're gonna do I know it's correct and now I just need you to buy in uh and recognize how genius I am and take this forward with me instead of I'm looking for your feedback I'm looking to make this better here's the problem trying to solve what do you think about it and that that's a great uh segue to the next question what is the biggest misconception about leadership that you see uh yeah I think the biggest the biggest misconception about leadership is that people who get in leadership rules inside of corporations I can't speak from from my experience outside of them but but that they're um all money driven I've seen what I have seen in my life is that people mostly uh with very few exceptions and I've had a lot of experience with people and and I have seen exceptions uh you know there are some psychopaths out there but mostly people have read this though I mean I like I would have argued with you about that 10 you know 10 years ago but now I'm like oh wow yeah um but but but most people are really well-intentioned and they move into leadership because they care about people and they care about doing things right and they uh and they they want to have a legacy a good impact on the world and what happens is over time that they they have fewer and fewer options uh you know in order like I one example is I sit tell this this story in the book is that there was a leader who was in charge of a of a um a large business unit and one of the biggest energy corporations that I've consulted to and he was probably the most engaging most um emotionally aware and uh caring um leader that I've ever worked with and he brought his team together and they did a collective values and visioning um workshops and they were they were a cohesive team and they had decided together that they were not going to do a process called flaring when they produced the asset uh which means um they were got they were gonna be a green they were gonna do a greener process and they were gonna flare hydrocarbons burn hydrocarbons off into the air um and they were responsible for a significant delivery uh during this particular quarter and he was pushed to reverse that decision and he had to otherwise he was gonna not hit his number and that number was really important to the company the corporation it was important to their quarterly earnings and so he had to reverse it and his team uh didn't feel like he went to bat for them didn't feel like it thought you know they were angry and they they and anyways he didn't he probably could have handled the resolution of that better but the plea was he didn't want to make that decision the you know a well an asset like that is going to produce what it's gonna produce over its lifetime whether you delay it for you know four weeks or not it's not gonna make it more or less ultimately so he felt like his hand was forced and uh and this happens all the time where people end up having to lay layoff huge numbers of people that they don't really they know they're gonna have to hire back in a year or they're gonna have to find somebody who's not as good as the people that they're having to let go um they're having to cut benefits to people they're having to reverse on decisions that they made a long time ago in order just to make this one number go up as fast as it needs to go up and these are damaging uh these are damaging decisions that no one really wants to be forced to make and the question is why do we keep forcing people to make decisions that they know are bad it shifts the perspective quite a bit because I don't because the the obvious uh scapegoat is the individual that makes the decision right regardless yeah exactly yeah and I and I can push but I can see too that I don't want to think that um a lot of times uh we don't have enough bravery in that role and CEO roles to say look I want to actually I want to communicate directly to stakeholders to the to the shareholders about this I want to say look we're gonna take a loss or we're gonna we're gonna reduce earnings by this much for this year and this quarter because we're making the decision to hold on to our people and there have been a little bit there's been a little bit of that some companies do that a little bit better or we're gonna cut dividends dividends as a profit share why would you lay people off before you cut dividends that like makes no sense to me like unless you really want to let people go and they're not really you know you're trying to like cover some other different objective but in general it's not an easy role to to lead a P&L and a large corporate it's a it's a very impersonal role and so what happens is the people who are personally connected often leave and so what you end up with at the top of those companies is people that can sleep like a baby and still have decisions which is not what you want because they're leading they're they're they have they wield massive influence on our government and all of our other systems if you could tell yourself if you could tell your younger self one thing what would that be yeah I would tell myself that this is gonna be a fun ride I would tell myself that it gets better I had I had a I wouldn't say I didn't have a rough start in like my family I was I was very supported but I felt like a real weird kid because I was one and I'm now I'm just a real weird adult and I'm okay with it but but I I enjoy I enjoy the engagements that I have I enjoy the work that I do I enjoy the people that I do it with and I enjoy becoming more alive every year and that's that's that's the magic I like that I like that answer a lot just no I'm just funny because you know when when when you are young you just tend to try and rush everything and to try and just move faster and quicker and do more right but you know after a while you realize that's not the answer yeah it was always a smart kid you know and but and I and that's what I ended up leaning into is like okay you know this is who you are well I mean okay but that you know that's not that's not all okay um who is one person that had an incredible impact on your life and what did you learn from them who so many um I yeah this is it's a hard one um well I can say one of the the most fortunate things um in my life is that I have had a large extended family around me like the whole time that I was growing up and even when I was at my most awkward which was probably up until last year but like if I but but if we say we stay with like my adolescent years um I I had some real uh internally difficult times reconciling who I was and where I fit into the world but I always had people around me um cousins and uncles my parents too who just thought I was the best and like that has like lifted me through my entire life so I've had great professional mentors I've had wonder but but the idea that there's only so far I can fall because I have people in my ear um and in my life all the time that don't care if I fall or not you know and I've had plenty of personal and work related failures and they've never wavered so I that is a privilege that I that is never lost on me because I know that I don't want to sound I don't want to sound too sentimental but I don't it doesn't feel like a sentimental thing it feels like a knowledge that there is always in there's a there's uh there's a lift there you know what I mean I can try things because I can't feel bad enough that they're going to be gone you recommend a book or a podcast besides your own we'll get we'll get that in the show notes but a book or a podcast that somebody should go check out um I'm a big fan of a woman named Joanna Macy who wrote a book called Active Hope and that was and that and her the the the book that she wrote before that um I mean see if I can recall the name of it um let's stick with Active Hope uh and then Joanna Macy who is a uh she's she's an amazing person who uh who is an environmental activist um but also a Buddhist teacher and she is all about actually feeling what's happening in the world and and finding the ways to activate that to use the feelings of of grief and pain and um and love and you know to find your ways into the right ways to support given who you are and what you have to bring to it gee I just I just googled her she has a client she has a wild love for the world coming back to life pass it on world as a lover a widening circle there's like she has like some like 10 15 different books very impressive I don't know her I have to check out her uh her stuff yes do definitely the work that reconnects okay very good um and then uh most important question would be what does success mean to you uh so success for me means that the work that I'm doing uh and the life that I'm living um is in service to uh making making the world a better place uh for future generations and I don't just mean like the world is like the small w world of the people around me I mean I want to bring what I have to to I want to know that I have wrung out who I am in service of doing something that will be good in the world and not just for myself but uh but for my kids and for people that I don't know on the other side of the planet I love that and then where do people reach out uh email phone email phone social website whatever whatever you want to draw does that uh you yeah you can you can find information about me on my my website which is www.teenaburger.com and all my links are there to my social and my book and my book links are there as well