Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bytes podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of
Joanne Lockwood: amazing people as they've had a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and generally making the world
Joanne Lockwood: a better place for everyone to thrive. To join me in the future, then please
Joanne Lockwood: do drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk,
Joanne Lockwood: that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co. dot UK. You can
Joanne Lockwood: catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.
Joanne Lockwood: So plug any headphones, grab a decaf and let's get
Joanne Lockwood: going. Today is episode 100. Yay. 100. With
Joanne Lockwood: the title power reimagined. And
Joanne Lockwood: I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Jason
Joanne Lockwood: Patent. Jason describes himself as a Global Leadership and
Joanne Lockwood: DEI consultant and coach. When I asked Jason
Joanne Lockwood: to describe his superpower, he said, persistence, finding solutions,
Joanne Lockwood: growing in partnership with others.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow. Hello, Jason. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Joanne,
Jason Patent: I'm really happy to be here with you and have the
Jason Patent: chance to talk about some topics that I know you and I both care deeply
Jason Patent: about. So thank you so much for inviting me. Absolute pleasure. And
Joanne Lockwood: it's really great for Suzanne to introduce us as
Joanne Lockwood: well, and that's really good. Thank you. So,
Joanne Lockwood: Jason, power reimagined. Tell me about power.
Jason Patent: I feel like any conversation about
Jason Patent: making the world better for more people has to start
Jason Patent: and end with power. And I also feel like, and I'll
Jason Patent: speak really now, I think this does apply beyond
Jason Patent: the borders of the United States, but
Jason Patent: I don't want to overstate the case. And I was born and raised in the
Jason Patent: United States and while I've spent about ten years of my career also living
Jason Patent: and working in China, really, I mean, the United States and
Jason Patent: American Us american culture and language and all of
Jason Patent: that is what I'm most familiar with and what I live and breathe every day.
Jason Patent: So that's sort of a caveat to what I'm about to say, which is that
Jason Patent: I think that we don't have that many tools for meaningfully
Jason Patent: discussing power and having it be front and centre in
Jason Patent: conversations. And there's a couple of reasons for
Jason Patent: that. I think. One is generally the people who have the power
Jason Patent: set the conversation topics, and when we have power,
Jason Patent: we generally have a harder time recognising that we have it. And when we do,
Jason Patent: we don't want to talk about it because we're afraid someone's going to come and
Jason Patent: take it from us. And then also, and this, I think, is very
Jason Patent: much not unique to the United States but a huge
Jason Patent: part of our culture here is we like to think of ourselves as really
Jason Patent: egalitarian and equality minded.
Jason Patent: I don't think that the behaviour of the nation state
Jason Patent: really bears that out. I don't think that the structures in the way
Jason Patent: that systemic oppression still happens every single
Jason Patent: day in the United States really bears that out behaviorally.
Jason Patent: But we don't like talking about power here
Jason Patent: because there are these myths that we've built up
Jason Patent: around meritocracy. To
Jason Patent: the extent that we have merit and ability,
Jason Patent: we can create the future that we want for ourselves,
Jason Patent: irrespective of our membership in identity groups,
Jason Patent: irrespective of history, et cetera, et cetera.
Jason Patent: So all of that to say, in answer to your
Jason Patent: question, we have to talk about power because it is the central
Jason Patent: reality of humanity and we're really not good at
Jason Patent: talking about power. Yeah, power,
Joanne Lockwood: privilege, these are all words that Dei
Joanne Lockwood: professionals like ourselves talk about all the time. Yet when you try and bring them
Joanne Lockwood: into the conversation with people who maybe are not HR
Joanne Lockwood: dei orientated, they feel there's a threat. I think you
Joanne Lockwood: mentioned it. People feel that you're taking something away from them.
Joanne Lockwood: You mentioned egalitarian and this belief of
Joanne Lockwood: meritocracy. If people believe in the
Joanne Lockwood: meritocracy, then they believe that everybody has a fair chance. But
Joanne Lockwood: what they don't often see is the power and privilege
Joanne Lockwood: imbalance in the meritocracy that they swim in
Joanne Lockwood: all the time. Exactly. And those
Jason Patent: feelings, we're also not really good at talking about feelings. It's
Jason Patent: considered quote unquote soft, not businessy.
Jason Patent: And that's another skill set that we have to develop
Jason Patent: collectively, is emotional intelligence,
Jason Patent: recognising what our feelings are, naming them, dealing with them,
Jason Patent: and also recognising their origins. And what I mean by that is
Jason Patent: I'm a cisgender, heterosexual, able bodied white man. The country that
Jason Patent: I grew up in, the society that I grew up in, really, in a lot
Jason Patent: of ways, the world was kind of built by
Jason Patent: people like me, for people like me, which means that I
Jason Patent: am not immune to those same emotional reactions.
Jason Patent: There are times when I'm reading something or hearing something, and
Jason Patent: I can feel myself bristling and getting annoyed
Jason Patent: when somebody questions
Jason Patent: something I've considered to be fundamentally true. And
Jason Patent: the feelings aren't going to go away because they've been burned into our brains
Jason Patent: by the systems that we have grown up inside of and that we still
Jason Patent: continue to live inside of. So I think that right out of
Jason Patent: the gates, one thing that can stop a conversation, really, even before
Jason Patent: it gets started is these feelings
Jason Patent: of defensiveness, protectiveness, feeling like somebody is
Jason Patent: going to take something away from me. That's one piece of it.
Jason Patent: And then another piece of it is I can feel as if my identity, who
Jason Patent: I am, is being challenged. What kind of a person I am is being
Jason Patent: challenged. Oh my gosh. If I have a racist thought, I must be
Jason Patent: a bad person. There's a very, very steep and slippery
Jason Patent: slope from if I have this kind of thought to
Jason Patent: therefore I am this kind of person, that I definitely know that
Jason Patent: I'm not. I know that I'm a good person. And the
Jason Patent: system's context can be extremely helpful
Jason Patent: because it kind of frees us up from having to
Jason Patent: blame ourselves or feel badly about who we
Jason Patent: are. And it helps us set, I think, a much more really kind of
Jason Patent: scientific and objective. I mean, I don't believe in
Jason Patent: objectivity. That's a whole philosophical conversation we could have there,
Jason Patent: right? But we do have science.
Jason Patent: And I think if one were to
Jason Patent: take as close to an objective look as possible
Jason Patent: at the world, the world is structured by systems that power is distributed
Jason Patent: unequally. This is all true as far as I'm concerned. Why would I
Jason Patent: expect that I somehow am free from
Jason Patent: all of the biases that the
Jason Patent: unjust and unequal power systems I've grown up inside of have
Jason Patent: burned into my brain. Of course I'm not free from those.
Jason Patent: It doesn't mean that I'm a bad person because I have a particular kind of
Jason Patent: thought. I have a particular kind of thought, say a racist
Jason Patent: thought, a thought that is disparaging of an entire
Jason Patent: group of people based on race, which, as we all know, is a
Jason Patent: fiction as well, human created fiction? Why would I
Jason Patent: expect that my brain wouldn't be polluted with all of these
Jason Patent: negative biases if the systems around me that I grew up in and continue
Jason Patent: to live inside of have burned them into my brain. It's just a
Jason Patent: fact. So if we can begin to have to look
Jason Patent: at ourselves with a certain kind of objectivity, I think we can also look at
Jason Patent: ourselves with a certain kind of compassion as well, and understand.
Jason Patent: Look, I'm stuck in this muck along with everybody else.
Jason Patent: How can I begin to develop a set of tools and skills
Jason Patent: to deal with it every moment of every day so that
Jason Patent: I can deploy the power and the privilege that I have
Jason Patent: into something that is closer to inclusion and belonging
Jason Patent: and equity and equality than if I don't have that
Jason Patent: awareness? Because if I don't have that awareness, I'm just going to roll forward
Jason Patent: and do what humans do, which is generally use the
Jason Patent: power that we have in order to keep what we have and keep others
Jason Patent: from getting it. So roundabout now, several minutes in, I
Jason Patent: think that that's when we talk about power reimagined. We're talking
Jason Patent: about something like that. Yeah. It's interesting you brought into the
Joanne Lockwood: conversation of social constructs. This is the rule
Joanne Lockwood: set we invented over generations, hundreds of years, thousands
Joanne Lockwood: of years, whatever it may be, as a society, that we've decided these social
Joanne Lockwood: constructs are the rule set that we must all live by.
Joanne Lockwood: And if you don't conform to those constructs, you get policed either
Joanne Lockwood: out of your society or you get
Joanne Lockwood: forced back into the box where you come from. And I know
Joanne Lockwood: it's quite a well worn cliche, but it's basically the
Joanne Lockwood: premises of the film. Matrix is all around understanding
Joanne Lockwood: the world of social constructs, how it's been designed
Joanne Lockwood: and being able to step out of that rule set and see the world
Joanne Lockwood: differently. It's literally taking the two blue pills, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? Because once you've stepped outside and see the
Joanne Lockwood: world through constructs, you can't unsee them.
Jason Patent: I've used that metaphor in conversations and specifically, actually in
Jason Patent: coaching conversations before, the blue pill, red pill metaphor from the
Jason Patent: matrix. And isn't it exactly what you just said? Once you've seen it, you
Jason Patent: can't unsee it. And it can be daunting, it can be
Jason Patent: frightening. But I also feel like if we really
Jason Patent: mean it when we say that we want to create a world that works for
Jason Patent: everyone, if we want to create a world of genuine belonging,
Jason Patent: if we want to create a world where we're not really creating
Jason Patent: needless suffering and death every day, if we really want to boil it
Jason Patent: down, we don't really have a choice. You mentioned another word,
Joanne Lockwood: oppression. And you mix that with power, you mix that with privilege, you
Joanne Lockwood: put oppression in there, again, another triggering word for many
Joanne Lockwood: people. I'm not oppressing anybody. But again, when
Joanne Lockwood: you think of that, of the dynamics of systemic and social
Joanne Lockwood: constructs and how we've built society, the inequities that are
Joanne Lockwood: inherent in it, it's again, hard to see how
Joanne Lockwood: I as an individual have oppressed anybody. But I
Joanne Lockwood: recognise that I benefit from a system is
Joanne Lockwood: inherently a construct. Disadvantages many,
Joanne Lockwood: yes. And I'm going to pan out for a
Jason Patent: moment because I think one of the things we've gotten into pretty quickly in this
Jason Patent: conversation is some of the limitations of the
Jason Patent: human brain and how we evolved and what we evolved to be successful
Jason Patent: at. There's a phrase that
Jason Patent: I doubt that I invented. I did some googling to see if I could find
Jason Patent: it out there. And I didn't see that anybody had used this before. But then
Jason Patent: I'm still kind of testing it out to see if it sticks and if it's
Jason Patent: helpful for people. But essentially, the workplace is the modern day savannah. And what I
Jason Patent: mean by that is no specific savannah, but the savannah of the
Jason Patent: imagination, where it's a struggle for survival, scarce
Jason Patent: resources, there's danger, life threatening danger
Jason Patent: around every corner. And humans evolved inside
Jason Patent: of this context. It's kill or be killed, eat or be eaten,
Jason Patent: the law of the jungle. And our
Jason Patent: physical brains and bodies exist and are
Jason Patent: configured in the way that they are so that we can succeed in
Jason Patent: that kind of an environment. Take that and throw that
Jason Patent: into still, I guess. I guess it's still the early 21st
Jason Patent: century here and now in January 2024, and we're
Jason Patent: recording this episode. And there's
Jason Patent: all of these ways in which it is absolutely necessary for the survival of our
Jason Patent: species that we be able to collaborate well with people who
Jason Patent: are really different from us. To unleash their talents,
Jason Patent: to have them feel like they belong so that they can unleash their
Jason Patent: talents. And I don't mean this in the instrumental, extractive,
Jason Patent: capitalist sense of get stuff out of people. I mean. I mean
Jason Patent: this in kind of the highest sense of, like, let's
Jason Patent: deploy our humanity in the most effective way possible for the betterment
Jason Patent: of our species. So you take this very
Jason Patent: understandably terrified, frightened animal
Jason Patent: brain and you throw it into this current context and
Jason Patent: this need to collaborate effectively. And it's a
Jason Patent: real mismatch. We're really not very well equipped
Jason Patent: at the most basic biological level. We're not well equipped to meet
Jason Patent: the challenges of the moment. In other words, we've got a really long way to
Jason Patent: go because of this fundamental mismatch. I'm trying to remember
Jason Patent: now that this whole sort of panning out context and savannah
Jason Patent: context. Do you remember the last question
Jason Patent: you asked me a moment ago? I want to tie it back to that. It's
Joanne Lockwood: around the systemic oppression and the social constructs and
Joanne Lockwood: how we benefit from. Without realising.
Jason Patent: Yes. So the broad context is our brains and bodies
Jason Patent: aren't equipped to think in certain ways. And one of those ways is we're
Jason Patent: not really equipped. It's very difficult to think in these
Jason Patent: macroscopic, big picture, systemic terms
Jason Patent: because we evolved in this environment that was extremely local. We form
Jason Patent: in groups and out groups. Right. It's not like every individual is struggling against
Jason Patent: every other individual. Groups are struggling against groups. We have in groups and we have
Jason Patent: out groups, and we're really good
Jason Patent: at understanding the interests of our in
Jason Patent: groups, those who are nearest and dearest to us, the people
Jason Patent: whose interests we perceive to be aligned with our own, and then
Jason Patent: everybody else whose interests we perceive to be not aligned with our own, and sometimes
Jason Patent: often directly conflicting with our own. Hence,
Jason Patent: intergroup conflict, war. So all
Jason Patent: of this points towards a need for us
Jason Patent: as human beings to try to look at ourselves
Jason Patent: in a more objective way to understand what our
Jason Patent: limitations are. Because if we don't understand what our limitations are, we
Jason Patent: don't really have a chance. If we do understand what our limitations are,
Jason Patent: then we can start to work with those limitations, address those
Jason Patent: limitations, and build up sets of skills that we can then
Jason Patent: deploy that help to overcome those limitations. Yeah, because
Joanne Lockwood: our in group out group biases are so
Joanne Lockwood: ingrained in our prehistoric brains.
Joanne Lockwood: I live in a commune. Anybody who comes from over the hill is only
Joanne Lockwood: coming over the hill to attack me or do something bad to me. Therefore,
Joanne Lockwood: I trust people who are in my in group. I distrust
Joanne Lockwood: inherently anybody else who's not like me. So it's the affinity
Joanne Lockwood: bias out group stuff. So it's so
Joanne Lockwood: ingrained in who we are, in our biases, our
Joanne Lockwood: protection mechanism, our vagus nerve is straight to our adrenaline
Joanne Lockwood: gland, kicking us into action or kicking us into hide.
Joanne Lockwood: You see it in the animal kingdom as well. We have an inherent distrust.
Joanne Lockwood: So if you think about that as a fundamental survival bias,
Joanne Lockwood: no wonder people who are not like us, people who have
Joanne Lockwood: different values or different systems or different language or different skin colour, whatever,
Joanne Lockwood: or sexuality, they may become outgroup. And it's really
Joanne Lockwood: hard to let our brains encompass them and bring them
Joanne Lockwood: in unless we find an affinity. Yes, absolutely.
Jason Patent: And I think if it's okay with you, I'd like to give
Jason Patent: a. I love this. And it's all
Jason Patent: extremely. This is context. Would it be okay with you if we move into something
Jason Patent: a little bit more practical and applied? Okay, go for it. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: please do it. I'm wondering if your listeners just like, okay,
Jason Patent: great. What am I supposed to do?
Joanne Lockwood: Solution is good. Yeah.
Jason Patent: I have a book and I write about this in the book. I'll just give
Jason Patent: an example. And when I talk about
Jason Patent: global leadership and global Dei, there's a
Jason Patent: fairly specific way in which I mean that and the
Jason Patent: whole global piece. The reason I put that in there, first of all, it's because
Jason Patent: my career has been global, but also because
Jason Patent: differences that when we're talking when we're in a global context,
Jason Patent: we expect difference to show up. And there's a whole field called
Jason Patent: intercultural communication, intercultural leadership that has
Jason Patent: a rich set of tools to offer us for
Jason Patent: looking at difference and changing the lens through which we see
Jason Patent: difference. And so to give a specific example,
Jason Patent: what it helps us to do is focus on behaviours so that we're not jumping
Jason Patent: immediately into identity, we're not jumping immediately into power,
Jason Patent: because it can generate these shutdown
Jason Patent: reactions from people. And you can't get anywhere if you start there sometimes,
Jason Patent: right? So if we start with something behavioural, behavioural, I
Jason Patent: think we all are familiar with differences in, say,
Jason Patent: communication style. Individuals have differences in communication style,
Jason Patent: and differences also pattern across cultures. From the
Jason Patent: standpoint of communication style. One of the big adjustments that I had to
Jason Patent: make as somebody born and raised in the United
Jason Patent: States and trying to work effectively inside the chinese
Jason Patent: cultural and linguistic environment was different communication styles.
Jason Patent: I was trained know, say what you mean, mean what you say. Direct
Jason Patent: communication was really the only way to communicate. And then I found
Jason Patent: myself in a situation where the dominant, which is not to say that
Jason Patent: every individual conforms to this, right, this is patterns. But broadly
Jason Patent: speaking, my direct communication style was not going to be successful,
Jason Patent: it wasn't going to build trust, it wasn't going to help collaboration. And so I
Jason Patent: had to do some adapting, or the term that I use
Jason Patent: is bridging. I didn't admit the term bridging. It comes from the intercultural
Jason Patent: field. But even when we're not talking about international
Jason Patent: borders, one of the stories that I tell in the
Jason Patent: book is about a colleague that I had who had a very different communication
Jason Patent: style from mine. And she has the pseudonym
Jason Patent: Anita in the book. And she was one of my direct reports,
Jason Patent: and she was kind of a dream colleague. She was
Jason Patent: so good at her job that I never really felt that I had to
Jason Patent: manage her. She just got her work done extremely
Jason Patent: effectively. We would meet, I always met with my director reports, one on one
Jason Patent: every single week. And when we would sit down every week,
Jason Patent: what I wanted to hear from her was because I was busy. I was
Jason Patent: moving a million miles an hour, trying to accomplish way too much.
Jason Patent: What I really wanted to hear from her was whatever
Jason Patent: she needed me to hear so that I could help her do her work more
Jason Patent: effectively. Instead, what I got was a story. Every single
Jason Patent: time we'd sit down and she would say,
Jason Patent: we've exchanged pleasantries, and then she'd get out
Jason Patent: her list and start going through all of the things that she's been
Jason Patent: doing. And then before long, she would start telling me a
Jason Patent: story. And it really bothered me because
Jason Patent: I just wanted her to get to the point. And one
Jason Patent: day she caught me looking at my watch in the middle of our meeting
Jason Patent: and stopped talking immediately. And I knew exactly what
Jason Patent: had happened. And I was like, oh, she got me. She caught me
Jason Patent: and she said, do you need me to stop talking? And I said,
Jason Patent: anita, I'm sorry, no, please continue with your story.
Jason Patent: And she did. But it felt a little bit different. I kind of spoiled the
Jason Patent: mood, I think, with my checking of my watch. We
Jason Patent: got through the meeting, it was fine. And it was an important moment for me
Jason Patent: because I recognised a couple of things. One was that
Jason Patent: she really needed to tell me these stories. It wasn't a
Jason Patent: question. There was this part of me, this voice inside my head, that
Jason Patent: I felt like she was wasting my time and wasting our time. And so
Jason Patent: it got me thinking more about what else could be happening here.
Jason Patent: And I had already been trained. In fact, one of
Jason Patent: my jobs at there was actually was
Jason Patent: directing a centre for intercultural leadership. So
Jason Patent: it's not like I was new to this whole topic, right? I just wasn't applying
Jason Patent: it to myself in this particular relationship at this particular time. And it's
Jason Patent: communication style. This colleague of mine is a
Jason Patent: high context communicator. That's a term in the field, and it's a term in the
Jason Patent: field for a reason. And I'm a low context communicator. What that means is, as
Jason Patent: a high context communicator, she needed to provide
Jason Patent: enough context to understand what she was doing inside of a larger
Jason Patent: context. As a low context communicator, I'm just like, let's boil it down to what
Jason Patent: we need to know, because efficiency and transparency, those are
Jason Patent: the values that are driving, that are most important for us
Jason Patent: to honour here, where she is more concerned with values
Jason Patent: around relationships and a sort of more
Jason Patent: holistic approach. What I was eventually able to do in that relationship
Jason Patent: was a little bit of fake it till you make it, which is to say,
Jason Patent: grit my teeth and listen to the stories until they were done. And then
Jason Patent: I found, over time, that I was actually enjoying the stories that she
Jason Patent: was telling me. I feel like it helped us to,
Jason Patent: over time, to build trust and actually kind of ironically, to get more efficient in
Jason Patent: our work. So I feel like I'm so concerned with efficiency. Like,
Jason Patent: tell me, get to the point. But the rupturing of trust could actually
Jason Patent: lead to inefficiencies in the long run. Whereas if
Jason Patent: I could flip this viewpoint in the ways that I've been
Jason Patent: describing to you, we actually might have a more trusting relationship that could
Jason Patent: lead to longer term efficiencies. So that's one example. Now, if we get
Jason Patent: into identity and power there, I'm the supervisor, I'm a man,
Jason Patent: she's a woman. English is my first language, it's not hers. She's
Jason Patent: an immigrant, I'm not. There's a massive power imbalance in that
Jason Patent: relationship. What normally happens in the workplace is we're not
Jason Patent: aware of the power that we have. And when I say power, I deliberately include
Jason Patent: privilege in that as a specific form of power, the norm
Jason Patent: is to keep rolling forward. I'm not
Jason Patent: aware of the power that we have and just expect other people are going to
Jason Patent: do all of the adapting, code switching, accommodating,
Jason Patent: assimilating, integrating. And when we talk about power
Jason Patent: reimagined. One of the key things, behaviorally, that we're talking about every single
Jason Patent: day in the workplace is the folks with more power need
Jason Patent: to be doing the adapting, which is what in the
Jason Patent: book I call bridging. And again, not my term, but I apply it in
Jason Patent: a particular way in my work that was pretty long. I hope the listeners
Jason Patent: are still with us.
Joanne Lockwood: One area that I've come to realise is when
Joanne Lockwood: we talk about different groups, intergenerational
Joanne Lockwood: groups particularly, it's incumbent on the older
Joanne Lockwood: generation to bridge down because the younger
Joanne Lockwood: generation won't bridge up. They may have an appreciation, but it's
Joanne Lockwood: incumbent on us, Gen X's or other generations
Joanne Lockwood: to learn about Gen Alpha, Gen Zenz and learn about how they're
Joanne Lockwood: interacting with the world because they will not show any interest in
Joanne Lockwood: what we're doing. So in order to create that bridge, as you
Joanne Lockwood: called it, we have to bridge downwards. They will never bridge up. So
Joanne Lockwood: the power imbalance, if you like, in that scenario is actually from an age
Joanne Lockwood: perspective, the power is with the younger generation because they
Joanne Lockwood: are setting the new communication styles. And if we, as older
Joanne Lockwood: generation want to keep relevant, even in business, we have to bridge
Joanne Lockwood: down and understand what's coming, not trying to force the younger generation
Joanne Lockwood: to live in our world. Yeah, generation is a particularly interesting
Jason Patent: example because there's a really
Jason Patent: interesting how generation interacts with age.
Jason Patent: They're closely related, but not synonymous. But the fact that
Jason Patent: people in a given generation are going to age
Jason Patent: up into a cohort where they're the ones
Jason Patent: setting the standards for everybody else. I think you make a
Jason Patent: really valid and important point there that there is a power, but they don't have
Jason Patent: that power yet, right? We're still the ones in charge.
Jason Patent: And so often we feel like we can just go ahead and dictate our
Jason Patent: way, when in fact, as you point out,
Jason Patent: I guess the power is kind of latent,
Jason Patent: it's nascent, but there's no question it's coming right.
Joanne Lockwood: I had to learn that as a parent. I thought the power laid with me,
Joanne Lockwood: but I learned that I had to be a negotiator, I had to be an
Joanne Lockwood: adapter, I had to be the one who gave to ensure the relationship
Joanne Lockwood: was productive, because I can assure you, my children
Joanne Lockwood: were, whilst they're fantastic children and superb young
Joanne Lockwood: adults, or your adults now, I realised that me saying
Joanne Lockwood: I'm old, I know better is no way to communicate. You
Joanne Lockwood: have to learn a different set of skills to communicate with younger
Joanne Lockwood: people. And as like, being a parent really taught me that.
Jason Patent: Yes. And I think I appreciate the application of
Jason Patent: this power reimagined concept to
Jason Patent: generation. I think one of the important differences between generation and
Jason Patent: a lot of other identity categories is exactly what I was saying a moment ago,
Jason Patent: which is they'll age up into positions of power,
Jason Patent: but if we're looking at, say, for example, race and really
Jason Patent: just about any other identity category, that doesn't hold.
Jason Patent: So we're talking about a lifelong condition of being
Jason Patent: marginalised, of being unseen,
Jason Patent: of being forced into situations where I have to change who
Jason Patent: I am every single day and suffer indignities every single day
Jason Patent: just in order to get by. Also to avoid
Joanne Lockwood: standing out, being different, being accused of being
Joanne Lockwood: troublesome or argumentative or bossy
Joanne Lockwood: or whatever other negative words we could throw at people. You
Joanne Lockwood: say the code switching, the masking, the covering, is a survival
Joanne Lockwood: mechanism to survive in a world where you
Joanne Lockwood: are not the majority, because the majority set of rules, you have to play
Joanne Lockwood: by those rules, even though they don't necessarily work for you. Exactly.
Jason Patent: I want to clarify one important
Jason Patent: distinction, which is, and I touched on this a little bit earlier in
Jason Patent: our conversation, but this whole, the idea
Jason Patent: of collaborating effectively together, to
Jason Patent: me, is we can and should
Jason Patent: be thinking and talking about that in human terms. And what I
Jason Patent: mean by that is, what is it like to be a
Jason Patent: person, a human being who feels seen,
Jason Patent: who feels included, who feels like they belong, and then to
Jason Patent: be able to contribute their talents and energies accordingly?
Jason Patent: We do function inside of an extractive global
Jason Patent: capitalist system. That's a fact. Right. And
Jason Patent: I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's not like we're going to snap our
Jason Patent: fingers and have a set of systems that are going to be
Jason Patent: more focused on humanity. I mean, the extractive systems that we
Jason Patent: function inside of are not focused on humanity. At the same time,
Jason Patent: it's possible, I believe, to function
Jason Patent: inside of these systems in much more healthy and
Jason Patent: humane ways than we currently do. And that's also just fundamental
Jason Patent: to the work that I do, is this
Jason Patent: belief that we have a lot more wiggle room
Jason Patent: than we think we do, especially when we have outsized power and
Jason Patent: outsized privilege. And so much of the challenge of leading
Jason Patent: inside of these inhumane structures is finding where
Jason Patent: that wiggle room is. Where do I have, where
Jason Patent: can I bridge where? And how can I bridge such that
Jason Patent: in my spheres of influence, however big or however small they may
Jason Patent: be, can I carve out spaces where people feel more
Jason Patent: like they belong? Isn't the pace of change, though
Joanne Lockwood: glacially slow and frustratingly slow, so
Joanne Lockwood: much so sometimes you can't even see change occurring because
Joanne Lockwood: it's those micro kind of increments?
Joanne Lockwood: World Economic Forum, their gender equity report, I think
Joanne Lockwood: last year said that we're not going to achieve gender equity in the
Joanne Lockwood: western world for another 7500 od
Joanne Lockwood: years. And globally, it's more like 250
Joanne Lockwood: years. When you think about some of the Far east and other parts of the
Joanne Lockwood: world. And who wants to wait 75
Joanne Lockwood: years for gender equity to start occurring? Who wants to wait
Joanne Lockwood: half of that time, a quarter of that time, a third? Whatever
Joanne Lockwood: fraction it is, it's like anything. We want it now. How
Joanne Lockwood: do we get it now? How do we keep patient that
Joanne Lockwood: long? Well, that's a great question,
Jason Patent: and I don't think we have a choice, which is to say
Jason Patent: each of us has a certain amount of agency. And
Jason Patent: I think my work is predicated on a belief
Jason Patent: that, let's just say, let's snap our fingers
Jason Patent: and fast forward 10,000 years, presuming that we're all still around
Jason Patent: as a species, right, and that we haven't completely destroyed life on this
Jason Patent: planet, or maybe 1000 years, whatever, just some very
Jason Patent: long time into the future. And let's say that there's still an awful lot
Jason Patent: of nastiness going on. I still believe that
Jason Patent: inside of our spheres of influence and the relationships that we have with other
Jason Patent: human beings, it's meaningful. This work is still
Jason Patent: meaningful because of the impact that we can have within our spheres of influence
Jason Patent: now. So that's the worst fallback case, right? So
Jason Patent: in the very, very worst case, we're still having a
Jason Patent: positive impact if we're doing this work mindfully,
Jason Patent: intentionally, persistently. I also happen to
Jason Patent: believe that the more skilled we can
Jason Patent: get broadly speaking, doing this work, which has many, many
Jason Patent: aspects to it, and we've touched on a few of them in this conversation already,
Jason Patent: that over time we've got a better and better chance at
Jason Patent: transforming these larger structures and these larger systems
Jason Patent: in more meaningful and more impactful ways, so that the
Jason Patent: actual impact of the work that we do extends beyond our immediate spheres of
Jason Patent: influence. We can't know, there's no way that we're going to know
Jason Patent: what that impact is. It's very mysterious. So there is a
Jason Patent: faith aspect to this work as well, I suppose. And
Jason Patent: the longer I'm around, the
Jason Patent: more I recognise that my time on this planet is really limited.
Jason Patent: And in my lifetime I'm only going to see so much change. And then I
Jason Patent: look at my. I have two grown daughters and I think about them,
Jason Patent: they may have kids at some point and I'll be thinking
Jason Patent: about them as well if I'm still around. And my hope is
Jason Patent: that when they leave this earth, that we
Jason Patent: will have progressed in some meaningful way
Jason Patent: towards this better future. I don't think there's a finish line, I should say that.
Jason Patent: I mean, I think because of how we're wired, we're not going to change human
Jason Patent: wiring. That is how it is. We just have to get better and
Jason Patent: better at managing our limitations, at overcoming our
Jason Patent: limitations. But there's no shiny future
Jason Patent: where we're born. We come out into the
Jason Patent: world and it's like we're all one big happy family.
Jason Patent: No, but through education, et
Jason Patent: cetera, the future can look a
Jason Patent: heck of a lot better than it does right now. So, yes, we want it
Jason Patent: now. And not only do we want it now,
Jason Patent: to the extent that one belongs to identity
Jason Patent: groups that are historically and currently still very much marginalised.
Jason Patent: And I boiled it down in a really stark way earlier, and I'll say it
Jason Patent: again, suffering and dying, they need it now. And I guess that's part
Jason Patent: of what motivates me and keeps me moving forward with this work,
Jason Patent: is like I can sit here on my high horse in my
Jason Patent: incredibly privileged life and say, some distant
Jason Patent: day, things will be better. Well, okay, great. But people are
Jason Patent: suffering and dying now. How okay am I with that?
Jason Patent: How much do I really care? And how much is
Jason Patent: my caring about that actually going to motivate me to take action? And then
Jason Patent: what sorts of action am I willing to take? Those are questions that I
Jason Patent: think we all need to be wrestling with every single day. We're not going to
Jason Patent: live up to our own standards every single day. We might be really lucky if
Jason Patent: we have a day where we feel like we live up to our own standards,
Jason Patent: but I feel like those are questions that we have to be asking and responding
Jason Patent: to in our action. Yeah, it occurs to me there's this massive
Joanne Lockwood: disconnect between society at
Joanne Lockwood: large and the corporate world that
Joanne Lockwood: we breathe all the time. Where in most companies,
Joanne Lockwood: sizable companies, global organisations, there's DNI teams,
Joanne Lockwood: there's people worrying about equity, inclusive recruitment
Joanne Lockwood: processes, there's lots of people focusing on this as a job. But you
Joanne Lockwood: step out of corporate America, corporate Europe, corporate UK, corporate
Joanne Lockwood: wherever, onto the pavement, who is thinking about
Joanne Lockwood: equity in the same way? Because you can say, well, our
Joanne Lockwood: government are know you look at, we've
Joanne Lockwood: got elections coming up in the US, we've got elections coming up in the UK,
Joanne Lockwood: we've got elections coming up in five or six other countries around
Joanne Lockwood: the world that will put potentially different
Joanne Lockwood: governments in the next twelve to 18 months. And those
Joanne Lockwood: governments, a lot of them, have a different view
Joanne Lockwood: on human rights and equity. And
Joanne Lockwood: without naming any names, so are we
Joanne Lockwood: regaining and then getting pushback? Because
Joanne Lockwood: woke has been weaponized as something
Joanne Lockwood: that's used against people who are trying to create positive change where people can
Joanne Lockwood: thrive. We talked about the pushback, the power privilege, people
Joanne Lockwood: feel losing something. The white man is feeling
Joanne Lockwood: marginalised now and the governments are reacting to
Joanne Lockwood: that feeling. So say there's this disconnect between
Joanne Lockwood: corporate motivation to be inclusive and
Joanne Lockwood: societal and the world at large. There's a disconnect there. How do we
Joanne Lockwood: rationalise that? I appreciate that. That's a change of the world question, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? That's pretty
Jason Patent: big question there, but happy to indulge and explore
Jason Patent: it with you. I haven't thought about it in those terms before.
Jason Patent: Well let me focus in on one piece. I don't know if this is actually
Jason Patent: going to get at what you're trying to get at, but let me focus in
Jason Patent: on one thing that you said, which is this whole idea of the white man
Jason Patent: feeling marginalised. Tim Wise, who
Jason Patent: is a white male author, an
Jason Patent: activist, long time, decades long activist on
Jason Patent: race based in the United States. I attended a webinar
Jason Patent: of his and he said the following. He said, let me make sure I get
Jason Patent: the words right. What was the one word? When you're used
Jason Patent: to privilege, inclusion feels.
Joanne Lockwood: Like oppression or something like that, isn't it? Yeah, something like when you're
Jason Patent: used to having power. That wasn't his exact words. But when you're used to having
Jason Patent: power, pluralism feels like oppression. And what I
Jason Patent: appreciate about that observation was it's an effort to get inside the mind
Jason Patent: of this quote, unquote, marginalised white man.
Jason Patent: I think there's some real truth in there. The
Jason Patent: reaction, and I'll just use white men as
Jason Patent: cisgender, heterosexual, able bodied
Jason Patent: white man, is a shorthand now for
Jason Patent: certain intersection of identities, where
Jason Patent: there's sometimes a shared sense. And I think the election, I will
Jason Patent: name names, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and Trumpism, which has
Jason Patent: exploded in terms of its visibility and its influence,
Jason Patent: certainly in us politics and elsewhere around the world, it seems as well,
Jason Patent: is a global.
Jason Patent: What's the word I'm looking for? It's a global phenomenon that stems
Jason Patent: from, I think, a human reaction that we shouldn't be surprised
Jason Patent: about, based on the wiring of the brain
Jason Patent: that I was talking about earlier. Having power feels
Jason Patent: good, and it grants us
Jason Patent: access to scarce resources inside of a system that has trained
Jason Patent: us to think in terms of scarcity. We tend not to notice power when we
Jason Patent: have it, we tend to notice it more when others have it. And
Jason Patent: if we get the slightest sense that somebody wants to take our power
Jason Patent: away, it's terrifying. There could hardly be anything more terrifying than
Jason Patent: that. And I think that's fundamentally, that's
Jason Patent: what's going on. It's going on at a micro level and a macro level. And
Jason Patent: of course, people are exploiting this tendency in order to gain
Jason Patent: power for themselves, but I think fundamentally that's what's happening.
Jason Patent: I don't think it ties into your question about the disconnect between
Jason Patent: corporate approaches and societal approaches. So my apologies for not
Jason Patent: connecting it back to that. But that's where you got me thinking with your question.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think it was just an observation that the corporate
Joanne Lockwood: organisation, or organism, if you like, is
Joanne Lockwood: developing a more inclusive culture
Joanne Lockwood: that isn't necessarily married or mirrored outside of their front
Joanne Lockwood: door. And often we see corporate culture influenced by the
Joanne Lockwood: wider outside. But I now see corporate culture as being a safe
Joanne Lockwood: space from the outside world where you can get dignity and
Joanne Lockwood: respect, a level of equity, a level of
Joanne Lockwood: protection that you may not get outside of your company,
Joanne Lockwood: which creates another inequity in society, where if you're working for a large
Joanne Lockwood: organisation, you're far more likely to succeed and be respective
Joanne Lockwood: for who you are. If you're working for a small
Joanne Lockwood: organisation, a local organisation, in a local town, where there's going to
Joanne Lockwood: be a massive disconnect between the experience of people
Joanne Lockwood: from an inclusion, from an equity, from an opportunity perspective, once
Joanne Lockwood: you get inside the door of a corporate, then you're more likely to
Joanne Lockwood: succeed again. That's a privilege, I guess there's power and privilege to
Joanne Lockwood: get a role or a job in a large organisation.
Jason Patent: Well, I will defer to your expertise on that simply because
Jason Patent: I haven't ever worked for a particularly large organisation and
Jason Patent: I don't have any large corporate clients either. So I don't have that kind of
Jason Patent: a window into that. Okay, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: let's go to another attack. We talk about equity, and
Joanne Lockwood: people often assume that equity is going back to breeze. Conversation is
Joanne Lockwood: about giving something up so that other people have
Joanne Lockwood: more. Because it's kind of a human nature, isn't it, to want
Joanne Lockwood: better for yourself, betterment. I wanted my children to have
Joanne Lockwood: something I didn't have. I'm not going to walk away
Joanne Lockwood: from an opportunity where someone says, here, have
Joanne Lockwood: this role, this job, this assignment. I'm not going to
Joanne Lockwood: say, no, you give that to somebody else.
Joanne Lockwood: And that's not. Equity is about. It's not about taking things away
Joanne Lockwood: from people or asking people to step back. It's trying to recognise in a society,
Joanne Lockwood: people need to be given more tools to allow them to
Joanne Lockwood: get to the start line. Yes.
Jason Patent: I feel like scarcity mindset versus abundance
Jason Patent: mindset is, for me, anyway, it's been an extremely helpful
Jason Patent: frame going back to the savannah. We evolved in this environment of
Jason Patent: scarcity. One way to look at the global
Jason Patent: systems, the extractive global systems that still dominate
Jason Patent: work in the world, is just an extension of that savannah
Jason Patent: mentality. And so we tend to think of things in terms of
Jason Patent: scarcity and zero sum. If you get something, that means I lose
Jason Patent: something and
Jason Patent: everything that I'm sharing with you and everything that I'm saying, I want to be
Jason Patent: really clear with your listeners about this. This is stuff that I'm struggling with in
Jason Patent: my own mind every single day, right. My mind
Jason Patent: is polluted in the same ways that everybody's mind is polluted,
Jason Patent: right? There's all kinds of really nasty stuff kicking around in my brain all the
Jason Patent: time. I struggle with this stuff. It's really hard for
Jason Patent: me some days. Some days it's easier than others. But generally speaking,
Jason Patent: it's really hard for me to
Jason Patent: genuinely feel a sense of abundance about the world.
Jason Patent: Like I say, some days are easier than others, some days are harder than others.
Jason Patent: But scarcity has been burned into our brains through our
Jason Patent: evolution and through the ongoing existence of these scarcity based structures that
Jason Patent: we all function inside of. So it's a natural
Jason Patent: reaction to feel like, you get something, I
Jason Patent: lose something. I once had the opportunity to listen to the
Jason Patent: president of Ireland give a talk. And he said something that really
Jason Patent: stuck with me. And he was talking about, I guess the
Jason Patent: United States as kind of the worst offender in this category,
Jason Patent: but this also being a global phenomenon as well. But
Jason Patent: he was talking about an ethos of insatiability. There's
Jason Patent: never enough. We always want more and more and more and more and more understandable
Jason Patent: inside of a scarcity mindset. If resources are
Jason Patent: scarce and everyone's looking for the same resources, I need to hoard those
Jason Patent: resources. I have to, because otherwise someone else is going to get them and I'll
Jason Patent: have less. And then what he said was what he would like to see is
Jason Patent: a shift towards an ethos of sufficiency. Can we
Jason Patent: all just please have enough? And we can take any resource and think about any
Jason Patent: resource. I think in those terms, you can start
Jason Patent: with the basic material stuff of life. Food, water,
Jason Patent: healthy, unpolluted food, clean water, decent
Jason Patent: shelter, clothing, like the basics of human existence that are
Jason Patent: lacking for an embarrassingly,
Jason Patent: horrifically large percentage of humanity. Start with that. Can
Jason Patent: we just please have enough? And from there we can get in. We work our
Jason Patent: way up to the amount of power we have inside of our organisations, the amount
Jason Patent: of influence that we have over others to change policies and build. If we get
Jason Patent: back to equity, creating laws and
Jason Patent: policies that distribute resources
Jason Patent: in ways that are more based on human
Jason Patent: needs, then I guess all of that.
Jason Patent: To say that I have found this notion
Jason Patent: of trying to think in terms of abundance and trying to think in terms of
Jason Patent: sufficiency as a baseline as opposed to
Jason Patent: the scarcity insatiability approach that we
Jason Patent: are still functioning very much inside of today. I appreciate
Joanne Lockwood: this next thought I have is probably outside
Joanne Lockwood: of your kind of everyday comfort zone.
Joanne Lockwood: But I'm thinking as you're talking is there is no profit
Joanne Lockwood: insufficiency. Our capitalist society is about
Joanne Lockwood: propagating the scarcity model. We look at
Joanne Lockwood: environmental issues. People don't want
Joanne Lockwood: limitless renewable energy. They want fossil fuels, because
Joanne Lockwood: fossil fuels is power. Fossil fuels
Joanne Lockwood: gives control over things. We don't want to cut our pollution because
Joanne Lockwood: China won't cut theirs. It's all about protecting ourselves
Joanne Lockwood: and hoarding what we have. And that seems to be the capitalist model
Joanne Lockwood: at the moment. I was listening to you. I'm thinking I can see where
Joanne Lockwood: we're going wrong as a society because we're not geared up, as
Joanne Lockwood: you point out, for sufficiency.
Jason Patent: Yeah, I agree. And that's also a
Jason Patent: reminder to me that there's a caveat that I want to throw into
Jason Patent: this conversation as well, which is I think it can be very
Jason Patent: easy for us if we're
Jason Patent: lambasting the excesses of capitalism.
Jason Patent: It can be helpful to remember that there's nothing wrong with commerce,
Jason Patent: right? And there's nothing inherently wrong with markets.
Jason Patent: To me anyway, there's a real beauty in you
Jason Patent: and I coming together. You need or want something that I
Jason Patent: have, and I need or want something that you have and we're able to make
Jason Patent: as free individuals choose
Jason Patent: to engage with each other in commerce. I think that's actually
Jason Patent: potentially a beautiful way for humans to interact. Now, if that's the basis of
Jason Patent: everything, no, right? But
Jason Patent: to me, there's nothing inherently evil or wrong about that. It's when
Jason Patent: capitalism is that just run amok, where it becomes
Jason Patent: all about hoarding resources and power.
Jason Patent: And to me, that's what fundamentally we need to work on
Jason Patent: changing over. You know, folks can get
Jason Patent: very defensive, know, and say, what are you, a communist or something?
Jason Patent: Capitalism, everyone knows that free markets
Jason Patent: generate wealth, and Adam Smith and a rising tide lifts all boats.
Jason Patent: And I think it can be absolutely true that
Jason Patent: markets in certain ways allocate resources more efficiently, as the
Jason Patent: economists like to say. And it can at the same time also be
Jason Patent: true that we've gone to ridiculous excess
Jason Patent: as a species as far as how this is playing out around
Jason Patent: the world and the dire human consequences every single day
Jason Patent: of that. Which also reminds me, since I said we can think this and we
Jason Patent: can also think this, this is another skill set that we have to build as
Jason Patent: human beings, which is the ability to hold multiple truths. We have to
Jason Patent: get better. And I say this with such emphasis because I'm really
Jason Patent: yelling at myself because this is something I'm really not very good at and
Jason Patent: I'm trying to get better at because my brain always wants to go to the,
Jason Patent: listen there, I just said it right there. Always wants to go to the binary.
Jason Patent: That's actually not true that my brain always wants to go to the binary. But
Jason Patent: I just gave you a binary lot there, right? So
Jason Patent: frequently my brain just wants to just separate into
Jason Patent: yes or no, good or bad, right or wrong. That's because, that's because
Jason Patent: I'm a human being. That's my inheritance as a human. My brain is limited in
Jason Patent: that way. Okay? That means I just need to direct more of my focus
Jason Patent: towards holding multiple different truths at once.
Jason Patent: It's another one of the skills, another one of the tools
Jason Patent: in the toolbox that we need to get better at.
Jason Patent: Recognising and using as human beings is much as my brain might want
Jason Patent: to simplify into right and wrong? Yes. No. We have to get
Jason Patent: better at holding multiple truths and seeing things from multiple perspectives at
Jason Patent: once, or at least switching more fluidly
Jason Patent: between realities. And I think it's not necessarily
Joanne Lockwood: multiple truths, it's recognising that one truth is not the only
Joanne Lockwood: truth and it's perspectives are key. Being able to step
Joanne Lockwood: back or step one pace to the left or one pace to the right, you
Joanne Lockwood: see something different. And I think that's the hard thing. And I'm
Joanne Lockwood: a great believer in perspectives and multiple
Joanne Lockwood: views, but I'm also quick to jump to the
Joanne Lockwood: binary. You have to slow your thinking down, step back and say
Joanne Lockwood: okay, that's my view. It's just my view. Okay. There
Joanne Lockwood: are other views, those views are different. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: it's just a habit. You have to learn to override
Joanne Lockwood: your default thought and be able to press pause for a second
Joanne Lockwood: and just ask. Hear a different story? Yes.
Joanne Lockwood: It doesn't mean they say they're right or you're wrong, it just means it's a
Joanne Lockwood: different view. Yes. And I think you hit on two really
Jason Patent: key skills and these are real skills and that's another thing.
Jason Patent: These are actual skills. We're
Jason Patent: trained and hired in a set of technical skills, but there are these human skills
Jason Patent: and you just pointed to two of them. Pause, ask
Jason Patent: if everyone could get a little bit better every day
Jason Patent: at pausing and asking. That would take us pretty far.
Joanne Lockwood: Some of the basis of emotional intelligence as well though, isn't it? It's
Joanne Lockwood: recognising your own sense of self, your own
Joanne Lockwood: interaction style, the needs of others, and starting to
Joanne Lockwood: connect with a bit of compassion and empathy there. Yes.
Jason Patent: And I think that if I'm sort of reframing that in terms of
Jason Patent: the work that I try to do with folks and what I'm trying to do
Jason Patent: in my book, it's essentially, yes, emotional intelligence is the
Jason Patent: foundation of it all. And then what I try to do is provide
Jason Patent: frameworks and contexts and related skills
Jason Patent: to apply every single day. So like the communication style thing that, the
Jason Patent: example I shared with you about my colleague who told the stories, right. It was
Jason Patent: really helpful to me that I could recognise that the function of my discomfort
Jason Patent: was a difference in communication style. And communication
Jason Patent: style is just one among many, many different kinds.
Jason Patent: Behavioural differences in the workplace. There's a whole
Jason Patent: world of what we call cultural dimensions. So risk
Jason Patent: orientation versus certainty orientation status orientation versus
Jason Patent: egalitarian orientation, there's a whole big list of those.
Jason Patent: There's different conflict styles, there's different leadership styles, there
Jason Patent: are different ways of giving and receiving feedback. And so we've
Jason Patent: got these sort of big picture, fundamental background skill
Jason Patent: sets around emotional intelligence and managing our feelings. And then there's the
Jason Patent: very specific applied skill set of self awareness.
Jason Patent: So this is how I
Jason Patent: think the world should be run. These are
Jason Patent: my preferences, other awareness. My colleagues have a different set of
Jason Patent: behavioural preferences based on values,
Jason Patent: maybe a quite similar value set, but ordered or ranked a little bit
Jason Patent: differently. And then a set of skills for bridging the whole
Jason Patent: intercultural field is based around this self other bridge model. And I get into
Jason Patent: that a lot in the book. And all the work that I do with clients
Jason Patent: fundamentally is around this self other bridge
Jason Patent: model and framing it in terms of this
Jason Patent: shared meta language around cultural dimensions, conflict styles,
Jason Patent: leadership styles, et cetera. And then the
Jason Patent: rubber meeting the road in all of this is bridging strategies. What
Jason Patent: can I do differently every single day as somebody with
Jason Patent: more power to move towards somebody with less
Jason Patent: power and the way that they go about their
Jason Patent: business? So what I'm really trying to do in my work is
Jason Patent: take these really, we've talked in this, we've
Jason Patent: gone pretty deep and pretty broad in this conversation around
Jason Patent: these big picture questions, around human
Jason Patent: institutions and human challenges. I really try to
Jason Patent: boil that down into specific actions that we
Jason Patent: can take every single day. And so
Jason Patent: ultimately we could talk all day and then
Jason Patent: some about these big picture questions. But if we're not able to,
Jason Patent: in a really practical way, advise people
Jason Patent: on what they can do and what they can try, then I don't personally
Jason Patent: see, like, I wouldn't be interested. To me, that's
Jason Patent: fundamentally the impact that I want to have in the work that I do, is
Jason Patent: equipping people with a very concrete set of skills
Jason Patent: around bridging to people with less power. And if we get back to this whole
Jason Patent: notion of power transformed, that really is what I'm talking
Jason Patent: about. Anyway, you're right, and you're right exactly
Joanne Lockwood: in what you said. We could keep talking about this all day, and I've absolutely
Joanne Lockwood: loved chatting to you for the last hour with the record button on
Joanne Lockwood: and 20 minutes or so in the green room beforehand. And no doubt we'll
Joanne Lockwood: have five or ten minutes before we hang up after this recording. So,
Joanne Lockwood: Jason, it's been absolutely an honour and privilege to have you here today. How
Joanne Lockwood: can our listeners get hold of you? What's the best way to keep in touch?
Joanne Lockwood: Tell us about your book. Well, for keeping in touch, I guess I'm
Jason Patent: a Gen xer. I'm an emailer.
Jason Patent: Jason@jasonpatten.com. That's the easiest way to drop me an email.
Jason Patent: Jason@jasonpatten.com. You can find me on LinkedIn.
Jason Patent: I'm there. That's really my only social media is LinkedIn.
Jason Patent: I haven't found the bandwidth to do Instagram, Twitter,
Jason Patent: so you can find me on LinkedIn. Jason patent. So if you want
Jason Patent: to get in touch, please do. There's lots of different ways that we can
Jason Patent: engage, and I'd love to have a conversation with you. If any of this piques
Jason Patent: your interest, drop me a note and or search up my book.
Jason Patent: Humanly possible, a new model of leadership for a more inclusive
Jason Patent: world. It's almost a year old now. It's going to have a birthday here at
Jason Patent: the end of the month. It's a short read. You could read it in an
Jason Patent: afternoon, and I would encourage you to do that. If this conversation has piqued your
Jason Patent: interest, go pick up the ebook or the paperback and just
Jason Patent: give it a read. I think you'll find it interesting. The feedback that I've received
Jason Patent: from readers is they really like the stories. Everything is grounded in stories. So
Jason Patent: I don't talk about any concepts outside of the context of a specific
Jason Patent: story. Some of them are my stories. They're mostly stories about mistakes that I've made
Jason Patent: and tried to learn from. But there's also a lot of stories that don't involve
Jason Patent: me at all. But they all tie back to these
Jason Patent: questions around power and how we can use power as a force for inclusion.
Joanne Lockwood: Fabulous. Is that on Amazon? Can I jump on there in a minute and get
Joanne Lockwood: a copy? Yes. Brilliant. I'll do that. I'll go and cheque it out on
Joanne Lockwood: Amazon, and I'll put the link to the book in the show notes so that
Joanne Lockwood: anyone else who's interested in following up can hunt it down.
Jason Patent: Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. You're welcome. And there's just one more
Jason Patent: piece I want to add to this, which is, I wouldn't be doing this if
Jason Patent: I wasn't fundamentally optimistic. I get into this in
Jason Patent: the introductory chapter of the book. I feel like
Jason Patent: right now we're at the very, very leading edge. We're just starting to scratch
Jason Patent: the surface of what we can do as a species in
Jason Patent: this realm of creating a better world for everyone. And I think
Jason Patent: a lot of it has to do with the things that we've learned. And we're
Jason Patent: talking, you're talking about the vagus nerve, and we're talking about the brain and the
Jason Patent: body and the amygdala. This is relatively new
Jason Patent: that humans have had the knowledge that we have the understanding that we have about
Jason Patent: ourselves as organisms and how we function, that we can contextualise ourselves,
Jason Patent: put ourselves into this larger context, understand our limitations, but also
Jason Patent: our potential. And the two are just two sides of the
Jason Patent: same coin, our limitations and our potential, and we can really start to realise
Jason Patent: more of our potential to the extent that we're able to recognise and manage the
Jason Patent: limitations that we have. So I have no idea what kind
Jason Patent: of a listener experience this episode is going to create. I think there's
Jason Patent: moments where we got kind of heavy with stuff, but I wouldn't be doing this
Jason Patent: work if I didn't have a really foundational optimism about what
Jason Patent: human beings can accomplish and also just a real excitement
Jason Patent: about where we could potentially be headed as a species. I concur, and
Joanne Lockwood: I think you said something very early on, that we can't change the entire world,
Joanne Lockwood: but we can change ourselves, we can change how we show up, we can influence
Joanne Lockwood: others. And that's why I do it as well, knowing that the power of
Joanne Lockwood: one, it's exponential when all the people who do care get
Joanne Lockwood: together and we share that care and we start making a difference together. So you
Joanne Lockwood: have to have faith. It's exhausting, but it's
Joanne Lockwood: rewarding when you see small gains. And thank you,
Joanne Lockwood: and I've enjoyed listening to you, I've enjoyed recording
Joanne Lockwood: this with you. I've learned an immense amount and contextualised a
Joanne Lockwood: few other things as well. So it's been really good. So thank you very much,
Joanne Lockwood: Jason, and a huge thank you to you, the listener. I appreciate you getting
Joanne Lockwood: to the end. Tuning in. If you're not already
Joanne Lockwood: subscribed, please track us down on Spotify or
Joanne Lockwood: iTunes and hit the follow or subscribe button. Leave us a
Joanne Lockwood: comment, give us a rating. Give us five stars, Gordon. Give us five stars. I
Joanne Lockwood: dare you. And please keep a lookout
Joanne Lockwood: for next week we'll have another episode of the Inclusion Bytes podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. And
Joanne Lockwood: of course you can share it with your friends and colleagues if you've enjoyed this
Joanne Lockwood: episode or others. I've got a number of other exciting guests. This is
Joanne Lockwood: episode 100. Yay. Woo. We've got another hundred to go, I'm sure. At
Joanne Lockwood: least there's another hundred to go, so I'm sure you'd be equally inspired by those
Joanne Lockwood: guests. Of course, if you'd like to be a guest yourself, you'd like to
Joanne Lockwood: have a conversation. You don't have to have a book out, you don't have to
Joanne Lockwood: have a deep study of anything. You just have to have an
Joanne Lockwood: interest in making the world a better place. Come and join us. Send me an
Joanne Lockwood: email jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and finally,
Joanne Lockwood: my name is Joanne Lockwood. It's been an absolute pleasure to host
Joanne Lockwood: this podcast with you today. Catch you next time. Bye.