Joanne Lockwood: Foreign.
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Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 184 with the
Joanne Lockwood: title Emotional Agility in Action.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome JD Walter.
Joanne Lockwood: JD is a learning and development expert, helping organisations achieve
Joanne Lockwood: peak performance by investing in people as humans,
Joanne Lockwood: not just assets. When I asked JD to describe his
Joanne Lockwood: superpower, he sees his ability to reframe
Joanne Lockwood: emotional intelligence and resilience as tools for collective
Joanne Lockwood: empowerment. Hello, jd. Welcome to the show. Thanks,
JD Walter: Joanne. It's absolutely a pleasure to be here.
JD Walter: I look forward to our conversation today. Yeah. You're
Joanne Lockwood: based in the us, I believe. Yes, I am in
JD Walter: the Sunshine State of Florida, so I'm about as close to the
JD Walter: Caribbean as you can get without actually being Caribbean.
JD Walter: So southwest Florida, outside of Naples, and it is sunny.
Joanne Lockwood: And is that near the Gulf of America?
JD Walter: Well, I still call it the Gulf of Mexico, but yes.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, yeah, the. The Gulf. The Gulf. Anyway, the Gulf. It's been the Gulf
JD Walter: Mexico since I was a kid. It's going to stay that way as far as
JD Walter: I'm concerned. Yeah, yeah. So
Joanne Lockwood: we had the unfortunate
Joanne Lockwood: event that the Pope died last week, a week before, wasn't it? And his funeral
Joanne Lockwood: was on Saturday. Is that a big thing in America, watching that?
JD Walter: I'll be honest, I don't know. I mean. Oh, it's in the news.
JD Walter: I actually, you know, I don't really. I try and stay out of
JD Walter: the news as much as possible. I try not to kind of fall in line
JD Walter: with what everybody's talking about. Wow.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, fair play. I completely relate to that. There's a lot going
Joanne Lockwood: on in the news, but probably a good segue on to talking about the
Joanne Lockwood: topic of today, about this resilience. Emotional. Emotional intelligence.
Joanne Lockwood: What got you into this? Where where did it all start? So
JD Walter: I think so my background, so education wise experience.
JD Walter: I am a former member of the US Navy
JD Walter: and I really was, I was more of a
JD Walter: strategist early on. Um,
JD Walter: I had more of an interest
JD Walter: in how organisations are structured, how work is
JD Walter: organised, processes. So I was very, very
JD Walter: style organisation and I think that experience
JD Walter: and that focus, while very beneficial for my career
JD Walter: at some point couldn't resolve what I was sort
JD Walter: of dealing with in an organisation. So I had a couple of instances where
JD Walter: I was running programmes, had a large group of
JD Walter: individuals working for me and I wasn't
JD Walter: at the time prepared to kind of see the human
JD Walter: dynamic clearly. I was
JD Walter: so into the, well, I can fix this by restructuring,
JD Walter: I can fix this by changing the process. We can, we can
JD Walter: reallocate work, you know, we can organise in a way,
JD Walter: but those things, at some point they break down and they don't actually solve
JD Walter: what is ultimately happening inside of an organisation. And that is people
JD Walter: being people, right? Like. And so
JD Walter: I had a very specific situation where I was
JD Walter: running a large scale human resource
JD Walter: service centre out of 20 people
JD Walter: and it was rough with conflict. I was,
JD Walter: I lost about 50% of our staff in six months.
JD Walter: And there was just so much conflict in HR, you know,
JD Walter: complaints, et cetera, et cetera. And I looking in at
JD Walter: this organisation and I'm thinking that's why,
JD Walter: how do I, how do I even attempt to fix what's happening here? Because it
JD Walter: was so much, it was so personal to
JD Walter: so many people and the conflict was so heavy and I, and I
JD Walter: brought in several external folks to say, hey,
JD Walter: observe this and tell me what you think. And they kept coming
JD Walter: back and saying, well, you need to fire your manager, get rid of your.
JD Walter: And, and I can't. And I couldn't
JD Walter: resolve like in silent, my head.
JD Walter: I like just getting rid of a couple of managers doesn't
JD Walter: change what's ultimately happening. That's too superficial.
JD Walter: That's like, that's when you fire the coach from your sports
JD Walter: team, right, because you're not performing well. It's not the coach that's out there
JD Walter: on the field, it's the players. So that's who you should be looking
JD Walter: at. And so anyway, I, I decided that I was
JD Walter: not going to accept everybody else's perspective that it
JD Walter: was a management problem and I'm going to dig and I was going to find
JD Walter: something more fundamental. And so, so what I ultimately did was I went
JD Walter: back and I sort of reconstructed the whole project
JD Walter: from the time we set up the contract. We bid on the work
JD Walter: and the contract. And then we started to set it up and I realised two
JD Walter: things very quickly. One, that we hired a bunch of really
JD Walter: great subject matter experts and we told them what their job was going to be.
JD Walter: But on day one, we asked them to do something different, something not just different,
JD Walter: but something they've never done before. So we hired all of
JD Walter: these HR professionals who were used to
JD Walter: performing transactions, processing work, benefits,
JD Walter: payroll, promotions, those sorts of things. And
JD Walter: on day what we asked them to do were to build standard operating procedures
JD Walter: and processes. And they had never done that. Those things
JD Walter: had always been given to them. So that was
JD Walter: hurdle number one. We, we said, hey, come have this job and here's what
JD Walter: you're going to do. And then on day one, we, you know, we pulled the
JD Walter: rug out from underneath him and he said, oh, but you have to do this
JD Walter: first. So that was the beginning of the vibration.
JD Walter: And then secondarily we had to implement some technology,
JD Walter: a ticketing system. None of them had ever worked in a
JD Walter: ticketing system before. And now they were not only being
JD Walter: burdened with having to
JD Walter: learn a system, we were trying to design it as we go and it was
JD Walter: not a very good.
JD Walter: Our partners. And so we weren't able to build
JD Walter: the technology. So that was sort of hurdle too.
JD Walter: So you take that and I, and I re. What I realised, I was like,
JD Walter: okay, now we've done, we put everybody offensive. They're all afraid
JD Walter: if do well they're going to get fired. This job, you know, and you
JD Walter: just extrapolate out the fear. And of course it makes sense to
JD Walter: now that everybody's fighting and there's lots of complaints. And it's because
JD Walter: everybody's in this heightened state of awareness. And it was in
JD Walter: this moment that I really, you know, to get to your. The light bulb went
JD Walter: off and I was like, man, I have got to learn to address
JD Walter: organisations differently. And so my wife was doing
JD Walter: some doctoral work at the time. She was researching emotional intelligence. She
JD Walter: was throwing a lot of stuff at me to read. I did a bunch
JD Walter: of, you know, kind of research on my own, read a bunch of books, did
JD Walter: a bunch of, you know, academic journals and, and finally came to
JD Walter: this place where I was like, you know what? We, I need to completely rethink
JD Walter: how I approach organisations. And so that,
JD Walter: that was the switch where I said, okay, I'm,
JD Walter: I'm a human agent at this point, right? Everything that I do
JD Walter: for custom, all about the lived experience of the employees,
JD Walter: you know, it just, it ancillarily, you know,
JD Walter: organisations Are abstractions. They exist on paper,
JD Walter: may have buildings. But what makes an organisation is
JD Walter: the collective of individuals that have come together to do something
JD Walter: under that umbrella. So. So at this point,
JD Walter: once I started to understand emotional intelligence and
JD Walter: I really started to understand the relationship between human psychology,
JD Walter: it really just kind of changed perspective and
JD Walter: experience in conflict zones. And I was
JD Walter: interested in the idea of
JD Walter: resistance, right? Resistance to collaboration,
JD Walter: you know, why, you know, we're so easily avoidable, et cetera, et cetera.
JD Walter: Now thinking about resilience as this ability to manage
JD Walter: stress, overcome kind of wear and tear of, you
JD Walter: know, tension over time. And it really started
JD Walter: like I said, you know, you know, this is the key
JD Walter: here. If we want to. If we want to strengthen ourselves, if
JD Walter: we armed to avoid being
JD Walter: drawn into where is going on in our
JD Walter: environment. So our environment want to choose, want to be
JD Walter: rational, we want to respond in an appropriate way.
JD Walter: And resilience for me is really what that's all about. And so I
JD Walter: use resilience as anonymous.
JD Walter: We can talk more if you want about, you know, all those aspects. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm keen to find out a bit more about the team dynamic you
Joanne Lockwood: observed in your. And the epiphany time when you
Joanne Lockwood: did that. Because people, as you say, people blame the manager.
Joanne Lockwood: Sometimes it's appropriate. But often I find managers
Joanne Lockwood: haven't been trained to be managers. They're promoted from
Joanne Lockwood: the ranks without any tools, without any success and
Joanne Lockwood: then something expect them for being a great engineer to being a people person and
Joanne Lockwood: a people leader is often unfair. But
Joanne Lockwood: we hopefully we can train people and I think emotional intelligence
Joanne Lockwood: is something that personally, in my own experience is once you become
Joanne Lockwood: aware that it's a thing and you start to
Joanne Lockwood: focus on it, it becomes something you can develop skills in. Is that
Joanne Lockwood: right? Yeah, absolutely. So I think,
JD Walter: you know, there is.
JD Walter: So example, right? I'm a great. I made a
JD Walter: manager. There's a development, right. Management is a very specific skill set
JD Walter: and we haven't trained to it. And we go, oh,
JD Walter: well, okay, what is that?
JD Walter: Right. It's to
JD Walter: developing managers tends to be this very superficial effort. Oh, we'll be more
JD Walter: empathetic. I'll be a better leader. Okay. Again, I don't know what these things
JD Walter: are, right, as concepts. Now you can spell them out and you can put a
JD Walter: little post around the wall. But it
JD Walter: doesn't tell me as an individual how to behave.
JD Walter: How do I inform my behaviours based on that? What does empathy look
JD Walter: like as a behaviour? How does empathy show up authentically?
JD Walter: And. And that connection is so it like
JD Walter: a superficial was a
JD Walter: destruction image than if I just would have said, yeah, I don't really
JD Walter: care about your personal life, get back, right. Like it's almost like we can
JD Walter: deal with that better than this sort of fake
JD Walter: caring. And so, so what I think, when I think about
JD Walter: emotional intelligence, what I think is about this capacity to be
JD Walter: authentic, but it requires us to vulnerable, right? So
JD Walter: vulnerability. And I always like to mention
JD Walter: Patrick Lencioni. He's five
JD Walter: behaviour to the team. He lays vulnerability based on
JD Walter: building results oriented team. For me, I
JD Walter: act resilience or emotional intelligence as the founder. Because if we
JD Walter: don't have the capacity to withstand
JD Walter: scrutiny, tension, stress in the environment, we
JD Walter: can't actually be vulnerable. Vulnerable is we're actually starting to be authentic.
JD Walter: And when we're authentic now, we're building trusted relationships.
JD Walter: Patrick says that if you don't get a chance to weigh in,
JD Walter: you can't possibly buy in. And he's talking about productive
JD Walter: conflict. We all run away from conflict. But the
JD Walter: argument is important because that's how we get to innovation,
JD Walter: right? That's how we evolve our organisation,
JD Walter: you know, into the future. So the ability to
JD Walter: authentically connect with people is incredibly important.
JD Walter: And it doesn't have to be the authenticity is more important
JD Walter: than sort of the 10,
JD Walter: let's say in their environment, people are keeping on as they're
JD Walter: looking for that they're looking talk engagement all the
JD Walter: time. What is it that's an emotional connection to this thing that I'm doing.
JD Walter: And, and we have programmes like oh hey, we have fundraisers. That's
JD Walter: rise. The engagement. Engagement isn't about whether I like the
JD Walter: organisation, whether I like the people I work with. It's about
JD Walter: can I emotionally connect with this work that I'm doing with
JD Walter: the mission, you know, the thing that I do, the task that I do on
JD Walter: a daily basis. If so, then
JD Walter: I'm going to be
JD Walter: too productive as possible. But what stops the noise around me, all
JD Walter: the drama around me, all the change that's constantly happening. So if I'm
JD Walter: constantly reacting to all of these things happening in my
JD Walter: operating environment, I'm never actually able to get to
JD Walter: being a peak performer. So again,
JD Walter: it's the resilience that comes from, you know, well developed
JD Walter: emotional intelligence competency that allows me to be
JD Walter: vulnerable and it allows me to. And what we're really talking about is
JD Walter: I have a root of who I want
JD Walter: to be yourself. I'll draw from, you know, concept of human
JD Walter: psychology, real self is who do I want to be
JD Walter: in the world. And if I have a measuring stick, then I
JD Walter: can make decisions in the moment how
JD Walter: to be cave. So in that exchange,
JD Walter: No, I'm distracted. There's this thing, what I want to be
JD Walter: able to do, be able to connect with you
JD Walter: that your facings I've ever
JD Walter: faced. Maybe I can't truly be empathetic, but I can
JD Walter: certainly be sympathetic. But what I commonly do is I can use space.
JD Walter: I can say, you know what, you need to take the day off, don't worry
JD Walter: about it, go home. You know, if you need anything, let me know.
JD Walter: But go take some time, go take a walk, do whatever, you know, whatever it
JD Walter: is that you need to do instead of driving towards. Well, that's
JD Walter: too bad you feel that way. You work
JD Walter: the law in that. That latter scenario
JD Walter: is tenfold. Take until day. I
JD Walter: mean, we don't work eight hours a day anyway, so it's not like we're, you
JD Walter: know, we overblow the loss of production because
JD Walter: we assume that eight hours is being worked every
JD Walter: day. But we know that's not true.
Joanne Lockwood: In team dynamics, in leader team dynamics,
Joanne Lockwood: I imagine there has to be a kind of a, a normalisation
Joanne Lockwood: of a balance of emotional intelligence. Because if you're not careful, if
Joanne Lockwood: you're imbalanced, one person has high emotional intelligence and one has low or,
Joanne Lockwood: or not aware of it. That can create frustration on both parts. You know,
Joanne Lockwood: someone's trying to be empathetic and listen and manage you and look after you. You
Joanne Lockwood: know, you're neurodiverse or your, your empathy levels are low.
Joanne Lockwood: You're. You're kind of, yeah, you're, you feel uncomfortable in
Joanne Lockwood: that situation. So how do we kind of try and level out
Joanne Lockwood: this imbalance? Sometimes step away from an
JD Walter: organisation, Just look at the world and I think about all
JD Walter: the craze on a daily basis.
JD Walter: The world is ripe with. That's the first thing that doesn't matter
JD Walter: that we're at work. Our lives are our lives and they're
JD Walter: filled with all of these. Right. Whether it
JD Walter: happens within the bounds of the organisation or not. Um,
JD Walter: I've done a lot of work with public servants in the United States.
JD Walter: If you've read news, you know that there's a big move to total
JD Walter: number of federal employees in the Federal Government or in the government in the United
JD Walter: States. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But unfortunately, the
JD Walter: narrative that goes along with it is these people aren't being productive. They're not great
JD Walter: professionals. These guys, you know, they're not really doing that. They're lazy
JD Walter: they're this, they're that and those things couldn't be any further from the truth. But
JD Walter: that's an. That is going to necessitate this. We step back and
JD Walter: we kind of, you know, we protect ourselves from this.
JD Walter: This criticism. Right.
JD Walter: So I think you know, when you
JD Walter: imbalance in. In a. When you
JD Walter: have the imbalance you can. I'm trying to think of the
JD Walter: best way to say it. If I look out into the world and I
JD Walter: see of the drama based that
JD Walter: sort of
JD Walter: more it's shouting match. Everybody's trying to be heard.
JD Walter: There's no more focus on bringing in
JD Walter: evidence and proving a truth. It's
JD Walter: because you're in. It's. There's just so much
JD Walter: vital in the world and. And it's exactly what you
JD Walter: just being. So
JD Walter: look at it from that perspective. What I think I
JD Walter: can commit myself to not be distracted
JD Walter: by all of the stuff that's coming after me.
JD Walter: I'm maybe not
JD Walter: be as negatively impacted by all of the stuff
JD Walter: and ultimate world a much nicer place. We'd all get along a lot better.
JD Walter: And I think that's ultimately what we really need to be doing is
JD Walter: we need to be acknowledged. We're different. Right? We're all
JD Walter: diverse in all the different ways you can be
JD Walter: diverse and numerous others come from someplace
JD Walter: different. We all approach life different. We have different beliefs,
JD Walter: different opinions, you know, different desires. But it's
JD Walter: all okay because there isn't a right. And I think this is
JD Walter: where the emotional intelligence and I think
JD Walter: emotional intelligence in that scenario that you're talking
JD Walter: about.
JD Walter: To be where you are. Okay. Do you want to be better?
JD Walter: That's really the question. It's not do you agree with me? Do you? What are
JD Walter: you shooting for in your life? What. What is your goal? What is your ideal?
JD Walter: Where are you trying to get to? Who are you trying to be as a
JD Walter: human being? Let me help you realise that. And if we do that I think
JD Walter: all the rest of this stuff just kind of starts to fall into place. But
JD Walter: it. It requires strength, right?
JD Walter: A resilience within you to be able to put yourself out
JD Walter: and say this is me without apology.
JD Walter: This is who I am. You can be who you want.
JD Walter: I take no offence to celebrate you be who you want to
JD Walter: be. But let's, let's do that in a
JD Walter: way that we're not trying to change each other.
JD Walter: We're not falling on a flag not we're not
JD Walter: saying your role is only
JD Walter: good if go back to that ideal self idea
JD Walter: what, what that is all about. Is deciding who we
JD Walter: want to be as individuals. How do I want to show up in the world,
JD Walter: how do I want people to experience me if that's the most
JD Walter: important and frankly the only
JD Walter: measuring stick that will letter to us? Because everything else
JD Walter: is an abstraction. It's everything else is some third party creation.
JD Walter: The ideas of success that are printed in magazines, the commercial,
JD Walter: the political rhetoric, everything, everything that goes
JD Walter: on driving towards no, no, I have the answer and you
JD Walter: need to follow me. And it's not about following people, it's
JD Walter: about being authentic. And so.
Joanne Lockwood: We live in a world where a lot of the communication we do
Joanne Lockwood: these days is asynchronous. We social media,
Joanne Lockwood: we're hiding behind keyboards, we're sending a message. That message
Joanne Lockwood: then travels through space and time and someone will read it and
Joanne Lockwood: then reply or not or whatever. But
Joanne Lockwood: in the human evolution, most of our communications was all synchronous. We
Joanne Lockwood: were talking to a person with a person. We could judge their
Joanne Lockwood: reactions, we could judge their feelings, we could judge their state, what
Joanne Lockwood: they were doing. Whereas now we've got no idea
Joanne Lockwood: where the person is at the other end, what they're doing, what they're thinking
Joanne Lockwood: of, what their emotional state is, what their happiness quotient is, whatever.
Joanne Lockwood: And we're sending this message and they
Joanne Lockwood: interpret it in a completely different way often which is intended
Joanne Lockwood: or we don't have consequence in what we say
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. Is that part of the problem we're getting here? Yeah, I think
JD Walter: so. I think it's a desire
JD Walter: to interpret what somebody is saying.
JD Walter: And I don't know, I would probably
JD Walter: argue that we've lost some of our command,
JD Walter: the ability to speak clearly, concisely,
JD Walter: to say exactly what I mean without an
JD Walter: agenda. If I tell you you're not here in
JD Walter: Florida, but if I sun is shining today and it's 85 degrees,
JD Walter: okay, you can me, you can go look on Weather channel or whatever app and
JD Walter: and find out if that's true or not. It's an easy piece of
JD Walter: information for us to then conversation about. But if I say
JD Walter: the weather, it's not about
JD Walter: facts anymore. Fact get
JD Walter: proven. That's an opinion. So what happens is
JD Walter: we fall to opinion much more than actually just
JD Walter: exchanging bits of data that we want to then
JD Walter: comment on or talk about
JD Walter: address. So what happens instead of saying like you know,
JD Walter: my silly little weather analogy instead of just 85
JD Walter: degrees from we typically
JD Walter: things with an
JD Walter: agenda I personally you do
JD Walter: agree with. So I have to convince you the weather's better here.
JD Walter: It is point of that it doesn't it doesn't change
JD Walter: anything in the world, right? It just makes us feel better because somebody
JD Walter: agreed with us potentially. All of this
JD Walter: goes back to this idea, right, of resilience where it's like I don't have to
JD Walter: be right. No one has to agree. I'm perfectly okay
JD Walter: in this world if absolutely nobody
JD Walter: agrees with me. Now I might want to consider
JD Walter: my beliefs if absolutely nobody is agreeing with me
JD Walter: because maybe there's something that I'm missing so I should consider that.
JD Walter: But at the end of the day, the point isn't to be
JD Walter: the same as or different.
JD Walter: To have my own perspective based on my lived experience and then
JD Walter: to let everybody else have the same thing. So to
JD Walter: grant that courtesy or that say
JD Walter: listen, your, your lived experience,
JD Walter: it's all on you. I'm. You need.
JD Walter: I'm not not care. Because who am I
JD Walter: to make the rules right
JD Walter: places. But that comes to, right, like come back to
JD Walter: a comfort level. Are we confident enough? Are we
JD Walter: secure enough in ourselves? Can we,
JD Walter: you know, positively
JD Walter: overcome other. We have.
JD Walter: I'm afraid of not being liked. Okay, okay.
JD Walter: We need to understand, right? And, and is the thing
JD Walter: that you're putting out there to try and get people to like
JD Walter: you, is that authentic to you or is that kind of what you. You
JD Walter: grabbed? Because I think people, well, people like people
JD Walter: like this. So now people like people. I'll get a
JD Walter: sports like people that, you know, make six figures. So I'll go
JD Walter: get a job that makes six figures or whatever it happens to be
JD Walter: I in the world. If I sit back and
JD Walter: I'm complete selfish observation
JD Walter: of the world it is.
JD Walter: We're so concerned about
JD Walter: not fitting in, right? We're so
JD Walter: afraid of not being accepted. We're so afraid
JD Walter: of somebody not, you know,
JD Walter: wanting to give us the job, not doing well enough in
JD Walter: school, fill in the blanks of whatever it is that
JD Walter: we subordinate all of our kind of hopes and dreams for us
JD Walter: ourselves as people. And we say, okay, well this is what's going to sell,
JD Walter: right? And so that's it. That's who we become.
JD Walter: In psychology, this is called incongruence where the ideal
JD Walter: self and the realised self are no longer are not aligned.
JD Walter: For me, that's what I would say. Happiness. Happiness is alignment
JD Walter: between the ideal self and the realised self. If, if you are
JD Walter: at least on the track too becoming
JD Walter: that person that you want to be, showing up the way you want to show
JD Walter: up, having people experience you the way you want to be
JD Walter: experienced, then I think everything's okay.
JD Walter: And all the Other stuff doesn't matter quite as much. But
JD Walter: we live in a world that is very much driven towards
JD Walter: what somebody else thinks we should want,
JD Walter: have or do. And often it's motivated by their
JD Walter: own greed to line their own pocket, sell their cars, you know, get
JD Walter: us to give to their, their special cause, you know, elect them
JD Walter: to office, whatever it happens to be. And
JD Walter: we don't want to live in. This, as I say, we
Joanne Lockwood: live in this hyper connected world now. So again, going back to our
Joanne Lockwood: primaeval days or prehistoric days, if we were
Joanne Lockwood: isolated in our views in our, in our small little village group,
Joanne Lockwood: we were pretty isolated on our views, we would homogenise around the majority for safety
Joanne Lockwood: and protection. But now we can almost, in our
Joanne Lockwood: infinitely connected world we can find someone who's going to agree with us
Joanne Lockwood: somewhere and we build these networks of people who agree. So
Joanne Lockwood: we create our polarised affinity groups and tribes out there
Joanne Lockwood: online, whatever it may be. That means
Joanne Lockwood: we don't have any human bounds on the
Joanne Lockwood: validity of these ideas or the trying to
Joanne Lockwood: work out what tolerance is. And we become very intolerant of difference.
Joanne Lockwood: And you're saying become polarised and it's too easy now to fit in
Joanne Lockwood: an us versus you. I'm right, you're wrong because everybody behind me
Joanne Lockwood: says I'm right. And that's what's propagating
Joanne Lockwood: this kind of conflict we have in the world now in my belief.
JD Walter: Yeah, absolutely, I think so to go back to that, let's
JD Walter: go right back to the very beginning. You know, what are
JD Walter: the defining attributes of humans, right?
JD Walter: There's hierarchy, right? Someone has to be in charge,
JD Walter: someone has to be accountable for the decision. We want
JD Walter: to live in this beautiful idealistic,
JD Walter: you know, dream world where we all get to say, but that's not the
JD Walter: truth, that's not as a species, it's never been that way.
JD Walter: Yes, there is an opportunity to contribute, yes there is an opportunity to
JD Walter: weigh in. But at the end of the day someone has to be
JD Walter: accountable, right? Someone has to make the final decision.
JD Walter: So hierarchy is always going to be a part of who we are as a
JD Walter: species. So is division of labour. We can't
JD Walter: all be warriors, right? Some of us have to be berry
JD Walter: pickers. But guess what? Those berries are vital to our
JD Walter: nutrition and we can't just eat the animals that we've killed,
JD Walter: right? Like as a, again as an animal we need multitude of
JD Walter: nutrients and they need to come from different sources. And so if we want to
JD Walter: maintain health and wellness and be able to continue to
JD Walter: propagating the species that, that berry
JD Walter: picker is. I think early on we understood divisions of labour
JD Walter: much more intimately and much more rationally.
JD Walter: Rise of mass agriculture in the Mesopotamian valley, you know, the, the
JD Walter: advent of leisure time, the rise of the arts. And now we have
JD Walter: this, like, competition for what's most important,
JD Walter: what brings the most value, and that's where
JD Walter: we are now. It's just, it's a competition there. It's not about
JD Walter: the thing anymore. It's all, it's just about winning. It's just about the
JD Walter: competition. It's about being right. I think
JD Walter: that the human species most significant
JD Walter: competitive advantage is our ability to collaborate.
JD Walter: We are a social animal. Collaboration is the
JD Walter: key to our evolution. We talk
JD Walter: about it incessantly these days, particularly in a business environment.
JD Walter: Oh, collaboration is the key to success. Yes, it is. If
JD Walter: we're so lost in the end of the collaboration, we miss the value of
JD Walter: the collaboration, because that's not collaboration anymore,
JD Walter: that's exploitation. No, no. Be on my team, think my way, do what
JD Walter: I say to do, and then this is what we're going to achieve. And isn't
JD Walter: that great? Look, we're going to raise the trophy. Okay, hold on.
JD Walter: I'm not interested in the trophy. Right, because it's not about, why
JD Walter: are we here together. It's not about the value of collaboration. It's about the
JD Walter: output. And the output is all. Ultimately, it's incredibly
JD Walter: selfish. Someone wants it. Now there's a mistake where we say,
JD Walter: oh, well, that's the problem with hierarchy. No, no, no, no. Hierarchy isn't the problem.
JD Walter: It's that someone has defined the outcome and
JD Walter: now we're all being forced to buy into that rather than saying, what, what do
JD Walter: we want to accomplish together? Hey, let's get together now. We're this group. What
JD Walter: do we want to accomplish together? Well, I want to do this. Okay. I want
JD Walter: to do that. All right, well, let's, let's, let's work on this. Let's find the,
JD Walter: the common thing that we can go do together. And then the value of the
JD Walter: collaboration is in the collaboration because
JD Walter: of the power that it gives us as individuals to achieve something.
JD Walter: So I wonder, I think
JD Walter: ultimately, when I think about collaboration now, I love that we
JD Walter: talk about it so much, but I don't think we understand
JD Walter: what it really means. I think we assume, unfortunately,
JD Walter: that collaboration is. No, no, we're all on the same
JD Walter: team. We've all agreed to be on this team and this is what
JD Walter: we're doing, but we don't spend the time and the energy
JD Walter: along the way to make sure everybody is
JD Walter: being heard, that everybody's being able to, given an opportunity to
JD Walter: weigh in and ultimately contribute to
JD Walter: the collaboration, which again is more important than the outcome
JD Walter: itself. You used the word trust a few times and authenticity.
Joanne Lockwood: And the challenge sometimes is being able to let your
Joanne Lockwood: guard down, isn't it? We talked about this,
Joanne Lockwood: wanting to be right, wanting to have your own opinion, building a tribe. How
Joanne Lockwood: can we lower our defences
Joanne Lockwood: sufficiently to be able to be able to listen to another
Joanne Lockwood: perspective? Because that's the challenge. We've got to do with the emotional intelligence of resilience.
Joanne Lockwood: We're going to have enough self confidence in our own beliefs or
Joanne Lockwood: our own arguments, our own why to better entertain funny about
Joanne Lockwood: someone else's why? Because otherwise it would just be seen as a, I'm letting you
Joanne Lockwood: attack me. So how can I create a safe space
Joanne Lockwood: for me to engage with you that has different opinions or different
Joanne Lockwood: views? Well, I don't feel that I'm going to be,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't know, set upon. I wonder sometimes if
JD Walter: we maybe hold our beliefs a little
JD Walter: too hard, you know, too close to, you know, white knuckle in these
JD Walter: beliefs of what, whatever they happen to be.
JD Walter: So it becomes very difficult to be curious if
JD Walter: our identity is so rooted in this one thing. And I can't let it go,
JD Walter: oh, my God, what if I'm wrong? I'm wrong.
JD Walter: Evolution is all about change. We talk about this is like
JD Walter: everything that we talk about in business now. It's all about accommodating
JD Walter: change because change is constant, the markets are volatile, the pace of change
JD Walter: is increasing, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's just ramping
JD Walter: up. But it's not a new phenomenon.
JD Walter: Change is innate in the universe. I mean, there's
JD Walter: tension is natural. That's what keeps the universe together, it's what keeps our
JD Walter: bodies together. So some tension
JD Walter: is good. It's about the fear of changing our
JD Walter: mind because of the perception that we think, oh, if
JD Walter: I change my mind, someone's going to look at me and they're going to
JD Walter: criticise me. They're going to say, hey, you know, you used to think A, now
JD Walter: you think B, what? Well, there's nothing, absolutely nothing
JD Walter: wrong with changing your mind. There's nothing wrong with adopting a different position.
JD Walter: There's nothing wrong with living a life, having experiences, taking in information,
JD Walter: being curious, engaging with other people and coming to a new way of
JD Walter: thinking. Right. History is replete with these wonderful
JD Walter: examples of people who started out on a very
JD Walter: disruptive way of thinking. White supremacists, right? Let's just take this as
JD Walter: an example. Someone who is a hardcore white
JD Walter: supremacist. They're a member of, you know, white supremacist groups and
JD Walter: they are all about this. And then over time and through experience, they
JD Walter: come to realise that there's an error in the. In the logic of their thought,
JD Walter: right? And they come and they meet people and they engage with people and they
JD Walter: find that there's this wonderful energy if they. If they
JD Walter: take that old way of thinking and they put it on the shelf and they
JD Walter: say, I'm going to adopt the new way. But what happens in that instance? And
JD Walter: that person is now ostracised from every community
JD Walter: that they were ever a part of. And the people that they're
JD Walter: leaving behind aren't mad
JD Walter: because they've lost a member. They're mad and they're
JD Walter: afraid because the individual that had the
JD Walter: courage to step away and say, I'm going to change my mind is. Is now
JD Walter: a threat. And that's the way we're perceiving it now. We're saying, oh, I
JD Walter: can't think this way anymore because I could be wrong.
JD Walter: We're so afraid of not being
JD Walter: the same start to finish. And it is
JD Walter: antithetical to life, to, you
JD Walter: know, being a human being. Right? The whole universe changes
JD Walter: on a daily basis. You know, I got a sunburn the other
JD Walter: day. Layers of skin are peeling off my shoulder. That is me
JD Walter: changing. My biology is fundamentally changing. There's no way to
JD Walter: stop it. So I think we're lost in this space
JD Walter: where we're so afraid of the possibility
JD Walter: of change that we fight and resist
JD Walter: everything. But if we didn't,
JD Walter: we would be freed to just experience this big, beautiful,
JD Walter: wonderful life in a. Just such a, I think, an open
JD Walter: and honest way that we wouldn't be
JD Walter: afraid because somebody looks different from us or somebody
JD Walter: thinks different from us, or somebody wants, you know, somebody wants,
JD Walter: you know, I want income tax. No, it's. I don't
JD Walter: want income tax. Okay? It's not.
JD Walter: There's an argument, there's a conversation to be had about that topic, that
JD Walter: thing, but that shouldn't be the defining factor
JD Walter: of who we are as individuals. And that shouldn't create an
JD Walter: impasse necessarily for us to not be able to get
JD Walter: along. So, you know that
Joanne Lockwood: example you gave there about income tax? We need to step away
Joanne Lockwood: from the minutiae to the overall objectives, don't we?
Joanne Lockwood: So what do we want? We want a society that's safe,
Joanne Lockwood: productive. I want to go about my life. I want to have this, I want
Joanne Lockwood: to have freedom, I want to have happiness. In order to have that,
Joanne Lockwood: I recognise I need to contribute to the running of society.
Joanne Lockwood: I can either do that this way or I can do it this way. One
Joanne Lockwood: of these ways is income tax or I can trade income tax with effort,
Joanne Lockwood: I can do whatever. But somehow, if I want to share
Joanne Lockwood: resources, I've got to contribute to that pot of resources.
Joanne Lockwood: So if we can get people to talk about the problem we're trying to solve
Joanne Lockwood: or the reality we're trying to create, and this is just a vehicle
Joanne Lockwood: to get us to that reality and we have a different
Joanne Lockwood: perspective on the best way of funding that reality, then we could talk
Joanne Lockwood: about what would be a better way of funding it. Well, we'd all love it
Joanne Lockwood: if food was free, water was free, sunlight was free and we'd have to pay
Joanne Lockwood: anything. We'd all love that. But actually where we are today is here.
Joanne Lockwood: So how do we solve that problem? And it's trying to take it away from
Joanne Lockwood: the politics of the little and talk about how do we achieve our big
Joanne Lockwood: objective. And that's we're sometimes bad at. We get locked into this
Joanne Lockwood: minutiae of solutions, not the challenges we're
Joanne Lockwood: trying to fix. Yeah, I think about.
JD Walter: So we talk about self awareness as a component of emotional intelligence, but there's two,
JD Walter: two ideas. Awareness and mindfulness. Right. And I've always sort
JD Walter: of talked about them this way. Right. Awareness is the
JD Walter: macro. Right. I see. I know what's happening in my environment. I'm,
JD Walter: you know, it's not necessarily head on a swivel, but I know what's going around,
JD Walter: on, around me. I'm. But I'm not paying
JD Walter: immediate attention to it. Right.
JD Walter: I know I'm walking up to a corner and there's cars, there's traffic on this
JD Walter: corner. I'm not looking at every car coming down the road, but I'm aware that
JD Walter: there's traffic and I know that I need to stop at the corner and make
JD Walter: sure that the road is cleared so I can cross it. Awareness
JD Walter: is just knowing that there's traffic. Mindfulness is the moment that we stop and
JD Walter: we say, okay, those cars are far enough away
JD Walter: and I need three lanes, I can make it. Right. I bring this up
JD Walter: because I think that's what. What happens. What you're
JD Walter: talking about is we
JD Walter: are so lost in the weeds. You said
JD Walter: minutia, but we are so focused in the micro,
JD Walter: as if the micro is the thing
JD Walter: that, you know, tips the needle to success or failure. And
JD Walter: it isn't. Right. It's the bigger stuff. But the bigger stuff
JD Walter: are made up of all of these. But we get so wrapped around
JD Walter: the axle about one issue. And this is politics in
JD Walter: a nutshell, right? There are those that
JD Walter: have taken up an issue and subordinate everything else.
JD Walter: I like guns. I vote solely. I don't. I do,
JD Walter: but I don't vote. I'm using this as an example. I like
JD Walter: guns, and I will only vote for somebody that is pro gun.
JD Walter: Okay, but what about all the other ways that they think about things?
JD Walter: Are. Are we. Why are we willing to say it's okay,
JD Walter: all right, this guy is going to fight for guns,
JD Walter: but doesn't like anybody that's not straight, white, male.
JD Walter: Okay, well, I can't get behind that. Right? I can't. I can't
JD Walter: subordinate, you know, one to the. These two are very, very different
JD Walter: things. They're not related. But we've created a system
JD Walter: where they become related because they're all in
JD Walter: somebody's platform. And we have to distil all
JD Walter: of our beliefs down to left or right, you know, liberal
JD Walter: or, you know, conservative, Republican or Democrat in this country
JD Walter: anyway. And there's. There's no way to. There's
JD Walter: no way to exist in that sphere called
JD Walter: politics if you aren't going to live in the
JD Walter: binary, you know, And I'm not. I'm like, I
JD Walter: absolutely. I refuse to
JD Walter: join anything. I'm not a joiner because I
JD Walter: am confident that no matter what I join at some point I will
JD Walter: disagree with. And that is something that I'm not going to try and reconcile.
JD Walter: I can't join a political party. I'm not going to file. I get.
JD Walter: I struggle with people's agendas. Like, you shouldn't. You shouldn't tell
JD Walter: me everything that you feel right up front. No, your job is to represent
JD Walter: me. What we should be doing is we should say
JD Walter: guns. Let's talk about guns. Okay? In a vacuum,
JD Walter: this is guns. Here's how we think, done, move on.
JD Walter: Here's what we think about income tax. But instead it
JD Walter: all gets lumped together. So politics is really, you know, these
JD Walter: agendas, they're stew. And you can't. You can't weed
JD Walter: anything out. And then, of course, in this country, oh, my God, the way they
JD Walter: write legislation, it's just. I mean, these
JD Walter: bills are just so big and there's just so much stuff in them.
JD Walter: It's no wonder nobody can ever agree on this stuff because there's just so
JD Walter: much in it. There's no way you can possibly agree with every
JD Walter: little thing. So I think we've, we've gone to this place where it's like all
JD Walter: or nothing, right? So we talked about, like, we focus
JD Walter: so much on these, the micro. Like you were saying, we're here and
JD Walter: we're intently focused on the minutia, but then we just,
JD Walter: we throw it away. We don't want to have that conversation. And it
JD Walter: becomes about, well, are you, you know, are you left
JD Walter: or right? Well, if you're right, you gotta love guns and you, you know, you
JD Walter: gotta hate, you know, gay people. Well, that's stupid. That's
JD Walter: a completely archaic way of thinking. Why can't I be
JD Walter: economically conservative but like socially liberal?
JD Walter: Well, there's no place for me in the US political spectrum if that's my
JD Walter: belief. So what are my options? I either have to
JD Walter: subordinate one of my beliefs or I just step away, which is what
JD Walter: I've done. I just, I just don't vote. I'm not going to be a part
JD Walter: of it. There is, I
JD Walter: believe there are other ways that I can show up as a human
JD Walter: being and advocate for the things that I believe
JD Walter: in. Right. Everybody gets a choice. Make your life
JD Walter: choices, whatever they are, I will celebrate all of them and I will champion
JD Walter: you. I can't do that inside of a political spectrum,
JD Walter: so I have to step away from it. But again, this goes back to that
JD Walter: fear I'm comfortable not belonging to. But if we are,
JD Walter: if we're afraid of being alone, if we're afraid of being out here
JD Walter: on the fringes and not a part of the, in group, we're never going to
JD Walter: be honest with each other ourselves, sorry about what we really want
JD Walter: and who we really are and how we really want to show up. So
JD Walter: we're constantly being manipulated and drawn into somebody else's argument.
JD Walter: But the upside is that if we all just ignored the argument, the
JD Walter: argument goes away. Right? We don't, we don't actually have to get into the
JD Walter: debate and that's what we don't realise. I think
JD Walter: often there are those that say, well, you have to have an opinion.
JD Walter: No, I don't. I don't actually have to have an opinion on everything.
JD Walter: I don't have to have a belief on everything. I have to have opinions and
JD Walter: beliefs based on my lived experience and what works, you know, what's right for
JD Walter: me. But to do that, I have to concede that
JD Walter: you get the same thing. So that's what liberty really is all about. And
JD Walter: I've kind of gone down a Rabbit hole here. But the very idea of
JD Walter: liberty I find fascinating because liberty says that I get to make
JD Walter: all my own decisions, but the freedom to make all of those own
JD Walter: decisions comes with an obligation to care for everybody else's
JD Walter: liberty. And we don't remember that here in this country anymore. We've
JD Walter: forgotten what liberty actually is. Liberty's more about
JD Walter: constraint than it is about expression. But we don't want
JD Walter: to talk about that anymore because we want. Our liberty is all about do whatever
JD Walter: I want, whenever I want, and you can't stop me. Well, that's reckless
JD Walter: and dangerous and it's rude because you're
JD Walter: not caring or considering anybody else's perspective.
JD Walter: So I, you know, I could go on and on about this because I
JD Walter: think this is, this is fundamentally, it's broken in society
JD Walter: and is our willingness to
JD Walter: stand on our own and our willingness to
JD Walter: let everybody else stand. So when you're going into organisations,
Joanne Lockwood: when you're working in, let's call them, conflict zones,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't mean battle zones with armies and
Joanne Lockwood: tanks. I'm talking about conflict zones in organisations where, much like the
Joanne Lockwood: one you describe right at the beginning, how can you get people to
Joanne Lockwood: disarm, lower, lower the threat levels?
Joanne Lockwood: What sort of techniques do you use? Well, I think the first thing is
JD Walter: to recognise that what we're reacting to is probably
JD Walter: a superficiality. It's more of a symptom. So
JD Walter: we're not actually talking about the root of what the matter is.
JD Walter: So go back to my example about the service centre that
JD Walter: I was running, that management. That was very much a,
JD Walter: a symptom, right? Like, let's just fix this
JD Walter: rather than go and figure out what the root is. Why are people vibrating?
JD Walter: So what I try and do is
JD Walter: without, without any
JD Walter: aggression, right? What, but creating a safe space,
JD Walter: but allowing people to step away and helping
JD Walter: walk back from the point of, like, we're butting heads over
JD Walter: this right now, but what are we really, what are we really
JD Walter: struggling with? What is really causing us to adopt this
JD Walter: particular position? Where are we as human
JD Walter: beings in this moment? What are we afraid of? And if we talk about that,
JD Walter: if we can acknowledge that, then we can get past it, right? Then we can
JD Walter: say, well, you know, you know, if you don't do this
JD Walter: and, and we don't produce and, you know, this project isn't done
JD Walter: on time, we're all going to get fired. Oh, okay, okay.
JD Walter: We have a much more fundamental fear here. But
JD Walter: are you afraid of getting fired because you're going to lose this job?
JD Walter: Nope. It's deeper than that. This money that I make through
JD Walter: this job funds a lifestyle. Now there's probably a family
JD Walter: behind me, children, there's dependence right on
JD Walter: me as an individual income earner. So the.
JD Walter: The fear of losing my job isn't even about losing a job.
JD Walter: It's about losing the ability to take care of the
JD Walter: things that I am supposed to take care of as a father, as
JD Walter: a husband, let's say. And that
JD Walter: is more in tune with the ideal that I
JD Walter: have for myself, where I am. I'm a good parent, I'm a good
JD Walter: husband, I'm a good provider, I am dependable. People can
JD Walter: count on me. The people that I love can 100% count
JD Walter: on me. And I will always be there to take care of them if
JD Walter: that's what's going on. And so that argument
JD Walter: about the project not being done on time often is
JD Walter: rooted in something much more fundamental. And so I think we've got to get back
JD Walter: to that. We have to have that conversation like, okay, yeah, got
JD Walter: it. All right. How do we protect ourselves? So
JD Walter: what we're doing right now, this project isn't even about this
JD Walter: project because somebody else decided what this project is. But
JD Walter: our job is to make sure that it's successful. Okay. Are we
JD Walter: really going to get fired if we're not on time on this project?
JD Walter: Potentially, yes. But more often than not, we're probably not
JD Walter: going to get fired. We might get a bit of a chewing, right?
JD Walter: We might hear about it, but we're not actually going to get fired.
JD Walter: Right. And so I think we need to. That's what I try
JD Walter: and do. I try and step us back to where are we at? What's
JD Walter: really going on in our heads? What are we really afraid of? What are we
JD Walter: really rejecting? What are we really reacting to here
JD Walter: in this moment? Because that foundational stuff,
JD Walter: we're much more aligned on that. We all can understand that. Oh, yeah. We all
JD Walter: have responsibilities. We're all parts of families, units, friends.
JD Walter: There's so much more similarity there at the foundational level.
JD Walter: And it's much easier for us to get on board
JD Walter: with an idea at that level. Right.
JD Walter: Like now, you know, how we fix this project, how we.
JD Walter: What do we need to do to get this project back on track and in
JD Walter: budget? That stuff is
JD Walter: tertiary at best. Right. In those moments of conflict.
Joanne Lockwood: Jg, this is fascinating. I. I could talk to you all day. This is. This
Joanne Lockwood: is really up my street as well. I have. I. We share a
Joanne Lockwood: perspective on this. So this is. This is really interesting. How could People get hold
Joanne Lockwood: of you if they want to find out more. Check out my website. It's
JD Walter: Walter W-A-L-T-E-R-I C dot com.
JD Walter: There's a way to chat with me through there, send me a
JD Walter: note and, and, you know, I'd love to talk about anything and everything
JD Walter: from a business perspective. Right. Like, we're really focused on the learning and development
JD Walter: components of an organisation and our orientation
JD Walter: is towards the human skills, so emotional intelligence, leadership,
JD Walter: strategic thinking, team building, those kind of competencies.
JD Walter: But we're, you know what, at the end of the day,
JD Walter: why we do this is really about how do we.
JD Walter: How do we help improve the lived experience of our fellow
JD Walter: human beings? We do it through the lens of an organisation because we
JD Walter: all show up in organisations and it's this commonality,
JD Walter: but it's broken. It's broken across the board. There are no
JD Walter: perfect organisations, there never will be, because perfect can't be achieved.
JD Walter: But. But we can make them better. But we make them better by
JD Walter: recognising our own humanity and allowing others humanity to show up
JD Walter: in those environments as well. And stop subordinating our
JD Walter: humanness to this abstraction called, you know, Company
JD Walter: X. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Amazing, jd, thank you so much.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
Joanne Lockwood: my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with
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Joanne Lockwood: episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.