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Coming up next on Passion Strike.
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I have a reputation john wired magazine did an article on me and the headline was this man makes founders cry.
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The joke is that i make people cry because i asked them how they are but i ask it like i really care and what typically causes the tears to fall at that point.
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is the realization that they have not been heard and they may not even be able to answer the question, how am I themselves?
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Because they re so disconnected from themselves.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now let s go out there and become Passion Struck.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 374 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast.
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And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
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In case you missed it earlier this week, I had two phenomenal interviews.
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first was with none other than Jim Quick, the founder and CEO of Quick Learning, New York Times best-selling author of Limitless, and host of the Quick Brain podcast.
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We discuss how Jim has spent the last 25 years helping people improve their memory, learn to speed read, increase their decision-making skills, and unleash their super brains.
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We do a deep dive on the new, expanded version of his book.
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I also interviewed Dr. Lynn Matreson, the Chief Science Officer at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, known as PANCAN.
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We discussed the mission of PANCAN.
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We discussed the need for early detection of pancreatic cancer, the latest available treatment options, how PANCAN is educating high-risk groups, and the importance of advocacy.
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I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews, and if you loved today s episode, or either of the others that I mentioned, we would appreciate you giving it a 5-star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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And if you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here.
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If you want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we love it when you do that, we now have Episode Starter Packs, which are collections of our favorite episodes that we put into convenient playlists.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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In today s episode, we re taking a critical look at the complexities of leadership in a world rife with division and strife.
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In our society s current climate, where polarized views often create walls rather than bridges, it s all too easy to point fingers and assign blame for the discord we all experience.
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Yet, the key to fostering a workplace where every individual feels acknowledged, valued, and free to express their whole selves lies not in the world around us, but within us.
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Our own search for belonging can uncover the subtle ways we might unwittingly uphold the very barriers we seek to break down.
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In this pivotal episode, I have the distinct privilege of interviewing a luminary in the realm of executive coaching.
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Jerry is not only a seasoned guide for entrepreneurs seeking to navigate the rough seas of leadership, but also the CEO of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm.
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His journey from venture capitalist to renowned coach and author, including his leadership and the art of growing up, has given him a unique vantage point on the transformative power of introspective leadership.
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With his latest groundbreaking work, Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong, Jerry invites us into a discussion on how leaders can spearhead creation of a truly inclusive environment.
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It s a conversation about the necessity of radical self-inquiry and the hard questions that can lead to systemic change.
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In our interview, we ll peel back the layers of what it means to lead with vision and vulnerability.
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We ll explore the first steps towards viewing ourselves with clarity and honesty, acknowledging our life stories and the unseen challenges that shape us.
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It s about recognizing the impact our unhealed wounds can have on those we lead, and learning to navigate these personal landscapes to foster deeper, more inclusive communities.
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So stay tuned as Jerry and I delve into these crucial topics, drawing on his extensive background to help us understand how to lead, not just with skill, but with soul, in pursuit of a world where every individual has a sense of belonging.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am honored and so ecstatic to welcome Jerry Colonna to PassionStruck.
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Welcome, Jerry.
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Thanks for having me, John.
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It s really a delight to be here.
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As you and I were discussing before the podcast, it truly is a small world, and we have a mutual friend in common, Jeff Walker, who actually endorsed my upcoming book, as I told you.
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And Jeff speaks very highly of your time together at JPMorgan Chase, specifically JPMorgan Partners.
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And he mentioned that you have this unique ability to coach people
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to embrace vulnerability while maintaining strong leadership.
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Could you share with us some insights and how leaders can balance these two contradictory traits?
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Sure, but let me just mildly push back on the premise of your question, because I actually don t think they re contradictory traits.
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I actually think they re complementary traits.
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And there s two ways, two metaphors I would give you that help describe that.
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You mentioned our mutual friend Jeff.
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Both he and I, I don t know if he would describe himself as a Buddhist.
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I certainly would describe myself as a Buddhist.
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In my lineage, there s an image that I will give you, which is strong back, open heart.
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So strong back is that ability to be a really effective manager.
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to be a really thoughtful leader.
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Open heart is that stance that allows us to take in the world as it is, even though it might hurt us a little bit.
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That s the imagery that I would hold on to.
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And in a similar fashion, I ll give you another metaphor.
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So there s container, and then there s content.
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The container
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whether it s of our business or our efforts as a leader.
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It s the traditional things that we think of.
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It s a good P&L.
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It s a well-run business.
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But the content is what makes a business unique.
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And the content, to me, mirrors that open heart.
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And the container mirrors that strong back.
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So they work together.
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They re not in opposition.
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Why do you think it is that when you and I were growing up into our careers, that this whole term of being vulnerable, I remember being in the military when I was in fortune 50 companies, this whole notion of being vulnerable was something that you just never wanted to show because you were afraid that it might look like weakness.
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What s changed?
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Well, first of all, a couple of things, one of which was Brené Brown.
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Brené Brown s work in talking about the power of vulnerability has really changed a lot of the dialogue.
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But I think the change actually began before that.
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I m going to make a point that I often make.
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I tend not to use the word vulnerability, because no matter how much change and no matter how much success Brene has had in changing our thinking about this, it still has an emotional tag associated with it.
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It still has what your first impulse was, which was, oh, this is about weakness.
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And if you look at the word vulnerability, if I describe that wall, if I say that wall is vulnerable, it means it s weak.
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So I m going to give you a different word.
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And in using that other word, I would encourage you to take this in.
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Here s the word.
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Honest.
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Now,
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You re smiling because there are not many leadership books or even Fortune 50 companies that would say, our managers should be dishonest, right?
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And I m doing that purposely.
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I want to make the connection because here s the truth.
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Here s what s really driving this.
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To live our life being dishonest,
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with ourselves and with those around us, because we re afraid of being honest, causes us pain.
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It costs us.
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I identify as male, I think you identify as male.
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Okay, so folks like us, who are socialized as kids, to hold back to, in effect, mask up, when we get to our 30s and 40s and 50s, do you know what the number one cause of death for men that age is?
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Suicide.
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And here s the truth, there s a relationship
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between masking and feeling terrible.
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So that is what I think is changing.
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And that s why I think it s really important that we allow that change to come in and to realize there is nothing weak about being honest.
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In fact, it takes extraordinary bravery and strength to be honest.
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Jerry, thank you for sharing that and what you were just talking about with the mask leads me directly where I wanted to go next.
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It seems that you and I both encountered pivotal moments in our careers around the same time.
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At 38 or 39, I had climbed the ranks to become a Fortune 50 CIO, having spent years and years focused on external achievements only to discover this profound sense of personal disconnect, misery, and only what I can describe as complete and utter numbness.
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And it s one of the main reasons I do this podcast because I would never want anyone else to have to go through what I felt at that time.
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But I understand you ve experienced a comparable crossroads.
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Could you share your story and how you navigated that period of your life to what you re doing now?
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Sure.
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So for context, I ll turn 60 in about a month.
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So this was a couple of decades ago.
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But when I was turning 38, it was 2001.
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And our friend, Jeff Walker, and I were working together.
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Jeff s JP Morgan Partners was an investor in my first venture capital firm, Flatiron Partners.
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And
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Many of the investments that we had made had gone south.
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It s not that dissimilar to what s going on in the market today.
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And as 2001 started to roll forward, it became increasingly difficult in business.
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And then the 9-11 attacks happened.
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And they really affected me.
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I lost friends.
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I was on an airplane the morning of the attacks.
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And I flew down to DC.
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And I remember coming back and feeling tremendous anxiety.
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And something had already been brewing inside of me, something about realizing that the life I was living, the outward success that I was experiencing, wasn t related to the inner sense of how I was feeling.
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And as my friend Parker Palmer says, I was living crosswise with myself.
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Who I was on the outside didn t map to who I was on the inside.
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And so then I took a job with Jeff and I started working at J.P.
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Morgan.
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And after several months, I realized that the anxiety had morphed into a depression.
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And I found myself one day, February 2002, standing outside the pile at Ground Zero and wanting to kill myself.
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And this was an important moment because
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As a child, I had struggled with depression.
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And I locked it away and just got on with my life.
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And it came back with this tremendous vengeance.
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And thankfully, I did not follow through on that impulse and instead called my therapist and got in a cab and went out to Long Island where she had her office.
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And the rest of my life began to unfold.
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I began studying meditation.
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I began really questioning what had got me to the place that I was in.
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And the result is I ended up becoming a coach and being the guy that you see today, who I am.
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So ironically, you and I have taken not exact, but comparable paths now after experiencing something that sounds very similar to both of us.
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I remember just being beside myself.
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It was like everything around me was falling apart.
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My relationships were falling apart.
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My health was falling apart.
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I didn t have the motivation to do anything.
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And I think there are a lot of people out there right now who have this same thing going on and they don t know what to do.
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What would be your advice to them on an initial step that they can take?
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I just want to pause for a moment and stay connected to those folks.
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And so when I speak, I want to speak directly to you.
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no matter how bad the feelings are.
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Please understand.
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The fact that John and I are sitting here talking about this is evidence of what I m about to say.
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You are not alone.
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The lies that depression tells you, well, they re just that.
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They re lies.
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The fact that you may be feeling bad is not evidence that you are bad.
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And in that not being alone,
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Please understand that it s OK to reach out and to say, this hurts, and I don t want to feel this way anymore.
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And so I m going to call a friend.
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I m going to call a therapist.
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It s funny, John.
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I realized as I was telling the story before, and I said, and I called my therapist, that might be one of those moments that feel like the honesty is vulnerable.
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because we still live in a society that stigmatizes feeling bad.
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You do not have to suffer alone.
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And people who are a little bit older, a little bit wiser perhaps, have gone through it themselves, and you can reach out.
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Thank you, Jerry, for sharing that.
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And for me, that was one of the most foundational steps I took as well.
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And it really helped me to see my life in a completely different way and how I had built it to be so imbalanced, where when I started incorporating more balance into my life, specifically through techniques like you mentioned, such as mindfulness,
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how much that ability to do self reflection and introspection started to really get to the core of what was missing.
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And that was, I didn t really know myself to the point that I was intimate with myself, if that makes sense.
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Sure.
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Because if you grow up socialized to quote, not be vulnerable,
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then you are, in effect, distancing yourself from your own heart.
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And how can one come to know oneself if you don t even know your heart?
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I have a reputation, John.
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Wired Magazine did an article on me, and the headline was, This Man Makes Founders Cry.
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And the joke is that I make people cry because I ask them how they are.
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But I ask it like I really care.
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And what typically causes the tears to fall at that point is the realization that they have not been heard.
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And they may not even be able to answer the question, how am I themselves?
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Because they re so disconnected from themselves.
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Yeah, I just have to tell you, like for me, the pinnacle of everything I ever thought I aspired to be was CEO of a software company.
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And man, I finally got there after that CIO role, after like you, willing myself to go to continue going and go against what was truly what I should be doing.
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And I remember getting there and they say it s lonely on top, but more, God, I had no one to talk.
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You couldn t talk to the board members.
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Cause I was worried I d show weakness.
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You couldn t talk to your own employees.
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You re worried you re going to show weakness, right?
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Yeah.
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My ex-wife at the time wanted nothing to do with any of it and couldn t relate.
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So I had no one to talk to and I m just that emptiness.
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So one of the things that really helped me come out of this was learning how to self-love and show self-kindness.
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And I ve learned that we share this thread in our spiritual journeys, that we ve both been influenced by Buddhist teachings.
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You are a Buddhist.
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My sister is a Buddhist as well.
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I am not, but I have studied it pretty extensively.
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And in particularly, I m interested in your experiences with Sharon Salzberg, who is a renowned teacher on loving kindness.
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Can you share in any ways how her teachings have influenced your approach to leadership and personal growth?
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Well, sure, but I ll make a connection so that it becomes a little bit more clear.
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I have a fundamental belief.
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As a coach, I ve come to believe that better humans make better leaders.
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And so in order for us to really lead well, we have an obligation, if you will, to use the language from my first book, Reboot, to grow up.
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to fully actualize as an adult.
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And my relationship with Sharon, Sharon is my primary teacher, my relationship with Sharon has been the main means, that plus therapy, for me growing into the adult that I am now.
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And I ll tell you a funny little story about that.
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One night, maybe 10 years ago, I was in New York.
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And as I often do, I was going to have dinner with Sharon.
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And we were crossing the street headed to a restaurant.
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And we were just yakking.
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And I said, Sharon, we were just talking about things.
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She actually turned to me and she said, Jerry, you just seem really happy.
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And this was notable because it wasn t always the case, right?
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And I said to her, well, I should be, damn it.
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I ve been sitting on the meditation cushion for 16 years.
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What was the point of all that if I wasn t going to be happy, right?
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And that image of the two of us standing in a corner, laughing with love about the journey from
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Not really being comfortable with oneself to, as you put it, self-love.
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That was a really sweet moment that s stayed with me since then.
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And Sharon s been a big part of that.
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Sharon and the Dharma and learning to sit still, even when I didn t like what my mind was coming up with in those moments of sitting still.
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That is definitely one of the hardest parts is sitting in those thoughts.
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But what I ve come to realize is that those thoughts, just trying times eventually end and it s learning how to cultivate that path.
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That s one of the secrets to propelling yourself to the next chapter in your life I have found.
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Yeah.
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I had a therapist for many years, Dr. Sayers, and whenever I would come in to a session and complain about my life, she d say, this too shall pass.
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But equally, whenever I came in sharing all this wonderful news about my life, she d say, this too shall pass.
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Just a nice gentle reminder that it s all impermanent.
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Gary, I m going to take this now to discuss your brand new book, Reunion Leadership and the Longing to Belong, which comes out this week that this episode is coming out.
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And I wanted to do that introduction we did, which was one of the more profound introductions I ve done on this podcast, because your book for the listeners who are out there is a very profound book.
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And I wanted to lead into it in the right way.
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So I m going to start it off this way.
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In Reunion, you advocate for a really radical shift in how we define successful leadership, moving beyond the narrow focus that I m so accustomed to of shareholder value and financial metrics.
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You suggest that embracing a broader consciousness of leadership responsibility will challenge
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entrenched ideas of success, which have been tied to, let s face it, output and ROI.
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Could you elaborate on how redefining success to prioritize inclusivity will transform leadership paradigms?
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Implicit in your question and your observation is the answer to your own question.
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You re right.
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Every definition of success that we carry, both successful leadership, but even success as actualized adult, carries with it, in a sense, a material output structure.
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It s like we re all playing the game of life.
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Do you remember the game of life?
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where you re going to end either going to millionaire acres or the other place.
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I don t even remember the other place.
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And everybody s trying to end up at millionaire acres.
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What I m proposing is that we alter the function or expand the purpose of leadership beyond just the container of those financial outputs.
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to be inclusive of the content, in the end, that I think matters most of all.
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And the content that matters most of all, I think, is the fact that human beings are hurting.
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I think that there are two great threats to the species right now.
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There s the threat of climate change, and there s the threat of us killing each other.
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There s the threat implicit in our tearing each other apart.
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And I think that there is an opportunity for those of us who hold power by dint of our being either our bodies or by our being in organizations and having leadership positions.
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there is an opportunity for us to look at the world and say, I don t want babies to be killed anymore.
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Because you know what, John?
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Babies are being killed.
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I mean, I know it s dramatic language, but that s actually what s happening.
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Gun violence is the number one cause of death for children under the age of 17.
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How are we doing?
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And what are we so afraid of?
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What are we doing?
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We ve got a war here.
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We ve got a war there.
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We ve got people protesting against a beer company using a transgender woman as a spokesperson.
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Come on.
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Why does this matter?
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What are we so afraid of?
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Can t I look across the aisle and see the human being?
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People are in pain.
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I would agree that they re in pain.
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And I think a couple of the things you mentioned are part of it.
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I also think that this idea of being lonely and people being or feeling that they re helpless to what s going around them are also part of this overall, I don t know what you call, cosmic thing that s going on right now.
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But when I was reading your book, it in some ways reminded me, and I m not sure if you ve read it, but my friend Seth Godin put out a book, The Song of Significance.
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My friend Seth, I ve had many conversations with Seth, and when we were both talking about each other s books, because he read mine and gave me an endorsement, he said, yeah, we wrote the same book or similar books.
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That s right.
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Yeah.
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So they had a lot in common, but one thing his really didn t go into, and it s a topic that isn t widely talked about, and that is othering.
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Can you discuss what othering is and what are the true costs of something you describe as systemic othering that s not only in society, but it s also in the organizations that so many people work in?
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Yeah, so let s give credit where credit is due.
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I believe the man who coined the term othering is Professor John A. Powell at the University of California, Berkeley, who is one of the co-founders of the, I believe it s the Institute for Othering and Belonging.
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And so one way to think about this is that those are the two opposing forces, okay?
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And so one way to understand othering is as an encompassing view, where we define someone who is not like us, however that is, as the other.
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So if you re in Myanmar, in a Buddhist country, it might be the Rohingya.
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Or if you re in China, it might be the Uyghurs.
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Or if you were in Japan before World War II, it might have been Koreans.
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Or if you were in the United States during World War II, it might have been Japanese.
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It s this constant belief that those people out there, they are the problem and they are different.
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and therefore they re scary or less than and worthy, if you will, of dehumanization, stripping away the humanity of a child, calling them savages, calling them brutes, calling them name the words.
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And so what I argue, and this can show up as anti-Black racism, it can show up as anti-immigration feelings,
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It can show up as anti-Semitism.
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It can show up as Islamophobia.
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It can show up again and again and again and again.
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Anything that is outside of what is perceived to be the norm, the dominant narrative.
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And the reality is most of us live outside, right?
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And we can be complicit in the maintenance
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of this tribalism, we can be complicit in seeing someone else, as my friend Valerie Kaur would describe it, seeing them as a stranger.
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Because in her religion, one of the highest expressions of her religion, Sikhism, is to see no stranger.
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Nobody is stranger.
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is family.
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And you re right.
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We see this all over.
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And I think that there s a very profound through line when a nightclub in Colorado Springs can be shut up because the folks having a good time at the nightclub love differently than the way I love.
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When a mother, a 69-year-old mother of nine shopkeeper, waving a pride flag, hanging a pride flag outside of her shop, gets shot and killed because she won t take the pride flag down, what are we doing?
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You can disagree without it becoming conflict and violence.
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So Jerry, I want to bring this in a different way so that people can understand it.
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So I remember, and for the audience, if they ve heard me tell this story before, I apologize, but I m going to bring it up again.
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I remember I was in my early thirties.
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I had just gotten this job at Lowe s.
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I was the youngest vice president in the whole company.
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And I get saddled with this organization that my second day in the job, the head of HR pulls me into her office and says,
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Out of 360,000 employees, your group has the lowest employee engagement scores in the entire company.
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And so I started to do what anyone would do.
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I started to ask all my customers and peers, what s going on with this group?
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And
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The terms that they were using were some of the things that you were explaining.
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They were talking to them almost like they were a different organization from Lowe s, like they were the others.
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And granted, a lot of these people were in call centers or they were in the operations watch center, and maybe they didn t have the same degrees as everyone else had, maybe not the same social economic conditions that everyone else had.
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But what I really
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found amazing is when I started to just put myself in their shoes and I immersed myself into going in at two o clock in the morning so I could sit with that team that was at work or going into the data center or doing whatever I needed to do.
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I found that the reason that they weren t performing is because they felt like they had been belittled and they didn t feel like anything that they were doing was mattering to the company and they didn t feel like they belonged.
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And as soon as I started to put in some of the structure that made them feel like they were worthy, it was like a light bulb went off and automatically their performance started skyrocketing.
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So I bring this story up because I was hoping you could explore more this concept of belonging in the workplace and why you believe mattering is so important to effective leadership.
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So I m going to do that annoying author thing where I m going to read to you just a little bit from my book, just a tiny bit.
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And this is a really powerful quote that helped me understand what we re really talking about.
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And this is from the theologian Frederick Buechner.
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And he said, there lies the longing to know and be known by another fully and humanly.
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And that beneath that, there lies a longing closer to the heart of the matter still, which is the longing to be at long last where you fully belong.
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John, in your story, what I hear is not just the fact that folks felt like they did not matter,
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And what I hear is that their longing to belong, which lies as close to the heart as you can get, that s what didn t matter.
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And what you did by sitting shoulder to shoulder with them was you said, your story, your experience matters.
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And I see it.
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And I care.
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We started off by talking about vulnerability.
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We started off, and I shifted it into talking about honesty.
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And the thing that I imagine you did, even though you ve told this story before, but I m imagining more to the story, I sit there and I imagine you at two o clock in the morning sitting next to somebody and maybe sharing a sandwich and maybe telling a joke about the world at large or telling a story about your family or listening to their stories.
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Because what you did was an act of human connection and the consequence
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was that their longing to belong was answered.
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And if I can jump in, Jerry, I think another important element of this was I wanted to instill in them the fact that I believed in them.
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So one of the things I tried to share with them is that it s impossible for me to be here at two o clock in the morning every day, just like it would be
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for the general who runs special operations command to be in a country 2,000 miles away as a mission is going on.
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And so you need to have this eyes on but hands off relationship where once you give people the marching directions of what you re trying to create,
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I think it s so important to also give them the ability to do it in a way that is unique to their inherent talents, but not feeling like you re micromanaging what they re doing.
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Because what I found is maybe it wasn t the way I would have done it, but oftentimes it had better results than the way I would have approached it because they were closer to the problem, if that makes sense.
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Let me ask you something.
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You said you were in your 30s when you did this?
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I was.
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Where did you learn that getting closer to them is what needed to happen?
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And why was that important to you?
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Jerry, a little bit about my background as I went to the Naval Academy.
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But even before that, I was one of those people who just was a hard worker since I can remember and wanted leadership responsibility.
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So as soon as I could, I think I was 14 years old.
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I might have been even younger and maneuvered my way to get a job at giant supermarkets.
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Before I knew it at 15, I was in charge of the produce department.
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And before I turned 16, they gave me at the time, one of the most difficult jobs in the whole store, which was to run this truck crew.
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And so this truck crew here, I am like barely 16 years old.
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And every single person who was on the truck crew was over 18.
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Most of them were in their twenties and they were all ex-convicts.
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And what I learned from this, and they did not make it easy, even though I was coming in there to be the leader of it, I had to start from ground zero.
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Here I was a scrawny kid having to go in the truck and unload every single box at first.
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That s how you got indoctrinated.
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But what I learned was I didn t treat them as ex-convicts.
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I learned that if I was going to be accepted, I had to treat them as human beings.
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and look beyond that because they, most of them would come up to me and say they had made mistakes and they re trying to rebuild their lives.
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And I think that was a critical component of it.
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But I think another critical aspect was when I went in the military, I learned very quickly that it was the senior NCOs, senior enlisted who made or break your careers.
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And so I really leaned in on them to show me their hopes.
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And in so doing so, one of the things that they taught me was that if you are going to lead whatever it is, you better understand the people who work for you.
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And the only way you can do that is to show it through your actions and by being present in how you re leading.
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And so I guess it was a combination of those things that has just stuck through me, stuck with me throughout my career.
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Let me ask a related two-part question.
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You re 14 and you got that job, 14, 15 years old.
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Was it really important that you had that job?
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I grew up in a family where we were given the necessities and anything beyond that we had to fend for ourselves.
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So if I wanted to have any extra money or anything else, I needed for that.
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But more importantly, it brought me meaning at a young age into my own life.
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So yeah, it was an important aspect.
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And why was it important for you to go to the Navy?
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I guess my grandfather and my father served before me, but more important than that, I turned down going to some Ivy League schools and the University of Michigan and others because at the heart of it, I wanted to be a leader and I thought there s no better place I could go than a service academy to learn leadership acumen.
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Well, let s acknowledge your grandfather and your father for their service.
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and notice what s happening inside of you right now.
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It may feel a little vulnerable, but you re being honest and you re making connections because I m invoking your ancestors and I m invoking the parts of you that were really important.
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You needed to find your own way.
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It wasn t just about having an extra few dollars to go to the movies with your friends.
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It was about your own internal reliability, your own internal independence.
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And it s in that zone that you made connections with people.
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That s where you learned that it mattered to matter.
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And I would bring you all the way back through your career, through your experience to where you are today.
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Now I know why you do this podcast.
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You re still connected to those guys on the truck crew.
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God bless you for remembering them.
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This is where I wanted to go next, Jerry, and thank you for opening that up.
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I think we think of our family histories and we oftentimes don t spend a lot of time diving into them.
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I remember my paternal grandmother lived to be 101.
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God bless her.
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The entire time up until she was about 96, we all thought we were Polish.
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And when her sister died, we found their birth certificates at my Aunt Helen s house, and it showed that they were from Germany.
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And so maybe it was my dad or one of us asked my grandmother, why have you been telling us that we ve been Polish for all these years?
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And she said, it was because if I would have told people at that time, I was German, I would have been an outcast.
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And so we crafted this story that we were Polish to hide that history, given what was going on and how people were treating former Germans.
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And I bring this up because your book touches on the theme that our self-perceptions, as well as the narratives we ve been told about our family histories, can obscure the truth of our identities and those of our ancestors.
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In my case, growing up, feeling that we ve been Polish this whole time, German is just a simple explanation of this.
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But how do you propose that we navigate these personal and ancestral mythologies to arrive at a clearer understanding of ourselves and where we come from?
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Well, first of all, before I answer that, I just want to acknowledge how painful it must have been for your grandmother to deny the reality of her own experience because of the suffering, because of the anger, because of the othering that she would have experienced.
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If we go back to the point of reunion,
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which is that those of us who have power have this responsibility to create the sense of systemic belonging.
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I would argue that you cannot do that.
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You cannot do that without knowing your own story.
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It s like building a house on a weak foundation.
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And so you coming into
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A relationship with the reality of your ancestors  experience is an essential component.
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of you taking this naturally occurring empathy that is there in you and building upon that so that no one else, not in your orbit, has to deny anything about who they are, whether it s because of their gender identity, or because of how and who they choose to love, or the experience of their ancestors.
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Remember when we were talking about
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the vulnerability is a weakness and I m going to hide that so that I can fit in.
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Well, think about what your grandmother did.
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She hid a part of who she was so that she could fit in and feel that she belonged.
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It s heartbreaking.
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And I just think of how many tens of thousands of people were in the same situation as her.
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And my fiance now is Jewish.
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And I see the othering that happens to her in that community more clearly now than I ever did before, because I m so close to it now.
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And it is especially in these times right now that we find ourselves in.
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Yeah, someone asked me last night, I was on a live event, and someone asked me, how did writing Reunion change me?
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And as you know, from reading the book, I go into my own exploration of the stories my ancestors told versus the reality of what my ancestors experience was like.
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And one of the ways that I ve been changed
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is that not only can I not unsee what happened, but that I can no longer unsee what is happening around me.
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Whether it s anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, or anti-immigration feelings, I see it all.
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I see it, and more importantly, I feel it.
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And let me tell you, it hurts.
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But that s the pain of people suffering.
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And I don t want to live in a world where I don t feel that pain.
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Because numbing myself to that pain means I can skate by and do nothing about it.
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And that s not acceptable to me anymore, not for me at least.
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I think so many of us don t realize the matrix that we ve been living in.
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And once you re able to pull yourself out of it, it s not something I talk about a lot on the podcast, but once you really come home to yourself, it is so powerful.
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And I m glad you just explained that because through your words, you showed how that hour evokes so much emotion in you and has allowed you to see things through, let s face it, alien eyes.
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That s right.
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Can you describe someone who s listening to this?
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They re taking this in and maybe they don t really believe what you and I are talking about.
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They re a leader.
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Maybe they re even the CEO of a company.
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What does coming home look like if you are that leader and how it affects the approach that they take in creating a sense of belonging for everyone who s under their guidance?
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I ll try to explain it by referencing something that happened to me after my first book came out.
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And I wrote about this in Reunion.
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And that is, I wrote Reboot with its core belief, its core premise that better humans make better leaders and that we can use the leadership journey to complete the process of becoming an adult.
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I wrote that book, and I shared a lot of the stories of my life as an example.
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And an odd thing happened after the book came out.
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Not only were people praising the book, but they were using a very similar phrase time and time again.
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And that is that your story is my story.
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I remember one day in particular, I got two messages.
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One, a LinkedIn message from the CEO of a Fortune 100 company.
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and the other, not through LinkedIn, but through an email chain through a friend, from a man on death row.
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And both men said to me, in some form or another, your story is my story.
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Now, I use those two men as an example of something really unexplored, which is that both felt that way about me, then their stories were each other s stories, despite how they ended up.
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OK.
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So back to your prototypical listener who might be a CEO trying to sort this through.
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The truth is, that whole experience of people seeing their story in my story, that came about because I had the bravery to drop the mask and go first.
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See, when you are given the privilege of writing a book, it s not unlike being given the privilege of leading.
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You have a platform.
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People will listen to you.
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They may not like what you have to say, but they ll listen.
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And I would argue that with the privilege, with that great responsibility, with that great power,
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comes, like Spider-Man s uncle said, great responsibility.
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And the responsibility is to go first, is to drop that mask, is to stand and come home to yourself so that you can make it safe for the people around you to come home to themselves.
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That s the connecting point.
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Jerry, I had a follow-on question to that.
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You and I both know that
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In any organization that you re in, there are cultural norms that exist and beliefs or values that contribute to the feelings of isolation or othering that occur.
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How do you propose leaders can reconcile this tension between fostering community and making people feel that they belong and this competitive drive that is so prevalent in corporate culture?
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Well, here again, I think you re setting, in the question, John, I think you re setting up a false dichotomy.
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It goes like this.
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You want me to make everybody feel like they belong?
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We have competitors we have to beat, as if the two things are in opposition.
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Extend it.
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You want me to make everybody feel like they belong?
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We have shareholders that we have to report to.
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Well, as we used to say in Brooklyn, I believe you can walk and chew gum at the same time.
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You can actually be
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extremely competitive, extremely successful, and create return on investment and treat people well.
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They are not in opposition.
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You just have to set the intention and the priority.
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Look, the history of business is filled with companies that are so well run,
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that people don t want to leave, that they do extraordinarily magical things.
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And more often than not, they re led by leaders whose egos are held in check, who see themselves as a servant, who understand that we re better together.
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They don t grab the headlines, those leaders.
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But leaders who have to be out in front, narcissistically asserting themselves, those are the ones who grab headlines.
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But I d rather have good return on investment than headlines.
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In my upcoming book, I have a chapter that I call The Gardner Leader.
5
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And in it, I profile General Stan McChrystal and Keith Krotch, former Assistant Secretary of State.
5
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And I go through the different things that make up a Gardner leader, but one
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that they both said was the most foundational for the future of leadership is the notion of being ambitious, which is really being that servant leader.
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And when you have people of that caliber who are talking about the need to lead without ego, it is so powerful.
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Jerry, if you could distill one message from your book for the audience, particularly for those who are in positions of power, what would that key takeaway be?
5
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that, first of all, take the time to connect with your own sense of belonging, with your own story of that.
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Where did your people come from?
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What did they experience?
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And from that, try to foster a sense of empathy so that you can see your colleagues, your peers, your friends, your stakeholders as wanting the exact same things, love, safety, and belonging.
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That s what we do.
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That s what we want.
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And from that place, derive the policies and procedures that define your organizational culture.
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That way, the work that you do is not performative, but transformative.
5
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And I m going to end our discussion on that point.
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Jerry, if a listener wants to learn more about you, obviously I ll have the book links and stuff like that in the show notes.
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What is the best place for them to do this if they re in the car or someplace and they want to Google this really quick?
5
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Well, the website for the company is reboot.io.
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And I m on all social media platforms and that sort of thing.
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But reunion.reboot.io is the site for all things related to the book.
5
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And one of the things I m really proud of is that we created a limited edition three episode podcast
5
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called Reunion Stories of Belonging, from various people talking about their experience of belonging and othering.
5
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And I m really proud of it.
5
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It s really wonderful work.
5
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And I speak the least of all the people on that show.
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And that makes me happy.
5
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Well, Jerry, I applaud you for trying to bring this very fundamental topic to the masses and doing it in the way that you did with so many clear examples from your own life and others that you highlight throughout the book.
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So it was truly an honor to have you on and thank you so much for being here.
5
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Oh, thanks for having me, John.
5
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And shout out to our mutual friends, Seth and Jeff.
5
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What an incredible interview that was with Jerry Kelowna.
5
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And I wanted to thank Jerry Harper business and Helena Jacobson for the honor and privilege of having him appear on today s show.
5
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Links to all things Jerry will be in the show notes at passionstart.com.
5
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Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
5
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Videos are on YouTube at both Passionstruck Clips and John R. Miles.
5
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I have some exciting news that my brand new book, Passionstruck, is now available for pre-order and you can purchase it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you purchase your books.
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Links will also be in the show notes.
5
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You can go to LinkedIn and sign up for my newsletter, Work Intentionally.
5
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You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles.
5
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You can also sign up for my personal development newsletter, Live Intentionally at passionstruck.com.
5
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And I forgot to mention for my book, if you sign up now, I have five incredible giveaways worth over $300 in value that you will get as a free gift for pre-ordering.
5
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
5
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck Podcast interview I did with Amy Morin, who s a psychotherapist and international bestselling author of five books on mental strength.
5
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And Amy also gave one of the most popular TED Talks of all time with over 22 million views on the secret to becoming mentally strong.
5
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And in our interview, we go through all that.
5
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And we also discuss mental strength exercises and talk about how to avoid the unhealthy habits continue to hold us all back.
5
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One of the things when it comes to grit, I think it s so important to have grit and to keep working hard.
5
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But when it comes to mental strength, I think one of the key differences is recognizing that it s okay to give up sometimes.
5
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Sometimes people who are too gritty tend to keep going long after they should quit.
5
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So for example, if I start a new business tomorrow and my business isn t doing well,
5
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and I m suffering because of it.
5
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It s okay to have the mental strength to say, you know what, this was not a good idea.
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I don t need to have the grittiness to keep going long after I should have given up.
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I see people who get stuck in that pattern where they ll say, I already announced I was going to run a marathon and now I ve torn this muscle in
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my leg, but I m going to hobble along anyway because I have grit.
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and I want them to know it s okay.
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Sometimes it takes a lot of courage to give up, to abandon your goals, to say that didn t work right now, I m gonna focus on something else.
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The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting.
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If you know someone who could use the words that Jerry gave today in this episode, then definitely share this episode with your friends and families.
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It means so much to us when you do that.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Until next time, go out there and become Passion Strong.