Michael Koehler: Welcome to On the Balcony. I'm Michael Kohler. I'm a leadership coach and a facilitator, and I'm your host. In our kickoff season, we will examine Ron Heifetz’s landmark book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. We'll also explore applying some of his concepts in our own practice.
Leadership Without Easy Answers is the book behind the most provocative class at Harvard University. It has impacted generations, change agents, executives, and people who care about developing others.
Here's why: The study of leadership is a really young, and some might say an amateur field. Historically, leadership studies were often no more than great man theory, looking at presidents and CEOs in very simplistic and limiting ways.
Then people describe the difference between transactional and transformative leadership and writing about the difference between management and leadership. And that's been helpful, but definitions of what leadership is actually remain abstract and not really aligned. The old joke goes, ‘Two leadership professors will rather share the same toothbrush than the same definition of leadership.'
So, then in the early 1990s, in a time of hope, after the Berlin Wall fell, the world was opening up. Mandela becomes president and the IRA puts down weapons in Northern Ireland. At a time of despair, where we also see Serbia, attacks in Sarajevo, the Rwandan genocide, and the Los Angeles race riots, Ron Heifetz writes a book about leadership that breaks away from what has been done before.
And that really helps us to understand why some things are going well and other things are going really poorly in the world. And here we are today, 30 years later, and Heifetz's concepts remain relevant to our current hopes, and despair, around big challenges of the world. And these concepts are still pioneering.
Here are three of the biggest of his ideas. One, leadership is a practice, it's a verb. It can be exercised from wherever you sit on the organizational chart, or in your community whether you have a lot of authority or little. Leadership is a choice you can exercise at any moment or not. There is no such thing as a great leader. There are only moments of great leadership, and it often comes from many places and many people.
A second big idea is leadership mobilizes people to do difficult work. That is where the distinction between adaptive and technical challenges comes in. Different people have different terms, complex, complicated, routine, and wicked. The technical and adaptive gives us a greater sense of what is required of people.
Technical problems are routine problems, where the problem is clear and the solution is clear, and all we need is expertise. Adaptive problems need new capacities, new learning, and unlearning. And the work of leadership is managing that process.
The third big idea is that in order to understand how to mobilize people, you need to understand the ecosystem and the different perspectives of the various stakeholders, including the ones that are resistant. Unlike what you may have heard before, it is not that people are resisting change.
People love change if it's in their favor. Nobody gives back the winning lottery ticket or the room upgrade. What people resist is loss, real loss, or perceived loss. And in order to understand where people are not making progress, despite better knowledge, you need to understand their losses, material losses, loss of competence, identity, relationships, or loss of deeply held beliefs and ways of being. Managing loss is a core task in the practice of leadership.
As a German studying Heifetz and these three big ideas really, really helped me understand the rise of Nazi Germany and our efforts in dealing with our difficult past in a very different light. But let me pause here. This is as much lecture as you'll ever get on the show. I'll stop talking about the framework right now, and instead, share with you how we will engage with the material on the show, which may be slightly different than what you expect. It will not be academic. It won't review or critique the whole content of the book, or the adaptive leadership framework.
Instead, we'll look at the book and its impact more deeply with love and rigor, and ask, ‘How does it speak to us in our own practice of leadership?’ Each episode will do two things. In the first part, I’m visited by a guest, this week is going to be Rosi Greenberg. I'll introduce her a little bit more in a moment.
Rosi and every guest moving forward will bring a sliver of the text, and together we’ll chew on it deeply for more insights and application. For those of you who are avid readers, I invite you to read along. Each episode will cover a chapter of the book going in order from beginning to end.
In the second half of the show, you can join me on my own developmental journey. I will go out to my colleagues and ask for some coaching around the question, “Where can I, Michael, practice more leadership?
In today's episode, I'll be joined by my colleague, Andy Cahill. That's a little later. Let's begin.
I would like to introduce you to my wonderful colleague and friend, Rosi Greenberg, to discuss the introduction and chapter one with the title 'Values and Leadership'.
We'll explore these chapters for the theme of silence. What does it mean to be in silence and to interpret silence? We'll talk about the intersection of silence and identity. And also explore how silence can be a leadership intervention.
Rosi is a leadership coach, an artist, and most of the time, she combines these two practices in one as she did when she co-created the cover of our podcast. On her website, she writes she spent 34 years trying to be less messy but realizes it's actually way more fun to just embrace it - all the mess.
I figured as I embark on this new creative project, or podcast, something that can be also filled with mess, it felt only fitting to invite Rosi as my first guest.
Quick heads up. This episode includes language around the challenges of racism and the Holocaust. Let's dive right in.
Rosi Greenberg: Hi, Michael!
Michael Koehler: Hey, Rosi! Welcome! It’s so good to see you.
Rosi Greenberg: You too. Thank you. It's good to be here.
Michael Koehler: So, we'll get started today, as we'll always get started with a brief summary of the chapter, and today we're going to look at the introduction and chapter one of Leadership Without Easy Answers. I'm curious to hear what one or two ideas stood out, or three, stood out for you, Rosi?
Rosi Greenberg: Yes, it sounds in the introduction, he's really grounding us in who he is, and kind of where he's coming from, and all of this and where the theory comes from. I was really struck by these three pieces that he brings around looking at symptoms, and finding the underlying causes within a whole system that he said comes from the medical field, and then the adaptation, and what it means to adapt coming from biology. And then the sense of authority relationships coming from being a doctor, and then holding tension that comes from music and that those really ground the whole theory itself.
Michael Koehler: Yeah. Wow! That's so interesting. It's almost like he's laying out the theory in a condensed version, in that introduction and chapter one. You know it's coming, the deep dive, but it's all already in there.
Rosi Greenberg: Exactly. And I love how he does it, so rooted in who he is and what he brings to it, and the positionality that he comes from.
Michael Koehler: Yeah. I'll throw in two additional pieces that kind of complement really, with what you say, which I think really relate to his core contributions in this field, which is really clarifying some distinctions in the field of leadership, and kind of busting some of the myths around leadership.
The first one is, leadership is not personality. Leadership is not a set of tools. Leadership is not a role. You're not a leader, right? It's practice. It's an activity. It's a verb. It's not even influencing. It is mobilizing people to tackle tough problems. You measure leadership by its impact.
Do people make progress? That is the kind of groundbreaking idea that makes this book very different from many, many other leadership theories. And then related to that, I feel like this whole question around values, this whole idea that leadership is not value-free, and just because you're following someone doesn't mean they're leading, doesn't mean that this is going to have a good outcome. It’s really distinguishing this theory or this framework from others in the field.
Rosi Greenberg: Yeah, for sure. He starts teeing up adaptive challenges from technical problems. He starts teeing up leadership from authority and the distinction there, and that those are going to come. But I think a really important piece of the adaptive work is he's saying that adaptive work is helping people face their tough realities and helping change behaviors and values and helping people cope with losses in a really interesting way that differentiates him as you're saying, from lots of other leadership books and texts that are out there.
Michael Koehler: So, I want to circle back to what you just said about how he ties this to his own identities, like his identity as a musician, his identity as a doctor, as a psychiatrist. In his later books, he'll also pull in his other family identities, father, son, husband, and I'm curious, as you're joining me here today as the guest, what identities are you bringing to us as we examine this book?
I'll share some of mine as well because that may hint us also to some of the biases we are bringing as we're examining this chapter. So, what's coming up for you, Rosi? Who are you?
Rosi Greenberg: Yeah, I noticed that he was using the word bias. And while I love that, it's also wisdom, it's the biases of what lenses that we're using that both cloud our ability to see clearly, but that also create our ability to see what we do see.
And so, I think it’s great that all of the wisdom in the framework is kind of coming from the ways that he sees. So, my wisdom and my biases both come from being an artist. That's a really big one around the sense of creation and creating as an act being one of the most important things for me, and the most important thing in interactions with people is wanting to feel this kind of generative creativity, and this sense that we can create the world that we want to see.
So, there's kind of a sense of possibility and of drawing outside the lines that come from being an artist. I think being the oldest daughter of a single mom who chose to be a single mom, who was a rabbi. And from this, we call it an intimacy constellation, but an alternative queer family has really shaped the way that I see the world and the way that I see what belonging means and inside-outside, insider ship, and outsider ship maybe, and knowing that I felt deep belonging inside my family and had moments of belonging outside and also moments of not belonging inside and outside in the sense of connection as a really important valence for me in a way of seeing the world and value that I hold.
I'm giving myself three. My third would be as an educator, a teacher, and someone who really enables basis of discovery. And I won’t say learning because learning has so much connotation in our lives. It’s a kind of banking learning but real discovery for people to explore new truths about themselves. I guess, throughout my career in education, that discovery, but also being a teacher of math in inner-city Baltimore, and of Arabic over the summers and now teaching adult education leadership development, that's really important to me.
Michael Koehler: Yeah, well, what beautiful lenses to bring to this and I relate to some of them. I resonate with some of them even though in different ways. The educator is present here. I'm an educator too and still identify as a leadership educator.
The tension around belonging and not belonging as they're a little bit different identity paths, but gay kid growing up in a pretty heteronormative religious environment and root seriously not belonging there and breaking out.
And then the artist and like the artist in me has a different expression. I used to be a dancer and used to be a choreographer. So, I'm really connecting to that piece as well in the sense of I think that what draws me to your work Rosi and I think is what I find so inspiring, I think you have such a wonderful way of bringing the wisdom, to use your word, the wisdom of art to leadership and leadership development.
I'm curious, I'd love to uncover some of these threads here. I'll just name an obvious one because people listening to us can't hear it. We're both two White people in this conversation, and so is Heifetz. And so, just naming the biases we are bringing, we may be bringing from that stance.
One important lens that I think is interesting for us as we explore the books throughout the season is what is coming up from different vantage points of identity, vis-a-vis this framework, how does it resonate from different identities? And also, what are some edges, some frontiers we're encountering?
So, I'll encourage my guests, I'll encourage you, Rosi, today as well, with the identities you're bringing to share with us: What's resonant, but also at what stage are you experiencing edges?
Rosi Greenberg: I really, really appreciate that. I'm grateful for you naming race in a White supremacist society. Also, I want to name that we are all assuming fairly middle-class, cis-gendered folks who have all been to and worked at Harvard, which puts us in a very particular location.
Michael Koehler: Yeah, reading a book that was written in Harvard. And probably many more, though we know we haven't even named yet.
Rosi Greenberg: So many. Those are the salient ones at this moment that stand out to me, but I'm sure there are…
Michael Koehler: Yeah, somebody's listening to these 30 years from now, who knows?
Rosi Greenberg: Exactly. But I think that a really important piece of Heifetz's work, too, is that he wrote this 30 years ago. So, I think that's a really important piece to just name and notice that he was located in that moment and we're located in this moment, and so whoever is located in whatever moments, they're in listening to this, there's such an interesting interaction there that sometimes it gets to be really blame oriented, like, ‘You should have known.’ But I also think that there's just something really beautiful talking across those time spans and learning from all of them.
Michael Koehler: Yeah, and then as we'll explore, some of these problems are pretty timeless and pretty timely. So, let's dive into that. One of the pieces that I ask my guests every time is to bring a piece of text with them. And the briefing here really is, it's a short one, it's a sentence, it's a little quote, but something that really kind of moved you.
And that can be like all kinds of emotions, that can be on the pleasant positive spectrum of like, ‘I'm deeply moved by this.’ But it can also be like, ‘Wow, this is causing some friction. This is causing some conflict in me.’
So, I don't know what you brought Rosi, but I'm curious to hear what it is. So, what's your piece of text? And would you read it to us?
Rosi Greenberg: Yeah, there's this moment. So, Heifetz is framing up, where he's coming from and all of this, and he's talking about being a musician. This line just really struck me, he says, ‘Music also teaches to distinguish the varieties of silence, restless, energized, bored, tranquil, and sublime. With silence, one creates moments so that something new can be heard.’
I just love that.
Michael Koehler: Would you read it again, for us?
Rosi Greenberg: ‘Music also teaches to distinguish the varieties of silence, restless, energized, bored, tranquil, and sublime. With silence, one creates moments so that something new can be heard.’
Michael Koehler: Thank you! What about this passage moves you?
Rosi Greenberg: I think silence is a really important form of
communication. And so often, I think, in the general, in so many of the academic spaces that I've been in, let's say, speech, and text is the valued form of communication, and the pregnant silences are missed, whether that's silence because someone's unhappy. because there's something that can't be said in the space. because someone's not in the space.
I think we misunderstand silence. I think this is just a tiny part of what he's saying, but I think in the framework as a whole, it invites us to listen to silence and to what's not being said just as much as we listen to what is being said.
Michael Koehler: You're an artist, Rosi. I'm curious what images come up for you when you think about silence?
Rosi Greenberg: The blank page, breaths come up and depression, like a moment of real destruction and depression that I went through in my own life comes up as, like a real space where there was no speech, there were no words for me, but out of that space came so much creation. There's this cycle of creation and destruction, that I think silence plays a really important role.
Michael Koehler: As I'm imagining those three images, blank page, and depression, I can also be in touch with the time dimension of silence, the short silences, but also like the long silences, not just the hours of the blank page, but maybe the months, or the years of depression.
Rosi Greenberg: Yeah. You saying that makes me think of just the length of the universe, really. I mean, we can go really big here but the silence that existed well before us, and it will exist well after us and kind of puts us in our place with how much speech and how important we think every act of speech is, given how much silence there was out in the galaxy before us.
Michael Koehler: Yeah. And probably will be after us.
Rosi Greenberg: And I think there's something beautiful about the ability to read those silences. Like he's differentiating restless from energized, from bored, from tranquility, from sublime. And there's something about the quality of when we're exercising leadership, understanding those nuances and differences in the people that we're speaking to or not speaking to, and this deeply human listening that happens in order to create something new.
Michael Koehler: What experiences have you had in your own life in that realm? I'm sure you had many blank pages as an artist, but let's maybe think a little bit in the realm of leadership as it addresses tough social challenges, and maybe there's a connection between artistry and leadership here. What experience comes up for you as you think about those different versions of silence and mobilizing people to make progress?
Rosi Greenberg: I taught a workshop last summer with some folks in Alaska. There were native folks in the room. The Native community, that particular community had a wait time before anybody would speak, it was respectful to offer 30 seconds of silence from which could emerge the true thing that you wanted to share.
And there were a lot of White folks in this workshop as well, whose wait time ranged from anything from like 0.02 seconds. Raising my own hand here. Being Jewish, we say sometimes we do a form of speaking called high-intensity collaborative overlap, where we just jump in on each other and there's negative wait time. We put it as a norm that we're gonna have 30 seconds of wait time. Now normally on a zoom call 30 seconds of silence feels scary as a facilitator, right? You're like, ‘Oh, they didn't understand the question. Something's wrong.’
We put that as a norm and it was just as deeply respectful as just waiting and seeing what emerges. And at the 32nd mark, a Native woman and a White woman were both about to speak, and we could hear the native voice and we wouldn't have heard it if we hadn't committed to that 30 second.
Michael Koehler: Will you read the adjectives again? The different qualities of silence?
Rosi Greenberg: Yeah. We have; restless, energized, bored, tranquil, sublime.
Michael Koehler: Yeah. I forgot to share one of my biases here. I'm also German and I have never used the word ‘sublime’ and I'm not really sure what it means. What does sublime mean to you?
Rosi Greenberg: In terms of silence, I don't even know exactly how to describe it. It's the moment after the orchestra finishes playing, and you're just sitting there in that warmth and energy, and it's silent. But it's like, something just happened and you're just witnessing it together. That's the best definition I could give.
Michael Koehler: Yeah, I definitely have experienced that feeling.
Rosi Greenberg: I'm googling it now to check if I'm actually correct about that.
Michael Koehler: I was struck by one piece, Rosi, that I saw in your bio, which is that beautiful line that you've spent many years in your life trying to be less messy. And recently realizing like, it's actually way funnier, but maybe also more impactful to lean into the mess and use it as a resource.
So, I'm curious, what wisdom comes from your own experience with a mess that we can import to the space of this tough leadership work that addresses the tough problems out there?
Rosi Greenberg: I mean, this became clear to me last year, feeling really deeply depressed. And I've had depression in various stints throughout my life. Last year was particularly bad as I think a lot of people in this country were in a pretty dark place at some point during the COVID period.
But yeah, just feeling like, ‘Man, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know where I'm going.’ It felt like I had a million questions and no answers and no sense of self really. The experience of people loving me through it and then the ability to see that as a strength and see all those questions, not as weaknesses but the questions of like, ‘Gosh, what's the purpose? What do I care about? What do I want to do? How do I make an impact?’ Like, I have to solve these. But the questions themselves feel worthy to dig into and explore and create with. I used to think that holding all those pieces meant that they had to come together in a perfect way into a puzzle with one picture, but now it's more like the pieces are really fun. Let me just hold all these different pieces and assign more pieces and play with them.
So, it's been creating art out of that space, combined with a lot of other things that have brought me more out of that into where I am. But holding that still is very much a part of me and loving that as a part of me, rather than trying to get rid of it.
Michael Koehler: So, as I'm bringing that inner wisdom into the world, into the tough messy challenges here, I'm wondering, what puzzle piece are you holding? What are you bringing?
Rosi Greenberg: I think that kind of playfulness in the face of chaos. I think loving the messes is about not expecting everything to get to be right, but it's also about like, let's get our hands dirty, add some clay and let's finger paint, and let's scribble with crayons.
I now get the groups that I'm with, groups of adult CEOs and top leadership folks, to scribble before we start our workshops, and just make a mess or something. I mean, even as I say it, my shoulders relax, right?
There's something like we were told when we were four or five that we’ve got to stop making messes. And then here we are making messes everywhere, and having no idea what to do with the messes that we make, whether we spill something on a carpet or our whole organization is White, and we have a terrible problem with just reenacting White supremacy everywhere. It's like, those are messes. And so, we’ve got to just dive into them and figure them out rather than avoid them.
Michael Koehler: I have one more question, maybe one and a half more questions for you. I got a little bit of the sense when you were talking earlier about Heifetz that there may be something that you have an opinion about, something that you wrote or said or you want to clarify something? When we’re talking about that competition. I'm just curious, is there anything you want to say about this chapter that hasn't been said yet?
Rosi Greenberg: Yes. Oh my gosh! So, okay, he goes through the whole chapter talking about leadership is not value-neutral. He's talking all about how it's about context, and it's about skill. And it's also about the situation and kind of being with the moment. He's saying it's not value-free. He says it's about mobilizing people to do adaptive work. And that's confronting their biases, and changing, doing that real self-reflection, but he doesn't ever say, towards what ends, who needs to do the self-reflection and how do you define the community, except for in the very last paragraph, he says, ‘It's about what's consonant with the demands of a democratic society. In addition to reality testing, these include respecting conflict, negotiation, a diversity of views within a community, increasing community cohesion, developing norms of responsibility taking, learning and innovation, and keeping social distress within a bearable range.;
It's like all of a sudden, he declares all of these amazing values. Later, he says, justice, human welfare, and community liberty, equality, but he doesn't say what any of those mean. Like, what does justice actually mean? And so, he's saying it's not value-free. And then he gives these just kind of headline values that happened to be the values of our time, but without saying where they come from, who decides? How does the actual interaction of the book and who gets to make that call?
So, it felt like there was this really big question about, wait a minute, where does it come from and who says it, and that just happens to be the values that our democratic current society says it holds, but that was my big, like,’You don't get to do that!’
Michael Koehler: So, it’s kind of his attempt to say something a little more concrete that makes the world a better place, which is such a catchphrase, right? So, what does that mean? And then sort of, he names these headlines, but you say, like, actually give us a little bit more nuance around that, that would have been the hope?
Rosi Greenberg: A little more nuanced. It felt like he was pointing the finger at people who are saying it's value-neutral, but then he's offering these values that aren't neutral, but also not clarifying what they mean. And so, saying justice as a value, just kind of ends up that justice becomes a neutral value because we don't know what it means or who for.
So, I think he skirts some of the work. Perhaps he gives it back to us, but still. I would have liked to explicitness about that skirting and the invitation to, if the work is indeed being given back, to say, ‘Hey, y'all, what are the values by which you were defining your leadership?’ Because I think it's a really important question.
Michael Koehler: Yeah. Including and figuring out those values, those potentially competing values in communities, and he names that, right? It’s important leadership work like sort of finding the synthesis between, we've seen that in the pandemic like there's the value of like, we need to have functioning economies, but we also need a healthy people, we need to protect people from, not necessarily from catching COVID, but from dying from COVID and from getting really long-term negative effects from COVID. And how do we balance these two values with each other, right?
Rosi Greenberg: I think, with informal authority, especially, there's this question of, who is the us that you're bounding? And how big are you bounding it? Because if you're bounding it with your family, for example, or within one faction, the competing values, and the work is different, but that decision of how are you bounding? Am I bounding for all of the US or am I bounding for the Democratic Party? And where am I exercising my leadership really matters and is also not value-free?
But there's not even a mention as a kind of consideration. So, that was another piece of that, but all of that was coming from a sense of this academic competition thing where I need to find a hole in what he says so that I can be valid. I think that's a really interesting piece as well, leadership in a competitive society, too.
Michael Koehler: I love it and it's welcome. Rosi, I want to wrap up our session today by inviting you to read your quote, one last time. We'll let it land and then I'll ask you a final closing question about the quote,
Rosi Greenberg: “Music also teaches us to distinguish the varieties of silence, restless, energized, bored, tranquil. With silence, one creates moments so that something new can be heard.”
Michael Koehler: What is that new?
Rosi Greenberg: I think it's what's here, just what's present and what's already true.
Michael Koehler: What's here, what's present, what's already true, and what for a long time I haven't paid attention to. Thank you so much, Rosi, for being with us today.
Coming up: What happens if I change my lens from talking about leadership to actually practicing it? That creates some anxiety, so I'll get some help from a coach. That's after the break.
Welcome back to On the Balcony. In the second part of each episode, we’ll shift gears towards application. I think it's time for me to explore how I might bring a little bit more leadership into the world, or at least into my organization, my community, and my clients' systems. And because this is hard work, I decided to get some help.
Today, this help comes in the form of my colleague, Andy Cahill – executive coach and leadership educator. He has offered to do some real one-on-one coaching with me, to help me expand my frontiers.
If you've never experienced coaching, here are a few things you need to know. Coaching helps people make progress on a challenge related to their own development. A coach does not give any recommendations about what you should do. It is the client who develops the insights in real-time.
So, today, I'm going to be the client. And that can feel vulnerable, and also a little messy from time to time. So, let's see how this goes.
Andy, thank you so much for being here and sharing this practice with me and the folks who are listening. Before we get started. Is there anything you'd like our listeners to know about you or your coaching practice?
Andy Cahill: Hey, Michael. Thanks! It is so fun to enter this space with you. It will be my first time publicly recording a coaching session that others will hear, kind of a general audience, and that's both really exciting for me, and also produces a little bit of nervous energy in me.
But I think the thing to answer your question - what do I want people to know about my practice - if I could put it into a single word, it would be the presence, to the extent that you and I can get really present to what is meaningful to you what matters to you, and what that means for your leadership, then will tap into possibilities.
I'm not here to tell you how to lead. I wouldn't even know how to tell you how to lead. I'm not here to give you advice or fix things for you. My hope and my aspiration are that we can go deeper than we often get the chance to in the frenetic pace of our day-to-day lives. So, that's what I try to bring into all of my coaching with my clients and hope to bring that today here.
Michael Koehler: I'm really excited about that. And slightly scared.
Andy Cahill: Yeah, because you're recording. We're all recording everything here.
Michael Koehler: So, Andy, I pass the reins over to you. I'm in your hands in this coaching session.
Andy Cahill: Okay. So, Michael, where should we start today? What would make this a powerful conversation for you?
Michael Koehler: At a very simple level, I want to figure out where I can practice more leadership. I've been kind of thinking about this podcast project and have been thinking about my own role in the world. I deeply identify as a coach and leadership educator, myself, and at the same time, I really feel like, ‘Man, I can’t just like, can’t just be like a coach. I have insights, I have ideas. And where is the space for me to be a practitioner”
Like, I used to be a dancer and a choreographer, a coach for dancers. And even though you know, I love the coaching as well, the practice is really deeply informative. So, that's kind of my big question?
Andy Cahill: Hmm.
Michael Koehler: What's my leadership opportunity at this moment in the world?
Andy Cahill: And how are you relating to that question, what's my leadership opportunity at this moment in the world. When you ask yourself that, what comes into your awareness?
Michael Koehler: Rosi and I, in our conversation, were talking a lot about silence and the role of silence, and the piece we didn't touch on a lot, barely I would say, is what are the leadership opportunities for when I am silent, instead of, lik,e speaking up. What are ways to lean into the tough challenges, bringing a voice, maybe it's a little scary, but where are these spaces?
There are two big themes. We've been talking about adaptive challenges the whole time while reading this book, right? But the two adaptive challenges that are pretty alive for me right now, where we are in the world is one, diversity, equity inclusion, and social justice as it shows up in the organizations we work with, as it shows up in our own organizations, that shows up in a society, in my life, in my marriage, in my family. That kind of feels closely related to my own identity.
And then the second piece that I'm sitting with is, which is kind of this macro challenge out there, the whole world faces it. I sit here and I honestly, like really care about it and I have no clue what to do about it. I even see how I'm contributing to the mess with my flights, and all of the things I'm not doing, right?
So, those are like two themes that I think kind of what would be helpful for me, I would say in the coaching session today is if I could even land on a good goal, if I could even land on something that I could start working on and start thinking about, operationalizing, where I could explore my own frontiers and edges, that would be great. But even landing on that goal would feel like progress, because it still feels so huge. What could I possibly do around racism? What could I possibly do about climate change? Like, I don't even know where to start.
Andy Cahill: So, I'm hearing you, right, there is a part of you that wants you to lean into the social and global issues in a meaningful way. And there's another part of you that feels a little bit overwhelmed by where to even start around that.
Of the two that you've just presented, as sort of the social justice work, the equity and inclusion work, and the ecological climate work, is there one of those domains that seem to have particular gravity for you that you want us to look at together today?
Michael Koehler: I think if I were just talking about the emotional pull, I think the social justice stuff is more, more meaningful. I think that's part of the problem with the climate crisis, right? It's there but it's also like until you sit next to a burning forest and need to evacuate from your house, the urgency is not as close right? I have friends who experienced that and for them, the urgency is very high. So, just because my own primary experience is not as intense doesn't mean it's not also acute.
Andy Cahill: So, as you attend to the part of you that says, just because this is an acute for me, it doesn't mean it's not acute, it doesn't mean it's not real. And you also attend to the part of you that feels the emotional pull towards social justice work.
As you just tune in to each of those parts. Is there one that seems to be speaking to you a little more loudly or needing a little more attention or asking a bit more of you in this moment, right here?
Michael Koehler: I wish we could do both. And maybe there's a way to do both. Maybe there's a way on my journey to attend to both. But I also understand that we need to zoom in on one. I just want to name the loss.
Andy Cahill: Yes. Yeah. I am asking you to make a choice. And the choice is for right now, not for your lifetime.
Michael Koehler: Let's take social justice.
Andy Cahill: Okay. And maybe in the spirit of acknowledging the loss and acknowledging the part of you that's going like, ‘Hey, we can't just always go to what's closest and easiest’, if it feels right, you could just take a moment to breathe with that and let yourself know that you're going to find a way to address your relationship to the question of climate change when the time is right. And when that feels complete, then we'll go to social justice.
Michael Koehler: Yeah, and maybe even stronger. Like, I think I want to make a commitment to circling back to the climate change question, as I'm journeying through this season here and thinking about what am I learning? Like, if I'm focusing on social justice, what am I learning in that domain that I could transfer to the climate change, adaptive challenge?
Andy Cahill: Beautiful! Knowing what you know about yourself, is there anything you need to do right now to ensure that you'll follow through on that commitment that you've just made?
Michael Koehler: I just need to write myself a reminder, I guess.
Andy Cahill: Yeah, I look forward to seeing what emerges from that thought line and that thread. So, let's now honor the emotional pull you feel towards this question of social justice. Where is that pulling you? How is that pulling?
Michael Koehler: It feels really present in my life. I live in an interracial marriage. In an intercultural marriage. I work in an international organization. Our client's systems, that of leadership development, our client’s systems, almost all of them are wrestling, explicitly or implicitly, with a challenge of diversity, equity inclusion.
And then with my own identities, like I'm holding some of these boundaries within me, the White German, cis male, kind of all of these identities are kind of historic, present and historic oppressor identities. Then also a gay man, an immigrant, somebody who lives in an interracial marriage, are identities that can relate to experiences of being on the margins.
And there is something, some intuition that I felt from the moment I’ve entered the United States that there's something in that German case that could be useful for the American case. If you want something around how sort of White Germans, many of them, not all of them, have wrestled over decades around their very difficult past, and sort of dealing with the past may have made that part of their DNA, if you want their cultural DNA that I find is really missing in the US.
There's such a forward-looking attitude. Very little historic, particularly from White folks with very little interest in dealing with the past and thinking about the past. Where I feel like, I have something to say that I'm not saying but I have something to explore, and I've been sitting with that question for a kind of a while. So, I would love to get some energy and some strategy towards that piece.
Andy Cahill: Yeah. To what extent do you have a sense of what it is you have to say, what it is you have to offer?
Michael Koehler: I think at a very high level, it's that insight, unless you lean into the past and deal with the past, even if it's not you, even if it's your ancestors, there is something that is part of your responsibility in examining because you were raised by your ancestors. We are all swimming in the culture that got created by that.
And to actively dismantle these systems, we deeply need to examine them. I don't know what that intervention is and how those lands, but I think that is kind of the insight, as I'm being here as an immigrant and sort of getting myself situated in this country, I'm like, I think that would be helpful. It's not like it's gonna solve everything but I think this is one piece of the puzzle that I think may be useful.
Andy Cahill: So, you hold this intuition, you have some sense that the unique intersection of your identities maybe positions you to share this intuition in American contexts.
One direction we could go now is to start to help you work out what it would look like for you to make an intervention somewhere in your organization, your community, your family system, wherever. Like, what would that intervention be? The other way we might go is to look at what if anything has stopped you from making that intervention up until now?
Michael Koehler: I mean, even though as I'm talking about, it feels risky, it feels exposing, I'm sweating. I'm literally sweating, my upper lip. So, there's something there around that resistance.
So, I would love to brainstorm with you at some stage and also for myself about what that could look like and what that could be but I think that's where maybe we could spend a few more minutes today to think about what's going on there? What's holding me back?
Andy Cahill: Yeah. Beautiful attention to your own physical experience of the question of resistance. There's something here that's activating your nervous system right now. And that's a pretty good clue that you're entering territory that's uncomfortable and a bit risky. Right here, right now you're saying like even talking about this feels a little risky with me. I'm assuming that's because other folks might hear it if we release this recording. What feels risky about it? What's the risk you're in touch with?
Michael Koehler: Yeah, let me just deal with that question.
Andy Cahill: Yeah.
Michael Koehler: So, the first thought that comes to mind is, there are so many ways I could be wrong. I'm not a historian. I only have my lived experience as a German, growing up. First of all, the German case is not pretty, right? As ugly as Germany's history is, ugly dealing with the history is.
We sometimes say, ‘Well, the Germans have learned from their past.” No, there are parts of Germany where we have still a lot of antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism in Germany these days. So, who are we to say, ‘Look at us, right?’
So, that is certainly like there is a worry. It will come across as I'm here, like, preaching or teaching like, which isn't the intuition, but it could be the impact, or not the intention, it could be the impact, right? That's one piece.
The second piece is how else could I be wrong if contexts are different, right? Racism in America is very different from Nazi Germany. It's like people have started to draw some connections around the systemic natures. I love that book Caste, reading that book, Caste, that was drawing some of these connections was fascinating for me to explore.
But then again, it is also very different, in a way, all of these experiences are very unique and hard to compare and contrast and build from. So, that's kind of the second anxiety that people will say, like, ‘Hey, this is great for Germany, but that's not relevant here because of those other reasons.’
And then the third thing, Andy, I mean, this is triggering, this is hard for people to lean into. I mean, I didn't have a face-to-face with my grandparents, to have these conversations with them. I had them in my heart and with my parents and with my peers, but then I visited memorials sites, the termination camps, but like asking people to say like, ‘Hey, what did your grandparents do? How were they contributing?’
That is really triggering work. And I think in a way it's necessary, but I'm also scared about that, because, and I hadn’t thought about that yet, but I'm an immigrant in this country and I also want to belong, I don't want to come here and alienate everybody. So, what is that right mix between...?
Michael Koehler: You have a voice exercising caution, ‘Michael, you're not an expert’, you have another voice slowing you down. It might not be appropriate in this context. It just might not translate.
You have a third voice. It sounds like really protecting you against triggering emotion around this very charged issue because you want to belong here and be home here. And as you get in touch with those sorts of three forces all in their own way of working to keep you from making an intervention, is there one in particular that if we helped you get some space around, you might feel 10% more able to try out and experiment or leadership intervention in the space.
Michael Koehler: Let's start with the belonging one. The last one.
Andy Cahill: Yeah, that one felt like the most charged. It's likely that that fear of belonging lives somewhere in or around your body. Can you get in touch with that anywhere in your physical experience?
Michael Koehler: It's in the heart. It touches my heart.
Andy Cahill: Yeah. What does it feel like in your heart as you get in touch with that energy of keeping you safe and helping you belong?
Michael Koehler: Warm but also a little fragile, little delicate, a little vulnerable.
Andy Cahill: So, maybe just take a moment, you're already there but really take a moment to connect your hand to your heart. And with as much compassion and non-judgment as you can muster, gently bring your conscious attention here to your heart where you feel this fragility and this warmth. And as you bring your attention there, notice if there are any other sensations or emotions, or thought patterns that start to come up. Anything else that is here for you?
Michael Koehler: Man, my heart is racing. It's like beating, bomp, bomp.
Andy Cahill: Yeah. As you feel that racing, are there any accompanying images or emotions, or thought patterns that are arising?
Michael Koehler: Andy, it kind of feels right. It feels like this is where it belongs.
Andy Cahill: I'm struck by, a moment ago, you talking about the fear of losing belonging and at this moment you're in touch with this is where it belongs.
I wonder as you just presence yourself to the rightness that this is where it belongs, what becomes possible for you now that wasn't possible five minutes ago, when you were only speaking to the fear?
Michael Koehler: Like the belonging I'm actually looking for is the belonging that is generated, that is created in that moment of really getting to know people and really deeply connecting with them, including the not so pretty sides.
I mean, that's the belonging I want. I don’t want to hear the stories, that complexity either, like, I don't need the superficial. Like, ‘Yay, everything is great.’ That's not the belonging I'm looking for anyways.
Andy Cahill: Yeah, that's beautiful. And as you get in touch with that level of belonging that actually you have a need for that that inspires and motivates you, is there somewhere in your life where if you were to move towards this issue of social justice and make the risk of talking about the past or history or healing, where are you called to make that take that risk in service of deeper belonging?
Michael Koehler: This is beautiful. This makes me very happy. I think I have an experiment I can try in the next week, which is entering conversations with people that I feel close to, like, I'm seeing a couple of friends this weekend that come over for a barbecue at my place, that I have some trust with, some belonging with, where it feels right to begin sharing some of that intuition that I'm holding inside me and carefully inquiring a little bit about their perspective on it and their own family history and ancestry, and how they've been thinking about history. And maybe just trying out this fear of belonging there for a moment, right? Not yet trying to move the needle on social justice here, but just seeing is that the belonging to those friends at stake as I'm sort of dipping my toe into the waters here?
Andy Cahill: So, I'm hearing you, right, this opportunity with your friends this weekend is a chance to try out the validity of the belief you're holding that if you talk about this stuff, you may be rejected and lose your belonging. It sounds like the thing you're going to be tracking for is something like, do I feel more connected to these people or less after having talked about them.
Michael Koehler: Yeah.
Andy Cahill: Okay. How does that feel as a commitment to make?
Michael Koehler: It feels right. It feels exciting. It feels a little scary, but it feels like the…
Andy Cahill: Not too scary, we're not asking you to go to a public talk…
Michael Koehler: No, exactly, not like a lecture...
Andy Cahill: Great! And knowing what you know about yourself, is there anything else that you need to put in place to ensure that you'll follow through with this experiment?
Michael Koehler: Well, Andy, would you do another session with me where we can check in on that?
Andy Cahill: Well, is there an episode 2 of this podcast, Michael?
Michael Koehler: I suppose. I think so. We'll talk again. It would be great to check-in. No, seriously, it would be great. I mean, we're not just talking on this podcast, you are also a colleague and it’d be great to continue to be in conversation with you about it.
Andy Cahill: Yeah, whether or not, I'm back again and I'm absolutely happy to. Maybe next week in one of our connections, I'll try and make a point to just ask about how it went.
Michael Koehler: Thank you.
Andy Cahill: Okay. Talk to you again soon.
Michael Koehler: Thanks, Andy!
On the Balcony will be back with episode two. We'll be joined by Mitzi Johnson, former Speaker of the House in the state of Vermont, kind of the Nancy Pelosi of Vermont, really. We’ll discuss chapter two of Leadership Without Easy Answers with the title, ‘To Lead or to Mislead.’ Intriguing. I'll invite you to read the chapter yourself and explore with Mitzi and me, how systems can get really heated when confronted with tough challenges, and how they react to that heat.
For Mitzi and the legislature, that heat was around gun violence. Here's a preview of how it felt when the police caught a potential shooter in the state of Vermont:
Mitzi Johnson: All of these social problems compounded in one place that just became this cauldron that was simmering anger. And that's the moment that knocked me out of equilibrium,, and I remember forwarding those affidavits to my leadership team saying, ‘Read this carefully. Hug the people you love. And come back Monday morning.’ That was a Friday afternoon that I sent it, like, come back Monday morning being ready to work our tails off. And I had an unexpected partner in the Republican Governor who was a lifelong gun owner.
Michael Koehler: Also, Andy will join me again to debrief my experiment and help me continue to work on my leadership challenge.
If you like the show, press the subscribe button and leave a review. That helps others to connect to this really powerful framework.
On the Balcony is brought to you by KONU: growing and provoking leadership. We’re produced by Podigy. Editing, Riley Byrne, Daniel Link, Tim O'Brien, Christie Perrott, and Emily Weiner. Cover art by Kenneth Amoyo and Rosi Greenberg.
Our Music is called Change in Blue by Hannah Gill and the Hours.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you for episode 2 - On the Balcony.