Hi, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And it's my joy to welcome Linda Rossetti, who's sitting in front of me at the moment all the way from Boston, Massachusetts. That almost came out the other way there, didn't it? So, we've got two literary names on the show today. So Rosetti. Christina Rosetti is a member. She's sort of relative. Yeah.
Linda:Yes. And Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a pre-Raphaelite painter.
Russell:Fantastic. So, how's Boston today? What's the weather doing today?
Linda:It's dreary and rainy. My sense is it probably is going to stay this way for quite a while. So, we're not smiling very much about this right now.
Russell:So the lobsters will all be hiding.
Linda:Exactly. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Russell:It's an absolute pleasure. I love your background. I don't know if it's one of those fake backgrounds or it's the real thing, but if it's a real thing, it's a lovely piece of art in the back. This is podcast gold is talking about what's behind you, but you know what I mean. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Linda:I am somebody who is trying to get the world to think differently about something that's universal, and that is how we respond to disruption in our lives. I come to this having been in the corporate world for more than 30 years but find myself very curious about kind of upheaval that we all encounter and how we respond. And so, for the last decade, I've done research in that area, and I've written two books. One was called Women and Transition, and the most recent was Dancing with Disruption. But all of it is really an invitation to get us to think differently about the things, whether it be a job crisis, a breakup, a change in our health, and a zillion other things, to think differently about those moments and frankly, respond with hope and expansion.
Russell:Okay, so let's just do the basics. How you define a disruption and people to respond differently to it. What's the sort of traditional way of responding to it?
Linda:Well, disruption, you know, as you know Dr Russell, can happen in a zillion ways, it can be the traffic jam we encounter on the way to the office to something more meaningful, like the loss of a spouse or an unexpected layoff from work. And so, the disruptions that I'm really very interested in tend to fall in a category that impact our functioning. Right. For whatever reason, we're not able to carry on our basic, our normal baseline activities or those that really call into question are thinking about our self-concept, who we are, and kind of the mental model we've used to process the world we live in. And so, I call those gateway disruptions. And those are the ones I'm most interested in, really.
Linda:They're the ones that really call into question our thinking about who we are or how we make meaning in the world. And typically, we've been socialised to kind of run the other way. When these happen, we stall, we retreat, we disengage often when these happen. And the crisis in that is that oftentimes these are signals for real opportunity, for growth and expansion that we miss if we respond in ways that we've been socialised to respond.
Linda:So given that we've been socialised and given that they previously worked for us, and I use the word worked advisedly, why would we want to change? Because that's the law of carrying on and on and on. I mean, some would argue expecting a different result, but we're sort of socially conditioned, aren't we? Because there's some reason for doing it in a particular way.
Linda:Yeah. And I think that you're already on to the point there, which is I'm not sure we all think that it is working. Right. We might behave in this way, but I think we're more and more realising that perhaps there's more. And that's really the opportunity. Right. There's the yellow brick road in front of us to say, well, maybe there's a way to consider something different. And I think that's really where my work starts. Right. I've done a decade worth of research which started out talking with nearly 300 adults from all walks of life in terms of what they experienced at these times of upheaval in their lives. And it was fascinating because they were patterns that emerged from that we tend to not talk about in life. But in fact, they're pretty provocative.
Linda:And so my work is really about educating people on what might be happening at these moments and then allowing people to make their own choice. Right. This isn't kind of prescriptive or standing up, kind of waving a finger, saying, you must do this when you encounter fill in the blank. It really is educating people so that they're empowered to maybe consider other options. And I find that in that there's enormous opportunity.
Russell:So you mentioned some of those patterns. What might be examples of those?
Linda:Well, I think one of the most fascinating ones that I found in the research is that in society, we're kind of conditioned to use two words interchangeably, and yet they mean very different things when we're facing disruption. And those two words are change and transition. And what I found in listening with folks is that changes are very often alterations or variations in a known outcome. Right. We lose a job, we need to replace income. Right. So, we can articulate what it is. And ultimately, in my research, what came out is that we pursue changes when we have a fixed self-concept. We say, okay, we know exactly who we are, and we need to make XYZ changes. But what we're doing is we're leaving intact our thinking about who we are and how we make meaning in the world versus when we explore transition.
Linda:What we're doing is we're welcoming instability for a time in our self-concept, and it is much less about pursuing a known outcome, but really re-examining the assumptions upon which we anchor our sense of who we are and how we make meaning in the world. And so, transitions occur when there's a shift in what holds value and meaning to us versus changes are really all about making alterations or variations on a fixed self-concept. And so, educating. Right, Dr Russell, educating people on just this notion that there are options can oftentimes be very enlightening. Right. And it allows people to do the Holy Grail thing, which is to ask themselves a new question. And I think that's the power. Right.
Linda:In these moments, that if we can have a new context, that we can put our experience in, our experience of a job loss, our experience of a health crisis, if we can place that in a new understanding, then we get to ask new questions of ourselves. And I think that's really where we can break away from some conditioned responses and kind of explore some new.
Russell:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It is interesting that you talk about the semantics of this, because I personally think it's important. I think we undervalue the narrative that we set ourselves. And I was interested because I know you've worked very much in the corporate world and been in HR and such like, but I was very minded once when someone asked me or said to me, it's not change that human beings fear. It's the process of being changed through a change management process, usually by a manager and a leader who has no idea, because actually the concept of change is absolutely natural. We're changing, we're migrating, we're transforming, we're progressing. Every single cell of our body is in constant energetic states.
Russell:But there's something about the way that corporates work or those interesting moments in our life when we come to turn a corner that are quite interesting. So, I quite like this idea of transformation. I actually use the word progression, but transformation is a great word as well. They all mean something being in constant motion, rather than sort of the old Lewin idea of freeze, unfreeze, refreeze, that sort of idea that sort of makes no sense as human beings does.
Linda:No, no. And you're so right. I mean, everything on the planet is designed to constantly change, and yet we're socialised to hold on to these static approaches. And I think that's where a lot of conflict comes from. And there's a very interesting man who did some research in the Columbia University in New York, and he observed a lot of people going through these progressions or transformations. And he said there's really two levels of activity that's happening. The first level is this notion of practical, right? If somebody's doing a change management effort in a corporation, they have one set of outputs they need to make versus the old set. So, it's very practical. We need to do B. Now, we used to do a, how are we going to do it?
Linda:But he said there's another level that is oftentimes absent from our conversation, and that level is the intense emotional response that happens in relation to that change. Right. The reality is that when we move, when we change our mental model, we move our thinking about who we are. Our emotional system responds to that as unsafe, and it throws an enormous amount of activity at us, whether our familiar emotions are anxiety or fear or regret or shame or perfectionism or. Everyone has their own favourites. And I think that Mezzaro was the gentleman's name. That was very interesting because very few people really focus on these parallel tracks. Right? A lot of people spend a lot of time on, look, this is how we're going to change and we're going to do from A to B, and that's what we're going to do.
Linda:And that's very practical. And there's a lot to that. I don't want to be diminished. There's a lot to affecting change in our world. But my work also honours the fact that there's another dimension to this, which is how we respond emotionally and making sure that we recognise that a lot of the emotions that we may be experiencing are really responding to the fact that we're in this unstable period for a time.
Russell:And that's interesting in itself, because I think corporately, we've used the sort of Kubler Roth framework to sort of guide our efforts and such like. But the thing you, as you look at neuroscience and you look at neurochemistry and such, doesn't. The thing is, you tend to find, when you explain any model, human beings have the desire to fit into any pattern that you give them. So, it's very easy to say, here's the model to recognise it. And everyone goes, yes, I can see that. But our neurochemistry didn't work that way.
Russell:And we're really actually dealing with cortisol or dopamine or serotonin, really, once we get those three things worked out and you stand a chance, it's always struck me as quite interesting how little coaching we do through change, because actually coaching is about how we navigate the future, how we create that new narrative with ourselves, for ourselves and other people as well. And I think it's one of the interesting things that we have a very still have a hugely commanding control leadership construct. And I think things like engagement and authenticity have actually made that worse, because all the evidence shows that everything's getting worse, and yet we're still banging on using these sorts of same techniques over and over again. So, I like the idea of talking about something different. I'm not going to bang on about my own book.
Russell:That's a story for another day. But I think even something as simple as changing that narrative to disruption and transformation is just saying something different allows people to just examine the opportunity, because it's not a problem. The opportunity for the different perspectives.
Linda:Absolutely. Well, now you're hired as my new PR person.
Linda:I think that this notion of giving people a new way to approach something that's common is really the work that I'm trying to do. And I've written this new book, Dancing with Disruption. And in it, in each of the chapters, is an exercise to try to help people kind of bring the work into their own experience. And one of the chapters talks about narrative. So, I'm really smiling as you talk about narrative, because I think that as I've studied this, and I've also had the great good fortune of working with some universities in the United States and doing collaborative research on this, what we found is really changing our narrative is an incredibly powerful shift that can occur and really help people kind of move forward from this. And it's simple. It's not a thousand times complex.
Linda:One of the techniques that we tested in the research was changing from a chronological narrative to a value-based narrative to say, look, most of the world will say, if I meet you, Dr Russell, I would know. I would go through my little quick chronology, when in fact, if we're in a period of transformation, we actually need to disengage from the chronology and anchor on things that hold meaning or value to us. And with that, the aperture on what's possible and what growth might mean just opens exponentially.
Russell:Yes, because actually we're dealing with a world where the past doesn't matter. What matters is the fluidity of the present. Now, I love your concept, and in my own book, we talk a lot about dancing with things, and I talk about relationships as being a dance between people. And you talk about the way that you operate with your employees as a dance, because it isn't it? And some people say, sadly, it's a dance of aggression and a paso doble. And for some it's the waltz and for some, it's the Argentinian tango, and they really should not be working together. But again, it's that lovely idea of pushing and pulling and leading and following and actually seeing it as an integrative process rather than something that's just forced upon people or that's not navigated or that's not found a way through.
Russell:And I think it's that classic thing, isn't it? On the dance floor, dancing with lots of people. Everyone manages to dance without falling over each other. And we have a tremendous capacity as human beings to be able to find our own way. And I think in leadership terms, we're just spoon fed so often with rubbish. I mean, I was running a leadership program last week, and it just horrifies me still to hear managers and leaders saying, I am the manager, I am the leader. I am paid to give a solution. I am paid to. It's my starting point. If you're doing the work of someone, a layer below you should be having a pay cut. And that always shocks them because actually that's the know.
Russell:Get your people to think for them, let them work out what the dance is and let them start to dance it, because that's really exciting, isn't it?
Linda:Dr Russell, you remind me of some work that I did. I had the great good fortune of serving as the head of HR and administration for a large global company. And the reason why I mentioned it is when I was in that role, we had to take 200 acquisitions and knit them together to behave as one organisation. And it was really challenging, right. Because what you're talking about is getting behaviours to change, right. Because when I started the job, I would go to meetings all over the world, and people would come in and the first thing they would do is they would introduce themselves and the acquisition that they came into the organisation from, right. So, their connection was with their past. They weren't really connected at all to what we’re trying to do together. And we had this choice, right.
Linda:Were we going to be a certain leadership team or were you going to be a confident leader team? And the certain leader team would basically say, here's the seven things I need you to do. I need you to go out and do it. I'm going to measure your performance against it. And there's no degrees of freedom versus the confident leader is going to say, here's the goal we need to do, and I'm going to give you some parameters, but ultimately you have to find your way to how you're going to achieve it. And I think that, thankfully, we had a very enlightened CEO who was on the confident leader side, not the certain leader side. And that's how we did it. Right. We really set up some values and behaviours that had to be a part of what was going on.
Linda:And then we gave some people some degrees of freedom on how to make it happen. And I think that I've learned so much from that, which really speaks to what you're talking about, which today, particularly if we're in public companies, right, we have 90 days to do everything, because every 90 days we have to report to the street about what we've done. And what that does is it tends to lean towards this certain approach because it's like, look, we don't have time to fool around. We can't learn. We have to execute this. We have 90 days versus that is so stifling to an organisation, right. That under imagines what that organisation is capable of because you're never giving people the opportunity at any interval, at any 90-day interval, the opportunity to really apply what they could do and move forward.
Linda:And I think that's the tragedy that I see in terms of this notion of leadership and management. It's too much prescribed when, in fact, that really undervalues the skills that are at the table and we're silencing voices that could really radically, positively change the dynamic. That's the fine line.
Russell:And it's a challenge, isn't it? Because we operate within a social construct, and if the social construct is 90 days, then you can't have this other world. And the thing is, it's really interesting when you watch people. We worked in MA's, I've done MA. People aren't interested in the size of the opportunity. They are interested in the certainty. They're interested about not making a loss. They're not worried about making an extra five pence. They're worried about not losing $5, aren't they? So, I'll mix my currencies there, and I think you get this. I can't remember the phrase a zero-sum game. I think it's something like those. Well, it's the fur lined rot and the cream of the crap example again, isn't. It's this idea that we defer to the just about average.
Russell:But it's interesting because, of course, if you work in the public sector or non-profits and such like, you find the same thing going on. Because I think socially, we come from a world where we expect strong, clear guidance. It is interesting how many times when you're working with people, they'll say things like, well, I don't want to think. I want you to give me the answer. A, because it's easier, B, because then I don't have to do any work, and C, because, actually, that's how I've been trained. I've not really. Through education and through having a succession of poor, heinously terrible levers, I've not learned to think. And I don't think we value thinking anymore. We talk about cognition, but we don't value thinking anymore. We don't value insight.
Russell:What we value is really compliance, which is where engagement and all these ideas come from, really. It's doing what you're doing for less money than you should be paid.
Linda:It is. There's so much in your remarks that we could chat about. But I think this notion that we have probably not created a safe environment for people to take risks. Right. And I don't mean risk, reckless risks. I just mean ideas. Right. The ability.
Russell:Yeah, risks, not reckless. That's the point, isn't it?
Linda:Right. I think informed risk taking is really magical. And I think that leadership today, I was trained at one of the fanciest leadership training grounds on the planet, right. The Harvard Business School. But I think, as I read what comes out of that organisation, even today, just tells me we have so much runway on this. Right. The work that you do and the thinking that you're doing is fantastic, and it strikes at the heart of what is needed so that we can unlock the possibility in teams. And I think that's where our work intersects. Right.
Linda:I go to the individual level and try to give people some vocabulary and understanding of what's happening at moments of conflict so that they can actually reach and activate their skills and bring that to bear on the challenges of the day, whether that's in a non-profit or in a large public company or at their kitchen table, it really doesn't matter, because if we can engage people's voices, and when I say voice, it isn't what you hear audibly, it's really their essence and their power as an individual. If we can engage that, we'll be so much better off as humankind.
Russell:Yeah. And you can see why people have done the great resignation. You'll see why people have looked at this idea of entrepreneurship, and for some people, it really genuine isn't about money. It's just simply about freedom. It's about that idea of exchanging, really, certainty for full managed risks, for having the freedom, the capacity of failing at least your own efforts. And actually, isn't it fascinating that the very thing we want in organizations we have with people who we drive out, we drive them out of our organisations, and then they become the very person that we wanted this to be? And no one sees the irony that it's a systemic culture within the organisation that was the problem reinforced and driven and mitigated by the, as you call them, the certain leaders. It's really interesting phrase.
Linda:Well, it's so interesting. I mean, I think that. I don't know that I have a lot of data to know who exactly we're driving out of the organisation. I'd love to get some access to that. But what I do know, as somebody who was a leader in human capital around the world, is that we for many years, operated under a social contract with our employees when we had an employee. And that meant a lot of things. Right. They gave us their hard work and their good ideas and their commitment to excellence when they were inside or working, whether they were inside the walls of a company or doing it from their home office didn't matter. Or from the driver's seat of a van. Right. We had thousands of vehicles on the road at Iron Mountain every day.
Linda:But that social contract has really been whittled away. We've tried to optimise margins, and so we have, at least in the United States, we have 30 years with virtually no real wage growth for large pieces of the population. Right. We have development and training dollars that have been effectively outsourced or in most cases, eliminated from the corporate investment profile. And I could go on and on, but I think ultimately this absence of a social contract is really even though people think we're winning and we have the highest corporate profits ever, to your point, I think we've actually lost a great deal, and that's going to hit us pretty hard because that social cost is much higher than whatever the growth is in the stock market or whatever index you choose to look at.
Linda:So my work, and I sense yours as well, is really about trying to get us to rethink this social contract and our role in it, because I think that individuals have an enormous potential that remains untapped. Part of that is because when we respond to disruption, we too often stall, disengage, or retreat instead of recognising those moments as opportunities to engage so much more of ourselves and turn up the volume on our voices. So, I'm really honoured to have the opportunity to talk with you about this today because it's something I believe so strongly about.
Russell:Me too. And I often start these conversations desperately aiming to disagree with you. So, stimulate debate and end of disagreeing with you. But one of the things about the social contract I find fascinating, especially in a country like yours, which is so large, is the extent to which culturally it's so different in different places. I mean, we're a small country in comparison, but I see a different. I've moved from the south to the north, and I see a massive different difference even in 300 miles. And having spent time in the south of America earlier this year, it's staggering, the different social contract there. I work in Africa and all over the world. It's quite confusing, actually. When you go to certain parts of America, it doesn't seem like the America we see on television. It doesn't seem like this forward looking first world country.
Linda:It's quite unusual. We have, choosing my words very right. I can see that our democracy is an ideal and it is still a work in progress. And certainly, there are grave differences across our country. When we think about even our response to immigration, to the folks that are citizens. And depending on the state that you're in or the county that you're in the country, your experience can be radically different. So, we're working hard to address all of that while the car is still going 60 miles an hour down the road. Right. So, it is a change effort that is continual. And it's heart-breaking that we haven't had more progress on things that really matter a lot. But there's no one, well, no one that I know, that's sitting on their laurel saying, we're done. We're working pretty hard to keep it going. I do hope to have the conversation.
Russell:I do hope so, because it doesn't look like that. From the mean. There's a move to neo populism at the moment right across Europe and across America and such like. And you know, the trouble is that we've been seen as socially liberal, and we've ended up with all this inequality and therefore the responses to become neo populist and move to the right. But of course, we've never actually been liberal. And certainly, your country has never been liberal. Ours never has actually always been to the right. And your Democratic Party is probably where our Tory party would be. And we've had a couple of attempts of lurching left and it would always run away from screaming. So, we've never really embraced a more left leaning philosophy like Bernie Sanders. I'm not saying the right or wrong.
Linda:I'm just saying we're very good at pretending that we've done something as an excuse not to do it and demonising the thing that we didn't do to create the solution for a problem we never had. And it's a brilliant trope that we need to learn from. At the moment, I think.
Linda:Well, I think in the states we have a lot more variability than perhaps gets presented in the press. And our Democratic Party has moved to the centre over the last decades. But as a north easterner from the world where Bernie Sanders lives, I completely understand the progressive and support it, and there's lots and lots of initiatives across the country in support of that. But it is very different when you look regionally. If you take the coasts, the Northeast coast, the California, Washington State, Oregon, those are very different places than if you and I parachuted into Missouri or Tennessee. And I'm not judging them, they're just different places. And I think that our work is not done. As I mentioned, our democracy as an ideal is still an ideal work in process.
Linda:The great Barack Obama really put the vocabulary to us, and as he walked out of the presidency said, we need to really address the values. And if we are about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have to be honest about where we're executing against that and where we're falling short and address that. And I think that's some of the most exciting work that's happening in the United States right now, is really addressing that because.
Russell:Different places dance to different places at different rates. So, you better tell us a bit about your book. Actually, because I've been very discourteous and not giving you the chance to tell.
Linda:No, you have given me dancing around all of our conversation. Right. So, Dancing with Disruption is a book that empowers readers to respond differently to disruption and gives them a roadmap on how to navigate moments of upheaval and conflict in their lives. And it's born off of a decade of research. I dealt with nearly 300 people from all walks of life who went through really radical change, and then 80 of them worked with me on these exercises in the book. So, the book is a great read if people have the opportunity to take advantage of that.
Linda:And also, the work has spawned a series of accreditation courses or continuing education courses that I and my organisation run to help people who are leaders or coaches or social workers or human resource professionals to give them the tools they need to affect change in the environments that they work in. And so, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to join you and thank you for the opportunity to mention my book and work. And it's really a labour of love. Right. I believe strongly in our need to change the way we respond to, you know, I invite everyone to think about that and join, you know.
Russell:Just looking on Amazon as we chat your books is on the UK site, which is great. There are at least five different Dancing with Disruption, so make sure you get hold of Linda Rosetti's book, which has a huge number of five-star reviews. That's amazing, because normally there's someone who says, I don't like the colour of the cover and something, so I'll give you one. But congratulations on that. So, I shall be buying that copy. And thank you so much. It's absolutely fantastic. So how do people get hold of you? How can people approach you? What's the way of getting in touch?
Linda:The two easiest ways. The first is through LinkedIn, right? That's the easiest way to do it. And the second is just visit my website, which is my full name, and I think it's in your show notes. The only trick is my last name has Two S's and two T's. And aside from that, those are the easiest ways to contact me.
Russell:Or just click on the link, because that's the modern way. Who knew? Never need to spell anymore. Linda, it's been absolute joy talking to you today, and I could chat with you all day, but I need to be respectful of your time. But thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolutely fascinating conversation and I really wish you all the best with everything you're doing. I think it's absolutely remarkable.
Linda:Well, I've loved it. Thank you. And I look forward to continuing our conversation sometime soon.
Russell:I do hope so. You take care.