The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 404 - Pete, The Student

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I have some exciting news for you.

Jen: Oh.

Pete: I am a student again.

Jen: How wonderful. Wait, what?

Pete: I guess we're all students all the time, are we not students of life? But no, I very deliberately leaned into being a participant in a leadership program. And it's still very early days, but it's so fun to be a participant as opposed to the facilitator. And there's a couple of ideas I've been noodling on as part of that experience.

Jen: Oh, I can't wait to hear. This is The Long and The Short of It.

Pete: Alright. So there's this really cool company slash program called Aleda, A-L-E-D-A, that I've come across. I was introduced to by a dear friend of mine, Bianca. And the way she described it to me is, was she like, "This is like the closest thing I've seen to altMBA," because she took the altMBA. She knows I was one of the head coaches of the altMBA. I was like, "Did you just describe something that I've been missing since the altMBA has not existed? Then great. I want to try it. I want to take it." That was a formidable experience in my life. And I'm feeling like I haven't had an experience where I felt like a real student and beginner for a while.

Jen: Mm.

Pete: And so I signed myself up and the way this works is we get put into a curated cohort of six people. And once every couple of weeks, we catch up with a facilitator for about an hour, maybe ninety minutes sometimes. And we talk about various things as it relates to leadership. Right off the bat, I was blown away. I was blown away by the experience and the like nervousness and a little bit...

Jen: Mm.

Pete: ...of like what I call a, you know, a growing pain of being in the seat of a student. And what was cool in the first call was it became obvious, which again, I've seen this as a facilitator, but I felt it myself as like everyone had some version of that. And we all felt a little bit like an imposter and we're all like, "What the hell is this thing? And what are we actually doing? And who are these people?" And there's people from right around the world, some incredible and brilliant people. And so I've just like...I'm in this experience. I don't know if it's too early to share some of my learnings, but there are a couple, one in particular that I just...I'm tickled by and I just wanted to share it with you and bounce it off you.

Jen: Let's hear it.

Pete: Honestly, I don't even know if this is an episode because it feels so trivial. It feels so obvious. It feels like something that I would say to a room full of people that I was guiding on an experience like this. Like it feels baked into the way that I facilitate these things, but I'm just experiencing it and reinforcing it for myself that it is wild how helpful it is to be in a room of smart, growth-minded leaders and hear their perspectives on challenges. So just last week, one of the leaders who is this amazing woman over in England and runs this very successful legal firm. And she said, "I've got this challenge with a particular employee. Like, can you help me workshop it?" And so all of us come from different places and backgrounds and little geographies. And we're just like, "Oh, have you thought about this? And maybe try this. And how about that?" And I could see the leader...you could see her being like, "Oh, this is really helpful," and writing things down. But what was wild was also, even though it wasn't my situation, even though it's not my legal firm, as I'm hearing other people share, I'm going, "Oh, that's a cool idea. I hadn't thought about that before. I like the way you're thinking about solving that problem." And I'm like learning through osmosis of helping someone else learn. And so it's just this reinforced, obvious idea that is...it almost feels too simple to say out loud, but it's so beautiful and elegant and effective in its results, which is to try and put yourself in a room where you have a problem on the table and you each share some ideas on how to solve that problem.

Jen: Yes, yes. A thousand times. Yes, Peter. That's right. Now, in my life, this is my daily experience because I am leading classes all day and I have, you know, lots of people in the room working through their problems. So I feel like I already know this punchline, but over and over again, almost on the daily, I hear from people, "Oh my gosh, I made so much more progress today in class, not because of my work session, but because of watching everybody else's work sessions. I learned so much from hearing other people talk about their approach to the work." The challenges they're facing, the techniques and tools they use to overcome those challenges. Even people talking about the landscape of the world they're working in is helpful to people. So yes, yes, yes. A thousand times. Yes.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. I hear this too from participants in workshops I'm in, but I'm just like blown away that I'm experiencing it and going, "Oh yeah, it's still so powerful." Even though you know it, it makes me think of...one of our mutual friends once told me about this group of laryngologists in New York. Do you remember this story?

Jen: Well, isn't that friend me?

Pete: Maybe you told me the story. I thought it was our mutual friend that told us this story, but maybe you told me the story. Or maybe I told it to our mutual friend. I don't know. Anyway, I use this in workshops all the time, so feel free to fact check me. There's a group of laryngologists in New York. A laryngologist is someone who works with the throat. Is that right?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I'm getting fact checked in this moment. And my recollection of this story is you have these very brilliant people at the top of their field, helping people at the top of their field who use their voice as their instrument, i.e. singers and performers. And once a month or whatever the frequency is, a bunch of them get together and go, "I've got this tricky situation or this tricky patient or this tricky diagnosis. What do you think? What am I missing? How can I think about this differently?" And one by one, they go around and they share ideas for helping that particular person with that particular patient. And they're often blown away by having someone else from the same profession see the same thing, but from a different perspective, how useful that can be in their practice and helping their patients. Is that right? Did I make that up?

Jen: That's correct, Peter. So, okay. You told me to fact check you, so I'm going to tell you.

Pete: Please, please.

Jen: The person who told you about it was me because we did an episode on it. But the reason I had access to this room was because of our mutual friend, the brilliant voice teacher, Tyley Ross.

Pete: This is right. That's the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought Tyley told me about him.

Jen: Tyley takes me sometimes as his guest. But here's one additional element that might be interesting to you. Yes, it's the laryngologists. However, they also invite people with other specialties who work with the same vocal apparatus but are not laryngologists. So they invite voice teachers. They invite speech pathologists to come in and also offer their insights because they see these issues in a totally different context.

Pete: Yeah. So I love that example. It reminds me of that. But what's even cooler, I would say, about the experience that I'm having and the experience that I'm like, how do I co-create or create more of these type of experiences? What's really cool is, I guess this is like a living example of our podcast in a way, now that I said this out loud, that I haven't said out loud, but I'm saying it out loud in my head, is we have such a diverse range of people in this group from a background perspective. Like we have an elite, I'm talking elite soccer player on a global scale. We have an elite AFL, Australian Rules player, which is a national sport in Australia, not a global sport. We have, you know, like a PR genius based here in Australia. We have this lawyer over in England who is, you know, brilliant in the world that she occupies. And there's this incredible senior leader who's been part of this like rapid growth startup here in Australia and then, you know, and then there's me. And so like we come from so many different walks of life and yet it's still so useful. Like the laryngologist example kind of makes sense to me because you've got other people that are working with the same type of thing, i.e. the instrument of the throat. This is almost more surprising, but cooler because it's in theory people who have nothing to do with each other.

Jen: Right.

Pete: But actually that becomes a superpower and a strength because, you know, the elite soccer player sees it from a teamwork perspective or something that you just wouldn't have seen otherwise. And, you know, I see it from the perspective of, oh, having a difficult conversation. Like I know how to help leaders have difficult conversations. And so there's all these interesting different ways to see the same thing. And I'm just repeating myself now, but it's just so cool to be part of and so cool to experience. And so now I'm noodling on like, how do you create and be part of more of these kinds of conversations and interactions?

Jen: Mm-hmm. Pete, I don't remember if I've mentioned this on the show or not, but I too have been a student recently taking a coding class for creatives.

Pete: Jen's the coder.

Jen: And it's been a really wild ride. But all of these people from creative backgrounds, but none of us do the same thing. And we're all learning these skills for very different reasons. And as we're making things along the way, we're sharing them with each other. And things that I would never in a million years have thought of, I see someone else's work and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I know exactly what that is bringing up for me as an idea of something I want to make for myself." So yes, having access to other people's experiences, insights, et cetera, is so helpful. So I guess the central question is, how do we get more of that? And I have a couple thoughts.

Pete: I was hoping you would.

Jen: Well, of course, there's like the very structured way of finding a program and signing up for it. And I'm a part of several programs and I like that I have someone else telling me when the meetings are.

Pete: Me too. It's so nice.

Jen: Right? Another thought is join a book group. You know, I used to, and actually this was requested of me last week to bring it back. I used to run a book discussion group where I would pick a nonfiction, like apply it to your life kind of book. We would all read it and then come together and discuss the practical application of the ideas in the book. And of course, everybody has a different idea for practical application because they're thinking about their own context, their own problems, et cetera. So something like that is super useful. And I live in New York City, so I have more access to this perhaps than other people. But we have great community spaces like our public libraries, like the 92nd Street Y, like places that host events, Creative Mornings, which is all over the world, where you can come together around a particular idea and talk like in real time with real voices to other humans.

Pete: You know what? I've never been part of a book group. I feel like that's something I should do or would enjoy.

Jen: Oh, it's so enjoyable. Yeah. It's even enjoyable if you haven't read the book.

Pete: Okay. So I like those ideas. One that comes to mind for me, I mean, this is very specific and local, but I'm sure there's an equivalent, or maybe you could be the person who instigates this. I had lunch with this brilliant human yesterday by the name of Anna Blackman. She is just an incredible leader and friend of mine. She started this...it's almost like a movement or a company or something by accident. It's called Talent Table.

Jen: Ooh, I got to look that up.

Pete: What she does essentially is once a month, she invites a select group of twenty people to lunch. And it's like a three-hour lunch. And her rule is like, you know, really great food, really great drinks and really great conversation. And so, you know, you go to a nice restaurant, she books out a dining room and she facilitates a conversation. I'm going to the next one. And so I was asking her like about it yesterday because I'm going and I'm curious. And I was like, you know, like, "Do you facilitate? Do you just kind of get out of the way? Do you...how does it go? What are the...what's the value that people get out of it?" And she's like, "I mean, I do facilitate and I have some conversation, but really it ends up being the conversation that you had with the person next to you or like the thing that you talked to Jen about while you're waiting for your entree." And there's now all these connections and business deals happening that were totally not part of her plan just as a result of bringing together, you know, smart people from, in this case, around Brisbane to have lunch together. And I was like, that's...I just feel like in the world that we're in where everything's digital and scalable and fast-paced and AI and blah, blah, blah. It's like, or what if you just once a month had lunch with fifteen to twenty people that were really smart?

Jen: I love that so much. That reminds me of a friend of mine who used to live in New York, who had this amazing like farmhouse in Brooklyn. How does a person have a farmhouse in Brooklyn? In any case, it had a really big dining room and she would host these dinners where she would invite four people and each of the four people she invited had to bring a plus one who she had never met before.

Pete: Love it.

Jen: So every time she had a dinner party, she made four new friends and then we would all, you know, meet each other. And the conversation was so varied and rich because you've got all these people coming together who have something in common, but not necessarily someone in common, maybe coming from different backgrounds. It was just such a great event and everyone should copy that because it was so fun.

Pete: Yeah. So again, I know this isn't groundbreaking. I know this is probably obvious for all our listeners, but I'm just...I'm caught up in the energy and excitement and the imposter syndrome of meeting really smart people from around the world in other industries. And I'm going to be continually, I'm sure, surprised and impressed and energized by the fact that no matter who has a challenge or what challenge that looks like, it's useful to bounce it around with these people, regardless of whether you know them like your next door neighbor or whether you are in the same industry of them. Sharing a challenge and having people share their perspectives on the challenge is just invaluable.

Jen: So good. And that is The Long and The Short of It.