Joe Miller: 0:00

Hey, welcome everyone. I just wanted to jump on in here and bring Bob Tipton on. As you might know, if you've been following the channel for a while, Bob was my first Titans guest. Actually, we recorded around this time, maybe a little earlier, five years ago. He's been a supporter of the channel and has a unique, I think, sensitivity beyond the technology space and experience way beyond that. So, Bob, I saw, I think I got an email from you about a month ago inviting me to a new webinar you had, and the title really hooked me. It really dealt with kind of what we're all experiencing right now. Give us the background and let us know what compelled you to come up with this new content.

Bob Tipton: 0:53

Yeah, thanks, Joe. It's good to be with you again. We have known each other a lot longer than I think either one of us want to admit, but I know I had certainly a lot less gray hair back then. So yeah, the title of the webinar is Navigating Times of Radical Change. And for whatever reason, it seems to be that my life is just filled with opportunities to navigate times of radical change, go all the way back to being the middle child in a dysfunctional family. That's kind of how I got in navigating all this. And then through the years as a professional, There's been a whole lot of things that have happened, a lot of things in my personal life. As I've gotten older, I've gotten, I think, a little bit more patient, a little bit more observant. I've developed a better set of skills. What I'm seeing right now is just there's such a degree of suffering that's happening with people. They're so reactive in the world right now to whatever it is. Some people get just absolutely addicted to following every single shred of information about some particular thing. And they can have their emotions swing wildly from one day to the next, depending upon what the latest thing that they just heard. You know, from a biological perspective, if we live our lives adrenalized, first of all, our lives are shorter. They're a whole lot less fun. And we're not given much beyond the fight, fight or freeze options that adrenaline provides for us, which isn't really great for making good executive type decisions. If you're spending all your time worrying and being activated by things. So I decided, because I've been looking around and I've been dealing with a lot of things, we talk about some of that if it comes up, but I've been dealing with a lot of things myself over the last year. I just decided, let's get some tools out there to help people be able to navigate things more effectively. It doesn't necessarily make things easier, but It doesn't make things go away, but the way that we approach our response and activities to what's happening, we're in control of that.

Joe Miller: 2:59

Yeah, I think as we get into this content more and discuss it and just let everyone know, I will put links in the show notes so that you can jump on the webinar, which is a complete unpacking of these tools that Bob has provided. What we're going to do is have a series of several episodes where we'll take maybe one or two primary principles, tools, and Bob will unpack it for us, and we'll just interact. But what comes to mind to me, Bob, you and I, before the call, we did a little preliminary and talked about kind of the echo chambers of all the information. And by the way, this is not... As you stressed with me, this is... It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on or whatever spectrum you're on. It's how to evaluate all this massive amount of input. We get more and more of it. It's accelerating information and what's real, what's nonsense. How do we get out of just being overwhelmed by the information that's hitting us and evaluate it? So I think You know, I completely resonate with that. Sometimes last week, I took a little personal retreat because I just had to step back and do some planning ahead. But I realized how addicted I've become, even though I'm aware that it's easy to become addicted to these devices, right? These tablets and phones and the constant barrage of messaging. And we barely have time to even engage our prefrontal cortex in evaluating them. So really resonate with that. Yeah, take us through some of this, Bob.

Bob Tipton: 4:48

Yeah, so the term you use, echo chamber, really disempowering. It's also very seductive. You know, one of the things years ago in my career, I found out myself running a marketing organization, which is not my formal training, but it was a very sophisticated company. And I don't need to hear the whole story, but I wound up running a group that was responsible for influencing the way that people thought about things, the way that they would buy things, their habits. And I learned the inside scoop about how they actually do that. And it was terrifying, to be honest with you, because it preys on our fears. It preys on things that we are susceptible to. And about 20% of the population is highly influenceable, as I discovered working with them back then. So they're the ones you go after first. You try to get them to do things and then create momentum around that. And the echo chamber is something that's done intentionally. It's important to realize that it's not something that happens by accident. It is something that is scripted. And there are rules and goals and measures and tools that are being applied, whatever it might be. So, you know, we all feel like we're a victim of algorithms on our devices. We are if we let ourselves be. And part of the process of getting out of the echo chamber is acknowledging the fact that you're in one. So without that, you just fall prey to it. You find yourself receiving content that reinforces the messages that they want you to pay attention to. Go all the way back to probably 20 years ago, the movie Minority Report. Precogs. Oh, yeah, the precogs. It's like we have the pre-crime division, and it's this whole idea about predicting things. Well, that's the basis of the story. But if you remember walking along, it had this recognition capability where all the content was being customized and tailored as we went from place to place to place. And you actually had to change your retinas to be able to get the messages to have something else. So that's a pretty extreme example of changing the way you look at things. One of the perspectives that I offer in this idea is stand back, even for 10 minutes, and just ask yourself, what do you continually see? What messages are continuing to show up? And what behaviors have you embodied in order for that to be the case? So for me, I like to confuse the algorithm and I do things that are unpredictable and confusing. So I will look at things that I have absolutely no interest in. I will look at both sides of whatever the question is pretty deeply. I will examine a variety of different viewpoints and then let the algorithm try to figure out who the heck this Bob Tipton guy is.

Joe Miller: 7:38

What do I serve him next?

Bob Tipton: 7:40

Yeah, it's like, I don't know who this person is, but they don't fit our profile. Cool. Also, one of the other things that I found, I read a book years ago called Stopping, Even When You Have to Keep Going. And it's this idea of taking some time in between things to be able to reset, refresh, to give yourself space, actual energy to do something. I have a training now. It's called why energy management is a new time management. It's this whole idea of it doesn't matter how much time we apply to something. It's the quality of the energy that we bring. So that book was talking about scheduling 50-minute meetings instead of 60-minute meetings, turning the radio off in your car. So, Joe, it's this idea of separating intentionally from the barrage. Give yourself room. Get out of it for a bit. Stand back and look. And if you still want to engage in social media, because it's great. In some ways, it's fantastic. But don't be predictable. So jam it up

Joe Miller: 8:41

by not being predictable. I guess, and then maybe one of the underlying things here to discuss is that first you need to have awareness of what's going on here. It's that old analogy of being a fish in the ocean and being unaware that you're swimming in an ocean.

Bob Tipton: 8:58

Yes.

Joe Miller: 8:59

So that's part of it. I think maybe that's part of what you're trying to accomplish with the webinar as well as give people tools. You have to start with that awareness, right?

Bob Tipton: 9:08

Yeah, well, there's three levels of awareness when you talk about what you're describing, Joe. And training helps, experience helps, intentionality helps. But the first level of awareness is after the fact. So I just did what I always do. It's like, darn, I just did what I always did. I just wasted 90 minutes stuck on looking at cat videos. That's first level of awareness. Second level of awareness is you're in the middle of doing what you normally do. And the realization pops into your head to say that I'm suffering due to some catastrophe. I'm being activated by a message that I'm receiving. Second level awareness is great. You choose to do something, okay, if you don't, but you still made a choice in the middle of it. The third level of awareness is you prepare yourself in advance. So before you sit down with, I don't know, Facebook or Instagram or whatever your favorite social media channel is, or before you start looking at news, and I'm not even sure how to define that term anymore. When you're looking at something, prepare yourself in advance. I choose not to be activated by the message I'm receiving. That takes some time. It takes some intentionality. So when we think about navigating times of radical change, the first thing to do is, are you awake? And what I mean by that is, are you aware to what's happening? Your example of you're swimming inside of an ocean. As a fish, you don't feel the water, but that's where you are. So A, Are you aware of what's happening to you? And without some form of intentionality, we just stay in the echo chamber. It just continues to reinforce. The other thing, Joe, is this conditioning or bias. This idea, I don't know, I go all the way back to driver's ed, and that was a long time ago, but I go back to driver's ed and My driver's ed teacher said, you know, we naturally drive in the direction that we're looking in. And that's what we do when we're driving a car. We have our hands on a steering wheel. It's a great metaphor. Well, there was a time when I was in Scotland driving on the other side of the road for the first time. And we're on a small road, a little B road in the middle of no place. A car got very close to me. I got very close to their car. Well, their instinct was to turn the wheel to the left to get off the road. My instinct was to turn the wheel to the right. And what happened was we almost hit each other. I went the direction they didn't expect me to go in, and they went in the direction I didn't expect them to go in. But I was conditioned to turn that way. So this idea of, again, without some form of intentionality, we find ourselves. So here's, I have a series of five questions. Maybe we can dig into the first one here. When we find ourselves navigating times of radical change, this awareness, have this pop into your head when you're looking at something. Is it real? It seems like a really obvious question, except that how many things that are happening right now in the world that are just pure theater? They're no t real.

Joe Miller: 12:10

Mm-hmm.

Bob Tipton: 12:11

It's somebody somewhere putting a message out there that's trying to get a response. And if it doesn't, if it's not real, it isn't real. So examples of that would be, I don't know. Again, this is not political. You pick whatever political ad you ever want to see. Anyone. I don't care which one it is. It's going to suck no matter who gets elected. That's the basis of political advertising. It's going to be horrible whoever gets elected. Is that true?

Joe Miller: 12:37

Back to your earlier comment. Those things are targeted to get a response. I call it the lizard brain response, right? And to get all those hormones flowing, to get that kind of intense response. Yes.

Bob Tipton: 12:55

Yeah, so they hook you with something. They'll give you a headline or they'll give you a soundbite. And if you're in your echo chamber and you're not aware of what's happening, you're getting the fish swimming in the water, you'll react to it. And that's what they're counting on. is for you to react to it. So one of the most important things in times of radical change, so let's use an example of, I don't know, massive organizational shift. There's something that's potentially going to come and somebody talks about it as if it has happened or it's going to happen. Is it real? It hasn't happened yet. It may never happen. And as a result, all the time and energy we spend worrying about it is wasted creativity. So I call that taken to an extreme. We do that type of thing. It's called suffering in advance, Joe. We suffer in advance. We give away our power. We give away our agency and all of our ability to advocate for ourselves, and we give it to some other source. And at that point, we are quote-unquote powerless to the echo chamber. Taken to an extreme, beyond the suffering in advance, we can call it premeditated bitterness. We're already pissed off about something that hasn't even

Joe Miller: 14:06

happened yet. Just... Maybe think of this, Bob, let's see what you think of this, or maybe for this, that research has been done that shows that just processing in our minds what we think is happening produces all the same emotive responses, all the same chemicals, whether it's actually happened or not. I know there's just been research like that.

Bob Tipton: 14:28

Big time. That's what elite athletes use. It's this idea of virtualization. Right. Or people that believe in, I don't know, manifestation. It's this idea of if you create it in your mind, your mind can't tell the difference between the truth and a story that's repeated regularly. Right.

Joe Miller: 14:48

Well, we know that. And we should be suspicious when we hear the same things over and over again, because, you know, I think about the, I think I mentioned this to you before this call, it reminded me of the Star Wars scene with Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, These are not the droids you're looking for, that mind control technique that a Jedi could do that we think, oh, that's kind of interesting. But, you know, some of that actually happens. And as it's conditioning, it's implanting those thoughts and beliefs are built upon that over time. And so then it becomes the framework. We talk about biases, but it becomes the paradigms or the framework that we see all incoming data from. evaluate against and then we tend to amplify we tend to look for things that correlate or agree with what those rules of how we're looking at the world and it built

Bob Tipton: 15:44

yeah conversely we just simply eliminate anything that doesn't the same

Joe Miller: 15:48

thing yep and actually you know that paradigm research uh Kuhn, I think, wrote a book about scientists in the laboratory. They had a hypothesis they were looking to prove, and they got dated, did not agree with their paradigm, and it got discarded. Almost at a subconscious, I think at a subconscious level. It wasn't like, oh, this doesn't agree. It doesn't fit what I want. I'm going to throw it out. It's like, it just doesn't even appear, which seems a little bit spooky. But it happens.

Bob Tipton: 16:26

It can be deadly.

Joe Miller: 16:27

It can be really deadly, right? The stakes can be really high.

Bob Tipton: 16:32

Yes. I found myself a few years ago invited to speak at the CIA headquarters of all places. And I was there to talk about bias. And the people I was talking to were the analysts that create the president's briefing on a day-to-day basis. And in their world, bias is deadly. If you choose to rule in something because of conditioning or rule something out because of conditioning, it can turn out to be very bad for someone somewhere. So this idea, they were data scientists, and how do you keep bias out of data? So a lot of it is unconscious. A lot of it has to do with years and years and years of conditioning. When you see something, you react to it. So this is all in the category of, is it Even real.

Joe Miller: 17:20

Real.

Bob Tipton: 17:20

So, so much of what's happened in the last several years, we can just go back to five or six years in our world, there have been so many things that have been put forward as if they are true and they wind up not to be upon further examination. Or they're nuanced in terms of what truth is. I worry about statistics. This is another area that I am concerned about with how people present data. I will present statistics that show my perspective in the most positive light. I will limit the window that the data is actually available in, in order to make my point. And then, I don't know if you've seen it though, all the information that correlation is not causation or causation is not correlation. Yeah. Silly charts with the number of, you know, fatal spider bites compared to the number of Big Macs consumed in Northern California. Oh yeah. I'm making it up.

Joe Miller: 18:13

Well, it, It could be done. There was a textbook in college called How to Lie with Statistics, which kind of complements what you're saying. How things are presented, how things are framed. And if you don't really understand data analysis and statistics, it's even easier to... being manipulated. I'll just use that harsh word, but that's what it is. And this is one of the things, you know, having spent three plus decades in the pharmaceutical industry, there's a lot of scrutiny on clinical trials to make sure that products that are developed are safe and actually work, have efficacy. But there are things that are common misperceptions like A doctor may say to you, I may get myself in trouble for this, but they say, oh, you need to be on a statin. And we'll quote percentage of risk reduction. And actually, the percentage that is being quoted is relative, not real risk or actual risk reduction. So you get an amplified sense of benefit because that's the way the study presented the data. You know, clinicians that are deep into a particular therapeutic area, they understand this. Things get repeated without the needed context. And maybe context is an important piece here too.

Bob Tipton: 19:43

Well, yeah. And one of the most important contexts for all this kind of gets into the second question about navigating times of radical change is, does it belong to me? You know, maybe it's real, but I have no role to play in it. I have no, it's not going to impact me in any way, shape or form. It, not my backpack to pick up and carry around. And that's another one of the things that happens in these forms of manipulation, if you want to say it, is it creates the false sense that we're somehow included or we're somehow responsible or our participation is necessary. It's amazing how many people are so willing to pick up something that doesn't even belong to them. So when we're consuming news or we're consuming messages associated with things, Yeah, maybe we discern through whatever means we use to say, yeah, this is something that is real or likely to occur. But I have no role personally in dealing with any of it.

Joe Miller: 20:40

Yeah. Well, so you have no role. You have no ability. So kind of differentiate those things. It's not in your circle of concern or it's not in a place where you could utilize any personal agency to have an impact. Unpack that.

Bob Tipton: 21:00

Correct. Yeah, so the difference between the two is important. Well, I worry about a lot of things personally. I've got a lot of concerns about what happened to certain populations. And I'm interested in what's happening to certain populations. That doesn't mean every single circumstance that I run across, I should feel a sense of personal obligation to do something about. That's just not possible. Instead, I can maintain my sense of empathy and compassion and interest, circle of concern, as you said, but my circle of action is much smaller. So what I'm suggesting that we do, if it belongs to us, then we're able to do something about it. And that kind of leads to the third question. The two are highly correlated. So if it's something that is a radical change, it's real, and I have some actions that is mine that i choose to take or or need to take the next question has to do with what do i do now especially when it's something of a radical change nature it's immediate it's significant you have something that's necessary for you to do and this is where one of my favorite books of all time it's called deep survival it was written by a guy named lawrence gonzalez who I don't remember which Chicago paper he wrote for, but he was a journalist and he researched accidents, boating accidents, plane crashes, people being stranded on desert islands, all those kinds of situations that truly are life and death. The subtitle of his book is Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why? And what his research showed, and I encourage you to read the book because I'm giving you the Cliff Notes version here, but his research showed a couple of maybe surprising things. One, those that made it weren't necessarily of any particular age. So being experienced didn't really matter. And secondly, your training when it comes to survival was helpful, but it wasn't the most important thing that correlated to whether you would make it or not. The most important thing that correlated to whether you made it, there's actually two parts to it. I honestly don't remember now which was first and which one second. I just remember there's two of them. One was you adapted immediately to your new circumstances. So let's say you lost your job. Well, I tell you what you do when you lose your job is you adapt to your new circumstances. There are things that have to be taken care of immediately. Things like health care and unemployment, if that's an option, or job search, whatever it might be. It's every minute you spend wishing the circumstance was different is a minute lost when it comes to being able to be adapting to your current reality. So this idea of being in an avalanche, let's say, in the mountains, the first thing you need is air. Everything else comes second to that. So you find things to help you be able to survive. I need food, I need shelter, I need water. I need to be able to physically be safe. Well, the same thing's true in the world of some radical change. In fact, and then the second thing that correlated in his book, in his research, whether we made it or not, is the belief that you're going to make it. So this idea of having confidence or a positive attitude about it or belief in yourself. So this idea of adapting quickly, in fact, one of the other surprising things about the book is People that were rescued, many of them had adapted so fully to their new circumstances, the rescue was seen as it was disruptive. So those that made it for weeks or months in a very difficult circumstance, when they were rescued, it was like it was disruptive. They weren't ready to go back to their other life because they'd have adapted so fully. So anyway, there's this list of things, this stuff that's necessary to do now, capital N. And what I find when people are in the midst of some radical change is there's a whole lot of looking over the next hill, to use the metaphor, if you get lost in the woods. You just keep walking and you hope that someone's going to come and rescue you. Well, maybe they will. But in the meantime, there are things that need to be done.

Joe Miller: 25:20

Yeah, I think I could be wrong, but to me, it might go back to our discussion about the flight or fight response and sense of panic or anxiety takes over so that people stop thinking. I envision an impending plane crash and the panic, right? And trying to instill some training up front you know, at pre-flag training, things we should do, you know, in the event of an emergency like that, I think is intended to get us out of that and getting in to do the next right thing in terms of our safety and surviving. So I resonate with that. And as I think about it and think about just the state of the affairs where we jumped off on this discussion, a lot of people I know seem to be in this really heavy angst about the situation, talking about it a lot from their perspectives. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle they are, but not really doing much. You know what I'm saying? Because maybe there's nothing they can really do. So they know it's important. All their juices are up and they're just in a high state of anxiety. And so having practical tools, I think, is really useful. So, yeah, so this is great.

Bob Tipton: 26:52

Yeah, I mean, back to your aircraft, airplane crash example. That's one of the primary areas where flight attendants are trained. They're trained that there's 90 seconds to get everyone out of a plane. So it's not, do I care about you as an individual? Am I worried about what you're trying to take with you? There's a whole list of things that they're trained to just simply insist upon and it is you're right it's to break through that adrenalized state of panic and fear so that we're able to survive the plane crash we need to get out of the plane and that's an example of what i'm talking about here there's a certain short period of time where we need to be able to do something and that's being aware of where we are being aware of our circumstances and being able to quell the panic and the fear enough that we're able to make some immediately good choices. And then once that's done, then there's questions four and five in this idea of what's next. So yes, it's real. Yes, I have a role to play in it. And again, as you're talking about people just simply being in a state of fear all the time, take a deep breath. Let's just use that. Sit quietly with your dog or your cat. Take a walk. Get yourself out of the cycling of the energy through some form of intentionality. That'll be helpful. We'll just put that out there. Sometimes a deep breath is incredibly helpful. So after we've done what's necessary immediately, so I built a lean-to, I found some firewood, something, whatever is necessary, then you start planning. And this is where you have a short-term plan. And the short-term plan consists of a very short runway. What do I need to do in the next hour? What do I need to do in the next day? What is necessary for me able to navigate what's happening? So I'll give you an example from my personal life. My wife passed away about 13 months ago. We were married 45 years, Joe. We were in a relationship for 50 years. She was my person. I was her person. It was tragic. It was immediate. It was completely unexpected. And there's a lot of adrenalization. There was a lot of sitting and wondering and worrying, but not for long. There were things I needed to take care of, like how to make decisions about the right thing to do with her life support. I needed to make decisions about what to do when it came to next steps for her body and et cetera. There's a short-term plan for And if we're by ourselves, that's one thing. But if we have people around us to be able to support us in this planning exercise, I'll tell you, one of the things I've learned over and over and over in my life is that people are good. People care. They can be clumsy. They can be awkward. They cannot know the right thing to say or how to say it. Awesome. But they care and they want to do something. So when we find ourselves in this circumstance and someone's offering assistance, say yes. None of this, well, no, I'm okay. I'll fight my way through it. It's like I found myself, Joe, when people said, I'm going to do this for you. It's like, please, thank you. The worst question is, what can I do for you? I have no freaking idea. Right.

Joe Miller: 30:21

Again, you're in the middle of that swamp of tragedy and crisis. And your reflective thought is, I should know what to do because I've built a career and a life out of personal agency. I've been successful at that as a leader. Now I've just been sideswiped by this thing. It can be hard to accept help. So there's real wisdom in knowing to do that. when you need it, and having the awareness to recognize your own state and why you need it.

Bob Tipton: 31:03

Most definitely. It requires a level of, well, I'll just use a physics example, reciprocal energy. Giving energy and receiving energy is the same energy. I need to receive your energy because you need to give your energy. If I don't allow you to give your energy, I'm stunting your ability to do something. So I can get a lot more into that subject than we have time for today. The idea, people are good, Joe. People want to help. They may not know what to do or they may not know what to say, but they are there. Part of our realization, again, getting out of this conditioning, you know, especially men of a certain age, all right, I'll just categorize us. Men of a certain age, we were raised to be able to have answers to whatever. I found I was very ill-equipped and there were people in my life that had wisdom and experience and knowledge and empathy. And if I disallowed their ability to help me make a plan in a time of a radical change, I'd still be navigating it. So that's question four. What's my plan? So it's real. I have a role in it. I have taken care of my immediate things. What do I have to do now? Now what's my plan? So that depends on the circumstance, obviously, but getting some concrete actions in place is a good thing. So that kind of leads us up to question number five in this whole process. Question number five is how do I get started? You can have a great plan and still be paralyzed. You can still be worried about how it might appear. You can worry about it being looking clumsy or somehow being judged or ridiculed for what you do. The list of what do I do first or what do I do now sometimes is predicated by what's in your plan. But one of the most important things to do, to do first, imagine someone who just dug a big hole and they're holding onto the shovel. And they're looking around saying, what should I do first? It's like, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging it. It seems really obvious to say that. But this idea of getting yourself out of the self-defeating, the conditioned responses, sometimes that's the very first thing to do is to try something you normally have not.

Joe Miller: 33:24

That's interesting. I'm going to get back to accepting help from others. And I'm sure you've You've got something in this space. But again, this idea of awareness and knowing that you're in, you're digging yourself in a hole. Having someone close to you that you trust to sort of help you see a broader perspective of the situation you're in, that you trust their perspective, can be really helpful here.

Bob Tipton: 33:53

Well, you're absolutely right. And the thing I worry about sometimes, I'll just use another personal example. A week or two after Debbie passed away, I was getting something from one of her friends' house who also lost her spouse and had been remarried for a while. And one of the first things she told me was, Bob, you're never going to be the same. And I thought, you know, some abstract sort of way I kind of knew that, but it was such an ill-timed message. Sometimes it's important, Joe, to know that Even people that you care about that might have something important to say to you, they can be speaking from their own conditioning, from their own patterns, from their own belief system or where they are in their own journey. So this idea of curating is probably the word that I would describe. Curating the sources of information, comfort, support, whatever it might be, as much as you're able to. Be clear about who and where and why you're receiving information. This was completely out of left field. It took me completely by surprise and it really wasn't helpful. So rather than ruminating on it and thinking, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be the same and life sucks and it's always going to suck. It's like, I have to set that aside. So what I did is I walked away as I just simply put that in a box to be open later. So maybe that's the first course of action. is to take something and put it in the box to be open later or never. Now I understand what she was saying. I get it.

Joe Miller: 35:28

Yeah. Wow. Well, thanks for sharing that. Of course, I've known it, but being that transparent, this is real world stuff. I'm just curious, these steps, these different levels that you've shared, is there examples or a way you could describe them? Kind of just... More generally, maybe not so acute of the situation you've gone through, but let's say you're a leader in an organization and your team that you're responsible for is in a lot of turmoil because of messaging either internally to the company, whatever the case may be, or externally in the world, or it's, you know, we have tariffs, we have this, we have that, and they're trying to navigate all this and they're struggling. How could some of these things be applied? in sort of that real world type situation.

Bob Tipton: 36:19

Yeah, so when we translate this into leadership, there's two dimensions to that that's important, Joe. You know, I've been through a lot of organizational upheaval. I've been through mergers, acquisitions. I've been laid off twice personally. I was in a circumstance where I laid off lots and lots of other people. There's a real world component to this for sure. And leaders have a special responsibility when it comes to navigating times of radical change. I think first, it's a matter of saying, do I want to be part of this radical change personally or not? That is the first question. So another example from my life, I was offered a really great job when I was very young. It meant moving to another city. And all I had to do was lie about a merger and acquisition issue that was about to face my staff. That's all I had to do, which is to train myself. I said, no, this is not for me. So there's an opt out. option as well, I think is important for people to navigate. The second, I guess that's the first thing. And then there's two other things. The two other things are know that you're going to be going through this personally as you're leading people through it themselves. There's a level of authenticity that people can see right through if you're just being the Apollo cheerleader, you know, just stiff upper lip to use to my British upbringing. This idea that we just need to marshal our energy and we'll get through it and so on. You're probably denying your own process and you're not helping other people authentically process through things themselves either. So first, you need to realize that you're in the midst of it yourself. If there are significant issues that are happening and how to be able to not separate completely, but there's a level of compartmentalization that's important and authenticity as a leader that's necessary. So here's a specific example, Joe, when you're talking to your staff about something. Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know how this will affect me personally. I'm concerned about some things too. I get it. And what I do have control over, Joe, at this point as a leader and you do as staff, you have control over how you feel about all of this. I have control about how I feel about this. So what I'm going to do at this point is be transparent as much as possible. I'll tell you what I can tell you. I'll talk about what I can talk about. And I'll tell you what I can't talk about. And you're going to need to trust me about that.

Joe Miller: 38:45

I tell you what I can do and what I can't do.

Bob Tipton: 38:49

Yes. What do I have control over? I have control over my attitude. Right. You know, when people are afraid of job loss, oh my gosh, the worst thing to do is go hide. Because the people that are good at discovering who should go, that's who you look for first, the people that are hiding. The best thing to do if you're afraid of job loss, and this comes to the other side of things, make yourself indispensable. Continue focusing on great work. Ladies and gentlemen, in my department that I'm leading here, no, we're not in control of all this other stuff that's happening. But we're still in control of doing great work. So I'm going to go down swinging if I go down. I'm going to go down doing great things to support the organization. Or I'm going to opt out. It's not this worry and wringing my hands and gnashing my teeth and accelerating all the activation of people's adrenaline and the fight, flight, or freeze. I'm not going to be part of that as a leader. Either I'm in or I'm not in. And for leaders, that can be a really hard choice because we're suffering with fear and anxiety and the unknown because we're human. And here's one of the weird things that happens in leadership. It's happened over and over and over again. When times are tough, And by the way, this is a natural process. That's something I wanted to share today also. Nature has a regular process of order, disorder, reorder. It happens every year with deciduous trees when they lose their leaves. And guess what? The tree is not worrying about whether it's going to lose its leaves. It's not worrying during the winter whether it's going to come back or not. And it's not worrying when the leaves start showing up again that they're going to eventually fall off. It's just a natural process. Or the caterpillar who goes from a caterpillar into a cocoon and then turns into a moth or a butterfly. There's no worry. The in-between state for a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly, it doesn't look like either one. Great example. Completely liquefied. It's a little bit like if you walked into the middle of an operating room during surgery, you think murder happened. Yeah. It doesn't look like it did and it doesn't look like it will. It's this in-between state. So order, disorder, reorder is natural. The problem is that we don't allow ourselves to see that. We're probably the only species on this planet that actually worries about it. Dogs don't worry about it. They just miss you, and then you come home, and then they're excited. So this idea of leaders being able to help staff recognize that disorder is sometimes part of the natural process. And holding on to things the way they were, that's not natural. You know, we can get into real philosophical conversation at some point about this idea of impermanence, but nothing's designed to last.

Joe Miller: 41:46

As you were talking about that situation, that leadership situation, since I am a coach, I wanted to say an empathetic leader should be coaching their staff on how to look at things. and clarifying what's real and what's not real, being transparent about their capabilities to help them through the process, what their limitations are. I've often coached people who have been interested in furthering their career, typically technology leaders, but others as well. And one of the common things that happens is they get into a state of angst because they don't feel like they're moving forward. They feel like they can't do anything about it. And sometimes, whether it's their fault or external factors, they're in a situation where success probably, there's not a lot upside for them there. Yet, they still feel like there should be. And You can offer suggestions on how you can do the things that help you stand out, all the typical things, manage your relationship with your boss. But underlying all of it, they are disempowered in a state of angst and almost panic, and they don't know what to do. And I have actually said to people before, you have a choice. You can stay and change your mindset, or you can leave, or you can work. Maybe there's a third choice, or you can change your behaviors to stand out, but you may still end up feeling the same way. That's reality. So there's the world you want, and then there's the world that really is. And so, yeah, awareness first, but I just thought as you were going through that and unpacking that situation with your material that coaching people through these thought processes could be extremely helpful. A coaching program, Bob. You probably already have it designed.

Bob Tipton: 43:45

Yeah, maybe this goes back to my Quaker background. I don't know. My family goes way back to the Quakers. And one of the things they have is a clearness committee. And a clearness committee is not a place to go get advice. You don't go there to be told anything. What you do is you go there and they ask you a lot of questions. And it's the idea for you to be able to get clear about the direction that you're in and why. So back to what you're saying, Joe. We always have a choice, even if it's down to how I feel about it. Maybe I have to stay in the circumstance for a period of time, but I can decide how I feel about that. No one is in control of my feelings except me. And that's, again, getting out of the echo chamber when people are trying to make you feel a certain way. But opt out, that's a powerful thing when people are in the midst of something that's very, very challenging to deal with. This, again, is a pretty deep philosophical question. topic, but there's this idea of opting out is not failing.

Joe Miller: 44:46

Stop digging. I can argue that it's probably the best choice in certain circumstances, like the example you gave, but many others.

Bob Tipton: 44:58

Often, it's the best choice when you're being asked to do something that is immoral or unethical or illegal, something that violates your personal set of values. Whenever you do that, You don't get it back. What happens when you cross the line is you betray a little bit of yourself. So when I'm coaching people, Joe, that's the question I ask them. Are you betraying yourself in some form or fashion by remaining in the circumstances you're in or potentially staying in the same thought process that you're staying in? And if the answer to that is yes, it's like, that's a pretty clear indication to me that opting out is a good idea. Alternatively, maybe you're making it all up. The circumstance isn't even real and it doesn't belong to you. And you're just, you're putting all this bias and all this conditioning on top of somebody that doesn't deserve it. I find that a lot in mergers and acquisition work and reorganizations is people have a feeling in general that that radical type of change is just going to be bad. comes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So it's like somebody reached out to me. They're applying for a job in a place where I have some relationships and some knowledge. I gave them a tip. Take a look at this organization's values and connect your resume and your interview to their values. It'll make a big difference for you. It's like, well, that's a good idea. Pretty basic, actually. Yeah. It's something that maybe we should do every day when we show up at work is to say, how can I help push the mission of the organization forward? So all that's kind of in the category, Joe, of what to do as a leader. There's a lot more. You know, the third part of my webinar gets into some really specific ideas associated with that. And I know we've got more sessions together. So I'm going to save some of the feel for them. But that's kind of what.

Joe Miller: 46:57

You've held that webinar a couple times so far.

Bob Tipton: 47:01

Yeah. Yeah. It's relatively new. Yeah.

Joe Miller: 47:04

And do you open up for questions at the back end of it? I'm just kind of curious of the type of questions that have come up, if you can recall.

Bob Tipton: 47:13

Well, one of the questions is, so I work in an organization where our common theme is, well, that's just the way we do things around here. That's just the way it is. I'm going to wait this out the way I've waited everything else out. It's in this idea of learned helplessness is the category I put that into. And It's back to what's your level of concern, your circle of concern versus your circle of action. You know, if you're in a high level of leadership inside of an organization, maybe you can start talking about psychological safety and start talking about empathy and being able to have more effective leadership and more connection to your values. But if you're kind of a foot soldier inside the organization, again, why are you continuing to stay? The answer, again, it's a little bit of a broken record. The answer to that is, what are you doing? So you can steer from the inside of an organization. You can decide that I'm going to behave differently. You may be ridiculed for it. You may be reprimanded for it. You may be retaliated against. But you're doing what you can do.

Joe Miller: 48:15

Going back to sort of evolutionary biology, we've touched on a little bit already with the lizard brain and the flight or fight response. We also... want to seek comfort. And it's sort of the other side of flight or flight or flight. And I find that often people draw the circle of, you said action, influence action, very tight, very small. And so they amplify their helplessness in a situation beyond what the reality is. And rather than even take some initial steps of personal agency, They just sit and wallow in it. Now, I'm saying all these things like it's never been done by me. I have done this. Believe me.

Bob Tipton: 49:03

Sure.

Joe Miller: 49:04

That's how I recognize it so well. But that's so common. And even very highly compensated leaders can get into this sort of thought process and feel like, you know, I hear a lot of whining, I want a seat at the table. I want people to listen to what I have to say. You know, it's just like, okay, I get it. I mean, there's some reality that that might be a challenge. But what good is this doing, you know? And I've heard it said before, and for some reason, the writer, it slips my mind right now. But anyway, when these things come up, he has said before, you're stalling, right? Possibly.

Bob Tipton: 49:44

It's

Joe Miller: 49:46

like a defense mechanism or you're rationalizing things. to support the fact that you haven't taken any action. You're stalling. I love that word, that terminology, because in some ways it's true. It's like, you kind of know this already, but you don't want to go there.

Bob Tipton: 50:03

Yeah, it's possible. You know, there's certain personality types that like to do more processing. They like to be able to think about things longer and they don't make immediate decisions, but that's not everybody. It's back to the third question that I have. What do I need to do now?

Joe Miller: 50:18

Mm-hmm.

Bob Tipton: 50:18

And then into fourth, what's my plan? But yeah, this idea of learned helplessness, it's like the Geico alligator in the commercial. I can't reach the check in the middle of the table because my arms are too short. It's an idea that I'm not worthy or it's not my responsibility at some level of deflection. You know, you can spend years in therapy and still not get past that. The idea of agency, as you've used the word several times in our conversation, is a word that I don't think many people really spend much time thinking about. That is another thing that leaders, I think, in today's world, I think it's really important. It may be necessary, it may be vital. It's this idea of being able to have people... authentically feel that their voice matters. You know, how many people in your life, Joe, count them for me. How many people in your life can you ever remember saying, looking at you in the eye and they say, I believe in you? I think my mother

Joe Miller: 51:15

used to say that occasionally, but not a lot. I mean, definitely in the minority.

Bob Tipton: 51:22

Very small. Very small. So that's one of my intentions. I have two granddaughters that live with me and every day before they go to school or whatever the day is, I said, guess who believes in you? And they say, that guy. Ah,

Joe Miller: 51:36

I love it. That guy.

Bob Tipton: 51:38

It's the whole idea of reminding people of their worth and their value and their power and the contribution they make. not in an inauthentic way to use the double negative. This is something that is true. You need to feel it yourself. Yeah, that's been a journey for me over the last year is to try to figure out who the heck I am. Yeah. Debbie's husband. Well, guess what, Joe? I have value.

Joe Miller: 52:06

I'm going to share a little bit of a story here because thinking of Debbie in one of our podcast episodes together, you were talking about how you were setting up your own office. Remember this story? A

Bob Tipton: 52:18

great story.

Joe Miller: 52:19

Wow. I mean, and how you had all your accomplishments and all your certificates and all your awards and everything in your office. And you went up to talk to Debbie about something, and she was an artist, right? She was in her studio. And when you went into her office, you saw a big difference. On her wall was the pictures of the family, right? Am I remembering this right? And then you immediately went back down to your office and tore this stuff down.

Bob Tipton: 52:50

Yeah, it was such a moment of clarity, such a moment of openness about what we value.

Joe Miller: 52:57

So it was modeled by her.

Bob Tipton: 53:00

Oh my gosh. For

Joe Miller: 53:00

you. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is, and I think you were kind of underscoring this, the importance, not just for leaders, but all humans, is to encourage one another to to see the value in themselves by truthfully speaking, when you see that value in them.

Bob Tipton: 53:18

It's like yesterday, I was with a project team of about 25 people that are working on a large, complex capital project down in Atlanta. They took risks. They showed strong psychological safety. They said things to each other that needed to be said. They really did a nice job in the workshop. And at the end of the workshop, I just looked around and said, I think you're freaking awesome. congratulate yourselves for the hard work that you did and the risks and the vulnerability you showed, because that's not normal. What people tend to do in these types of settings is they hold back and they position and they posture, they politic, they look for an opening, and then they rush in to try to get some leverage. And you didn't do any of that. Instead, you decided, let's focus on what's right, not who's right. It was remarkable, Joe. It was great.

Joe Miller: 54:06

Yeah, just a final thought here. And I've been doing a lot of study recently on spiritual formation. And the author of the book I'm reading, Dallas Willard, talks about everyone is being formed all the time. And it really correlates to what we're saying about the conditioning, right? The question is, what's the input, right?

Bob Tipton: 54:26

Right.

Joe Miller: 54:27

And so one thing that we all, everyone can do is what you just touched on. And that is speak truth and encourage each other and be part of the positive conditioning. It's got to be real. It's got to be truthful. Because if it isn't, you'd have no credibility when you really need to speak truth. So it has to be real. But having that real empathetic but also truthful affirmation going on is a really important thing for everyone. And I think in particular leaders, but for everyone.

Bob Tipton: 55:04

Yes. Therapists, clergy, they have a term they use. It's called compassionate detachment. And the idea is that they're able to see what's going on and talk about it plainly and directly in a compassionate sort of way, but they don't wind up owning it. It doesn't belong to them, back to my second question. Yes, it's real, but it's not theirs. So I think that's one of the most important things for leaders to do right now also, is to be compassionate, but don't take on everybody's issue as if it's yours, because it's not. They have to do their own suffering sometimes. They have to do their own work. But helping them, modeling. Back to your story about Debbie, that's exactly what she did. She was a teacher in about eight seconds, and it changed my life. Well, yeah, the laser-level I love me wall, I'm going to go put

Joe Miller: 55:55

it in a box. Now I remember the I love me wall. That was great.

Bob Tipton: 55:59

I love me. Yeah.

Joe Miller: 56:01

Yeah. Bob, this has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time. And I look forward for the next installments here. In the show notes for everyone, I will plant the links to Bob's website where you can get signed up for his webinar and other related information that he spoke to. There was a book reference, for example. And we should probably get together within the next week or two to do the next one, I think. If that works, I'll... Talk to you about that. But again, Bob, thanks so much for jumping on on Titans again. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to the fruit that will come out of this work you're doing.

Bob Tipton: 56:40

Thank you, Joe. Appreciate it. You bet.

Joe Miller: 56:42

Bye-bye. Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of Transition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please check the show notes for additional information.