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Gentzy Franz:
So conscious leadership, the more awareness I have of what's going on inside of me, what's happening around me, I increase the likelihood that I have the impact that I intend. Our intentions and our impact get screwy all the time. I leave the house intending to get from point A to point B, at some point I go unconscious and I grab my phone, the impact is I get in a wreck, not what I intended, but it's the impact that I have because I go unconscious. In an organization or within an interpersonal relationship, the more unconscious we go, the more the impact that we don't want to have occurs, and sometimes that's harm.

Andy Kitson:
Hey everyone, welcome to the People Everywhere show. I'm Andy Kitson, my co-host is Niko Skievaski, and in this episode we talk about conscious leadership with Gentzy Franz. So a few years ago at Redox, we were in a bit of a funk. We had some big strategic issues to sort out, and we were just not getting anywhere. There were a lot of opinions, a lot of feelings, and it sometimes felt like the more we talked, the further and further out of alignment we got, it was exhausting. Fortunately, that's when a number of us picked up the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and it helped. We learned to recognize when we were feeling closed, defensive, and committed to being right, or below the line to use the conscious leadership terminology, and then how to shift above the line to a place where we were open, curious, and committed to learning. This whole below the line-above the line framework was so simple and so useful. It helped us work through these big issues that we all cared deeply about and have a feel productive, even playful at times. So when Niko and I started this podcast, I knew we had to do an episode on Conscious Leadership, and I'm delighted that, well this is that episode, and Gentzy as our guide, Gentzy is a coach, he works with leaders to bring the principles of conscious leadership into their organizations. He is also an academic and an operator. He alleged that people or get uptake, start a unicorn, and he holds a PhD in organizational behavior from the University of Illinois, where he still teaches today. This conversation was invigorating and joyful, and the day that we had it, it was just absolutely, exactly, precisely the conversation that I needed. So let's get to it. Here's our conversation with Gentzy Franz.

Andy Kitson:
Gentzy, welcome to the show!

Gentzy Franz:
Thank you. Nice to be here.

Andy Kitson:
We're thrilled to have you. Could we start out maybe just you could tell us a little bit about what you're up to today and your story for how you got there.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, totally. You know, I was thinking about this sort of an intro, intro to myself in different ways, but today what came to me is, you know, I view myself first and foremost as a teacher, and that's been pretty consistent my entire life, regardless of what path I was on at any particular time. And actually, remember, I was thinking, I remember the moment it occurred to me, I want to teach. And I was probably in third or fourth grade, to be perfectly honest with you. And these representatives from the, I grew up in a town, a small town in the Midwest called Jacksonville, Illinois. There's two liberal arts colleges there. One is McMurry College, that actually doesn't exist anymore, the other one is Illinois College, which still does exist, it's a beautiful campus, small liberal arts, kind of what you imagine of small liberal arts in the Midwest. My grandfather was the chair of the math department there, and so in third and fourth grade, we had some people come in from the college and they were showing a slideshow. It was actually a slide show or maybe even an overhead projector. I don't know, it was an old school and a picture of my grandfather came up in front of the entire elementary school and it was him teaching math. And he, he was a brilliant teacher and math did not and still does not come super naturally to me. I get it, but I really have to apply some, apply some effort and he just created ease around it. Complex topics, really difficult equations. He would teach it and it was fun. And so this picture of him that they showed was him in front of the room, really animated tweed jacket, like old school academic, and you could see the entire class, probably like 30 students are so laughing and like occurred to me right there, first, this overwhelming pride in my grandfather. Like, that's my grandpa, like, everybody's looking at my grandpa right now. And then this other thing of him being an amazing teacher and then like, literally the next thing I want to do that and I think what for me, bringing it to today, my goal is always going to be take really complex ideas or complex principles or complex situations or complex people and break them down, explore them, explain them in the simplest, most entertaining way possible. I think that that's what I, I think that's what I do, and it's what I do really well, it's where I find my most purposeful and fulfilling moments is making those connections with clients or in the classroom. And yeah, it all started that day, you know, lots of, almost 40, 35 years ago or so and in central Illinois. And so yeah, that's, that's what came to me today as I was thinking about it. And really what brings me joy now as a coach, as a organizational consultant, as a, as a teacher, is that just taking these things in. And because I deal with people most of the time, to me there's nothing more interesting or complex than a human being. I don't really understand, for example, how the Internet works. I just don't, I know it works, but I don't really know how it works. It's kind of, it's really not that interesting to me. I know I push a button and it comes on and I appreciate it and I'm glad that it's there, but I don't really understand it. Human beings, though? Oh my God. Like I could spend a day with either one of you just really understanding what makes you tick, the experiences that have brought you to now. And some people, especially individuals who understand the Internet or want to understand the Internet, that might be terrible for them. But it's not for me. It's, it's, it really is what brings me brings me the most joy and kind of brings me life.

Andy Kitson:
That was amazing. I don't think I've ever heard anyone trace kind of like what they're doing right now, all the way back to a specific moment in the third grade. That's.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah. And let me know, I want to put it like,

Andy Kitson:
Yeah, sure, sure.

Gentzy Franz:
And totally messy, wild, non-linear.

Andy Kitson:
Looking back.

Gentzy Franz:
Man, that's right, yeah, that moment. Boom.

Andy Kitson:
Wow.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah.

Niko Skievaski:
That's beautiful. And it's such a, it's such a nice thread to connect your work specifically as a teacher, formally as a teacher, but as a coach, which is really a teaching role in itself. And then even, even in your past, as you know, working people, organizations thinking of that from a teaching perspective is such a, I feel like a unique perspective on, on that role as well. So it's an interesting thread that I think we'll be pulling on throughout the, throughout the show.

Gentzy Franz:
Awesome. Cool. I'd love to.

Andy Kitson:
All right, so let's, let's talk a bit about the class that you teach. So this is an employee motivation and performance, do I have that right?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah. You get that quite.

Andy Kitson:
Could you tell us a bit about just like where do you teach? Like what kind of students? Like the, kind of like the course catalog, maybe description of it, and then we'll dive into like your, like the, the real take?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, totally. So the classes is employee performance and motivation, it's taught at the University of Illinois in the School of Labor and Employment Relations. The University of Illinois, it really has a big tier-one research institutions go, was kind of at the cutting edge of moving to substantial online learning, not just kind of creating it, but really wanting to replicate the experience. Their MBA program, which was a top 30 MBA program at some point, they don't even exist as an in-class experience anymore. So they're completely, they're completely online, really, really visionary by the dean there, Dean Jeff Brown, who I think is just really brilliant and thought about this and changed it, and they've had all kinds of success with it. Anyway, so I teach in the School of Labor and Employment Relations, which is part of kind of that move to let's really put some focus on online learning. So it's not just checking a box so that we can create some of the same experience in the classroom so that students from China and India and individuals here in the United States who are working full time can still have a meaningful experience and never come on to campus. And so that's where I teach now. It's the same program where I got my PhD and have been teaching in this online program ever since.

Gentzy Franz:
Teach it once a year. And the basis of it is really why do people work? Like why do they? What goes into it? What's the thought process? When people change jobs, why do they change jobs? When they're in a job, what makes them deeply satisfied? What makes them deeply engaged? You know, and what I tell, employer, the students in class one is really don't know. And that's just to say individuals are different and it is context-dependent. What we do know is, we do know there are certain levels that we can pull that people do like autonomy, but autonomy on a line in a factory in Detroit is different than autonomy at a startup in Madison, Wisconsin, just is. Knowledge employees versus skilled labor, these are going to have different components of what autonomy is and really what an organization can allow because of what the product is. And so on an employee line, autonomy might look like Kaizen principles as a real way to kind of dive into autonomy. And in tech, it may look more like the famed Google 20% time just to kind of think crazy stuff up. And so it really depends on what the context is and having an appreciation of what that context is. So we spend a lot of time in this class just honoring that and recognizing that there's no, there's really no roadmap to slap on to an organization and say, this is how you're going to get motivated employees, it just doesn't work. The other thing, big point that we talk about a lot is and I think it's a cliche at this point, but people leave, managers, they don't leave organizations or jobs, some data to support that. And we can all, we all know that if you have a really good manager that respects, that empowers, that gives you a voice, that listens to you, that provides direction, maybe it helps you, support you in your prioritization of tasks, it feels good. And as long as the other table stakes are being met, compensation, support, benefits, etc., you know, that can make a huge difference in an employee's experience and their tenure in the job, how long they want to stay, because organizations are really, at the end of the day, obsessed with attrition and want people to stay as long as they possibly can, and in some cases to a fault, organizations want people to stay so long that really it doesn't help the individual or the organization. There's some stagnation that occurs, and I think we're seeing some of that, just organizations having more of an appetite for turnover, recognizing how to bring the costs down, how to integrate people quicker, get them up to speed, so we talk about that as well. And really a lot of it is around how to have meaningful conversations. So you really signal to an employee, I hear you and I'm supporting you as a human being. It's very easy for organizations and we, an organization at the end of the day is just an organism just like us. We are organisms and organisms need to be fed and organisms get super selfish because they're terrified of dying and an organization is no different. And so in the process of this organization as an organism surviving, it's going to take and it's going to take from its resources, people. And so how do we as other people within this organization provide support to one another so that not too much is taken, but just enough. And in the process of giving, we're also receiving through a variety of different things, levers that we can pull. And so that's what we, we spend a lot of our time on those things. What can we do so that the, you know, so that all of the organisms involved in the organization can, can thrive, including the organization itself.

Niko Skievaski:
I love that analogy and what I heard was, was almost like sort of three levels to think about employee motivation. One is sort of the industry and job type perspective of, of like what is even possible on a, on an assembly line versus a knowledge worker. And then the next level, kind of at a cultural level for the company, like how does this company exist and operate as an organism? How does it extract value from its resources to produce some value into the world? And then the sort of third level, maybe the micro level you might think about is the actual manager and what is the, what is the manager-employee relationship and how is the manager supporting that employee. How do you think about the difference in a manager's job in representing the organism itself versus representing and advocating for the individual?

Gentzy Franz:
Super tough and those who do it really well, they're game changers because both of those, both of those organisms have needs and it is that is the manager's job is to kind of be the in-between, sometimes the buffer for one versus the other. But really when it's not the buffer, you know, kind of in a reactive state, they're proactively thinking about how do I feed both of these beasts to, for which I'm partially responsible and really thinking about sometimes and I think about this as a father balance on a daily basis isn't perfect. I think even to think about balance on a daily basis is absurd. And sometimes I'm going to spend a ton of time, quality time as a father. Sometimes I'm going to spend a lot of quality time on my business, and some days one might be more neglected, not in the general like awful sense, but just on a day-to-day basis, might be neglected, just based on pure hours I'm spending, or what my energy, where my energy is devoted, the net experience, I want to be balanced. And so that's the, that's how I think of a really good manager, too. Can you look at them, their net attention, their net energy? And is it balanced between the organization and the individual? And if it's not kind of over time, you probably have a problem. But if it is, that's a, that's a probably a really good manager.

Niko Skievaski:
I feel like that is a very succinct definition of what a manager's job is, balancing the needs, being the buffer between the needs of the organization-organism and the human organism that they manage. It's almost, simplifies.

Andy Kitson:
To think about balance.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, a lot of my work not to go into this right now because I know we'll get there but a lot of my work as a coach and as a consultant is I'll, I'll tell a lot of my whether it's a CEO or a CFO, I actually don't care about your bottom line and I don't, I do. But in terms of my work with these teams, my assumption is the bottom line is get plenty of attention. You know, especially with the individuals that I'm working with, I know what their obsession is. I know what they're losing sleep over, it's not the stuff that I talk about. They're losing sleep over this other stuff, awesome. So I just actually want to create a little bit more balance. Say, hey, for the next 2 hours together as this team, we're not going to talk at all about the business. We're going to talk about the context, which is all of us and the work that we're doing. My belief is and I have my own anecdotal evidence and a decent data set at this point to say all of this is actually just creating more ease so that when you go back to obsessing about the bottom line or EBITDA or whatever number du jour it is, that you do that with more ease and more humanity. And that's really how can we, how can we create that balance again? So the net effect is this, recognizing that on a day-to-day basis it's going to get out of whack.

Niko Skievaski:
I love that because it's the, the sort of chronic condition that we might say is coming up with, with many managers is having too much of a focus on what the business needs and your job you consider as a coach to provide more of that balance, to pull them back into the human aspect of it so then they can better have a balance going back into work.

Gentzy Franz:
Totally. And I think that that because it's just natural for us to care so much about this thing, again, whatever that quantitative measure is, I think thank God people are focused on it. Jobs are at stake, returns are at stake, investments, shareholders, whatever it is, this is what individuals within business, their own equity, for Pete's sake. This is what they are thinking about and what they're putting a lot of stock into, that's great. So how can we just pull it back a little bit and just say, hey, there's this other stuff to keep, keep focusing, keep obsessing, keep doing all of that. And I think that we need actually support and doing so, otherwise all of our attention is going to go in that direction. Again, it makes sense why, and we just need some support to say, hey, remember this other stuff too? It is important and I promise you it will feed and support this other stuff that you think is super important, even if it feels kooky or like you're taking the eye off the ball for the set for a second.

Andy Kitson:
What are some of the tools or frameworks that as a coach you find most useful but maybe you started working with in the context of this class?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, three kind of ideas for me that I think are really valuable at the individual level, and then if you extrapolate it up to the collective, also have real benefits and returns. So the first one is what does it mean to take responsibility versus blaming and criticizing? And we'll get into this in a minute with it, with the conscious leadership. I know, but that's where this comes from, it also just comes from me just living a life at this point where I know where my energy dips and I'm, me observing others where their energy dips. When we're in a state of blame or criticism, we have very little access to learning, we have very little access to possibility. We put the blinders on and we just get obsessed with who or what is wrong and we just become assholes in the process. All of us, by the way. And you know, we all know people who, their go-to is to blame and criticize. Their problems, sometimes they're brilliant and sometimes they're hilarious. But in terms of creativity, in terms of innovation, in terms of problem-solving, inclusivity, they're not the best. And we have good reason to believe science and anecdotal evidence to suggest that when we're innovative, when we're creative, and we're open to different perspectives and learning then product benefits. And so that's number one. And working with teams and individuals that I go with. Number two, staying curious versus being right. We are hardwired to be right, ever since we were little kids, all we wanted to do was make our caretakers, whoever they were, happy. And we got we made them happy by being right. And then we go to school. And if we're we get the right answers, we get the right grades, and then if we get the right grades, we get into the right college. And then if we get in the right college, we get the right job and ba ba ba ba ba ba, and on it goes. All of this being reinforced for being right, we love to be right. And it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If I'm out on the African plain and I don't really have the sophisticated brain that I have now and I look out on the horizon, I don't need all of the information or data to draw the conclusion that I'm right about that lion charging towards my people and that I need to get out of there. I don't need to feel teeth or run my hair, hands through a mane to understand I'm right about this and there's something to do. I'm not open to curiosity in the moment, I'm open to survival. We've evolved a lot, but we're still like this and we get it wrong. There's plenty of books out there to read about this. We know how erroneous we are and the conclusions that we draw when we are convinced that we're right. And so what does it mean to take a step back and just go? What would curiosity look like in this moment? Not when a lion is under, is coming at us. No, just be right then. But a lot of the time it's not that. And we have space, we can drop our egos and all of our preoccupations with self-preservation and actually get curious about our surroundings, we realize this isn't that scary. And in fact, if I'm curious, I have a lot to learn from others, from myself. And in fact, I might not be looking at the situation with any degree of real data. I just have some experience inside of me that's saying danger or scary or whatever else. If I get curious, then I can kind of shift. So that's number two. Number three, and this is kind of my favorite, especially within the workplace feelings. Oh my God, we'd like to make rational decisions. Yeah, that's right. Make rational decisions. Let's be reasonable, let's be data-centric. All of these things that we say in the workplace and it's just like, okay, I get it all like, yes, hooray for data and yes, let's be reasonable and yes, let's be rational and we are human beings, which means we are emotional. Even the most highly rational individuals that we know, they're still emotional, great. Let's not see that as a liability, but as a resource, as an asset. How can we use the emotions that we have to actually create a more inclusive environment, especially when I'm working with female executives, they have been told, most of them, especially if they've had a large degree of success and are in leadership positions, that they're too emotional or there's even other words that have been used specifically unfairly for women as it relates to their emotions in the workplace. We want to shift that, and I think we are shifting that. And if I can get kind of whew, for a second. The workplace has been defined by overly masculine principals for decades, and there is, if you kind of just look at masculine and feminine energies and I'm not talking about gender here, by the way, I'm just talking about energies that both live inside of us. We've tipped too far towards masculine. Masculine is rational, it's responsible, it's all of these things and again, has nothing to do with men. It's masculine energy. Feminine energy balance is that, it's creative, it's emotional, it's intuitive. And as we move and evolve the workplace, we're going to rely more on those. This is not to say that we're going to poo poo data or the rational things, but we're going to invite a merging of the two as opposed to overvaluing and then dismissing, which I think is what we've done. And so what can we really do to invite feelings into the workplace to allow them to recognize that this is another information center that we have available to us? And when we pair our emotions with our mind, which our mind craves data, that's where the magic happens. If we overvalue what's happening up here, we're going to miss out and we're going to alienate and we're not going to involve and we're not going to allow. And I think that our solutions are going to suffer and certainly people are going to suffer. How I express emotion in the workplace is is different than Andy, is different than Niko, is different than others, and how can we create more space for people to continue to be productive, because this is the big fear, if you get emotional, then you're not going to be productive. You're going to cry all day or you're going to do whatever else. I don't know that we have a whole lot of evidence to suggest that that's true. People get stuck for sure, they get stuck in their heads, too. Oh, my God. So, you know, that's just. How can we move it? Yeah, Yeah, that's right. How can we embrace that? How can we make more sense of it, allow that. Use energy, emotional energy to inform our decisions. You know, anger. Anger in the workplace doesn't mean that I'm going to flip a table or yell at someone. Anger can also create clarity, this is not okay with me, I'm actually a, no. I teach this to my clients a lot. In organizations, we just fall into the organizational nod, yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do that. Meanwhile, inside, you're going, there's no way I can get that done by Thursday this week. I know it, they know it, but I say yes because I'm supposed to. And I'm worried that if I say no or my yes has some nuance to it, they're going to think I'm a slacker, they're going to think this or that or that. There's a fallacy thereof. And the fallacy is we can be actually more open with what our experience is, more honest, more in integrity with self and others. And the organization and benefits, got on a little bit of a soap box there.

Andy Kitson:
Wow.

Gentzy Franz:
Look at me. Must like feelings.

Andy Kitson:
So, ... you'll correct me if I'm misreading this, but it feels like a lot of that is, we're about to segue way to conscious leadership, but that a lot of what you're talking about here is also kind of like the core of conscious leadership in my thinking about that kind of the right way or?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of those three things that I really focus on, those can be found in kind of what I view as the foundation of conscious leadership. It's kind of those first six principles. So if you're for listeners who aren't familiar with the book, I would say pick it up. The first six commitments is what they call them, really critical, and those three are just pulled out of those.

Andy Kitson:
The book is 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, is that right?

Gentzy Franz:
That's right, that's right.

Andy Kitson:
So how did you first come to conscious leadership and would love, especially if there's any kind of like circumstances of your life or what made it resonate for you to hear some of that story?

Gentzy Franz:
Oh, yeah. This one, this one is like a collision of professional and personal, probably why it stuck for me. I encountered Jim Dettmer, who is one of the authors of Conscious Leadership, one of the co-founders of the Conscious Leadership Group, and I think one of our greatest teachers alive, one of our greatest coaches. You know, when he was interviewed on the Tim Ferriss podcast, you know, he talked about himself as a, I can't remember use this word, but it's more or less a thief. He just, he thieves good ideas and he synthesizes them because he is a master communicator. He's able to bring them all together and then teach them in a way that's really succinct and practical. So I just, I do view him as a teacher, and he is, he's world class, you know, he's just he's up there for me. And so I encountered Jim when I was working in Chicago at a startup, and we were growing rapidly. We kind of had hit unicorn status pretty quickly and lots of hiring, lots of change, lots of emphasis on culture. And Jim came in to coach the executive team of which I was a part and really instilled the principles of conscious leadership within the organization. The, what happened in my mind as I went, Oh my God, this is really practical and lines up with kind of what I've observed over a lifetime, what I learned as a social scientist. Nothing feels off, nothing feels too woo. And if we, if we actually do this and embed this within the organization, the individual benefits and so does the organization.

Gentzy Franz:
It didn't, it felt like that balance that we talked about at the beginning. So that was where I encountered Jim. So it just kind of made sense to me, it started to click. At the same time, I was about a year removed from being a very devout, practicing Mormon. It was the kind of the belief system that had defined my entire life for a variety of reasons that we could get into in another three-hour podcast. And that all started to unwind for me in my early thirties and then kind of all the way, early thirties to mid thirties, I realized I don't know if this is the the space for, for my family and me to continue. And there was a lot of confidence there, but there was a ton of heartbreak. And the heartbreak for me was I loved it, it made so much sense to me, I built so much of my life into it, it was so much a part of the community, I was a part of The family that I came from, there was so much good there, and to see that it wasn't serving my family and me anymore was heartbreaking. That was the heartbreak, I think I didn't spend as much time there. I spent a lot of time in my head going, holy shit, now what? My entire worldview had been rocked. And even as a mormon, and certainly now and certainly then I can go to a pretty dark, existential place pretty quickly. And that's where I was, without that worldview that I had basically been nurturing since I could make sense of the world to three years old, came from a very loving family, and now all of that was starting to dissipate. What now? And at about this time I'm working in Chicago, I encountered Jim, I'm kind of this inner turmoil, my friendship community is shifting pretty dramatically and lots going on inside my head and my heart, and I met Jim and I've told him this, but I made Jim my new prophet. Mormonism has a prophet. And that person, that man is someone that you look to for guidance and you really don't question what the counsel is that comes from that person, and I missed that. And then in comes Jim, he's handsome, he's a man, he has white hair, he actually has a religious background, so that kind of resonated with me. And I was like, Oh thank God, a new religion. And the more I got into it, the more I tried to make him that and make the principles my new religion, I kept failing, because they're not, they're not rules. And he's not going to tell me what's right or wrong. And in fact, there is no right or wrong in his world. There is no right or wrong in the principles, there is no way to be. There's only what is true for me, and that was a radical departure. And so for me, conscious leadership, encountering Jim at a very pivotal point in my life gave me something to hold on to. I thought I was just copy and pasting religion because that felt normal to me and I had built up a lot of muscle for that. It was painful then to realize that's not what this is, it's new, I had to build new muscle to actually live by principles as opposed to rules. I was really good at rules, really. I just, I just was I just was. But now it's principles and that was a whole different thing. Jim's not a prophet, but he could be a coach, he could be a mentor, he could be a friend. And once I kind of took him off that pedestal, which was a whole thing that we could get into, once I took him off that pedestal and looked at him like that, it was just then it was liberating. It was liberating to kind of live that way and then realize, okay, this is awesome, because yes, I'm doing this within an organizational context, but my whole schtick is I want people to have something that makes them, yes, a better employee, but also a better father, partner, friend, human being, member of this ecosystem that we call the world that we just happen to live on right now. And that, that's to me where the principles really, really stick. It wasn't, I wasn't planning on talking about Mormonism, but there we went.

Niko Skievaski:
Thank you so much for going there. I really appreciate that. A very vulnerable look back at how you got to conscious leadership and, and even how you adopted it at the beginning, thinking of it as a new religion. I'm so interested in, in diving into kind of how you took them off the pedestal as a prophet. But I think, you know, before we go there, I would really love just, just so we don't lose listeners. If you could just define conscious leadership and give us a bit of the framework so we can, so we can go back, and I have so many follow up questions.

Gentzy Franz:
Perfect. So conscious leadership really simply, if you break down the two words consciousness, we can spin that lots of different ways, and it's, you know, it's made its way more into the mainstream vernacular. So the way that I think about consciousness in this context is consciousness is just awareness. If I am conscious, I'm aware of two things. I'm aware of what's going on inside of me, feelings, thoughts, breath, body sensations, just aware, I'm aware of, you know, if I stop talking for 10 seconds and just checked in right now and even looked at the two of you, things would happen to me inside that I could become aware of that's just being stirred by the image of the two of you on the screen. I'll tell you right now something that just came to mind. Niko, you look a lot like my cousin's husband. And so every time I see you and what's funny is they have a kid named Niko. Yeah, every time I see you, I'm just reminded of them. And then, and then my mind goes to soccer because she played soccer. So stuff is happening to me just by seeing your image. That's just me being aware of what's happening as a result of you just being you, you don't even have to do anything. So that's consciousness, awareness of my self, awareness of others, the environment that I'm in. Before I go on to leadership, you know, we, so what's the benefit of that? The benefit is that, that is we go unconscious all of the time. We text and drive, which is bananas. What I'm saying in the moment that I choose to text and drive, by the way, I do it sometimes because I go unconscious. I stop thinking about the fact that this little thing in my hand is more important than the one ton bomb I'm driving down the road at other bombs loaded with other humans. 300 people or so day die in the United States from texting and driving, more or less, I think is the number between 100 and 300. Regardless, it shouldn't be one person and it is. And what's happening? Are these bad people? Do they, do they leave the house going, I'm going to drive my bomb straight at other people? They don't. They go, I'm going to get my car and I want to get from safely from point A to point B, and at some point along the road, they fog out, I fog out, and I got this notification or this curiosity or this whatever or this urgent response is more important than what I'm doing. I go unconscious. Consciousness is about awareness, so that leadership actually gets played out the way that I want it to. And leadership is not about some formal position within an organization. Leadership is impact. And now we know the higher the position, the more impact a person has. A president of the United States obviously has an impact on the world, on the nation, on people, on my newsfeed, right? It's just about impact. CEOs, big impact. They make a decision and it trickles down the organization. But, you know, we, all of us as human beings, all of us as employees, are also having an impact, regardless of the position or status that we have within any system of which we're a part. Just like I told you, Niko, by virtue of you just looking the way that you look, you have an impact on me. And the impact is the memory of my cousin's husband and then the attachment to other memories or thoughts that I have associated with those people, so that's the impact. Now you say words and you do other things also have an impact on me, but that is really at the basis what we're doing at all times, we're having an impact. So conscious leadership, the more awareness I have of what's going on inside of me, what's happening around me, I increase the likelihood that I have, the impact that I intend. Our intentions and our impact get screwy all the time. I leave the house intending to get from point A to point B. At some point I go unconscious and I grab my phone. The impact is I get in a wreck, not what I intended, but it's the impact that I have because I go unconscious. In an organization or within an interpersonal relationship the more unconscious we go, the more the impact that we don't want to have occurs. And sometimes that's harm. I think that there are sociopaths in leadership, formal leadership positions. I do. I think that's rare. I think most individuals who have a negative, harmful impact on others are actually just at some point going unconscious. Now, that's not to say that harassment doesn't occur, that equities don't occur, that awful things don't occur within organizations, yeah, great. Like then there's hell to pay. And most of the time we're not talking about that. We're talking about misunderstandings, we're talking about an interaction that just feels slightly off. And then I create stories about that person. Great example. Remember when, remember when the three of us talked the first time? There was it was a hectic day in my house, cleaners I think, kids, something else, we were talking about this podcast and we got off. I didn't hear from you guys for a couple of weeks and you actually addressed this when you responded. I created the story that I was a wreck, I was a mess. These guys, these guys want to buttoned up, good, productive podcast, and that was not me at my best.

Gentzy Franz:
So I created the story that this was just, this just wasn't going to happen. And I felt some sadness around that and kind of did my own work around it. But that's the story. Andy, I didn't fully tell you this when you were, you sent the email, you're like, hey, I hope you didn't think that we'd forgotten about you or that we weren't interested. You sent this email I was just like, ooh, and that's what we're doing all the time. We're doing all the time. And you know, and I could have made it about you if maybe I should give me a break, it was a rough day. And that's what we do with an organization, all this stuff. And if we just kind of just calm it all down, then we increase the likelihood that we have the impact that we want, that we don't create unnecessary harm. Of course we're going to do things that disappoint people and other things, there's other workarounds for that, that's not what I'm talking about here, that's just kind of what's called to be living. But I'm talking about harm and impact. Yeah, So that's my, that's my, that's my experience, that's my definition of conscious leadership, why I think it's a really great framework.

Andy Kitson:
That's really helpful. Can you talk a little bit about the concept of being above or below the line? Feels like that might fit in kind of in this area here.

Gentzy Franz:
Love it. So above and below the line is just a way to describe the human state of being at any given time. This is not an exact science, but we're below the line most of the time. We're below the line most of the time because we so often operate from a place of threat and stress. We're out there, again, if we go back to the African plains, we're hardwired and designed to survive. So before we had all these words and the sophisticated mind, we just had our feelings, we were a little bit more animal to detect physical threats so that we could keep ourselves and the people that we love safe. Now, over time, mind started to evolve. We started this before African plains, keep everybody safe. We had no sense of me or we. And then the ego started to develop so that we could plan for the future, so that we could learn from the past. There's, this now this sense of me. Oh, my God. Now that's our preoccupation to protect the sense of me, I want to keep my reputation high. The example that I just gave you of our first discussion about the podcast, my ego. Oh, my God, what do they think about me? I switched out like, I'm like, in my bedroom, and there's people walking around. Story, story, story, story. Ego, ego, ego. Below the line. I'm just fearing something and I'm preoccupied. This is the state that we exist in a lot of the time. It's okay, it's not bad. We're there because we want to source, security, approval and control, and we'll do anything that we can to get it when it's under threat. The trick is we make a lot of it up and so we often stay below the line unnecessarily. One of my favorite books is called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky, a brilliant scientist at Berkeley. And his whole, his whole concept there is a zebra gets attacked by a lion and it's stressed out or below the line until one of two things happens, it gets away from the lion or it gets eaten by the lion. When one of those two things happen, the system relaxes. System obviously relaxes when it's dead because it has nothing else to get away from, but it relaxes in the other way too, so that it can just go back to its normal above the line state and so that it's not charged, that charge has a cost. We don't do this. We get away from the lion and we're like, God, we sit around with our buddies, we're like, The lion was really fast today. The lion, did you see his teeth? I think his teeth are bigger than they used to be. ... He was grumpy. He was really, he was, he was meaner than usually. We talk about it and as a result, stay decidedly below the line and in a stressed out space and in the process have all kinds of harm that we're doing to our system. And by the way, the system around us, as I'm talking to you guys about what an asshole this lion was, I'm convincing you of something that's my reality that might not be yours. And then I spin everybody up. So that's below the line again. Below the line it had value while I was getting away from the lion. After that, it didn't. And so that's what I want to shift to above the line. Above the line is a place to play, it's a place of curiosity. Play is actually a big one to go back to employment motivation and performance. If people have a sense of play at work, motivation goes up, and this doesn't mean that they're treating work lightly, it doesn't mean that they're not taking it seriously, that they're just kind of screwing around and one off projects, that's not it. But when work becomes play, when life becomes play, there's a sense of wonder, there's a sense of curiosity, there's a sense of awe, there's a sense of experimentation and possibility, it's also a sense of rest. And this is a big one for us learning coming out of the pandemic. We grind, I grind, you guys grind, a lot of people grind. And what does it look like to slow down? What do you learn about yourself? What do you learn about possibilities? About what you want? That's above and below the line. We're not below the line because something's wrong with us, we're below the line because we're human and because we care about ourselves and about others. The key there is to understand when am I going there unconsciously, and making that my default place to live as opposed to can I switch and live above the line? Wonder, again, curiosity, play, possibility.

Andy Kitson:
So what are some of the, the methods to make that switch?

Gentzy Franz:
Awesome question. The first question any time working with someone below the line is are you willing? Because if the person is too threatened and they're not willing and the situation is too serious, they're not going to shift to above the line. So the first question is willingness, that is the first step. And if someone's not willing, if I'm not willing to shift to above the line, I'm not going to make it some big deal because nobody gets to a true above the line place through force or coercion just doesn't happen. That's pressurizing an already pressurized system. Think about being below the line as you're hunkered down, again, the zebra getting away from the lion, that's a stressed out position. By telling myself I need to be different than I'm currently being, more stress on an already stressed out system. Not going to work or it's going to work momentarily, but it's not going to stick. So the first question is willingness. Are you willing, are you willing to, to explore another possibility? I'll just give you three things that I kind of work with. There's lots of different tools, and it's highly contextual about how to shift. The first thing is just, am I willing to just breathe? This doesn't have to be some complex meditation. Am I willing to breathe for 32 seconds, box breathing or 4x4 breathing? 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out, four rounds, 32 seconds. Can I just give this a second? Because I know in the two of you know, when I'm locked in below the line, not much intentionality is occurring, I am on autopilot, stories are spinning, I'm not giving space for much of anything other than my own preoccupation for whatever thing it is that I'm dreaming up. So will I breathe? That's number one. Number two, would I be willing to move my body? And when I say move my body, it means lots of things to me. It could mean go for a walk, it could mean dance, it could mean take a Wiffle ball bat out and slam a pillow, it could mean gripping, making myself move, making animal sounds. You know, we are animals. And if you go back to the zebra or you go back to a dog or you watch the way that they allow energy to move through them, they don't have the stories in their mind, so energy comes up. Dog, bears its teeth when it's angry, wags its tail, tongue wags when it's happy, it's feeling energy. But a dog gets afraid or it gets angry. And then that thing, the trigger leaves, it doesn't, again, sit around thinking about or talking about it, it moves and sometimes they shake. And that shake is just a way to release the energy. This is somatic therapy, is a, it's why it's so powerful overcoming PTSD because it's really allowing the body to move what's been trapped within the cells.

Gentzy Franz:
Trauma. And so at a small level, when we're below the line, we're just gripping and so can we move our body, so that's number two. Number three, am I willing to look at the situation from the opposite of what I'm currently looking at, not to convince myself that I'm wrong or that somebody else is right, but just so that I can open up to the possibility that the story that I'm telling myself the opposite could be as true. And I just play with it. And again, there's lots of questions to ask under that. And this is a, a process of inquiry that really comes from the work of Byron Katie, of which I'm a huge fan, if that's something that listeners are curious about, that's where that comes from. And there's a whole process of inquiry that goes along with it, transformational. Because if I have access to looking at a situation from the opposite of what I'm currently looking at, I have a chance of exploring the possibilities, the wonder, the awe of the situation. So those are the three that I kind of start with lots of different directions to go in with each one of those and additional ones. But for me, willingness and if I'm willing, great, let's explore then something else so that we can get to this place where it's playful as opposed to threatening.

Andy Kitson:
Very cool. How often do you find yourself doing this just kind of for yourself throughout a typical day or week?

Gentzy Franz:
Once an hour. It's actually, you know, it's the thing that I really reinforce with my clients is being below the line is natural, it's not bad, it just is. And can I be aware of it? Can I be conscious of where I'm at right now? And can I accept that this is just where I'm at right now? It's where I'm at, and it probably makes all kinds of sense. And I don't need to figure out why I'm there. The why is actually irrelevant and usually inaccurate. Me in a triggered space has more to do with something that happened when I was six than what's happening in front of me right now. It just is. I am just this, I'm a plant, I'm a plant that's been out here in the world and I've experienced lots of different storms and I've experienced care in different ways and I've experienced neglect in different ways, and every time that happens me is a little plant, I just get a little nick on the stem or I lose a leaf or a twig gets bent. And that's never going to change about me, and that's okay. And as a result of that, different things are going to stir me up in ways that aren't going to stir you up, Andy, and that's okay and vice versa. Can I just be okay with that? Can I accept that? Recognize, oh, man, I'm a scared little plant right now. I'm worried that the sun's never going to come back out or I'm worried about this, this caretaker that I have that's, that's in charge of watering me is going to forget about me here on this windowsill or in this desert or whatever it is, that's all that's happening. Can I just accept that I'm scared? Now, can I? Am I willing to look at the situation differently? Yeah. And then I dip into my bag of tricks and see which one resonates for that particular time and then go through my own work, which is just is always going to be a part of my practice and my existence. I'm never going to arrive and be above the line at all point, you know, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. It's not there, you know. Even Ram Dass, who again, an amazing teacher when he talks about when he had his stroke, you know what I mean? He, he was so enlightened at the point of his stroke. And he talks about the depression that he went into because he couldn't talk, he couldn't do the things with his body, with his mouth, the way that he had always done. And that's how he made his money, it was a huge part of his identity. And so he's sunk into this deep depression and had to do his work around the fact that he was now an individual who had had a stroke, part of his little plant material had been affected. And now this was his new reality and that was his new work. And I think that that's going to be true for all of us, for the rest of our lives. It's not to arrive at a place where I'm constantly above the line, to want that, desire that is foolish, it's a waste of energy. The work is I'm going to be below the line a lot of the time. And what do I do when I get there? Can I accept myself? Can I get willing to shift above the line so I'm not, so I'm more zebra-like and less and less Gentzy-like.

Andy Kitson:
Yeah, I find that reminder that figuring out why you're below the line just doesn't matter, it's unhelpful and probably wrong. It's just so useful for me because I, my habit is to troubleshoot and you can go deep down that rabbit hole and it just leads nowhere.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Andy Kitson:
So earlier you mentioned the book 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and I think it'd be useful just to kind of like dip a little bit into that and to start out with what is a commitment?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, so a commitment is just, just me saying I'm dedicated, I'm dedicating my energy to doing this thing, whatever this is. So let's say I have a commitment to taking responsibility. One of the things that I talk about, one of the things that I'm working on with my clients, have a commitment to taking responsibility versus blaming or criticizing. A commitment just means this is where I'm going to devote my energy. Commitment does not mean that I'm going to be perfect. I'm going to slip below the line and I'm going to blame and criticize sometimes. I'm going to blame and criticize myself, the commitment then is not, Oh, God, I'm such a screw up, maybe I'm not committed to that commitment. Then is I want to recommit to taking responsibility and go through the process to move my energy back in that direction. Because all that's happened when I've decommitted or fallen off the wagon or whatever you want to call it, is I've just committed to something else and it's catching myself. I've committed myself to blame and, blame and criticism. Wait, what? I said my commitment was here. Great. Slipped below the line, I got scared and I just went here. I want to now recommit to taking responsibility and I want to keep doing it. The reason that commitments are so important and it's so easy to, to slip out of them and then to slippery slope away from them as, soon as I don't go to the gym for a couple of days, even though I say I'm committed to going to the gym, I don't go. And then I just kind of start, two days becomes three days, becomes five days, becomes whatever else, and then I become deeply committed to not going to the gym. A commitment is, it's a constant check back to where do my values and where do my ideals align so that I can come back and miss the gym for two days, okay, I got committed to something else, I want to recommit to the gym and I do that by going to the gym. And so a commitment is just that, it's this constant process of drifting away from it and then shifting back to it.

Andy Kitson:
And for the, of the 15 commitments for conscious leadership, are there particular ones that you find particularly useful in your coaching work?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, I would go back to taking responsibility, being curious and feeling feelings. Those are the three I'm going to, you know, and I talked about those in depth a few minutes ago and I can say more about them if you want. And I'll just say those three, for me, working with individuals and working with teams, these teams that I work with, they've got a lot of things on their mind, they got a lot of things that they want to get done, the last thing that I want to do is overcomplicate that. And so if I just come in and I say, hey, we're going to work on taking responsibility, being curious and feeling feelings and hammer it home and do it again and again and again and keep practicing until the muscle is built, awesome, Awesome. They're going to be in pretty good shape.

Niko Skievaski:
...

Gentzy Franz:
I'm, I'm going to be in pretty good shape.

Niko Skievaski:
I love how those commitment and I'd love you to speak to it how those commitments play with each other. They feel so intertwined in that if you're taking responsibility, which means you're not blaming, but that requires you to be curious about how are you responsible, what are the ways you're responsible for whatever situation you might be in, and the feelings that you feel are often at blame or unconsciously causing situations that you might not, that might not be aligned with your intentions. Can you talk more just about how those things like play with each other?

Gentzy Franz:
I think you just did it really well. I mean, I'll elaborate and say a little bit more, but you're absolutely right. You know, taking responsibility is really about at its core, I'm taking responsibility for the outcome that I got that I did not want, which is usually where we go to blame and criticism. I'm going to come back and go, okay, can I get curious about what happened here without blaming and criticizing, can I just get curious? Can I take responsibility for my portion of this, not over function and not under function. Over functioning, I start blaming myself. Under functioning, I'm blaming somebody else. And so can I just find that sweet spot where I get really curious about, huh? That didn't play out the way that I planned. What's going on? What are my feelings associated with this? And you know, what we usually get to in my work is fear is under so much of what we do, of what we experience, and that makes sense. Something doesn't go as planned, I get scared. Is this going to happen again? What did I miss? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with them? Just fear. And can I allow that to be there and again, work through it from a place of I'm feeling fear, just just notice what happens when I say that. It didn't go as planned.

Gentzy Franz:
And I'm feeling fear, of course you are. But we don't talk like that. That's, that's really powerful in taking responsibility. We don't need to unpack my fear or my childhood. But every time I feel fear, we don't, we just need to recognize it, what is it? What do I not know that I want to know? That's usually what fear is. Then we start to unpack things from a simpler level, as opposed to unpacking them from the story or the mental level, which especially when I'm dealing with smart people like the two of you, like my clients, and this is a really good muscle and the imaginations and the rabbit holes, it's a wonder anybody gets anything done. It's like the greatest asset and the greatest liability at the same time. And so can we just quiet that a little bit so that you can actually utilize it as the asset that it is? But that's that's really how those three really work together. And in any issue that a client comes to me with, I'm going to be able to, we're going to talk about curiosity, we're going to talk about responsibility, what are you feeling? And then we're going to go at it from that space. Does that answer our question?

Niko Skievaski:
Yeah, for sure. And it really gets at something that I wanted to go back to that you mentioned earlier, in how do you use feelings and emotions as a resource? And I would love it if you could share a story or an example either from one of your clients or from your own past that, that does that, that uses that effectively. And, and specifically, I think something you said earlier around creating more balance in masculine and feminine energy in a workplace like what does that look like when when done well? Yeah, if you have a story I think, I think that'd be a great way to exemplify that.

Gentzy Franz:
Awesome. Yeah. Let me start with the story and we'll kind of go from there. I was working with a client, a partner at a very large law firm and had been a partner for a while and had this recurring fear that she was going to get fired. Now, based on her level of productivity and the people that she worked with and the portion of the firm that was generated by her clients, really unlikely she was going to get fired, just was. And yet it was there in her in every conversation she had, in every action she took, nobody would have imagined this working with her because she was so good. This was her, this was her thing, this is why she reached out to me through a mutual friend and said, I need support, and we kind of did our work. And, and I asked her when the last time was that she felt anger, and she goes, I don't, I don't get angry. And again, people on the surface interacting with her cheerful disposition, really nice to be around, really thoughtful person. You wouldn't think of her as an angry individual whatsoever. So I don't, I never feel angry, just not angry. And I said, I don't believe you. I don't, like of course, anger is there, there for me, it's there for others, I don't believe you. And by not recognizing it and honoring it gets metabolized into other things, passive aggressive behavior, fear, avoidance, all of these things, as opposed to letting the energy flow. You know, I said, what's, what's so bad about anger? And she had a whole list of them. You know, like many of us grew up in a home where the father was prone to anger or not many of us, many of us have that experience, but we have an experience for at a young age that said, this emotion is bad and anger is a really easy one to label bad. People get impulsive, people get in bar fights, people bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. My dad, when he got angry or my mother when she got angry, this is what happened in our house. Start assigning meaning to the emotion as opposed to separating the behavior from the emotion, so now anger is bad. And I asked her, tell me about a situation you didn't like that happened recently. That was it, she told me, and I could tell as she was telling me, her jaw was locking, like she was like, she was either ready to punch or take a punch. It was that kind of look, and it was actually, I paused and I was like, I got to tell you, this energy right now is awesome. And she was like, no, I'm feeling so uncomfortable. And I was like, no, no, no, stay with it, stay with it, so she got back into it, jaw was locked, she looked like a fighter, she really did. And I said, what are you feeling right now? And she started talking about what she was thinking, not what she was feeling. I just want you to allow the possibility that you're feeling anger, I want you to go off video and I want you to go off audio and I want you to do whatever comes to you to match what you're feeling. We don't even need to call it anger, I'm going to call it anger, you call it what you want, I just want you to just do something. So she goes off the camera, goes off audio for two and a half minutes go by. I was like, well, she, maybe she left, maybe this was, maybe this was too ... Institute for her, maybe this was too much. Maybe, maybe I pushed it. She came back in tears, so what happened? She said, I screamed and I punched and I made noises that I haven't made since I was probably ten. And she just, her whole system settled, for me, what that story highlights is we block our emotions so often and as a result, we are holding on to energy we do not need to hold on to, it does not serve us, it doesn't help those around us. The feminine, to go to your question, Niko, the feminine is free flowing of energy, it happens, we don't think about it, we allow it to move, we allow it to inform, and we don't let it sit. We don't turn it into thought, all that does is creates an emotive cognitive loop that we get stuck in where we're just manufacturing feelings at that point, feelings generated by thought as opposed to feelings being generated by the environment around us and designed to do what they were designed to do, make sense so that we know what to do next. So the flow of energy is actually really powerful. There was lots of other work to do with this particular client, but that was before, that was, the floodgates opened at that point is what I should say. She had access to so many other possibilities. The fear, I'm going to be fired dissipated, it was just blocked anger. She got used to communicating with her anger, and here's the cool thing, her colleagues loved it. They were like, damn! It was just this whole different energy because they could tell like she was being sneaky with her energy, passive aggressive, avoidant, all of the stuff that we do simply because she was uncomfortable with what she was feeling when in reality anger just pops up and it says something's not okay with me. Anger is designed to create boundaries, not because I'm God or I'm looking for universal truths just because I'm this tiny little plant who's been through some storms and has had care in certain ways. And I know certain things are okay with me and certain things aren't. A cactus is not okay with being over watered, it gets angry when you overwater it, it gets mushy, it dies, that's okay. So don't water it so much, that's it. We are the same way, we all have our boundaries, anger is a beautiful way to kind of set them. So that to me, is emotions and energy in the workplace, we get so scared of them for no reason, and it's bringing the feminine energy in, that is flow. There is nothing rational about what we were doing, it was, and it was beautiful.

Andy Kitson:
It's such a great story. Are there particular like breakthroughs that people typically have or a progression that people typically develop through as they become more conscious leaders? Like, it was very interesting here, kind of the detail on this breakthrough, the woman you're working with, she went through as, she was becoming more conscious around anger. Like, how does someone build on that kind of on a longer time horizon? And are there other similar kind of breakthroughs that you typically see?

Gentzy Franz:
Love it. The, the first, if I kind of walk you through the progression of an individual's consciousness or their journey, if this is something that they want to be a part of, the first thing is just awareness. In her case, to go back to that example, she was a, she became aware that she was actually feeling anger, awesome. So whatever it is, whatever the experience that we're having, whatever way that we're being, and some leaders, by the way, the awareness is I am deceptive, it's not always pretty, I'm out of integrity. Some people I work with, I am cheating on my spouse, I'm aware of that, after awareness comes acceptance, and then just accept that this is what I'm doing right now without making it right or wrong. Now, some listeners may be like, no, no, no. If you're cheating on your spouse, you're wrong, I get it. That might be a deviation from something that you've committed to and an agreement that is broken that can have devastating consequences. But as soon as I start wronging myself about that, shame sets in, I get caught up in some cognitive loop. Can I accept that this is what I'm doing and where I'm at right now? Number two. Number three, can I be willing to be with this differently than I'm currently being? It's what we talked about with above and below the line.

Gentzy Franz:
Am I willing to stop what I'm doing? Am I willing to be with this thing differently? And again, if the answer is no, okay, great, keep working at acceptance. Willingness, then, what I, for me, it's always, what do I want? What do I want? I may want to really grow within the job that I'm in, I may want a really successful exit of my organization, I may want to retain a lot of my employees, whatever it is, I may want to do something completely differently than I'm doing right now, awesome. This is another, a little bit of a risk when I'm working with clients too, of I am not, I'm not coaching to a certain outcome. I had a case last week where a pretty prominent executive that I was coaching and I'd been hired by the CFO to work with her team came to me and said, I've got a job offer on the table, I don't know what to do. Now because the CFO hire me to think I'm going to manage this person in this particular direction and I'm interested in doing that and my client knows this, that would be a misuse of kind of my guidance, a manipulation of the influence that I have over this person. I'm deeply interested in what does that person want? And because they've been on the journey for a while, they, they didn't have to get through the other stuff, they could really focus on what it was that they wanted, but without, with all the other stuff kind of loose out there, if I'm not aware, if I'm not accepting, if I'm not willing, really tough to have a conversation around wants. It's just, they're just messy, they're jumbled, they're kind of mixed up with all kinds of other stuff. So to me that's the progression and it's continual. It's to go back and readdress those things at different point to understand that wants shift, right? That makes sense to me. Let's figure out how to make sure that you're fully owning them so that you're taking responsibility for them, so that you're not just going after what you want, sneakily or deceptively. You're doing it above ground, fully communicating with the people that are in your orbit. Otherwise, I'm going to start trying to get what I want and hang on to what I got and do all this other stuff that we just tend to do as humans because we're full, we're afraid of letting go of what we've got. It brings us security, approval and control, and if I want something different, kind of what might happen. So that to me, that's the journey. And it's it looks different for four different people in different ways. But that's the, that's the progression.

Andy Kitson:
What does conscious leadership look like at more of the team or the organizational level?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, I think it's just, it's really about getting people more open, more vulnerable so that they can speak with candor. I'm really good, I'm really glad I didn't, sometimes I say candor and I was real quick aside, I was, I was doing this big workshop in front of 150 people, and I kept saying candor. And one of my friends who was in the audience afterwards came up to me and he was like, H¡hey, he was like, that was awesome, loved it, but you made candor sound like a mountain in Lord of the Rings. Let's make our journey to candor. So within teams, all we're looking for is we're looking for more candor. We really are. Do I feel safe being open and does my openness is, is the primary motivator behind my openness so that you get to see me or so that I get to control you.. If I'm being candid so that I control you, that's not candor, that's what we do naturally to get control, it's manipulation, it's okay, it's what we do, but that's not candor. Candor is I'm being open so that you can see me in the experience that I'm having, I'm allowing you to have the same thing. I'm not making your experience, my experience to manage or control, but I am allowing you to have it and creating space for it so that we can get back to what it is that we're doing, which is run this company or whatever else. So that to me is really what it means to take responsibility, I'm taking responsibility for my experience and I'm empowering you to take responsibility for yours. I'm not saying you as a victim of circumstance, I'm not seeing the organization or the market or the recession or whatever else it is as the villain, and I'm not going to hero the situation by going into overdrive just to make sure everybody's okay. Good luck, you'll exhaust yourself. It's one of the ways that we stay below the line, seeing situations or people as heroes, victims and villains, a big part of conscious leadership as well, and that's just what it means to be below the line. So the whole thing in working with teams or in an organization is how do we, how do we really live this stuff through the way that we interact, through the way that we own the experience that we're having, as opposed to thinking that it's being controlled by this, by this puppet master that we have no control over. Another quick aside, a client that I was working with, he had all these stories, pretty high level in the organization but not C-suite, had all these stories about how decisions were being made and his work was, can you be open to the possibility that the making, the people making the decisions have no idea what they're doing? They're just as clueless as you, they're just as scared as you, they're just as vulnerable as you. Maybe even more so, because they know the decisions they make have a big impact. And those people, they're good people. But to think that they have it all figured out or they're being nefarious in their decision making or they're being absolute in their decision making is not helpful. Mike Mullen, who was the joint chief of staff under the second Bush and Obama, he was an advisor at one of the companies I worked with in Chicago, and he'd meet on a regular basis with the executive team. And we talked about decision making at that level, and especially Obama with some of the decisions that he made in the Middle East and his pursuit of Obama, all of these things, there was this one of the things that made him a great leader was he was decisive and willing to make decisions and also recognize, A, they weren't right or wrong, they weren't black or white, and no matter what he decided, there were going to be some awful consequences. He allowed all of them and held space for all of that in really made it important that he had people around him that could support him in that, because that is tough. So anyway, that's, you know, within organizations, within teams, that's really that's going to be the work or the things that I focus on.

Andy Kitson:
So last question, I think we'll transition to Rapid Fire. I'd love to hear you talk a bit about remote teams. So a lot of what you're talking about, it's very personal, work that people are doing with themselves. There's a lot about just the interpersonal dynamics and assumptions you're making about people and all of that, and are there particular challenges that you see remote teams, remote leaders struggle with or the other way around particular areas where maybe they're successful in ways or things are easier for them in ways that in-person leaders or teams or not?

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, gossiping on Slack, brutal, and maybe even more damaging than gossip. By the way, gossip is going to happen in the workplace, it just is, there's too much at stake and we get scared and we need other people to see our reality our way so that we feel safe, it's all we're doing when we're gossiping. Gossip on Slack or places that we can really vent, it feels productive, but man, that's there, it's there, and it can kind of feed negative energy, and it's just people wanting to connect. And so in a virtual environment, what, are we giving people space to connect with one another in productive ways? You know, because the social aspect of work is so big and me going and having an informal conversation with this person or that person because they, they work just down the room for me, really, really powerful and productive and has defined the workplace for so long. You take that out of the equation and people are, they want it, they're looking for it. And so sometimes because we're just the way that we are, we're going to do it in unproductive ways, great. So how can we give people productive ways to do that? You know, virtual sessions like the one that we're having today, where we're actually talking about feelings, where we're practicing things outside of just our day to day work, really, really valuable. And that may sound convenient because that's my job, right? And I really do, even if it weren't, it would be valuable, I know that I need it. There are people, there are other coaches, other consultants that I meet with on a regular basis just to share ideas and to get support and everything else like that because I get lonely. So I think you've got to be intentional about that. Where I'm seeing leaders really be successful is understanding that and recognizing that the 2 hours a month they devote to bringing the team together and having this kind of facilitated conversation pays real, real dividends.

Niko Skievaski:
I really love that because one of the main things I think about as a remote leader is being intentional about creating spaces that you wouldn't have to if you were in person. And that's exactly what I took from, from that answer was we need to forcefully go on people's calendars, create a space, a facilitated space, so that in this example we can acknowledge our emotions and do it in a productive way where those things can be helpful rather than in a slack DM, where it can turn into these stories about why the lion's teeth were really sharp looking today.

Gentzy Franz:
Totally, that's exactly right.

Niko Skievaski:
Now I'm just thinking of all the ways I need to bring this back to my work. Gentzy, I think that you really exemplified one of the reasons why I love doing these shows, and that's, we get a free hour of coaching through this time period. But alas, we are nearing the end of our time. And I have enjoyed so much of this. But before we let you go, we're going to hit you with a set of rapid fire questions which which I really enjoy because it gets to see some of the variety in the ways people answer them. And Andy and I will switch off on, on asking these questions here. But the first one, if you could share a story that illustrates what culture means to you, either personally or in your career.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah. Let me, you know, something that I'm in right now. Huge acquisition, one of the biggest acquisitions actually, of 2021. Big old company bringing in another big old company and all of the, the fun and fireworks that come along with merging those two. And what I will say is that the, is a client of mine, the leader of the acquired entity is has explicitly stated repeatedly the importance of culture first and the importance of meeting numbers, whatever those, they have their own, and not just the lip service. It's really easy to say culture is important. It's just like, it's kind of what we say in organizations now. The culture is important, great, I don't always believe people. I do believe that numbers are important because of all of the energy and focus and attention that goes to that. I'm not saying take away from that, I'm saying expand the pie, and say if culture is as is important, what are the measures? How much time and energy are you devoting to that? I promise you that if it's actually important, you're going to devote time to it, and your constant concern of am I balancing the culture with the objective, quantitative realities of this organization, if you're concerned and you're putting time towards the tension and creating the balance, you'll figure it out. I say this to, to people who are, you know, I want to have work-life balance. I don't know what that means, and again, like we talked about at the beginning, it's probably not going to be a day to day thing. And if you think about it that way, you're screwed. But my net experience, I want to be a good dad. So for me, I have four kids, it's a big part of my life and always has been and will always be a big part of my identity. My professional identity is also really important. I always want the tension of I want to be a good dad and I want to run a really cool practice. And I just, I'm going to give attention to both of those things and I'm going to tune into myself to when it gets wonky or out of balance, I'm going to correct because I'm unwilling to let either one of those things slide. And I think I'd do a pretty good, damn good job of it. And leaders who are saying these two things are important, culture's important. So the client that I have right now, just put their money where their mouth is. She's investing a ton of time, energy and money into culture, and I see it. I see what's happening. Doesn't mean that the acquisition is beautiful or seamless or anything else like that. But boy, is it benefiting from her emphasis on culture.

Andy Kitson:
All right, next one. So what do leaders too often under emphasize or overemphasize when it comes to remote company culture? Said another way. I kind of like what's underrated or overrated?

Gentzy Franz:
I think goes back to what Niko said. Underrated is the intentionality around creating opportunities for positive, productive connection. Underrated, in terms of not enough attention or intention is given to that. Overrated, what people are doing over the course of the day, there's a lot of movement around measuring employee time and productivity right now. There is log in times and everything else like that. Ooh, that feels like a throwback to scientific management and Frederick Taylor, to me, which had its place in the evolution of the workplace. But I get it, I understand it, and to me it comes from a place of fear, deep, deep fear. So I think that that, that's a trend that I'm watching with remote work that's I'm going to watch really closely, I have fear around it, I feel right about my perspective and I'm open to it evolving and being a way that it can be deeply supportive of individuals. But right now, I don't know that it will be.

Andy Kitson:
Hmm.

Niko Skievaski:
Yeah. Okay. Next question. What work changes have you made personally since the pandemic started that you plan to carry forward?

Gentzy Franz:
I don't say yes to anything I don't want to do. Doesn't mean that I'm not, it doesn't mean that I'm doing everything easy. But I really check in because I know what happens to me from a place of scarcity and fear and wanting everybody to like me because I do, and I will say yes then to things as a result. I got to check in and is this, does my, my check is does my energy go up or does it go down with this? This podcast is a good example of this. If I had met the two of you and been like, I would've said, no, not because anything is wrong with you or wrong with me or wrong with the idea, it just my energy didn't go up. I talked to you, my energy was up, I said, yes. It was easy, it was easy. And so for me, I'm constantly checking in, this is not something that I did before at all. I'm just like, yes, yes, yes. Especially as I you know, by the way, I started my practice March 13th, 2020. Now it's my first day of really launching my practice Lightly. So that's, that, I wanted to say yes to everything in the beginning and did and suffered some consequences where I got involved in really long, intense work that did not serve me or the purpose or align with why I'm here on this earth. And for me, just saying yes to things is really, really important and getting clear around that.

Andy Kitson:
All right, last one. So, so what non-business hobby or pursuit most influences how you approach your work?

Gentzy Franz:
Psychedelics.

Andy Kitson:
Interesting.

Gentzy Franz:
Now, you know, I could say, you know, there are other things that are deeply important to me. You know, being a father is like literally my favorite thing that I do on this planet and always, always has been as much. And by the way, it's a place that I get to teach and, and a place that I get taught on a daily basis, that's always been constant. For me psychedelics is more recent. Psychedelics is, has, you know, with consciousness and conscious leadership and kind of understanding a new way of being. You know, psychedelics for me has been a place, a place where I've been able to re-imagine, where I've been able to, you know in, if you watch How to Change your Mind on Netflix now, which I think is a really cool look at the book, the book's even better, but it's just an opportunity just to put a fresh layer of powder over the deep grooves that we form mentally. And all those deep grooves are they're just stories that we've created. And to go back to the the plant analogy that I've made a few times, which I honestly I actually it's a convenient analogy, I also believe it. We are organic stuff, like we are organic stuff, we are decaying, we can snap, we can break, there are things about us that are just flawed organically, just like every plant is different in purpose and there's something inside of us and this is where the mystical comes in, the we do not understand. There is soul, there is something magical, there's something, if, if this is material, there's something eternal to and the meshing of those two is pretty extraordinary. And so how do we, how do we understand the that the dance between those two, understand that the tension that's created by eternal and material, how do we allow both of those to exist and recognize that every being that we're encountering is in the middle of the same messy dance? And they have different organic material and they're different plants that have been in different storms and have had different caretakers and different forms of neglect and, oh my God, then, then your heart can burst open for yourself, for other people. And it doesn't take your desire to be productive down, it doesn't take your desire to be efficient, to work hard. All of these things that we value within the workplace, those things then just get to be fun because work, it's made up, it's not real. It's this place where we come, where we just get to use our good minds, we get to play with other playmates, we come up with ideas. It's like we're kids, we just have more responsibility and we know that, that's the world that we live in, and so we get money for those things. As soon as it becomes too important or too much of our identity or too serious or too heavy, damage occurs. And I think that we're, we, there's a reckoning occurring within the workplace, within organizational structures, and has been building for a really long time.

Gentzy Franz:
We know that inequities exist, we know that play does not exist in the workplace, we know people get harassed, that power is used to impose will upon others, and it doesn't have to be that way. So really long way of saying psychedelics, just fresh powder, new ways of thinking, you know. And I had my very set ways of thinking. I collected, essentially, I spent the first 35 years of my life collecting answers, and I loved to be right. This is what was so disorienting for me about losing Mormonism. I intend to spend, I hope, 35 years and beyond, collecting questions, new ways of being, new ways of seeing things. And to me, psychedelics isn't the only way to do that, by the way. But it's a, it's a turbocharged way to really open yourself up to different possibilities. And so my work in that space, which is, by the way, highly intentional and sometimes might happen at a first show, but most of the time happens at a, a really intentional way where I'm thinking and I'm using it to expand my own consciousness, increase my own compassion, and bring it back to the workplace to say, hey, this isn't just something that the hippies do that makes them tune in, check out all of the stuff that we've been taught about the dangers of psychedelics and the moral outrage that's been occurring for the last couple of decades. Now we're seeing a renaissance of wait a second, huge benefits at the individual level, for mental illness, for organizations so that we can all get back to playing and supporting one another. So I would say for me, that's a, that's a huge part that we could go down other rabbit holes as well. But that's kind of what came to mind as you ask the question. And and honestly, something that I wanted to, to kind of bring into the discussion because I think it's important and I think we're just scratching the surface of the intersection of psychedelics and work. And, you know, you've got CEOs like Shane Heath, at mud water and other places where you're seeing different ways of being with psychedelics and with work even, you know, he doesn't talk about it, but Yvon Chouinard, look at what he did with Patagonia yesterday. I don't know if you saw this news, but he gave the company away. And I'm like, I'm like reading the read the fine print of like, yeah, what are the tax advantages and all of this other stuff. And he just wants to make sure that Patagonia continues to do what it's done on this planet for the entire time that he's run it. Oh, my God. There are so many different ways of being with work and we get trapped into the fine grooves and can we find ways, meditation, psychedelics, having conversations like this where we just fresh powder, fresh powder, fresh powder.

Niko Skievaski:
Ah, wow. Well, thank you so much for bringing us there. What a courageous way to end our conversation. And it's something that during this, this renaissance, I think the more times we can talk openly about psychedelics and the impacts that they've had on our lives, myself included, the more we can, we can help to harness the benefits and do it in a responsible way that because it is, it is undoubtedly, I do not doubt that there's a lot of benefit that can come from it. I am afraid that there will be a backlash and I think that the way that we talk about it contributes a lot to that. So I really appreciate you, you bringing it up and obviously, I appreciate the entire time you've spent with us today. I am so motivated to go on with my day now and I'm sure our listeners will feel the same.

Gentzy Franz:
Yeah, awesome. Thanks, guys. Thanks for being so thoughtful with your questions, for kind of creating a scaffolding and taking us down some fun rabbit holes. Yeah. Really, really appreciating the, the consciousness with which you approached this conversation.

Andy Kitson:
Thank you. It's been a joy.

Andy Kitson:
And that's the show. Thank you again. See? That was a blast. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening to the People Everywhere Show. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave us your review and tell your friends. And if you have feedback or you want to suggest a guest, or maybe you just want to say hi, well, you can send us an email at Hi@PeopleEverywhereShow.com. We'd love to hear from you. You can find a transcript of this episode on our website, along with all the other episodes we've done at PeopleEverywhereShow.com. And while you're there, go ahead and sign up for our mailing list. And that way you can stay up to date on new episodes as they come out. And that's it. We'll talk to you next time!

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