Episode 6
Lead like nobody’s watching
Leadership is a dance. For Darragh and Julietta of SAP, too much leadership advice focuses on the head and not the heart. They created their retreat to help leaders tap into their own source of courage and resilience, even – or especially – when they didn’t think they had any.
Darragh Power and Julietta Stotz have both had moments of realisation that their thoughts were just a movie projection. Along with Julia, they share some of those moments of serenity when – even in the darkest times – they realised that their experience wasn’t shaped by the world, but the reverse.
Key takeaways
- We often give power to the circumstances of our lives, when it fact it is us, and those around us, with the power.
- Ego is merely insecure thinking taken seriously.
- Insecure thinking is just thinking. And it can make us stupid.
Links
- Connect with Darragh on LinkedIn
- Connect with Julietta on LinkedIn
- Three Principles
- Invisible Power: Insight Principles at Work, by Dr Ken Manning, Robin Charbit, and Sandra Krot
- Life Lessons: From Sport and Beyond, Simon Mundie’s podcast
Transcript
Welcome to Generative Leaders, a series of conversations with leaders generating positive outcomes for society, the planet, and future generations to inspire, challenge, and have fun with what's universally true of the human mind.
Julia:I'm your host, Julia Rebholz, and this week to help me, I'm in conversation with Julietta and Darragh.
Julia:Julietta and Darragh, I am so ha, so happy to be here with you today.
Julia:I'm absolutely inspired by the work that you are doing at SAP, and it would be great if you could talk a little bit about what you're leading and what you're doing.
Darragh:Well, the same for us
Julietta:Thank you so much, Julia, and it's just, um, a huge honor to to be here with you and, uh, learning so much from you and with you since you've been accompanying us in this process of us creating this program for leaders at SAP.
Julietta:And it's just been an incredible ride with you, um, because you've been just really being so insightful and triggered so many great thoughts in, in myself and Darragh as well.
Julia:Oh, well I'm, I am just so honored to be on this journey with you.
Julia:People listening are gonna be like, this is a mutual loving, and they would be absolutely right. So how did you come to going, look, we need to make our leaders in SAP more, more generative, um, and, and thinking about these sort of wider, wider pieces?
Darragh:So, so we, um, We're looking for how people change because the technology industry is really at the center of change.
Darragh:At least we think we are , you know, it's a, every industry is changing, but there's a lot of kind of, the change in the world is enabled by technology and a lot of the leaders in the company have to be able to deal with change.
Darragh:So the program we lead is called Mastering Change leading at a deeper level.
Darragh:Because when we looked at how change management and, and change leadership training is generally done, it's a lot of heart or a lot of head, but it doesn't really touch hearts and souls, right?
Darragh:So you have like a, cutters models of change.
Darragh:You've got, uh, William Bridge's transition model.
Darragh:There's all these models out there, but yet people don't really seem to change in the way organizations want them to change.
Darragh:Because they're free to make their own decisions.
Darragh:So when we came across, um, Insight Principles, a number of years ago, I could see for myself, wow, I, I really thought I understood , what, what, what was been said.
Darragh:But then when I started to look at how I was thinking about things, I was very, I had frameworks, but I couldn't do things in the world or I couldn't be the person I wanted to be necessarily.
Darragh:And, uh, because I didn't understand how my.
Darragh:Experience was created or how my experience was working.
Darragh:So when that started to change, it kind of became like a bit of an infection.
Darragh:Myself and Julietta didn't start talking about it because she's braver than I am in many ways.
Darragh:And, and, and she was like, let's try and do something with this.
Darragh:You know, like, let's try and bring this understanding of how, how we change and how people change and how the principles behind these change actually helps people.
Darragh:Because we, we live in a world that's changing and our leaders have to deal with it.
Julietta:So first and foremost, I need to correct you.
Julietta:I think we're both a great complimentary, uh, couple power couple, so to say, uh, in that task.
Julietta:Um, yeah, maybe my courage was, was something that through my own personal experience that I had, after I got exposed to the three principles that led me to be that courageous and just try it out because Darragh was the one actually to introduce me into that world of.
Julietta:Magic of insight.
Julietta:Of wisdom of, yeah.
Julietta:And it just gave me this incredible, uh, let's say confidence to say, Hey, we should try this for a three day retreat.
Julietta:Why not?
Julietta:So the moment was, was not only right, but mental wellbeing became such a urgent topic for, for people within sap, not only within our company, but worldwide.
Julietta:So I believe that the momentum we had, Also gave us the room to, to be courageous, to, to try things out, to play with that, to be playful with it and to to see what leadership actually needs.
Julietta:So we basically give them the room to just be instead of do.
Julietta:And we, we make them aware of that.
Julietta:And that's where the magic happens.
Julietta:And we've seen a lot of people coming back to us saying that it changed their lives.
Julietta:They became much more happier, they became much more relaxed, much more resilient to happening to them.
Julietta:And let's see how we want to measure that.
Julietta:But we're seeing a lot of people buying into that, and it's becoming a contagious thing right now.
Julietta:So people are hearing from it.
Julietta:We are starting to have overbook courses, wait lists because we may get something very exclusive, something that if you, if you're, because it's not for everybody, right?
Julietta:And people feel compelled and they hear it from another colleague.
Julietta:Even team leaders have offered their team members to take part in that.
Julietta:And that's going, showing an interesting dynamic.
Julietta:How they're collaborating as a team.
Julietta:So yeah, it's an interesting journey and it's just, um, a lot of fun doing that with Darragh.
Julia:Well, I, I know you guys have a, have a lot of, a lot of fun, um, in the work that you do together, which is, is, is fantastic.
Julia:Um, cuz that's missing in a lot of corporate, um, organizations.
Julia:And this podcast is all about generative leadership.
Julia:Um, and I know that the, the program that you've put together for your leaders is, you know, has that really at the, at the center, at the core of, of what you are doing.
Julia:So I'd love to hear in, in your words, you know, what is, what is a generative leader to you?
Darragh:I was thinking about this and I was trying to find synonyms for generative, but I think before the definition of the word generative, there's a kind of a, a perspective on where the power lies within human beings.
Darragh:And a generator of leader to me is somebody who can generate or who can create.
Darragh:So they have this sense of yes, there's all these circumstances.
Darragh:You know, there's macroeconomic indicators, there's currency trading in the uk, , you know, there's a, there's a lot of factors.
Darragh:You know, there's, there's the war, um, between Ukraine or Russia and Ukraine.
Darragh:There's that, you know, there's supply chain problems.
Darragh:There's always problems.
Darragh:And generative leaders are not the ones who passively react.
Darragh:They, they, they, they respond in intelligent and wise ways, and they have a perspective that we can create a better culture, a better environment, better outcomes, and we should, and not alone.
Darragh:It's not that I, I, as a generative leader, should do it alone.
Darragh:Is that, , the power is in me, but it's also in you and it's also in the other people here.
Darragh:And if we want to have a culture that is really inclusive, that's really values, different ideas, that really creates better outcomes and, and better ways of going about things, then we can, and that possibility is very hopeful for people.
Darragh:You know, a lot of people can believe in positive thinking, but that kinda runs up against things.
Darragh:It's like, uh, and, and, and you know, a crisis can bring you down, but if you truly understand where the power to change lies or the power to create lies, then it doesn't really matter about the circumstances.
Julietta:I see actually everybody as a leader, everybody in a company has a leading role and, um, could, could bring out their best by, by having these three dimensions at at heart.
Julietta:So having in mind that this.
Julietta:Heart matter.
Julietta:Like being in with your heart, being invested with your heart is something that we have probably not seen over the last couple of years because we were all busy as leaders trying to fulfill our KPIs, uh, fill, fulfill our budgets, make sure that we, we get everything done and get it done fast.
Julietta:So I thought of about a metaphor for, for generative leadership, and I think it's more along the lines of not even being a dance instructor, but you know, being a dance coach that has his or her dancers.
Julietta:and you wouldn't show, and you wouldn't tell them.
Julietta:Now you move your right feet to the left two times and then you, you know, fall with the left foot.
Julietta:And then you make sure that, so you wouldn't explain that you would showcase it.
Julietta:So you would make them have a feeling for how this movement looks like.
Julietta:And then you would have them do the movement and have them get a feeling for that.
Julietta:And that's where I kind of went back to the point that it is all about this human experience, about that emotion that you have while you're having this movement and not about teaching it.
Julietta:And that's where this metaphor just is, is just incredibly helpful for me to see how, how easy it actually could be.
Julietta:Because we tend to think that it's so hard to just lead with a hard, because we, you know, those dancers that try to dance, but they feel all stocky and it's just they wouldn't have those moves and flows well, maybe because they're not there yet.
Julietta:Right.
Julietta:Maybe because you didn't show them the move, or they don't dare to look inside themselves and have that feeling.
Julietta:And I saw some of our leaders or dancers who might have been a little, you know, not able to, to move rightly because they felt ashamed or they felt fear.
Julietta:They somehow, after the three days, they, their movements little smoother
Julia:so it sounds like from, from what you are saying that, um, you know, what the program is, is really sort of helping leaders to tackle, is there, there's always gonna be lots of circumstances that they're gonna have to deal with.
Julia:Um, you know, the macroeconomic situation, the war things in their personal lives, issues with their teams, but having that resilience, having that ability to be free from the circumstances and be able to create and see what to do and see what makes sense and see how to dance.
Julia:That rhythm that is needed in that moment allows them to to, to have that freedom.
Darragh:And, and there's a kind of a, self-consciousness aspect to it, right?
Darragh:Because uh, when we dance, we kind of feel like everybody's looking at us and judging us.
Darragh:, but we also feel that in ourselves.
Darragh:You, you, you might, we might be thinking, God, I'm, I'm terrible.
Darragh:Like, you know, I have , I've got three left feet.
Darragh:I don't just have two.
Darragh:So, so we feel self-conscious and, and that self-consciousness brings with it a lot of thinking, how am I doing, how do my people like me?
Darragh:You know, am am I, do my bosses rate?
Darragh:Me?
Darragh:Does am i, am I if I miss this number by 3%?
Darragh:So we have so much thinking about it that it's not thinking about the thing, it's thinking about me with the thing
Darragh:It's thinking about me in the dance and not the dance.
Darragh:And the dance is where the work gets done and where everything gets created.
Darragh:We have had leaders share stories like a, you know, an email goes in where somebody escalates to somebody above their head.
Darragh:. And in the past they would've had a huge amount of worry about that.
Darragh:And not only that, but they'd be really mad.
Darragh:They'd be like, I'm going to, like, I'm, I'm, this is go, I'm gonna go to war here.
Darragh:They want to go to war.
Darragh:I gotta go to war.
Darragh:So they then one meeting, one email would generate 10 other emails, which would then generate three or four meetings, all in a bad mood.
Darragh:And then it would summarize in a big fight where everybody's having a bad mood and it's all about somebody's ego or their noses been outed joint.
Darragh:So we, we, we, we, we kinda sometimes play that the term ego is insecure thinking, taken seriously, is the way we look at it.
Darragh:And it is, a generative leader doesn't have a pass on having an ego like none of us do.
Darragh:We're all gonna feel that self-consciousness in the dance, but we see that the dance is more important than ourselves in the situation.
Darragh:So the leader who shared that story said they decided I'm just not gonna go there on the fight.
Darragh:Like I could go there and I can see that it's gonna cost me and a load of other people hours and hours of time.
Darragh:But if I just send one email and then go back and talk to my customers and go back and work with my team on the dance, it's still gonna be broadly the same result.
Darragh:But I'm gonna have saved myself so much pressure, and I'm also not carrying that feeling into the conversations.
Darragh:And from a business perspective, then they see the value of that state of being because they have perspective, they have the resilience.
Darragh:They're not reacting to outside forces as much, and they can see options where they, they wouldn't before.
Darragh:So they start to share about, you know, going in and really listening to customers as opposed to going in with a case prepared for the cross-examination , you know, is, uh, and, and that that frees up so much mental space that that, that the seeing of how they're thinking is working.
Darragh:That, you know, I don't have to spend two days preparing cross-examination on a court case.
Darragh:When I go into a customer, I can do some preparation, but really I can show up and listen at a level I never could before.
Darragh:And then instead of having four meetings, because we didn't hear them the first time around, we really hear them the first time round and it becomes obvious what we can do.
Darragh:So they, they see, they start to connect the, this way of being or way of seeing or understanding that they have to.
Darragh:, what it allows them to do from a business perspective, how it allows them to create a culture in every conversation that they have, whether that's with their customer or with their, their boss, whether it's with people they've had a fallen out with, and the meetings just become a lot fewer and I'm more productive.
Darragh:You know, people summarize it sometimes going, it's, I get more work done, but I care less paradoxically.
Darragh:And, and, and how does that work?
Darragh:And, and what they're caring less about is they're not taking things as personally.
Darragh:They're in the dance, they're not in, they're thinking about the dance, you know, and, and, and, and when they're dancing, they dance with a lot more elegance and ease than, uh, when they're really trying to dance.
Darragh:You know, there's a difference.
Julia:So, you know, you've talked about generative leaders.
Julia:You've talked about some of the outcomes that you are, that you are having.
Julia:But what I really wanna get into, what I really want to hear about is what are some of the insights that you had personally, that, you know, you talked about at the beginning that you, you had some, some revelations about how change works, how the human experience works for yourselves.
Julia:That then made you go, hang on a minute.
Julia:If we put this at the foundation of everything that we do, we are gonna get way better results for the business.
Julia:So what was the insight or the moment or you know, that, that you, you can personally share that kind of had that happen for you?
Julietta:Yeah, for me it was a very deep experience that I had, um, and on a personal, uh, basis, having had to go through cancer twice.
Julietta:Um, and had, having had this comparison from the first diagnosis and the second diagnosis where I and I journaled, I journaled after my first diagnosis.
Julietta:And, and I, I just went through it last week indeed.
Julietta:And I, I just looked what I wrote at that time and I just was flabbergasted by my wisdom.
Julietta:And I, I just wrote down, fear is going to be your enemy.
Julietta:Don't fight cancer.
Julietta:It's part of you.
Julietta:deal with it.
Julietta:Find productive ways of dealing with it.
Julietta:So these were my little mantras that I'd had before I was even exposed to that idea of how mind, consciousness and thought play with each other.
Julietta:And for the second time is where I really saw it.
Julietta:After Darragh had given me an intro into that, I still was struggling with it, with the idea that yes, the outside world surely has a part in what I think for sure.
Julietta:So I didn't believe that yet.
Julietta:A hundred percent.
Julietta:I kind of bought into it and I said, let's play around with that.
Julietta:So I just remember sitting in that doctor's office knowing already after the biopsy that this is not gonna be good news.
Julietta:And I felt the fear.
Julietta:I felt the fear, I felt all that, that I was not a fan of after the first diagnosis when where I talked to myself.
Julietta:The, the own dialogue was sounding more along the lines of you can't be afraid now.
Julietta:Um, which made it even worse.
Julietta:And I was starting to really hyperventilate and all I wanted was to run outside.
Julietta:and then, and I was re, I was just reading Invisible Power at that moment, so I thought, just get some distraction.
Julietta:Read invisible power.
Julietta:So I started reading it and there's this one part, um, about this lady that forgave the murder of her son.
Julietta:So that kind of was in my mind, and I was like, how can she forget?
Julietta:I mean, if it was my son, it's easy to say, but I mean, how can you?
Julietta:Um, and then it went into the part of how Thoughts really created a reality that must not be real.
Julietta:And that was the moment where I realized for myself in all that fear that this is not reality.
Julietta:And this is not going to be productive for me right now.
Julietta:Yes, I can run outside, I can cry, I can yell, I can, I can just, you know, deprive myself from talking to a doctor.
Julietta:But ul ultimately, this is not going to lead to a goal.
Julietta:And so one thought away, I found, I, I really found this calmness.
Julietta:I found this.
Julietta:Calm, surrender.
Julietta:That helped me to deal with that situation in a more productive way.
Julietta:I'm not saying that I felt Grant while having, uh, received that diagnosis, but even the doctor approached me and said, you are incredibly brave for what I'm just telling you.
Julietta:And I said, well, you know, inside of me there's a, a real disco going on . But I knew I had to, I knew I had to be calm.
Julietta:Now I, I just felt right to do that.
Julietta:And just through this me realization that my thinking was creating an experience that wasn't conductive for me in that moment and that specific moment, I yelled in my car.
Julietta:After that, I cried.
Julietta:I, I phoned my mom and yes, but even throughout the entire therapeutic treatments and all the other bad news that came after that, it always helped me to get back my feet on the ground by just realizing.
Julietta:that my thoughts were just creating something that is potentially not really real.
Julietta:So, and this is where I understood for myself.
Julietta:So if I can deal with that in that situation, why can not people around me deal with that?
Julietta:Right?
Julietta:And how can that not be helpful for them, if that is so helpful for me in a critical situation?
Julietta:This might.
Julietta:And then I had this mom in, in my head who lost her son through a murder and she's capable of forgiving a murderer.
Julietta:I thought, wow.
Julietta:Okay.
Julietta:So there must be more to it.
Julia:So Julie Julietta, I've gotta stop you there cuz we gotta unpack what you just said cuz that was incredibly deep, incredibly powerful and you just kind of skimmed over it like it was nothing.
Julia:So take me back to that, to that moment where, you know, you, you said you were sitting in the doctor's office and you felt fear creeping up your body and you noticed it and your sort of, your first instinct was to just try and talk yourself out of it was.
Julietta:Exactly.
Julietta:Yeah, it's the habitual.
Julietta:Julietta is a strong woman.
Julietta:She's capable of dealing with everything.
Julietta:Ah, that's the second diagnosis.
Julietta:Come on, Julietta.
Julietta:You've dealt with that before.
Julietta:You're a strong girl.
Julietta:You are still, it wouldn't help, so it would become worse.
Julia:So you, so you were, you know, you were having that internal dialogue, you know, and, and I'm sure lots of people can relate, um, of, you know, obviously not being in the situation that, that you were in, but in similar situations where, you know, got this one thing going, oh my God, this is really terrible.
Julia:It's awful.
Julia:This situation is, you know, horrendous.
Julia:And then the other voice that comes in that says, no, no, no, you can deal with this.
Julia:You'll be fine.
Julia:It's gonna be okay.
Julia:And it's almost like, would you say it's almost like a battle going on inside you?
Julietta:It didn't feel like that in that moment.
Julietta:Retrospect, yes, but in that moment it rather felt, and I, it surprised me very much that it just like a light bulb moment.
Julietta:It just came to me.
Julietta:This is not conductive.
Julia:Yeah.
Julia:So you, so it was like, so you ha you know, this fight was kind of going on and you started to hyperventilate and then you just had this moment of absolute serenity and this, this light, light bulb coming on going, this is all thought, this is happening in my head.
Julia:And what was that like for you when you, when you, when you had that moment of realiz?
Julietta:It felt like in the, being the eye of the hurricane, like this incredible silence in there, knowing that even inside of me, cows, cars, everything was flying around.
Julietta:I had this, this little cocoon that I could find myself in.
Julietta:And that held me for a good time.
Julietta:And, and I'm, I'm, I was really happy to, to know that there was this safe place and it felt, it just felt like, um, like a safe place.
Julietta:Not even like a relief, more like a okay, this is where I can think clear, this is where I can be a little bit more analytical about it.
Julietta:less emotional or whatever you wanna call it.
Julietta:Hurricane shelter wouldn't have been the same thing cuz it would, would be separating me from that.
Julietta:And it still was.
Julietta:So it was this hurricane inside of me, which gave me that peace, quiet to deal with it.
Julietta:It doesn't mean that I didn't fall back into depression or panic attacks or whatever it was, but it just gave me a more healthy approach and dealing with that.
Julia:and that's available to anyone, right?
Julia:In any moment.
Julietta:And we're hearing this from participants because we're also sharing that and we're, we're going down that deep level as well.
Julietta:And we've had participants just, you know, throwing their faces into their hands going, once they realize that I, I was driving myself crazy for the last 20 years.
Julietta:They, they, they realized that for themselves in that moment.
Julietta:And this is where, it was one of our first sessions.
Darragh:It's funny, you know, um,
Darragh:cuz it's ind of like the straight man and the comedy sidekick, or the straight woman and the comedy sidekick.
Darragh:So I haven't got the same story as Julietta, but like I had a situation where I forgot to renew the health insurance for my kids.
Darragh:I thought I had done it, but I hadn't done it.
Darragh:And I got really mad and I put a, a ticket into the ticketing system to say reinstated, like, and I was pure panic.
Darragh:I was just terrified.
Darragh:And then the person at the other end of the, the ticketing system rang me and told me my tone was completely inappropriate.
Darragh:And I was like, shit, they're right.
Darragh:They're right.
Darragh:Like I created the whole thing in my head and that like that, that happened around the same time.
Darragh:So I was like, I apologize.
Darragh:I'm really sorry.
Darragh:And I saw that I was scaring myself and then, and I've seen so many times where I've been doing that, you know, like, uh, I had this idea of what being a good coach would be.
Darragh:So I had like, you know, I would have the, um, the reading of non-verbal signals like Milton Erickson.
Darragh:I'd have the coaching skills of, you know, and I had created this image in my head and I was miserable coaching people.
Darragh:I'd come out going, God, geez, I'm so bad.
Darragh:Like, I'm terrible.
Darragh:I, I thought, and, and people would be fine.
Darragh:They, and go, wow, that was really helpful.
Darragh:You know, so I, I, so I have had a lot of small realizations, but what we try and point to is that the capacity to realize is, is in everybody.
Darragh:and the capacity to create these realities is in everybody.
Darragh:Going into situations, you know, I would have to do training programs for like all sorts of different companies when I was a management consultant.
Darragh:And I would go in.
Darragh:on the inside.
Darragh:I was terrified.
Darragh:I was so sure I was going to be found out as an imposter.
Darragh:So I made sure I had every bit of information that I could possibly get.
Darragh:And if people came out with a book, I'd go, oh yeah, it's not as good as their second book, you know?
Darragh:And I, I didn't realize that.
Darragh:I was scared.
Darragh:I didn't realize that this librarian character, which became very comfortable for me as a way of defending myself, was just a habit of thinking, and I didn't know that it was, that I was doing it.
Darragh:I didn't realize that I was doing it.
Darragh:You know?
Darragh:I didn't see that it was thinking, I thought this was who I am and this is how I need to be.
Darragh:So I've had loads of realizations, little small ones like this, which all kind of wake me up to you know, that's just your thinking, right?
Darragh:You know, it's like that's not who you are.
Darragh:You are not the thinking that you have and, and, and, and that it's, you're actually okay.
Darragh:You're actually quite, quite likable as a person when you're not doing that.
Darragh:And I didn't know that I was allowed to be , you know, likable just as a normal person.
Darragh:You know?
Darragh:I thought I had to have these kind of extraordinarily qualifications.
Darragh:So I, I would describe it as actually I've been above average probably in knowing things, you know, cuz I have three master's degrees, but far below I've would come to realizing that the only reason I have those three was to try and defend myself against the fear I was feeling about.
Darragh:Looking stupid or not fitting in or not being able to earn money or not being able to pay my mortgage.
Darragh:And, and, and actually life is far more pleasant when I see what my thinking is doing in the moment.
Darragh:And even when Julietta and I were talking, I was sharing what I knew intellectually and she found it really helpful cuz she realized it at a level that I didn't realize it at, you know?
Darragh:And then that kind of made me go, shit, maybe there, there's even more here than I thought.
Darragh:So then I started to realize things again.
Darragh:So it's not that there's, we ever get there, right?
Darragh:It's that, it's that once you see, it's always going on.
Darragh:You know, I don't have a pass, nobody has a pass, but then everybody has a pass because this space of seeing this capacity to realize.
Darragh:The feeling of God, I'm so stupid, is so real, is so relieving, you know, , it's like, in what way am I being stupid today?
Darragh:you know, like, what thinking am I taking seriously today and making myself stupid with, and, and, and, and, and I see more and more of that.
Darragh:I keep doing it, but that it's okay.
Darragh:And, and, and when people can see that it's not just when you're in crisis mode or a serious point of life, it's the, the email from your boss.
Darragh:But I'm, I've made peace with the re the fact that realizing it has so much value and so much capacity for a happier life is released and so much capacity for being in the moment with people and for being really listening and being genuinely curious.
Darragh:And then out of that listening and curiosity comes so much generative, so much creativity, so much Oh wow.
Darragh:You mean I can just be me and we can just talk and we can share ideas without having to take them too seriously and see what comes.
Darragh:Wow.
Darragh:That, that sounds good to me.
Darragh:, you know, and people, people enjoy that.
Julia:No, exactly Darragh, and you, you know, you, you put it so, so elegantly that this design of our mind is the same for everyone.
Julia:And, um, you know, we didn't choose it and we didn't get anything different from anybody else.
Julia:, you know, that the, the design is, is the same for every single human being.
Julia:And, and it's seeing the truth of that.
Julia:You know, we are all creating a movie in our heads in every moment.
Julia:And, you know, there's, there's three of us having this conversation right now and we are all creating different movies
Darragh:And, believing that our movie is
Julia:Exactly.
Julia:And believing that our movie's.
Julia:Right.
Julia:And, and just seeing the truth of that, just seeing that that's what's going on and, you know, we can take it really seriously or we can have fun with it.
Darragh:And, and, and that's the, uh, I'd say that this is an area that we're growing with a little, you know, cuz part of starting the program off was, at least for me, I was taking myself very seriously as somebody who knew, you know, and I have to, I had so much pressure on to kind of, we have to get this across, right?
Darragh:Oh yeah, no, no, we have to do this, we have to get this across, we have to get this across.
Darragh:And now I can see that it's like, back to the definition of ego again, as the insecure thinking taken seriously.
Darragh:Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, , you know, and then to see that it's not, , the me, me, me, me, me thing.
Darragh:It's Juliette's dance coach metaphor is to just be in the dance and to see what the dance is producing, you know, and to enjoy it and to have fun with it and to, you know, have a laugh about it, you know, cuz there's so much, there's so much weight in the outside world now, you know, in, like everywhere you look, there's the opportunity to be depressed and hopeless.
Darragh:you know, the, the, the opportunity to create that movie is infinite, but also the opportunity to create a generative movie or a, a better culture or one that caters for all life on the planet, for bringing human beings together.
Darragh:Without all this, you know, uh, the ways that we, we judge each other, the ways we separate each from, from each other.
Darragh:Awareness is already there.
Darragh:You can't become more aware.
Darragh:You just realize you're not aware, you know, or you realize that this amazing gift to be aware of things, you can shrink it down and just look at, like adding a line on an Excel spreadsheet for, for a meeting.
Darragh:And that can become the whole world.
Darragh:And you can spend your whole career just looking at one line after line on an Excel spreadsheet.
Darragh:Or you can get your head up into generating something amazing or even one conversation at a time.
Darragh:Having a, a fun conversation, curious conversation, listening conversation, creative conversation, and maybe make the whole of Excel spreadsheets redundant.
Darragh:, like why would we measure 1% improvement in this one?
Darragh:We could create a whole new business, which would make all that 1% so trivial.
Darragh:And actually we have the common sense and the resources and the skills and the power within people to do that.
Darragh:You know?
Darragh:So, so I, I think it, there's so much fun and joy and optimism and perspective and hopefulness that can come out of, and that's leadership too, right?
Darragh:That's a, a generative leader creates this environment in which people feel safe.
Darragh:They come up with new ideas, they have perspectives, they try things when they fail, it's not terminal.
Darragh:They learn cuz they're not victims of circumstance, they're actually creating.
Julia:I love what you just shared, Darragh, and you know, you have this very elegant way of, of, of taking people on that journey, cuz we talk about awareness, we talk about consciousness, you know, all these sort of different terms, but how do you see it?
Darragh:So I think language can be, which our intelligence, you know, is, uh, Vic can sign, the philosopher described it as, so you have the word awareness or the word consciousness, but the experience of it.
Darragh:The real experience of it is, is awareness present right now, even for anybody listening to the podcast is awareness there.
Darragh:And at any point in our experience, has it not been there?
Darragh:You know, people might say, when I'm asleep, it's not there, but then maybe I'm not there.
Darragh:So, so there's kind of a, i i is, when we talk about awareness, we're not trying to be abstract or theoretical.
Darragh:We're trying to look at, in our experience right now, if I'm having, thinking right now and I'm having a movie in my head right now and I'm aware of that, then awareness is dear.
Darragh:So it's a, it's a, it's a universal capacity.
Darragh:It's already there.
Darragh:It's in our experience beyond that, it's sort of outside our pay grade to talk about.
Darragh:But I, I can see that if you take.
Darragh:Search inside yourself, which is run at Google, it's run at sap.
Darragh:It's mindfulness practice.
Darragh:People want to cultivate awareness and, and, and, and it's not that they're cultivating awareness, is that they're realizing they're aware.
Darragh:Right.
Darragh:And then if you look at like Simon Mandy's podcast in, uh, in, in the uk he interviews sports stars.
Darragh:And a lot of them would say, you know, like, uh, when I'm in a flow state, there's no me, there's no thinking about me.
Darragh:I'm just there.
Darragh:I'm present.
Darragh:I'm doing it.
Darragh:So there's this kind of exploration in elite performance in sports.
Darragh:There's this exploration in the corporate world of awareness.
Darragh:And often it's linked to flow states or it's linked to greater perspective or whatever it is.
Darragh:But the way.
Darragh:, I like to talk about it anyway, is that it's there, you know, even if we're arguing about it, , you're aware of the argument.
Darragh:I'm aware of the argument.
Darragh:It's there.
Darragh:It's, it's just a fact that that awareness is there.
Darragh:Now the word is just a pointer towards the experience.
Darragh:So let's not talk about the words or let's not get hung up on them.
Darragh:Let's see, in my experience, what does that mean?
Darragh:And I, I would see for me, when I've had these insights or these realizations, is that I realized I was unaware.
Darragh:I was taken thinking really seriously.
Darragh:And then I suddenly see, oh, it's not like I thought.
Darragh:And that to me is.
Darragh:not becoming more aware.
Darragh:It's just realizing that , that I, I was stuck in thinking, you know, so that, that's how I see it.
Darragh:It's, it's quite simple and practical that it's, it's just there.
Darragh:It's a function we all have, and I realize when I'm not aware, sometimes, a lot of the time I don't.
Julia:and, and, and Julietta.
Julia:How about for you and what, what's, what's the value of having that, that realization?
Julietta:It's, it's massive.
Julietta:Um, and my experience coming us with the experience that I just shared with you is, is just listening to that feeling right and to, to taking that feeling.
Julietta:Is it a, is it a good feeling?
Julietta:Is it a less good feeling?
Julietta:somehow I, you know, I didn't feel good.
Julietta:So that kind of gave me this capacity of noticing that something is not going right, something is being created inside myself that is not helpful right now in that moment.
Julietta:So having this kind of a pointer of the feeling, and it might even be sometimes a good feeling, right?
Julietta:If I'm feeling too good, I might go like, Hmm, what am I not seeing here?
Julietta:? But, but, um, all kidding aside, I think it's the feeling that points us to this awareness, into this capacity of noticing that.
Julietta:And, and it's just been tremendously helpful, um, of noticing that everybody has this hurricane going on inside, but knowing that the hurricane also entails that I, that has that peaceful part, that quiet mind that serves you.
Julietta:In those moments, that gives you maybe even more eyes to look at something in a different way.
Julietta:So that, that's how it feels to me.
Julietta:That's how it, it was created inside of me, and I'm seeing more and more every time.
Julietta:So this awareness is just becoming more, more present, let's say.
Julietta:It's so, it takes less time to gain access to this eye of the hurricane that gives me these multiple eyes of seeing whatever else is there to be seen.
Julia:And it's, it, it, you know, again, it's, it's that we didn't choose this, we didn't design this.
Julia:This is just the way it works that, you know, we have, you know, we've talked about today, we've talked about, you know, that.
Julia:We don't choose our thinking, it just shows up.
Julia:And it's like a, a movie that's, that's running and it's happening all the time, but then we also have this other capacity to be aware of that, to be aware of the fact that that's going on.
Julia:And, you know, we didn't choose the design, right?
Julia:. So it's not like we can be engineers and go into our minds and go, oh, we, we don't really like this design.
Julia:We don't like the flood of thinking that we get, we don't like awareness.
Julia:We don't, you know, we don't like these movies that we are creating.
Julia:So the only thing that we can do is learn how it works so that you know, the, there's a shorter amount of time between the mind realizing what it's creating.
Darragh:And I think that's what what you said is so important is that because one of the difficulties with the outside in paradigm or not understanding how it works is that I see a lot of people going for willpower, right?
Darragh:Is that, uh, you know, in the military they say like, detach and observe, you know, if I get my willpower right, I can step out of the hurricane, you know, or if I do my meditation practice and then I have like five deep breaths then and it's an attempt to control the hurricane as opposed to see the nature of the system.
Darragh:And, and, and, and there's a fear factor, at least I see this for myself, is that, uh, if I understand the nature of the system, I don't have to do that.
Darragh:The system itself will bring the opportunity to get out of and stuck in that thinking that I'll see it if I don't understand the nature of the system.
Darragh:I'll create all sorts of strategies and tactics to try and force myself out of that.
Darragh:you know, I'll try and, you know, okay, I got, I gotta reprioritize, you know, like that's a, that, that looks like a really good strategy.
Darragh:Instead of, I have all this work to do, okay, I'm gonna detach and reprioritize, I'm gonna take my emotions out, I'm gonna disassociate, I'm gonna go for a run, I'm gonna do, you know, and it creates even more stuff.
Darragh:And, and this is a conversation that we see with people a lot of the time, who, who kind of go, isn't this just mindfulness?
Darragh:You know?
Darragh:Or isn't this, you know, and it's because the assumption that I have to escape that and I have to do something to escape that.
Darragh:I see this as another way of ego, right?
Darragh:So it's not to not be okay with not being okay, you know, it's like if you're fighting against a feeling of overwhelm and you think you have to do something with that, it creates even more.
Darragh:But if you understand the design is for success, is there, if I wait, if something's gonna happen, I dunno what it might be, it could be that I realized this, or it could be that my thinking changes, but I can't control the floor of thinking.
Darragh:And, and, and it seems like a, a minor point, but the experience that's created is enormous.
Darragh:The, the difference in experience, the freedom that comes from seeing, With understanding the way you, you, you, you describe it there is very different from trying to force yourself to see it in order to escape a feeling that you don't want.
Darragh:And, and, and, and it's like a understanding the nature of the system, the nature of the principles, as opposed to, you know, uh, taking the content of things really seriously or taking the ideas you have about yourself having to do stuff really
Julia:Well, it's, it is, like Julietta was saying earlier, you know, about, one strategy is to try and talk yourself out of it.
Julia:You know, like, get a grit, come on, you, you know, you can deal with this.
Julia:And, you know, and it, it's just one thought fighting with another and not seeing that they're both thoughts that have been created by the system.
Darragh:But boy, does that look like a good
Julia:Well, yeah, it does.
Julia:And, you know, and, and we've been so conditioned to, to do that.
Julietta:I think it's even beyond learning how the system versus basically an unlearning of the programming that we've been through all of us, and then just the mere acceptance of our nature and, and just the trust in it, that it does show up even in the wildest times.
Julietta:Always there that it's just part of you and it's nothing that you have to, cuz that, cuz that was exactly what I tried in the beginning when Dare exposed me to, and then when I did my first, uh, retreat with Insight Principal Julia, it was just Oh yeah.
Julietta:Until actually it whole sense.
Julietta:Yes.
Julietta:And I'm, yep, yep.
Julietta:Okay.
Julietta:You know, we might debate about that little point here, but Okay.
Julietta:Yeah.
Julietta:I'll, I'll try to ponder upon it and sit with it.
Julietta:And it just evolves and it just, you become more and more, um, trustful of your, of your own, and I don't wanna call it judgment, because the judgment is what Fs everything , right?
Julietta:So of your own, of your own, uh, system, how it operates and how you, how it's so beautifully designed just to make you happy and successful.
Julietta:That's all it does, but we fight it.
Julietta:We fight it for sure, because it just doesn't go along with the programming.
Julia:And I think it's really important to point out Julietta that, you know, programming is, is, you know, we, we all have it.
Julia:But if you, if you think about every single breakthrough that we've had as human beings, we've questioned that, we've got curious about that, and then we've come up with a new idea that makes a lot more sense.
Julia:And so, you know, it's not like we have to kind of pick through all of our thoughts.
Julia:We just have to see that that's what they are.
Julia:And then when we have awareness of that, , you know, the, the ones that just don't make sense, they just start to fall away.
Julia:They just start to look less appealing, less real, less, have less power.
Darragh:We, we identify with them less, you know, so, so that part of the, the reason that we have the problem with thinking is that like, uh, take me seriously.
Darragh:Like I, I know what I'm talking about here.
Darragh:You don't know.
Darragh:And we don't realize that we're doing that, you know, we don't realize that it's just a thought.
Darragh:It's like, if you don't take my ideas seriously, then you're not taking me seriously, and you better be taking me seriously.
Darragh:And, and, and, and it's, we don't realize that we're doing it and it can be so funny, you know, and so tragic at the same time, because the part of the conditioning is, There's thirst for control.
Darragh:You know, don't, don't use crayons on the wall.
Darragh:You know, don't, uh, don't sing in class.
Darragh:It's inappropriate, you know, what are you doing?
Darragh:Laughing at a meeting like, you know, uh, so, so there's so much stuff that gets, that we start to take seriously.
Darragh:It's like, you know, I couldn't possibly laugh on a podcast because like, people should take me seriously , you know, and they should take my ideas seriously.
Darragh:And, and because we take it the thinking so seriously, it, it, it kills, it can kill the mood there.
Darragh:There's, there's a lot less playfulness, a lot less joyfulness.
Darragh:And you look at kids, you know, and they create infinitely without kind of thought and even go back to human beings for thousands and thousands of years, you know.
Julia:Well listen, I know we could talk for hours and um, and we probably have done in the past.
Julia:Um, but it's, it's time for us to wrap up now.
Julia:Thank you so much, both of you and um, have a wonderful rest of the day and I look forward to our next conversation cuz I'd love to have you both back and.
Julia:Share what you've been
Julia:learning.
Darragh:Uh, thanks for, for the invitation.
Julia:Such a fabulous conversation with Julietta and Darragh.
Julia:As always, our conversations are really, really profound and um, I love going deep with them.
Julia:If there's something that's resonated from the conversation for you today, share this conversation with someone that needs to hear it.
Julia:You can do that by going to generativeleaders.co.
Julia:There were lots of things that really stood out for me from the conversation that we had today, and I just wanna share a few of those with you.
Julia:One that really resonated with me was the point that Darragh made about where is the power?
Julia:Is it in the circumstances or is it in me and everyone else around me?
Julia:There are so many times throughout my life, and maybe you resonate with this too, where I've really felt like the circumstances are what's creating my experience.
Julia:That I can't feel better until something changes.
Julia:I remember when, um, we were moving house and um, I was feeling all of this stress and I just kept thinking, as soon as we've moved house, we'll feel better.
Julia:I'll feel better.
Julia:As soon as I've moved house, I'll feel better.
Julia:And we moved house and guess what?
Julia:I didn't feel better cuz my thinking hadn't changed.
Julia:And then at some point it did, and I started to feel better.
Julia:And I started to see that the power wasn't in the circumstances, it was in the thinking that I was having.
Julia:And that power is in me and it's in everybody else.
Julia:It's it's universal to, to all of us.
Julia:And when you realize that you have the freedom, the freedom to dance your own dance as Julietta put so gracefully.
Julia:I also love Darragh's description of ego.
Julia:And there's a lot of societal narrative about ego and people having big egos and you know, they've got an ego bigger than the size of the planet.
Julia:Well, the fact is, is that we all have an ego, because what ego is, is its insecure thinking, taken seriously.
Julia:You know, there's been so many times, um, creating this podcast where I've started to get this thought, oh, will this be good enough?
Julia:Will people listen to this?
Julia:And seeing that, that was me having insecure thinking could have had me stop doing this podcast.
Julia:But you know, something inside of me knew, that was thinking, that got created.
Julia:And I don't have to take that seriously.
Julia:Yeah, it shows up.
Julia:I can't control it, but I don't have to take it seriously.
Julia:And 99% of the problems that we all have were created in our minds through that insecure thinking.
Julia:And when we get freedom from that, then, you know, we can start to see it's, it's just thinking.
Julia:It's not, I'm not the thinking that I have.
Julia:I'm much more than that.
Julia:I have the capacity to be much more than that.
Julia:And so that leads us to the final point that really resonated with me is what thinking am I taking seriously today that's making me stupid?
Julia:I'll leave you with that as the final thought to reflect on, and I look forward to our next conversation of Generative Leaders.
