In a world of rapid change and uncertainty, preparing leaders for an unprecedented future is crucial for organizational success. In this episode, Darrin Tulley sits down with Brent Robertson, CEO and content creator of Be Generative, to explore the transformative power of generative leadership. Brent discusses the organization’s mission to equip leaders for a future without precedent by fostering environments, awareness, and conversations that generate more than they started with. He emphasizes the power of generative listening and its role in fostering meaningful conversations and challenging the status quo. Tune in to discover how to transcend the status quo and drive transformative progress in your organization.
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The Next Frontier: Preparing Leaders For A Future Without Precedent With Brent Robertson
Brent Robertson, thank you for joining the show. How are you doing?
I’m doing great.
That’s awesome. It’s good to see you. You’re somebody who brings people, including myself, to a deeper level of thinking and awareness. You helped me and many people connect our hearts, minds, and souls. I’m excited to share you with our audience. Let’s dive in.
Sounds great.
I’d love to jump in and talk about what we have going on with Be Generative. I’m stoked about being a partner of yours and helping to get Be Generative out to the world. I’d love for you to talk about Be Generative, Brent. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to the world? How should we be looking at that when we think about Be Generative?
There is a lot to unpack there, Darrin. At its core, Be Generative and even the name of the organization is meant to represent a way of being that creates more. That’s all about how we can create environments, create awareness, and create conversations that generate more than we started with. Much of the focus is on understanding where the leverage is.
Where is it that if we spend time and energy can make a great deal of difference? I think that one of the things that keeps coming up over and over again is we spend much of our time in action mode where we’re busy doing, we’re creating agendas to do things, and we’re packing our schedules full of activities.
Our average agenda for meetings is a punch list of get-things-done lists. A place where we spend very little time that is incredibly high leverage creates conditions for success before we enter into the activities or the work we happen to be doing. Much of creating conditions for success is farming, for example. It’s about making sure that the soil, the hydration, the light, and the weather, whatever it is that we can influence, have cultivated conditions for success that will bear fruit as we enter into our activities. A lot of that has to do with leaders. For example, it’s about even creating conditions for yourself.
Am I even paying attention to what I need to be at my best so that whatever I’m spending my time on has the greatest impact? Even as it relates to our work with others, are we creating conditions that favor the conversations that we want to be having that need to produce results? In the absence of taking time to set the conditions in place, we waste a lot of time taking on conversations and activities that are going to be a reflection of our condition that we never addressed in the first place.
Since a high failure rate, we’ll say, wasted conversation time. The biggest culprit is, did we just take a moment to even check in and say, what is it we’re about to do and what’s needed for us to be successful? Move into that action. A lot of this has to do with our self-awareness and what we are aware of that we’re addressing and not addressing, and it has a lot to do with listening.
Are we in a place in which we’re prepared to listen into existence, whatever is needed? Anyway, there is a lot more to say there, but that’s the genesis of the program. Be Generative. All of the programs that it offers are an examination of, if we spend even a little bit of time with intention and focus, is going to set ourselves up for success and amplify the effect of anything we do from that moment forward.
I want to dive into a few of those conditions and items you’ve set up here. Before we do that, I’d love to go one step into the logo. My daughter surprised me. She’s an artist, she painted this for us to enjoy.
That is amazing. Very cool.
It’ll be a backdrop for certain calls. How would you describe that logo? What does that mean to you? What’s showing up for you?
A logo itself is representative of a lot of things. A part of it is an allegory to harmonics, and the pattern of colors is meant to represent a waveform. When two sound waves of different frequencies connect in a certain way, it creates a node, an amplifier. Even existing sound waves, when they interact in a certain way, vastly amplify how much volume they create.
The three colors, red, green, and blue, are representative of blue, standing for the water that we’re in, and that’s meant to represent our reality. Green is about a verdant future and possibility, and that’s all about the future possibilities that we seek. The red represents the energy behind it all, which speaks to our sense of identity and purpose.
We use that color reference over and over again as it relates to various constructs in the Be Generative programming, including the generative listening program, but when those three colors exist, they can make any other color as well. RGB is the hallmark of television technology and other ways in which we display color to invite infinite possibility in the complete spectrum of color available to us. It’s bringing those three together. It has a beautiful representation of all the work that we’re doing.
Take a deep breath. That encompasses our whole world, our whole being. That’s what I mean, Brent. You take it to another layer. Even when you talk about the two voices and they amplify, it seems like in today’s business world, the voices are at each other. They wash out, cancel out, they’re not being listened to or heard. I’m curious about how that takes effect and how it amplifies because when you said that, I just could hear this beautiful orchestra working together, and it’s just amplifying the beauty and the sound.
Darrin, you bring up an interesting point. Something I talk a lot about as it relates to, I would say, one of our archetypal default listening types that limits us, which is we often listen to agree or disagree with what fits our worldview and experience. It was a very common example of listening. What’s funny about it is when we reach disagreement, we agree to disagree, and we stop listening.
We reach an agreement, vehemently agree on something, and tend to stop listening. But the more tragic aspect of that listening is that it collapses us into a binary, which is two sides of a coin, right or wrong, true or false. When we arrive at that moment, it only allows for two possibilities, what is seen as right and what is seen as wrong and little room for any other conversation.
That’s a very common construct inside of organizations and the conversations they’re having. What it does is it eliminates other possibilities altogether. What if, instead of a binary, we thought of conversations as a field of possibility where we have competing influences that open up the field? Inside of that field is any number of possibilities that can exist.
It allows us to have a framework to entertain and engage in conversations in more meaningful ways. It often opens us up to the delight and surprise of what shows up that we didn’t consider if we’re willing to stay in the conversation and honor what are those competing influences even going back to the logo in that construct.
What that framework of the blue, green, and red opens up for us is a field where, on one hand, we can honor what’s true and real for us right now, and that’s a robust conversation. We can then also open up the field of what that makes possible, which opens again, extending that field where all kinds of conversation and possibility exist within it.
Then, of course, the third, which is if you think of it as a triangle that expands, why does it matter? What about any of these matters? Imagine that if we open up our conversations to not be a binary of right and wrong, my way or your way, and say, “What are all the possibilities that live inside of that field?” Then, it allows us to make some more thoughtful choices, particularly as it relates to, “Of all the possibilities we see, what here matters to us that has meaning and gravity?”
One thing that is certainly true I see a lot in organizations is that, even as we construct ways to move organizations forward we tend to think that goals and things that we aim for need to be measurable and those kinds of things. However, what they need to be first is meaningful because in the absence of meaning, it’s going to be hard to conjure anyone’s energy to stay focused on them.
As it relates to creating future possibilities, it’s hard work because what you’re battling against is what will always win if you let it, which is the status quo as it exists, will occupy all of our attention and energy. If we’re going to create space in which we’re entertaining conversations beyond what so into what’s possible if it doesn’t matter to us, it’s not going to conjure our energy to hold that space open.
Often, when we hold open space for possibility inside organizations, it could be quite controversial. It often takes the courage of a leader willing to talk about controversial ideas, hold open space, and be relentless about this, which is exactly what we need to challenge the status quo into a new state of existence.
A lot of the work that I historically focus on in a lot of the programming in Be Generative is about how is it that we have the confidence and courage to speak to ideas that go beyond the status quo and be willing to stand in the face of no agreement even in the face of any new idea will land as hypocrisy. It will be seen as an enemy to the status quo and that can challenge organizations and members of organizations to understand that new ideas are going to first show up as blasphemy and a threat.
Over time, then all of a sudden, if we’re willing to keep those ideas alive, we could begin to see how that idea could give us a place in which we could intentionally challenge the status quo into new states of existence. When I say challenge the status quo, we have to break stuff in favor of something new and create space for something new to come into existence. The status quo will take up all the space if you let it. It’s a real existential act of courage for a leader to hold open a space of possibility when we don’t know how to get to it yet.
We need to create space for something new to come into existence. Share on XTake that all in for a second. I think about that status quo. There’s a level of comfort we’ve been told to be within the status quo. You talk about reality. It’s that level of human nature. We get comfortable with what’s happened or what those binary beliefs are. It’s right or wrong, from high school or from high from preschool to be, “Am I good? Did I have the right answer or not?” I’ve been trained as a leader. I can’t say, “I don’t know.” I can’t say, “I don’t know how to do that.” I can’t ask for help.
Certainly, I’ve changed as a leader over the last eight to nine years tremendously. It’s in this space of being curious and listening in a different way, which is what I love that you are saying. It’s expansive. It’s creating the space to hear from other folks who have better solutions, maybe challenging ideas to your point about advancing and expanding what the status quo is tomorrow. It expands to what could be.
You and I both love the word possibilities and the space within it that helps many people thrive. You’re talking about this in an expansive way for us to think about how we live and how we are. I’ve heard you talk about leaders, in particular, around this work goes beyond skill sets. This goes beyond ideologies. I think it’s important for us to take a second to talk about what you mean so there folks understand that there is a pretty clear distinction here for us to slow down and think about it a little bit differently.
There are a lot in there. I think what you’re referring to is the place that we’re working in as it relates to leadership development. Traditionally, we’ll say that I see three major approaches. Two are very common and most familiar. One is less so, the one that we work in. Skills-based approaches to leadership development are the accumulation of relevant skills, which are important.
You need to know how to do some things. You need to have some mastery of particular skills. Some of those skills may be operating a P and L, some of those skills could be the ability to speak in public, those kinds of things. Very important to have them. There’s leverage there, but at that again, those skills are all about the mastery of doing things.
Ideology-based approaches to leadership development are ones where, for example, whatever the latest leadership book, du jour of somebody writing their story of leadership, often those kinds of books and that modality of training is all about if you subscribe to a particular set of beliefs and values, then that makes you a good leader.
What happens there is oftentimes it leads people to believe that if I follow somebody else’s recipe, then I’m going to have the same results if I just follow these values or principles, whatever it may be. That’s powerful as well, but most of the time when that’s going on, we’re following somebody else’s story and not our own, and you see this all the time in organizations where they may have language for the principles that they abide by and do anything but abide by those things or do them in any consistent basis.
There are a lot of pitfalls in that approach to leadership development as well. We’re saying that as long as I exhibit these values, I’m a good leader, or as long as I have mastery of these skills, it makes me a good leader. The third domain that we focus on is transcendental. What does that mean? It’s an exotic word. Transcendental means transitioning to higher states of awareness and higher states of being and then acting from that new vantage point.
It’s much more about the self-discovery process of understanding the innate capacity that’s already there, a deeper understanding of a sense of identity as leadership being much more about a personalized, very deep personal expression of self. The real power of and where great leadership comes from is that place in which I know myself deeply, and I know how to bring the full expression of myself forward.
Skill is great. Ideology and strong values are important, but who am I? I’ll say it this way: It’s not so much what you say, do, or be that makes the difference. It’s where you stand when you say do and be those things. The transcendental approach to leadership development is to understand where I stand and what is my truth in the matter. Who is this person operating? What do I know about myself? What am I willing to entertain as possible, not just for myself, breaking the patterns of the past, and going beyond those limits, but what do I see is possible that’s beyond our understanding of how to achieve it?
That comes from that place of courage where we can imagine something profound, and maybe we could stand in the truth about ourselves and those around us. That’s where amazing things happen. That’s where the leverage is. It’s about simply how I do the work to ascend to an elevated state of awareness where I’m able to include more than I could before.
I know that you’ve got some very personal breakthroughs you’ve discovered. A fundamental new vantage point in which you became aware of something that you weren’t aware of that completely changed your life trajectory. That’s what I’m talking about. You come into this discovery and say, “I had no idea. Now that I know, how can I include it in the way in which I lead?”
You’re spot on about some of those personal examples. As you’re talking through it, I’m picturing something I’ve heard you talk about when we talk about our words, our actions, and how they sync up with our values or what’s more meaningful. Essentially understanding what our identity looks like, how we’re perceived, and is that matching up?
When I’ve had my personal awakenings, I recognize that those (words, actions, values) were not in sync. I was not walking the talk. That’s what was scary to me until I recognized I had the courage, to your point, and was vulnerable myself to take a look at that because I was thrown into an experience that allowed me to breakthrough.
With you, Brent, when the pandemic started, I got to revisit that in a much deeper fashion with all the tools from LFG (now called the Generative Leadership Program), which we’ll talk about in a second. Yet, it allowed me each time to be more expansive about, “My god. Is my heart out there the way I want? Am I receiving the world the way I feel I’m receiving and accepting?”
That level of those components of intentionality didn’t match up with my identity and how I was representing myself. I don’t know what you feel when you think about those distinctions in general. Do they match up? Should they match up? What do you think about this? I know it ties to one of the tools you speak about when you think about identity and intentionality. Just curious about when you may use my store or think about another example that might represent that.
One of the things I find exciting is the prospect of getting a better understanding of where one leads from. Part of that is to get clear about the underlying assumptions about the world that are the foundation in which I operate. We all have these assumptions about our understanding of the world around us, assumptions we make. We often don’t spend or hardly, if ever, spend time examining those assumptions.
If we don’t understand the baseline at which we operate, then we don’t have access to where our true power is. One of my favorite questions to ask leaders is, what is a belief that you hold so dearly that you will never be argued out of it? A belief that you hold close that it animates your life. That discovery can only come from being in a conversation like that.
Having a better understanding of the fundamental aspects and/or beliefs I have about the world that animates me in the absence of awareness of those things can get us into a lot of trouble. We may be leading from a very limited view of the world if we haven’t thought through what’s behind all this and are willing to say what are the beliefs that animate me, and are those beliefs still relevant based on what I know to be true? Often, let’s examine our beliefs that are operating in the background. It surprises us to say, “There’s something there that’s come through a life experience I had that I’m carrying into every conversation that isn’t helping.”
It could be a traumatic experience of the past. It could be some concept about the world, some assumption about how it is we got to this place in the world that if we don’t understand what it is that we’re operating with, we can carry those things. They can be limiting and dangerous. At the same time, if we understand powerful fundamental beliefs.
I’ll give you an example. This is a conversation I was in at one of the listening workshops last week where the gentleman I was speaking with spoke into that question. I offered the question and I was there to receive it. What came through was just such a powerful discovery for this person, as he believed progress could be made even when it seemed impossible.
When everyone’s hands are in the air saying it’s unchangeable, it is what it is, we have no choice, and there is no possibility of possibility, he takes the controversial position of, “There’s always a place in which we can make progress.” Which can be, as you can think about it. That sounds very easy. No. It is not easy to hold the space to say, “No, progress can be made.” We just need to get curious about how to go beyond what we’ve known and what has worked or has not worked in the past.
Let’s go beyond those things and see, okay, what form of progress, what ways we could make progress, and what other possibilities we’re not thinking about that could represent progress? We often have very limiting beliefs and assumptions about what progress looks like. We don’t even notice when progress is being made.
As an example, one of the things we teach within Be Generative programming is that so much of the work we do is about transformation, meaning transitioning from one form to another. For transformative work, I’m not talking about incremental improvement, like a little bit better kind of change; I’m talking about seismic change. It is that transformative change starts off subtly, almost invisibly, and then suddenly.
The subtle is a change in the health of the water we’re swimming in and then the sudden is what that healthier water produces. That’s sometimes weeks, if not months, of that subtle change. If a leader isn’t equipped to notice it and pay attention, it would look like no progress is being made, although a lot of effort is being spent. It’s quite the opposite. Often, those subtle bits of progress, are we noticing a depth of relationship amongst those responsible for the organization?
It is because they’re right there, it is a deeper access to each other. If you put this on them in a mathematical equation, Darrin, it’s quite simple. Let’s just say zero to five is our capacity. Zero is no capacity, five is super, and we’re just superhuman. Let’s just say, on average, a leader is operating at a 2 or 2.5. If we can move that number even one degree, the logarithmic impact of that is that we simply have a bigger numeral to throw into the mathematics of an organization.
Of course, leaders have disproportionate influence, hence the position of leadership. We can make massive strides toward getting access to more of what’s already there, which is the nature of the human beings that make up the system. This work is all about how we change our numerals from 0 to 2, to 3, 4, and 5. That’s what this work is all about. Is it now we’re working with five times fives as opposed to two times twos, and the math plays out?
Yes. The outcomes are there. The generative way of being, listening, thinking, and leading is very expansive, as you said. You mentioned that pool of water and how that ecosystem is forming into its own layers of being to foster new growth, ideas, and discoveries. I hear you and it sounds like these are organizations.
As you mentioned, these are human systems with human needs, and there’s a difference in place, especially since the pandemic. Leaders need to lean in and be different as it relates to how to get the most out of their people. You talk about how we can amplify the effect of all that we do in our being and do that with less effort.
Yet, I hear all the time with a lot of leaders who I speak with. Even this week, I noticed four different leaders say, “I’m so busy.” “I don’t have any time to figure this out.” “I don’t have time to invest in this.” “I barely have time to talk to my employees.” “We’re in a hybrid workplace and I don’t get to see my folks.” I’m curious, Brent. We need to slow down to make the time.
I’ve been blessed to go through a couple of cohorts with LFG and the Be Generative programming, and I have been with you as well. I see people do exactly what you said. They start to realize who they are, how they’re going to show up, and how they’re going to connect to something that’s more meaningful, and the outcomes follow. How do we get other leaders to slow down for a minute and realize that this will give them more capacity and time? What are you noticing? What are you seeing out there?
It’s like the paradox of diminishing results that we’ve created. Often, this is the paradox of leadership too, which is as we ascend into organizations, as we ascend in our roles, much of it has to do with the part that we celebrate and the part that gets talked about is how much doing gets done. As we ascend into higher states of responsibility, we just get more to do.
We can bring on skills and get better at doing those things, but what we forget is what conditions allow me to operate at a higher state of capacity and how do I care deeply for those conditions, which, of course, are human conditions. Something that I think is important to recognize in another domain where regenerative focuses is most programming and most conversations about business, organizations, and leadership have to do with the business systems of that organization.
Business systems are the things we use to operate the business. What doesn’t get talked about are the human systems, which are their own thing. The human systems are in the domain of the condition of the human beings, the culture of the organization, the depth and quality of the relationships amongst the members of that team, and the willingness to be vulnerable and transparent with each other. Our ability to act with integrity and consistency demonstrates our values through our words and actions.
One of the most important things about understanding human systems is the experience people have inside of our organization and the experience people have outside of our organization, who are our customers. That’s what human systems care about. If we care a great deal about human systems as much as we do business systems, there lies a much healthier organization, and we spend very little time.
I have to credit Mel Toomey, who coined the meta disciplines of organized systems where you’ve got business systems that operate the business. You’ve got human systems that cultivate conditions that favor the folks that are there, and then you have integrative systems which are the ones that are dedicated to bringing about and integrating change into an organization. All three of those meta disciplines, if they’re healthy and thriving are a reflection of a very successful organization indeed.
I think about today’s world with AI and the tools that are out there. You just talked about human systems, and how people are shying away from AI, maybe not using it to its capabilities, and maybe afraid of it. We’re trying to double-click here on humanity as you’re talking through this. How do these live together? How do they coexist?
I believe that there’s a beautiful relationship between the two. I speak about this often, helping organizations come to a healthier relationship with technologies AI as opposed to fear-based ones. Here’s what I’ll say about it. My take on it is that the current state of existence of AI is much like what Starbucks did for coffee, which materially raised our expectations for the quality of coffee that we can get access to all across the country, at this point, all across the world.
What I believe AI can do is elevate the expectations we should have about the conversations that we are engaged in and elevate the fact that if we can leverage AI in a way in which we can accelerate our way to better outcomes that we can generate and automate many of the, we’ll say, less powerful conversations, shouldn’t that free us up, inspire us to think, and speak about bigger and more important things? Shouldn’t it give us a platform in which we should start to exercise what I believe is the pinnacle of the human condition, which is our imagination and willingness to dream?
What I believe AI can do is elevate the expectations we should have about the conversations that we are engaged in. Share on XThat’s the domain of the human condition that is yet very far from being replaced by AI. Will it ever be? Who knows? Again, I could go on and on. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about what AI is and what it’s not. It is not consciousness. It’s a very sophisticated way in which we’ve used technology to predict the best right answer based on a knowledge model of the past. It is not a place in which we can engage in the exploration of the field, my favorite field in which to work, which is the unknown.
Yes, within the unknown is where the discoveries you talk about and the possibilities are just waiting to be noticed. As part of that, I love how you encourage people to live life through this generative lens of inquiry, open-ended questions, and what-if questions. It’s not, yes or no. It’s not binary. Everything you’re teaching everybody, teaching us, and teaching me. As we think about this space, we must receive it.
It’s something you gifted to me and I wish the other day about slowing down and receiving what’s there. I take that to heart. As we’re leading life through inquiry, we have to be able to listen. I know this is a top program in Vistage Leadership right now and I think you’re out there as one of the top speakers in the country with this program. I’d love for you to talk about what you’re noticing out there as you’re talking to leaders around the world about listening at this level of inquiry.
These types of what we’re bringing in and how we’re being generative in this space. I know you touched on this a little bit in the beginning, but I’d love to go a little bit deeper based on what you’re experiencing with your guests with the Vistage Leadership and other organizations you’re speaking with around, listening.
A lot to unpack there. I want to share something that you brought up. One of the hallmark characteristics of Be Generative programming is that we are working in the field of the transcendental field in which we’re looking to elevate ourselves into higher states of awareness and being. That field is best created through inquiry. It only exists through inquiry.
What do I mean by that? It’s not a field of answers. It’s a field of questions. Even the toolset that’s the baseline of all of the programming, every single one of those tools and there are many of them, is a, “What if?” For example, what if the future does exist? What if the way it exists is in language? It’s a willingness to entertain that question. It’s not to say that’s true or false. It’s a willingness to just be willing to have that question wrap around you like a beautiful blanket.
How does the world look through that question? That dovetails beautifully into the practice of generative listening, which is exactly that. What I find is an awakening that happens with people that participate, 1,000 have, is that if we keep asking the same questions, which is often the case, we ask the same questions, then we have the same conversations over and over again.
When we have those same conversations, of course, our conversations are how we relate and how we experience the world. We keep asking the same questions. We keep having the same conversations. What does that mean? That means we keep having the same experience over and over again. Over time, it feels unchangeable.
“There’s no reality but the one that I’m in.” “How do we change it?” The culprit isn’t what we think. The culprit is that it is the questions we ask because those usher us into the rooms of the conversations that we’re having. The culprit is the understanding that our organizations and their futures live only in our conversations, and that’s where we can go to work and shape them.
As it relates to generative listening, what I do is reawaken people to this incredibly powerful Internet capacity for listening that they already have and aren’t using. That we have forgotten to use and let those muscles atrophy. Part of it is paying attention to, “What have I noticed about the characteristics of the conversations I’m having?”
Our automatic conversations, the ones we’re going to go to by default every time if we let it, are somewhere in time between what we know and are experiencing at this moment that tends to be the outer edge of our conversations to what have we known and experienced in the past. That’s the blue. That’s our reality.
That tends to be what we talk about. If you throw any two people in a room and tell them to just get to know each other, the temporal space, temporal being understanding time as a field phenomenon, I can guarantee the domain they’re going to speak in is right between maybe the outer edge of what are we noticing and experiencing right now to what have we known and experienced in the past. That’s where we go by default, and unfortunately, that’s where we stay.
This is the trappings of that reality recreation mechanism, and if those are the conversations we’re having, then we’re just replicating things over and over again. What if we broaden the temporal range of the listening or the conversations we’re having and start to include a space that goes beyond what we know and are experiencing right now into the unknown and unknowable? That space of possibility that we have to invent through the conversations we have and it simply takes a different question.
One of my favorite frameworks on this is what so and what does that make possible? What of those possibilities are we interested in and why do those possibilities matter? The third domain that I reawaken people into is the domain of identity, where the only way we can come to understand ourselves and who we are for those around us is through conversations about that topic.
Who are we? Why are we? What is it that people notice? One of the powerful concepts is that we can only exist for somebody else through the other. The only way we know how we exist for the other is through the other. Our listening, if we’re willing to listen to someone and fully receive them, gives someone a space in which they can come into existence.
If we’re willing and courageous to reflect on what we see, what it does is it gives the other a glimpse of who they are for their world. Something that is one of the most powerful experiences any of us could ever have. It’s taking on different questions that bring us into new rooms of conversation, and of course, those conversations can radically change our worldview and experience.
I feel I’ve lived some of those moments where I was nervous to ask, or maybe I didn’t ask because I thought I was good enough. I know that when I’ve stepped back to be curious about how people perceive when I’m vulnerable and when I’m sharing my personal stories, as you and others have heard on this show. People give back more than you ever anticipate as long as we’re willing to open up to what that looks like.
That’s not always pretty. It’s the ability to see what they’re saying about how we’re showing up for other people, how I was showing up for other people, or how I wasn’t. I thought I was. To me, that was the greatest gift. An understanding that the distinction of what I thought wasn’t fully right from their eyes, and that’s what mattered, not my eyes. That was a big change in my life, going through those steps and listening to how others see us, as to your point, because we can’t see ourselves directly.
You’ll never see your own face directly your entire life outside of a pixel, a photograph, or a mirror. Your only view of yourself is an abstraction, but I can see you directly. Something you can’t say. Think about that for a moment. It just boggles your mind. I’m witnessing you right now in a way you could never witness you.
You'll never see your own face directly your entire life outside of a pixel, a photograph, or a mirror. Your only view of yourself is an abstraction. Share on XYes, I’m thinking about it. I’m trying to look at myself. It’s hard. Yes. It’s mind-blowing.
It may be a nugget for the readers as it relates if you’re tracking with this conversation right now about the power of listening. One of the powerful things that leaders do is if you want to understand the condition of your listening, pay attention to the conversations that show up around you, the condition of the people in those conversations, and how they show up around you.
What are the conversations that show up around me and what’s the condition of the people trying to have those conversations with me? Are they coming at me openly, vulnerable, and willing to share deep, unformed ideas or are they coming in attack mode, ready to defend themselves? What does that say about my listening? The other thing to pay attention to is what are the conversations that aren’t showing up around me that I wish were. It’s not by accident. I promise you.
They’re not showing up around you because others have discovered that those conversations are not ones that you invite or are willing to have and so, they don’t bring them up around you or if they do, it comes as what we would describe as an attack because the other’s already in a defensive posture. It says everything about the condition of your listening and it’s such a powerful thing to pay attention to.
That’s a great takeaway, just start to observe our conditions, how we’re showing up, what’s absent or what’s present, and what’s going on. I think that’s brilliant. Thank you for sharing.
The reason I’m hot on this topic right now is because in the last six of these workshops, many of the reflections back on how it is saving and deepening relationships amongst those that attend, particularly with their spouses. A question to ask yourself is, “What are the conversations I wish my life partner was having with me and aren’t?” “What are they not sharing with me and why?” “What does that have to say about my listening?” If not, “What does it have to say about my willingness to invite that conversation?”
That says a lot and you’re right. I’ve experienced that firsthand around the conversations you’re referencing. To me personally, just diving into the conversations to take some of the walls down that maybe we’ve put up over time or some of the stories that we jump back into, “Here we go again.” Shaking that to say what’s here so that we can think about what’s on the other side of that conversation.
Now, Brent, I know you’ve been working through this for some time. You’ve been in a practice with Fathom for so many years and now Be Generative. I know that on a personal level, you’ve had a lot of things that you learned, experienced, and have overcome. I’m curious about what stands out for you and has helped you see the world at this level you’re talking about. What’s helped you deepen your thinking and the soul that you’re noticing? Then, what are some of those moments for you that have come up in your life that have shaped you?
There is a lot there. One thing I would say that certainly drives this work for me is a deep love of the human condition and other human beings. One of the inquiries that’s always in the back of my mind when I’m interacting with someone is what if the key that may unlock my future is sitting right there in the other? That came into my life for whatever reason. What if I took that posture of curiosity with them?
That has been a way in which bulldozes through judgment, through all this other stuff that gets in the way. Assumptions and all the things that keep us from having meaningful discourse, and I see this a lot with leaders, make the false assumption that people aren’t up for these conversations because that’s malarkey. We’re human beings, every one of us, and these are the conversations that are the fundamental makeup of the human condition that we’ve known about all through time in history.
It isn’t a matter of people being inadequate or incapable of entering into a more meaningful discourse or that there isn’t some amazing key that could unlock something crazy within each other that we may not have had experiences in which we’ve been able to engage in those kinds of conversations, but I promise you we’re desperate to.
Why can I say that? I say that because there are many things we certainly know about the human condition over time. There are three fundamental things that are, again, baseline assumptions that have been heavily examined and that I operate with. One of them is that we are desperate to be seen, known, and appreciated to the degree that’s happening for us, which is the same degree in which we stand strongly in the world.
It’s amazing how few times and how few of us are getting those experiences regularly. We’re desperate for them that we’re in a time now where we’re desperate to be seen, known, and appreciated that we’re just overtalking each other. Nobody’s getting the experience of it. We just get louder, fill up more rooms with words, and don’t even give us a moment to have that experience of being seen, known, and appreciated.
What makes me think is that there have been some moments to go back into some of your personal challenges. I think about the beautiful TEDx talk that you gave. You talk about the story with your mother, and I’m curious about how she helped you step into that form of listening.
It’s hard to explain. The best way I can put it is that something foundational for me is that anything is possible and it’s never too late. There were a lot of things that stood between a deeper relationship between my Mom and me. We had things in which we could engage and things that we couldn’t. Limitations. As she was going through the journey of her ending on the human plane, something opened up, which was this deep vulnerability that I became aware of in those last hours when I was beside her, helping her let go of all those things.
All the things that never got discussed that she held on to, the pain and the tragic moments in her past that carried forward, the anger set, and all these different things that were going on. It was like we were side by side, cutting those tendrils and liberating her from all of that to be free to enter the next plane. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, and I got to a relationship with my mom that I had always wanted to have but never did until that moment.
It’s almost like both of you were able to see each other for the beautiful beings you both were at that time and let everything go. You stepped into the situation that’s in front of us versus what shaped us to that point and it’s a beautiful thing. We need to do that now. I’m glad that you had that experience so you could feel it before she passed.
Another experience along the way, and I think that’s part of your earlier question. What these last few years have been about is coming to a place in which I wanted to operate my life that I didn’t know was possible. Many parts of my life were well-addressed and cared for, but other parts weren’t. There were parts of my character that I was very proud of and parts that I wasn’t.
There was this dream of living with much more integrity, where my values match my words, match my actions, and it’s been a rigorous practice over these last few years. Controversial and challenging. Requires the endings of a lot of things and the beginnings of other new things and challenges along the way. My friend at the time, who has now become my wife, challenged me as we were driving home from a mountain hiking expedition.
As I was going around, it was either this way or that way or if I could choose this path, then this path. She just said, “What if you could have it all?” It stumped me for two hours in the car. “My god. What did I say?” It opened up this field of possibility. I said, “What does all look like that matters to me?” Then, “How do I hold on to that dream?”
If I hadn’t been asked that question, I wouldn’t have even conjured the language to describe what it was all about. In the absence of having that beacon of possibility, how was I directing my life, and how was I creating conditions that favored it? That beacon of ideal possibility continues to this day to open up the pathway toward it.
I would describe through this practice, I stand in a place now where a couple of years ago, if you asked me or told me, “This is what your future looks like,” I would say, “You’re joking. There’s no way that’s impossible.” I’d laugh you out of the room, probably walk away, or maybe slap you. I don’t know, but here I stand, and it was all a willingness to have that vision.
Your willingness to share those stories you’re working through is important. I appreciate your vulnerability there. It just validates, Brent, we’re all human. We all have these challenges that we need to stand in, look at, and face if we want to get what’s possible or if we want to live out our legacy in a certain way. We want to feel connected with a greater being. That’s what it is. We need this. You said earlier, I love it. It’s the posture that we stand in.
I love that you talk about taking responsibility for the lives we touch and you’re touching many lives. I applaud you for the fact that you’re walking the talk. You’re living this each day. You’re expanding each day. You’re generative. You’re representative. One last question, Brent. I know we’ve been talking about possibilities throughout this whole show, and the show is called Live Your Possible. I’d love for you just to give one more tidbit about helping people live their possible. If there’s a different level of definition or distinction, add that too.
If I were to encourage anyone reading to have a conversation, take some time and then examine that question, “What if you could have it all?” When was the last time you discussed what matters to you? What’s the “All” that would be the makeup of my life that would matter? When was the last time you had that discussion with someone that matters to you?
That’s a conversation to have and to discover what it is all about because in the absence of having that conversation, how do we have any chance of creating it when we don’t know what it is? Start to get clear on what all means to you and then how you start creating pathways toward it. It all starts in the conversation. The answers only exist in the conversation. Who in your life would be willing to entertain that conversation with you? Go have it tonight.
I love that encouragement and that support. As part of your programming, I’ve seen you ask people, “Within the next 24 hours, will you commit to do and take on this conversation?” Everything you ever wanted could be on the other side of this conversation, or they might give you that perspective of how you matter to them, and you could share how you matter to them or with the other people in your life. It’s very beautiful.
What matters? That’s the whole thing. All of this is about willingness to enter into more meaningful discourse about conversations that matter.
Brent, this has been wonderful. I don’t know if there’s anything on the top of your mind that you just want to get out there. One more thing.
Look at it this way. We, as a species, have unlimited potential, and we’re at a time now when we have a world that would invite us to exercise that potential. Maybe now is the time to say, “When was the last time that I did something that scared the daylights out of me, but I believe in it?” When was the last time we did that?
We used to talk about it this way. Do something you’ll remember in 10 years. Take on something that you’ll remember in 10 years. Why not entertain that conversation and be up to something like that? In some dimensions of our lives, we tend to think that it has to be done through work. No. In any dimension of your life, what am I up to that’s worth spending my life on? What am I up to that I’ll remember ten years from now?
Love it. Why not?
We’re going to live this life out anyway. Why not entertain that conversation?
Let’s leave an imprint. Let’s have that lasting impact. Brent, I’m honored to be on this journey with you. The lives that we are going to touch and the responsibility we’re taking together, I’m excited about what’s ahead. I have much love for you and say hi to Sherrie. I appreciate you being on the show, sharing all your wisdom, and your love for everybody reading.
Darrin, thank you for creating this remarkable space to pour into both of us. Our partnership is very important. Thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Brent Robertson
- Be Generative
- https://www.Be-Generative.com/sip-sessions
- https://www.Be-Generative.com/brent-robertson-1
- TEDxHartford- Brent Robertson
About Brent Robertson
Brent Robertson is the CEO and content creator of Be Generative, equipping leaders with a future without precedent. https://www.be-generative.com/
Brent is a TEDx speaker, has delivered keynotes at universities such as Yale and UCONN, inspired crowds at industry events for the American Institute of Architects and IndustryWeek, and designed and emceed record-breaking events for Keep America Beautiful and The Society for Marketing Professionals (SMPS). Vistage, the world’s largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization, has named Brent as a top speaker.
Brent is also a successful entrepreneur who has launched a series of successful businesses, including consulting firm Fathom and the renowned leadership development program LFG. To experience Brent is to be left with a powerful message and an incredible experience that you will reflect on long after the interaction is over. He is passionate about working with people who are committed to step into their potential, and who are open to provocative ideas and shifts in perspective that encourage radical growth.
Brent has been gifted from mentorship by, and collaboration with, many legends in Organizational and Leadership Development. This list includes Alpesh Bhatt, Wendy Appel, Daryl Conner, Judy Neil, and longtime collaborator Mel Toomey, creator of the first ever Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership graduate program and co-author (with Judy Neil) of the renowned book, “Integrating Change”.
When not at work, Brent can be found spending time with his three children, and out in the wilderness hiking local trails or summiting the New Hampshire 48 4000’+ mountains in every season.
