How to reinvent yourself to reinvent the world

Bill Duane: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the heart of innovation Podcast. I'm Bill Duane former Google engineering executive and Superintendent of wellbeing and courage consultant and speaker on innovation strategy. We're going to be diving deep into the internal innovation that unlocks external innovation and the surprisingly practical ways we can become better innovators. We'll be in conversation with innovators from many different backgrounds and contexts, including business, science, social change and technology and not only benefit from their expertise, but also their personal stories of their innovation journey. Today, we get to talk to make Psalter about how humans develop and held that can allow you to innovate at the very core of who you are, and how that can then enable creative and innovative action. Meg is an internationally experienced executive coach and management consultant who works with corporate public sector and nonprofit clients with 20 years experience. As an integral master coach, she supports leaders to develop the mental, emotional and interpersonal capacities needed to handle greater complexity required at pivot points as their careers or organizations change. A skilled teacher of mindfulness she incorporates mindfulness and self awareness techniques into coaching programs and leadership development. So welcome, Meg to the heart of innovation. Very happy to have you here today. I am delighted to be with you, Bill. And you are in Toronto, I'm in Toronto, Canada. That's right. So I am going to defer for a second the normal question of what do you think of innovation and ask the more pertinent question of what are your thoughts on Rush? Oh, what a rush.

Meg Salter: 1:40

You do? They were a great band. They were a great man. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what is feeling? What a rush? Yeah. Did you ever get a chance to listen to the when you were growing up? Yes, I did. Yeah. Jealous? Yeah. Jealous? Yeah. Anyway, I couldn't I couldn't let a friend from Toronto come up without, without harassing them about about a rush question. By the way, for anybody listening, the heart of innovation is now a podcast about the music in times of Canadian band Rush. And so for the rest of this, we will be talking about, you know, I'm not saying it's going to be limited only to rush. You know, we can also talk about The Tragically Hip or, you know, pretty much any any Canadian band that came out of the bar scene of the 70s.

Bill Duane: 2:26

But until that happens, we can talk about this innovation stuff. So Meg whether when I say innovation, how, what thoughts pop into your mind? Or how do you define innovation? Well, you know, Bill, I've got a coaching and a business background. So

Meg Salter: 2:46

coaching is all about helping someone develop a new way of being and a new way of doing. So that's one way of understanding innovation is the fostering of something new, and ideally healthy and productive. And it's about understanding the context for that. And sometimes it's also about understanding what is keeping the existing current way of being in place.

Bill Duane: 3:21

Hmm. So like that there's, there's two parts to it, there's the individual part of it. And we'll get into that for the whole rest of the time around skills about not only doing but being, and I think it's the it's that first part that really tends to get overlooked. And then when you also talk about the context about what are the inhibitors in I'm guessing that some of those inhibitors can be internally generated, or externally generated the last podcast? Guest I had on my friend Roxy was really talking about some of the structural stuff around race and gender that can be inhibitory. But it sounds like you're talking about not only from the individual side, but also the organizational side.

Meg Salter: 4:04

Absolutely. I mean, there's always the inside and the outside of anything, any organism has an inside and an outside. And a lot of the people I work with are quite successful already. And what is keeping their way of being and particularly their sort of mindset in place is that it has worked, it has been successful. They have been paid handsomely, to be a certain kind of way. And it meets certain kind of organizational needs or a strategic context. So when any of those things shift, when it gets out of sync, then you've got room for novelty.

Bill Duane: 4:49

Room for novelty makes it sounds so benign, I know in my own life, in my own development as a leader and executive, I'd say the harshest kind of innovation. is when you need to re innovate something that has been successful for you in the past, and then some sort of context changed either. And for me, the the toughest one was getting promoted were a certain set of being and doing strategies that were the reason why that got you there in the first place, then become neutral, and then negative and having to dismantle something that's been positive for you. That's, that's some of the toughest kind of innovation, it's

Meg Salter: 5:32

it external, because your identity is tied up to that your paycheck is tied up to that your relationships are tied up to that. But as other very famous coaches have said, what got you here will not get you there.

Bill Duane: 5:48

Yeah, it's so strange one hears that advice. And you think, and this is again, where I think this emphasis on being comes from you hear that you hear that advice at one level may be at the cognitive level. And it can almost land like a platitude. But for me, I'll give you an example of one of the harshest lessons I learned I call it the lesson of the invisible megaphone. So I went from being a line manager to a boss of boss of boss. And I really like having warm interpersonal contacts. And I love joking around. And part of this is what helped me create high trust relationships to to operate really well. But in a certain layer in the hierarchy that was new, that behavior was destructive. Absolutely, because because people said, oh, no, this guy in charge, who I don't know any of his context, is making a joke that that sounds negative about my project, or what to me. And the reason why I'm tying this back to being is that I was doing it so that I felt good because humor, and jokes make me feel good. And the sad, difficult thing I had to say is, do I want to have that feeling of humor? Or do I want to do harm to the people that ostensibly I'm here to make their lives better. And there's a deep sadness in putting that away, it's counterbalanced by the idea that you're doing it for the right reasons is that an example of what you were talking about is,

Meg Salter: 7:21

and let me put let me broaden out that example a little bit, you were used to creating relations of ships of trust to warm through joking around. And so when you become in a new role, that way of creating trust no longer works? In fact, it's counterproductive. So but trust is still an important value for you. So the question becomes, what does trust look like for me? And for other people? Like, how are they going to read the trust signals, and you have to let go of a way of creating trust that was pretty much guaranteed, and try something brand new, that you have no idea whether it's going to work? In fact, I can probably tell you for the first little while, it won't work that well, because you're not gonna you know, you're not good at it yet. You're not skilled at it yet. So there is, you know, that sort of letting go that transcending finding something new, but also with through line. And so in this case, the example that you're bringing this through line is creating trust.

Bill Duane: 8:29

Yeah, and really, then, I mean, something I found both in my own life and in coaching and advising other people, is that the bridge that can hold up, right, because the the new, the new structure, the new edifice is not going to be as well built as the old one, because it's brand new, you know, but this almost like, how do you the, the thing to put over the gap is, is one values, you know, I'm doing this in the name of trust. And I think I think that helps give us stability of purpose, to try out the new thing. And then, you know, we're also both both meditators and the ability to feel the, in the body, the arising of discomfort of not knowing what you're doing, or the awkwardness of doing and the awkwardness of trying something out on a new on a very big stage. And then the ability to stay with those sensations and then again, constantly turn to there is a felt sense of comfort that goes alongside of I am, I am putting myself in a tough situation for the benefit of others and for the benefit of trust at the expense of what has been something that was pleasant.

Meg Salter: 9:44

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, ideally, you're trying out these new moves in a moderate kind of way in a pilot project kind of way, rather than perhaps for a large shareholder meeting. And you've got a support team around you, which could be a coach, which could be a buddy, who monitors you and you have enough. You're developing enough sensitivity, both outside of you to look around at. Some people are really good at reading faces reading the room, how is this going monitoring external energy? Some people are more attuned to reading internal energies. So you know, where is this new positive feedback loop coming, it may literally be in a different part of the body than the old feedback loop. So attending to energies, excuse me, for one sec, this is slipping. Attending to different kinds of energies, locating where in the body, those energies are. Mindfulness can really help you with this kind of fine sensory discernment. It's kind of like retuning an instrument.

Bill Duane: 10:55

So I want to I want to pop up a level in in your beautiful response, we had the treat of hearing that you have several different domains of expertise. I'm wondering, can we hear your superhero origin story about how you became master meditator? Coach organizational design? I just I'd love to hear how you how you got to this point.

Meg Salter: 11:22

Oh, Bill. It's so ordinary. It's so goofing around.

Bill Duane: 11:27

Yes, the usual. Yeah.

Meg Salter: 11:29

I mean, it started I started working office work, when it was pretty primitive. And I quit University in a huff of irritation. And all of a sudden, I was reporting to people who had less education than I did. And that was a good lesson because I learned brand new ways to have fun.

Bill Duane: 11:48

We were hanging out time Timeout, timeout. What, what, what led you rage quit University? Oh, you can't let that go.

Meg Salter: 11:55

I was pursuing psychology and something rather. And I had the first of many life crises, I thought, Oh, this is all useless. This is all useless. So I had left home previously, I was following the standard familial path. And you know, early 20s, late teens, I'm going to be different than my parents, which hopefully many of us get a chance to do so. And what that did was it. It really gave me a feel for frontline work. And the enormous what goes into frontline work often undersung underpaid, they had to go out to work during COVID Many people so I mean, I did that for a number of years. So that kind of attuned me to a different range of people, which is great, absolutely great. Best friend learn how to flirt for sure.

Bill Duane: 12:57

Is that part of the art says just people do I offer that flirting and as maybe not part of my friend. I think I think you should I think you should start at tick tock. And maybe,

Meg Salter: 13:10

maybe we'll put it under leadership presence, shall we?

Bill Duane: 13:14

No, no, we should not put flirting in anything to do with work. Maybe in France, that would be a great product did the US I think I think we'd be giving poor advice.

Meg Salter: 13:23

Anyway, I did go back to school. I worked in the financial sector for a number of years, I worked for smaller organizations and and then large organizations. We got married as it turned out, second time round, we moved to Europe. I worked for the tech sector, both in Canada. And in London, England, I didn't MBA in London and Brussels. My My husband was working for the International Division of one of the large Canadian banks came back and had a national roll for a large Canadian bank, which got me into marketing and strategy and quality improvement and all those kinds of things sort of got me into change management. And somewhere in there, I was still working for the bank national roll two kids paying off the mortgage, couple cars on the driveway. You think you have it together, right? You think you have it together? And my brother's suicide it and it was a huge shock to all of us. None of us were ever the same again. And you know, back in my you know, university days, I've been taking Philosophy and Religious Studies and you know, you read a few books and got a credit so it was just great. And after words, but a few months afterwards, I had a little voice in my head that said you should meditate or you could end up like Johnny and I thought that was his heart Short NBA. And I didn't hear voices, but this one kind of persisted. So I started up taking up a meditation practice. So for quite a long time now, career and family, I have now two wonderful grown daughters. And meditation had just all intertwined. So I left, you know, after several decades, I left large corporate work, I went into small boutique consulting firms doing change management, org design, that kind of stuff. Always attracted to theories that were acknowledged complexity of organizations that have acknowledged enhancing levels of developmental maturity and complexity, whether it's in the organization or the individual, and started off doing individual coaching, because it was scary. It was scary to be intimate with somebody rather than protected being by being on a stage and having a giant binder. So took some training through integral coaching Canada, which is one of North America's top training schools, and have been doing individual coaching for about a dozen years now. Yeah, so that's kind of the short, meandering road. And usually, you know, something, it's that old theory, you're doing a current way, and it's working fine. And then something that doesn't work anymore, either in you or externally. And you got to figure out something new.

Bill Duane: 16:35

So you just mentioned a whole big arc. And, you know, I, of course want to, you know, extend my condolences around the death of your brother. And also honor, the positive change that happened as a result of that. I think both in terms of for in my own life, you know, it was the worst thing in my life, my dad's death, that was actually this pivot point. You know, I think I think it's not until things are difficult enough, like, I don't think fat dumb and happy is a great platform to make deep change from and on the one hand is, is we wish everybody to have ease, and a good life. And you know, the Tibetans have the saying, May you have the appropriate amount of difficulty. So one is I really just want to acknowledge just the depth of of, you know, of what suicide brings, particularly into the into the family unit. And then I'm curious, when you said there was a voice, so a lot of times our intuition, there's different kinds of knowledge. So if we're in the business world, we're used to seeing our knowledge in graphs, in PowerPoints. And so the idea that these different very important, and in this case, you're also mentioning novel source of data, can you tell me if you're comfortable with it, how how that data arrived, of, you know, some idea of attention must be paid, like there was this, this was something really different?

Meg Salter: 18:11

Yeah. I mean, I can still remember, Sunday morning, Sunshine streaming in the window. And all of a sudden, you're hearing this voice in your head. If I look back on it, the stressors, if you're fortunate if you have enough supports around you. And I was fortunate, I had a stable marriage, the kids were healthy. I had a job, the mortgage was getting paid off, like there were other solid things in place. If those aren't there, then that same stressor can draw you in. So I really want to acknowledge the relatively healthy context and support I could draw on. If I look back on it now a new sort of a developmental perspective. It was a new part of me coming online. It was the part of me that had wanted depths and meaning in my late teens and early 20s, but sort of said, No, I think I'm going to get a job and be treated respectfully and have a career and all those things. So I was kind of looking for more depths and had this vague sense that something was missing. And there was there's a long time ago bill, there was a quality of perception that was different. It was short, not wordy. And just like it left an impression, like pay attention to me. And it sunk in and I thought okay, I've heard of this stuff. I tried it before. Didn't like it.

Bill Duane: 19:58

The meditation my head, try

Meg Salter: 20:00

did it before I, you know, gone down to Rochester and gone to the Rochester Zen Center, but no way too much tofu for me in those days. And I've always, the other thing is, I've always been attracted to, these are things that can be applicable in the midst of daily life. And I think that goes back to my own personal life a father who ran off at one point, and came back, you know, earlier relationships with a guy takes off with the money. So part of me goes, we're gonna have wisdom in the middle of the world, not up on the hill. And the deeper perspective, as I articulate now is that the world is not something to be run away from the world is sacred. We are here to do our growth and development and learning and loving on this planet, in this world, surrounded by these other creatures. And yes, it can be great to have moment times of intensive training. And I've done that regularly. But the proof is in your conduct. So it's easy to be loving all beings, when you're all by yourself. It's much harder when you're at a screaming match with a teenager or in a tricky q&a session or making a pitch for funding.

Bill Duane: 21:32

Right? I want to jump back to something you said just really jumped out at me this idea that there was a new part of you coming online, from a developmental standpoint, and one of the things that really jumps out at me about your work and your book, is this inclusion of the developmental process as an overlay to to all of these things. And so I think one of the things that is really helpful for people is even the idea that new new parts of you will come online at various points. And that the way they do is really varies from person to person. When I was listening to you, it sounded like it was literally a voice that you heard. Right. And, you know, my friend, Scott shoot, he wrote a book called Full body, yes. And for him, his whole body just as some version of stand up and applaud like, it's just it's very somatic for him. Whereas for you, it's very narrative. And I would imagine I was watching a YouTube video on Duke Ellington, who had synesthesia, who would see the tambor of his musicians as as color and texture, you know, blue burlap. Yeah, for the baritone saxophone. And so, you know, one of the things I think that's amazing is to give people the heads up to be on the lookout, because I don't think as coaches or teachers, you can tell someone what it's going to be. And I think these experiences can be so disjoint from work a day previous methods of cognition, that they can be dismissed for their weirdness or, you know, I'm sure if you start hearing voices, during a period of intense grief, you might say, this could be a pathological this could be the beginning of a mental break.

Meg Salter: 23:35

Absolutely. And I have family members who are schizophrenic. So I am very aware of voices in the head. So yes, I mean, we all have our different ways of apprehending reality. I tend to have a lot of pretty strong inner radar, I have a strong introversion. For other people, it could be very interpersonal or relational. All of a sudden, the people you hang with are just boring. Or, or a different kind of, like you're, you know, it's who your relationships. Other people know it through their body, for example, the energies that we know what keeps them going. So there were, you know, I'm kind of using some of the four quadrants there. But there are lots of ways of discerning that still small voice now for me, it was a voice but it may be a tingle in the body. But I think the marker is this feels different. It's got that kind of, I've lived in French speaking countries recordable. It's got a freestyle, it's got a different texture. And if you're open to that different texture, you know, ah, this is something you don't know. You tell, this is something different coming. This is something different going on, I better pay attention.

Bill Duane: 24:59

So I think that's really The interesting especially the way that it can mean falling out of love with a with a thing or an activity. So for instance, I've always been a musician. And so I always had all my guitars in my office. And then I felt really bad because I wasn't playing them anymore. And then I thought, well, let me take them out of their cases and put them in like a stage stacks a stage stand, so I can just pick them up and play. And then I still did. And I felt bad about it. Because this was a part of who I was, this is how part of people know me. There's a bit of identity in there. And then at one point, I realized I just don't want to play guitar anymore.

Meg Salter: 25:39

I played piano for 10 years. And then I just thought, I don't want to practice anymore.

Bill Duane: 25:44

Yeah, and it's that shift. But I do think that we can get into extrapolate Natori in nurses about stuff we've done in the past. So in other words, when I had one of these many shifts happen, I was resistant to it, because it almost felt like I was out of integrity. Because I had said to myself with some harshness, you should fucking practice those guitars. And then when I didn't, and then I finally realized, oh, no, it's I don't enjoy it anymore. And I'm in charge of me. And I don't have

Meg Salter: 26:14

to right. Now, were you a professional musician at the time Bill? No, what if you were? Hmm. What if you were a professional musician and your livelihood depended on it and a couple scrawny kids? I'm just saying, and the same thing hit. So we're upping the pressure now. Right? Yes. So that I run into that in organizations a lot, right, you're being there's an external requirement, you are being paid to do something rather. And all of a sudden, it just doesn't give you the juice anymore.

Bill Duane: 26:54

So what do you recommend in those situations

Meg Salter: 27:00

not to make an immediate switch. Sometimes, you can change the role in the organization, right? Sometimes you can't, sometimes it's a different way of coming at the same position. And sometimes that might mean a fairly significant change. Right, in terms of changing job or changing organization, or whatever, but there's often more flex and wiggle room than you would think. Because we've created the role suited the way we were, but there's more room for maneuvering that we haven't even seen yet.

Bill Duane: 27:44

I think so. And then also is, you know, every activity can serve different needs. So if one of those needs is, you know, vitality, and freedom of action, then if that pays really, really well, and lets you put some in the bank, and there's a way for you to counterbalance the absence. So not every activity has to push every button. So what I love, love, love when working with the ute, with, with with students with you know, Gen z's in particular is meaning and purpose is so much more important than it was to my generation Gen X and previous generations, that they're just not willing to forego it. I think, in part because the system they're walking into does not is not delivering on the promises, that if you if you trade your happiness, you will have a certain level of, of material comfort, and no, these systems are just going to extract everything they can out of you so so they're really into meaning and purpose. But I think that means that young people can over index on that to say that I'm supposed to be head over in heels, head over heels in love with every aspect of what I'm doing. Whereas some aspect of what you're doing serves one goal. And then one aspect serves another goal. So I think your advice is really is really wise not to make not to just have whether or not you're doing hand flips over it be the only criteria. Plus

Meg Salter: 29:15

even if you're doing hand flips at the beginning, there's always a honeymoon stage. Hmm. And after six months to a year, you're probably not doing hand flips. And the shadow side of any situation is beginning to surface itself. So meaning and purpose can be understood and followed in many different ways. So you don't need to leave that vector behind.

Bill Duane: 29:45

And I think India to your point, so there was so because transit in the Bay Area is so poor, a lot of the tech companies run bus services to and from San Francisco downtown. of Silicon Valley. And one of the bus drivers. His name is Lloyd. And you know Lloyd's job on paper is to get Google employees to and from campus from San Francisco safely and reasonably quickly. Lloyd's experience of the job is is is that he gets that done. But he has a he has a knack for names. So he learns everybody's name. Everyone is greeted by name with a fist bump if you've taken that bus more than three or four times. And Lloyd also would give us shit. Like when we're pulling in, he's like, okay, entitled Googlers, we're here to drop you off at your overpaid job. So you know, it was just give us like a little bit of a hard time when he was dropping us off. So it was clear that he loved us. But also, you know, in a little bit of an older brother, yeah, kind of way, and the sense of warmth, and smiling and community. And if you are in a Lloyd bus, you're like, Oh, this is fantastic. And then I left Google a long time ago, from time to time, it hasn't happened since before the end of COVID. And I wonder what Lloyd is up to, since I was Lloyds first stop, when I would get there, we just have a chance to hang out while he was having his coffee for a few moments. So I wouldn't be walking around my neighborhood in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco when I would hear the tute of a double decker bus horn. And just as, as one of these buses went by, I would just hear like, I go. So all this to say, and looping this back to your previous point is, I think a lot of times people get hung up on the job description, part of their jobs and looking for meaning and purpose. Whereas given the richness of human collaboration, the constant need to figure out new ways of doing things, you know, these areas of meaning, and purpose and richness are all over the place. And important in your case, you're mentioning, sometimes they're just coming into view of Oh, I really value human connection. Yeah, for example. Yeah.

Meg Salter: 32:05

And, you know, speaking about Lloyd, and many, many zillions of others, not everybody gets the chance to make those kinds of choices, privileged choices. And yet, you can still, you know, I value creating a little bit of sunshine in the world. Or, you know, there's a job description on paper, and it's only ever partial. And then you realize, oh, I'm, I'm going to do this work. And I'm going to try and figure out how better to collaborate, for example, or how better to stand up from my point of view, or whatever that is. So there are there's ends. But there's also means and keeping both of those in mind can be one of the ways to expand your leverage, if you will.

Bill Duane: 33:04

So, thinking about this idea of adult development and imagine there might be some people listening who are somewhat familiar with it, could you give like maybe just like a short overview of adult development and how it ties into this notion of reinventing oneself or within a group of reinventing something or just just in general.

Meg Salter: 33:29

The notion of adult development has been the notion of development has been around for quite a while ever since Piaget and child development. And the notion that children develop not only physically but emotionally and cognitively is very well documented. And maybe 2030 years ago, people began to pursue the same thing and adults and I can tell you is a personal, huge relief, to know that development of more complex ways of meaning making of perceiving the world are possible after the age of 22. It's wonderful. We all grow and develop as children, we grow physically, we grow from understanding ourselves as the center of the world to understanding other people are also people in their own right. It's called theory of mind. We grow from there are many models, the one I have found most productive and evidence based is the status model through Terry O'Fallon. And understanding how many perspectives can we take is one way of understanding it and this has enormous application in the ordinary world. So a small child takes their own perspective first person, you know, little kid hides their head under the rug and because I can't see you, therefore, you can't see me right It is cute. They lend later on learn to take a second person perspective to really understand how somebody else feels to value friendships and relationships more than toys. For example, this can develop even into

Bill Duane: 35:17

some people never reached that point, especially with the toys, especially when

Meg Salter: 35:21

the toys are expensive. This, you know, one of the ways of understanding development, picking up on some of your interest is how big is our circle of we have W E is that, you know, me and my close friends, is it me and my tribe, that could be a biological tribe, it could be a tribe of belief, or religion, or language. I lived in Quebec, Canada for a number of years. And, you know, there are different linguistic groups in Canada that can have significant bumfights and a very different sense of identity. And that sense of identity is very deep. We can grow into a third person perspective, which is ability to sort of stand back on those relationships and see ourselves as an individual outside a very strong group affiliations, I would suggest there in many parts of the world, they're just making that transition now. And it's a it's a, it's a sort of a challenging one. And third person, fourth person perspective, I think that voice inside of my head was me coming into fourth person perspective, where I'm more able to understand interior parts. In organizations, a fourth person perspective is going beyond, you know, what do I want to create in the next three to five years going beyond getting a team behind me, which included, you know, tech folks and investors and whoever else? To what are the different contexts I have to navigate? How are the different stakeholders feeding into this? And how are their agendas conflicting? getting a sense for a broader systemic view. So as sort of a whole systems, you can really come online, that requires a broader perspective taking capacity? With whom can I have empathy? Who others can I put myself really put myself in their shoes? Who do I need to get feedback from, because they can see things in me, or the situation that I literally cannot see. So I need to bring this fourth person perspective online. So this ability to take a perspective is, in fact developmental. And I guess I want to stop here, Bill and pause by saying, and they're all beautiful. And we shouldn't privilege any one particular capacity, you know, a two year old is equally as beautiful as an eight year old, they're just different. And we are all sacred in our own ways. So I don't want a privilege a certain way of meaning making over others. But sometimes the ability to handle complexity and ambiguity makes a difference.

Bill Duane: 38:22

Right. And, you know, also, if you if you extrapolate that frame, one of the problems that I can fall into in any developmental path is the idea that one is better, or sorry, you know, the farther along you are, the more accomplished you are. In therefore, when you look back, and you say, well, I now have capabilities that I didn't use to have to look back with a sense of, you know, shame or unhappiness about it. And then, you know, I think the real subtle harm that can happen and I say this to my coaching clients, well, the ones who enjoy a salty coach, is they say, How's your project of hating yourself into a better person coming along? But I think it's so when we look at these developmental stages as what's what's ahead of us is a lack verses I loved the way that you put it is, it's just more in different tools in the tool set and sometimes these other perspectives are, you know, the the ones that may have come online earlier are really useful in certain contexts and to not have this idea that more is better or some method of attainment is is above some other ones, but the way you put it is was much more beautiful.

Meg Salter: 39:43

Well, you know, there's that's a really good point bill is just a couple of things to build off there. One is, you know, is the complexity of our perception and meeting meeting adequate for the task. Complexity on the side doesn't match complexity on the outside. And one can argue that the demands of the world are getting more complex, more complicated. And so we need to enhance our bandwidth capacity to meet those. Having said that, I personally am involved with conservation efforts in Canada. And one of the big things here is indigenous lead conservation. Because they know the land. And they are hoping to be in right relationship with the land, and all the sentient beings on the land. So they're all important.

Bill Duane: 40:39

Right? And I think, you know, going back to one of the first things you said about meaning making, and then meaning making the antecedent to that being given perception. You know, I think one of the things that's toughest about innovation, and the previous podcast with Roxy Manning covers this quite specifically of that, it needs to accommodate divergent points of view and even divergent truths. So from a perception standpoint, the method of perceiving the thing is radically different. You know, and, you know, normatively we say, objective science, you know, those tools are the correct ones for studying ecologies or systems in that. So when somebody has a different method of perception, and then sensemaking, it becomes very, very interesting to say, how might these two be be harmonized, particularly when one one or both sides has a first principle of this method is the only correct one of proceeds,

Meg Salter: 41:48

right, which is in itself a relatively narrow view, you know, that tends to come from, you know, certain meeting making capacity, which is, you need, it's almost like a camera lens. If I could use that as a metaphor, Bill, it's like, you need a really wide lens, to be able to take in all the different frames, cues, and the capacity to detect different meaning making modes, the emotional capacity to be with dissonance, because you're not used to this yet. The capacity to not need to resolve ambiguity, or paradox in two seconds, meant to live with it for days and weeks and months. And one of the things that's happening now is that people are coming together from all over the world, and whether it's gender or ethnicity, or language, or history has historicity, we've got all these points of view perspectives clashing in the same room. And there's a possibility for that to be very rich, and transformative. But it's tricky. possibility for huge conflict, and dissing the other dismissing the other because you literally cannot see it.

Bill Duane: 43:20

Yeah, you can't see it, or ontologically, you just say it's any, any information from that source is wrong, and you bring up an important thing of complexity and ambiguity. My take on my own instincts to narrow in that way is to simplify so that the problem space, the problem matrix becomes easier to navigate and calculate, right, the idea of if you look at the IDEO, IDEO and design thinking models is to actually invite confusion and complexity in the beginning. And for people like me that came up from an engineering standpoint, that is a condition that is broken, and begging to be fixed, whereas you mentioned and certainly what complexity theory teaches us is, there's actually a need to encourage that because the, the method, the method of using solid measurements only works in relatively static environments. Exactly.

Meg Salter: 44:26

I often use a model that combines first diverge and converge divergent thinking followed by convergent thinking in in cycles. Because, you know, you can solve a problem given certain kinds of constraints, but how do you define those constraints from problems faced in the first place? What is the relevant problem to solve? And that's one of the things that happens in large organizations is that you become pretty good at solving narrow, relatively narrow, but technically complicated problem spaces. And that you have to go beyond that. to say which which of the problems we should even be looking at.

Bill Duane: 45:03

Right? Or it has the problem change. The classic thing in a large organization, you know, in the military, it's called, like fighting the last war is you have an entire system of organization process policies, and maybe most important incentives to keep on doing it the way that you have been. And to actually diverge from that necessarily means to have your numbers go down and possibly go up in an area that's not even being measured, or maybe people think it's bullshit, or antagonists. That's

Meg Salter: 45:36

right. Yeah, they have a finely tuned machine for a situation that's no longer relevant. Yeah, I think that's, that's especially especially true now. You know, just thinking about, you know, I do a fair amount of work in in the AI space. And I really, you know, I joined Google in 2005. And I really thought the velocity of things was moving quite fast, quite fast, then the pace at which they're moving now is really, really stunning. I mean, even as a as a Gen X, or who came up in my adult life with the internet, it's pretty clear that the internet of today, the Internet of Google's circa 2008, is going to seem it's already starting to seem quaint. And what's coming out is, is something, you know, unknown. So we're definitely getting more into this. This ambiguous space. And I think, I think part of the reason why I love your work so much, is, you know, right now, I'm really struck by just a sense of mastery, you know, the way that you tie very different like each one of the domains that you have expertise in, people spend their whole life developing a deep expertise in it. Mindfulness, business systems and sort of the MBA stuff, the developmental theory, and then there's the whole organizational part about how organizations develop in this, and then the coaching part on top of that, which is another so what is, he got a lot going on, and I'm here for it, and I'm grateful for it. And I would be remiss, you know, I know, a lot of people are probably thinking like, well, how can I get some of my eggs wisdom? And the answer is, via a book called Mind your life. And if you happen to be in China, it was just released in May I say, brilliantly translated by one yen Chen. So with this book, it's actually it's a, it's a, it's a how to about in particular focus on the mindfulness but informed by these other areas. So one is I would encourage everybody go out and get a copy of that book. But also, you know, obviously, step one, by the book, but in addition to that, for people that are listening to us and say, like, I would really love to examine my own life and the efforts that I'm trying to do in the world through these rich lenses, maybe with working with a coach. In addition to buying the book, how should people go about working with a coach finding a coach? How do you find one that's, that works for you that is smart, and then maybe combining that with other modalities like meditation, or therapy or even psychedelic stuff? How would you what are your best practices on that? I am not joking. It's said in Silicon Valley executive coaching combined with psilocybin is is is very much up and coming thing now. That speaks to my youth. Coaching is a very broad field is not regulated. I happen to think that qualification and experience makes a difference as does personal chemistry. Certainly, when I'm being interviewed in the sort of organizational sector, somebody will be given a choice of, you know, here's a two or three coaches and go pick the one you like, because chemistry is also really important. You want to feel that the person kind of gets your world but you also want somebody who's not going to parrot back what you want to hear. It's can be helpful to think about why am I here? What do I want out of coaching, but often people don't have that they just have this incoherent sense of unease. Something's not working anymore, and I can't even put my finger on it. Sometimes naming what it is that's not working, naming the old way of being for example, It can be very illuminating. So, International Coach Federation has a huge list of people. That's one source. There are local organizations, that's another source. Try and figure out what the person's style is my own style to attach edgy. I try and operate at the knife's razor edge of challenge and support, which is shifting, you know, by the minute kind of thing. Most coaching should be more than just a pleasant chat, you should walk out with practices, you should walk out with homework, you should work out with something to do differently, try x y Zed over the next little while. So for me, that balance of Ooh, this is could be interesting. I'm a little bit nervous. Is, is a good way to go about it. And of course, on the mindfulness side, there are many people who when I started, it was, you know, the odd book and people, live teachers. Most people now start off with an app, although the retention rates are very poor on most apps, including even MBSR. So again, finding out what supports you need, you need the intellectual support, do you need a community? Do you need a meditation buddy? Do like to sort of shop around with different styles for a little while and figure out what suits you. It can be really helpful to have a live touch base with a senior person from time to time because it's really easy in coaching, or mindfulness training, to be delusional and to kid yourself. Right? To get yourself on how you want, or oh, this is self care, it's not that I'm slacking off. Because I don't want to be with my own thoughts isn't gonna take a little nap. It's just self care. Yeah. Yeah, as as an example, just to pull out of Yeah, yeah, example. There are times for that. And then there's times when that's just plain narcissism. So.

Bill Duane: 52:20

Yeah. So what is, uh, well, as a way of tying everything together, you know, we talked about how the world is changing so rapidly in such surprising ways. And there's been a couple times when I'll go on a quick tangent. I used to when my office Google office was downtown San Francisco, I would take the tram and I would take it two steps farther than my office, which was on on the water on the bay, and then have a 25 minute walk to center myself do some meditation before walking in the office. And it's sometimes I would choose an imaginary person to do the walk with somebody from history. And I would explain, and sometimes I would do it with myself from an earlier age. And, you know, fairly recently I was I was playing that game. And I was explaining what the world is like, and me from 20 years was just like, just stop making shit up and be like, well, flat Earth is really a sincere thing. And there's lots of people who believe in it. Donald Trump is president and I just went through like some of the ups and downs, and it's part of your swing. I just like it seems so unlikely. We're in a very weird, we're on a very weird tangent A timeline, it seems,

Meg Salter: 53:44

you know, well, there's a couple things there. One is, you know, after about, well, even, even when, at a very young age, it's possible to look back at your younger self and say, Oh, my gosh, I have changed. It's possible. I've already done it several times. Now, many of these changes are normative, you know, you went to elementary school, you went to high school, maybe you went you got a job or you whatever. So they don't seem like that unusual. But if you look back on your younger self, and what used to scare you and delight you, and your present self and what scares you and delights you you'll find different things. So that's, that's a confidence builder. That change is normal and natural and you know, it doesn't. The big punctuations probably happen at greater frequencies when you're young. And in areas that are supported as you know, sort of much later perspectives are not socially supported that much. So that can be hard or it can be lonely. The other thing I wanted to do is to tie in the mindfulness piece to this. A phrase I often use is a It has to do with enhancing your internal bandwidth. People like Daniel brown refer to the speed of mind. And a lot of folks think that mindfulness is, you know, you've got to be calm and quiet and sitting by yourself and you slow down. And so if I'm a busy person, why the heck would I want to slow down? I am rewarded for being productive and busy. But in fact, as you develop these attentional skills that mindfulness does, you're actually developing. It's almost like your internal processing is speeding up. So that what you're observing seems like it's clearer, more spacious, more sharply focused on and so that the, the bandwidth I'm using that term as a metaphor of your internal capacity matches the bandwidth of what's being asked of you. So let's give an example of somebody who's, I don't know making a pitch, shall we say, does that sound reasonable? Sure. And they walk in and initially think they just have to master the material and make sure the PowerPoints don't look too horrible. Now add in, in the ability to monitor your own internal energy, the negative self talk, the emotions flowing through the body, simultaneously looking at different people in the room? And how are they reading it? Reading that kind of energy, looking at the pacing, you get a really sharp question, taking that in fully rather than being automatically defensive. Understanding that different kinds of people in the room will require different kinds of responses, because they coming from different contexts have different interests. And to do that, with militant grace and ease, that takes the ability to pop in and out in and out very agile, very agile, emotionally, cognitively interpersonally, energetically, very agile, and you sort of have to have that kind of capacity to for that internal agility to match the complexity of what, what's in the room in front of you.

Bill Duane: 57:37

Yeah, yeah. And I would add, as part of that internal agility is also the regulation to deal with some of the dissonance between those two, you know, that that, that they, you know, either there might be some emotion directed at you, if you get a peppery question. Or even that little, that little free zone of self doubt, that can come up in the in the middle of things, or someone presenting a divergent point of view that you wish wasn't true. And then the other thing is, you might be familiar with the Johari. Window, Sam, that blew my mind. So the Johari Window, correct me if I'm getting this wrong, is there's things about you that you know, and others don't your secrets. There's things that you know, about you and others do, this is sort of what you're transparent and open about. And there are things that other people are aware of you that you have no idea like this. And I think to find out about that aspect of the Johari Window is that one that can be the hardest to stomach because I think a lot of times you mentioned before, sometimes it's the shadow or something where we have developed I mean, going back to when you had this, this literal voice of wisdom pointing you towards wholesomeness during a time of great difficulty, I'd say the shadow of that is the thing that conceals aspects of your own experience from you because you're not ready for it. Or it or there's there's a fear that you're not ready for it.

Meg Salter: 59:22

Yeah. So the ability to take in feedback itself can develop initially, well, I'm the expert, I don't need feedback. Who you to tell me and then I'll take feedback as long as we can agree we're, you know, it's all about going to this particular goal. And if you know, the 10 is big enough, but we're going to this particular goal, and then feedback because I know that you bill can see things that I don't and I need to know that that's that part of the Johari Window you were talking about it to the ability to sort of see these multiple feedback loops that occur in a very complex system. Given how each one reinforces the other, and then beyond that, just stepping into a broad field of awareness, which allows you to take in all these different pieces of feedback and hold them with truth, but also with a light touch. Because you know that the feedback is also representing who it comes from, as well as who is pointed towards. So, so just all of these things grow up, we always grow up, I think it's a great relief, actually a great relief. And it's really funny to me, and one of my ways of holding, especially ideas around shadow is it's, it's really funny, I think of how many friends of mine have gone through the very intense experience of like coming out as queer in one way or another. And it's building up and it's on their mind, and they tell their best friend, I'm gay, and they're like, What, da, we're all waiting for you to be able to catch up to everybody else. And this idea that, you know, a lot of times the things we're protecting, maybe maybe don't need protection, that which is not to minimize the the real harm that that people go through. But it can be fun to do some small, safe experiments around this. And you can ask a trusted friend, or a colleague at work to say, you know, when I do XYZ, could you talk to me about it afterwards. Or, you know, in this particular meeting, I want to do blah, blah, let me know how I did. Or in the meeting, I'm desperately going to need hand signals, if I do X, right. So me is better, or something like. So the ability to seek feedback, most standard, coaching programs started off with some kind of feedback, you don't need to do, you know, a paid instrument to get reasonable feedback, but you do need to have an enquiring mind, and be willing to sit with some discomfort. So from somebody you trust in that regard.

Bill Duane: 1:02:05

So what's interesting, then is that, you know, this implies then this positive feedback loop between having a certain amount of trust, stepping into it with vulnerability to see if you have any blind spots, and I think there's a tenderness of asking someone you trust to help you with your blind spot that then up levels, the sense of trust, and then and then safety. And then I think, you know, stepping out of the individual realm into the org realm, the more that people are doing this with each other, this this delicate dance of vulnerability, and trust, and helping each other uplevel and CO regulation. This is the point when it goes from being a bunch of individuals trying to get better individuals into a group of people doing their thing, because even though there might not be an objective, and a key result or KPI around trust, and blind spots and shadows, a team that has a very functional way of accommodating those, you know, I think that builds that construct of psychological safety that the Google research showed was the number one separator between extremely high performing teams and high performing.

Meg Salter: 1:03:24

Absolutely. And, and, again, to your point about trust, and how do we recognize it? And what did we do to enact it? You know, a can start off with, you know, I trust your code. I trust you, technically, I trust you to do a good job. And that's one baseline. Whatever your job is, I trust you to be accurate and reliable in that, which is already no mean feat, right? Yeah,

Bill Duane: 1:03:53

yeah.

Meg Salter: 1:03:55

Too to what else? Can you trust somebody with interpersonally or relationally. Or contextually, you know, I need to find out when certain customers or certain people are doing X, Y, Zed. So, you know, we can start off. The thing about coaching is that, you know, it's like a kid riding a bicycle, you need to meet people where they're at. And you can start off with something that seems fairly straightforward. And increase that size of that window incrementally in ways that are feeling comfortable for you and comfortable for the other people until it just becomes a normal habit. You ask for feedback and certain kinds of things. So vulnerability can feel scary. And this is about scaling. Right? So you can start small and build that relationship of trust.

Bill Duane: 1:04:51

I think that and that's what I liked the normalization of the fact that this is difficult and awkward. It's that forming, storming norming performing remembering that you know that getting getting real is or getting complicated or encountering paradox. I think when you're in environments of emergence and great change, you actually need to get to those really quickly because to route a path that routes around, those, those discomforting feelings of all of we just talked about, of shadow of not knowing of what worked for you in the past is no longer working for you like without some method of squaring to that with love and compassion. But so I'm sort of I'm sort of giving you my version of the answer. But what would you recommend as a general thing for people, but how do we? How do we cognitively? How do we emotionally prepare ourselves for the difficulty of change and growth?

Meg Salter: 1:05:56

I think one of the key things that has helped me and many people I've worked with, is to understand that confusions are normal. And they are not a sign of failure. I mean, when you're learning something, and you're confused about it, you don't know your shit yet. And we can take that into going forward. But a confusion can also be a sign that a certain kind of growth is occurring. And this is a normal effect that happens. And often, when we feel a confusion, our reaction to it is to push it away. Because we interpret that as something's going wrong. But if we interpret that as oh, maybe something's going right, I just have to figure out what it is and who can help me with this.

Bill Duane: 1:06:55

Right? where something is flexible in a supple, in a way where it was immovable? Yeah,

Meg Salter: 1:07:01

yeah. So it's that I'm moving to one of the two tools that I can, can be taught in mindfulness, for example, is how to turn towards a source of discomfort, rather than turn away. And an automatic reaction very often is to turn away from the source of discomfort because it's uncomfortable.

Bill Duane: 1:07:24

basic survival out there basic survival, you know, supersize it, if it's uncomfortable, flee it, or numb.

Meg Salter: 1:07:30

Yeah, you know, but you know, whether it's relaxing into childbirth, to facing off the huge animal that's about to charge you and you got a little puny stick on a spear, we have learned how to face towards the difficulties. And that takes interior skills, it takes support from around you. And doing that in ways that are manageable, like maybe five minutes to start. But that, you know, whether it's called a growth mindset, or an open mindset, it's counterintuitive. radically, radically counters, Why

Bill Duane: 1:08:09

think we need we need active active skills to engage it. And then at the individual level, and then at the group level, we need people we trust to co regulate to provide, as you were saying before, different points of view different, different viewpoints. And then to create that circle of trust, combined with third party, fourth party views that allow us to, not to really map out and triangulate an interior and an exterior landscape that shifting sometimes more, sometimes less.

Meg Salter: 1:08:46

And, you know, with some of that practice, you become used to the fact Oh, yeah, I know how to navigate this stuff. I did one of these five, eight years ago. And I'm here, this one's different. But I survived the last one, you know, people in, you know, save tech sector and high level professionals who, you know, go back and look back to graduating from, you know, perhaps high school into university, and all of a sudden, you're a C student, you thought you were, you know, wonderful. And then learning that there are different kinds of intelligences. And in the organizational workplace, I mean, the cognitive is the price of entry, it gets you in the door. And beyond that, you haven't been trained, likely.

Bill Duane: 1:09:35

So one, one might say that this sort of training at the individual and group level of oh, we could call it maybe the heart of innovation,

Meg Salter: 1:09:42

we could call it the heart and soul of innovation. Absolutely. And they're all tied together, aren't they? You know, we might lead with the brain. In some sectors and other sectors not so much you might lead with the body. Or you might lead with sort of people type intuition, sales roles are like that. So we lead Is no one part of us, but it's kind of like a three legged bar stool. You need all three legs. Right? That sounds like a pretty perfect spot to land on. Meg, thank you so much for like I said, the term that comes to mind is mastery in so many domains and the ability to weave them together. I'm very grateful that you've taken your time to share it with me and the folks who are listening. It's been a pleasure Bell. It's always a delight to talk with you and hello to your listeners.