Holistic Leadership in Action: How Peggy Rajski Balances Strategy, Intuition, and Discernment to Drive Change

Speaker A: Let's just try to break this down a little bit. You're no different than all of US CEOs of small medium enterprises running big organizations. If we get caught up in this rat race of emotions, as a leader, we know what happens. You know, if we get caught up in this bubble of craziness that we all hit, at times it becomes difficult, especially if we get caught up as a leader. How do you stay beyond the fold, above the clouds?

Speaker B: I have been guided by what I always thought of as a gut instinct throughout my life. And what I've come to understand is there's more nuance, um, and layers to that. You know, for me, instinct comes from lived experience.

Speaker A: How difficult is it really for female or for people who have a lot of feminine energy in general to survive that? And how do they harness this? A lot of questions. Welcome listeners. I am Seb Vishmann, your host of the Dude Insider. Uh, where we dive deep into raw and meaningful conversation with visionary founders, CEOs and CHROs who see beyond profits, elevating the lives of employees and vendors and the planet we call home. Today we are joined by Peggy Reisky, a visionary leader and creative force whose holistic approach to leadership has influenced change across film, education and the non profit world. As the founder of the Trevor Project, Peggy has played a pivotal role in the organization's evolution over nearly three decades, guiding the organization through a critical period of transition marked by cultural shifts and resource constraints. With more than 40 years of leadership experience, spanning her Oscar winning film work to her tenure as dean of the School of Film and Television at LMU M, Peggy brings a rare blend of emotional intelligence, deep listening, creative insight and system level thinking to every challenge she meets. In today's conversation, we explore Peggy's multidimensional, uh, leadership style. One that draws from instinct, experience and a strong sense of purpose. Whether you are revitalizing an organization or navigating cultural transformation, Peggy's insights offer invaluable guidance for leading with clarity, courage and compassion in a rapidly changing world. So welcome Peggy. Good to have you.

Speaker B: Seb, thank you for that lovely introduction. It's great to be here with you.

Speaker A: Good to have you. Um, we have had a conversation before this conversation, and I was really excited, Peggy, to continue this wonderful conversation we have had because of your ability to tap into your intuition in a what seems to be sometimes harsh world. We're speaking about different industry, of course, your experience leads from film, education, nonprofit and so on. But really, I want to take this conversation broader. Above that, tell us what has been your experience. Knowing when to use your intuition or how to use your intuition, or why that is even important in a sometimes harsh, let's call it, corporate world. Talk us through that.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting because I have been guided by what I always thought of as a gut, uh, instinct throughout my life. And what I've come to understand is there's more nuance, um, and layers to that. You know, for me, instinct comes from lived experience. It comes very quick. I think it comes from our millions of years of, you know, fight or flight responses. You now getting ready? Uh, that happened throughout the animal kingdom and moved into the human one. Um, and it's a very, uh, quick instinct of, you know, what do I need to do to stay safe. Now, in a business environment, there are decisions you're making very quickly. You learn things. Like, for me, it's about reading a room, getting a sense of where people are coming from, uh, how they might be feeling. That's where instinct blends with a little bit of intuition, you know, a sort of sixth sense of picking things up. I think these days, what we start to call all of that is, um, eq, emotional intelligence. But I think there's yet another layer that really I have learned to rely on more and more as I both deepened my own practice about tuning in, um, and trying to. Whether it's through meditation, uh, journaling and other means, uh, tying to something that, for lack of a better phrase, is just bigger than myself. And what I started to see is that there's a difference between, um, decisions you make, uh, from instinct, which are usually rapid, uh, you need an answer quick. You rely on that to quickly digest a lot of information and go, yes, no, maybe later. No, let's proceed. And I've been a very instinctive leader and decisive, I might add, um, and that served me very well. But what I've seen more and more is that there is a bigger thing that I feel drawn toward. And there's been a theme of service throughout my whole life where, honestly, it's the thing more than, I don't know, money and credit and other things. It's really the idea of service that has been most fulfilling for me consistently. And this is after over, you know, four decades in largely the entertainment industry, but then also, as you pointed out, in both the work I've done in the nonprofit world and in academia. So this thing that I find myself drawn to over and over is always asking myself, what is for the highest purpose and greatest good all involved and trying to tune into that and act from that place and from that guidance, if you will. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: It makes a lot of sense to me. And, you know, like, we could talk about this for ages, right? So, uh, let's just try to break this down a little bit. You're no different than all of US CEOs of small medium enterprises running big organizations. I know that you have been pivotal in really growing the Trevor project to I think, over 600 people. Is that correct?

Speaker B: At its peak. At its peak, there's been retrenchment, and that's where we are now. And there's a whole story about that. And that was the transitional period where actually the board asked me to come in and step in as interim CEO while we were going through a transitional period where some retrenchment was required.

Speaker A: And it happens. Please go ahead. My apologies here.

Speaker B: No, uh, as I said, I was asked to step in when somebody realignment and recentering is really how I saw it was needed. And taking a hard look at what are we really here to do, what is our core purpose, what is our mission and our vision? And what I discovered after, um, listening to her of finding out what was going on and what were the presenting issues for people internally, much to my surprise, I discovered we had never codified our organizational values. And that is a huge oversight. And part of why that's an oversight is because if you don't have values that guide your decision making and strategy and back up, a mission and vision is good, but values is how you live it. And so without a shared understanding of what those were, one of the most important things that I was able to do as interim CEO was in fact help create that. Um, I worked with an outside firm who came in to help, who had expertise in helping deal with change management and culture change. And what I had discovered in my listening tour and what they discovered as they dove in and did more war as well, is that people in that vacuum had started to create their own values. Like, each department started writing its own values. And you knew how well intentioned that was and thoughtful. I mean, people were really thinking big picture. But you can imagine if you've got 10 different value systems, they're going to collide. And part of why they had done that was that there was discussion for almost two years to get values done, but they had yet to materialize. And so that's where I saw that there was, uh, not only a need, there was urgency, because it becomes your values are leverage in so many ways about how, what expectations are we setting for what we do how we'll do it and how we'll treat each other. And they became a uniting thing for the organization.

Speaker A: Thank you for that, for sharing that. I want to pivot back to that in a moment, especially around this part, that smaller clusters within a larger organism. Akka, um, corporation, company, organization started to build their own values. Let's go back to this in a second. Because it naturally happens, but you, you kind of call it out, um, consciously for the first time, even for myself, who's been dealing with this day in and day out. So let's see how this conversation pivots back to this. The point I want to make though, is that let's go back to intuition for a second. So you have been interim CEO of the Trevor Project. So I want to paint the picture that you're no different than other leaders in the corporate world. Right. You have been an award winning filmmaker. Ah. Again, leading the travel project in nonprofits. Um, dean of school at lmu. There's big responsibility. Uh, there's pressure coming with these roles like other CEOs, CHROs founders go through. But yet the reason I invited you and wanted to have the conversation with you is you have that inkling to say, hold on a second. There's a lot of pressure right now on my plate. I need to be cognizant about to what degree I slip into la la land in terms of my emotions getting the better of me and still be guided by this intuitive peace within you that, by the way, we all have, as we know, right? But if we get caught up in this rat race of emotions, as a leader, we know what happens, you know, if we get caught up in this, you know, this bubble of craziness that we all hit. At times, it becomes difficult, especially if we get caught up as a leader. How do you stay beyond the fold, above the cloud, so to speak, to keep that broader picture to say, you know what? Let me stay a 5D human here instead of getting caught up in this 3D world and let my intuition guide my next steps. How do you do that? And how do you advise other leaders in your field do it better.

Speaker B: Well, there's this, you know, great phrase about. My job is to respond, not react. You know, so react is the first instinct that comes up. You know, someone says something, you can feel your back get up, you know that you're getting defensive or you want to attack, you feel threatened in some way. Everybody has that. If you're in a leadership role, believe me, people want to take potshots at you. Right and left. Most people want someone to, um, I've seen over and over as a leader, and I think, especially as a woman, if I'm honest, you know, that you can become a target for a lot of things people project onto you as the leader. And it's true. You have a lot of authority and a lot of responsibility. And this is where I say, if you don't have your own value system for how you're going to make decisions and operate, um, I would feel lost in floundering, and I'd be doing things that are more reactive rather than a more informed and chosen response to. To something. So what I've learned to do is there is value in pausing. And, you know, I am not perfect at this, believe me. I have said things that I have regretted as well as kept my mouth shut when I wanted to say something, but was smart enough to know it would not help move things forward toward the ultimate goal of resolution. Right. So some of that is, uh, maturity, trial and error, hard earned wisdom. Um, also learning not to take things personally, which is a challenge, I think, for creative people. It's a very big challenge not to take things personally when they get criticized. Um, but I've learned to get much better about that. I think, really, for me, you're always trying to look at what's the big picture goal and what's going to help me get us there. Um, and as a leader, I'll tell you what helped me a lot in this last situation with Trevor. One, I had founded, uh, the organization with my two filmmaker fellows. Right. I had the idea for it. I felt a great sense of ownership, and still do, about the Trevor Project. But the Trevor Project, which started around my dining room table, is now an organization with several hundred people. So I'm happy to say I was a catalyst for its emergence into the world. But it's bigger than me. And I always felt we were serving something that was bigger than any one of us, which is the Trevor Project, for folks who don't know, was founded because, um, back in the mid-90s, when I made the short film Trevor, which was my directorial debut, and shockingly and pleasantly went on to win, uh, the Academy Award for Best Short film. And when it won that Oscar, it opened the door to a lot of opportunities, one of which was to have the film screened on hbo. And when that was happening, um, what I knew at this point in time was that the suicide rate among LGBTQ youth was estimated to be. Their risk for suicide was four times higher than their peers at a Minimum base level. And this in fact, was truly one of the largest mental health crises in the country. But no one seemed to know about it. So both our film helped, in its humorous and very poignant way to bring attention to that, because it was about a 13 year old boy whose world turns upside down overnight when word spreads at school he's gay and everybody starts ignoring him. But when we had the chance to be on hbo, it was also a chance. When I realized that the film was airing and a friend in passing said, you should put up a number for kids who could call. It was a shocking moment to realize, one, she was right, there should be a number call. And two, oh my God, I hope there is one. But I quickly found out there wasn't any kind of service like that. And then I had to face another decision, which is, do you just turn away or do you do something about that? And luckily, uh, I'm a person who likes to solve problems. And all the years in the field film business had built that muscle for me. So when I knew we only had three months to get a 24, 7, uh, crisis line going with specialized counselors who had training in how to deal with the very unique stressors and issues LGBTQ young people face, um, I said, we can do that. And with a lot of help from a lot of different people, we pulled it off and started it. And now it's nearly 30 years later. But the disturbing thing is that those statistics remain. That same level of risk still exists. So, um, the bulk of my career was in entertainment, but I made this little film that little did I know would in effect launch a movement and wind up helping address a huge mental health crisis in this country. And now, decades later, I look back at that, at that moment and go, I never did not, you know, start making a movie to have that happen. But it's been an extraordinary thing that I was led to do. So when you ask me about instinct and listening and tuning in to something that is not always, uh, what you're hearing or what you're feeling drawn to do, does not fit a traditional picture, uh, does not seem like the most, uh, easy, traditional, expected course of action to take. I learned to trust that voice and that guidance and follow that path. And sometimes it means you need a certain amount of courage and a comfort with taking risks, which I think also seems to be part of my personality. And now I see how useful that trust in that has turned out to be in my life. So part of my message to other people is really to help cultivate that and learn to listen to that more. But it does require stepping back, pausing, getting quiet, getting out of your ego, getting out of being reactive, and listening to what will really serve the greater good in this moment.

Speaker A: There are a couple of kind of things that come up for me, one of which is that I would love to hear from you, Peggy. Is that something you cultivate? Only it's kind of a rhetorical question. My apologies. But you know, how do you. Maybe let me ask you differently. Intuition, the stepping back, this pausing, this, you know, remaining above the fold. How do you practice this? I'm sure it's not just in the trenches in the corporate world. You probably are somebody who lives it. How do you like, what do you do like? How do you stay above the fold in a precious situation?

Speaker B: Well, I could think back on, um, what the most recent ones I've navigated. Um, first of all, it's assigned to me. If I'm feeling reactive, I can tell if my, uh, anger is getting up, frustration is getting up. If I'm feeling impatient right away, it's like time to pause. Okay. Or find someone safe to vent with. Right. So luckily I have, uh, good friends, a good partner. Um, but in my work life, I've always had a good ally, you know, that's in the trenches, who you can go. I don't know. This is kind of getting on my nerves right now. What do I do? And I had Trevor. When I stepped in as interim M. CEO I was lucky to have another person step in at the same time with me as sort of the second in command. And we had in a pre existing relationship because we had served on the board of the Trevor project together for over, for many years. I'd been there forever. But Gina had come in and, uh, had been on the board for over a decade and had also served as board board chair. So she had a lot of inside knowledge already as well. But we came in and we had very complimentary skills and it was wonderful because we could talk through issues that were presented. It needed to be addressed immediately. And it was a safe sounding board. And because there was pre existing trust, we could be, um, very candid with each other about what our own analysis, uh, of the situation was and then make educated, I would call, informed, uh, decisions. But before making a decision, I would always step back and take a pause. And I even do it. I've done it on sets. When I was on movie sets, I just would go turn to a tree. I was outside. I remember so clearly, actually, when I was directing, going I am lost. I am not sure what to do next. And I need help. And I just got quiet.

Speaker A: The tree. It is.

Speaker B: I connect. It's the tree and. Or your heart. What I've learned more and more is sometimes I just stop. I put my hand on my heart and I go, okay, just. I'd like a little help right now. What would be most appropriate? And you can take that in a meeting. You can do it. You can do it between meetings. But that calming my nervous system so I'm not in a reactive state doing whatever I need, whether it's outside, the fresh air, this thing, go in the bathroom, sit and get quiet for a minute in the stall if you need privacy. All these things are different things. Shut the door to your office. They're all things I do. Um, to help me center. I'm also big on lighting candles. I don't know what happens, but something shifts as soon as I light a candle. Um, the other tool I use is actually writing. I'll do sometimes a lot of, uh, uh, tuning in, asking a question and then asking for an answer. And I'll do a lot of automatic writing to see what comes up out in that. So I. I have a lot of tools in my toolkit, so to speak, um, that help me get to that place. But the real pattern is pause, get quiet, get centered, take the deep breaths. Luckily, between yoga and meditation practice, I've learned about how much breath techniques can help you calm down. You know, Magic Johnson uses it. You know, breathe them for four, hold for seven, out for eight. He would do that before his free show. Thoughts. I go, uh, well, Magic Johnson good enough for Magic Johnson. I'll happy, happily do it as well. So those are some of the things I do.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for sharing. You know, for me personally, all this has become so second nature. Not m. To say that, you know, I am anyway in any way, shape or form where I should be and that I don't. I have tremendous struggles, especially right now. But for me, it has become so natural to just believe in. Know that there's so much more than just this sep that sits here and is an owner of a company and a consultant. Right. Um, what do you. Who do you write to? So when you're writing, when you're journaling, you know, like, uh, for the people out there that I'm sure that we all understand what you mean. Right. But let's just go a little layer deep and we don't have to go too ethereal here unless we go there anyway. But who do you write to. Who do you ask for guidance? Is there like a second person there? Is this, like a future version of yourself? Like, is this God? Is this spirit? Like, who do you write to personally?

Speaker B: Well, I, um, love that you brought up all those options. My ritual, um, which I've used at times is, uh, kind of simple. I get out a journal book. Someone told me once to do this. And again. This presupposes that you believe there's something. I call it the universe. That there's just something bigger than yourself. You could call it Jungian collective unconscious. People can call it God. Not with how I see it as exactly. Because it's too loaded of a term and it's too, um, denominational for my taste. But, you know, there is a sense of. In metaphysics, you know, is a lot about. And even in certain kind of. When you get into the subatomic particle theory of physics, you know, you get that all of this falls apart when you get on that level, you know, something's going on that, uh, there's mystery in the world. That's all I can say. And I'm tuning into asking that mystery, whatever it is that's not seen that some, um, guiding force. I think that I'd like help.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So if you don't believe that this might, by the way, still work for you, you can think of it as talking to your subconscious. Maybe that'll work. But it's very simple. I sit down with pen, paper, I light a candle and I go, dear Universe, you know, higher ups again, whatever way you, um, please guide my hand as a. As I write, I'd like to know more about what's going on with X, Y and Z. Or I'd, uh, like help. I'm wondering about this issue. What might be the best response. And then you just write nonstop. You write the chatter, the ridiculousness. You find yourself going, I think this is substituted. Or am I sitting I doing this? I can't believe I am. What was she talking about? This is dumb. Um, and then eventually some other stuff will come up. And when I started doing it, I would also set a timer, you know, for 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever I wanted. And just keep saying, I would like to understand this better. I'd like to hear more. And that's how I do, uh, it. I think I first read about this approach in this book by Julian Cameron called called the Artist's Way. And it gave a bunch of exercises people could do to sort of start to get in touch with their creative side, their, uh, their muse. If you will, whatever, again, whatever words you want to use. Um, but that thing, it's the conscious choice to listen and to set the intention. You're listening to something other than yourself and your own, uh, negative ego. That's, to me, what that practice is about. To make a good decision. I try to set ego aside and be of service to something greater. And that's some of the ways I get to it. Now, people who know me know I do not live in that space every minute of the day. Um, some of the things I've had to learn about is, uh, I am an impatient person. Most people who are in leadership roles, they process stuff quickly, they want to get stuff done. Uh, for me, I know that I can often see a solution probably 20 steps ahead of other people. Right. But what I've had to learn was when you're not a sole enterprise, you have to bring people along. And sometimes it's going to take longer for them to get it and for you to get the buy in necessary to move the collective toward that goal, because it has to be shared. You're not going to get there on your own. You know, when you're running an organization with hundreds of people as employees, there's a lot of coordination required. You know, not only buy in about what the course of action will be, but then motivation, guidance, flexibility, to adjust as you're going along and having a constant feedback loop. Where are you with that? How's it going? You know, are we checking in? What, what's the problem? What are the blockers? What are you doing about that? And just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. But also the requirement to keep communicating and helping, keep centering people on why are we doing this? And even though it's hard, even though we hit bumps, why are we doing it? And that commitment to that goal, Mission, vision, values, this is why we do it. And what I have to trust is that the people you have working for you who really want to be there and believe in that mission and vision and those values will go the extra distance to help bring that into the world, because they'll have a sense of ownership and reward, personal reward and fulfillment from doing it. Not every person comes from that place, you know, and to me, one of the huge responsibilities as a leader is that you have to be very clear. And I discovered there was some confusion in pockets of Trevor when I stepped in. Um, there was a lack of clarity about certain roles and expectations. And I think it's one of the, the responsibilities of leadership is to always help Everyone understand what they are for each and every role in the organization. And then once that's understood, and by the way, not just what they're supposed to do, but what you as the leader representing the organization, are also committing to do for them as employees, you know, what is that win win situation that we're agreeing to enter? Right. And then when those two things aren't aligned anymore, if someone's not performing to what our expectations and they've been coached and it's still not working out, then there needs to be a parting of the ways. Because ultimately if you don't, that's a disservice to the mission and vision that we all signed on to serve in nonprofit. When you do this corporate. When you're doing corporate work, you use different language, but the gist of it is the same. You know, we're green, we're going somewhere, we're agreeing. What are each of our roles are what you're supposed to give for what I'm asking you to do. And this is where the trickiness is, where values are so important because. And I expect to be treated a certain way and, um, mutually in the course of this endeavor.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for that. Um, Faggy. You know, I had to suppress my giggles when you mention impatience. Um, I'm terrible at it. Right. We have this grand vision. We want to go a million. And I think for me at least, I'm not sure how you, how that sits with you, but it's the pressure, uh, but it's also the excitement, you know, where I'm like, oh, man, I just want to go places. I want to have fun. I want to. Yes. And there's pressure for sure. And why do you. Why don't you get it? And, you know, I always have to tap m myself on my own shoulder to say, you know, if you rush the conversation or um, if you don't make properly time to really explain your imagination and vision to somebody else, what do you expect? You know, like, especially as a learning and development expert as I am, I have to educate a lot of senior executives about the fact that it is our responsibility to clearly communicate. And if we don't do a good job with this, yes, things are misunderstood and do go pear shaped and, you know, there are always two sides of the equation for sure. But I'm a big fan about responsibility as so many of our, you know, of our, um, of our tribe or whatever we call that is of leaders that, you know, we have to communicate clearly. But I want to transition this conversation

Speaker B: into Something that really, seb, before you move off that I really want to flake something because you just pointed out one of the most important qualities, uh, a leader needs. A leader knows, needs. A leader needs to know how to be a storyteller. You know, you can have a 10 page memo that is not going to get people inspired to come along on the ride, Right? So sometimes people mix up explaining with, uh, and use, um, sometimes quantity as opposed to my rubric is, is it, uh, is the clear, is it digestible, is it memorable? And then that's where you move from. And having the gift of knowing how to tell the story. Not just the facts, but a story,

Speaker A: a story that can buy into and brings them along.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And also thank you for that. And also to relate that story back to the relevance and to the, you know, to the impact it creates for this particular person. Right. This, we do things because we hope to increase something in our life. Right. And for us to understand and grow, crystallize what is in it for the other person to find a way to tell a story that actually brings this alive, I think is super powerful. Wow. Uh, so a question I have for you. You spoke earlier about that and it's not about the Trevor project, it's not even about you necessarily. But I would love to hear your thought on this in whatever context. The female, the woman, the woman in a, uh, male driven world called the corporate world, where you have to achieve, where there are hard deadlines, where there are KPIs, where there's drive, drive, drive, all of which are, uh, none of which are feminine qualities. And I don't speak necessarily about the woman and man. I speak about the femininity, the masculinity, Right. So I have a lot of femininity, naturally. I have a lot of masculinity, which means I have a bit of a fist behind my arm, um, I guess you would say. But I have also this, this magic touch, I would believe, or at least people tell me, how do you, or how do you see or how do you advise or, you know, how would you have loved to apply yourself in different ways or in better ways in this sometimes harsh world that dwarf this femininity, which is this, you know, this, um, being compassionate, right. Being kind, being intuitive, being in tune with yourself and making some really powerful, strong decisions from that frame. How do you cultivate this? What is your golden nuggets right there? And how difficult is it really for female or for people who have a lot of feminine energy in general, um, to survive that? And how do they harness this? A lot of questions. Where do you want to take it from here?

Speaker B: These are biggies. I think that what you're referring to, and I think it's important to make this distinction between what's an archetype, right? There's a masculine archetype and there's a feminine archetype. There are, uh, masculine as a gender and there are female women as a gender. And archetype and gender are two different things, right? So archetype is generally speaking. And this is why most indigenous cultures, um, tended to, from my understanding, anyway. Think of, um, the Earth, for example, an incredible force of that as a feminine entity, as feminine energy, right? And it's about what is creation? What do you do? You're a cave person. You're see, cave person. I don't.

Speaker A: We are totally. Cave people are cave.

Speaker B: Okay, there's a cave person. You're looking around and what do you see, like trees growing, things growing. Like, where does all this come from? What's this about? Something's making all this happen, right? And so you think of, you know, Mother Earth as this powerful, uh, force and energy that they honored. What I've always understood is that the feminine archetype is really largely associated with creativity. And the masculine archetype is, is largely associated with getting it done. Feminine comes up with the idea, masculine gets it done. All of us embody both of those things. All of us, whether you're, um, stay at home, parent, whether you're a CEO, and that could be any gender, you have the capacity for both of those things. Our cultures got shaped by prejudice and I personally think fear of the feminine. And that's where chauvinism came in, where patriarchy has existed, where misogyny, truly, this fear, I don't know what women's ability to give birth, I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about that feminine that can scare a lot of people. And by the way, well, let's be

Speaker A: honest, women are the more powerful species. That's the reason why.

Speaker B: But is that really true? And this is where I'm saying where I really think long and hard about this and start to get very careful. Like it's so easy to make generalizations based on gender. It really is. And I am working really hard to break myself of, uh, doing that because I think it perpetuates a lot that does all of us. A decision serves, you know, this idea. Like when I use a word like chauvinism or patriarchy, everybody thinks I'm talking About men. I'm not. I know women who are some of the biggest chauvinists I know. Everybody has bought into a patriarchal system to some extent. We are in the process of trying to break out of that. But that's also. When you try to create that kind of, um, transformation and deep, profound change, it's gonna, like, engender a lot of backlash. I grew up in this. I came into my career life in the late 70s, okay, so I got mileage on that. But I remember what it was like when women, oh, my God, we're first getting credit cards when they started using the word men is and how freaked out that made everybody. You know, I could go on and on about things I witnessed and what I look back on now and think, holy moly, what was going on. But I also had some kind of enough of, uh, resilience, uh, drive, ambition, determination skills, uh, to somehow keep my head down and keep going through and not be deterred. And weirdly, the film business at the time I was coming of age in the film business. It was just the emergence of the independent film movement. So honestly, if you wanted to be a producer, you could call yourself a producer. All you needed was a business card and a script and then go find the money. And if you could find the money and get the thing made, voila, you're a producer. And in a weird way, it was one of the, um. The traditional Hollywood system was a lot harder for women to crack, but the indie world was more open in a weird way to that. I didn't know that consciously. It just. As I said, all I did was follow where opportunities emerged, uh, and where. Where I felt drawn to and excited about. I mean, I have to admit, I'm a movie girl. I love my movies. The idea of working in movies, I don't know how. I grew up in a little town in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Like, I didn't know anybody in the film business. And if you wanted to get in the film business, why the hell would you move to New York? Just I did, and things opened up and m. This was, I'm afraid, a long way around coming back to what is the masculine drive and feminine drive. And I. All I can say again is I believe we all. I know I do. I have a very strong masculine drive. If we associate drive with masculinity, with ambition and wanting to get stuff done and creating things in the world, right. My feminine side brings that creativity and vision to all of that energy and, uh, drive, it directs it toward a positive goal. And at the same time, my femininity or the feminine collaboration, teamwork, uniting to achieve a goal, those were considered feminine ways of leading. Now all the good leaders I know do that, and it's regardless of gender. So that's where I go. You know, I want to help us distinguish between archetype and gender and where characteristics and quality qualities reside. We're all very complicated beings, right? We have leans, you know, where certain things, you know, you lean a certain way more than another. Um, I certainly think some of my feminine leans have helped me in certain circumstances and situations, but I've also seen where my masculine leans can really rub people the wrong way way. And part of that has to do. Sometimes I just, you know, I'm being inappropriate, but sometimes it's just because it's coming from a woman. So I've experienced both of those things, but I don't know if that helps address sort of what you were asking.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, thank you for that. This is what is my. One of my guiding principles around community nowadays, to hanging out, to get to know, get to learn from people who have cultivated both ends of the spectrum, who understand how to drive and have proof well, who have been able to have fun and, you know, have been able in this tangible world to create results. I think that's a better way of putting it. While cultivating, not losing and really fully being able to fully step into this creativity, into this knowing what the right vision or goal even is, which is again, a feminine quality. For me, the feminine quality is about this clarity piece around what the vision is. And then the masculine quality is more about getting shit done, so to speak. Right. Um, so I love to, you know, again, hang out with people like yourself, Peggy, because you understand the power of not just the one and the. Or the other in a dualistic world, but actually to. We have to harness both. We have to cultivate both. And I, I don't know, but my hunch is that males or the masculine that are really to that lean to fight left or right listening to this podcast. Well, if you have come to the stage, by the way, you are on your way or you're doing well, but. But I think a lot of people would have tuned out by now, uh, because they don't understand this feminine quality yet at all. The feminine would relate to what we're talking about, but the masculine, again, leading into this too far. They probably would have. They're probably not anymore sitting here anyway. So really. APPLAUSE and, um, I was about to say, I'm proud of you. That's A total inappropriate term since you have, um, you know, since you are the wiser one here in the call. But you know, I love that you have been cultivating both angle of the story called life. So, my gosh, well done. Um, the last point I want to ask you about before we wrap up here is to circling back to this piece around the Trevor project, or even across or even beyond this, if you choose to. He spoke about. You put it in your words, but you spoke about that the Trevor project, M wasn't all that clear about its own values before you stepped into the interim CEO role. Again, I want to put this into you words or you correct, uh, me here. Right. And that consequently departments, people, team leaders, managers respectively, out of good intent, started to create their own values, which creates naturally, maybe disconnect, potentially. It's a risk. Right. Um, if you want to create a family and everyone shoots off in their own rooms and create their own little things and there's no overarching value that keeps it all together. Well, good luck with this. And this is our role as a leader to do that. Right. What do we do? Like, how do we do that? I mean, surely we have to understand our own values as an overarching company, number one. But how do we communicate that? Talk us through what's on your minds if you hear that.

Speaker B: Well, when it happened at Trevor or that. I discovered that in my listening tour, which was the first thing I did when I stepped in. Um, it was, uh. What I could see is that it was one leading to, um, siloing. It was contributing. It wasn't defeating siloing, it was increasing it. Because everybody was becoming their own bubble. Secondly, there wasn't, um. As I said, Trevor was navigating an extraordinary transition on multiple levels. This is back when. This is shortly after the pandemic hit, we had to move from having offices in both Los Angeles and New York into being fully remote. And the same period of time, the organization grew from a little over 100 some people to over 500. The infrastructure needed to support that kind of rapid growth had not been built in place. And yet at the same time, incredible stuff was going. We opened an office for crisis services in Mexico, launching our first international outpost. We had lobbied for five years to get funding for the 988 crisis line. Uh, in. In the US there's now a 988. You just dial 988 and it's there to help people who are having either suicidal ideation and. Or other behavioral health crises. Right. And Trevor helped Get that law passed for that. And also to get special funding assigned for an LGBTQ sub network that was part of 988. It's one of those. Press three, you go to Trevor, if you're LGBTQ and looking for specialized help, why did the government agree to do it? And by the way, this was passed under Trev, Unanimous passage in both houses of Congress because some of the research that Trevor, in fact does, because that's another big part of what we do, had shown in quite clear terms the high degree of risk for queer and questioning young people. And everyone agreed. This is shocking and appalling, and we, as a government, are going to do something about this. Excuse me. So now we cut to, you know, Trevor, remote. This pilot comes through. We've gotten the money. We are asked to be the sole provider during the pilot phase, and we're gearing up, uh, to do that. And what happens as the pilot's getting underway is there's a huge increase in volume, which is what we anticipated, and thank God, got the funding to support. Right. But it doubles the, uh, amount of, uh, contacts coming into our 247 services. So Trevor has its own. Under its own name, its own crisis services. And now we're doing work also contracted for the government to do that. So all of this was happening at once. So now you've got. All of a sudden, everybody's like, I used to know everybody's name. There's so many more people. What's going on? And then you've got, oh, my God, where's my paycheck? And I'm not. Who do I talk to and get this result? And then the pressure of launching these two initiatives, and there were even plans to launch in more places. Well, once I came in and looked at all this, just said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This has been a very ambitious, um, undertaking on, um, multiple fronts. But it's clear the stress of that is not working well, and we need to reprioritize elements of our strategic plan in terms of what we are going to focus on. So after discussion, listening, assessment quickly went, all right, we're going to table further international exploration. For now, we're going to focus on what we've got to do here next. We've got to find a way in which people are feeling they're operating in silos and with different sets of values. We're going to center and align around one codified set. And we did, and I'm very grateful. There was a wonderful woman named Tracy Steele who, Who came in and led this Initiative and in short order, I mean within three months we had outlined, uh, they did their listening tours, deep dive. Then three months we had come up with a codified set of values and then we prepared a rollout of it to the wider organization, which happened I think in the next two months. But all of that had to happen while we're also going, we're now going to get close, clearer about how we uh, what our expectations are for navigating internal communications. How are we going to get better at ah, responding to questions and concerns that employees come up and how are we going to also be clear about accountability for performance? All these things needed to be done at once. I don't know. I know I saw it in Hollywood over and over that when um, a script was not as strong as it needed to be before you went into production, people just started throwing money and people at it. It is not the most cost effective way to make a film. I think the same thing can happen in organizations. You're quickly adding, adding, adding, but not enough pause to step back and go, are we really building this in the right way? And how does culture show shift from when you're a small in person organization and then you're fully online and you're five times as many people? I know this is part of what you get into in your work, but that's what we had needed help navigating and I saw that it had. Not that we needed some outside help to help us colorless identify and create a plan to move us forward to a uh, healthier and more aligned centered culture. And the values were the thing that did that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you, Peggy. Oh, that is amazing. What an amazing conversation. Peggy. Thank you so much for your insights, lessons learned. Um, and this last piece around, you know what really struck me and many, many pieces you mentioned as well, that people at the Trevor Project implicitly, right now, they acted to create their own values, which is really quite amazing if you think about it because usually that doesn't happen consciously. It forms almost like in people's individual heads, um, and chunks even one level down from a departmental level to an individual level. Just because the organization overarchingly doesn't know and doesn't have the clarity and therefore wasn't able to communicate a vision that goes back to the hiring process and all that good jazz as well to align everyone. Right. So that is amazing. Um, again, I loved your insights around this piece around um, different archetypes, right. Feminine, masculine, for us to really sit down, pause for a moment to ask ourselves what's my leading edge. What's my leading hand right now or in general, and to see if, you know, if we can pivot a little bit more into the midpoint, into balance, if you will, where we have the tool belt to cultivate both or to utilize both, depending on the scenario. Sometimes we need to have a little bit of a masculine, uh, hand. My dad was very good at this and also very loving man, I must say. Right? So he is. I, um, love him so much because I really believe that he, that he, um, taught me how to do both. He's a loving man. He full of kindness and compassion, and he's an incredible listener. But he also knows how to not scare me, but how to tell me, look me in the eye and say, sebastian, that is not good.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I love that. Right. And the conversation around intuition, right? About pausing, stopping, believing, whatever you believe in journaling and just stay conscientious and conscious about how you act and not just react to pressure in the corporate world in particular. So thank you so much. Peggy, any last words from your tool belts of wisdom and insight?

Speaker B: Well, I think for most people, I think that it helps to remember there's a difference between being decisive and being discerning. You know, it's easy to be decisive, you know, make a decision, move on, it's done. We all love to check those things off of our, of our checklist. But discerning is that word that I use for what I'm talking about when I say step back, get quiet, tune in and really go greatest. You know, what's for the greatest good of everybody involved, including yourself. Um, and so that for people who are not ah, woo woo, as we say, you know, I think that this is a, this ah, is an easier way in for folks. And that really is one of my values is discernment to bring that to

Speaker A: bear and what I do, discernment, discernment, discernment. Everyone keep listening, keep journaling. Peggy, thank you so much for your time. It was lovely to getting to know you, to listen to your wonderful and, um, intuitive insights. And I just want to thank you for your time today.

Speaker B: Thank you, Seb. Um, wonderful to be here. And how could I turn down someone who hasn't organization called Do Good,

Speaker A: that's, uh, us. Thank you so much.