Exploring Internal Family Systems Coaching with Janet Livingstone

Speaker A: If you have a team lead who's wise in that way, they are much better placed to manage a team where there's conflict, where there's discomfort, where some people are choosing to opt out, where some people are dominating the usual human dynamics.

Speaker B: This is leaderful, where we give you the models and the frameworks, the strategies and the skills that you need to drive true transformation for yourself, your team, your organization, and the world. Welcome to the show. Welcome to another episode of the leaderful podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Coulard, and today I'm thrilled to introduce you to Janet Livingstone. Janet is an IFS certified coach in Seattle, Washington, who has a deep expertise in working across cultures and across types and sizes of organizations with leaders of all stripes, helping them develop more emotional and social intelligence and unlocking their inner creativity and wisdom. We dig into a bunch of stuff in this episode, from how to foster emotional intelligence to the ifs or internal family systems coaching methodology, and how that applies to both individuals and teams. You're going to get a ton out of this conversation and looking forward to a round two with Janet, because there's much more that we could discuss, um, about this type of practice, about coaching and facilitating with teams. And so, without further ado, here's Janet. Janet, thank you so much for joining us on the leaderfo podcast. It's great to see you.

Speaker A: Thanks, Jeff. It's great to be here.

Speaker B: I figure we'll just kind of jump right into it. We've got so much that we can talk about today that we're gonna have. We're gonna run out of time, no doubt, and we'll have to do around two, but we're just gonna jump in and pepper you with a couple of questions, um, and we'll kind of see where the conversation goes. But maybe before I do that, uh, maybe introduce, uh, yourself and your practice a little bit, um, kind of the context that you find yourself with working in. I know you work in a bunch of different cultures, across cultures and different contexts. Um, yeah, maybe. What should the listener know about you to kind of ground them in. In your perspective?

Speaker A: So I like to say that I work globally, and I don't do that all the time because I would never sleep. But the reality of my life is that I grew up on the east coast of the U.S. but I've spent, um, not quite half my life, but maybe. Maybe close to it, in living in other countries. First in Central Europe. That's, uh. It was still Czechoslovakia when I moved there. And now it's the Czech and Slovak Republic. So I spent almost 17 years in Slovakia. That's a whole story, which I probably won't have time to tell. But anyway, so Central Europe, um, and then I spent a year and a half also in Zambia, working in global health with a baby and a husband who had to leave two thirds of the way through. So that was fun and interesting and. And I've consulted in a number countries and my most recent, um, discovery. Well, not, not my discovery, but anyway, I've been, uh, spending time in Asia because with my Boeing job, I worked, uh, at Boeing under sales and marketing for eight years. And so we were focused on the China market first just exclusively, and then we expanded into different parts of Asia, India and Southeast Asia. And so that was a fabulous new area for me to understand, explore, get used to, you know, dealing with all those cultural things and, um, just, you know, getting to travel there, which was a huge privilege to hop on a plane and go to China or go to India, several parts. And so what that means is that I'm a kind of chameleon, kind of flexible person. I grew up learning foreign languages because that is my best sense in my ears. And it's always given me a straighter path to, um, build relationships with people and to understand the culture and history also through the language. So that, That's a whole fascinating thing. That's a way of being that, that I have, that I am lucky to have and that I use a lot. My brain is active, so I use that in coaching. So I'm. I'm able for that reason to coach people in various cultures, maybe even even Americans who are posted somewhere abroad, whose company relocates them to wherever to help them get through the transition and vice versa. Even folks, you know, like in tech, there are so many people from all of. All over the world, right? And those folks, even after years of being here, they still feel that difference. So there's a lot of space holding that happens there with my clients, um, who come from all over the world. And I know what they're going through because I've been through it I don't know how many times in different places, long term and short term. When I worked in Global Health, I became, after a while, after I started having my children, I have two kids. I couldn't work full time, so what they would do is send me out as a consultant. And I became like this weird, like the hit person who they send to the Rat's Nest, you know, some project that's dysfunctional and they needed something to happen there. And they're like, let's send Janet. And so I ended up in all these bizarre situations for which I was, you know, often unprepared. But I really had to adjust quickly. So I'm kind of used to hitting the ground running and the more kind of grounded in myself, the more okay with my own self shortcomings or perceived shortcomings or, you know, who I am as a person. The more comfortable I get with myself, the better I am at hitting whatever ground that is and asking all the questions and not being ashamed to ask and to try to figure out what is happening and to listen. And so let's get to what I actually do. I'm a coach and facilitator and I guess you could call me an organizational development practitioner. I do a lot of my work online, but my preference is in person. And um, I bring all of this experience and my listening skills and my empathy, as much of it as I can muster, to all of my work. Because we are all human beings and if we don't pay attention to our human side, we're not going to get where we want to be. Or we will, but we won't feel good where we are. So I'm gonna stop there.

Speaker B: Thanks for sharing. And so many questions about all of those experiences that you've had. This could be just Janet sharing stories of the work that you've done type episode. But, um, maybe let's, let's zoom in a little bit on what you notice across cultures that is a consistent part of the leadership experience. And then maybe some differences that you've seen and how those have showed up, um, kind of a bridging that cultural, sometimes the gap, uh, across cultures from a leadership perspective, what doesn't change from context to context from your, in your perspective? And what might be some of those differences that you've noticed?

Speaker A: That's a great question and it's a very large question. I would say that. So to pick on a commonality, I think that leaders across the board feel a great responsibility, not only for their people, but for achievement. And they feel usually, um, a need to be the one in the room who, who knows and who can be decisive. And so a lot of leaders use, use the terms of strong, want to be a strong leader. That gets interpreted differently across cultures, I would say. But the point that I would make most, um, vehemently is that culture and history of the place that you come from or the place that you've spent the most time during your life is the, has the biggest impact on how you Lead, how you perceive the expectations of you, what assumptions you bring with you when you enter into a leadership position. And that really varies across the board a lot. And one of the mistakes that I see leaders making, sort of any leader from any culture, is that obviously a leader brings with them the expectations and the assumptions and the cultivated behavioral norms, all that stuff. They bring that with them no matter where they go. And it takes time spent dealing with other people from other cultures or living in a country. It takes years, at least six months to even kind of begin to see the mosaic of that new culture come into focus. It just takes time to understand what is happening in a different place. And many, many people just discount that completely, especially Americans who, you know, we live in this giant country, we perceive ourselves as great and powerful and blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to talk about politics, but you see it. I mean, it's clear, right? And so there's this style like, oh, well, I'll just go and fix something. I'll go over there and I'll explain it to them and they'll get it and it'll be fine. And. And that doesn't happen. And then we scratch our heads like, well, what's happening? Like, I've laid it out. The task is clear or this is clear. They know the way forward. And. And it's all about transactions and achieving and not wasting time on too much talk, not wasting too much time sitting around and drinking coffee and, uh, all this kind of cultural baggage that we bring with us, right? That time is really valuable, that we have to have a work ethic. We have to work all the time because that's the only time we're productive, right? This idea that having downtime to process in our brains how we feel, what's happening on our team, what's happening in the particular sphere we're concerned with, whether it be sales and marketing or technical processes or whatever it is, having downtime to process things is hugely important. And when you live in a culture where there's this constant push, work, work, work, work, continuously improve, go faster. And AI is just creating more expectation of that. I think we do ourselves a disservice, right? And this is not new. We all know that this creates burnout. But there are cultures where people don't feel any guilt, right, about taking time, about letting the communication unfold. I find this with India, for example, right. I'm collaborating with an, uh, Indian, uh, professional person, very experienced. And the communication is a sentence here, a sentence there, and there's all this uncertainty that I have to tolerate. Right. But I trust the process because I trust her, because I've seen her in action. I know that she's incredibly intelligent. And so, you know, we not only have to deal with uncertainty in our work lives, wherever we are, but also there's uncertainty in cross cultural communication because there are plenty of cultures that just don't see the need to provide all the detail that I as an American would want, or I as a Brit would want, or wherever. One of the examples, please forgive me, all my Slovak friends, is my observations of Slovak leadership. So, for example, Slovakia is a tiny country in Central Europe. Most people, uh, confuse it with Slovenia. And I always say, no, we are not the country of Melania Trump. Sorry. And I say we because I lived there for so long that it's my second home. Being a country of 5.4 million people squeezed between Ukraine or what it was, the Soviet Union and the Germanic world is a very uncomfortable position to be in throughout your history. And that's not even to that, um, that doesn't even mention also pressure from the south. So. So the Slovaks were ruled by the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire for centuries. Hungarian rule is Hungarian rule. They attempted to force the Slovaks to adopt Hungarian as their main language and to basically erase their identity. Also, forgive me, my Hungarian friends, for saying this, but this is part of the history. So what that produces that kind of cultural identity, being squashed, being pushed around, being being governed by one culture and then another culture and having everything change all the time, makes for a population that expects the worst. A population of people who don't feel empowered because they're always being beaten on by somebody. It creates a population that's proud that they've even been able to keep their language, which is something that most of us take absolutely for granted, right? We have our language, this is our language, we speak it, no problem. Nobody gives us beef. Nobody has any beef with us about it. And that shows up in, that shows up in leadership styles. What I find is that that kind of cultural and historical background creates leaders who think, well, I'm a leader now, so I can just have a luxurious life. I'm going to make a ton of money, I can do whatever I want because I'm finally the one in charge. And I'm going to tell everyone else around me, do this, do that, whatever, I don't care, you know, if they need somebody, something from me, that's their problem, I'm the leader. And so there's this kind of distorted idea that once you get to that level, you really have free rein. The way folks, so many folks in that part of the world communicate is also a lot of like judgment statement. This is how it is. This is, you can't do it that way. You had to do that like this. It's very common in many cultures. But we've started to understand that it doesn't always bring out the best on your team. Right. It doesn't always bring out the best in your children. So I'm going to stop there for a moment and

Speaker B: yeah, thanks for sharing that kind of practical example of kind of a difference in kind of that leadership mindset and kind of the mental models that people bring into leadership and how culturally enforced those can become, um, and probably rigid. And like you said, it cuts across generations. And I think often it's easier to spot that in someone with a different mental model or coming from a different place and speaking a different language than it is to look internally and start to examine our own mental models about leadership that we've inherited. It's usually, you know, it's probably the part of the human condition where we can spot things in other people much easier than in ourselves, which ah, it maybe is a segue into a conversation about emotional intelligence. I know it's a big piece of your practice around how you help leaders attune. Uh, you've mentioned a few things already that had my ears perk up. You mentioned feelings, you mentioned listening, you mentioned some things and practices that I would put into that helping leaders develop their emotional intelligence space. And so maybe kind of open ended question or just a prompt here around the importance of emotional intelligence, how that shows up for you in your coaching and your team facilitation practice. Um, why it's important, why it matters. Four leaders in this day and age, again, big topic and kind of free reign to.

Speaker A: Yeah, huge. Uh, I mean I'll start by saying that uh, emotional intelligence is for me a cornerstone. It's an absolute foundational skill. It's something we can all build. All of us, we all get stuck inside our own worlds, all of our emotions, all of our, you know, things that are generated from our own trauma. Everybody has trauma. It doesn't mean getting hit by, you know, a car. It doesn't have to mean having lived through a war. It can be at any level. We all experience it as part of the normal human experience. And those mechanisms in the brain that protect us from trauma also protect us from seeing ourselves fully and being fully self aware. And we all bring that we bring ourselves Wherever we go, right? Just because we become a leader doesn't mean that we're automatically wise and judicious and thoughtful and all of those beautiful things that we would like to be. We all have our work to do. And so when I work with leaders on emotional intelligence, I have a couple of avenues in. First, I use the EQI 2.0 tool. It's a great tool where there are lots of competencies. What, what the tool does is it recognizes that there are many competencies that we can break down that we can look at individually. And it's very rich, right? So that helps us to get out of that mindset of, oh, I'm a good leader or I'm a bad leader or I'm a whatever or he's at all the labels, right? They're a narcissist, they're this, they're that. You know, within stress management, there are emotional skills, right? And within the other competencies, there are a huge number of pieces that we can work on. If I want to communicate better, I have to tap into, first of all, my listening skills. My listening skills entails me letting my desire to be the center, uh, of attention and to be liked and to bring my knowledge. It, it entails me calming those impulses down so that I can be fully open to someone else. That's a kind of generosity. It's a kind of empathy. It's a kind of self control that we can build by understanding ourselves better. So for me, for me, EQ is just basically, we have to know ourselves as best we can, given that we live inside our own heads. And the only way to do that is to work with others who can gently help us without judgment, see ourselves. That can be a coach. That can be a, uh, particularly empathetic facilitator. Maybe we're only in team coaching. It can be a colleague who's willing to listen. It's, it's anybody you can build trust with.

Speaker B: A pattern that I've noticed around emotional intelligence and self awareness is that it falls victim to the same kind of individualistic mindset that the system generally supports. At least the western kind of North American system of individualizing all of these leadership skills. And what you're talking about is enlisting the support of a trusted friend, ally, uh, colleague, coach, therapist, someone who can see, you know, often to say, you can't read the label from inside the jar. And yet that's the default. It's like, just get more self aware. And it's like, well, if it was that easy, then we would all be really self aware. And so we need that. How do we invite that external perspective in, in a way. And then you, you alluded to some of the things, you know. Ah, A non judgmental, empathetic support person is a prerequisite because we're not going to share if we feel judged or if we experience judgment from someone. So just wanted to note that for the listener is that oftentimes emotional intelligence and self awareness becomes this very individualistic pursuit. But I think it's a team sport and I generally see leadership as a team sport more than an individual sport. Um, which is just a pushback against a system that's always pushing us towards the individualized version of whatever the thing is. And I see emotional intelligence doing that. So I wanted to flag that and I interrupted you. So you were, you know, they respond to that or carry on.

Speaker A: No, I love that. That's a beautiful observation, Jeff. It's hard. It's really hard. And we live uh, as social beings so the idea that we can fix our own emotional intelligence by ourselves feels fairly absurd to me. Right. Because emotional intelligence, why have it? If you just live inside your box, which I can talk about later. If you just live fully inside your box and you're not collaborating with others, you're not interacting with others, you're not drawing on others energy, if you're not perceiving others emotions, you're not fully living as a human. And you know, we forget, as you say in these highly individualistic societies in North America, we, that is a huge assumption that we bring to wherever we work in the rest of the world that, that you know, individual gain is what we're all after. We assume it's what everyone wants. We assume it's a marker of our prowess. Like you know, like making money means that you're successful. Right. The me. The meaning of excess is also success attached to our individualism. Like if you can't make it, you're a loser. Pull yourself up by your bootstrap. All these old kind of um, tropes that are really anchored in, at least in the, in the US mentality. I, you know, Canada is slightly different.

Speaker B: We fluctuate. We're, we're still, you know, we're a close cousin, um, to individualistic.

Speaker A: Okay, on a relative scale. Yeah, yeah, you're a close cousin. But this whole idea of emotional intelligence as a team sport. I love the way you say that. I've never really heard it used as an expression like that. I think that's brilliant. You know, if we're going to exist in corporate teams, then of course, it's a team sport. When we have a team meeting, each one of us individually reacts to all the other people in the virtual room or in the actual room all the time. We don't see it because a lot of it happens internally. But there's energy that comes from every person. And there are some people who will trigger us to use Hillary Clinton's latest thing Till the cows come Home. And we won't know why unless we do the work, unless we find somebody else, unless we read about what emotional intelligence is and make the decision ourselves. I want to be more self aware and then find somebody who can help us along that path. And I'm going to segue here just a tiny bit. This is one of the reasons why I love internal family systems, which is another methodology that I use in my coaching. Um, for those of the listeners out there who do parts work, I mean parts work as well. It's the same thing. Basically. Internal family systems is about parts. The parts work recognizes that we have a system inside us made up of sometimes subconscious parts. And as we get to know them, they become more conscious. And those parts are there because we are complex and, and they are largely there. Most of them are there to protect us from feeling too vulnerable. Because we all have at our core, you know, a bunch of vulnerable parts from our childhood, from things that have happened to us. We all have it and we all have to protect ourselves. Why do people pose right? Why do people feel they have to come and know everything or they have to be, you know, the greatest, or they have to be the greatest speaker in the world or, you know, they have to get everything perfect. Those are all expressions of parts that we have inside us. And in order to have a team function really well, the ideal for me is to have team members who all get that they have parts that come up. I'm triggered because I have, uh, my anger monsters coming up. Why is my anger monster coming up? My anger monster is coming up because that person over there reminds me of when I was 10 and I could never get a word in edgewise. But I was made to do things like get up and play the piano in front of my parents dinner party guests when I didn't feel like it. You know, that's a total first world childhood problem. I totally admit. Right. It's a, it's, nonetheless, it's a thing. And so if you have a team that understands that they have stuff going on inside them during the meeting and they can be aware of that, both through registering their emotions, that is being emotionally intelligent and also being in touch with their body. Because somatically we get cues from our body all the time about what's happening. Right? So if you have a team that's aware in that sense, they can also then become aware that not only do we have systems on the inside of each of us, but our team is a system. So our system is reacting to everyone else's system around the table. And if there's a wise team lead who's done their work in this way, it doesn't have to be ifs work. It can be a combination of other things, obviously. But ifs for me is like more of a straight arrow to the core. If you have a team lead who's wise in that way, they are much better placed to manage a team where there's conflict, where there's discomfort, where some people are choosing to opt out, where some people are dominating the usual human dynamics on a team. And the goal is. And then. I'm going to stop on this topic for a moment. The goal is to have team members who are so self aware that they could say, a part of me is uncomfortable with this discussion because not, I can't deal with this discussion, this is stupid, but a part of me, right, because then it gets separated. Then we as individuals think, oh, it's just a part of me, it's not all of me. And it also doesn't feel as aggressive to everyone else around the proverbial table.

Speaker B: Definitely appreciate the perspective. And I have so many questions about ifs in particular, you know, coming from addiction to mental health. It was definitely, um, one of those therapeutic kind of modalities or approaches, perspectives that was really helpful for our clients because addiction and often mental health becomes a, uh, kind of a totalizing identity. It's like, yes, addict. And it's like addiction's a piece, it's a part, it's a behavior of a part, you know, and being able to distinguish that and be able to see whole people as opposed to just one sliver of them that might be the loudest part that's kind of on display or the part that I'm looking for. Because sometimes, you know, there's a part of me that wants to be a helper. And so I only see the broken bits or the perceived version of that. So I mean, I love ifs been. Been a piece of my practice in that, in that space. Um, what drew you to it? You mentioned kind of straight arrow to the core and. But what drew you Initially to ifs. And what have you experienced? Maybe some examples of, like, what you've seen, the shift in a leader or team once, um, parts became more visible. If you have any kind of examples that stand out from your.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, okay. What drew me to it? I. So I've been coaching for about 11 or 12 years. Uh, conventional coaching, ICF certified. Right. And I had this feeling that it's. It's not enough that, uh, you know, I'm not. I'm not able to handle all the emotions of my clients well enough. There must, you know, there must be more that it's a little bit shallow sometimes. For what. For what I want to do. Because I firmly believe that clients who don't make a shift on the inside are not going to be able to make a shift in their behavior on the outside. As. As a leader. Full disclosure. My father is a psychiatrist who's been practicing IFS for some time and who, uh, introduced me to it long ago. And as the. As the daughter, I was just like, no, dad, I don't want to do your thing. I want to do my thing. And it took me a while to come around and to see the wisdom of it. And what I did, the way I started, was that I went to an IFS therapist myself so that I could experience it as a client. And that's hugely valuable. And I walked into the therapist's office and I sat down, and within 10 minutes, I had discovered one of my major, uh, vulnerable pieces, though one of the exiles, as they're called in. IFS 1 is so one of the vulnerable young parts that gets exiled in our system inside. We suppress them because they're so vulnerable that we can't tolerate that kind of feeling on any consistent basis. So we have to push them down and exile them to the deepest parts so that we can function right. So that we don't feel freaked out and ashamed and abandoned and upset all the time, because nobody can do that. And it was so vivid for me. I had visions of all my parts. They came out like cartoons. Like, seriously. It was crazy. And it was so valuable for me and so kind of altering. I felt my whole energy alter, um, that I decided I was going to take this on. And that was the time when the, um, Internal Family Systems Institute had begun to offer IFS for coaches. So I was able to get into the second cohort. It's very deep. It is the nexus of psychotherapy and coaching. And IFS has, um. ICF has embraced IFS coaching, which is a little bit of A puzzle. Because there's so much like, oh, icf. We don't do therapy. We are not therapists. Right. But this is the nexus. That's how I got into it. I've been doing it for a couple of years. The way we are encouraged to work as coaches and the way it works for me is not to come to a client with, okay, now we're going to do ifs. This is how I do it. You know, I need you to close your eyes and find your parts. No, that's just like. That is way too invasive. And it's, you know, most people are not ready for that. So I just introduced the concept here and there. When I hear a client speaking from what feels to me like a clearly apart, right here comes the angry part, or, uh, you know, the frustrated part. I'm unseen. I don't feel heard. I'm frustrated. That's a part. And so I might say, well, it sounds like there's a part of you that gets really frustrated during these situations. Do you want to tell me more about that? And so it just, it kind of goes. And some clients want to go deeper right away and some don't. And I do not push because as the coach, I'm not there to push anybody in any one direction. I'm just holding space and using my part discerner as a guide. And, um, so I'll give an example. So I have a client who, um, I've been working with for some time, and we really have built a lot of trust. And he's been transforming himself kind of consciously into a better leader. He's been promoted into a higher leadership role. And he's been thinking about what that means, what kind of shifts he needs to make, how he needs to behave differently with his team, how he can delegate more, et cetera, et cetera. And it's all been very like, role focused behavior as a leader focused kind of stuff. Very intellectual. Finally, after having praised his superior who supports him, after having praised that person a lot, I was a little skeptical. And he finally came and he was really frustrated. And I, um, thought, okay, here's the stuff that was underneath. That's why there was that feeling like, oh, I need to praise my boss. I need to say, oh, he's great, he's great, he's great, he's great. And I'm like, uh, why are we say he's great so many times?

Speaker B: Who are you trying to convince here?

Speaker A: Exactly. Who are we trying to convince? And so the admission of, I'm feeling frustrated here I've done everything he wants me to do, but I know it doesn't matter. And I'm still vulnerable to criticism from others and I'm still afraid that I'm not going to meet, meet the standards and I'm not going to meet the targets, even though I have made my boss's life much better because he doesn't have to be very hands on with me and all this stuff. Right? It all comes out. I said, well, what do you want to say to your boss? Like, if you could say, if you could say anything, what would you, what would you bring to him? What would you say? And the feeling was, well, there's nothing I can say because they don't care. They don't care what I'm going through. And so then we made our way to, well, so who are you going to fix? If you can't influence your boss's style or your boss's behavior, what's left? Oh, well, I had, you know, I used to fix myself. And so then I started to ask about, okay, what about this part? Like, if you could work on this part of yourself, the part that feels unseen and unheard, what would that feel like? And so that for me was a breakthrough that, that Kochi made it deeper out of the intellectual, out of the cognitive realm of, uh, this is what I'm doing. These are what my folks are doing. This is what I want them to do. This is how they're reacting to me and into the, oh, I'm feeling this. This is in my way, this emotion. I need better regulation. And that for me, those are the most beautiful moments of coaching that I can possibly experience. And I left that session feeling wonderful for him and very excited. That's an ex, so there's your example.

Speaker B: Thanks for sharing. Yeah, no, I love those kind of powerful moments of new insights and new opportunities and possibilities that emerge when we start to see kind of our own, you know, our own ownership and agency and power. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about power dynamics at the Ally Code, the Right Use of Power Institute, and the models and frameworks, they're very, actually adjacent to internal family systems. There's been quite a bit of crossover in practitioners kind of between both, both schools of thought and obviously emotional intelligence and nonviolent communication. There's like a little cluster of influences.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, they're all, they're all interwoven. Right.

Speaker B: Really, really connect them. So I love to. I just love the stories of changes, changes that get sparked, um, and supported.

Speaker A: I have actually a question for You Jeff that you know, here I am um, thinking about all these things. So you have all these methodologies. Do you consciously interweave them? Like how do you see that? Do you draw on one one moment and then another the next? Or do you, do you somehow separate them? Like how is it for you?

Speaker B: That's a very good question. We try to be intentional and conscious about the, the approach and making sure that it matches the like the intention impact gap is real for practitioners just as much as leaders and parents. Like we have a good intention to create a condition or create a space for something to happen. Are we doing that consciously and intentionally or are we just acting from habit or default? And so I'm generally quite try to be reflective of is this the tool for the job? And we're pretty kind of tool agnostic. And so I love all tools but I pull from lots of different modalities because there's no right way. There's a way. Right. And there's maybe better more suitable ways and there's ways that are maybe reinforce the status quo or perpetuate the same kind of problems. And so I'm kind of usually conscious of the, of the tool. Um, a few of them just have become baked in to the. We use a framework that we actually built called conscious communication. Kind of the three Ds of conscious communication. Because I see communication like that is how we operationalize power. It's in communication. It's our ability to. We call it. So the first D is deep listening.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: You already alluded to deep listening and how challenging it is and how most of us don't actually listen deeply to self to start with. But also. Right. We're listening to the stories and narratives and assumptions and opinions and all the things that cloud get in the way but that true ability. And for me that's like if we're. If the task at hand is to build trust and connection and relationship then deep listening is really the only path to do that is to create the conditions to create the space for Janet to feel like I'm not judging you. Um, that's that empathy and non judgment like so those you know, pieces of non violent communication combined with an awareness of the power dynamic. Do. How much power do I hold in this relationship? Because as a coach you're coming to that in a position of power. Not that um, functionally different than a therapist. Right? Yeah. And a parent and a leader. Like we all are in an up power position. And so the questions we ask can unlock um, or not, you know, change for, for that person. And so just being really conscious of the power dynamic and what's my role in this specific instance, in this side of this coaching session. But even moment to moment within the coaching sessions, am I intentional in the questions that I'm asking and am I actually listening deeply and creating the space for that or do I have a judgment about where I want to take this conversation? Am I asking a leading question to try and get that person, like we're all guilty of that. I do it all the time with my kids. Right.

Speaker A: It's unfortunately, it's human to do that. Yes.

Speaker B: We have to kind of notice those, those tendencies and urges to be a people, like a people pleaser, helper, fixer. Right. That's key. Start to solution way, way prematurely, not even understanding that the problem they're experiencing is different than how you've interpreted it. Right. Or we lay our own stories on it. So there's lots of that kind of intentionality. Um, but so that deep listening, meaningful dialogue. How do we actually engage in meaningful dialogue once we have created the conditions for the different perspectives to be on the table? How do we then engage in a dialogue that moves us closer to a shared solution or a co created solution? Um, where we get kind of purposeful direction and so that kind of three Ds of like deep listening, meaningful dialogue, purposeful direction as a continuum of communication skills and approaches and tools and, and within that, lots of nuance. But that's how I've kind of reconciled that like nonviolent communication in particular the oftener model. I was just working with a group yesterday and the observations, feelings, needs, requests is an amazing tool for engaging in dialogue and maintaining connection within that. Uh, but it's not great for performance management and actually giving somebody direction, clear direction. It can be, but often when we're first learning it, it's like we struggle with it. And so there's other models that are good for that. And so again it's kind of being agnostic, not falling too much in love with any one individual tool, but seeing where they, where they do really well based on the need of a client or relationship and where you might want to shift. Um, yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really wise observation. I mean I think, I think a lot of us get attached to certain models that we like that sit well with us and we tend to attribute all the success to a model. But being flexible, I mean, uh, I think it really, it requires experience using many different tools like you said, and that experience brings you then the sensibility of, okay, this is a situation, maybe for this, maybe this thing would work and maybe listen so you become more adept with your toolkit to the benefit of the team or whoever of, uh, the client. I, I love this. The deep listening dialogue and direction. That's great.

Speaker B: Yeah, Just a framing because again, coming from the helping professions, coming from addiction to mental health, we were trained to be deep listeners. But there's a shadow side to deep listening, which is getting stuck in a listening pattern and people share and nothing ever changes, right. Or people come together and talk in dialogue, but nobody actually like, would never get a clear direction. So it's a bit of a, um, map for creating some, that connection and direction, like balancing those, those competing needs.

Speaker A: Um, you know what's coming up for me with that is that, um, in ifs and internal family systems, they, uh, emphasize the coach or the therapist, it doesn't matter which one. Doing the quote unquote U turn you like Y O U. So that when you're listening to a client, you need to also check in with yourself and make sure that your own parts, right. Are not coming up and influencing the way you're listening to them or the questions that you're asking. Because, I mean, I think this is what you're essentially talking about is that we come, right, we bring our own. What's the role of, to get away from it.

Speaker B: Uh, the role of coach or facilitator. It's really problematic and easy to replicate the leader as expert, dynamic, and try and be the facilitator as expert or the coach with the answers. It's like, actually my role here is actually to hold space. That's the outcome. It's not the solution, this thing. It's not to pick the direction. It's to hold the space for this group. Because the wisdom of the group is what is going to be sustainable and people are going to buy into that. Otherwise, I just, I'm a guy with an opinion, um, and they're paying me for it. Right. And so it's, it's really kind of that conscious aligning your intention with your actions. You know, we talk a lot about intention impact gaps, but that's not actually the impacts are secondary. It's the actions that we take. So do our actions align with our intentions? And that's where I try and kind of have lots of consciousness around the action that I'm taking with this group or this person and the tool that I'm bringing to the table. And does it align with that holding, uh, space? If that's the goal of this session. To just hold space for tension or conflict or whatever it happens to be. Um, again, we could. We could talk. I think this is. We'll have to queue up around 2, because I'd love to dig into. Um, it's really important. I think the. I believe that the big. One of the biggest shifts required to unlock team intelligence and safety in these things is a shift from leader as expert and decision maker to leader as facilitator and space holder. Um, I see that kind of distributing power more equitably on teams. And unlocking a lot of stuckness on teams is actually located in the leader themselves. And so I love this conversation about parts because there's a part of self that maintains that, and there's other parts of self that we can invite to the table. Um, but maybe let's spend a couple of minutes on team facilitation and your approach to unlocking some of that stuckness. And then I know you've been doing some innovating in your own practice, and I'd love to hear a little bit about that too. But, um, knowing we'll set aside the pressure of trying to cover everything today, because we won't. Um, but maybe talk a little bit about your team facilitation work.

Speaker A: Sure. Okay. So I'm developing an approach to use IFS with teams, and it begins with a fun, silly exercise, because my new goal in life is to bring energy and fun to the work we do because it can get pretty serious and pretty heavy sometimes, and we all deserve a little lightness. And so the. The IFS exercise for teams is, uh, a is around role playing, choosing external. Not the ones we have inside, but external, stereotypical parts and having folks embody them around the table and having a team lead trying to run a meeting and all. And the. And the parts are behaving right.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: It's the behaviors that the parts are motivating. Like, I hate change, and, you know, I'm super compliant, and I'm pissed off all the time because nothing is fair. I love it. And all this stuff. Right. It's fun because you give people a taste of fully being blended with ifsp being blended with a part fully. And I did this at a conference with a bunch of OD people, and they laughed their asses off. It was incredible. We had a great time. So I'm experimenting with how to apply IFS to teams. Uh, right now, that is one thing. And then I have a couple of other things I'm doing So I just came back from a conference of facilitators who do something called. The name is very original. It's called the, uh, box. This is what it looks like. It's a hollow box. Hello. And the box is like a big metaphor for mindset. When you're inside the box, you're stuck in your own mindset and it's hard for you to see what other people are doing. It's hard for you to see your way forward until you decide you're going to become a little more open to what's happening, or until you work on your emotional intelligence, for example, and you become a little bit better, more grounded in yourself and less defensive. And you can listen to other people and all this kind of stuff. So this, this box is a beautiful thing because it's not just a discussion, it's a thing. You can draw on it. This is, this is my drawing of myself. Um, I'm a really bad visual artist, but this is my best. I'm, um, far better at auditory things. So everybody gets to draw their own representation of themselves, which in itself is already a thing. Right. If you get together with a group of people and they all draw themselves, you get to see how they perceive themselves visually. You also get to be incredibly goofy with each other because everybody's doing the same thing. You get to use color. The thing is tactile. It feels very strange to put it on your head. When you put it on your head, the sound echoes around you. So it's, it's like literally being stuck in your own bubble. And it goes, it goes from there. So the box is wonderful for talking about change, resistance to change, for, um, connecting more deeply with people, because you can write on the outside, you know, lists of what you want to achieve or who you want to be or things that you're not afraid to show the rest of the world. And so people, rather than asking you about it and you having to say, well, I really want to do this, which a lot of people have trouble with. Right? Some people don't feel deserving of success or whatever. You can just read each other's boxes. And so it's a beautiful and fun tool that can be used for anything from a 90 minute to a two day team, uh, session. And it brings in the other senses, which I, which I really like. I really think that we've been stuck for a very long time in an intellectualized paradigm that's all about the inside of our prefrontal cortex. And there's a lot more there that we need to work with. And a lot of methodologies have started doing this. So I'm using the box. And then finally, the third thing is that I attended some brilliant stuff that weaves music into work with companies and teams. And part of that is based on the fact that music uses more, uh, centers of our brain than most other activities that we can possibly do, except for dancing. It connects the intellectual with the sensory. So the right and left brain gets more connected when we make music. We have to focus very much when we make music. And so, for example, a very simple exercise is to take a percussion instrument like a, a maraca or a small drum or something. You can even just beat on the table and have the group do a rhythm together and listen to each other such that they can be as in sync as possible. Just that it's really simple. Just that can create a kind of synchronization or co regulation of our nervous systems in the room. And it's a beautiful thing. And I know you mentioned that you've done drumming. And so it's, it's the same kind of concept, right? Humans have been drumming and dancing and singing forever. It's a really fundamental part of it. And we've somehow come to a point in our evolution where we feel embarrassed to do any of these things that are like, really elemental for us. And so one of my goals is to introduce these things in small doses in ways that don't feel too, you know, threatening or scary or whatever to people and to get them to do it and then to witness how it makes them feel both inside. Because if you do, if you do the percussion, if you drum with someone for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then you stop, your body continues to reverberate, it, it vibrates, right? You can feel it. To experience that it can bring a group together very quickly in a way that's completely non verbal. And it's fantastic. And so I did this at a recent conference I was at, and they were all like, what are we doing? This is cool. Okay. And they were all like shaking the maraca and looking around and I was, you know, I was guiding them. And then we took that and we were already kind of comfortable with each other, so it was an ideal situation. Then we stopped that and then we moved on to, uh, we performed a song I transcribed. I rewrote the lyrics to a song to make them relevant to our situation. And we had a choice. Folks could sing or do free dancing, whatever they wanted. Movement or beat on the table, Beat the basic rhythm of the song on the Table. And, uh, luckily, you know, I got to choose a song myself. So I chose a song where the rhythm was consistent throughout. We did that, and the idea was to also incorporate the box if they could. So some of them were dancing with the box on their heads or dancing with the box or, like, drumming the box on the table, and they lost their minds. It was hilarious. And I had. The whole room was just, like, dancing and singing. And then when we were over, they were like hoopla, you know, hooping. And so these things, they make a difference because folks remember them. They remember how good it felt. They remember how they could do it together with others and not feel embarrassed. I'm looking to interweave.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: It's the combination of everything because we as humans are complex.

Speaker B: I love that, ah, example. And thanks for, thanks for sharing us having some flashbacks to drumming circles and, um, dance parties and things that we would used to do in treatment because, um, getting out of your head and into your body and connected and grounded with, with other people in the same space is something I don't think we do nearly enough of as a, As a practice generally. So, um, I think we should probably just acknowledge that we're gonna have to have a round two of this conversation. There were a dozen questions I didn't get a chance to ask you that I want to. And rabbit holes that we can, we can dig into. I really enjoyed this conversation. Um, you want to leave the listener with a nugget or an insight or a, ah, call to action, you know, maybe where people can connect with you if they want to learn more about your work. It's always an important one. And any kind of leadership, kind of call to action that you want people to either reflect on or practice or do something, the listener can take some action after this, uh, podcast.

Speaker A: First of all, um, people can find me on LinkedIn under my full name, Janet Livingstone in Seattle. So that's easy enough. I'm creating a new website. I have an old website, which is cultureiskey.com coach. Culture is key. One word, coach. But that is being revamped, so it's not the best. So the call to action is if you're interested in any of any combination or permutation of what I have covered in this podcast, please just get in touch. We can brainstorm. We can just, you know, go further and talk about what this would mean for you as a practitioner, as a coach, whatever your role is, or if you're a company looking for a, uh, slightly unorthodox approach and I would say in general to leaders, to other humans in this space, that let's take advantage of all of the things that are available to us, that models come and models go. But humans are complex, as I said before, and we react to a lot of different things. And if we recognize how rich our internal worlds are and bring the richness of the external world to meet that, we can create all kinds of positive energy. That's my challenge right now. On the second episode, I may have a different challenge. Thanks Jeff.

Speaker B: Thanks Janet. Really appreciate your uh, your time and your energy and your wisdom. M. Um, great, great uh, conversation. And I'm, I'm also looking forward to round two, um, and to have you join us at the co. We've got a workshop planned, um, for early May. I believe you're going to come in and.

Speaker A: Yeah, really looking forward to that.

Speaker B: With a group of leaders that uh, that we support. So I'm excited for that. Yeah, looking forward to it. And uh, yeah, thank you again.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Leaderful is brought to you by the Ally co, a team of human centered systems conscious consultants, coaches and facilitators dedicated to helping you and your team tackle the core problems of burnout and stuckness and misalignment and misuses of power and all of the things that get in the way of creating truly human centered workplaces where everyone thrives and does their best work. Head over to www.theallico world to learn more.