The Leadership Skills We Were Never Taught

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to youo Odyssey Podcast where your guides, Tara and Karen invite you on a transformative journey toward wholeness and personal growth. Each week we'll discuss topics related to the human experience and offer insights to help you along the way. Please note, this podcast should not replace medical care or advice. We are not licensed healthcare professionals or mental health therapists. If you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe so you don't miss out on our future discussions. So explorers, let's dive into today's episode. Hey explorers, it's Tara. Karen and I are so glad you're here today. Today we're beginning a three part conversation about leadership. Not strategy, not productivity, but the human skills that make leadership possible. For more than 30 years, our guest has been working with leaders around the world to explore a powerful idea that many of the challenges we see in our organizations and maybe even in our society stem from something missing in how we educate and develop human beings. And we're starting with the foundation, the leadership skills most of us were never taught. Mary, thanks for joining Karen and I today. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Thank you. Great to be here. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Would you like to introduce yourself to our audience? [00:01:39] Speaker B: Thank you very much for inviting me. My name is Mary Graham and I have had the privilege, pleasure to work with visionary leaders over the last 35 years and obviously done some work with Karen. We're going to take a look at what we have inherited from visionary leaders over the last 30 years and what they've passed on to us. Where we are currently with our vision or lack of vision and what we can do with our vision for tomorrow, making it practical. So it's all about our higher wisdom. But that on its own won't fix it unless we can translate it into some really practical steps. [00:02:18] Speaker C: Buckle up explorers because we're going to get an overview of this work that Mary has been doing in the world for so long and it's really who she is. She's embodying this leadership of her own to share how we can shift and I believe raise consciousness of humanity. And that it begins with, with educating, training our youngest leaders, our youngest peeps, and then having them evolve into full grown, full blown effective and holistic leaders. So we're gonna be talking a little bit about process, we're gonna be talking a little bit about practical application. And hopefully this is going to invite you to explore where in your life you could use some of this information to enhance the way that you lead or show in the world. Because leadership is not just C suite of organization, right? We are all leaders in our own ways. In our own communities, in our families. And it's really important to notice what skills we have and what skills we might like to build. [00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. [00:03:30] Speaker A: All right, so let's get started with the missing education piece. Mary, what first made you realize that something was missing in how we develop leaders? [00:03:41] Speaker B: I think everything that you've said about leadership starts with the missing education for all of us. So I think that's the absolute starting point for wherever we are in our lives, wherever we are with our leadership, Every single one of us today on the planet have got missing pieces of our education, and that plays out in the way that we communicate with ourselves. As Karen just said, the way I talk to myself, the way I treat myself is the way I lead myself. And missing in our education currently is it plays out just in the way we relate in a chat over a coffee, which becomes the culture in our local community, and then it plays out exactly the same with our leaders. So we're all the Same currently in 2026. We've all got missing pieces of our education, and we're all learning those pieces. Some of us are learning it very consciously, and some of us are having it forced upon us, and some of us are not aware of the what we're learning. So my awareness started 35, 36 years ago when I was doing the classic is this the job for me? And back then, in 1990, it was about job. You know, purpose was not a word. It's really important to remember how far we have come in the last 36 years. That word was not around. So it was, you know, go to school, get a job. And that was it, really. And so I was analyzing whether or not the job I was doing was. Was filling me with joy and whether I was bringing really good skills to it. This was pre Internet. There was no books, no Internet explorers. [00:05:19] Speaker C: Just feel into that for a minute. For some of our younger listeners, there was no Internet. [00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think there were three books exploring human beings and where they were going and what was going to happen to us. And there were a few, probably about five people doing lectures around the world, and that was it. Now, wonderfully, the visionary leaders around our wholeness have brought in the fact that it is perfectly okay for us to be sitting here in an afternoon having this conversation. If we had had this conversation in 1990 in the United Kingdom, this would have been labeled navel gave, as in selfish. And whose time are you using? You should be doing something really useful. So, yeah, I read the three books. I went to the 10 lectures we didn't have a coaching profession in the UK and nor was there in the United States either at that time. Coaching as a profession only started to happen towards the end of the 1990s. So I was working with a team and we did an exercise around authentic purpose and a whole load of light bulbs went off for me. And that gave me my clarity that I am here to work with leaders who want to bring the whole person to work, that want to create a culture where the whole person flourish. Now you can tune into loads of podcasts where you would hear that back then that was absolutely revolutionary, that there were CEOs who wanted to create a culture where the whole person could come to work. And of course the first question that would come up is, that is going to interrupt our productivity. And that still is the first question that comes up when a new leader opens a book, listens to a podcast and says, yes, come and talk to me about bringing a whole person culture into this organization. It is still the first question, is this going to interrupt our productivity? And luckily there is a lot of data now to say, no, it won't. It will enhance it. So there will be a little bit of time investment at the beginning, but it's going to enhance it. So of course now we've got 36 years of data and as the Dalai Lama says beautifully, finally neuroscience has caught up with Buddhism. So all of the things that we couldn't measure in our brain back then, what was happening in the brain couldn't be monitored. Now you can just go and have a brain scan and it will show you what is happening when you are in a defensive, ego driven place and what that is doing to the immune system. So again, all those visionary scientists that brought in that capability for us so that we can measure the impact of what a whole person education does on our brain and our well being. Phenomenal. [00:08:13] Speaker C: As I'm just listening to you talk about this, I'm realizing, yes, in any organization I have played a role in, when there is that culture, really your nervous system is not regulated at all. And it feels like there's this pressure, there's this striving, there's this judgment, there's this, you're not doing enough. All of that energy that comes into it that I think unconsciously, people who are working in that organization, some of them can feel it. And it doesn't feel powerful and motivating and empowering. It just feels kind of icky. And it's so fascinating to me that by the mid-90s, you were on the cutting edge of thinking about how this changes everything. I really believe that this awareness, this knowing changes everything. How we approach every facet of our lives. [00:09:07] Speaker A: Let's talk a little bit about that whole person education. What does that mean if someone's just listening to the history, Mary, that you shared with being at the forefront? What does it mean to educate from a whole person or lead from a whole person perspective? [00:09:22] Speaker B: I think the first really simple way of describing it is if you think about a circle with four quadrants. In that circle we have our physical intelligence, our cognitive intelligence, which we call our iq, which we're very attached to and we know all about. And then we have our emotional intelligence, our EQ and our sq, our spiritual intelligence, which is about aligning our actions to a set of values. And so if you look at that, we as a world are really good at our PQ and our iq. So what athletes can do, what we know about the body, we know how even 10 grams of protein can affect performance. So what we understand about our physicality is phenomenal. When our iq, this cognitive intelligence, where we pump our brain full of facts and figures, we've been working on that since in the UK, the 1940s, when we made education available for everybody for free. I don't know when that happened in the US, but it happened in the 1940s, so up to 100 years. So we know how to get data into the cognitive part of our brain, we know how to get facts and figures, and our current education system is based on this one quadrant, this iq. How much data can I tell you by the age of 16 about what I know about science, maths, English, geography? Yeah. And I can absolutely tell you that by 16 I know how to pump that part and I know how to throw it out again and put it into a reasonably coherently intellectually structured essay. The bit that's unfinished is the other 50% of who we are, which is our emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence. That is how we act aligned to our values. And what I was thinking about was Dr. Stephen Covey, who wrote all the Seven Habits books in the 1980s. He was one of my first go tos. He talked about the whole person and he did 100 years of research through the US of all the people that have written about how to be a success, and he put it in that beautiful format of the Seven Habits. And then he did it for teams, teenagers, families. Phenomenal gift that he gave. And my goodness, I used every line that he wrote as part of my understanding about my wholeness. And I think one of the things that we're sitting with today as we are going from this tipping point as to whether we're going to remain in our lowest ego or whether we're going to tip into accessing our emotional and spiritual intelligence properly is a lot of this stuff we have known since the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s by the real visionaries. The key is, are we now going to use it? That's really the key, and that's what's been happening in the last 30 years, is using what has been around through Carl Jung, through Dr. Eric Byrne and many others who did their research in the 40s and 50s and said, hey, people, if you speak to yourself like this, this is going to happen. If you speak to each other like this, this is going to happen. If you neglect this part of yourselves, this is going to happen. So, you know what you said about corporate culture, and frankly, any culture, I work with community groups who are just in this judgmental attack defensive place. If we speak to ourselves like that, and it's in the culture which it is really stuck in, our very embedded a couple of options, which is to join in and start behaving like that too, but to join in with a very strong defense system so I can justify to myself and then tell somebody who questions why I've joined in to say, well, you just have to, if you want to survive around here, you just have to use this defense system. Yeah, that's called the act out is I've chosen to join in the negative norms and act out by putting my defensive mechanism and then convincing myself that's a good way to go. Or I act in. I just slowly start removing myself and I slowly, bit by bit, start underperforming, getting sick, getting stressed, and I just slowly start to feel isolated and disconnected. [00:13:56] Speaker C: Right. It feels like in those situations, it's like that eat or be eaten. Like it feels like a very binary choice and realize there's more choices. [00:14:06] Speaker B: And you know the great podcasts about the neuroscience of what happens is if I start telling you what you should be doing, the amygdala part of the brain starts to light up and pretty soon you're going to be coming back looking to tell me what I should be doing, and then we'll be in this beautiful tennis game of back and forth, but we're not then shining the light on the root of what is the real issue we came here to do, and we're not making it safe for you and I to share ideas and inventions. And we stay in the binary, well, I'm wearing blue, so I can only say we do it this way and you're wearing yellow, so you're going to say it that way and we stay in this adversarial way. Over the last 30 years so many organizations have stopped doing that and have found a better way to do it and have found that they can in fact be more productive by moving away from the blame and shame and defensiveness. I was talking to an organization and they in their bonus structure points towards their bonus for using Marshall Rosenberg's non violent communication process which came out of Eric Burns Parent Adult child. Okay, wow. And so they are doing that now. They've still got a big degree of training and education to do in their organization. I'm not saying that the 15,000 people in that organization are all doing it beautifully yet. But what is in the culture driven by the leadership is really, this is our manifesto, nonviolent communication. And this is where we want to hear you doing it and saying it in meetings. So we want to hear this, not that. [00:15:57] Speaker C: And the incentive is there. Literally. Bottom line financial value. [00:16:03] Speaker B: That's what the visionary leaders that I've been working with been knocking on the door to. First off, let's allow us to learn it. Are we going to create space away from time management, technical skills, the stuff that you can easily point increases the bottom line to soft skills. [00:16:23] Speaker C: I was just about to say soft skills. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Okay, so. So I don't experience learning about myself and changing my emotional intelligence and changing my behaviors. I don't experience that a soft experiences of bloody hard. [00:16:36] Speaker C: It's freaking challenging, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. [00:16:40] Speaker B: So I mean I think that's where we've come from. And we can laugh. I can laugh a bit now because that would have been all the people with the defended be strong egos in the driving seat. So the first one was to actually create space. And I can remember one of the doctors that I was working with introduced me to a colleague and the colleague said what to do? And I said, well, I work with leaders who want to bring the whole person culture into the work. And he went, ah, so you're teaching them about love. And I said, you got it. And he said what you're doing is stealth marketing. And I said absolutely. I said, they call me in and they say we need to know something about motivation. And I go great, I'm your woman in. I go, so this is how you do motivation. Number one, you find your wholeness. You speak to your EQ and your sq because that's where your motivation, it doesn't live with my knowledge about science and it doesn't live up here in my logic. My motivation lives in my heart and my higher principles to my values. Yeah. I absolutely need my cognitive to put the plan of action into a coherent, practical format. 100% I need my logic, my sequencing, my data, my ability to checkout resources. 100% I need it. But that's the second step. The first step I need is to switch that off. Click. Thank you. Take a rest. Right. My motivation is here in my heart, in my belly. Oh, my God. I can't speak to that person about motivation because I find them super scary. Okay. Useful information. Right? You find it scary. Okay. So how are you going to use that fear to prepare? Purpose of fear. Fear is preparation. We're talking about in a work learning environment. The purpose of fear is preparation. Yeah. And that was the starting point. I was just going in and whatever subject to learn, I'd be like, yep, great. And then I would then say, so it's all there in your wholeness and in your emotional and spiritual intelligence. And then around 2010, I was working with an organization in San Francisco and it was coming and talk to us about the whole person. So it took till 2010 before organizations could say the words, can you come and talk to us about the whole person? [00:19:04] Speaker C: Wow. There was like a natural arc, like an opening, a growth, becoming open to that collaborative culture. Right. To rewarding, even opening to the fact that there are these missing parts and they are equally important. Important. And can we come to a place where we honor and value all of the gifts, the 360 degrees about every individual to, in business terms, increase the bottom line. Become more productive. Just be happier generally, you know, happier, more satisfied, fulfilled people. Because all of that affects the business. [00:19:45] Speaker B: And of course, in an ideal world, if we could turn the clock back, what we want is for people to arrive at work already fully understanding how to look after themselves and say, when I get stressed, I know how to look after myself. When I have a misunderstanding with a colleague and I start labeling them the bad person, I know how to get myself out of that behavior and I know how to put myself back on the track of what was my part in this. That's my other side of the story, is lobbying our education system. The Henley center for Forecasting said a lot of people in Western Europe say that they feel satisfied with their work and they have a home and they have enough money for a holiday, but they feel empty because they don't know what their deeper purpose is. So the Henley center said, at the millennium, the first three decades of the 21st century, particular people in Europe will be seeking their meaning and purpose through therapy, coaching, self help, podcasts, etc. We've absolutely seen that and it's absolutely beautifully out there in all sorts of shapes and forms. Everybody can just click online and do their authentic purpose statement and all of those things are out there and getting it onto the education system. In 2025, we asked a lot of the head teachers to think about where they would put it on the curriculum, what it would look like. We really need it, but we're a bit busy. Then we did a second round and they came back with, yes, we definitely need it, but we're not broken enough. Right. That was 2005, 2006. Now, I can absolutely tell you, 20 years on in the UK, a majority of people would say, we are so broken. So we missed some massive opportunities to get the pioneers together and really ingrain it. So what we're left with currently from the gift of the past is we can talk about anything. There's stuff out there, it's still in slices, it's not being done as a whole and it's not been done thoroughly enough. And that's where we sit today, you know, in early 2026. [00:22:09] Speaker A: So what I hear is there is this twofold approach that should happen for visionary leaders. They should as human beings. What you were saying earlier about this awareness about where they sit, what their triggers are and how to handle and adjust to those triggers, but also the learning and missing piece of education that needs to come not just from an organizational level, but from a societal level as well. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And what I've been doing for the last 30 years is we need absolutely everybody. So I've worked with politicians, I've worked lobbying the educators for them to take it on board and put it on skills. You know, it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to look after an elder. There is nowhere in the village that doesn't need the education. And so what the visionaries have been doing in the last 30 years is picking the most fertile points. And the fertile points have predominantly been the corporates. They have been the ones that have been more open and more visionary and more brave. And of course, they have more resources. The politics. I've worked with two political parties. One of them, they will say really clearly, this job asks you not to be human, so what's the point in me learning this? And those chickens are coming home. To roost right now. One political party did. We got to have this on our induction training before we allow anybody to join the party. And the timing of when they introduced myself and a few other organizations to go in and do that training for them so that everybody in that party would be able to speak with this nonviolent communication and this truly inspiring safe culture. The timing they were in such conflict with a particular issue, There was not a moment nobody was able to put their attack hat down. That's where we are right now. There's a lot of anger and fear in certain corners that won't open the door. And we've got to think creatively about that. [00:24:13] Speaker C: Like you said, bringing, bringing it in a stealth way might even be the most effective. Like we're going to tell them we're doing this, but we're also incorporating this, this and this. And once you get in it and you start to experience what that's like and what it feels like to be in that safety and to be in that accepting mode and that collaborative space, I would imagine most people would respond very positively and very grateful fully to have this idea of non violent communication and bringing all of the parts of oneself like that all feels like such positive stuff to me. And the only factions I think that it wouldn't feel positive to are people who are threatened by it, who do not live that way, who choose to keep digging their heels in and just doing the same thing over and over. And as you say, that does come from a place of fear and anger, anger and polarity and defensiveness. And that's never going to serve the whole. So we must, we must try different, we must think different, we must act different. We have to approach this differently. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we're ready to have to. Is the critical parent. We have to do this. [00:25:24] Speaker C: She caught me. [00:25:25] Speaker B: So. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely right. Our culture, especially when there's a sense of urgency, we have to do this. We're ready to. [00:25:33] Speaker C: We're ready to. [00:25:35] Speaker B: And therefore, what are the options of what we can do now? This is, as you said, the arc of where we've got to. We can talk about these things now and we can put this stuff on the table and there's an amazing amount of good work has been done. I think one of the things that's very easy for me to reflect on about what we could have done better is we could have told the story better about what's been achieved. When people tell you the story of what they get out of being connected to their wholeness, it's so much bigger than that. So that's the bit we've missed is telling the stories of what has happened for the individuals and then in a team telling that story has not got on the front page yet. [00:26:28] Speaker C: It's important to share those stories at the right time. [00:26:31] Speaker B: What happened in the past is that some of the leaders said, yeah, yeah, we're going to do this. And they told everybody up front what they were going to do. That doesn't work. It's like me telling you, oh, I'm going to. I will be amazing in eight weeks time. Well, yeah, so yeah, why don't you just show up in eight weeks and we'll see? Yeah. So it's not about telling the story up front. It's about doing the work. Really, really doing the work, building the skills. Because these are all skills. It's not a concept. And there was tons in the past of these amazing visions and values statements which were really necessary. We needed a visions and values statement. What we want though is people to tell the story of. If you came and worked with me and my team this week, this is what you will see us doing. [00:27:18] Speaker C: Attainable skills. Yes. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's skills. It's love plus skills. It's that powerful combination. So it's not a concept. In the fluffy, oh, it'll be lovely when we all can trust each other. That's one of the really big ones that people got caught in is let's have trust on our visions and values statement. The only place of trust is do I trust myself to navigate around you? If you fall back into one of your unhelpful behaviors around me, do I trust myself to navigate that and have a range of interventions to say? Please could you rethink what you just said to me and can we get back onto a good track? Right. Me trying to trust you is not where the trust lies. Can I trust myself to show up skillfully and navigate what happens in front of me and role model my values? And my number one value is self responsibility. Can I trust myself to show up and role model self responsibility in all our communications? Which would be. Okay, Karen, I think we've got a misunderstanding. I think my part is I probably did this. Does that resonate with you? What did you think happened? How can we move through this and get back to the task of what we're here to do? [00:28:41] Speaker C: Right. All those skills, that self awareness and that ability to own your responsibility for your behavior, the way you show up, the way you communicate and then having a two way conversation of not Blame or shame. But let's look at what happened. How did you see it? How did I see it? Let's find some common ground. How can we move forward together? Act, listening, all of those beautiful communication skills. I have to choose whether I'm going to react or pause and breathe and respond from a place of sovereignty of my own agency, coming from that place of awareness and self responsibility, wholeness, and ultimately, really, love is, I believe, what it comes down to, love of self, love and connection. That is such a beautiful way for us to move forward. I do have great hope for that. And as you say, it comes through practicing these clear, attainable skills, these modes and ways of being and communicating. [00:29:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And that might bring us to a point now to do a little exercise because we've talked a lot about the concepts and it's taking the conceptual into action. [00:29:57] Speaker C: So love it. [00:29:58] Speaker B: I'm passionate about. I'm a pragmatist, and I can tell you all the time how much I love this. When there's a tough situation. Yeah. How am I choosing to respond? What am I actually going to say? What I say to people is, what's your script? That situation. Write out your script for when that happens again. Which it will. [00:30:20] Speaker C: Yes, it will. [00:30:21] Speaker B: I know. That's the other thing that I think we're right at now. It's about a leader and you and I and a team together saying, right, what are we going to be doing and saying differently in the current crisis to get ourselves in a fit state for the rebuild. Right. [00:30:39] Speaker C: Because you can't come to the solution and the resolution from the mindset of the issue and the problem if you're stuck in that. Right. Obviously, that's not working. So what can we do? And how can we show up differently? Beautiful. [00:30:52] Speaker B: So what I'd love us to do now is to look at the accurate skill stories. So the parenting skills experts have some phenomenal research on what are the very specific skills that as parents, we want to pass on to our kids. And they say the number one skill that we want our kids to leave home out is the accurate skill stories. And so can you say, what are your key skills? Not labels. Not like, I'm a good communicator. That's a label. When I'm communicating, what are the specific skills I am doing? So getting behind the labels to talk about skills to then balance that with. And I've got a missing skill currently that I'm working on. Yeah. And that will generally be some kind of emotional intelligence. It's usually, you know, I Want to learn more how to self regulate when this situation happens in this scenario, and then what's my unhelpful behavior? And it's the balance of those three things. So five specific real core skills that are mine that I'm born with. One missing skill that I'm really happy to share with you in front of a group that I'm currently working on, and an unhelpful behavior that if you see me doing, I am ready to receive. This is what the most amazing human beings quietly and calmly have done in the last 30 years with thousands of people. Teams sit together and they share their accurate skill story with each other. And they work with their accurate skill story every, every step of the way. You know, on the new project, I'm going to bring this missing skill. I'm going to bring this unhelpful behavior. Tara. I'm sure I am. So please, when you hear me see me doing that behavior, give me a signal, because if it's out of my awareness and I'm starting to speed up and I've completely lost it, please tell me and I will be ready to say thank you for that. I'm now going to step back into my better way of behaving. So I know loads of organizations are doing that, and it has revolutionized the way they behave at their sick attendance. Apparently the US 45% of the workforce is using some kind of medication to get through the working day. Their performance levels have gone up. They have saved huge amounts of money by doing this accurate skill story. But what it means is at the beginning, oh, my God. You want me to share with you a missing skill and an unhelpful behavior? And what happens is the first thing people think about is, this is going to go on my record. You're all going to talk about this in the coffee break, right? So people go into this panic that it is going to be used to hurt them. So it requires me to trust myself that if you choose to over the coffee break, say, oh, that Mary, she reckons her unhelpful behavior is this. But I think she's got this, this and this, this. Then I need to trust myself to be able to do that. Yeah. So it's a really powerful exercise. That sounds incredibly simple. How is that going to save the world? How is that going to save our business? [00:34:22] Speaker C: Oh, I can see it. [00:34:23] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So why don't we all do a little accurate skill story right now, okay. And so think of a specific goal or project, a goal that you want to happen or a Project that you're working on. Yeah. And it's about a pen and paper. Because pen and paper connects the screen and tablet. [00:34:47] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:34:49] Speaker B: We stay in our sequencing brain, we don't get into our EQ and execute. Pen and paper means we connect to our wholeness. So think of a goal that you really, really want to achieve and write down five specific skills that you already know that you're good at that you can bring to the goal. A missing skill that you would love to have to meet that goal, and an unhelpful behavior that you probably will do on the journey that you're ready to soften a little bit. But let's write it out and look at it. Bring it into the light. And this is all like really neutral. Yeah. This is a really calm, just I'm okay. It's not about I'm amazing or I'm awful. It's just about, yeah, I'm human. So let's take just two minutes. [00:35:39] Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it. [00:35:40] Speaker B: To do that. So what I usually do, what I've been trained and I would recommend this for anybody doing any kind of exercise is do the exercise. And then the question we're asking ourselves is what happened while I was doing the exercise? So that's the first question before sharing the data. Yeah. That's the real learning. Yeah. Did I start with I've got nothing good to say about myself, Did I move straight to the unhelpful bit or you know, what happened? Yep. So why don't we share what happened? Just what happened while you were doing the exercise? [00:36:15] Speaker A: Definitely skipped ahead to the unhelpful behavior. I was like, I have the goal, like the project. And then I was like, okay, how can I get in my own way in delivering on the project? What stops me? And then went back and filled in the skills and the missing skills. [00:36:33] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:36:34] Speaker B: Great. Great. Yeah. So that's an illumination for you as to currently this week. What can happen for you is to skip to the task what the block is. [00:36:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:48] Speaker B: And that's very much what we've been trained to do. Yeah. In the one dimensional IQ and results. And what happens when we skip what we're doing really well, what I'm good at that I'm going to bring like really specifically what happens when we skip that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And Karen, what happened for you as you were doing it? [00:37:13] Speaker C: The goal came for me pretty easily and I actually, I am a rule follower, so I did the process in order because that's what I was asked to do. But what I Felt in my body was what I noticed. As I was thinking about the goal, I felt an excitement and I was like, oh yeah. And then I was able to identify sky skills. And then my energy started to drop as I began to identify a primary missing skill. And then the unhelpful behavior was very clear. And it's kind of what I did or embodied as in the exercise, which is I just kind of went numb. So yeah, I sort of experienced the exercise as how it flows for me, like coming in, like. Yeah. And then being like. [00:38:08] Speaker A: And being like, it speaks to us so well. Because you're like, I'm a rule follower. And I'm like, by default, I'm a rebel. [00:38:16] Speaker C: All right. And Mary, what about you? [00:38:18] Speaker B: I'm working on a theme at the moment of all three parts. Getting, recognizing my skills deeper, taking another layer off my unhelpful behavior and, and putting myself in situations where I am clearly improving my missing skills. So I just picked a new subject and was interested to see that the same came up. So I'm reassured that I'm on the right track for this chapter, however long that chapter is. It takes eight weeks to change a behavior and grow a skill. If I focus on it every day and I put myself in practice situation, by the end of eight weeks, I've got a new muscle, new neural pathway is in, and I can start to really feel the benefit of the new skill I'm growing and the unhelpful behavior that I'm reducing. So I was reassured to see that I'm on a consistent track. This accurate skill story is about getting behind the labels. You know, what is it I really bring to this project? I bring good ideas. I bring the ability to stop the conversation and say, can we circle back and see if we've missed anything? Because if I just say, hey, I'm a great communicator, you're immediately thinking, she's really attached to being a good communicator. And everybody says she's a good communicator. And it creates this scenario where we don't give each other quality feedback because we live with our labels. Labels stick and they keep us stuck. [00:39:55] Speaker C: Yeah, label is identity. And when we get attached to identity, then we can't be who we really are. [00:40:01] Speaker B: So the key with the accurate skills story for the future of our well being and our flourishing is to use it in all situations. So with my beautiful tennis girls on a Saturday morning, a conversation will arise about he's not very nice or she's not very nice and it goes into labels. So imagine that we had been trained to say, when he does this behavior, I'm tempted to make him all about that one behaviour and give him a label, but I'm not going to. Can you imagine if we said that in every single situation that we often. The discipline of the commitment. This is the love. You know, love is discipline. Love is the commitment to turn up every day and use the skills to make it safe. To not put people in boxes with a label on and discard them and then make up a story about why they deserve to be discarded. It also is about, oh, snap. Being able to say no really clearly. Yeah. So this is not about then allowing people to continue behaviors that are hurtful. But can you imagine if we've stopped this blaming and shaming and putting people in boxes? We've got so much energy to help people then redirect their missing skills and their unhelpful behaviors. [00:41:35] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, Karen. We just learned everything about everything and this feels like an amazing time to dance and move some energy. This song is ethereal because there's beautiful melodic instrumental that just washes over you when you listen to this song. The song is by Saturn Sleeping at last. [00:42:05] Speaker C: It feels like it's gonna sound like Big Magic. I feel like it's what just happened on the call. [00:42:10] Speaker A: Daddy Magic. Yes. Check out this week's song on the YO Podcast playlist on Spotify. How amazingly perfect was that whole experience? We were talking before about, like, the seasons of life. That song felt like so many seasons. And when the vocalist came in, it's like, that's the awakening. That's when it's like, oh, things start to shift. There's this awareness that Mary has invited us into. Like, once you know, you can't not know anymore. [00:42:50] Speaker C: Exactly. Right. And like all the instrumental was like everything leading up to that and it was building up to that moment, that moment of awareness, of awakening [00:43:02] Speaker A: Explorers. Our truest leadership begins with that quiet realization that the way we've been taught to move through the world isn't the only way, nor is it even the best way. [00:43:15] Speaker C: It's not the whole picture. [00:43:16] Speaker A: That's not. Is not like we have been invited to an awareness that calls us to something deeper. [00:43:24] Speaker C: I am excited for all of us for the next couple of episodes. I know you have a quote. [00:43:30] Speaker A: I have a quote from educator, author and Quaker activist Parker Palmer. We teach who we are. [00:43:42] Speaker C: Just like, I just like sink down to all the levels. I was like, oh, yeah. Like, it is. It is alarming, then awakening, then powerful. And empowering. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Very, very powerful. Because when you bring all of your pieces together, it speaks to the way that we've done things, the shoulds that have happened. Like, that's who we thought we had to be. That's who business, organization, society has conditioned us to be. But maybe when you wake up, when [00:44:14] Speaker B: you wake up, teach from who you [00:44:17] Speaker A: are, we teach who we are, right? [00:44:19] Speaker C: That's it. That's all you be, you act, you embody, you are who you are and [00:44:26] Speaker A: you teach from there. [00:44:27] Speaker C: Like, and that's how people learn about who you are is by the way you show up by the skills that you share and the actions that you take that you are sharing all of who you are. [00:44:38] Speaker A: This week, explore and notice the moments where your reactions lead and the moments when your awareness is. In our next conversation we're going to move into the present and why these skills that we are calling and inviting you towards matter so much right now. But until next time, keep exploring what it means to lead as a whole person. [00:45:03] Speaker C: And remember that that starts with self love. It starts with you embodying and embracing all of who you are so that in safety and in love and in power, you can move forward and teach us who you are. Oh, we love you explorers. Thank you for taking the journey. Thank you again to Mary Graham for sharing her amazing knowledge, wisdom, skills and visionary leadership. And we'll see you all next time. Take good care. Thank you to Queenies in downtown Durham for the use of their community podcast studio and for welcoming us so warmly. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Each week [00:45:44] Speaker C: we'd like to give a shout out to Coco Cinnamon, the birthplace of 1023 Media and the yo podcast. Please support your love local women owned minority owned coffee shop in downtown Durham. Brought to you by Durham based 1023 Media, a heart centered woman owned multimedia company.