#016 - Transcendence & Self-Actualization

Robert Greiner 0:05

Now there's a lot of optimism about the next three months, the next six months this time last year, things were pretty dire. And we just experienced this really compressed mega crisis that we've been coming out of. And I think that it's good it didn't last for too long. We now's the time to start preparing and making sure that we are able to exit this one well.

Tiffany Lenz 0:25

even if someone had tried to tell us 20 months ago, 24 months ago, no one was listening, there wasn't a reason to listen, there wasn't a it's almost like crying wolf, because there wasn't a there wasn't a real catalyst was so much kind of belief in the status quo, or just like steady, slow and steady wins the race sort of mentality that has lasted for such a long time. The other thought I had, and I'm interested in how you experienced this, since we were both off on a bit of a vacation kind of the same time, when we talk about how we're coming out of this. And there is lots of optimism. We also have agreed many times over that there are permanent changes to the industry. And I, here's what I experienced, I was gone for 11 days, for 12 days, I was not on zoom. And it took me about an I don't mind, zoom. I've worked on it for a number of years work with teams in India, China and everything. And I actually feel connected to people. So I do opt for an opt in more than I opt out as a rule. But it took me a solid seven days before I realized how tired my brain had been. And that I felt rested. Even though we were busy from seven in the morning till midnight, every day I felt rested. And I started to feel myself like relaxing and creating again, like this back kind of back lobes of my brain, were starting to generate creative ideas. Again, and I don't know what to do with all that I don't know how to maintain it's this, we're not talking what I'm not talking about is work life balance. It's not about a number of hours work at this point. It's about a way in which I work, and how I stay connected to people. But also be mindful of what I just learned about myself. I'm curious to hear all of your responses to that, and also how you felt being away for a little while.

Robert Greiner 2:20

I am thrilled you brought this up. And I think we should pivot our entire discussion today to cover this topic. You good with that?

Tiffany Lenz 2:28

Yep, 100%,

Robert Greiner 2:29

I'm gonna send you a link right now. I'll send in slack. Here you go.

Tiffany Lenz 2:33

because really, the kinds of problems we're trying to solve what we're talking about in this podcast, the work that I'm doing the the very, like, the very macro work that you're doing. This is not stuff that you just hit the clock and work and come up with all the ideas, you need AI, we're trying to solve big problems that haven't been solved before. And we need to be sure that we're giving ourselves space to create.

Robert Greiner 3:02

Okay, so what I heard you say is there is a because of this low grade stress, because we're in this crisis mode that we've talked about the ability to be open and creative and exploratory, gets shut down, there's friction there at a minimum. And when you step out, it takes some time. But eventually, you get to the point where you get the flood, almost like a pressure valve being released, and you get in this more sort of creative growth oriented mode. Is that Yeah. And so it's interesting that you bring that up, because and also you said, Hey, we don't we don't just clock in, do something creative clock back out, that the minimally viable crisis leadership model we talked about last time, was a amalgam of a continuation of the last 12 months of, you know, journaling, and trying to figure out what the heck's going on. And then just now, it started to come to the surface. And a lot of that clarity came after being off for spring break. And your subconscious may be chewing on it over time. But once you give, even if you're working hard, or you're busy or active, it's just different. It's a different kind of,

yeah, labor.

Tiffany Lenz 4:15

roll by seven. I'm in bed at: 1230

Robert Greiner 5:22

Well, yeah. And I had a similar experience over spring break. And I mentioned Diana and I had we went volunteered at the vaccine mega center, and I haven't told you the details about that.

Have I?

Tiffany Lenz 5:33

No, but I'd love to hear it.

Robert Greiner 5:34

Okay. Yeah. And I think this is all related. We have you been to the State Fair of Texas ever? Okay.

Tiffany Lenz 5:40

I've

been to the Ohio State Fair.

Robert Greiner 5:42

I don't know that there's a bigger a better state fair than Texas. Maybe there is. We'll

see.

Tiffany Lenz 5:47

I've been to Stampede in Canada in Calgary, which claims to be the biggest State Fair.

Robert Greiner 5:53

Oh really, in all of North America or the world,

Tiffany Lenz 5:55

they listen, they at least claim it for Canada. Okay.

I don't okay.

Robert Greiner 5:59

So Texas State Fair is enormous. And happens once a year around October. And it is a permanent fixture in the Dallas Metroplex. And so there are things going on at this on the State Fairgrounds all year. There's a musical, that's where we saw Hamilton was at the State Fair, cool. There's a botanical garden was an aquarium, I think the aquarium might have closed down. My wife shaking her head. Yes. So that's probably the case, lots of things going on. It's a massive, like space, the Ferris wheel is permanent. It's a permanent fixture. And then they bring all this stuff in when you went during the fair time. So that the vaccine mega center, there's two that I know of one is at the State Fair. And the other one is at Texas Motor Speedway, where all the NASCAR stuff happens. So you can take like massive concrete parking lots and stuff like that. And there's so our public transportation in Dallas is called Dart. And there's a train that lets off at the State Fair. And so what we were doing was there people, most of this, you stay in your car, you drive up, you have an appointment, you have a QR code on your phone, they write on your window, there's some cryptic language that lets the know what to do, you drive up, they stick you through the window, basically, make you wait for 15 minutes you drive off, so everybody just stays in their car, constant caravan. But if you don't have a car, how you gonna, how are you going to get vaccinated, and so people will come in on public transportation to this station, we would help make sure they were registered and get them on these charter buses. So there were about 14 charter buses, just driving in big circles all day. And that was nice, because you What's that dual mode you were talking about? This was all day in the sun freezing in the morning got hotter. Later in the day, lots of wind on your feet all day, I think it was like 12 hours, if you do both shifts, and was really tiring, but it was really fulfilling and energizing helping people. In our jobs, we don't really, you know, there's not a life health component to it. If we miss a release, it's not a great thing, no one's gonna be harmed by it. And here, it's like people, they didn't have a camera phone, didn't have internet on their phone. They were just signed up at some church somewhere. And they were told to show up on this day, and they didn't know what to expect. And it was nice to maybe their registration wasn't quite right. And you could go in and help them get all set up and things like that. And they got on the bus and they got their shot. And that was that was one of those things like when I was back, I was much more refreshed when I came back and I had taken time off before. But if you're just doing nothing, it's a little bit of a different kind of rest. It's more of a detachment thing. Being detached and active in some other endeavor helps your creativity and openness and energy level when you're back. Yeah, that's

Tiffany Lenz 8:43

a really good point. Because I also had taken off, you know, a few days here and there. But there was something about this trip. And I was a little nervous about going and what's in it was very safe. People were very careful. Lots of masks, lots of sanitizing very thoughtfully done. And but it was the detachment It was like my in every way pivoted to something else. And I was physically active and intellectually stimulated. Yeah, all sorts of things that were so different from. So I love my job. I love the people I work with. It's like not it's not there's not a problem to solve. There. It's that so many things we've talked about. This is a brand new space, a brave new world, and managing and leading in this particular time of crisis, this isn't going away at all, the way that we interact with people and help them not just survive, but thrive in an environment that will constantly involve more remote work and all sorts of different variables. So processing through all this,

Robert Greiner 9:44

I have a really cool framework to share with you that are metaphoric. So this guy Scott Barry Kaufman,

have we talked about the sailboat before?

Tiffany Lenz 9:52

No, but I know his name for some reason.

Robert Greiner 9:54

Yeah, so

he's like Maslow's 2.00.

Tiffany Lenz 9:58

Okay, that's it, then yes. Modern Maslow

Robert Greiner: 10:00

he's rethought the hierarchy of needs love it. And we come we work at a company where we rethink and reshape and combine frameworks all the time. And if you're not careful, you can try to reinvent something and it just falls flat. I think this is a really well done Bri articulation, nuanced articulation of the foundation of Maslow, like have applied a different lens. Do you have the link when I say, do you have that open? Okay, so scroll down until the sailboat image and I'll talk you through it. Charles showed me this before, which I think he's really into this kind of stuff to psych idea of well being.

Tiffany Lenz: 10:37

Sounds like him.

Robert Greiner: 10:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay. Okay, so you there. So we have so take your idea of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And just set that aside for now we're playing in the same space, though. So the idea here is you have an image that and the firt, the primary part of it is a sailboat. So you have this little half circle at the bottom with three layers. That's your boat, safety, connection, self esteem, okay? Then you have this triangle, this little line connecting the triangle that makes it look like a sail, which has three layers, exploration, love and purpose. So the idea is if you have holes in your boat, if your boat sinking, whatever metaphor you want to use, the sailboat analogy is probably more appropriate. If you're talking about well being as an analogy, because Maslow's hierarchy is a, it's not really a hill to climb, you're not really at any one stage permanently, you fluctuate. So the idea of a boat floating across the ocean, where the ocean can do things to affect you, your sailing, you can unfurl your sail to move faster, you can close it up to go slower, is maybe a little bit more of a nuanced or appropriate analogy, nothing wrong with Maslow's. But this is just again, we're taking another lens on it. So the idea is, if you have safety or connection issues or self esteem issues, you're not going to be able to open up your sale and grow. And the connection is huge, right. So that's been a thing, safety, for sure, especially early on, in the pandemic, still a low grade stress around that the connection is the main thing that has really hampered us, and that's part of the boat, so you can't fully grow and explore. While you have these sort of low boat level issues. There's a couple other things in this metaphor. So the waves, the bottom part is security. And so that's the idea of you're trying to keep the boat from sinking growth is the open air. So the more you unfurl your sail, the more you can pursue purpose, love exploration, the fat, the more growth and that's really the self actualization tie in there's the idea is for optimal growth. And then you see the two boats in the background. There's also a, an idea here that we are on on the we're sailing around other boats to other people around us. And those relationships and interactions matter. And so the the idea is over time to transcend is to experience growth, which is the unfurling dynamic sailboat, kind of idea. And exploration is like the underpinning the driver of all growth. So desire to seek out make sense of novel challenging and uncertain events. Right? Security is concerned with defense, protect, and protection. So anyway, Woody, what do you think about that?

Tiffany Lenz: 13:20

This is really interesting. So there's a lot to digest here. I really love the analogy. I can grok the bottom as making sense, the safety, connection, self esteem, and all of this wrapping into security, and the importance of having those as the boat and not the sail. Meaning if there's a hole in any one of those you're sinking doesn't matter. Where if there's a hole in or an dysfunction in exploration, love or purpose, you're not growing or moving, or probably interacting and thinking how boat works like you're not interacting with anyone else. Unless they are like, running into you. Basically, I'm, I'm curious about exploration, being the bottom of the sail, with love in the middle and purpose at the top, as opposed to swapping those and having purpose at the bottom of the sale like purpose as the foundation for growth. And since you're much more familiar with it, then I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Robert Greiner: 14:21

Oh, that's a good point. I don't think the order matters.

Tiffany Lenz: 14:23

Oh, okay.

Robert Greiner: 14:24

I could be wrong. But they Scott Barry Kaufman is very against the idea of the hierarchical structure. In fact, he said that Maslow didn't even represent it as a hierarchy to begin with, which I haven't dug into one way or the other.

And then you see that

Tiffany Lenz: 14:40

I want to believe in the pyramid does look like a hierarchy.

Robert Greiner: 14:43

He might have wrote about it in a different way or something like I'm not sure. I don't know, though.

Tiffany Lenz: 14:47

Yeah, that's fair. And I did buy this book, by the way. That's where I heard because because you mentioned Okay, I haven't read it yet. But I did buy this just right before I left.

Robert Greiner: 14:56

Oh, yeah. And so one thing that I talked to Charles about which I thought Interesting is the podcast that we have that you and I have. And then that that meet Charles and Igor have originally started as a way to increase connection, we're having coffee all the time, pre COVID, you get to this point where you're three months into the quarantine, and you've been in isolation, we were trying something out to increase our level of connection. But it's morphed into this idea of exploration. Where these aren't performances, we're just putting on the microphone and having a discussion about what's on our mind. And we're thinking out loud, and we're furthering our understanding and development in these areas. And so it's become like a exploration and growth type activity, where it was, the genesis of it, though, was very much around connection and not feeling isolated.

Tiffany Lenz: 15:46

Yeah, I'm reading through just skimming some of the notes here in in this visual that you sent me, I'm sure you'll attach it to the podcast if people can take a look. I love this quote, it says growth is a direction, not a destination. And that in and of itself, is something that pivots so nicely into all of the conversations we've had about complexity versus complicated burden, the connection framework, we're not in a complex in a complicated environment anymore, where variables are known. And we can just come up with a very sophisticated heuristic that will solve a problem, we've pivoted into this complex space. And that means it's a constant movement in a direction, hopefully, one of growth. But the destination is less important. Always unclear and ever emerging.

Robert Greiner: 16:37

And you're never on a direct path to it. You're always course correcting. There's this idea in sailing called tacking. Have you heard of it?

Tiffany Lenz: 16:45

Yeah,

Robert Greiner: 16:45

yeah. Which I think is it extends this metaphor even more, which I don't think there's anything about that in the book. But that's where your desired courses in the wind, so you have to turn his turn so that you actually move in against the wind, and you adapting to wind blowing changes from one side of the boat to the other. And you still make progress in the desired direction. But you're completely, like, if you didn't know that wind was a thing you're like, how is the boat moving in that direction? While it's pointed in this kind of bizarre angle. And I think that's a while you're talking about growth and navigating a complex environment that has some macro impacts like COVID, the zigzag fashion that you might sail about with using a tacking type maneuver, I think is also appropriate here where you're not really going to get from point A to point B in a straight line.

Tiffany Lenz: 17:35

Yeah, there that resonates with me as an example of emergence in both leadership style, and market resilience, strategy, this idea of catching of tacking, of pivoting so that you're sailing into the wind.

Robert Greiner: 17:55

And then the point that you started the conversation with, which is I took some time to disconnect and detach, not to leisure not to laziness, but I was off actually being active, but it was very energizing, that fits the story. Your experience is correlated with the idea around here of the took some time to again, move into the you know, purpose, love exploration area, unfurled your sales a little bit to us, Scott Barry Kaufman's analogy, and it unlocked some of this other some of these other like mental thoughts and cycles that allowed you to go and be productive in this more open, growth oriented creative type space.

Tiffany Lenz: 18:35

Yep, that's exactly right. Very interesting.

Robert Greiner: 18:38

So the one one quote, he says is every now and then when we're really catching the wind, when we aren't preoccupied with our basic needs, and we are moving purposefully in a direction with the spirit of exploration and love, we can experience transcendence. And that's a top of the framework transcendence goes beyond individual growth and allows for the highest levels of unity and harmony within oneself and within the world. transcendence which rests on a secure foundation of both security and growth. Seeing the both working together allows us to attain wisdom and a sense of connectedness and synergy with the best of humanity. That kind of really ties it all back together.

Tiffany Lenz: 19:16

Yeah, yeah. It'll remain to be seen how we use this as a test for ourselves of something that does allow us to be energized. I'm reading another little quote here that around like when you say about our connection to humanity, this one phrase talks about integration within oneself contributing to something meaningful in the world. Well you're only able to do that, if you're embracing how these different states work together, security and growth and how to keep them all strong, or keep them all to use the metaphor from functional and from getting holes in them

Robert Greiner: 19:54

and the integration idea and contributing something meaningful that can take so many forms. I was joking with my wife, when you sign in and out for the volunteer thing, when you sign out, it says, hey, you've saved the city of Dallas $200. And basically, they value your time at $20 an hour. But the idea around, we were doing very manual labor basically, low, quote, unquote, value work that actually created these thoughts and feelings of high meaning, because we were helping other humans. And I think that that idea, it's like it unlock and unlock some of this top sale type feelings. And yeah, I think that's going to be a very slow process for us, as individuals and organizations is to get back into kind of outside of the security space, just focusing on the security side, like we did in 2019.

Tiffany Lenz: 20:50

Yeah, I

agree. Mentally, I'm poking at this a little bit from the perspective of the stock market, shareholder primacy, the standard goals that tend to drive an organization, or a publicly traded organization that we know, don't only work for a very small number of people, I don't I wonder how these will overlay?

Robert Greiner: 21:12

Yeah, the same. I think from a personal standpoint, when you think about this metaphor for you as an individual, it makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure. As a leader and I have a team full of sailboats, to extend the analogy here. What do you do about different boats are in different shapes and conditions

and those kinds of things, so.

Tiffany Lenz: 21:32

and I can see how this for a team, a collective and for then a broader collective accompany there's a strong argument to say this is the how, but the what is still the same, the what is still financial and economic strength and growth is everyone benefits from that? So if that assumption is a correct one, then the application would be on the level to which one could apply this in their organization in their team. Very interesting. I like it. This is very cool. Yeah, I got the book. We're both rested. We can be creative enough to have a point of view on this.

Robert Greiner: 22:15

Maybe we'll see. I'm glad we went down this path today. I wasn't expecting to talk about this, but I think it was a good diversion.

Tiffany Lenz: 22:22

Yeah, probably meant to be given that we were both experiencing something very, very different and refreshing. Yeah, right now. This is super cool. The books next on my list. Excellent. Got to finish another one first, but

Robert Greiner: 22:36

that would have to be active at a time.

Tiffany Lenz: 22:38

Yeah, I've always got two going but one is always fictions it's like that a nice brain rest.

Robert Greiner: 22:45

Yes, the brain rest

like that. Cool. Next week, I'm sure next week, I think we'll continue the breaking down the minimally viable crisis leadership model.

Tiffany Lenz: 22:54

Yes.

Robert Greiner: 22:55

Okay. Decide. Awesome. I was great.

Tiffany Lenz: 22:58

Yeah, good to see you too. Thanks again for pivoting so nicely into this very, yeah. Hot and top of mind topics.

Robert Greiner: 23:05

Yeah, it was fun guy was helpful. I'll talk to you soon.

Tiffany Lenz: 23:08

Talk soon. Bye.