The Conversation Factory

Diane Mulcahy is an advisor to both Fortune 500 companies and startups, is a regular contributor to Forbes and is the author of the bestselling book “The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want”   Diane was early to the party: When she started teaching MBA students a course on these ideas, some people thought she was talking about Computer Memory. But what made me really want to talk to her was how she decided to go deeper into the topic via teaching - one of the most powerful ways to learn anything! I was also eager to learn more about how she helps organizations work with these trends, rather than against them - I wanted to learn about her approach as a coach and advisor. And you can see, her secret is slowing down conversations.   The future of work is more than gigs on Lyft and Uber or Taskrabbit.    Barbara Soalheiro, of the consultancy Mesa, in our conversation on the podcast back in season three posited that the best and the brightest wouldn’t want a full time job in the future...which is why she’s designed her innovation sprints to be one week - to help brands bring the best brains in for short sprints.   This is why Diane finds tremendous opportunities to coach and advise organizations to adapt to and survive this transition in what people want from work.   Traditional orgs need to put significant effort into shifting their cultures on:   Trust in Management- Facetime isn’t the same as work (ie, Clock and Chair Management doesn’t work in this new world - for more on this, check out Diane’s Forbes article on Trust) Projects over Jobs - Define clear outcomes and break up jobs into clear projects and deliverables. Processes and Systems - Internal systems have to adjust to be more nimble and customer-grade.   We talk about the importance of slowing conversations down when there’s internal resistance: Diane relates her sense that Orgs seem to be saying.   “We know these things are happening. We know we have to respond,"    ...but then it turns out, they want to respond without really changing anything. Diane points out that that's not possible.   The way through is patient conversation, and Diane gives me some deep pointers on shifting challenging conversations with silence.   We also reminisce about travel and I try to get her to tell me what her next forward thinking, trend-setting MBA course will be on...which you’ll have to listen to end to learn all about!   Explore all things Diane Mulcahy Dianemulcahy.com where you can find links to her other books (she also writes about venture investing) and to many of her online articles.   Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access Link: https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Conversation Analysis is a powerful tool that looks at large numbers of conversations to help build insights about what works and what doesn’t.  Elizabeth Stokoe is a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, and shares some key insights from her excellent book, Talk, the science of conversation and her well-received TedX talk. As she suggests in the opening quote, any conversation that you participate in has a landscape to it. What Conversation Analysis can do - and we are all conversation analysts, just not professional ones - is show us the texture of that landscape, and how to navigate the bumps in the road effectively. One surprising idea I absorbed from Professor Stokoe is in this quote, when she says that: “In a way, the best conversations might have some clumsy, awkward moments and through that way, you might move past it and into something more mutual” We know what is natural and easy because we know what feels clumsy. Seeing, accepting and moving past the clumsy can help us find a smoother path. We are the Turns We Take Elizabeth’s idea that we are the turns we take, that speech acts are real acts, is a powerful one. And so is her idea that non-responsiveness or silence in reply to an awkward turn can get things “back on track”. If someone comes in “hot” to a conversation an easy way to cool things down is to wait and let the person fix it themselves, as she says: “People will figure out that they just did something that was a bit off and fix it.” What I really loved about talking with Professor Stokoe is that she busts conversation myths with ease - and Science! There are many popular ideas about conversations, from how they differ across cultures to how much communication consists of body language to how men and women speak differently - both in amounts and type.  Professor Stokoe suggests that there are many more similarities than differences across cultures and genders. She is in fact, more interested in how we construct gender through speech, than how our biological gender influences speech. And she also reasonably suggests that if body language is 90% of communication, why can we communicate just fine over the phone? There is, as it turns out, very little science to support many such figures. Working with real conversations instead of simulations Elizabeth also casts very reasonable doubts on some of industry’s favorite models to explore interactions, like secret shoppers - it turns out that people who are acting like customers don’t act like customers.  She also suggests that using role-play in training is not as effective as it could be. Conversational Analysis can offer better insights by studying real conversations en masse, in fine-grained detail. Be sure to listen all the way to minute 45 when we dive into group conversation dynamics and how people learn what behaviors are acceptable in a session in the opening seconds of an interaction. It is shocking how quickly the landscape of a conversation is built and surveyed by the participants.  Links, Notes and Resources Elizabeth Stokoe’s TEDx talk A deep dive on her work on the TED blog More on CARM training Elizabeth’s excellent book, Talk On Body language:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian “Mehrabian's findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes (the "7%-38%-55% Rule") are well-known, the percentages relating to relative impact of words, tone of voice, and body language when speaking. Arguably these findings have been misquoted and misinterpreted throughout human communication seminars worldwide” Lenny the anti-cold-calling chatbot More about conversation and gender from Professor Stokoe here.  

I’m so excited to share this conversation with Oscar Trimboli, author of Deep Listening, a lovely book/card deck.   We talk about the costs of not listening, the opportunities that are created when we listen and why hearing what's unsaid can transform your work and life.   In our western conception, we have speaking and listening, a basic duality.    Oscar describes our normal conception of listening as monochrome, two dimensional listening rather than multi-color, multi-sensory listening.    Oscar has worked to absorb traditional approaches to listening from Inuit cultures in North America, to Australian Aboriginal cultures, as well Polynesian and Maori cultures.    Oscar breaks down a 6-dimensional listening model that leverages a deeper understanding of the Chinese word for listening, Ting as well as an Aborginal concept for listening, Dadirri, which approaches listening from 3 dimensions - Self, Peoples and Lands.   125/900 and The Cost of Not Listening   Oscar introduces us to the 125/900 rule - the simple fact that we can speak at 125 words a minute yet we can think at 900 words a minute.    The basic math of conversation is that there will always be something unsaid.   The Impact of this fact is impossible to calculate. In our daily work this can mean a misunderstanding, an argument, lost work or a delay.    But Oscar points to two shocking examples:    +we lost three critical weeks in the fight against the Coronavirus because the Chinese authorities weren't willing to listen to a doctor. On December 30, 2019 Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist in a Wuhan hospital, alerted six of his friends on WeChat saying, "There's a SARS-like virus that has a huge impact on the mortality of aged patients.”  Li was later asked to recant his statements and also later passed away from the disease.   +August 27th, 2005, Dr. Raghuram Rajan, then head of the International Monetary Fund, spoke at the Federal Reserve annual Jackson Hole conference in 2005. Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the warnings "misguided" and Rajan himself a "luddite".   How to Listen to people you disagree with   One final idea I want to highlight is how Oscar suggests to go about  listening to those people we fiercely disagree with.    He suggests, rather than work to convince them, simply ask” "when was the first time you formed that opinion?"    The immediate impact is that it gets us out of talking points and into the starting point. It’s a more human story. It’s the beginning of empathy and of understanding the data that they are working with. Links, Notes and Resources Start here with Oscar’s Listening Quiz More about Oscar on the web: www.listeningmyths.com

I’m thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri. We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It’s been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you. A friend shared Nikki’s work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a program to teach facilitation to Rural Women, and I was so curious to dive into her facilitation and leadership approach and her critical work. Nikki’s core metaphor is soil - the complex place that gives life to us all - the source of our nourishment. Monoculture vs Food Forests Soil can be thought of as a series of inputs - minerals, water, carbon, etc. A mathematical equation for creating a space for life. But rich soil is not simple. It’s a complex, living thing that responds unpredictably to attempts to control it. In agriculture we can have a food forest - a near-wild combination of plants and animals feeding each other and ourselves. Or, we can have a monoculture - sprawling spaces where we use as much science and technology as possible to sustain maximum outputs at all times and at all costs. Nikki suggests, rightly, that monocultures can also exist in our own organizations...and that when we have such a monoculture, when we are not doing what she calls “basic diversity and inclusion work” innovation and creativity will be lost.  Esther Derby, a noted Agile consultant, touched on this forest metaphor in our podcast interview - she said that she would rewrite her whole book about leading change using food forests and forest succession as her central metaphor. Mechanistic thinking vs Complexity Thinking in Group Work and Leadership We push this metaphor of soil and complexity deeper into growing personal leadership and holding space for deep group work. Nikki describes the central tension: “I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable....With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen.” After all, control is rewarded. As Nikki suggests: “The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded.” SUPPORT THE PODCAST AND GET INSIDER ACCESS https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Links, Notes and Resources Nikki Silvestri on the web https://www.nikkisilvestri.com/ Nikki’s TEDx Talk Nikki on Soil and Shadow Gestalt Organizational Development Carter's Cube (free login required)

Innovation Theater.    Have you ever been guilty of performing innovation theater?   My guest today, Tendayi Viki, is a partner at Strategyzer (the company behind the business model canvas and other innovation tools) and defines Innovation Theater simply as:   ACTIVITIES THAT LOOK LIKE INNOVATION BUT THAT CREATE NO VALUE FOR COMPANIES   So: A workshop that creates enthusiasm with no follow up. A Hackathon that doesn’t solve real challenges. Training everyone in Design Thinking but changing no internal policies to encourage experimentation and prototyping.   I’ve been guilty of it.    How can we all do better? This is a delicate topic, because it’s not wrong to want more people in your organization to “get” innovation and the practices that drive innovation. Then we’ll have buy-in to do more, right?   Support The Podcast As A Conversation Factory Insider https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider   Full Transcript at: https://theconversationfactory.com/listen Links and Resources Tendayi on the web https://tendayiviki.com/ Tendayi at the Innov8ers Conference: https://innov8rs.co/beyond-the-sticky-notes-aligning-innovation-with-corporate-strategy-tendayi-viki/ Tendayi’s latest book: Pirates in the Navy https://www.strategyzer.com/

I’m so excited to share my conversation with Casper ter Kuile. He has a book coming out this month, The Power of Ritual. He breaks down the architecture of ritual and how to bring more intentional ritual into your work and life. I love the four “categories” of ritual Casper lays out in his book- those for connecting with yourself, rituals that connect you to others, nature, and to something transcendent. I first encountered Casper’s work through his company, The Sacred Design Lab, and their free PDF, which you should totally download, How we Gather. It showed how the breakdown of organized religion has opened up an ecological niche, if you will, for brands like Crossfit and Tough Mudder to become one of many places that we get meaning and belonging from - instead of just one place of workship. Casper’s work is like Biomimicry (studying nature for design inspiration) ..but for religion. Whether you are religious or not, studying religion to understand how it plays a role in people’s lives delivers some powerful insights. Casper’s work shows us just how powerful those insights are. As he says in the opening quote, we need to be intentional about which rituals we lift up and celebrate because they each tell a story...every myth is communicated from generation to generation through the rituals that we maintain. What rituals make up your work life and home life? How do you measure and mark time? I hope you enjoy the conversation, and start harnessing the power of ritual! Support the Podcast and get insider access Full transcription and more on the conversation factory Casper on the web: https://www.caspertk.com/ The Power of Ritual: The Sacred Design Lab: https://sacred.design/who-we-are Their amazing free resources are here   More about Casper Casper ter Kuile is helping to build a world of joyful belonging. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, Casper connects people and co-creates projects that help us live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. Nothing makes him happier than learning from religious tradition and reimagining it for our context. Casper holds Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and remains a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. He co-hosts the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and is the co-founder of activist-training program Campaign Bootcamp. His book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) will be published in the summer of 2020. He lives with his husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.  

Today I share my conversation with Ron J Williams. Fast Company rated him in the top 100 most creative people in business...back in 2012! He’s started some serious ventures - SnapGoods was an early vanguard in the sharing economy - and he’s also helped companies large and small get proof (rather than stay in conjecture) on their business ideas with his consultancy ProofLabs.    He’s currently working as SVP & Head of Program Strategy at Citi Ventures. We also went to High School together, which is why he still takes my calls!   I brought Ron onto the show because of a conversation we had months back about how businesses ARE conversations - that they can’t just extract value from people without listening, adapting and relating to the people they serve.    Ron offered the idea that each moment, each pixel, is an opportunity for a company to listen and to respond thoughtfully to their customers...this level of granularity and specificity in the opportunities for conversations between business and customers really lit me up.   Ron also happens to be a black man. This episode is coming months after we recorded it - I’m working through a backlog - and you’ll hear, at the end, my gratitude to Ron for bringing up the topic of racial inequality in corporate innovation...and the costs it has for our society as a whole.   I did not want to commit the sin of making a person of color speak for “their people”...it’s a burden that “non-minorities” don’t have to endure. I am rarely, if ever, asked to speak for all white men, as if I could.   Diversity is so important.    Innovation isn’t just a conversation between a company and its customers...it’s also an internal company conversation. And who is in that innovation conversation determines what problems get noticed, which ideas get funded and for how long. With a large majority of white male voices in corporate innovation and silicon valley, the problems that get addressed and resolved are the problems of a very small, very privileged group of people.   Ron says towards the end of our conversation, and I’m condensing a bit:   “it's amazing to see many more people popping on the scene, both as people of color, women, LGBT...we’re capitalizing networks...and empower(ing) more folks...when there are more voices in the virtual conversation of innovation, more lived experiences means more problem sets that maybe you and I wouldn't think to tackle, come up with... if they were networked properly, resourced properly, supported properly, would build something huge”   I hope more diverse voices get included into the innovation conversation. What can you do at your organization to help make that happen?   Enjoy the episode. Ron is fun to talk to and really fun to listen to! Support the Podcast and get insider access Links and Resources https://www.prooflabsgroup.com/   Jason Cyr on Designing the Organizational Conversation: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/11/15/designing-the-organizational-conversation More About Ron Proven innovation leader and entrepreneur building mission-driven teams focused on solving hard problems.   Bringing together 15+ years of entrepreneurship, corporate strategy, startup advisory and product leadership, I have a unique perspective and an awesome network filled with doers.   I center my teams on the principle of customer obsession. I believe that sustainable growth comes from better understanding of and partnership with the customer.   Quick background: I've founded, built, invested in and advised on peer-to-peer, sharing economy, marketplace, machine learning and social commerce companies. In varied roles as a founder, intrapreneur, consultant, Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Lead, I've helped Fortune 500 companies re-engineer core business strategies and innovation programs across industries.   Passion: Working with smart people to solve problems that matter (one reason I sit on the Board of organizations like BUILD.org)   General approach to creating impact: - Long-term shareholder value follows customer obsession (not the other way around) - Values and value creation go hand-in-hand - Diverse perspective is an organizational super power. It is not a box to check - Cultivating a culture of trust and willingness to take risks is a competitive advantage - The “why” is almost always more important than the “what” - Mission and culture beat innovation theater every time   Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory

Today I talk to Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former Chief People Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation and currently part of the faculty for the Leadership programs at the Full Circle Group. Together, we unpack the ideas of Conversational Leadership. In a conversation, there are usually at least two points of view, and movement forward comes through a give and take. The world asks things of us, and we ask things of the world...what we get is the conversation that is our lives. We can demand all we like of the world, we will get what we get. And just the same, the world will never get all it asks of us - we get to choose. Leadership in organizations is absolutely accomplished through dialogue - leading through dictatorial fiat is not a sustainable model. That old mode of command and control is losing its hold on the world. Gayle presents us with this idea of leadership as sensing and steering - of getting data and feedback from the world and “turning up the volume on what works”. Feedback loops are the essence of conversation and leadership. The image brought to mind my episode with Aaron Dignan, founder of the Ready who asks leaders if they would like to ride a bicycle where they get to steer or one with a fixed steering wheel - you can only point the bike in one direction and keep going. Everyone always chooses the steering bike, the ability to make little corrections to your course, rather than stay in a line….and yet most organizations are led like a fixed bike, with an annual budgeting and strategy process that isn’t conversational or adaptable mid-course. In terms of the Conversation Operating System at the core of my book, this is about Cadence - having a lively pace of feedback, rather than a slow or non-existent one. Gayle and I also dive into the importance of Narrative in leadership. Data is critical, but data, in the end, doesn’t tell us anything. We tell stories with data. There are at least two ways to shift a story - one is with new data and the other is with a new story. And for this, Poetry is a surprising tool. Poetry can give us new words, the seeds for a new story. My interview with Nancy McGaw from the Aspen Institute is another conversation to juxtapose here - she talks about poetry as a profoundly simple way to start a group conversation with depth. Gayle offers that: Poetry helps me tap into a deeper well, helps me get grounded so that when I go on with my day, I'm much more able to be responsive and not reactive.   Gayle reads us one of her husband’s poems, Mameen, which I’ll place in the notes for you to read along with. (It might help to mention that Gayle’s husband is the rather famous poet David Whyte!) Gayle also helps us understand how to unpack poems with groups and help the words go deeper - starting with a story about why it’s significant to you or allowing people to choose a line that resonated most with them and to share it with another person. Leaders need to be intentional in how they communicate with the world...and that’s work, to design all of those conversations. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and you use it to deepen your leadership. Mameen Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith among the rocks where the mist parts slowly. Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed by circumstance, how great reputations dissolve with infirmity and how you, in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing everyone you hold dear. Then, look back down the path to the north, the way you came, as if seeing your entire past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a broad future. Recall the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons whether you reach them or not. Admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door, once you have walked out into the clean air toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become the privileged and the pilgrim, the one who will tell the story and the one, coming back from the mountain who helped to make it Links and Resources   More about Gayle on the Web   The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram   Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity by Jennifer Garvey Berger     Nancy McGaw on the Conversation Factory on Leading Through Asking   Naomi Shihab Nye on Kindness: https://poets.org/poem/kindness   Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.   Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.   Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere   like a shadow or a friend.   More About Gayle Gayle believes the world needs more leaders who are “able for” what lies ahead, who have developed the capacity to meet the complexity of global challenges. Working in the field of leadership for the past two decades, it has become abundantly clear to her that there are the visible, tangible, practical, and pragmatic aspects of leadership that need to be executed on a day-by-day basis, and then there is the work of caring for the the spaces between people, of seeing complexity and interdependencies, of understanding relationships and power and all the ephemeral things that still excise tremendous influence on the day-to-day behaviors of people. Thus it is the invisible work of leadership, the work of showing up, setting culture, and creating spaces for others to thrive that is the focus of her work. She believes in meeting people and systems wherever they are, and then developing people to work with the full range of who they are to meet the full complexity of the organizational system and operating ecosystem, working with the intangible but critically necessary human substructures to move a strategy forward. Gayle Karen Young is a cultural architect and a catalyst for human and organizational development. She comes from a rich organizational consulting background with both corporate and nonprofit clients. She was in process of becoming a Zen monk when she became an executive instead, taking on the role of Chief Culture and Talent Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation (CHRO for Wikipedia and its sister free-knowledge projects) until early 2015 when she joined Cultivating Leadership. From high-level strategic thinking to practical implementation, her skills include leadership development, change management, facilitation, training, strategic communications, speaking, team building, and personal and organizational transformation. Gayle holds a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology. Gayle is passionate about global women’s issues and supporting women in leadership. She is also very much a geek that loves attending Comic-Con and reading science fiction, which inspires a passion for technology and its leverage for societal change. She is keenly interested in the intersection of technology and human rights and supports futurist humanitarian causes. She lives in both San Francisco, California, and Whidbey Island, Washington.   Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/conversational-leadership-gayle-karen-young-whyte

Finding an opening quote from my conversation with Ayse Birsel – One of Fast Company magazine’s ‘World’s Top 15 Designers’ and author of Design the Life You Love was a challenge, mostly because I delighted in re-listening to each moment of it. In this opening quote, Ayse is talking about the joys of having a process that guides her in her design journey.    Her wonderful book, Design the Life you Love is not self-help BS...it’s a visual thinking masterpiece and a guide to one of the most powerful and simply stated design processes I’ve ever seen….and I’ve seen and made a lot of them.   The double diamond of design thinking was my first design process, the first map to creativity that I followed, and it helped me design entire work engagements, hour-long meetings and multi-day workshops.   But underneath that framework is a deeper one: Ayse’s De:Re map. De:Re stands for deconstruction and reconstruction, and this idea is essential if you’re going to design anything well.   In the context of designing conversations, meetings and workshops, the key question is: What are the parts that you can see? If you can’t see the parts, you can’t shape them.   That’s why we love frameworks...they help us know what to look for!   The idea of deconstruction is controversial in some spaces. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:   When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts... Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts—something is always created too.   -Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance   What is created through deconstruction is the opportunity to reconstruct something new.   Ayse asks us to apply this framework, methodically, to our lives, so that we can build our biggest design project, our lives, according to principles we can (literally) live with.   What’s truly delightful about Ayse’s perspective is that many people still assume that design is for the few - designers. And that designers are akin to artists, disheveled and mysterious and creative. And that creativity is more magic than method. Watch Ayse’s TEDx talk, read her book, and you’ll see...design is for everyone.   The question is...when you look at a problem, what do you see? A messy mass? Or do you start to deconstruct the challenge into its parts?   This is true of a workshop or meeting or a conversation...what are the parts? Who are the players? What are the goals and constraints? Once you start deconstructing...you can start reconstructing a new configuration and a process to get there.   I could go on, but I don’t want to keep you from enjoying this conversation any longer! Full Transcript here Links and Resources   Ayse on the web   Design the life you love: The book   Ayshe’s Inc Column  About Ayshe   Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay) Birsel is one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People 2017. She is the author of Design the Life You Love, A Step-By-Step Guide to Building A Meaningful Future. On the Thinkers50 shortlist for talent, she gives lectures on Design the Organization You Love to corporations. Ayse writes a weekly post on innovation for Inc.com. Ayse designs award-winning products and systems with Fortune 100 and 500 companies, including Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, Herman Miller, GE, IKEA, The Scan Foundation, Staples and Toyota. She is the recipient of numerous awards including Interior Design Best of Year Award in 2018 for Overlay, a new Herman Miller system, multiple IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Awards) and Best of NeoCon Gold Awards, Young Designers Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. Ayse is one of only 100 people worldwide to be named as one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches—a program Goldsmith conceived during Ayse’s Design the Life You Love program—along with the President of the World Bank, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and the President of Singularity University. She is a TEDx speaker. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the MoMA, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Born in Izmir, Turkey, Ayse came to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship and got her masters degree at Pratt Institute, New York.

On today’s episode, I talk with Cameron Yarbrough, the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders.  full transcript is at: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/scaling-leadership-development   Cameron offers some deep insight on how to step up as a leader and as a coach of leaders. We also dive into the challenges of designing a product for multiple customers and needs - his platform, Torch.io is designed for Learning and Development leaders to set up programs, and also for coaches and coachees to have a streamlined experience...all while working to deliver insight on the ROI of coaching - both top line and bottom line impacts on the business - spoiler alert - it’s a hard thing to do, but worth it. Why?   We close the interview with a Carl Jung Quote:   “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Cameron offers:   “To me, this is a perfect reflection on what it means to really look at your blind spots. If you do not look at your blind spots, if you do not do the painful hard work of bringing in, bringing attention to your blind spots, those blind spots are going to run your life and you're going to call it fate.”   That is what having a coach can do for a leader, and what a facilitator can do for a team, to be sure.   Cameron also shares his insights from his experiences in Zen philosophy and Psychology and puts much of modern facilitation practice in a larger context and history from T-Groups at MIT in the 1960s to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business’ Interpersonal Dynamics course today. Torch on the internet: torch.io Twitter at @torchlabs Cameron on twitter @yarbroughcam The johari window The Peter Principle On users, customers and power: Chelsea Mauldin, Executive Director, Public Policy Lab IXDA 2017 Keynote: Design and Power: https://vimeo.com/204547107 (ff to 7:00min for the “good part”   T-Groups   The Ladder of Inference   Stanford GSB Interpersonal Dynamics Course About Cameron  Cameron Yarbrough is the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders. This is how Torch was created- Cameron wanted to create a streamlined process integrating a tech platform and real leadership coaching for executive level employees and founders.  Check out this article to learn more about Cameron: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/breaking-into-startups-torch-ceo-and-well-clinic-founder-cameron-yarbrough-on-mental-health-coaching/ Enjoy the conversation.