Speaker 1 00:00 - 00:22 I think Dan's not working. Uh-oh. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Teamwork a Better Way. I'm Christian Napier, and as you can tell, I'm a little bit under the weather, so I apologize for that. Speaker 1 00:23 - 00:32 But I am joined by my very effervescent co-host, Spencer Horne. Spencer, how you doing? Great, man. I'm sorry you're feeling bad. Speaker 1 00:32 - 00:49 I feel great. Well, I say effervescent because you've got this unique combination of pinstripes and polka dots on your shirt. And there's got to be a story behind this shirt, Spencer. No, it's just fun. Speaker 1 00:49 - 01:06 My wife likes to get me some fun shirts, that's all. It's fun. I don't know if you have caught this viral sensation from Quebec, Angine Despoitrines. It's a musical duo. Speaker 1 01:06 - 01:23 They use loopers, but they all dress in polka dots. head-to-toe polka dots and costumes and play the drums and guitar and bass. Quite interesting. And so when I saw the polka-dotted shirt, it reminded me of Angine de Poitrine. Speaker 1 01:23 - 01:37 Je ne sais pas. You'll have to check them out. Very, very interesting microtonal looping music. So it's not fair to be an acquired taste. Speaker 1 01:38 - 01:46 It's been a minute since we had our last episode. How you been? Man, I'm good. Better than you, I guess. Speaker 1 01:46 - 02:13 On Saturday, my wife went to Las Vegas to be with our kids, and I went and found a great new masseuse, and she's like, listen, You're in bad shape, but you're going to have to experience some pain now if you want to feel better later. But if you don't experience any pain now, you won't feel better later. And she hurt me good. Well, do you feel better now? Speaker 1 02:14 - 02:23 Well, I feel a little sore, right? But it should help in the long run. Yes. Well, I hope you feel better soon. Speaker 1 02:23 - 02:53 Spencer, we could catch up for a long time, but we've got an amazing guest. I'm super excited to introduce him. You are so well-connected throughout the world, and so many of our guests come from your vast network of connections, and you have the honors of doing those introductions. But this guest comes from my circle of friends, and so it's my honor to introduce him, Matt Manning. Speaker 1 02:53 - 03:14 So Matt spent close to two decades working in technology and going through various levels of leadership, including a number of years with Qualtrics. And we recently had a guest, the chief psychologist from Qualtrics, Dr. Ben Granger. Ben Granger was on with us. So we get to have another Qualtrics connection here. Speaker 1 03:14 - 04:05 And after Qualtrics, he went and did a couple of startups and things were going fantastically from a professional perspective. he was facing some internal struggles, and I'm sure he'll get into that with us here a little bit, which led to a transformation, not just personally, but also in his career. And now he focused his work with leaders and individuals who are navigating transitions, just like he navigated a transition, helping them develop the inner capabilities that this particular age, this age of AI that is calling us to build on. So his work, it sits in the intersection of personal transformation and civilizational change. Speaker 1 04:05 - 04:25 That's a big word and a big concept then. with a very simple question at the center. How do we become wise in this age of AI? So in addition to all of this, I consider Matt a very close friend and someone who I look up to. Speaker 1 04:25 - 04:42 He's a very, very deep thinker, and I've always admired his insights, and it's really an honor to have him on our show today. So ladies and gentlemen, we bring to you Mr. Matt Manning. Matt, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, Christian, thanks for having me. Speaker 1 04:42 - 04:51 Spencer, looking forward to it. So excited to have you. Thank you for coming, Matt. Yeah, we're really, really excited to have you here, Matt. Speaker 1 04:51 - 05:41 But maybe to get us kind of started off here, you could tell us a little bit about your own journey. You know, this journey of kind of rising up through the ranks, climbing that corporate ladder. and really excelling at anything that you were doing, whether it was with big companies like Qualtrics or with some of the small startups that you were working in as an entrepreneur. And what led you to do a lot of thinking and soul-searching, ultimately transforming you personally, but also the trajectory of your career, an inflection point, and now really focusing on helping people undergo a similar transition to a more fulfilling life as a leader and as a human being. Speaker 1 05:43 - 06:28 Yeah, I mean, it's been quite the journey. I spent, like you say, 17 or 18 years in technology and mostly in sales. And, you know, there was this phase where it was just all about growing and getting to the next kind of place and really focused on growth and making more deals and getting more things and, you know, all the success, the things that that we work hard for. And yeah, over the last five years or so, I just started to feel You know, I had all of the things that 10 years ago I thought was gonna make me deeply fulfilled and deeply happy. Speaker 1 06:28 - 07:05 And as I started to turn inward and do some deeper work on myself, and I could just feel a shift happening in the way I identified with the world and the perspective that I was taking on the world. And it got to a point where, you know, The pursuit of more money. felt kind of empty to me. And, you know, I had a really good position that I had worked really hard for and on paper just looked great, really good company, great friends that I was working with. Speaker 1 07:06 - 07:51 And there was something about it that was deeply unfulfilling, and it was kind of sucking my energy. And as I went through this, this transitionary kind of phase in this, this identity shift, I started to have a an intuition that, you know, a lot of my work was going to be focused more on psychology, contemplative practices, consciousness. I studied psychology in college and that's what's always really interested me. But I think the money went out living in the economy that we live in where it's inflationary and you always have to be producing more to get ahead and it takes a lot of energy. Speaker 1 07:51 - 08:33 And yeah, long story short, I thought it would happen after the company I was working at had an exit. But after a lot of soul-searching, it just came together really quickly about a year ago, where something in my body knew that it was time. It happened on a Friday night, and I quit my job on Monday to go into the unknown. I think that just as people, individuals go through these transitionary phases where the old way of doing things, not that it was bad, but it starts to not be useful. Speaker 1 08:33 - 09:15 I think civilizationally, we are going through a similar shift and yeah, it's a really exciting but disorienting time that we're living through. So I know Spencer's got a lot of questions, but I've got one more before we kick it over to Spencer. So I've seen you posting frequently on LinkedIn, you're writing a newsletter, this idea that you've come up with, the liminal leader, right? This word liminal is an interesting word, and I'm curious, how this word liminal came about for you. Speaker 1 09:17 - 09:28 He's just been describing it the whole time here. You know, I, well, it's just been kind of interesting, right? Because it's not a word that is very commonly used. I had to look it up. Speaker 1 09:28 - 10:20 Yeah, I mean, we're more familiar with the term subliminal, right? Like we hear this term, but I'm curious if you can just give us a little insight into the genesis of this term liminal leader, this term liminal, what it means for you, and what do you think it means for us more broadly? Yeah, so just to start, the word liminal could be, you could use a synonym of in-between, kind of the in-between space. And the company I started, I call it the Liminal Leap And, you know, I've got a newsletter on LinkedIn called The Liminal Leader that's talking about what types of capacities do leaders for this time need to be building. Speaker 1 10:21 - 11:05 But where it was born from is, you know, as I've been describing a little bit and maybe you can sense into, there was this sense that, you know, I went through a deep transformation and I've studied, you know, developmental psychology and how adults continue to develop. And I figured out, you know, what exactly was shifting within my own identity structure, but at a very visceral level, it felt like the old Matt was kind of gone, right? Like, you know, there's still things in my personality and all of those things, but the way that I oriented to the world started to really fall away. And the new version of me still hadn't and hasn't fully come together. Speaker 1 11:05 - 11:54 So I found myself in this in-between stage. And the new research on developmental psychology that talks about, it's been studied for a long time that children and adolescents develop through very predictable stages in how they're relating to the world. And there's new emergent research that individuals continue to go through development and uh change Into their adult years a lot of adults get stuck in a certain position or worldview but um, you know, I was just in this liminal space and what's interesting is the the same stages or kind of transitionary periods that happen and can be very disorienting to a person happen at the level of uh Society as well. Speaker 1 11:55 - 13:03 So the world, you know happens in in Groups and companies in religions and states countries any collective group goes through these same emergent stages so just just as I found myself in this liminal space where it's this in-between space and Something new one wants to emerge I find that happening collectively, you know, all of the systems that we've built and probably starting in the industrial revolution that have really helped us for the last couple hundred years are now starting to fall away and i don't want to make them bad because they've gotten us to where we are but in this age of technology we're still in the infancy of the internet and now with the advent of ai I think collectively, we're finding ourselves in this liminal space where, you know, it's in between the old systems. I think you talk to anybody and you can feel it, the old way of orienting is falling away and something new is emergent, but it's still unknown. Speaker 1 13:03 - 13:23 And so we have to get comfortable in this kind of in between not knowing space. Uh, so that's a little bit about the origins of the liminal leap, the liminal leader, and what I mean by liminality. So I think of all of a sudden when you were talking about the in between stranger things, right? Totally. Speaker 1 13:23 - 13:45 Between these two worlds. So you're going very esoteric and very deep. I'm going to back it out for the people who are thinking, well, money's no longer important. You were talking about, hey, I'm not going to be, what I interpreted is, I'm jumping out of the rat race, because I'm burning out. Speaker 1 13:46 - 14:07 I've got to figure out a better way to operate. But the problem is that you're in this in-between, because the world is still mostly operating on the system that you've been talking about for the last several hundred years. And you're now transitioning to, I don't know, let's call it a higher plane. But when you opt out of the system, what does that mean? Speaker 1 14:07 - 14:17 I mean, do you still have to? You know, get a check, you know, checking account. I mean, you still, you still have money coming and going. Do you, you know, you don't, do you have a job? Speaker 1 14:17 - 14:28 Are you, I mean, what are you doing? Are you, I'm just so curious. What's what, what does this mean? Are you still operating in the normal economy of, of things? Speaker 1 14:29 - 14:43 Yeah. So me personally, um, yeah, I mean, I live inside of the system, so, you know, there's, there's no way out of the systems that we're living in. Um, I mean, what, what's good. Yeah. Speaker 1 14:43 - 15:15 I mean, it's created a lot of like volatility in every aspect of my life, but yeah. You know, part of this is starting to build, um, something, a new type of vocation for me personally that can contribute to society and also, you know, support me and support my family. But yeah, I mean, I still, I still got to pay the bills. You know, I don't know, this is a topic we want to go into, but I'm, I'm a pretty hardcore Bitcoiner. Speaker 1 15:16 - 15:35 Um, so, you know, there is. A way to opt out of the existing financial system into something that's, uh, completely distributed. Uh, that's probably neither here nor there for this conversation. Uh, but I think that's the level of change we're talking about is everything, but there's a way to function in the financial system. Speaker 1 15:35 - 15:44 Yeah, totally. I think that's, that's really key. Cause the first thing I said, well, how, how do you live? I mean, can we, can we play, but it is, it truly is a leap. Speaker 1 15:46 - 15:56 Right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a, there's a level of trust that, um, and it's scary. It's disorienting. Speaker 1 15:56 - 16:16 It's, uh, it'll bring up the deepest. the deepest fears and the deepest limiting beliefs that you have when you make a big leap like this of like, what am I going to do? And I think that's happening across society. You know, there's all sorts of things coming up as there's so much unknown. Speaker 1 16:15 - 16:46 But yeah, I mean, I'm trying to build, you know, coaching platforms for leaders to develop the capacities that I think are called for in the age of AI. Cohort groups, we've got a, me and my business partner are running a, we just finished our first eight week cohort of a group running a course called The Art of Conscious Relationship with AI. So this is using AI- Well, this is really what we want to talk about, right, Christian? I mean, this is, This is super exciting. Speaker 1 16:46 - 17:07 And if you talk about the return to real leadership, what does that mean in today's world? Because to me, if we return to real leadership and we're talking about a future state, that sounds interesting to me. Can you describe that? Yeah, there's a lot of aspects to this. Speaker 1 17:10 - 18:14 One thing that I think is worth talking about is you know, the leaders and the people that we, that we kind of put on a pedestal in society that are successful generally are the ones that are the, that have the most smarts or intellect. Like, uh, we've, we really kind of worship the intellect in the brain. And, um, in this AI age, all of a sudden we have these machines that, just outperform us in a purely ones and zeros and thinking and data collection, right? And so, all of a sudden, the things that make a leader and a person different than the machines is actually the nervous system, our intuition, a regulated nervous system where we can be with complexity and actually be calm and take all the data in and be able to Speaker 1 18:14 - 18:57 make wise decisions and connect to our heart and our body. That's actually the differentiator in the age of AI. So I think What AI is asking leaders to do is actually to go back to some of the more soft human skills and people that can really trust the people that they're working with and be connected to their own inner knowing and be regulated in times where there's so much uncertainty, instead of collapsing into full fear or just control, we can be with and take different perspectives to find creative solutions. Speaker 1 18:57 - 19:23 That's a start, some of the thoughts I have. I really, really like that. Christian, I'm not going to ask another question, but I think that's so important. I talk about intuition all the time when I'm coaching people, and we actually had someone on here, Christian, I think it was Ben, that talked about the fact that we have neurons in our heart and in our gut. Speaker 1 19:24 - 20:01 And so we actually have brain cells all throughout our body, and so part of that intuition that you talk about Connecting our heart and our gut and not just the intellect is something that can really, really serve us because our body records, you know, experiences that we've had and we start to trust those feelings, we make better choices. To me, that is going back, trusting our inner sense more and really not just relying on the intellect of the machines alone. I think that's a great and powerful combination. Speaker 1 20:02 - 21:00 Yeah, and if I could just kind of wrap that up in a question. This, you mentioned that we have this feeling of being dis, or we feel like we're disoriented, and usually that happens when we're surrounded with uncertainty, and so I'm curious how, what you do with the people that you are coaching, to help them feel like they gained some solid footing when the future is so uncertain and we're in this period of transition. What are the techniques or the skills that you are bringing to bear for the people that you help so that they feel like they can have some kind of foundation or place you know, a center that they can rely on. Speaker 1 21:02 - 21:29 They don't feel like they're just being tossed to and fro in the wind, so to speak. Yeah, a couple elements to your question. First off, with the disorientation, my sense is that collectively With AI being, you know, we've oriented so much of our identity to our work. What we do is how we identify. Speaker 1 21:30 - 21:52 It's like really central to how we view ourselves. And especially in the West, like you can see it where the first thing we generally do when we meet somebody is we ask them what they do for work. And the more I think about it, the more that just makes me sad that there's so much more to a human being. Who are you? Speaker 1 21:52 - 22:10 What lights you up? What are the deepest things that you care about? That's what I think the first question should be, not what do you do for work? So I think with AI threatening so much of our productivity, we have become, can you still hear me? Speaker 1 22:10 - 22:16 I think my screen froze. Yeah, we can hear you. Keep going. Just making sure we're good. Speaker 1 22:18 - 22:56 But so much of our identity is wrapped up in work, and all of a sudden, AI is threatening to do a lot of the things that we've been doing as humans. So I think it's asking us to go from being human doings to actually being human beings. So I think it's an identity-level crisis, because if all of a sudden it's true that AI is going to displace so much of you know, the jobs, for example, and I'm not making an argument one way or the other, but I think that's the existential fear that's coming up in society is like, well, you know, if I'm, if I'm not my job, who am I? Speaker 1 22:56 - 23:38 So that's the first part of your question. And then secondly, when I'm working with leaders, First off, it's developing the skill and the ability to be with and stay with discomfort and be with the actual volatility because so much of our human experience, let's be honest, being in a body and in this world that has so much entropy is an intense experience. We open ourselves up to pain and to pleasure and to joy, but there's a lot of disturbance in being a human. Speaker 1 23:38 - 24:19 And so many times we find ways to keep ourself occupied, to distract ourselves, whether that's with television, food, you know, endless scrolling, and on the bad side, like drugs and alcohol to just numb out and not feel what it means to be human. So first off, it's to create a relationship where you're open to being with the full range of human experience, and training your nervous system that it's actually safe. If you feel fear, for example, you can be with it, you can breathe with it, you're not gonna die. And to resource yourself to be able to be with that and be with that intensity. Speaker 1 24:19 - 25:00 So that's one thing. And then secondly, with leaders, I think the big capacity that's being asked of us, and this is a developmental capacity at certain stages of development that come online, is the ability to take multiple perspectives. So to be able to step back from my own perspective, not to say that I'm not gonna still have my view, but to step back and see that, okay, The person over here that I might disagree with has this other perspective, and can I see through their eyes what it might be like to look through that perspective? Speaker 1 25:00 - 25:55 And to see that, you know, all of these things that we're fighting over in society is just a bunch of different perspectives. And if I can step back and not be so identified with my perspective being the right one, and I'm still going to hold my perspective, but this ability to be able to see multiple perspectives and come up with creative solutions that unify people as opposed to just, I'm right, you're wrong, the binary nature of so many of our disagreements, whether it's politically or in any disagreement, is just that one side can't see the other side's perspective. So developing the capacity for perspective taking, in my opinion, is critical, and we need way more leaders that can step into that and realize when my perspective and my need to be right is actually just the ego clinging on to that needing to be right. Speaker 1 26:05 - 26:45 Okay, so you made a distinction between skills and capacity. And if I'm understanding you correctly, the capacity, not necessarily a skill, but the capacity is to be able to sit with discomfort, awkwardness, uncertainty. And I think if you develop that, it actually enables you when you, cause I think there's some skill in what you were in, in what it takes to, to be able to, um, appreciate different perspectives. Right. Speaker 1 26:45 - 27:16 I mean, but that, that in itself creates discomfort because I have to, I have to accept, or I have to think that other points of view have validity. and that I'm not always right or potentially can be wrong. That makes me uncomfortable. So if I have the capacity to sit with this comfort, I'm better set up for the skill to see things at more diversity. Speaker 1 27:16 - 27:26 Am I confusing things? Can you clarify? Am I on the right track of what you're talking about? Yeah, you're on the exact right track. Speaker 1 27:26 - 28:07 And to your point, to be able to take that perspective and back off of my own perspective and realize that, OK, I might disagree with somebody, but there's some validity and some reasoning behind what they're saying, like you say, requires me to say, oh, I might not actually be right all the time. And if my whole worldview is positioned around everything that I think and how I've kind of constructed reality and how I relate to the world, if it's all centered around me being right, and that's where it can be really disorienting. And this is where it's actually a developmental capacity. Speaker 1 28:07 - 28:23 So- But what if I am right? I lost you, I can't hear you. So we've lost your sound here, Matt. How's that? Speaker 1 28:23 - 28:43 There we go. There we go. Yeah, I think that's, and that's, so this is a developmental capacity. So what I was talking about earlier where, you know, children and adolescents go through different phases of growth or stages, you could call them or perspectives. Speaker 1 28:43 - 29:02 Adults continue to go through, you know, growth into new and emergent stages of consciousness or ability to take on new complexity. Our entire school system is designed to teach us to be right. I agree. I think we need to totally reform all of it. Speaker 1 29:02 - 29:46 And so, uh, yeah, it's, um, at certain stages that less, less mature stages of development, um, or the. You don't have as much capacity for complexity, and it's just binary. It's black or white, it's right or wrong. And that's where this developmental capacity comes online and the ability for somebody to hold complexity without totally collapsing into disorientation, but realizing that, yeah, my perspective might be right, but that's also, you know, relative and like, what are the things that even in my perspective, what are the Speaker 1 29:46 - 30:07 blind spots? And the other side of the aisle that I might disagree with, you know, what, what points do they make that actually, and why do they care so much about it? And what points do they make that I might not be seeing? I think that's what it requires of leadership, especially in politics and in business. Speaker 1 30:08 - 30:39 If you can start to see all the different perspectives, you can find ways to bring people together. So I really, really like this approach here, Matt. My thought gravitates toward, how does AI or how can AI actually play a role in helping people identify these different perspectives? The reason I bring it up is because in today's day and age, you mentioned the nonstop scrolling. Speaker 1 30:39 - 31:10 Well, the scrolling is determined by our previous behaviors. And so we have these self-reinforcing algorithms that will feed us information that the algorithm thinks we will want to consume. So we get less and less variety of perspectives by the very nature of the algorithm. AI doesn't necessarily need to adhere to those algorithms. Speaker 1 31:11 - 31:37 And so one thing that I did with AI, I predominantly use Gemini. So I'll use this here for the example, but you could do this with chat GPT or a clutter or any other AI. So I created a gem, which like a custom GPT that I call weighing both sides. And the idea behind the gem, I told the gem, use Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement. Speaker 1 31:37 - 32:15 So Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement basically takes an argument and breaks it down into different levels, with the lowest level being name-calling, you stupid jerk, and the highest level really addressing the substantive core of the argument. And what the gem does is if I put in a particular topic, it will provide the level six, you know, highest level of argument that it can come up with for one side, and then the level six argument for the other side. And then it weighs both sides and picks a winner. I will say, I don't always disagree with its analysis. Speaker 1 32:15 - 32:37 Sometimes I'm like, well, I think you left something out. And this leads into a dangerous territory because AIs are- Confirmation bias, maybe? They're designed to be affirming to you, right? So they will confirm your biases if you press them. Speaker 1 32:37 - 33:36 But when you do it in this kind of more agnostic way, just say, hey, weigh both sides of these arguments, you know, and then give me your presentation. It feels a little bit different as a human being to see the AI do it, because it doesn't feel like it's a personal attack on me or my beliefs. It feels like this is an AI having a conversation with itself and coming up with the arguments that it thinks it needs to come up with on either side of a thing. I think it's quite interesting to observe it, And psychologically, it's less impactful for me because I'm not seeing a human being on YouTube or on X, you know, making an argument that may potentially feel like it's relating to me personally. Speaker 1 33:36 - 34:11 It's a more impersonal and passionate way to start to see some other perspectives. So I was just curious to get your take after that long explanation. You know, what are some strategies? I mean, this is one tactic, you know, that I use to try to get some different perspectives, but what are some strategies that you would advocate for people to be able to to see other perspectives without triggering these instinctual feelings of defensiveness, putting up a wall, you know, Speaker 1 34:11 - 34:42 shutting it off, so that we can you know, make ourselves aware of what other people might be thinking, the approaches they might be taking, what arguments they might be using to inform their opinion without us getting too emotionally involved in, as you say, disoriented or derailed by the process of trying to understand. Emotionally hijacked. Yeah, emotionally hijacked. Speaker 1 34:44 - 35:05 There's so much to what you're talking about, and this could be like a multi-hour conversation. There's so many points to make here. First off, I think it's worth highlighting what you talked about, that actually AI is really good at this, at perspective taking. based on the information we feed in. Speaker 1 35:06 - 35:40 And AI could help me take a perspective of like a marine biologist and how they would look through something. Or I can take the lens of a psychologist or any perspective. So in its nature, AI is just a tool to help us be able to take perspective based on a whole bunch of different inputs. So I actually think at a very foundational level, the more AI is being used, the more it's actually beckoning us to recognize that life is just made up of a bunch of different perspectives. Speaker 1 35:40 - 36:28 And there's wisdom and blind spots in each. But if you don't recognize that that's what's happening, that AI is just giving you a certain perspective, you know, the way you used it was beautiful because you're using it to take different perspectives and look at it through different lenses, which has a ton of benefit. Most of society, I would argue, is just kind of using AI like an extraction tool, kind of like what we've used Google for in the past, like we put it in, it gives us the answer, and we're outsourcing it to be this one source of truth. And so if you're using AI in that way, where you just assume whatever it tells you is like, it's like God telling you exactly what it is. Speaker 1 36:28 - 37:01 That is very scary because really it's just a bunch of perspectives and it's trained on how you're interacting with it. And it's just going to reflect back whatever energy you're bringing to it, whatever perspective you're asking it to take. So, you know, that's one point. And then, You know, when it comes to this emotional hijacking that you're talking about, I actually, I don't find it to be super problematic. Speaker 1 37:01 - 37:34 What I would encourage people to do and what we do in our course is to, why don't we get curious about our experience? So how do we relate to technology and stay in our own body and connect to our own intuition and our own emotions? So if we are finding ourselves really defensive at something that a new perspective is spitting out, whether it's with another person or with AI, what if we just got really curious about like, why is this happening? Why am I getting so activated? Speaker 1 37:34 - 37:56 And we learned to be with it and get curious about what's underneath that. Why is it? It's generally, in my opinion, like a protective mechanism because there's something about that that's threatening to us. And usually when we're most activated, it's, we, we tend to put it on other people or on something outside of us. Speaker 1 37:57 - 38:38 When actually it's probably we're getting activated because something inside of us that we're not consciously aware of, that we don't want to recognize in ourself is being activated. So yeah, those are a few thoughts. I mean, this is actually very real. I know we're kind of talking in abstractions, but I'm having conversations with some of my kids about things that are going on in the world right now. Speaker 1 38:38 - 39:04 And I'm doing my best to be open-minded. I'm reading. They're sending me their posts about things that are happening. And I'm like, yeah, and, you know, and so we just keep sharing back and forth, trying to be open-minded, not saying you're wrong, but at the same time, it's kind of surface-level sharing. Speaker 1 39:04 - 40:07 And I know my son wants so hard to convert me to what he's, you know, what he's thinking because I'm an outdated dinosaur in my beliefs about what's going on in the world. He's trying really hard to give good arguments, but He's a lot like me. We're both you know, I I'm thinking about what you said, you know, what am I protecting and It comes down to kind of, in this case, a faith belief, and thinking, well, this is what I know, and this is what I'm thinking is gonna happen, and I'm thinking that maybe some of the thinking that is creeping into what he's sharing with me is being, again, is the algorithms, Christian, and I'm like, Is there some truth to it? Speaker 1 40:07 - 40:29 Yes, but to the level of conspiracy that, you know—and so I'm struggling with how do I—I mean, what do we do? I mean, do you give up your—do you just give up or do you just say, all right, let's agree to disagree or let's just keep the conversation going? I mean, how do you resolve anything? Am I going off in the wrong direction? Speaker 1 40:30 - 40:46 How do you resolve these differences? I can sit with the differences and I'm actually fine with it, but it's like we're not getting anywhere. I guess it goes back to what you said. I love what you said. Speaker 1 40:47 - 40:55 We're not human doings. We're human beings. And so right now, I'm just being OK with our differences, I guess. I don't know. Speaker 1 40:55 - 41:06 But I want to do something. I want to correct the imbalance. Right. Yeah, and I don't know the answer to that question, Spencer. Speaker 1 41:07 - 41:32 And each situation is so different. But one possibility that I'd like to throw out there is what if we got more comfortable with being in the space where there isn't an answer yet? Yeah, and I think that's the being, right? Just, OK, hey, we don't have the answer. Speaker 1 41:32 - 41:59 Let's get more information. I don't know. Yeah, and you're my son, and let's make sure we're connecting with each other and spending time together, and that this isn't, you know, let's connect back to our essence, which is, you know, I'm your dad, you're my son, I love you, right? Matt, I had many conversations with my wife growing up, because both of us are very, very stubborn, right? Speaker 1 41:59 - 42:18 She said, do you want to be right, or do you want to have a relationship? Yeah, I could use that one with my wife for sure. Do you want to be right or do you want to have a relationship? I want the relationship. Speaker 1 42:18 - 42:41 I want it. Taking this a little bit further. There are a few groups of people on the planet that I really, really admire. One of those groups are professional musicians. Speaker 1 42:42 - 43:25 I, you know, musicians who can get up and play a concert without making any apparent mistakes for like two and a half hours, it blows my mind. So I, if you look at the algorithm on YouTube for me, most of that algorithm is taken up with videos of musicians and music and so on and so forth. And there's a particular musician, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of him, a jazz musician named Stanley Jordan. Stanley Jordan really pioneered the technique of playing the guitar with both hands tapping. Speaker 1 43:25 - 44:17 So, I mean, Eddie Van Halen did that on the rock side when he really pioneered tapping, but Stanley Jordan on the jazz side really pioneered this technique of playing the guitar using tapping primarily instead of picking or strumming or finger style guitar. He's also a very, very spiritual, insightful, mindful person. And recently he did an interview online with a guy named Rick Beato, he's got like 5 million subscribers, does a lot of interviews of super high-level musicians. And Stanley was talking about the process that he used to get in the right frame of mind to play music. Speaker 1 44:18 - 45:02 And it seems to me that it resonates a lot with the things that you're talking about, Matt, which is about really being present in a space in a moment in time. not thinking, not dwelling on the mistake that you made in the past, or thinking about the difficult thing that's coming up in the future that you have to play, but just really being in that moment. Like just, I'm here in this moment right now, and I'm going to enjoy just being right here, right now, in this very moment. He talked about how When you can do that, then you play without tension. Speaker 1 45:04 - 45:32 You don't feel the tension in your hands, but the movements feel very fluid. And he compared it to signal to noise ratio. So, you know, in music or even in technology, right, we want a strong Wi-Fi signal. We want to eliminate the noise from the signal so we get as strong a signal as possible, as pure a signal as possible. Speaker 1 45:32 - 46:17 And so he talked about going through these processes of eliminating the noise and really just being present and focusing on what you're doing and just feeling it without tension, getting that strong signal. So I know I'm springing this on you without any advanced warning here, but I'm curious to get your take on that about how people can get to that place. He talked about in his practice routines, he doesn't play lots of fancy runs really fast to warm up his fingers, but he plays very slow and very intentional. How he wants to feel when he is playing certain notes, how that makes him feel. Speaker 1 46:18 - 47:00 And I'm curious, the work that you're doing, not just with yourself, but other leaders that you're coaching through these transition processes, where there is so much noise and it is so disorienting. How can we become more in the moment, present, filter out the noise, strengthen the signal so that we can move and perform without tension? Yeah, really beautiful example. It reminds me of, you know, the word that kept coming up as you were talking is flow state. Speaker 1 47:00 - 47:28 And you hear athletes talk about this too, where they get into a flow state where thinking almost stops and they're just trusting their instinct and they're fully in the moment. I think that, and this is where, you know, meditative training, I think is really helpful and nervous system training, learning to be with your body. But so much of what you're talking about is we live in our heads. And there's three ways of knowing. Speaker 1 47:29 - 47:53 The ancient contemplative traditions have been talking about this for thousands of years. There's the knowing of the mind, there's the knowing of the heart, and there's the knowing of the body. And I think in the modern world we live in, we're just oriented here up in the mind. And the mind creates stories, and creates catastrophe, and creates all sorts of noise. Speaker 1 47:53 - 48:32 Um, and when we can really learn to quiet the mind, not that we're not thinking there's nothing wrong with the mind, but when we're only oriented up here and living up here, uh, things can be moving really quickly. And so training ourselves like something that I've learned, um, as someone who has a very overactive mind and is, I've dealt with anxiety on and off pretty aggressively my whole life. So. just teaching myself at all times to be connected to my breath, to breathe instead of from up high in the chest, like really dropping my breath deeper down into the belly. Speaker 1 48:33 - 49:10 And whenever I'm doing anything, can I feel my feet on the floor? Can I stay connected to my feet while I'm engaging in discussion that's activating, right? So like when I'm getting really activated about something, can I feel my feet on the floor? And some of these basic practices, like meditative practices of being with the breath, staying with discomfort, over time, you find yourself getting into those states where thinking, we're less identified with our thinking, it's kind of just happening, but we're in more of a flow state, we're connected to Speaker 1 49:11 - 50:03 our body, and we can just move and trust our instincts on what's happening. And sometimes the mind will just kind of quiet down. And over time that tends to be the experience my own experiences that my mind You know sometimes gets over activated, but it's it's quieting down, but that takes a lot of training of being with the body I'm a huge advocate for for meditative training as well Yeah, that's uh, that's I think that's what I'd say about that for now You know, I can see that really being valuable, Matt and Christian, for a leader going into a difficult conversation with a team member, a direct report, a negotiation, all kinds of environments. Speaker 1 50:04 - 50:19 Christian, I think of it personally as a professional speaker. The same thing is true of that. It's a performance. And when I'm focused on how am I performing and what am I doing, I tighten up and I'm not loose and present with the audience. Speaker 1 50:19 - 50:48 When I am with them, being with them, present, grateful for the opportunity to engage with them, I'm able to perform. Because I'm not performing, I'm connecting. And I think that's very, I think those are principles that we've really, I mean, if I were to take just a couple of takeaways from today, to develop the capacity for discomfort. That's a resilience idea. Speaker 1 50:48 - 51:17 And that's going to help you to hear ideas, different ideas, different perspectives that are going to help your business. I mean, the research shows that the best leaders are able to use at least six different leadership styles. Well, that means you need to have different That actually causes you to have different perspectives. I mean, there are times when you need to have a doing type of leadership and there's a time that you need to have a connecting type of leadership. Speaker 1 51:18 - 51:39 But those are typically associated with different personalities. So letting that go, even when it's uncomfortable, because leadership is not about comfort. It's about being effective. And being effective means you have to do things that are not always aligned with what is most easy for you. Speaker 1 51:39 - 51:50 So just being comfortable with that disorientation, that that's part of life, I love that. Those are a few takeaways that I've gotten, Christian. I know we need to kind of wrap up. What did you hear? Speaker 1 51:51 - 52:11 Yeah, I think having the ability, I learned today, having the ability to look at things more holistically from different perspectives is super important. one for our own mental well-being, but two... And growth, right? Right. Speaker 1 52:16 - 52:36 You talked about, Spencer, do you want to be a writer? Do you want to have a relationship? And it makes me think, we've talked about it several times on this podcast, Spencer, that long-running 80-plus year now Harvard study that is looking at long-term happiness. And what does it come from? Speaker 1 52:36 - 53:10 It comes from meaningful relationships. And so if we're able to put aside you know, our own egos, and just focus on connecting with people, that will allow us to feel more fulfilled at work, at home, you know. And, you know, that includes, I think, our relationship with higher powers, if we so believe. And that will lead to the happiness that we are so desperately seeking in these uncertain times. Speaker 1 53:11 - 53:56 I know we're up against it, Matt, but before Spencer goes to the lightning round of questions to conclude our conversation, any other pearls of wisdom that you want to leave us with before we end our conversation today? I think the only thing that's coming up for me is just that I have a deep trust in what's taking place. That sometimes the breakdown and the volatility and like the falling apart, the crumbling, I trust that cycle. It's happened throughout history. Speaker 1 53:56 - 54:36 It's happened in my own life. So, you know, I think we're going to be living through times that are very challenging for the next decade or so. And I trust that it's exactly, there's nothing wrong with what's happening and what can emerge on the other side of the liminal space. if we get it right and we step up and we we live from a deep place of presence with undefended hearts and big hearts I Have a lot of optimism for what's gonna come out of that So I just deeply trust life and this evolutionary process that we're Speaker 1 54:36 - 55:28 going through Yeah I'll take from that, Matt, that, and we've talked about it, Spencer, many times on this show, that the vast majority of human beings ultimately want the same thing. We want safety and security and opportunity for ourselves and for those people that we love. And the optimist in me, is hoping that that will win the day ultimately. And although technology has allowed us to become more polarized and divided than ever, I think there is an opportunity for that technology to also allow us to become more connected than ever. Speaker 1 55:28 - 55:37 Spencer, to your lightning round of questions. Okay, super fast, Matt, ready? Yeah. One word that defines real leadership. Speaker 1 55:40 - 55:50 Vulnerability. Skills or capacity, which matters more. Capacity. Most underrated leadership trait. Speaker 1 55:53 - 56:01 Presence. Presence or performance. Presence. One habit that builds internal stability. Speaker 1 56:05 - 56:21 Consistency. Biggest leadership myth today. That you have to be loud. AI will replace tasks or leadership. Speaker 1 56:21 - 56:34 Tasks. High performing teams need more clarity or more trust. More trust. That's a, that's a, that's a tough one. Speaker 1 56:36 - 56:57 One word your clients use after working with you. One word. Trust. Finish this great leadership in the future will require. Speaker 1 57:00 - 57:09 perspective taking. Thank you. Great to have you with us, Matt. Yeah, thank you, man. Speaker 1 57:09 - 57:36 I can't believe this hour has flown by super fast for me. I'm so grateful for your time. If people wanna learn more about what you're doing and how you could potentially help them to become more fulfilled people, leaders, et cetera, what's the best way for folks to reach out and connect with you? Yeah, so you can find my work on theliminalleap.com. Speaker 1 57:36 - 57:57 There's a few resources there, including my coaching, and a link to a newsletter that's at newsletter.theliminallead.com. I'm also on LinkedIn, and I write the same newsletter. It's called The Liminal Leader on LinkedIn, so it comes out there. LinkedIn, I'm on X at MattJManning333. Speaker 1 57:57 - 58:17 But yeah, I'm totally open to connecting wherever and there's some new and exciting things coming in the next week or two in my world with some new developments and a new potential partnership of someone I'm going to be working with. So I'll announce that on my social media feed soon. Fantastic, Matt. Thank you so much. Speaker 1 58:17 - 58:46 People go connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him, look at his newsletters, really, really great. Check out theliminaleap.com. Spencer, in your polka dots and pinstripes today, you've been helping people for decades become more effective leaders, build high-performing teams. If organizations and individuals are looking for ways to improve their team performance, how should they reach out to you? Speaker 1 58:46 - 59:01 I love LinkedIn. Just message me there. Message me there. Christian, if somebody wants to get a hold of that great gym and pick your brain for all that wisdom in there, how do they find you? Speaker 1 59:02 - 59:10 Yeah, LinkedIn's great. Just look up Christian Napier on LinkedIn. It's easy to find me there. So thank you, Matt. Speaker 1 59:10 - 59:21 It's been a fantastic, fascinating hour. Thank you, Spencer. We've been doing this now for over six years. It's been fantastic. Speaker 1 59:21 - 59:31 And it's all due to you, viewers and listeners. We're so grateful for you and your support. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. We'll catch you again soon.