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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Carole, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Ari. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:You taught a course in Stanford and it was incredibly successful. And this is not just you or me saying it. I think there was an article in, was it ABC, Keep Me Honest Here? And the what everybody calls it, the actual name is something about feelings and emotions, but what everybody calls it is what?
Speaker 2:The students all call it touchy feely. Wonderful. So that means everybody calls it touchy feely.
Speaker 1:What is the before and after? What are the what are the problems that you see or what are the the changes that happen in the students kind of before and after? What are the stories that you hear maybe years after from students?
Speaker 2:Well, by now, and even in the last ten, fifteen years, the course has been around for many decades, preceded my arrival to Stanford. But when I arrived, we were teaching three sections of 36 students. By the time I left, we were teaching 12 sections of 36 students, which is why I became known as the queen of touchy feely. But so there's a lot of lore surrounding this course. Students specifically come to Stanford versus going to Harvard or Wharton or any of the other elite business schools to take this course because it's not taught anywhere else at an elite business school.
Speaker 2:Now Chicago Booth, a former facilitator of mine, went and took it there. But before and after, to answer your question. So most students and participants in the exec ed version of this and participants in the version that I now I left Stanford and started my own nonprofit and we teach this there. What people come into these programs with are preconceived ideas and notions about what it takes to be an effective leader, how I need to show up in order to be credible. What's going to result in you wanting to follow me if leadership is my area of interest.
Speaker 2:Why would you want to connect with me or be closer to me? And those are all what we call mental models, beliefs and assumptions that we develop very early in our lives and in our careers. And then we never have an opportunity to test them or to test their validity. But the circumstances of our lives change. And then it turns out that what served us really well when we were 20 doesn't serve us so well when we're 40.
Speaker 2:Served us really well in our first job doesn't serve us anymore when we become a manager and we're running a big business. So as an example, a story. My very first job, I'm not a career academic. I've done a lot of different things. My very first job, I was a sales engineer hired by the largest industrial automation company in the world.
Speaker 2:I was the first woman hired into a non clerical job, which does date me, but I'm not going to tell you what year that was because I don't want you to know how old I am. And what I learned very, very quickly is that there was no place in business for feelings. And that served me really well, Ari, until ten years later, I'd gotten promoted many times. I was running a 13 $50,000,000 business. In those days, that was a lot of money.
Speaker 2:And I got excited about something I thought we could do. I was with my team in an off-site and I was met with crickets. Then I was like, come on, you guys. What's going on? And one of them looked at me and said, Carole, what's going on with you?
Speaker 2:Like, are you, are you, are you going to like cry? And then he says, are you human after all? Are you human after all? Then I first started crying and said, you don't think I'm effing human? I don't think there's anything more important for us to talk about than that.
Speaker 2:And it was a perfect example of how a mental model that I had developed that had served me really well early in my career had more than stopped serving me and was now costing me. Now, I had burst out crying and said, You don't think I'm effing human? Three months into my job, I would have never made it to where I made it. You know, they have a presented image that they lead with. The more distancing their behavior is, the less people want to get to know them better, the more willing they are to be a little more vulnerable.
Speaker 2:And I'm not talking about just, you know, but I am talking about a willingness to admit that you don't always have the answers, a willingness to admit that sometimes you feel a little insecure, a willingness to be human. It turns out that others are drawn by that. And if you're willing to be a little vulnerable with them, they will be more likely to be a little vulnerable with you. And that's how we deepen relationships a little bit at a time. That's one of the big before and afters.
Speaker 2:I've had students over the years. I had students who came into a group. They ended up in a group with somebody else who they detested from the first day they arrived at business school and thought this was the biggest jerk that they'd ever met and ended the course by having these people be some of the people they are closest to to this day, thirty years later. So that gives you a little bit of a sense of before and after. Another big important thing that students learn is that another mental model they update is most people believe that if you're doing something that annoys me or ticks me off or upsets me, and I give you feedback about it, it's actually going to weaken our relationship.
Speaker 2:It's going to make it worse. Well, it turns out that if I know how to do it well, it strengthens our relationship, makes it even more robust. So there are many examples of these things that students learn through experience by engaging with each other, and update their mental models.
Speaker 1:So I want to dive into two really important points because this is much easier said than done. Oh yes. There is a very delicate balance between leaders showing vulnerability and being maybe too vulnerable to a level that it scares the employees. In fact, I just heard a story the other day where a leader was doing this like transparency, transparency and some transparency kind of weird corporate thing and then the next question from the audience is like are people going to be fired? So you know we want confidence from our leaders, want to feel, believe and know that our leaders believe that they're going to be successful and are but confident in on the other hand we don't want them to be robots, We want them to be authentically empathetic towards us.
Speaker 2:Right. Here's a way to think about it. How do you strike that balance? Appropriate authenticity. And let me tell you what I mean by that.
Speaker 2:Let's say I'm the VP of marketing and we've lost market share three months in a row. I stand up in front of the troops and I tell everybody we're crushing it. Well, first of all, that's not the truth. Everybody knows that's not the truth, and that does not make me a more powerful leader. The second thing I can do is stand up in front of everybody and say, Well, we've lost share three months in a row.
Speaker 2:I have no idea why. I have no idea what we should do about it. I probably shouldn't be your VP of marketing. I don't know what I'm doing. That would be inappropriate authenticity.
Speaker 2:Even if I believe that it's not going, it's not, it's not what we're advocating. But if I stand up in front of everybody and I say, so no surprise, we've lost market share three months in a row. I wish I could stand here and tell you, I know exactly what's going on and exactly what we should do about it. I can't. I have some ideas.
Speaker 2:I suspect all of you have some ideas as well. I've never needed you all more than now for us to rally together and figure out what we're going to do about it. Which of those three leaders would you rather follow?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Absolutely the third. You're also, what I love about your, your third example is you're also opening it for collaboration and feedback because if you've been crushing it, sorry, not crushing it. If you've been crushed for three months in a row and you're like, we know we've done bad for three months, but now we have the solution. That's also a little hard to swallow, right?
Speaker 1:Like, well, why do
Speaker 2:you You have this called solution the warrior two months ago. Exactly. Right.
Speaker 1:Like what, what changed? So I, I love that, that aspect that you've weaved into it. Is, is this a surprise to the executives that you work with? Or do they cut, is it hard for them to accept this or is it just like, oh, why have I not done this always?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, the answer is a little bit of both end. So I think it gives them pause. They're like, well, of course, what she's saying makes sense. But those mental models, Ari, are really ingrained. And you know, many of them learn very early in their careers never to admit a mistake, you know, never to, you know, show any weakness.
Speaker 2:They associate vulnerability with weakness as opposed to vulnerability with strength because vulnerability can come from strength too. I'm strong enough to tell you that I don't have all the answers. I'm strong enough to tell you that I made a mistake and still believe in myself. So I think that it makes sense to them and many of them realize in the moment when as they start to learn this that they have not stopped to examine their mental models in way too long. They used to help them and now they're costing them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I got to say that this, when did this come into Chicago Booth? I studied the executive program. We did not have this back in my day at least.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. My colleague, one of my facilitators from Stanford, Lisa Stefanik, brought it to Booth. Wanna say-
Speaker 1:I've heard about Lisa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably brought it there eight years ago, I want to Wonderful. Say, something like
Speaker 1:Well, I am so sorry I missed it.
Speaker 2:Not too late, you know what you could do?
Speaker 1:Not too late, yes. We're going to talk about the program we're running today too, which I'll tell the audience I'm going to apply to at some stage, so we'll talk about that as well. I think, and entrepreneurship, we've got a lot of interesting topics in this show. So before we get to all that, there's a transition that once you kind of get it, okay, like my mental model has its limitations. Like I know that there's something else I need to be doing.
Speaker 1:That transition is difficult. Is What are the things that are kind of fighting against us from changing?
Speaker 2:Well, think a number of different things. The first is you've got a lot of years of data that you're needing to overwrite. And you're not going to overwrite it with one new piece of data. You're going to need a lot of pieces of data to overwrite all the data that you're sitting with, which is all your past experience. Which is why these programs are so powerful because you're immersed in a situation where you're getting new fresh data constantly from different people, you know, nonstop for, you know, really intense way for a whole retreat, for a whole year in many cases.
Speaker 2:So that's the first thing to remember, that you're not going to suddenly, on a dime, abandon all your mental models and accept new ones. The other thing is that there are cultural elements, depending on what culture you are immersed in, both organizational and national culture, that can work against this. There are also some cultures are very gendered. I think this has changed significantly. But there was a time when the only emotion that was okay for men to show was anger.
Speaker 2:As long as it was appropriately expressed because anything else was squishy and cost you credibility as opposed to, you know, emotions are. And the reason it's called touchy feely emphasis on the feely, not the touchy is that emotions play this enormously important role in our ability to connect to other people. They're the basis of empathy. They're the basis of understanding each other. And yet when we're immersed in cultures that just don't allow for the expression of much less feeling feelings, we're essentially leaving half of all of our communications in the parking lot.
Speaker 2:Think of it like music and like music, treble and clef. I mean, treble and bass. You need both in order to have music that sounds reasonable. You have only one that sounds weird. Well, it's the same thing with thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 2:They're both important elements of good, clear communication. And feelings are what give meaning to facts. If I tell you, I went zip lining. Interesting fact. You might make up a bunch of stories about me.
Speaker 2:True story. If I tell you, I went zip lining and I was exhilarated. Well, you've learned something different about me. I tell you the real story, which is that I went zip lining. I was terrified, but my family coerced me into going because I didn't want to be left behind.
Speaker 2:You've learned a whole lot more about me, haven't you?
Speaker 1:I'll say that there is some good news here as well. One research that I can refer to was actually around anorexia and what this doctor found out that this kind of brain mental model mapping can actually be changed in at least twenty one days. So even if you have yours and you know this is just one piece of data it doesn't mean that it's exactly twenty one days for any kind of change we're trying to make but the surprising thing is that it's less than a month. It's not years to change a mental model that we have but what is really important is you need to persist in that new behavior day in day out week after week and if you change that behavior consistently it will become you know your new mental model and it won't take years and it won't take months it potentially can take as much as just one month.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of other research that supports that behavioral change over twenty one consistent days is what you need to get over the so to speak.
Speaker 1:Which to me is delightful because it shows that you can almost, you know, a lot of people believe people can't change. To me this research almost shows that you can be anybody that you want to be if you're willing to put in the work. And that's really the key difference here. You're really willing to put in the work. I want to shift to an overlapping topic.
Speaker 1:We kind of talked about you know how we present ourselves, we bring ourselves in public, but this there's lessons to be learned here on communication one on one and maybe if I may go into kind of friends and partnerships, husband and wife. If you had to break it down and I'm specifically referring to an article that I just loved that was also in I think was CNBC, you were talking about the different elements that make relationships successful. If you have to give us kind of what are the five things you want to think about, what would they be?
Speaker 2:So start by thinking about relationships existing on a continuum. One end of the continuum is contact and no connection. Those are your thousands of Facebook friends. They're not really your friends. At the other end of the continuum is what my coauthor and I came to call exceptional relationships.
Speaker 2:That's why the book is called Connect Building Exceptional Relationships. But along the way, along the continuum, there's robust and functional. Because also at the end of contact and no connection is dysfunctional. So there are certain things, certain hallmarks of relationships as they've moved down this continuum. There are skills attached to each of these hallmarks.
Speaker 2:So the first three hallmarks have to do with becoming more known to each other, allowing myself to be known and therefore creating an invitation for you to become more known and for us to trust each other that our disclosures won't be used against us. The second three hallmarks have to do with being honest with each other. So if you're doing something that's ticking me off instead of burying it, not saying anything, actually saying something because it's hurting us, our relationship, being honest with each other, dealing with conflict productively and being invested in each other's growth.
Speaker 1:Let me stop you there for, on the giving feedback on honesty part. I want to dive into that one for a moment. Is it all about the person giving the feedback that you just, the person, it's only the person that's giving the feedback, they just need to give it? Or is there something there double sided?
Speaker 2:Well, it's called an exchange. Feedback by definition should, you know, good feedback is gonna be an exchange. So I have data on how your behavior is impacting me. And I also have a motive for wanting to tell you that, an intent. So you've interrupted me.
Speaker 2:You interrupted me five times at that last meeting and this is the third meeting in a row where you've interrupted me repeatedly. And I'm feeling more and more irritated. And I'm telling you this because you started the meeting by saying you wanted to hear from everybody. And when I feel irritated like this, I stop contributing. So if you want to hear from me, then please allow me to finish when I'm speaking.
Speaker 2:And is there something I'm doing that is making it hard for you to wait until I'm finished? So own your piece of how you might be contributing to the dynamic. It's called inter the course, by the way, is called interpersonal dynamics. That's the thing that nobody ever remembers, but it's called interpersonal for a reason. We both have something to do with the outcome.
Speaker 2:So feedback back to your question, if I have feedback for you, it's in service of our relationship. It's in service of you because I care about you. In fact, lot of people will say, ah, it's not worth it. And I often say, take the word it and substitute it for I, you or we. I'm not worth it.
Speaker 2:You're not worth it. We're not worth it. And then ask yourself again, whether it's worth giving the person feedback.
Speaker 1:Let me push back again, because this is the most common thing I hear from executives. Giving, it's not worth it, right? Giving that feedback may harm the relationship and they don't want to take that risk.
Speaker 2:Yes. How do you, what
Speaker 1:is the problem here? Is it that we're just not giving feedback correctly and then we're incurring that risk or is the risk nonexistent? Like what is the issue with perception of risk around
Speaker 2:It's a wonderful question, Ari. And there's no, I'm not going to say that there is a 100% guarantee every time that if you learn how to give feedback more effectively, there will be zero risk. There's always going to be a little bit of risk, but you can significantly decrease the risk by doing it in a way that is much more likely to shift the probabilities of a good outcome. And that's why there's a very central part of the courses and programs and a central part of the book is in how to give effective feedback, which once you learn how to do, you also learn to become a much better receiver of feedback using the model. Because other people don't know the model, so they're going to give you feedback really poorly and it's going to be very easy for you to get defensive.
Speaker 2:And instead of getting defensive, you can actually use the model to say, so I hear I'm doing something that's upsetting you. Help me understand what it is that I'm doing because the behavioral specificity is one of the keys as opposed to you don't care about me, which there's no no behavior in there and it doesn't have a single, you know, you know, I feel that you're not a team player. Doesn't have a single feeling word in it. And that's why feelings are such an important element here. I feel worried about your commitment because you show up repeatedly late and never say a word once you've arrived.
Speaker 2:That's behaviorally specific. The model we use is called the model of the net, which is a little long to explain to you, but anybody can read about it or look it up. You can go to Carole Robin AI and ask Carole Robin AI about the NET model, she'll tell you, for free. And your question is really a good one and a really central one, which is the problem for most people is that they have they've been on the receiving end, the giving end, or the witnessing end of a feedback exchange that has gone terribly awry. And so they've over learned.
Speaker 2:So, you know, a cat doesn't sit on a hot stove twice. Yep. Never sits on a cold stove again either. So we over learn and we stop doing it and then we don't get any better.
Speaker 1:And you kind of mentioned this, alluded to it. I want to kind of double down on your point. The best way to never get feedback again and to increase that risk of giving you feedback is to receive it horribly, right? Exactly. So that's the best way to, and you're really doing yourself so much disservice because you're not going to get that information, that data to see what your blind spot is, to see where you need to improve, to get that next promotion.
Speaker 1:I think we forget that it's not only about the person who gives the feedback but it's probably even more about how you receive feedback and that first time you receive back, you receive feedback the first time how you react, that's gonna dictate a lot of the future going forward.
Speaker 2:One of the things that really helps me when I'm receiving a piece of feedback that's really hard to hear is I get really curious.
Speaker 1:Yes. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I engage my curiosity and I come back with, help me understand what is it that I'm doing. Help me understand what you're hoping the outcome of this conversation is going to be. You know, I invite more exploration of what's going on. And nine times out of 10, I get clearer, clearer for sure, and sometimes pretty clear about what behaviors I'm engaging in that are resulting in this person being unhappy with something about what I'm doing. And then the purpose, by the way, of a constructive feedback exchange is to move into problem solving conversation, into problem solving, not to change the other person.
Speaker 2:So what shall we do about it?
Speaker 1:There's so much brilliance in this. So first of all, curiosity, if you are ever in a problematic situation, just remember that one word curiosity. How do I, how am I curious here instead of, and it's really hard not to get angry, offended to think about oh is my job at risk like am I on a PIP like it's really hard to do that but I'll make an argument and tell me if you agree. The way that you response in that point can actually determine if you're on a PIP, if you're gonna be fired if you're gonna be successful. And if you respond with curiosity and move to problem solving, and I wanna hear more about that in a moment, that can actually be the huge difference.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And in fact, when you respond with curiosity, what you signal to the other person is that what they're saying is of value to you rather dismissing them. An example of moving into problem solving is somebody's arrived late to multiple meetings. So instead of saying, I feel that you don't care, which is not a feeling and which is really an attribution because you don't know whether they care or not unless they've said, I don't care.
Speaker 1:Well, it's worse. You're telling them how they feel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. That's about as bad as it gets. You know, you can start by saying, so you've arrived late three meetings in a row. I'm concerned about that. I'm annoyed that you're late.
Speaker 2:And I'm wondering what is going on that is making it hard for you to be on time so that you don't automatically assume that they don't care. Very few people, Ari, get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, how can I be a bigger jerk today, a less good employee today than I was yesterday? I mean, most people are well intentioned, but we don't treat them that way. So, you know, help me understand what's going on. And the reason I'm bringing this up is that, you know, I'm concerned and I don't wanna make up any stories about whether or not you're committed.
Speaker 2:Right. So now you tell me that, you know, that your school changed the drop off time and, you know, you have to drop off your kids and you can never be on time for the 09:00 start of the meeting. And then we I could say, well, can you be here by 09:15? Yes. Alright.
Speaker 2:So we'll move the meeting time start to 09:15. That's what I mean by but you've got to create an incentive to move into the problem solving conversation.
Speaker 1:I think that, you know, the other thing that I've experienced is that as executives, we need to say the following sentence. You don't know to the other executive that's discussing the problem, you don't know what's happening with that person. Exactly. We need to stop for a moment, especially so if an employee is consistently poor performing over the years, that's one thing. But I think what's really interesting is if there's a change of behavior.
Speaker 1:And if suddenly there's a change in behavior, then you've got to cut them some slack and ask, well, something has changed here, how do we help? And I can share a personal story. When my wife got pregnant and she did her travel, she was in pharmacy, she still is in pharmaceuticals, she was traveling, they went and they got her this amazing product which basically allows you to ship overnight breast milk, it's called Stork and the impact on that small gesture where they came and asked her, how can we help right? We can see that you're stressed how can we help? And then they came to this agreement that cost the employer relatively nothing was such a huge thing.
Speaker 1:Created such huge loyalty from my wife to the employer, it just changed the relationship because they stopped and they asked Great how can we example,
Speaker 2:it's a fantastic example.
Speaker 1:Had so many important points here Carole, I deeply, deeply appreciate it. There was one point that I really wanted to talk about. You talk about being committed to each other's growth and development. What does that look like? Where does that come out?
Speaker 2:Well, one way we practice that is by being honest with each other and giving each other feedback. If I see you doing things, even if they don't impact me, but I see you impacting someone else in a negative way, one of the things that is a kind and caring thing to do is to say, look, you might wanna ask Jane what the impact of that choice that you made was on her. Because if you'd done that to me, this is how I would be feeling. I can't say that's what's going on for Jane, but you might want to ask. Certainly speaking up and giving people feedback on the impact of their choices and their behaviors on you is the way to be invested in the relationship and in their growth.
Speaker 2:Because if they're doing it to you, chances are they're doing it to someone else too. And third, being someone who rather than judging is both curious and available, like being a thought partner. Can I be a thought partner to you on ways that we might there's there, there might be multiple ways to look at this? Can I, can I be a thought partner and help you think through different ways of both seeing the situation and thinking about how to respond to it?
Speaker 1:I want to just kind of put a line under that because I think it's so important. The psychology of framing is really what you're using here and you're changing the, for lack of a better word, the spectrum of the conversation from I'm telling you what to do or you're telling me what to do to let's think together and let's explore this together and let's come up with a solution together. That framing sentence can completely change the discussion. Incredibly important, incredibly powerful.
Speaker 2:And when you combine that with curiosity, now you've really got a powerful combination.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Asking somebody, what would be most helpful to you right now and would you like some thought partnership?
Speaker 1:What's interesting, I think sometimes people forget, they're not only framing the other person in the conversation, they're also framing themselves into curiosity and that's the power of that tactic. Brilliant. Another, I'm just throwing problems at you today, another thing that I see in the corporate world is this disconnect between responsibility on kind of development. The employer looks at the employee and is like well they're not even doing their job properly, like they're not pushing to get this development opportunity and then the employee looks at the employer and like oh I was promised to have all this development where is it it's not happening.
Speaker 2:You're not invested in me.
Speaker 1:You're not invested in me. It seems to be almost like a disconnect right we're not speaking the same language. Why is this happening and what can you suggest separately to the employers and separately to the employees?
Speaker 2:Well, of it Ari, I think goes back to fundamental agreements and contracting when you first get hired by an enterprise and what you believe the enterprise promised you and what the enterprise believes you promised it. And sometimes those are very fuzzy and not very well articulated. And that's just a recipe for a lot of disappointment. So the clearer you can be with a prospective employer on what you expect and what they can expect from you, the less of those kinds of problems you're going to have down the road. But most people don't do that.
Speaker 1:Can you recover from that? So you're two, three, five years into the job, you're in this fuzzy situation. How do you recover from that? Can you kind of start a new page somehow?
Speaker 2:I think, I think one way you can, I mean, it's harder, but one way you can is you can basically name it and say, you know what? If I had to do if I had this to do all over again, there are some basic things that I wish we would have talked about the day I walked through that door initially. And can we push a reset button? And can we actually form some agreements? What is it that you need from me that I'm not delivering or giving you?
Speaker 2:And I'd like to feel open to telling you some of the things that I want from you that I'm not getting from you. And by the way, this, this is basic recontracting that you can do in any relationship. You can do it in a marriage. You can do it between friends. You can do it between boss and employee.
Speaker 1:What is Leaders in Tech? Why did you co found Leaders in Tech? Why do you get out of the bed in the morning to do this?
Speaker 2:Well Ari, sometimes I'm a little bit reticent to say this because I never know how it's going to land, but in the spirit of transparency, which I advocate, I believe I was put on this planet to help people learn how to connect and how to connect, especially how to connect across differences of all kinds. People who see the world very differently, whose life experience is very different, whose values are very different. You know, in the end, we're all human beings. And I think most people regrettably don't know how to connect, much less form really robust, deep relationships. So they're leading kind of a Monday through Friday sort of dying in the old words of, I think, studs trickle.
Speaker 2:So for me, my work not even work. It's meaning. It's my mission in life. I loved my students and I loved what I taught at Stanford. I was not a career academic.
Speaker 2:I'd had multiple careers before I ever got to Stanford. And as much as I love my students and what I taught, working in an elite academic institution had reached the limit of what I could tolerate. At the same time that my co founder, one of my co founders had been chasing me for almost ten years to leave Stanford and start a nonprofit that would bring essentially the Carole Robin curriculum to Silicon Valley Tech. And we decided to start with founders pre founders or co founders, CEOs of pre IPO companies that had raised at least a substantial a round and in in the hopes of changing the culture of tech and Silicon Valley with all of the stuff that I had taught at Stanford. Just to give you a sense of how we've done, we sent out a couple dozen emails to VCs and people we knew in the tech world asking them to nominate CEO founders in January 2018.
Speaker 2:Two weeks later, we had three eighty nominees for our initial cohort of 12. Are about to launch our eleventh cohort of 96. And that is just the fellows program, the CEO Founders Fellows program. We now have programs for the people who work for the fellow founders. We have programs for the VCs.
Speaker 2:We have programs for executives in big companies who are not founders. So it's just taken off beyond my wildest dreams. And it's essentially, you have to be nominated. By virtue of having met me and been on your show, I can nominate you Ari, and then you're past that. And you can nominate yourself, and then we find somebody to nominate you more officially.
Speaker 2:And it basically is the first four days of the fellows program. The fellows program is almost a year long. It's actually three quarters, a four day retreat and three quarters. Some of the other programs are shorter, four day retreats with what we call a tail of a couple of months. They vary in length, but they basically what they all have in common is that they start out with what feels like touchy feely on steroids, which is, you know, the Stanford touchy feely experience, big immersion.
Speaker 2:Then a lot of the rest of the Carole Robin curriculum, because in addition to touchy feely, I taught high performance leadership. I taught leadership coaching and mentoring. I've taught taking stock and moving forward. So I taught multiple things over the years that we've brought into the fold.
Speaker 1:And I'll say that I got the nominationrecommendation from a friend at University of Chicago and he couldn't recommend the program more and was really excited about it. He went through the program and just loved it. So I'll pass on his recommendation to all Thank of the audience you. We do have one. This is the last question.
Speaker 1:It's a difficult one because it's a very personal one. If you had to go back to the most difficult point in your life, whether it's two years ago or twenty years ago, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:Well, the most difficult point in my life was when I was 27 years old and had gotten married at 20 and my then husband walked through the door and told me he no longer wanted to be. Married. And I had never failed at anything. And I considered that like the biggest failure possible. I had failed at the most important thing, my marriage.
Speaker 2:Nevermind that, you know, he was the one that wanted out of marriage. I took it as a personal failure. And what I would, what I have often told myself and what I would tell myself again is A, you will get through this. And B, you will be stronger for it. Even though that will be really hard to believe and hang onto, maybe for quite a while.
Speaker 2:And human beings are amazingly resilient. We are a resilient species.
Speaker 1:Carole, what a delight. Thank you so much for joining the show today. This has been so much fun. Appreciate Well,
Speaker 2:thank you. Right back at you. It's been fantastic.