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The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!
Hello, everybody, and welcome back in to another episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. I am still Scott Olson, retired FBI agent and currently private investigator. With me as always is my cohost.
Shawn:That's me, Sean Baker Garcia, the happy accidental CEO, which I, for at least the interim, continue to be. Thanks, Scott.
Scott:Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to this one. It's it's funny. As we go through our planning process, I see sometimes we stick to the plan, and sometimes we just kinda ride the storm. And I don't know about you, Sean, but today I'm feeling like we're just going to be sort of riding the storm.
Scott:I understand there's a lot going on in your world and I just want to start us there. Yeah. How you feeling? Is the is the world kicking your butt? Are you kicking it butt back?
Shawn:Yeah. Think it's always kicking my butt, you know?
Scott:Yeah. And, you know, this is this is all about us not being, you know therapists or psychologists or certified in any of this, but we are operating in this world of practical guidance and I think one of the things for us to continue to message as we talk about how to interact with the world and how to interact in the public discourse is to remember that being stressed out doesn't mean that you have mental health issues. Just means you're living life. It's it's about mental health sometimes, and you need people that are experts in that when you need them. But just the rough and tumble of the day to day, even if it feels bad, doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you.
Scott:It just means that you're dealing with, as the bard says, outrageous fortune. So what's your outrageous fortune?
Shawn:Wow. Yeah. So this is genuinely a free jump today. This is not a planned jump, but, you know, I am in a particular moment in my work, so professional and personal life, where there are a lot of forces that are coming together to create a perfect pressure storm. And so, you know, I think the comment, or the way I framed it, is that I feel strong, regardless of the fact that the world is kicking my butt.
Shawn:And I think that's an important acknowledgment for people to make, because I think more of us probably fall into that category than we realize or give ourselves credit for. Because necessarily when you're getting kind of kicked, whether it's your butt or elsewhere. You feel it, right? You're feeling that pain, and the struggle, and the fatigue eventually, you know, will set in. You know, even if you're an endurance runner, at some point, you know, that fiftieth mile, you're feeling it, you know, or whatever it is.
Shawn:So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like the marathon runner in my fiftieth you know, coming up on my fiftieth mile here, and I'm tired. But unlike marathon runners, which and and maybe they'll all push back, and they'll have some analogous scenarios that I just am unaware of not being one of those people. When when you do the work that I do, which is working with one or more governments to coordinate a event of some sort, whether that's a meeting, or if it's a training event, or some other kind of, you know, policy workshop, something, you know, it's got a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of masters, you know, that you're answering to.
Shawn:And it requires a certain amount of patience, you know, flexibility, and frankly, just determination. You know, a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of resilience and flexibility is needed. But as with all things, I think, as you ramp up to something, you could kind of look at it as like a wedding planner. You know, like, you know, you'd go through the prior year of prep and design and layout and conceptualization. And then as you get down to the last ten days, the different disparate parts that hadn't been safely kept in their lane, now the choreography is coming together.
Shawn:And so it is, we are dealing with an exceptional amount of choreography with a lot of different stakeholders. And, you know, I don't want to talk too much about what this is, just because not my place to this is a government sponsored thing. Want you know, they have the first right of refusal on the narrative, meaning the US government. But what I can say is is that, you know, it's dealing with public and private sectors, stakeholders from all governments, and it's just, it's a lot. You're, you know So that coupled with a couple of different personal storm fronts that I'm dealing with, you know, just Well, actually, it's more than that.
Shawn:It's probably like three. You know, I've got three seriously. It's like three tornadoes circling, you know, my general area on the And, personal you know, trying to keep your head above water, you know, on a stick, whatever your metaphor of choice is to convey that you simply need to hold your ground and stay the course and not let it break you and not let it drown you or any of those other horrible things that could happen. You know, it's a challenge. You know?
Shawn:And not all of it's bad. Know, some of that is actually very, very good stress. So actually, I just thought of there's five distinct personal things going on. Three of- or four. Two are pretty good.
Shawn:Two are pretty tough. Maybe not so good, but just difficult. And then there's the work stuff. Well, that's enough to sink anybody's battleship. And I consider myself a little stronger and more resilient than the average bear.
Shawn:Certainly, I think sometimes, you know, a little more clever. You know, because I'm scrappy. I know how to get myself out of things. But sometimes, you know, you just there's a delusion. You just can't get out from underneath it.
Shawn:I don't care how scrappy, how smart, how confident, how competent you are. And that's where I found myself this afternoon. And I'll say one more thing, and then we'll open it up to kind of see where this takes us. But there was a very clear moment. There were some small flare ups, okay, yesterday, towards the end of my day, and this morning as I kinda hit the ground running, that were telling me it's like the, red warning sign.
Shawn:Like, if you have a what what do you call that? Where it's like an arm, and it's like green to red. And it was like, it was starting to teeter over here into that red, you know, and it was, you know, and then it would come back to yellow, but then it would fall back to red, you know. So I knew there were some indications that things were starting to get me past my bandwidth, whether that's mental, physical, whatever, emotional. And then today, I was precipitously on that.
Shawn:You know what I mean? It was like, had two meetings back to back that almost broke sunk the battleship. You know what I mean? And and again, it was nothing bad. This was all positive stress because it was all people wanting to do something or some things that resulted in a good outcome.
Shawn:But when you get as overwhelmed as I was at that moment, it's time for the good idea fairy to be put to bed. She's drunk. Put her to bed. Let her sleep it off. Like, we'll go visit this in the morning late.
Shawn:I just didn't have the bandwidth to accept any new way. You know? You know, neither to do a postmortem, you know, which in our world means kind of, you know, hot washing. What could we have done differently? Now is not the time for that.
Shawn:Now is not the time for that. We do not have time for that. It can be done. It needs to be done. It should be done.
Shawn:Now is not the time for that. And then secondly, you know, not introducing any further complexity to the plan because I'm not even able to keep up with the level of complexity that's currently, you know, established. And so I had to send a very nice, sensitively worded, but clear message to my team, you know, because it wasn't any one person. It was everybody at all times with all things. And so I just needed to get a blanket statement out, and that was the only thing I knew.
Shawn:And I sent you the message. Obviously, we're not gonna read it online or anything like that. But you can certainly reference segments, snippets of it if if you wish to. I don't not that I have anything particularly against sharing the whole thing. It's just kind of long.
Shawn:So anyway, so that's where I'm at, Scott. And for our theme purposes, I have been, my team has been doing, we've all been doing the hard work of interacting. And it looks different in different contexts and surrounding different issues or problems we're trying to solve. But I think there's something to unearth there that maybe the audience could take away. Because I'm sure we've all been in this position in our respective professional and personal lives.
Shawn:So over to you for initial thoughts.
Scott:Yeah. So, I love this. And this is part of the reason why my friendship with you is such a valuable thing to me. Is because of how you interact with the world and how functional you are when maybe it doesn't seem all that functional to you. And so I've got two nuggets for the audience and then a bit of a launch.
Scott:The first one is something that you said, which is this notion of it was positive stress because it's about people. And I just when we talk every once in a while as one of us is is just going through that thinking out loud process and nugget drops. And I hope everyone in our audience has that experience on a regular basis when you're actually interacting with people, you're talking with people. I I think it's much more rare if it happens on text. It's much more rare if it happens in email.
Scott:But it it happens with startling regularity when you are in a conversation with another individual or with a small group and something drops. And the idea that stress would be positive stress because it's about people. It's about people on your team doing things that are good. We don't have the capacity for it. I love that concept and it's a highly functional concept and everyone who's listening should really grab on to that.
Scott:The other is kind of a bit of an old saw it's the notion that you think your life is a disaster not not you Sean Baker Garcia but every you that's out there you think your life is a disaster and it's really not and the reason is everything looks like a disaster when you're looking at it from the inside out. From the outside in all I'm seeing for you is a calm, cool, you know, highly functioning CEO, accidental or not, who is in the middle of a long term plan coming together. And it's like anything that anybody tries to do when there are a lot of moving pieces and you're a long ways from turning the machine on, there's not as much stress. But when you've done a ton of work and you have all the bits and pieces together and you're getting ready to flip the switch and you don't know if it's going to work, know from the outside everybody is looking at wow she built this thing and it's amazing and we're going to turn it on and it's going to you know perform exactly as planned and it's going to be great and on the inside you're quaking.
Shawn:Or sleeping.
Scott:If it's going to, you know, blow up. But I think the other nugget for people to take from this is what what an individual sees, particularly an individual that's looking from the inside of themselves out into the world. That's a unique perspective that nobody else shares.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Scott:Nobody and and it's it's not that people get it wrong negatively. They get it wrong positively. A lot of times people will think that you are much more functional, much happier, much better than you actually are. There are going to be some people out there that will think that you're much worse than you actually are. Yeah.
Scott:But the beginning of this nugget is understanding that that perception is never aligned. It is never ever aligned and it's not that it's bad that the world doesn't align with your view of yourself. What makes it more difficult is if you don't recognize that it's always going to be different. If you recognize that it's always going to be different, then it's something that you could take into your calculus and that takes me into, you know, the metaphor and that's kicking around my head and maybe the the the theme of this which is I love your tornado metaphor. Yeah.
Scott:You know, you got five tornadoes swirling around you. And I've I've never been in a tornado scenario. I live in a part of the country. I I've always lived in a part of the country where, you know, storms happen. I was in New York for Superstorm Sandy which seems like an eon ago.
Scott:I've had power go out and that sort of thing, but I've never been in a tornado. And it seems to me that being in a tornado, being around multiple tornadoes would be would be horrible. Yeah. But it also seems to me, and and I don't know this about you, I don't know if you have lived in, you know, tornado areas, but it seems to me that if you live in an area where tornadoes happen, even though it's a bad day when a tornado comes in, you still know what to do.
Shawn:Oh,
Scott:yeah. You know, you you actually have, some muscle memory. You know what to do. And and that is why I think dealing with stress is not a mental health issue. Because if you are dealing with a stressful event or a series of stressful events, you've got these tornadoes swirling around you, but you know what to do.
Scott:Mhmm. And it's not that you know what to do and you're gonna be fine. You know what to do and you also know you might get pounded. Also know that the tornado might go by you and you're gonna be fine. Now your choice is do you go help your neighbors or not?
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:But it's you're not helpless because you have things to do. And I think the challenge that we see in the public dialogue is when people are screaming emotion. They're screaming that emotion. They're in their reactive brain. They're in their amygdala because they don't know what to do.
Scott:They either have never faced this stress before, or they've faced this stress before and haven't learned from it because they don't know what to do. So the productive way forward is to take that, I'm in this situation and I don't know what to do, and and do what now? Get into a figuring out mindset? Get into a self loathing mindset? I faced this four times and I still haven't figured out what to do.
Scott:But whatever the response is and whatever the learning is, it seems to me that part of the key to productive interaction is recognizing that the the top of the road to functioning, to the solution is either knowing what to do in this situation you wish you weren't in, or figuring out what to do Yeah. In the situation that you wish you weren't in. And recognizing that you don't need to be helpless. You don't need to sit down and die.
Shawn:Right.
Scott:That's what I'm taking from you being
Shawn:kind enough
Scott:to be our example today. It's like somebody else.
Shawn:That's a great setup. So what I would say immediately is, I didn't grow up in tornado alley or areas that were regularly experiencing those, we did have one, oddly. And actually, there's been more than one in the past forty years in Fresno. Not big ones, obviously, not the kind that we're dealing with in Nebraska and, you know, or Kansas or something. But, know, so I have seen them.
Shawn:And then I got chased by one one time in Ralla, Missouri. And that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. It was like, you know, I'm an earthquake girl, 100%. I'm like, you know, this Oh, whole yeah, plant yeah. No, I mean, like, you know, I have very vivid memories of the 1991, I think, or to ninety two Loma Prieta.
Shawn:Like, I mean, like, know, serious, serious volcanoes. I don't have experience with volcanoes. That's a whole other threat. But not to fixate on that piece, but so I kind of understand them, I know the dynamics and some of the risks and dangers associated. But I think your metaphor still stands though, because the point of that is people who, you know, are living in those sorts of environments, you know, have traditionally grown up with it, so they have some kind of an infrastructure in place or protocol.
Shawn:They know what to do, you know. It's just like us with earthquakes in California. We know where to stand in the house, or in the school, or what, you know, we know the whole protocol to minimize sort of harm and risk to ourselves. With this situation, what I feel like I'm taking away from it that might be valuable for others out there in the listening world is simply when you do the work of honing your own communication skill, whether that's, again, in a personal context or in a professional context, when you operate in a kind of transparent, you know, candid way with people, when you are not operating with hidden intent, or, you know, secondary agendas that sort of, you know, may be in your interest, but not in the interest of the whole, regardless of who is in that whole, which in some circumstances is people in my family, in some circumstances, people I work with. As So long as you act honorably, honestly, work on your communication, and try to approach things in a way that is, you know, respectful, and just, you know, inviting for people to be part of the solution with you.
Shawn:That to me, you're doing the hard work of interacting well before you get to the interaction, is because you're laying the groundwork for successful interactions. Now, when you throw positive stress in there, I mean, positive stress, like, you know, I know who it is that administers the- maybe the American Psychological Association or something, like where it's like, you know, the big stressors, you know, marriage, children, death. You know, it's like why when sometimes you go to the doctor, they're asking you, like, Are you okay? You know, is any of this stuff happening to you? It's because those are known stressors.
Shawn:And some of them are very hard. Like, obviously, a marriage is gonna be a very different stressor than a death. You know? So when I was saying positive stress, I was just conveying my goal is to convey that it's really good stuff that's happening, as you kind of paraphrased. But it doesn't mean that it can't turn harmful.
Shawn:Even, you know, everything in the world is Somebody said once, or I read it somewhere, somebody quoted something that said basically everything consumable is poison. Because at some point, if you take too much of anything, it will kill you. If you drink too much water, if you eat too much sugar, if you you know, too much alcohol, right? So the question is then what, you know, even good stress can be bad if in inappropriate levels, or levels that you are unable to manage or absorb or handle. So for me, was trying when I messaged you before the session today, I was thinking to myself, you know, I just had to send a team note that let everybody know very transparently where I was at.
Shawn:That, hey, guys, I'm juggling a lot of different competing things right now. And I'm all in. And I'm, you know, we're all working long hours and weird hours, and everybody has been super responsive. We need to be vigilant on certain things that we're kind of covering each other's backs. Because as many details as are required of this particular thing we're trying to implement in ten days, it's very easy.
Shawn:It would be very easy for a small thing to slip through the cracks, and then everybody would point at each other. But like, that was their problem. You know? So I said, We are our brother's keeper, basically. We have to help manage the details because it's coming fast and furious, and the quantities are large.
Shawn:But, yeah, so what I took out of it, and I was hoping, know, kind of you had insights as well, but, you know, is one, I felt like it was a good communique to the team because it told them where I was at. You know, there's no mysteries. You don't have to wonder like, oh, she was terse in that meeting. Is it something I didn't? Nope.
Shawn:It's just my brain defaults to efficiency. And if I know I already don't have enough hours in a day to do what's already on my plate, the last thing I need is complicating conversation and factors that are gonna detract away from the ticking time. You know what I mean? So just to kind of explain that to them is just say, look, like, you know, this is what's and so I just did. I opened it all up.
Shawn:But, again, they're responding very positively to that, you know, because I think, one, because they know me, but two, because hopefully, I, alongside with them, whether they know it or not, we have been cultivating and doing the hard work of interacting with each other for a long, long time. And part of that is applying best practices that, you know, I learn from people like you, or from this podcast, or just from them. You know, sometimes they're showing me by example, and I'm learning from them, and then I'm applying that, their strategies, into how I communicate back with them. So, but I also think there's a second part of this story that could be explored, you know, at some point if we have time, which is just simply how do you know? Like, what are the signs?
Shawn:What are the indicators? Like, how do you know when something's because a lot of people, I think, may just be oblivious because they're holding the line so hard. And then all of a sudden, the gas pump at the at the gas station runs out of gas or it or it breaks, and you have to move your car. And that is gonna end up being the thing that makes somebody go postal. You know what I mean?
Shawn:It often takes people by surprise, even for themselves. Right? Yeah. So maybe there's something there there with that.
Scott:I I think there's a a really good there there. And it's it it's funny how we we talk about a lot of different threads and a lot of different things, but it really all does circle back to the hard work of interacting. And it's easy at the sort of the surface level to think about how the hard work of interacting is about, you know, communicating with other people and communicating with other people in a way that they can understand. And it's this notion of if you take a class on public speaking, one of the first things that they'll say is, know, know your audience. The metaphor is if you go to France, you know, speak French, don't shout English at them.
Scott:And, you know, think about what it would be like if they just shouted French at you. It's not going to help. And it's that, but we are now getting into the deeper levels of this and things that are actually more important than just understanding your audience. And I think the big theme that tumbled out of my brain listening to you is the idea of intent. And I don't know if if there's a two sided coin here yet or not, but whether it's it's a a two sided coin or just a concept, the intent with which you interact with the rest of the world matters.
Scott:But it's interesting because it doesn't matter in terms of creating a responsibility on the people that you're interacting with to see that you have good intention. It's not that. It's your intent in interacting the with the world is what anchors you in what you're trying to accomplish and I want to illustrate what I mean by using your you know your your gas station you know gas pump
Shawn:yeah
Scott:a story which illustrates the this straw that breaks the camel back get the camel's back And there are a couple of moving pieces here that I'm going to try and and pull together. So bear with me.
Shawn:Go for it because I'm going to take a sip. My throat's a little dry. So I'm going to take a quick sip.
Scott:Alright. When you're dealing with stress, some people deal with stress by just shooting it out to the world, screaming, and fundamentally that is not productive because it doesn't make you feel better and it certainly doesn't make the world feel better. And part of it is, yeah, you're you're letting your reactive brain react, but it's it's not useful because once you let it go, now you have to deal with consequences that come with that. The problem is that when a person thinks about that, the alternative becomes holding it in, holding it in, holding it in, and if you hold it in and hold it in and don't deal with it, at some point you crack. It could be, you know, tomorrow, it could be ten years from now.
Scott:And the the reason people actually need mental health care is when they hold things in and the default becomes to hold it in and they start thinking about things like, well, I'm holding all this in. So, I'm the only one who's dealing with this stress. The rest of the world has it so much easier than I do And this is not the only way to think about it, but it's the way that people do think about it. And then they they crack in a way that seems legitimate because they think I'm the only one who's dealing with this. The way that you have dealt with this stress is actually by sharing it in a very functional way.
Scott:And over the course of my, career at the prosecutor's office, as a trial attorney, at the FBI, as a counterintelligence guy, and as a a mid level executive in the FBI, people who lead really well, like you, have the ability to share how they're feeling without putting responsibility for that on other people because all you're doing is saying this is my status. And I'm going to circle back around to intent which is you aren't a a person who says this is my status. This is how I'm feeling today. This is what I'm struggling with today.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:When they do it with the intent of I am not gonna make you figure out how the boss is doing today. I'm going to tell you how the boss is doing today because I think it'll make your life easier. It's a steam valve for the person who's saying this is my status today but it's not a steam valve of my life sucks and all of you need to recognize how much stress I'm under. That intent puts the responsibility for my personal problems on somebody else and my view is that that is bad intent. But if my intent coming in is I'm gonna tell you how I'm doing and my intent is to make it easier for you to understand how to function in your role in the team as we go forward.
Scott:And I'm gonna cancel this meeting because I'm not up to it. And yeah, it's not fair because I'm the boss and I can cancel meetings and you're not the boss. So you have to show up at the meeting regardless of how you're feeling. Yeah, that's that's not fair. Mhmm.
Scott:But my intent is not to be unfair. My intent is to make it easy for the people around me to understand me. And what's fascinating about this is in middle life as I was learning this, I would do this with my kids. Would do this with my kids when they were little, when they were eight or 10. And it was scary for me the first time, the first couple of times I did it.
Scott:But now that they're all in their thirties, it's it's much easier. And the thing that I found was if I told my kid I was having a bad day, it calmed them down. Mhmm. Because they see dad all wound tight and they're 10, so they don't know.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Scott:And so I would say, you know, hey, sweetie. Come come sit down. I just want you to know that I'm a little bit bent because I had a bad day at work and I had this, that, and the other thing, and I'm stressed out because I barely had time to have dinner, and now I'm I'm gonna go and and coach your sister's soccer team. And I really love doing that, but it's just a hard day for me. Okay.
Scott:Mhmm. It's not my fault. Dad's stressed out, but it has nothing to do with me. And then when I'd get home from, you know, coaching soccer, half the time, one of them say, you know, here's here's a glass of lemonade, dad, and and they could help. But it's it's the intent of it that matters.
Scott:And the funny thing is when I talk to people about how the intent matters to you, a lot of the response that I've gotten as I've done executive coaching over the years is, Yeah, but people don't see my intent. They infer things about me that I don't think and I never thought. And that's relationship stuff. You do something and the person that you're in the relationship with says, well, you did that so you don't love me. It's like, no.
Scott:I did that because I was tired and I'm an idiot. It hasn't I I love you. I just did something stupid. That reaction has nothing to do with your intent because your intent is not for them to understand. Your intent in how you interact with the world is anchors you And it's it's difficult to describe the fundamental difference because the danger is if you act with good intent and then the world kicks your butt for it, you have a tendency to not do that again.
Scott:But if you act with good intent and you understand this keeps me angered, then the response of the world doesn't matter.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Scott:And it's not armor. It's purpose. The purpose is to anchor you. Yeah. Not the purpose isn't to put responsibility for your bad day on the people around you.
Scott:And I don't know if
Shawn:that makes
Scott:sense to you, But that's what I see. Yeah. As you've shared with me and with our audience how you responded to all these tornadoes today. Yeah. And you know sending out this email that essentially said to everybody that you're doing work with today, putting the final touches on this huge machine that you built, that you're getting ready to flip the switch on.
Scott:You basically said, this is this is my status today.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:And so this is how we're operating today because of how I feel.
Shawn:So I wonder, so I took some things out of that. So and and I'm gonna I'm gonna lead with something, and then I'm gonna ask you for a counterexample. So, you know, as you were talking, I was sort of taking notes down because, you know, what is the alternative or or not the alternative. What would have been the outcome had I not sent that note? Right?
Shawn:Well, in my mind, I was cataloging what the potential outcomes I'm sure there's more than what I listed, but I'll run these by you to see if they kind of resonate. You know, a, I might freak out and that you know, or start yelling or or, you know, or something would go wrong, and then I'd be, you know, kinda coming down on people. B, everyone will sense there's something wrong, but nobody will know. And so they will either just be walking on pins and needles in a state of constant fear, you know, or trepidation, because they're like, I feel like something's coming, and I don't know what or why. And then, you know, or, you know, they'll perceive the environment, or my actions, or inactions, or my whatever tone I'm taking, words that I'm saying.
Shawn:You know, kind of going to your point about humans have a tendency to make monsters out of intent. So like, you know, so without explicit sort of affirmation that here's what's happening, they're going to jump most often to the worst possible conclusion out of a primitive, you know, human evolutionary, I think, probably, desire to people please, or to not get in trouble, or to protect themselves. There's a The caveman at that moment feels a predator. And, you know, in modern times, that predator is just you're going to get reprimanded at work, you know what I mean, something like that. It also exports a toxic interaction culture.
Shawn:Right? So, you know, and we talked about this a little in our prep session on Tuesday before any of this was even manifest. So I kind of dropped this on you an hour before airtime. So, you know Good. Yeah, right?
Shawn:So, you know, so we had discussed how when, you know, part of doing the hard work of interacting is like not exporting, you know, toxic interactions. So, you know, I gave the example of the TS lady who was just treated me, like, inexplicably, you know, rudely. Like, it was just so bizarre, and and and we don't have to go into that whole situation, but
Scott:like, We you know need to mean, I I know the story because you shared it with me. Yeah. Think it's useful.
Shawn:Fair to the to the rest of the listeners.
Scott:Tell the Yeah. Bare bones so that everybody can understand the point you're making because Sure. It's a good point.
Shawn:Yeah. So so I was in line to go through TSA about a week ago on my way back to Cal, or from Las Vegas to DC. And I, you know, I'm one of those people who does touch list TSA pre check. I fly a ton, so I'm, you know, I'm just lickety split. And I'm a season traveler.
Shawn:I'm very low maintenance. I don't wear jewelry. I don't have metal. I don't carry crap in my pockets. There's no water bottle.
Shawn:Like, I am as clean a flyer as you're gonna get precisely because I don't wanna get yelled at. And I don't wanna and I don't want to hold up the line because I know, like, the stress of being in that airport TSA line, especially right now given all that's going on in the world with TSA, you know, having shortages of of personnel and staffing. So I am literally your poster child for the perfect traveler. Like, I'm the most low maintenance. So here I am with my low maintenance self.
Shawn:I'm just waiting to go through the little scanner. Right? Like, I've dropped off my little backpack, and it's going through the conveyor. And, you know, the TSA agent was there was two of them, and one manages the big rotating imaging thing that looks like a, you know, a right side up CAT scan. And then the other one has got the arch with the wand.
Shawn:Okay? So I couldn't figure out there was a guy in front of me, and he kept going from one side to the other. And I you know, again, I'm just staying back because I'm a good soldier. Tell me where to go, and I'm gonna go where you want me to go. Because he kept changing sides, then I didn't know, you know, if they wanted me somewhere or other.
Shawn:Well so I patiently waited for him to get through, and then I just kind of, like, was following him. And, you know, I don't remember even which one I was going through. And and the TSA agent screamed at me, like like, disproportionately ragefully screamed at me, which is shocked me, first of all, because I wasn't I was like, I did not see that coming because my amygdala, you know, is Yeah. Constantly on the lookout. Yeah.
Shawn:I am really react like, I I I usually can anticipate if I'm about to enter into a situation. Right? So
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:So completely, like, took me off my game, put me on my heels, and and I you know? So I was like, oh, well, okay. If you don't want me on this one, it is a very literal two steps to the left, and I go through the other one. Like, this is a very low stakes interaction. There's nothing it's not like it's rushed.
Shawn:There's not a ton of people. You know? And so as I was talking through, after I got through the processing of the shock, I just turned around and I looked at her, and I said, you know, I said, you could I think I said something to the effect of, you could have done that a little more nice, or a little, I don't know what the words I use, nice, more nice. Know, you could have been, oh, I know what I said. You could have been nicer about that.
Shawn:Yeah. You know what I mean? And I didn't say it, like, snarkily. I just was, it was, you know, like, because it was it kinda hurt my feelings. I was like, why are you trying to make me cry?
Shawn:I didn't do anything. You know? And then she said something even ruder back to me and got very aggressive about it. Even though nothing about my body posture was threatening, my tone wasn't raised, I wasn't condescending. It was just simply, you know, sister, that could have been done handled more gently.
Shawn:You know what I mean? And and and she freaked. So the example there being is when I said one of the outcomes if I hadn't treated my team the way I did is that I would have exported a toxic like, mood or tone or, you know, created a toxic situation now that I'm exporting to them because now they're having bad days.
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:And that's going to impact their interactions in their day. Now, in this case, she didn't impact my interaction for that day other than to make me, you know, feel a little get in my feels a little bit because I do the hard work of interacting, Scott Olsen, and I know that I can't export that. You know? I was like, I cannot export that. And and exporting it can look like a lot of different things.
Shawn:It can be treating the next person you interact with rudely or or having a short fuse with the flight attendant or the Starbucks, you know, barista that you're waiting in line and you're about running late to your plane. So now you're mad, but it's really your fault because you're running late. Like, you know, so all of those things. So that's all I'm saying is I thought, you know, we need to try to not do that wherever we can because it, you know, those little micro interactions are having a bigger impact than you realize. Or it could have also been me going up and blowing up TSA on my Facebook.
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:And that would have been WMD level toxic export. You know what I mean? Because everybody's mad at TSA right now anyway. Yeah. You know?
Shawn:Yeah. Or or just mad at the situation. I don't know if they're mad at TSA agents. So, anyway, like, so that was where I wanted to go with as, you know, an alternative. And then the last thing, because I do think this matters, and then I'll turn it over to you with my question, which is the counterexample, is the other thing that not doing that with my team today would have done is it would have removed from them the opportunity to step up and to contribute more or differently, which is exactly what they've been doing since I sent that note.
Shawn:That, again, that gives them opportunity. It gives them opportunity to show that they can do more. It gives them an opportunity to be kind of like to to to, you know, wear the the knapsack, the burden for you to pick your bag up because you ever hurt ankle. Like, you know, and they wanna do that. They they really wanna do that, you know, because they want to be able to be relied upon, and it feels good for them.
Shawn:Yeah. You know?
Scott:And they need permission. Yeah.
Shawn:So so so that's the last thing I'll say. The the counterexample I was going to ask you, what in your experience, because you're an executive, you know, leadership coach, you know, you senior level in the FBI, so you you have a lot of leadership chops. And what I would be asking is it you know, what are some of the typical ways that people do handle that situation who aren't doing the hard work of interacting? You know, is it just simply that they say nothing, and then they just, you know, the whole environment is tense for the day or the week? You know, is I guess that because I've been doing this for a long time.
Shawn:So this is typically my go to reaction or response. I don't know how else to do it just because this is the way I do it. But my examples are all bad. Used to have a boss who used to I used to work in a bakery when I was a young person. And she literally would hurl knives across the kitchen.
Shawn:You know what I mean? So that's like dramatically cartoonishly bad. But just in a normal environment, whether it's with family or work, like, I think what do you see as people doing out there who could be doing a better job at doing the hard work work of interacting versus either transporting toxicity or just not giving people an opportunity to understand what's happening? Is it just silence, do you think?
Scott:I don't think there's one answer, even even if it's, you know, one answer with, you know, pretty wide parameters. This is generally how people do it within within this range because it's people. Yeah. That's true. And I think part of why we talk about the hard work of interacting is that it's hard.
Scott:And so you'll see, to try and answer your question, I think the different ways that people react sort of tend to push us in the direction of, well, this is my leadership style. I withdraw. Oh, that's a have a, you know, heavy hand on the tiller because I'm an introvert. You know, I lean in and micromanage everybody, not because I'm a micromanager, but because, you know, I'm a servant leader and I wanna make sure that everybody is doing well and they know that I'm there for them or I'm an extrovert so I'm going to lead by walking around. But it's all labels which once you really look at and I don't wanna sort of get us into this leadership world because that's a whole another conversation.
Scott:But in general, in my view, when you look at this notion of leadership styles, It's a way to label what people are doing and what what people do is across the spectrum. And it's across the spectrum that's bounded on one side by never let them see you sweat, which is don't communicate anything just tell people what to do and be responsible for everything and then on the other end of the spectrum is don't wear your heart on your sleeve which is you know, and and I've I've had bosses. I'm sure people have had bosses. I've had subordinates who spend the first half of the day talking about themselves and how they're feeling and they're speaking because their process for working out how they're feeling is a speaking process, but they don't understand because they're so involved in their speaking process that it's not a good use of everybody else's time. So the hard work of interacting is understanding that how you interact matters and your intent matters even if people don't get your intent.
Scott:To illustrate the point in a different way, I'm gonna go back to fight or flight response that you referenced just a few minutes ago. And it's this notion of you see the leaf moving, you don't know if it's the wind or a lion and so the safest thing to do is to let your amygdala make you run. And what causes that is a lack of information. So when you are in a position with a team, when you are being inundated by the world and you have the ability to participate in the public conversation because you've got you know, access to the online world. The question then becomes how do you get out of the fight or flight yourself And how do you provide information to other people so that if they choose to, they can get out of the fight or flight?
Scott:There were times in my life where a lot of people thought I had angry resting face. Mhmm. And I would get a lot of, wow. I mean, have you not had your coffee this morning? You look really angry.
Scott:And I would say, no. I'm not angry. And it was a five minute conversation about how I was feeling because somebody asked. But it's part of the hard work of interacting is recognizing that the amygdala certainly, the reactive brain, the fight or flight is fundamentally based on a lack of information.
Shawn:And
Scott:you save yourself when you don't have enough information. And you save yourself immediately because if you don't save yourself then you're hurt in some way. Yeah. So I think the most effective leaders don't have a leadership style and the most effective communicators don't have an effective communicating style. What they are doing fundamentally is what you did this morning which is to recognize that the people around you, and this works whether you're the boss and you have a team or you're a member of a team and you're sitting in the middle of a chain of command and you have people above you on that chain and people below you.
Scott:Yeah. If you have information that you think they may find useful, finding a way to share that information is part of the hard work of interacting.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:And it can be anything from have you considered this to you're a moron, which is aggressive and not preferred.
Shawn:I like that scale. The scale of have you considered this to are you a moron? Like, that's
Scott:There there are people out there who respond better to you're a moron than they respond to consider this. Yeah. And so it's part of the hard work of communicating actually is understanding your audience but the the purpose of communicating and the thing that makes it difficult is to understand or is to be aware of this notion of people are in their reactive brains principally because they don't have enough information And if you have information to share, finding a productive way to share it is part of the hard work of interacting. There are a lot of ways to get it wrong, but there are also a lot of ways to get it right. And part of figuring out how to share information, and I think there are two things, one is that it it matters.
Scott:If you're sharing something personal about yourself with other people, it doesn't matter because it's personal to you. It matters because it's useful information. And I think the other thing that matters, and I lost it for a second and I'll come back to it, and it came back to me. The other thing is to understand that the way people perceive you is pretty identical to the way you perceive people, and it is the amygdala brain. The fluttering leaf is a lion.
Scott:Know, even if it's the wind, you think it's the lion. When and and it's what I love about your your TSA experience story. Mhmm. Obviously, this person was having a bad day.
Shawn:Really much. Yeah.
Scott:They could also just be not suited for the job. Some people should not be performing a badge and That part. Petty authority without oversight in the immediacy of, you know, getting through a TSA line or writing somebody a parking ticket or a speeding ticket. Some people should not have that type of immediate localized authority. But it's very easy to listen to that story and presume bad intent.
Scott:And there actually may not be bad intent. I mean, maybe that person was missing, you know, one of her parents. I'm using the feminine. I don't know if it's a a dude or a lady, but that person could be missing a funeral and is not getting paid and is loyal to the job. So they show up and they're missing a funeral and they don't want to be there and they're stressed out and they're unhappy and they're being human.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Scott:It it could be that. But the the problem for you is you don't know and you don't have the time to figure it out. And again, this is not what we're not trying to do here at the 2 Parachutes Podcast is give everybody a solution. And when someone's rude to you, presume they're having a bad day and move on. Take it and you know go go to the the image of of Jesus Christ of when somebody slaps you, turn the other cheek.
Scott:When they see you for your coat, give them your cape as well. That is a way to live. That is a way to live in some instances, but the hard work of communicating is being thoughtful about this stuff. Is understanding that when you're in your reactive brain, you're reacting, preserve yourself, but you can quickly and this is advice not direction, do what you can quickly to get over into your analytic brain, your thoughtful brain and understand the situation that way, which is I think kind of what you did in the TSA example. But understanding that the problem with communication and particularly the problem with communication that we have in the public discourse, in the electronic discourse is we think, and this is important, we think that since we can know anything, we can search and get the answer to any question now.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Scott:We think that since we can know everything that we do know everything. And just because we can know anything doesn't mean that in the moment when we're reacting to something we actually know everything that is useful to us.
Shawn:Right. And
Scott:so part of the hard work of interacting is what you did which is a measured, thoughtful, intentional sharing of information that the people around you might find useful and then understanding. Maybe you'll get a good response. Maybe you'll get a bad response. Boss, I feel really awkward and uncomfortable when you tell me that your life is going into the toilet because I don't know what to do with that.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:That you may get that.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:What it means is that type of information was not useful to this person. But and I'm gonna say this one more time just because I think it's important. The problem with the reactive brain, the thing that drives people to scream their outrage to the world is because they don't have enough information in that moment, and so they're doing the thing that saves them in that moment that keeps them from being hurt rather than taking a little more time getting over into the thinking part of your brain and doing a deeper analysis and going, oh, this person is having a bad day. They're actually not a threat to me. Mhmm.
Scott:I don't know if that gels with you or resonates with you, but it's so important.
Shawn:Yeah. No, I think that, you know, the takeaways for me, and hopefully for listeners, is simply that, you know, humaning is hard. It's hard, it's so hard, whether you're working or you're, you know, with your personal loved ones and family and friends, and that, you know, so just strive to be the best self of yourself in conversations and in the interactions. And, you know, I think it's a balancing act, you know. You want to share enough of yourself to provide context behind a mood or or, you know, a trigger or a need, right, but not so much that it, like you said, it would be, like, weird or awkward for your staff.
Shawn:And and that's something that, yeah, also goes back to your point of read the room. You really have to know your people. You have to and that's kind of your responsibility, especially if you're in a leadership position. But even if you're not, you know, I still think it's your responsibility because, you know, you're in a dance here with the other people or with the other persons, whether you want to be or not. Never have I ever seen anybody who could get through life without dealing with a person.
Shawn:So, you know, so I think that the point is well taken, is to do the best you can to cultivate and understand your audience, or who you're speaking to and with, and, you know, and then calibrate that balance of approach to the community that you're immediately engaging. And but I yeah. I agree. It's it's a really and I don't wanna be one of those, you know, add to the the pot heap of, you know, I don't know, public figures or experts, people who talk on things. I don't want to heap on that pile of just like, giving sort of, you know, short, like, do this, don't do this, you know, know your audience, you know, balance your emotions.
Shawn:Those aren't very useful, you know. I mean, I think all of us, for the most part, probably have heard that at some point in our life. So, you know, really our goal here is to just dig under some of the dynamics that that sort of maybe were informing whoever came up with those sayings or adages, right, there was a reason why they came to that conclusion. And if you're not gonna go read Stephen Covey or, you know, any of the other sort of, you know, or sociology, you know, experts and stuff, then just know that what we're talking about is trying to manage your interactions in a very non sexy, non life changing, world changing way. But if you do your part to cultivate how you interact with literally anyone, you're already doing something that's so, so important.
Shawn:Because, you know, if you, like I said, all of the things I said earlier remain true. It's like, I could have said nothing to my team. I could have suffered in silence and just said, look, like, you know, and then just kept but even if I I'm not the kind of person who starts yelling, you know, I don't do that. I don't get emotional with my staff typically. What would be more likely for me to do is just to withdraw.
Shawn:And then I would have to literally hibernate for two or three days to recharge the battery, which I can't really afford to do right now because we don't have the luxury of that time. So I think that, you know, you do the best you can. But the goal is not to avoid interaction, but to enter into it with noble intent and with transparency and candor, but not so much candor that they're all like, they can't unsee what you've just told them. You know, you don't want that, right? Like, you know, no verbal nudity.
Shawn:You know, they don't want to, you know, if they can't unhear what you say, that could be weird. But yeah, so, you know, that's kind of what I take from all of this, and I thought this was a very hopeful discussion just because even me, somebody like me, I know, you know, I think I have the right instincts, and I think I often make good choices, but I don't always understand why. Yeah. You know? And if you want to replicate something, you kind of have to understand the why.
Shawn:Like, how did you get to that choice? You know? And how do I do that again?
Scott:Yeah. And it's I mean, we're, I think, at our hour, maybe a few minutes past, but I, I love that concept of Noble Intent. What a, what a great way to put words to what we've been talking about. And noble intent matters because sharing yourself, open even a bit is hard because if you if you don't share who you are and people infer your, your intent or your, agenda without you opening yourself up and sharing. When they get it wrong, it's okay because they they really don't understand me.
Scott:If you share yourself and then people have that range of opinions, What impacts you is, oh, well they actually think that I am actually this way. They don't like me for me. And that's the humaning part. It's understanding that it's not sort of a one communication cycle. It's not you share something, they respond, and it's done.
Scott:It is the ongoing interaction, the the continuing to share information, the continuing to share yourselves with that noble intent, not the heart on the sleeve, I have all these problems, I'm a miserable human being, my life sucks. Nobody wants interaction with somebody who is sort of dropping that level of pain on them. So you're right, you don't want that sort of functional nudity, picture that can't be unseen because that takes everybody right to their amygdala. But noble intent and being open with Noble Intent maybe is the message of today. I love it.
Scott:Awesome. Okay. We got there.
Shawn:We did.
Scott:Thank you for today. This has been wonderful.
Shawn:Looking forward to the next jump. Alrighty.