Jim Conrad: Welcome to the Conovision Podcast, episode eight.
I am Jim Conrad, AKA Cono, and in the spirit of storytelling, we
will hear the story of Connection Lab, ConnectionLaboratory.com, with
founder Russ Hamilton, and how the story of human to human engagement
is so crucially important to the survival of the human species.
That's later.
But first, a story about why stories, our stories, matter.
Listening to stories, and telling them, helped our ancestors
to live humanly, to be human.
But somewhere along the way, our ability to tell and to listen to stories was lost.
And as life speeded up, as the possibility of both communication and annihilation
became ever more instantaneous, people came to have less tolerance
for that, which comes only over time.
The demand for perfection and the craving for evermore control over
a world that paradoxically seemed evermore out of control, essentially
bred impatience with story.
As time went by, the art of storytelling fell by the wayside, and those who
went before us gradually lost part of what had been the human heritage, the
ability to ask the most basic questions.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell observed one of our problems today is that we are not
well acquainted with the literature of the spirit, we're more interested in the news
of the day and the problems of the hour.
Thus distracted, we no longer listen to those who speak of the
eternal values that have to do with the centering of our lives.
The news of the day and the problems of the hour, we have inherited a world
that has lost all real sense of time.
Our most common complaint is that we have no time.
We moderns are problem solvers, but the demand for answers,
crowds out patience, and perhaps especially patience with mystery.
And that which we cannot control, we deny our own ambivalences, searching
for answers to our most anguished questions in technique, hoping to find
an ultimate healing in technology.
But feelings of dislocation, isolation, and of off centeredness persist as
they always do, as they always have.
What do we do with this confusion, this pain?
How do we understand that inevitable part of life captured in the term angst,
the anxiety and anguish that seem an essential part of being alive today?
Tradition suggests listen.
Listen to stories.
For spirituality itself is conveyed by stories which use words in ways
that go beyond words, to speak what's called the language of the heart.
A spirituality of not having all the answers, stories convey the mystery and
the miracle, the adventure of being alive.
I am Jim Conrad, joined by Russ Hamilton.
Hello, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Hello, Jim.
Jim Conrad: You have a company called Connection Lab.
Russ Hamilton: I do.
Jim Conrad: Gimme a thumbnail sketch of what Connection Lab does.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab provides workshops and executive coaching for
um, organizations, individuals that want to get better at communication,
presentation, and leadership development.
It is a methodology that can save your business, it can save your
community, and it can save the world.
Jim Conrad: How important in business is communication?
Russ Hamilton: What's the scale?
Jim Conrad: I'd have to answer that question by asking you the same question.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah.
So if we say one to 10, how important is communication in helping a
business fulfill its potential?
Jim Conrad: Thrive.
Russ Hamilton: Thrive, I would say 9.8.
Before it's a business crisis, before it's a healthcare crisis, before it's a climate
crisis, it's a communication crisis.
Jim Conrad: So companies that recognize this try to then embody or
teach these skills to their workers, but is that relationship changing
between employer and employee in the new technological marketplace?
Russ Hamilton: Constantly.
First of all, it's a new technological marketplace every 15 minutes,
so it's constantly changing.
We joke in our workshops and say, well, at least that's the last change.
Oh, thank goodness.
Change.
No more changes.
That's the last.
Oh, hang on, I'm getting a text.
Oh, there's a new change.
Oh crap.
It's constantly changing.
Jim Conrad: And that's stressful.
Russ Hamilton: Totally.
Very stressful.
Again, on a scale.
Some companies are very good at adapting, so they're very good at self-diagnosis.
They're very, you know, but those are very small companies.
Big ones really struggle with adaptation and flexibility.
They struggle with, uh, you know, adopting new technologies.
They struggle with adopting new cultures.
Um, you know, mergers and acquisitions.
There's a new company that we're bringing in that's bringing a whole
new culture, and while we want all the benefits of that organization, we're
also bringing their cultural baggage.
And sometimes that can infect a whole part of our organization or like most of it.
So it's extremely dangerous for some companies to have poor self-awareness
and have poor self-diagnosis skills and to kind of reject that
we're in a river that's constantly changing every few minutes.
'Cause there are companies that would prefer just to reject that that's true.
And just focus on what we control and what we're good at.
And those companies are short-lived and struggle.
Jim Conrad: What is the spark in a CEO's brain when he decides or what,
what is the information that he gets?
Is it from a consultant?
Is it from internal diagnostics to say, okay, we need to hire Russ
Hamilton and bring him in with his connection lab methodology because
we're obviously not communicating.
And how does that manifest itself in, let's say, the day-to-day
operations of any company?
Russ Hamilton: A company that doesn't communicate well often has a very
toxic culture, very protective, very siloed, very internally competitive.
Dominant personalities tend to suppress introverts and quieter personalities.
Dominant personalities identify if the company is safe or not.
The loudest person in the room gets to determine if the company
is safe to communicate in.
Jim Conrad: Right.
Russ Hamilton: Of course it's safe.
Why wouldn't you think it's safe?
Who doesn't think it's safe?
And of course, everybody who's an introvert and doesn't feel safe is
gonna sit on their hands and not gonna communicate 'cause they don't feel safe.
So, we want to be careful not to generalize CEOs because they are as
varied as any other kinds of human beings.
So this idea that a CEO is suddenly, you know, its own unique thing, I
wanna be careful not to generalize.
Jim Conrad: Because some of those CEOs are brought in from other
companies with other cultures.
Russ Hamilton: Yep.
Jim Conrad: And now they either try to force their culture, what they've
learned, upon this new organization that they're running, and they can
do that because they're the CEO.
Or they have to try to adapt to whatever the culture that exists in that company.
Now, usually if they're brought in, that company isn't, as a new CEO, that company
isn't doing well, and so they have to try to turn things around, quote unquote.
Russ Hamilton: That's one story.
Another story is the company has grown out of the founder.
That in fact it's been very, very successful and the founder has helped
it go from four employees to a thousand, which is overwhelming for this person who
is great at a technology or a service, and has no experience organizing a
board, organizing funding, organizing a variety of finance, organizing
shareholders, IPO, um, I mean, this person has no experience with that.
And so the existing board says, look, you've done great and we're gonna find a
role for you, but you are not qualified to bring this organization to the next level.
Would you like to see it fulfill its potential?
And that CEO, that man or that woman, is inevitably, you know,
gonna say yes because this is great, but it's also very hard to let go.
Yeah.
I've seen a lot of varied experiences in the C-Suite.
Jim Conrad: Sometimes people don't know if they built, especially if they built
a company, they don't wanna let go.
Because it's so intrinsically tied to who they are.
Russ Hamilton: Their identity.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
Russ Hamilton: It can be an excruciating process to convince or
otherwise remove a founder because they are now harming their company.
And sometimes the founder is right when they put on the brakes and
say, we don't want another CEO here.
We don't want another C-suite because it is a culture based organization
and I am the magnet for that culture, and they can be right.
Getting a new CEO is extremely dangerous.
Have you seen, I forget the film, the name of it, but it's basically the
story of Apple, Steve Jobs, and the CEO.
And you know, they bring in the, the Pepsi guy, you know, the CEO of Pepsi
to come and take over Apple, and he doesn't understand the product.
You know, he's trying to take all the money from the older computer and
put it in all these new products, and they don't want to invest in the thing
that's making them the most money.
And Jobs gets removed.
And of course, you know, that's, that's a pretty delicate story.
But so are all these stories are enormously sophisticated
and packed with nuance.
And to your earlier question, the problem is usually communication,
which can take a while to unpack.
What does that mean, communication?
Because it is a galaxy of definitions and predispositions.
I've been studying epistemology and linguistics as part of a requirement
to really understand what's going on.
And did you know that there were 6,000 languages in human history?
There have been 6,000 languages recorded in human history.
And of those 6,000 languages, 5,000 of them are impenetrable to the other.
I've been caught in a winter storm in Magadan Russia, Northeastern Russia,
and man, there's no Spanish there.
There's no like Latin based languages.
There's no Scandinavian, Germanic English.
You know that, you are looking at symbols.
You have no idea what they mean.
Jim Conrad: Only the locals know.
Russ Hamilton: Only, and they look at you like, why are you
standing in eight feet of snow?
And it's like, well, we're trying to find a restaurant.
But you can't have that conversation 'cause nothing I'm saying is
penetrable to the people hearing it.
Jim Conrad: Now that speaks to what's happening today, where
the universal language is quickly becoming our mother tongue, English.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah, it's still a dominant business language.
It's still the language that pilots use in pretty much every
commercial airline in the world.
They use English.
It's the language most often in finance, but language is
also used to separate people.
Think of twins in the house, kids that are born together.
They suddenly come up with their own language, right?
They can whisper and hum and talk and use hand signals, and the rest of the family
has no idea what they're talking about.
And they are pretty good with that.
They're pretty good with the fact that nobody can understand it.
So language becomes a way to separate ourselves from people
and isolate, and in a way elevate.
We are better than you and now we're into a territory that is worth exploring
to say, how is this an impediment to people around the world communicating?
Jim Conrad: How is language and tribalism, is language part of tribalism?
Russ Hamilton: I feel like that's what we're describing.
I think language is self-developed.
It's interesting, there's a couple of schools of thought around how, 'cause
we don't know, communication is one of the great mysteries of science.
We don't know who was the first person to actually use language.
We don't, you know, we've seen artwork on the walls in France and Africa,
um, but we don't know how it began.
There's the Noam Chomsky argument that says, one day one
person woke up and could do it.
There's also the more anthropological background, which is,
Jim Conrad: Over time.
Russ Hamilton: Over time, it was developed.
Jim Conrad: Our guttural grunts and squawks and squeaks started to
have different meanings if we link them together in some way or shape.
Russ Hamilton: That's right.
And anthropologically, you know, we would kind of as chimpanzees
kind of walk on all fours.
And then we started to walk upright which left our hands free to
communicate, which was a whole new thing when we started to stand upright.
Jim Conrad: Yep.
Russ Hamilton: And then when we weren't working as hard to do things, our facial
expressions started to get involved.
And so the grunts with facial and with hands started to
offer a communication source.
So there's that school of thought.
Those are the two primary schools of thought.
That it developed over time, or one person woke up one day
and started teaching everybody.
Jim Conrad: And we are, as human beings, we are symbol identifying,
meaning seeking creatures, aren't we?
Tie that back into, in one of your seminars on leadership development, is
meaning and value a part of the equation?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah.
Well, what that, that question makes me think of is the distinction
between autonomy and community.
Jim Conrad: Autonomy and community.
Russ Hamilton: 'Cause everybody has their own definitions of value.
Everybody has their own definitions of who they are and what they
are and what's happening.
Often those definitions are informed by the what they're fed and what
narratives they're consuming, and media they're consuming.
But the difference between autonomy and community, if you think of a
teeter-totter and on each end of the teeter-totter at one end is autonomy.
The other end is community.
Where do I put myself at any given moment between autonomy?
Do I, am I like more on the autonomy side?
What does autonomy mean?
Autonomy means my, how I define my right to self govern, self determine.
My autonomy, my experience, my senses, my sense of smell, touch,
taste, sound, all these things.
My personal experience in this world.
My right to determine who I am, to self govern and to self-identify.
That's autonomy.
Community is you and I in a room together with some friends in the booth out there
and we are a little community doing a recording right now on what we assume
is a common mission to create some interesting content for Conovision.
Both things exist simultaneously, so in a way, this is our approach to duality.
The particle in the wave, that light itself is both a particle and a wave.
Communication is both autonomy and community.
Both have to exist simultaneously for a successful communication to take place.
And we live in a society that tends to want us to choose, pick a side.
Do you want to be heavy autonomy and see the world as a threat to
your autonomy or as a benefit to it?
Or do you wanna live in a community and see the world as a threat to
the community or as a benefit to it?
The call to action is to embrace autonomy and community as two opposite
things that are existing in the same place at the same time, duality.
Jim Conrad: When you're doing your seminars and explaining that concept,
another part of your practice and methodology is to make people
aware how they react under stress.
Because we act, react differently when we're relaxed and we have minimal stress.
If we can have certain ideals, certain ways and practices that we do things.
But then when we are under stress, all manner of things begin to occur, including
reflexive thinking, thinking that's been buried back in there for a long time.
But as soon as we become stressed out, boom.
So your methodology is to identify that.
Identify when you're in a stressful situation, but more, more
importantly, look at yourself and, and see how you react under stress.
Russ Hamilton: Yes.
Uh, how do I show up under stress is the first primary question out of three
primary questions in our six box model.
We have a six box model, three primary questions, three primary relationships.
The questions we use as lenses to look through at the three primary relationships
and they can be applied to everything.
The first question in the six box model is, how do I show up under stress?
And of course, as soon as I introduce that question in a workshop, people
kind of glaze over and start thinking about how they show up under stress.
And it's like, the answer's not great, right?
So I can see their faces starting to change and they're like, uh,
you know, am I really supposed?
And I'm like, no, that's not the purpose of the question.
The purpose of the question is a lens to look through at our three primary
relationships, self content, and audience.
If you wanna check this out, you can do this on the Connection Laboratory website,
and we have our six box loud and proud there, and that's the framework that
we step through into all of our work.
Jim Conrad: So the lens looks at, uh, self, content,
Russ Hamilton: Audience.
Jim Conrad: And the audience.
Russ Hamilton: Right.
Those are our three primary relationships.
How do I show up under stress is our first lens.
And instead of going, oh, let me tell you about how I show up under
stress, that's not the purpose of the question in this context.
Instead, people will say, well, what do you mean by stress, Russ?
Because what's stressful for you might be different than what's stressful for me.
And I'm like, fantastic, let's have that conversation.
And then the next follow up question might be which of my skills and abilities
disappear first under stress that I have in abundance when I'm chill and relaxed,
which was a point you were making earlier.
What a lovely thing to explore.
The next follow up question is, can I notice how I show up under stress
without judgment or correction, or do I automatically lay the boots into myself
for being such a jerk under stress.
What a bag of fertilizer.
I showed up that way.
I'm supposed to be a pro, a professional.
But here I am, right?
And now I'm supposed to be the model for all the, no, no, right?
Can I notice how I show up under stress without judgment or correction?
And the target phrase, anytime I notice how I'm showing up under stress, the
target phrase is, isn't that interesting.
Because that one phrase means it's not right, it's not wrong,
it's not good, it's not bad.
It's just how I'm showing up under stress.
Another follow up question we ask is, does my audience know more about
how I show up under stress than I do?
Jim Conrad: And the audience could be anybody.
Russ Hamilton: Could be anybody in front of you.
Could be one person, could be the person across from you on the bus.
Jim Conrad: And that speaks to relationship.
You have to be, you have to be in relationship in order to have an audience.
Russ Hamilton: Right.
But if I have like a tick that I don't know about, and the person
sitting across from me on the bus is like, oh, I hope they're okay.
That person knows more about how I'm showing up under stress than I do, right?
Jim Conrad: Because of our innate inability to see ourselves.
Russ Hamilton: We, we, I can't have your experience of me.
I can't have your experience of me.
I can only have, I'm busy in here trying to manage what's going on.
And the same for you, man.
So, this question, how do I show up under stress is a place that we can just spend
the rest of our lives, and people do.
In our case, we use that question and it pivots into the next question, which,
the next primary question, which is, how do I want to show up under stress?
If I could choose?
I, I can't end stress in my life.
And the fact is I quite like some forms of stress.
I show up really well under it.
I like deadlines and things.
I show up well in game time situations.
I kind of love that excitement.
Other people are like, oh, some kinds of stress are just absolutely debilitating.
But how do I want to, if I could choose.
I wanna honor the stress that I'm under and still find a way, develop
my relationship to stress, to such a point where I can choose how
I show up in this moment instead of my stress choosing for me.
'Cause that's what usually happens.
There's a moment where I just shrug and I step away from the wheel and
my stress takes over and the next thing you know, I'm throwing furniture
across the room and I'm gonna have to rebuild relationships or find a new
job or a new spouse, or who knows what, 'cause I show up poorly under stress.
Jim Conrad: And that, sometimes that reaction is a reflexive response
from something deep inside you.
So, you know, what you're doing essentially is kind of business therapy.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah.
I mean, if that's language that's comfortable for you, I, I'm not
sure I would use that language, but I'm not attached to it.
I, I'm not attached to outcomes so much.
What I'm interested in is introducing these questions and it's this methodology
and then helping people use it.
So if they start attaching their own language to it, fantastic.
If that's, if it's business therapy, fantastic.
Use that.
Jim Conrad: So how does stress then influence through
with the lens onto content?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah.
So if we finish the six box, how do I show up under stress?
Question one, how do I wanna show up under stress, question two.
Question three is, what do I want to get better at?
Right?
If I'm noticing how I'm showing up under stress, if there's a gap between how I'm
showing up under stress and how I would choose to, what do I wanna get better at?
What competencies do I want to get better at, so I can start choosing
how I show up under stress instead of my stress choosing for me.
And people will say, well, Russ, can I put anything on that list that,
uh, I'm trying to get better at?
And the answer is yes.
Can I put my golf swing on the list?
Yes.
If that's what you want to get, like making Thai food, yes.
If that's what you want to get better at.
But if you find yourself in a team lead situation, if you find yourself, you
know, uh, leading a team of people or an organization or a community center
or a family, you might wanna start identifying competencies that will help
you and your team fulfill your potential.
And I say it like it's easy.
Identifying the outcome is easy, but identifying the competency
that's gonna lead to that outcome, oh, that's a good question.
What is the competency?
And when I say competency, what's the thing I can practice?
The, like piano.
Or saxophone or whatever.
Um, so those are our three primary questions.
How do I show up under stress?
How do I wanna show up under stress?
What do I want to get better at?
Our three primary relationships are self, content, and audience.
My relationship to myself.
How's my breathing?
How's my hydration?
How's my fitness?
How's my sleep?
How's my nutrition?
People dedicate their lives to this relationship, and it's a perfectly
noble way to spend your life.
To your point, what is my content?
That's our second primary relationship.
What am I good at?
How did I get good?
What do I make every day?
What artifacts do I create every day?
And what if I don't make artifacts?
What if I just have conversations?
Does that count?
What value am I bringing to these conversations?
What experience or ambition?
That's our second primary relationship, is relationship to content.
Over there in the right hand corner is relationship to
audience, and this is a big one.
I mean, not that all of them aren't big, but does my
audience feel seen by me, right?
Well, first of all, who's watching me at any given moment?
And can I see them?
But does my audience feel seen?
And almost more importantly, who decides if my audience feels seen.
And this is a lovely moment in the workshop where people, you know, make
the thinking face and who decides if my audience feels seen by me.
And people will guess.
But usually it funnels down to, don't I decide if I feel seen?
If you're the presenter and I'm the audience.
Yes.
If you are the audience, you decide if you feel seen.
We all decide if we feel seen.
This is part of autonomy.
Jim Conrad: And how do we know if we feel seen?
Russ Hamilton: Well, that's a great question.
Yes.
What is the, and notice the word, the operative word is feel.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
Russ Hamilton: So it's a sensation of feeling seen, and usually it has
to do with, you know, actual, well, people know when they feel seen.
They, they feel seen by their pets.
They feel seen by toddlers.
They feel seen by members of their family, who kind of accidentally
connect with each other.
There's no methodology involved.
We're just natural connected people, where we're naturally connected to each other.
Um, but we are increasingly in a world where that connection is kind of
marginalized and things that happen out of relationship are emphasized and amplified.
Uh, but does my audience feel seen?
Does my audience feel heard?
Does my audience feel necessary for this presentation?
Does my audience feel invited to inform my process and my content?
What is my feedback process?
What's it really in service of?
All of these questions, under the relationship of audience, imply a set
of competencies that I can practice or not in service of that relationship.
So now we have three primary questions and three primary relationships.
How do I show up under stress?
How do I wanna show up under stress?
What do I want to get better at?
Self, content, audience.
Each of these relationships have their own set of competencies.
It's kind of like playing three instruments at the same time.
Saxophone, piano, and drums, which is why people don't
want to give the presentation.
They don't want to stand up in front of the group.
Jim Conrad: Most people's worst fear is standing up in front of
an audience and giving a speech.
Public speaking.
Now why is that do you think?
Russ Hamilton: So, I think there's a few reasons for it.
One is because you're playing three instruments at the same time.
And the likelihood of failure is high with at least one of the relationships.
And people hate failing.
They are terrified, one of their greatest fears is looking stupid, looking foolish.
Jim Conrad: It's not the, the doing, it's how I will feel if I fail, when I fail.
Russ Hamilton: Not if, when.
Jim Conrad: Yeah, when I fail.
Russ Hamilton: And what that, what's that gonna look like?
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
Russ Hamilton: We have nightmares about it.
We have nightmares, you know, the actor's nightmare of walking out on
stage and not knowing your lines.
It's an enormous primal fear.
Uh, what we do in our workshops is we hold it up and we say, isn't that interesting?
And then we actually practice.
That, in fact, you can play all three instruments at the same time.
You can, you can breathe.
What you have to do is slow down.
And in fact prioritize relationship with the audience.
'Cause once the audience feels seen and heard and necessary and invited,
now you are no longer carrying the burden of a perfect presentation.
You are collaborating in the room.
You're carrying this exchange with everybody who feels seen and heard.
It's a collaborative effort.
Jim Conrad: So the operative phrase then would be the audience becomes the content.
Russ Hamilton: I would say the audience co-creates the content with you.
You have your slide deck, you have your offer, but you've built it
in such a way where you invite the audience to constantly inform it.
And if the audience feels seen and heard, they will, even in
silence, they'll lean forward.
They will give, offer you their energy and their attention.
Jim Conrad: 'Cause the mistake a lot of people do, uh, making presentation
is if they have enough technology and fancy gimmicks and slides, they can
somehow perform an amazing, uh, you know, presentation that will wow everybody.
Yet people glaze over.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah.
Jim Conrad: Because they're being talked at.
They're not being talked to.
Russ Hamilton: It's a different instrument.
If we go back to our six box, people try to improve their relationship
with the audience by investing in their relationship with the content.
It doesn't work.
If I change the content on slide 61 of a 90 slide deck,
that's really gonna get 'em.
Yeah.
It's not, it's not gonna get 'em.
It's a different instrument.
Your piano playing is not gonna get better when you practice the saxophone.
Your saxophone playing is gonna get better, which is a priority.
It's a primary relationship.
You need good content, but it's different than your relationship with your audience.
Relationship with the audience is curiosity.
What color are their eyes?
What color are their eyebrows?
What shapes do you see?
We actually practice this in our workshops.
And people start raising their hand when they feel seen because we
get better as audience members and presenters, and we take turns being both.
And the more we practice, the easier it gets.
What was I so afraid of?
Are you kidding me?
And people who were convinced that they were introverts and terrible presenters
and terrible creators and, and just awful as a contributor, suddenly have
to re-identify themselves and go, what if I'm actually good at this?
'Cause I just got a bunch of feedback from an audience, most of whom I
didn't know, or maybe I work with consistently, telling me that I'm
the best presenter they've ever seen.
And now their world starts to wobble and shift because their whole world,
their whole identity is rocked.
I am not a good communicator.
I've grown up my whole life knowing I'm not a good communicator.
I've always felt that I had things to say, but I, it is never land, I never had
the tools, I've never had the methodology that's gonna help me close that gap and
make it possible, make it collaborative.
And the moment it becomes collaborative and they get feedback from the
audience saying, I can't wait to see every presentation you do, you are so
good at this, that messes people up.
Jim Conrad: And that can be life changing.
Russ Hamilton: Repeatedly.
That's why I have the best job in the world.
Jim Conrad: If you were to give me an example of someone who had a breakthrough,
uh, in your personal experience over many years of doing this, what would it be?
Russ Hamilton: So, I have many to choose from.
The person I'm thinking of is probably, 2016, 2017, I'm in Boulder, Colorado.
I've been working with an organization for six years.
We're doing module two of Connection Lab, demand a call to action.
Uh, we have eight people in the workshop.
One woman gets up on stage.
Uh, I put her in her late fifties, maybe.
She's well dressed.
Um, she looks great.
She's standing on stage, she's breathing, she's confident, and it's amazing.
And so she's gonna, she's gonna do her presentation, whatever that
is, and very quietly, she says, you don't remember me, do you?
And I said, let's assume I don't.
I have a lot of participants in the world.
Can you remind me how we know each other?
And she said, you were here just about three years ago doing module,
doing a bunch of module work with Connection Lab, and she said, I looked
very different in that workshop.
And I said, okay.
And she said, I don't know if you remember me, but I was
wearing dark gray, black clothes.
I was wearing a smock.
I tried to hide in the world all the time.
I had gray long hair.
And I hid behind it.
And I said, I do remember you.
And she said, um, I did module one of your workshop.
And I wept like a child because I was facing my worst fears.
And you helped me see that there were really nothing to be afraid of.
And the more I practiced and the more I took a breath and just filled my
lungs from the bottom up and sought the answer in relationship with my audience.
'Cause I felt so alone and scared on stage.
But when I started to practice confronting what I thought was my
worst fear, actually connecting with people, it wasn't so bad there.
People were kind of rooting for me.
And I kind of had this breakthrough moment, and you asked me to
tie my hair back, and so I did.
I pulled it into a ponytail so people could see me, and I did my presentation
and I did it with, you know, watery eyes and snotty nose and, but you
gave me tissues and I cleaned up and I, I, I, I shared with the group
what I want my leadership legacy to be, and I got a round of feedback
that I'd never heard in my life.
And she said, I was so deeply moved by the first experience,
and I took pages of notes and I stayed in touch with my cohort,
the people I did the training with.
And, um, four months later, my communication got so
much better I got promoted.
Uh, I was a, I was suddenly on a team lead.
I, I'm leading 12 people, you know, in our marketing department.
And she said, I'd never been promoted like that in my life.
And she said, I felt like, you know, I was, I didn't belong
there and it wasn't appropriate.
But the more I did it, and I, I became a communications leader on the team.
Then a year and a half later, I got promoted again.
And she said, as you see me today, I'm in charge of 35 people.
And when I say in charge, I just modeled the practice of communication and
people feel seen and heard and invited.
And when I saw that you were coming back from module two, I
was the first one to sign up.
And I said, you have come a beautiful long way.
And she said, I really appreciate all the, all the things you've introduced me to.
And without your help, I, I would never be here.
So I just, I just wanna say thanks.
Jim Conrad: That's a great story.
That's a great story, Russ.
Thank you for being here.
Russ Hamilton: Of course.
Jim Conrad: Um, give us a plug again for Connection Lab.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab is ConnectionLaboratory.com.
Um, that's our website.
We have the podcast Lab Notes and, yeah, we talk to participants all over the
world who've been through the workshop and talk about their practice with
the six box model and the six modules.
Um, so I encourage people to check out the website, check out, I'm
on LinkedIn and social media.
Uh, we're developing the app, which I'm very excited about.
We're developing the board game, which I'm very excited about,
and I'm finally writing the book.
Jim Conrad: Nice.
Thank you, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Thank you, Jim.
Jim Conrad: The evolution of human language from its ancient roots to
modern complexity reflects the deep interplay between biological, cognitive,
environmental, and social factors.
The development of syntax and grammar allowed humans to move beyond simple
communication, while the diversification of languages into distinct families shows
the adaptability and richness of language.
As humans migrated and adapted to new environments, their languages evolved
to reflect both their changing needs and the complexities of their cultures.
Understanding this evolution provides valuable insights into the
nature of human cognition, social organization, and cultural development.
The evolution of human language is a testament to the adaptability
and creativity of human beings.
The invention of writing allowed language to be preserved and standardized, while
the rise of global languages and the impact of digital communication have
further shaped the ways in which language functions in contemporary society.
As the world becomes more interconnected, language will continue to evolve,
influenced by both technological advancements and cultural exchanges.
The study of human engagement shows how humans think, communicate, and interact
with one another, offering a window into both our past and our future.
That was episode eight of the Conovision podcast.
We heard a story about stories from The Spirituality of Imperfection:
Storytelling and The Search for Meaning by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham.
As well, The Evolution of Human Language: From Ancient Roots to Modern
Complexity by author Bruce William.
And, of course, Russ Hamilton, and the story of Connection
Lab and Russ's stories.
Amazing.
Thank you for listening.
And as always, remember, we are all stories to be told.