Igniting Flashpoints of Potential: The Transformative Journey of Leadership

Speaker 2: 0:03

This is the Rebel HR podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people's space. I'm Kyle Rode. Let's start the show. Welcome back, rebel community. We are going to have a fun one today. With us we have Tony Martinetti. He is the Inspiration Officer of Inspired Purpose Partners. He is also author of the book Campfire Lessons for Leaders, available now where books are sold, tony. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Well, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me, Kyle.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Well, we're going to have a fun conversation today. Just based upon the brief conversation before I hit record, I think we are kindred spirits around our own little campfire here today, so thank you so much for joining us. I want to ask you I want to start off with a question that I'm always fascinated to hear from somebody who is an author what motivated you to write a book called Campfire Lessons for Leaders, called?

Speaker 1: 1:03

Campfire Lessons for Leaders. Well, for starters, this is not my first book, but it was coming from this place, of realizing that I had accumulated all these amazing lessons from these people who had come on my podcast and shared these stories intimate stories and their lessons that I wanted to share with other people. And at first it was a scary endeavor because I was like, well, how do I really honor them and give them voice, but treat their stories with the care that it required? So the idea of bringing this book together was really daunting and challenging, but also it gave me a real need and desire to share with the world. And, at the core of it, all these lessons are all about helping other people to think differently about their own journey, their own stories that they're telling themselves and how they're looking at their journey through life, so that they connect better with other people.

Speaker 2: 2:11

I think I, I love the, I love the approach and and as I was preparing for this conversation and and you know, looking through some of the uh, the materials that you know, it kind of dawned on me that you know I've had so many important like conversations around a campfire or the metaphorical campfire where it's, you know, just a gathering of people on a back porch or whatever. But there's so many life lessons that like have like resonated and rippled throughout my life and I sometimes you don't even realize it's happening, Right Like it. But but it really shapes us and it kind of took me back to this place of like, kind of this primal place of like. You know it's like caveman days, when you know that's how we passed on information, it was like the first podcast, right. So I'm curious, you know, the motivation for using, kind of the symbolism of a campfire. Help me understand what prompted you to really reflect on that imagery.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Yeah, I love you bring this up, because that's exactly what I honed in on is this idea that I wanted stories that went deeper, that really connected with something very intimate but also profound, and not just surface level, like people coming on and sharing, you know, the surface level stories that they're used to sharing when they meet people. For the first time, I wanted to create a space that had people thinking really, you know, what is it that made me who I am? And I did it through what's called flashpoints, these points in our journey that have ignited our gifts into the world. Um, so I don't.

Speaker 1: 3:53

I know people think, oh, that must be so easy to get people that to that space of sharing. But no, it's not. You have to really intentionally invite people in that you feel are open to this type of a situation and you have to create a space that they feel safe to do so. And you know, again, this concept was something that, for me, was really important, because I wanted to go deeper and hear more about what drove some of these people to be making such an impact in the world and and what created that, the lessons along the way that evolved them into who they are absolutely.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah, I like that you called this out, because this is one of the areas that I, I, you know, I, I.

Speaker 2: 4:40

My theory is that that there's a whole lot of this in our work world, right, and we have these. We have so many interactions with people and we feel like we kind of know somebody, but so much of it is the surface level stuff. You know, it's the hey, how you doing Good, you know you don't actually want to know how they're doing and they don't actually want to tell you unless you have like a deeper level of connection and relationship. But I would also argue like that's also where the magic happens and I think that that's where you know, that's where some of the great leadership moments and leadership lessons can come from, when you actually go a little bit deeper. So I'm curious, as you were kind of going through all of the all of the data that you gathered to write this book, and, as you were reflecting on on some of the lessons in this book, what were some things that that maybe went against your conventional wisdom or surprised you as you were, as you were putting this together?

Speaker 1: 5:42

Well, a couple of things that I'll start with is that, first of all, I didn't realize that the core of this, all it, was about connection. I started to write and you know things evolve, so that's one thing I'll start with and I didn't think of it as this being about connection with others. I thought of it as just, you know, how do we connect with ourselves, or how do we share stories of transformation and what the lessons were? So things started to change in that regard too.

Speaker 1: 6:14

But even more profoundly, it doesn't have to be about trauma that transforms us Sometimes. It's about realizing that you know it's time for you to break a pattern that you've been in, that you know that isn't serving you any longer and that you're meant for more than you have been experiencing. And that is the moment that lights you up and says, yeah, it's time for me to live bigger, to think differently and to lead a different level. And no one is going to take the reins and say you know, here's the opportunity, go do this. Instead, it's really, if it is to be, it's up to me if you will.

Speaker 2: 7:05

I love that. Is that what you mean by flashpoint? Is that the flashpoint imagery that you've got this pattern that almost needs to be like cleansed with fire, to use kind of an interesting imagery? Is that, is that the thinking with the flashpoint?

Speaker 1: 7:19

yeah, the flashpoint is really, uh, you know, if you really think about what a flashpoint is in definition, um, it is, uh, you know, a sudden ignition of fire, um, and that's what it feels like when people go through that moment, and sometimes you don don't know it was until you look at it in hindsight. So when people reflect on these moments, they're like, yeah, that was the moment that changed everything for me. Sure, there's sometimes that there are traumatic moments that we've experienced being on a near-death experience or going through, you know, cancer and surviving cancer, or suicidal tendencies, things like that. So I won't go into that too deeply, but I think the idea is that it doesn't have to be, that it can also be a situation where, you know, maybe you got laid off from a job and you say, how am I going to look at this? How am I going to look at this as an opportunity versus a, a, you know, challenge that has been thrust upon me and now I have to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with it.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Yeah, I love that, that, that context, and I think it's it's really important.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And as I kind of overlay that onto my you know kind of my, my personal life, my professional life, I my you know kind of my, my personal life, my professional life, I think there's been a lot of these, a lot of these flash points, as I as I reflect as I reflect on it, and one of the areas that I think is is really interesting maybe to to talk about a little bit is is the fact that I think many of us get into this, like we get into this flow and this inertia of life and we just kind of like you know, it's almost like we're asleep at the wheel a little bit, and and and.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Then, I think, every once in a while, we look back and we're like we wake up and we have these moments in our lives. We're like wait a minute, why? Why am I doing this? And I think, as as I look at our occupation of human resources at least my occupation or leadership in general I think there's a lot of these things that we do just because we've got this kind of this default operating status, and one of the things that you really talk about is this intentional living versus default living, and so I'd like to maybe talk about that in the context of you know what that means and why it's crucial to understand that as you think about future success.

Speaker 1: 9:54

Yeah, I mean, oftentimes this comes from this place of like. You know, we start off on a path and we've got all these inputs coming at us from different angles, sometimes with well-meaning intentions, you know, I would say most of the time with well-meaning intentions from society, from our parents, saying oh, you know, get a good job, you know, find a career that's going to, you know, take care of your family, and that's great. But sometimes that input does not include the things that you love, the things that you want to do. How are you going to spend the time day in and day out that's going to make you feel fulfilled and make you feel alive? And that's what sometimes gets missed. Living by default is sometimes in that place of okay, well, I'm making a big, a good paycheck and ultimately I could continue to collect that paycheck, but I think my soul will have to live my body for a period of time, collect that paycheck, but I think my soul have to lose my body for a period of time.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Yeah, yeah, been there, but but, yeah, yeah, I, I mean, you know, I think this is a really powerful concept and I think this, this goes, you know, for me.

Speaker 2: 11:15

I started this podcast with the with the intention of trying to figure out how to like, how to, how to manage through challenging times in the context of work.

Speaker 2: 11:22

And but every, you know every, every podcast guest, and the more that I've been in my career, the more it's, it's so much more about that personal journey.

Speaker 2: 11:30

And then, and how you show up in the world, and I and I do think and I think many of us in corporate America could probably agree many times, yeah, you are just collecting that paycheck, right, and you're not necessarily living your truth or hungry for the work that you're doing, or feel like you're making an impact in the world in a positive way, and I think that that's for me, like I just think, like that's, that's just a, that's a travesty, right, like that's a tragedy, right, and if somebody, if you look back in your life, it's, it's, it's just, that's not the way to live, that's not how we're meant to live, right, like I, like I truly believe that and so so I'm curious, as you were, as you were going through the process of writing this book, interviewing all of these, these amazing leaders what are some common themes for individuals that have kind of had that realization, or had that awakening, or realized they were in default? How do we switch to that intentional side of it?

Speaker 1: 12:36

Yeah, first of all, realizing that you are more in control than you think you are, um, that you can create a life of your own making.

Speaker 1: 12:46

But it starts by looking outwards and uh, which I know sounds odd because you think like, oh, maybe it starts by looking inward and finding out what I truly want.

Speaker 1: 12:55

But it's about collecting data in the world around you and saying, when I do things, what makes me come alive, when I, you know, when I interact with my world, and if I'm not experiencing in the work that I'm doing, maybe it's time for me to go out and explore more, have more experiences, talk to more people and in interaction, I start to see that there's there's certain things that I'm seeing as I talk to other people that are making me realize that I'm missing a lot of what I really want and through that process, there might be some dots that you're connecting that will start to say, yeah, this is where I want to lead to.

Speaker 1: 13:42

But there's also a part of this which is to say, when you look back at your earlier life, your childhood or things you've done, there's parts of what you've already done that we sometimes disregard, that we've sometimes disregard. We think, oh, that was no big deal, or oh, that was not. You know that's not important to where I'm going. It was in the past, but there's clues that are lurking in the past that we need to be mindful of.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Oh, I love that. I love that that's a little bit of a like we're going to talk about like pattern shift, right. No-transcript mentioned the, the um, that that you know you have to look back, like look back and gather data and find those moments that like matter to you. And I realized a number of years ago that when I, when I listened to my intuition, my truth pops and there's a couple of those moments and I would call it now I like, I like the term flashpoint, I would call them flashpoints where it's like something really, really profound was happening in front of me and my body said you need to listen, and if I did good, things happened Right, which sounds a little bit woo, woo, right, but like you know, I can, I can point back.

Speaker 2: 15:22

I think there's probably four or five in my life that I can point back to and say, yeah, that put me on the path that I'm on today and that that led to some really really important things Never in the way that I thought it would happen, by the way, but but always in a way that was like really really powerful and profound right and taught me a lot. Not always good, by the way, like sometimes it's like you know, hard but real, no doubt, right. So I think that's a wonderful way to think about it and a little bit of a context shift. So, you know, I think that's one of the things too that as we look at our, our, you know, kind of our our professional lives and and and our personal lives, I think a lot of times you do find that in order to like protect yourself, especially in a job like human resources, where you have to hire and fire and sometimes you're judging people and it's like like it can be kind of there's like a dark side to it, right, it's not always awesome.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Yeah, I think a lot of times a coping mechanism is to compartmentalize and that is to like let's take the personal stuff, that's personal me. Let's take the professional stuff this is as people call me, like HR me, right, and like and like I'm two distinctly different people. This issue of this like surfacy, like pattern, right, we're like at work, people don't really know who you are because you're not really yourself. So how do we kind of think differently about how we show up at work and how do we actually get beyond the surface level interactions in a professional setting?

Speaker 1: 17:00

I just love that you're bringing this up, because this is one of the things that I see the most, and some people say, okay, well, the biggest challenge is, I don't wanna be regurgitating all of my personal life on other people, but the reality is, the more you hold back, the more you feel incongruent with your work, with your work, and you don't want to feel that way. I mean, you're spending a lot of time with work. Why not feel more connected and feel more fully yourself there? Um, but that doesn't mean you have to be, you know, revealing, you know kind of like, dirty secrets about yourself that you know you don't feel comfortable with or that might alienate other people. That's not what we're after.

Speaker 1: 17:43

What we're looking for is ways to share parts of who you are that allow other people to connect better with who you are and that helps them to open themselves up. And so the starting point of this is to say, okay, what are some things about you that make you unique and that make you who you are holistically? For example, I've worked with people in the past who have donated their time at homeless shelters and done work on the weekends that have made them come alive, because that's what they do. That's what they're all about. They're all about serving and they don't share that. And when I asked them to share that part of who they are, or even just kind of like using examples from their outside life to demonstrate points, that helps people to see that they're not just a robot, they're not just the HR person, that they have multitudes to share A part of myself you know, I'll just share one thing is that I'm an artist at heart and that's who I was when I was a child and for most of my young adult life.

Speaker 1: 18:58

And you know, when I bring parts of my artistic self into the work that I do, I feel more alive and other people feel connected to me. Absolutely. What kind of art? Well, now I do glassblowing. Oh, I love glassblowing, yeah, but in the past I used to do painting and drawing and a lot of different types of mediums. But it was really about not just stick figures and what have you. It was more about creating environments and worlds.

Speaker 2: 19:27

I love that and I think you know a very similar journey for me. My medium for art was music and that was like the more digging I do, the more I realize so much of music was nurturing. To me, music filled the needs, the emotional needs, that I had when I was a child. Now it's one of those things that I use it to speak and interact with the world and share my emotional truth with others when it's uncomfortable. It's really interesting that I chose a job where it it's really, really emotional, uh, on a regular basis and I have to figure out how to communicate emotion in a way that's like appropriate, um, and I've started to like, like actually show up in the workplace, like authentically with that. Like like my tattoos are visible, like I talk about music, you know more openly like people.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Like people know I love karaoke when I'm on a business trip, you know like. So now it's a whole thing. Every time I go on a business trip I have to sink area. But but it does, it humanizes. It humanizes your experience, yeah, and it. I truly believe that like art is one of those things that like there's a collective wisdom within it and if we truly embrace that, like art is one of those things that like there's a collective wisdom within it and if we truly embrace that as like as human beings, it helps us all connect more together and I just like it's one of those things that's like I think a lot of times we try to sanitize our lives, but the reality is like the artists in us are just yelling, like trying to get out.

Speaker 1: 21:01

So yeah, and it could be any. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be art, it could be. You know, if you're a cyclist and you just love, you know, doing different paths and doing different things. You know, bring some stories and relate your stories to some things that you know you do outside of work into the work, and then people can relate better to those things as opposed to using stodgy old examples that come from well, when I was doing this thing, you know it just makes it more fun and engaging and people also feel, like I said, connected to you Totally, totally.

Speaker 2: 21:37

And you know I think I'll give a really quick story here like great example, perfect example, almost the exact example you just used.

Speaker 2: 21:45

I was literally at an employee working group and one of the individuals said that she fostered dogs, kind of like one of those goofy HR icebreakers that everybody hates. But that was her example and everybody perked up and looked over. I'm like, oh well, that's cool. And then guess what the conversation was at dinner that night? It was like everybody's like tell me more about these dogs, and then everybody's got their phone on. They're talking about here's all the animals.

Speaker 2: 22:11

And then, and then my favorite part was like so we've, we've got this, we've got a great organization, but we've got a couple of people that have like we've been at the organization forever. They like like very, very tenured and in manufacturing setting, um, pretty solid, uh long tenured plant manager and he had like the cutest cat picture, not a dog person, cat person and so we had a whole conversation about cat people, dogs. But you know, the funny part is it was like at the end, after that dinner the next day, everybody's connected, everybody's engaged. It's like we have built this little like collective uh group and and it was just, it was an amazing experience and I I attribute it to that one fact that that person shared about being fostering dogs and opening that entire line of conversation. And later, after the fact. One of the participants said that was like the best conversation I've ever had at work.

Speaker 1: 23:07

I love that.

Speaker 2: 23:07

So there you go right. It's a flashpoint.

Speaker 1: 23:11

Exactly. I mean, I like that. The idea of like a flashpoint doesn't have to be an individual flashpoint. It could be a flashpoint in an organization's culture that actually changes the way people interact, which ultimately, in the long run and I've, you know, kind of mentioned this earlier is that people think of connection at work as being like oh, that's nice, but that actually has people working better together because they see each other and then they're feeling like this, feeling like I don't want to let other people down and I'd like to see you know what we can do together.

Speaker 2: 23:46

I love it. I love it. Yeah, it was. I just think, um, I, I think it's one of those things where, like and again I'll go back to I just I love the imagery of a campfire and thinking about it in that context, because I think I think, societally, we need this. You know, I think we need this in the workplace. We need to, we need to think differently about how we connect and interact with others, and I truly believe that that this type of thinking and this type of connectivity as a, as a, as a species, will actually help us evolve in the future and and and and overcome some of these societal challenges that that just seem like insurmountable.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Um and so I, and so I really appreciate your work in this, and I think the reality is like, if I have one thing that's disappointing about this, it's like that there's no way that we can distill all of the knowledge that's in this book into like a 25-minute conversation. So I'll just put a call out there that the book is available now. It's Campfire Lessons for Leaders how Uncovering Our Past Can Propel Us Forward. It's available, books are sold, and we'll have a link in the podcast show notes. With that being said, I'm going to transition. We're going to go into the Rebel HR flash rounds. Are you ready? Oh yeah, all right, sounds good. All right, where?

Speaker 1: 25:06

do we need to rebel in our lives? Ooh, we need to have more fun and we need to embrace more fun in general.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Yeah, I love it. I love it, I agree. Like can we just stop taking everything so damn seriously, please? Like, like, oh yeah, we're all on this planet. Let's just let's everybody's take a breath, let's have some fun. I love it, all right. Second question who should we be?

Speaker 1: 25:30

listening to Ourselves first and foremost. We don't listen to ourselves. We think that we take all the advice from the outside world. Sometimes we just going to say what do I really do?

Speaker 2: 25:44

I really really want dude I totally agree with okay. So I I am like, uh, I'm going down this like interesting journey, um, and I and I think I think it's a you know, maybe a little bit midlife crisis, uh, you know a little bit of a you know kind of a spiritual path, but I do, like I think many of us know intuitively right versus wrong. Right Like, as opposed to listening to all this conventional knowledge, that that there is, there is like a collective wisdom within ourselves and we just need to listen sometimes, right, so totally agree, um, all right. Last question how can our listeners?

Speaker 1: 26:19

connect with you. Well, the best place is my website, which is iPurposePartnerscom, and I guess the second place would be LinkedIn. I'm very active there, always posting.

Speaker 2: 26:32

Awesome and would encourage that. We will have the links. Open up your podcast player. Click into the show notes, get connected. Tony, thank you so much for spending just the last few minutes with us and for investing the time and energy to put this book together and to do all of the good work you're doing out there in the world. So thank you very much. Thank you All right. That does it for the Rebel HR podcast Big. Thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR Podcast. Twitter at Rebel HR podcast Big. Thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR Podcast. Twitter at Rebel HR Guy, or see our website at rebelhumanresourcescom. The views and opinions expressed by Rebel HR Podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Baby.