Speaker 1: 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 HR community. This is going to be a fun one. Today With us we have Dr Britt Yamamoto. He is the author of the book that is available now, where books are sold. Really excited to dig into it. The book is called the Soil of Leadership Cultivating the Conditions for Transformations. Britt, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Thank you for having me, Kyle. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Well, it's a pleasure to have you on the pod and really excited to dig into this today. Pod and really excited to dig into this today. So I'm really fascinated to dig into this topic because it's a little bit of a different slant on leadership than you would find in many of the books that you read in school or that you would find shiny on a bookshelf. So I'm fascinated to understand what motivated you to write this book the Soil of Leadership.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Well, I first want to acknowledge that you've done an excellent job of using the metaphor by saying that we're going to dig into this right away.

Speaker 1: 1:15

I got dad jokes for days, man.

Speaker 2: 1:20

We'll do our best not to use too many of those in this conversation. So in many ways the book itself is a culmination and a memorialization of the work that I've been doing over the last two decades with leaders from Africa, asia, latin America, the Middle East and over the last five to eight years, more in North America, and learning about sustainable farming and using a lot of those stories and those metaphors to speak to some of the leadership development approach that myself and my organizations take, which is very much an inside-out approach to leadership, so to speak. So maybe I can just start with a sort of a quick story about what I mean when I say the soil of leadership. So this idea comes from my very first experience in learning about farming. So I did not know much about farming growing up. I grew up in Southern California in a beach community where really, if you're talking about growing anything, it was probably the only thing that was. You know being grown was well, at least at that time, illegal and grown in people's, you know, parlor.

Speaker 1: 2:53

I think our listeners can probably fill in the blank.

Speaker 2: 2:55

You probably can fill in the blank, especially if you live longer at the West coast of the United States, but but not did not grow up in an agricultural community. However, my grandparents on both sides were farmers, as many first-generation immigrants, at least at that time, would be in the US, and so, while I was sort of not growing up around it, I sort of had it around me. Which is to say too that for many grandchildren certainly, if not children of farmers, it is very uncommon for especially if they are a small farmer, especially if they're an immigrant farmer, to want their children or their grandchildren to become small farmers as well. Right, that's, the sacrifice that's made, toiling in the sun and in the earth is not to sort of perpetuate that very difficult life. So, all of that's to say I did not grow up around agriculture, but as a young adult I realized at that time that I needed to learn about farming. At that time that I needed to learn about farming A sort of short story of it is that I was very involved in ecological education. I wanted to use our relationship to the natural world to provide and facilitate transformational education at that time for kids, but I realized that I didn't know anything about farming, which in many ways sits at the very core of that relationship between our humans and the natural world.

Speaker 2: 4:30

So short story is that I traveled to Japan, actually for the very first time, to go live on a sustainable farm there in the southern island of Kyushu. And I say it was my first time, which technically is not true because I was actually born there, but my parents were only there for about six months before they returned to the US and where I was raised in California. So it was both sort of a homecoming in some ways, but also, in more important ways, it was for me to understand and to learn about farming. So I went there with very little experience, fast forward, and of course the story itself is sort of articulated in a little bit more detail in the book itself. But fast forward, my very first morning on the farm the main farmer brought me to the field, the middle of the field this was October in Japan and the fields were just exploding with color and food and taste, and it was just amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:37

He said to me, or he asked me this question which would effectively change the whole trajectory of my life at that time, personally, but then certainly professionally, and that question was what's the difference between a conventional farmer and a sustainable farmer? What's the difference between a conventional farmer and a sustainable farmer? And this was me in my early 20s, so I had all of the book answers and all of what I believed to be the right answers and, being a very patient man, he let me finish and said well, those things all may be true, but what you really need to understand is, the difference is that a conventional farmer grows plants and a sustainable farmer they grow soil and that is the difference. And so, of course, I would go on to farm for about six more years, and that framework was very helpful in understanding what I was doing as an actual farmer. And it wouldn't be until later, as I would go on to to build my own organizations and businesses and work more with leaders around the world and helping them to lead their organizations and businesses more effectively, that I began to see that actually, the metaphor was just as resonant when we think about our organizational life.

Speaker 2: 7:01

So if you think about what it means to grow plants, you're focused on the short term, you're focused on what you can see, and it leads you to make certain decisions and it leads you to look at the world in a particular way, right. And what are you doing when you grow soil? Well, you're thinking about the roots, you're thinking in many ways, of what you can't see, so you're living into a different kind of imagination, right. And you're thinking about the long term. So it's a very simple framework, but it's one of these sort of nexus events where, once you start down that path, it leads you to start asking questions and look at the world in a very different way.

Speaker 2: 7:53

So, in many ways, what the soil of leadership is, it's our building on that very simple yet powerful framework of what does it mean for us, in our organizations and our businesses and the way in which we organize ourselves, to be looking at things from a soil-based perspective, right, and especially, I know so many of your listeners are working in the field of HR and you know what does it mean to look at the kind of cultures that we're creating as we are cultivating soil, where so much of our work drives us to think about and you know, to be very clear, like, farmers can't just grow soil, they need to grow plants too, right?

Speaker 2: 8:29

So it's very much a much a both and proposition, but what does it mean for us to think and then, of course, practice along those lines, right, so that very much is the essence of the soil leadership. And so what? What really, to come to your question in this very obtuse way, is to say that to see how this particular metaphor and of course there are others that that that are drawn from this as well but how this particular metaphor is so resonant, and not just in you know a North American HR context, but within a you know a social movement organization in the DR Congo, or within a you know small business in India, or you know you name it. It has this particular resonance where you know. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about why I think that's the case, but it lands in a way that you know people just understand.

Speaker 1: 9:31

So anyway, long answer to your first question, yeah, no, I love it and I love the imagery that that evokes. You know, and I think, really, really I love that. I love that metaphor, that tie-in between you know the sustainability versus you know, soil versus plants. Side note, my grandparents were farmers too, but I'm an Iowa kid, so a lot of growing plants, but it's funny because it still always comes back to the soil. It really does, because it's like, you know, even like the price per acre, it's all about which type of soil. Then you can get down to the.

Speaker 1: 10:11

There's all these different types of soils and name, and what's interesting is so I'm going to nerd out for a second Like, those soils come from the like decomposing roots of the of the plants that were there before. Right, and it's the, you know, it's these prairie plants that like, like the the universe gifted to us where we live and that is now the medium that we have the opportunity to, to grow abundance from Right. But it's so speaks to what I think many of us are trying to do and, quite frankly, many people are looking for, whether it's in your family, in your organization, in your community. You're looking for an environment to thrive, right, like an environment to grow, an environment to bloom. That's right.

Speaker 1: 11:00

We can keep going on these. We can keep going on these like tie-ins, the metaphors are everywhere. Yeah, the metaphors are everywhere. So, with that framing and context, I think it's a really, really, really great lead-in into you know, why is this so important to be focused on versus I would argue, argue much of the focus, as we look at like leadership, development and and organizational development is. It is on the plants, right, it's on the short kind of the short term visible surfacy stuff. Why is it so important to focus on the environment and the soil of?

Speaker 2: 11:43

yeah, no, it's uh. It in many ways it's the sort of the, the pragmatic question, right, like it's like well, it's great, like it's a really beautiful story, but like, why is this important? Um, you know, I say this both with my experience of building and leading organizations and and also sort of working with people who are doing that. And I think in many ways it's important because we have we and I say that in the sort of, you know, broadest sense are kind of done with these conventional forms of leading and organizing ourselves. They just are not working. And while it's very easy to sort of lob that critique and it's much different than thinking about how you actually build something right At the same time, I think that we need new stories, which is to say, we need new stories about how we organize ourselves, how we're creating the cultures that we're doing the work in, how we want to relate to each other in those spaces right, and my experience is that that is not the realm of technical fix, which is especially in my experience in the HR space. It's like we are inundated with technical fixes. Here's a new process or a new technique that's going to help build trust. Trust is the most important thing, or vulnerability, is the most important thing. It sounds like I'm casting aspersions at know, and I think we know a lot of the big names who speak on those terms.

Speaker 2: 13:30

But you know, if we use the plant soil metaphor, those are just plant orientation things, and if you don't have the soil to sustain those plants to grow, then you're just going to have to add implements and external inputs to prop them up. And so it's almost like we're not going to incrementally get there, but we also have to create a transition bridge to get there. So if we look at farming, when you take over a field, if it's been grown on conventionally before, you can certify that as organic. There's usually like a three-year period where it's a transition period where, if you're seeking to farm that organically or at least certify it as organic, there's remediation, there's things you have to do. It's a different kind of short-term thing where you have to sort of like feed the soil. You have to think about cover cropping, you have to think about ways that will help you to get there. But if you just go cold turkey and try to like farm sustainably and soil that's been effectively dirt, which is to say it's denuded of any kind of holding or nutrient you're going to expectantly, you're not going to be able to do anything.

Speaker 2: 14:43

I think a lot of in our organizational life. We have these great plants that if again we're using, they're heirloom, beautiful, tasty. All these things that we put into this dirt and there's nothing. There we have this amazing tool about how we're going to create a trusting team that people are going to open up and be vulnerable. Then we plop it into our work culture and it just wilts away and dies. And we ask, or we maybe say like, oh well, that tool was a waste of time, that was stupid. But then realizing like just there was, there's nothing, there's no holding median to actually like support the growth of that thing, right, um, and so I think it's that that I'm sure your listeners are familiar with, like adaptive leadership as a framework, and just like technical fixes versus adaptive challenges, and just being able to see things as messy, thorny versus like, oh, we can like, fine, all over the place. But I think what it comes down to is I think that we need new stories before we implement new strategies.

Speaker 1: 16:33

So I love that and, as I'm listening to that and I'm sure many of our listeners probably have had the same experience where I'm just thinking through all of these what I call like flavor of the month programs, right, it's like here we go, mission accomplished.

Speaker 1: 16:50

We've got this new, this new tool. It's quote AI enabled and it's going to help us make sure that we recognize effectively and build trust effectively. And you know all these, all these programmatic. You know solutions, all these programmatic solutions. But if you don't have this environment or, in this case, the soil for that to thrive, for that to actually take root, it just fizzles out. And then what happens for an HR professional or any leader, for example and what happens for an HR professional or any leader, for example is you become known as this big talker, but there's no action behind it, right? Because you're just throwing stuff out there, these programs that are supposed to fix everything.

Speaker 1: 17:39

And then you have a pizza party and say we fixed it. And then everybody's like well, it still sucks, that's right. Pizza party and say we fixed it. And then everybody's like well it still sucks.

Speaker 1: 17:48

So it's so, you know I'm so I. This is really resonating, you know, pretty deeply. I've always, I've always argued that you know, hr's job is not to not to do HR really well. Hr's job is to build an environment for the organization to do really well. Right and so and, and that's, quite frankly, just through trial and error of yeah you know, frustration of, of, of doing the flavor of the month type. That's right stuff um so.

Speaker 1: 18:21

So I'm curious, you know what, what for for those of us that are maybe having the light bulbs go off and they're like, okay, yeah, I get it, I need to do a cover crop before you know I roll out this next cool, exciting HR initiative.

Speaker 1: 18:48

This in the context of how to, how to kind of foundationally amend the culture so that it's so that it's ready to kind of accept the change that's necessary Cause, by the way, I totally agree, Like the old paradigm of leadership is just not working. Like it, it it works for a small, like a small minority of people, and I think it like a small minority of people, Um, and I, I think it, you know it, it's been effective at squeezing out profits and you know, and and and things like that, but it's not working for everybody, Right, I think? I don't think anybody would disagree with that statement. So I'm curious, in your work and you know you've done, you've done research on significant, you know significant areas here I'm curious what your perspective is on kind of how we should start to think about how to get there, how to, how to amend the soil yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 2: 19:35

Um, so when, when I was posed this question about plants versus soil on the farm and had the you know, very deep learning around that, after a couple of weeks, inevitably I would ask the second question, which is, you know, sort of to to what you're asking, which is like, okay, great, like you grow soil, but like, how do you grow soil? What goes into growing soil, you know? And um, I had another sort of um powerful framing that was, you know, reflected back to me, which is that it's it's a combination of time, space and relationships time, space and relationships. So that's what goes into building healthy soil on the farm, and, um, I won't get into sort of like what that healthy soil on the farm and I won't get into sort of like what that looks like on the farm. But if you think about some of the ways that we can and should be doing things a little bit differently, whether it's in our individual leadership or how we're even thinking differently about the teams and the ways that we're building culture. So time being the way in which you know I don't have to say this to any hr professionals about, you know, people feeling like their time is is very, very filled up right. I mean there's sort of the bean counting approach to it and the efficiency and all of that um, but even just that it's so oriented toward productivity and the space to reflect, the space to slow things down, the space to discern, especially with the way in which information and stimulation comes at us with the velocity that it does In many ways. The skills that we need now is how do you actually slow things down and like, how do you sift through stuff? How do you actually develop the power of discernment? You know so reflective practice is one of the big parts around time.

Speaker 2: 21:37

A space we talk about is spaciousness, so it's sort of the spaces in between things, and of course in the book I get into this in more detail. But this different way of thinking about how we do things through a lens of almost like not doing, are those spaces in between. I know that sounds very abstract right now and sort of like an interest of time, uh, but the spaciousness as a frame of seeing that as. So, if you think about, like in productivity, which we are so deeply have a deeply internalized what productivity looks like, we have to be doing stuff right to fill up our calendar to fill up our time. We're not doing something, we're not productive. Um, so much so that now, like if you, if you create time for people to rest, if you create time for people to not do things and you quote, even force them to do that, um, people see that as like I'm not productive, right, and so I use the metaphor fallow as a way of talking about this in the book.

Speaker 2: 22:48

So fallow being as a part of farming, where you're taking a field and you're not planting in it to sell and market, so cover cropping or green manures or just letting your soil rest. And that was very hard for me to learn when I was farming, because I was like you can't take that out of production, what are we going to do? We're going to lose money, we're going to do all these things. And I saw that as being out of production. But it wasn't until I could see that actually that is an essential part of production and my whole framing of production was what was getting in the way of me seeing that rest is production. So, in the context of growing, letting that field rest allowed that field to produce. It wasn't a light switch going on or off, it was part of a system in a cycle of production, and so, yes, that is a metaphor, that's a framing, but our work is all about, you know, those metaphors that we have about work, those metaphors we have about leadership, the metaphors we have about what it means to be productive, those all influence our practice.

Speaker 2: 23:52

You know, those stories come from somewhere and so when we work ourselves to the bone or we think that we have to suffer or whatever, like oh, because maybe we have this idea of what it means to be a good worker is like really attached to this story of martyrdom or sacrifice, or like those are stories but they deeply influence our practices, right? So it's like that's why a lot of my work, our work, has really tried to even come back to that place of story where we need new stories to help us reframe our strategies. And there are some beautiful other stories. I don't have to only make it about farming and sustainable farming, but this has a way of landing that is not complicated, it's not intended to be obtuse, it's just intended to be like hey, you know you don't have to like go and read all these, you know thousands of pages, or, you know, do all these things. It's just like we need to shift our perspective Right. And so, anyway, time, space.

Speaker 2: 24:57

And then the last one is relationships. So it's relationship to self, relationship to others, relationship to our work. And you know, for I'm sure, for your listeners, like the piece around, like self-awareness, the piece around intent versus impact. You know just a lot of the ways that we show up in the world and you know, I mean it's so funny that we think that we can work together easily when, like you know, there's nothing more complicated than a human relationship.

Speaker 2: 25:25

Like I have no idea what I, there's nothing I can do that fully understand, like how you see the world right, and what motivates you and whatever. I mean I can try and discern that. But so the idea that we just sort of gloss over that, that, like you know, that relationships which form the very foundation of our work can be just sort of managed, I think, is again like a bit of a sort of you know, it has its, I think, deep roots in some of the sort of Tayloristic ideas of production capitalism, but like we don't have time to get into that in terms of human resources. But yeah, you know, I think, again, these are stories, these are stories about things.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Well, I love it. I mean, I'm hearing like there's just so much inherent truth in all of this. And I think, as we talk about time, space and relationships and I love that statement the space to discern and then as we talk about spaciousness and the space between and the um, you know the requirement of, of rest, and you know I, I, you know I hadn't really thought about productivity in that context where you know, yeah, you know, I mean so many of us it's like, well, I have 30 seconds free, I better respond to you, know I, can I get through three emails? Can I get through two? You know, but the reality is you might be better served to like take a breath, go get a hit of sunlight and then come back and actually like effectively respond to the highest priority items. And then, you know, maybe those emails don't even matter anymore, but it is very much. It's the workplaces and I think, accelerated as we've got to more virtual workplaces, it's become so incredibly transactional that it is about every little ounce of productivity.

Speaker 1: 27:23

But when you reframe productivity and you do that in the context of, well, you have to rest in order to produce, um, you know it's, that's a whole different, that's just a whole different way to think about it, and I and I think about it in the context of leadership and personal development. Self-leadership, you know, that's right. You can read all the self-help books you want, you can go to all the therapy you want you can, you can do all of it, but it doesn't actually stick unless you give it the time and space to stick. That's right. Right, that's right. Yeah, you grow through hard stuff, but you still have to have that spaciousness to reflect and move forward, otherwise you just repeat patterns. Right, that's right.

Speaker 1: 28:05

So if you want to, change and grow and do things differently. You have to have space. It doesn't work any other way. And so, like I'm like like a big aha moment, right, and I'm I would. I'm the first to admit that as a as, especially as a young leader, my assumption was, as a leader, the goal was just make sure everybody stayed really, really busy, right, like, just like, make sure everybody, let's just make sure everybody's plates full so they can never blame me for not, you know. But the reality is, um, giving people more space and and there's all the buzzwords of empowerment, autonomy, you know, you can throw whatever, yeah, whatever else you wanted that actually that allows for more growth and, quite frankly, it's a hell of a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 28:49

So, yeah, I appreciate that, but I love, I love that framing.

Speaker 1: 28:54

I think it's, it's so incredibly important, you know, so I'm, I have to believe that this, this approach, you know it, it's, it's to me, it's, it's almost reminds me that you know it's.

Speaker 1: 29:10

It's like the, the, the truth of being an organism on the planet earth, right, like, yes, you know we are, we're human beings, but we're still, we're still of the earth, right, you know, and and we've got, we, we think we're, we're drastically different than everything else, but the reality is that these metaphors of, of tending and growing plants, they do reflect the human experience, right, and and these systems exist within a natural environment that I think a lot of times we ignore, especially in the world of, of business or organizations, um, organizations, or education, for that matter. And so you know, what are some of the corollaries that we need to be thinking about as we kind of remember our connection to the planet and Mother Earth, and what would the takeaway be for our listeners that you'd like us to kind of maybe reflect on as we think about this and as we go and pick up this book?

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah, Well, there's an idea called biomimicry, where we sort of look to natural systems and the ways in which these natural systems have so much to teach us about ourselves and human systems and the various ways that we move through the world.

Speaker 2: 30:40

And one of the reasons that I personally find so much value in drawing upon those things is it's very, it's very inherently humbling. Right, it's to say that, and again, this is just for me, but the, the ways in which my head and my mind, my intellect, gets in the way of some of the deeper, the deeper purpose that I feel called to, whether it's do the work that I do or connect with people in the way I want to connect with or to be able to share in this uniquely remarkable human experience that we were able to articulate ourselves and share emotions and do all of these things that we do and um. So I think it's not just like an intellectual enterprise to look at natural systems and say like hey, that's the way it works in the world, but also to understand that there's, there are these things that are so much, I mean, that have been going on and there's so much you know greater and and more significant than much. You know greater and more significant than you know, putting together our HR policy, but you know.

Speaker 2: 31:58

I'm sure that that will perhaps trigger a few people. But you know, again, I like to say that you know we should engage in deeply serious work but not take ourselves too seriously, and a lot of my work has been working with social justice leaders and movement builders over these past two decades too. So it's people who are, like, literally their lives are at risk and in danger as a result of the work that they're doing, in danger as the result of the work that they're doing, and yet, right, and there's that, and yet. And so, yeah, I could, I could go on and on about that, but but I think it's it's it's. It's not just the learning from natural systems.

Speaker 1: 32:49

It's also that, that way in which it opens us up to a different way of being, I love that. Yeah, I love that. Biomimicry that's a new one for me. I'm going to go down a rabbit hole tonight and totally nerd out, because this stuff is so. I do think, and I think some of it's come with age, some of it's come with experience, some of it's come with just questioning why are we doing this? Why, you know why, and and you know the kind of the, the very amateur study of human systems and and you know organizational culture and and. The reality is that that so much of it is, you know, just a reflection of the, of the natural systems, that that that we operate within, and uh, there's a lot we can learn if we just slow down and listen a little bit.

Speaker 1: 33:30

So, uh, with that being said, I could, completely. I could keep going for hours and hours and hours. I'm going to pause there and I'm going to say we're just scratching the surface, we're just starting to get into the top soil here. I'm going to keep going with these.

Speaker 2: 33:45

There we go, um, and so again, I'm going to call out um, there we go.

Speaker 1: 33:47

And so again I'm going to call out. I would encourage all our listeners grab the book the Soil of Leadership by Dr Britt Yamamoto. Absolutely amazing conversation. I'm going to shift gears. We're going to go into the Rebel HR flash round. Are you ready? I'm ready, all right, question number one where do we need to rebel?

Speaker 2: 34:11

ready, all right. Question number one where do we need to rebel? Um, well, I kind of alluded to this earlier, but, um, I think I think we need to reject our ideas of production, both as productive selves and productive systems. I'm not saying that production is not important, but I think the idea of what it means to produce is, again, it's deeply internalized through culture and organizational structures and all of that, and I think, in some ways, that alone creates some of the problematic dynamics that exist within ourselves and within our work with others.

Speaker 2: 34:53

So, absolutely, yeah, well, and I think we need to slow down it's slowing down, yeah, it's creating those spaces, it's resting and, um, you know, if you, if you want to see rest as a rebellious act, which is kind of a ridiculous thing, that sort of, that's where we're at. But, um, take a nap, go for a walk, yeah, and that's a radical act yeah, yeah, I love it, I love it.

Speaker 1: 35:31

I, you know, I I just think that's that that's such an important point to this conversation and I, I I guarantee you a lot of listeners are like, oh, there's no way. You know, we look at like cost per hour and all the sorts of things I go back to I like. So my context is for profit organizations. You know the the goal of the organization is to make money, right, but you don't make money if you burn people out, run them off. You have high turnover rates. You know it's miserable to work there. People get hurt, like, and that happens when, when people are stressed out, they're not paying attention, they're unwell, they're not, you know, they're not taking care of themselves and their mental health.

Speaker 1: 36:09

They're not taking time off Like the goal is to make profit, the goal is not to you know, to just count every last penny, like that might not be the way to do it and in the context of letting a field rest that actually helps it be more profitable and productive long term, right.

Speaker 2: 36:27

Sustainably be more profitable and productive long-term, right, sustainably. And again, it's not to suggest at all that these are simple issues that we're dealing with, right, they're thorny and complicated and contextual and they're there for a reason. You know. I firmly believe that some of these problems, or many of these problems that we exist, they're not bugs, they're features, they're the system is functioning in many ways exactly how it's supposed to function. So unless we, like, very consciously shift those things, they're, it's just so. That's why I say like it's not a technical fix. We're not going to technically fix our way out of this thing because the system is working exactly like it's supposed to work.

Speaker 1: 37:12

So I'll live with you, yeah yeah, yeah, all right, we can keep going. This is supposed to be the flash round, so I gotta go, okay. Question number two who should we be listening to? Um?

Speaker 2: 37:26

not to be like overly cute or anything, but I would say no one which is to say that there's so much noise and I don't mean that in an overly pejorative sense but there's just so much stimulation that the opportunity to be still and silent is rare. And I think that takes practice, I think it takes discipline, I think it takes regularity, because there's so much to be found and to learn and to hear within those spaces, and they're not just silence, it's not just, it's not blank space, you know. So, yeah, you know I often to be sort of a bit of a wise-ass when I'm having these conversations, I'll be like you know, why did you write this leadership book? And it's like, well, actually I don't think the world needs another leadership book, it doesn't need another leadership guru, it doesn't need another leadership person out there like telling you, like this is what you need to do, when it's just another form of repackage, something you know, I, I had someone yesterday, actually a friend in sri lanka, say they were talking about simon sinek and they were like he's just taking what buddha and christ and all these people have been saying for millennia and just, you know, reframing it as why or purpose.

Speaker 2: 38:53

It's just really funny. I've been kind of like you know which um, and I like I was the next word, but um, but anyway, there's good stuff out there already, so I I think it's it's. What does it mean to to actually take a step back from it?

Speaker 1: 39:09

I love it, you know, and I it mean to to actually take a step back from it. I love it, you know, and and I think in the context of our conversation, that really, really poignant. Um, you know, I, I do think that there's there's so much we can learn by by listening and and by trusting ourselves and our intuition, right, and it's kind of goes back, not to get too woo woo, but goes back to kind of believing that we are a part of a natural world and that there's, there's, you know that that there are actually natural systems that we've kind of avoided listening to, that we should, we should slow down and listen to as well. So, all right. Last question how can our listeners connect with you and get their hands on the book?

Speaker 2: 39:47

So there's a few different ways. You can, of course, go to any of the platforms where fine books are sold. There is, of course, the Hardbound book, but there's also an audio book, which came out really nice, and I would highly recommend that as well as something that you can walk around with. Also, you can follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram, facebook, and particularly on those two platforms I talk about the book, but I also talk about and share what I call fallow time. We talked a little bit about fallow earlier, and so you can see some of the ways in which I practice fallow. But wellbeing is also a big part of our work and a big part of the soil of leadership approach and sort of practicing wellbeing and how do you like, how does that show up and how do we think and talk about it. So if you're curious about how I do that, you'll see that there as well. But, um, but those are, those are the great ways to, to connect and um yeah, awesome.

Speaker 1: 40:55

We will have a link to that in the show notes, so open up your podcast player. Click on in um really looking forward to uh uh to, to hearing the reaction off the book.

Speaker 1: 41:05

Just a really wonderful conversation. I appreciate the reframing, the approach and, uh, you know, I think this is a, this is a, I think, a powerful conversation on leadership that that reminds us, um, kind of kind of what, what matters and where, where the focus should be. Uh, so I really appreciate you putting the work here and and, uh, I'm looking forward to continuing to follow the work you continue to do, brett.

Speaker 2: 41:32

So thanks for joining us today. Thank you, kyle, I appreciate it and, yeah, I think you and your listeners are doing important work out there and thinking about how we work together better as people. So ultimately, that's what all of our organizational life's about.

Speaker 1: 41:49

I love it. All right, yeah, rebel on, britt. Appreciate your time, all right. Thanks, scott. 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 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.

Speaker 2: 42:26

Baby.