Amiel Handelsman is a seasoned executive coach with 20+ years of experience helping leaders and teams navigate complexity. His clients have included college presidents, C-level business executives, and teams at every level. He is passionate about climate solutions and specializes in helping people deliver what they promise and build highly engaged workforces. Amiel is the author of four books, including Practice Greatness and the free e-books Reimagining American Identity and How To Be An Anti-race Antiracist, and is a frequent guest on podcasts. He holds a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Amiel lives with his wife and two children in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Amiel Handelsman is a seasoned executive coach with 20+ years of experience helping leaders and teams navigate complexity. His clients have included college presidents, C-level business executives, and teams at every level. He is passionate about climate solutions and specializes in helping people deliver what they promise and build highly engaged workforces. Amiel is the author of four books, including Practice Greatness and the free e-books Reimagining American Identity and How To Be An Anti-race Antiracist, and is a frequent guest on podcasts. He holds a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Amiel lives with his wife and two children in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. I have a returning guest today. But today, he’s solo. I have Amiel Handelsman. And he is a seasoned executive coach with 20-plus years of experience helping leaders and teams navigate complexity. His clients have included college presidents, C-level business executives, and teams at every level. He's passionate about climate solutions and specializes in helping people deliver what they promise and build highly engaged workforces. Amiel is the author of four books, including ‘Practice Greatness,’ and the free ebooks, ‘Reimagining American Identity,’ and ‘How to be an Anti-Race Anti-Racist.’ And he's a frequent guest on podcasts. He holds a BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Amiel lives with his wife and two children in beautiful Ann Arbor, Michigan. He also has a new podcast, and the general theme is his conversation about moods. Now, before we jump into that piece because I'm intrigued, what else do listeners need to know about you? What's another kind of fun fact that might emerge at the beginning of our conversation?
Amiel Handelsman 1:20
One of my two sons is obsessed with roller coasters. And so, we might be driving by your house every week due to Cedar Point near Cleveland. Is that what you had in mind, Scott?
Scott Allen 1:32
(Laughs) That's exactly… I have a friend, I should actually have him on the podcast, and he is one of these coaster enthusiasts where -- I have not been on Facebook for about three years -- but for years, when I was on that service, he'd have a sign that said ‘780.’ He'd be in some park in Indonesia with his wife, and his goal is to ride all of these roller coasters. And so, a fun fact is that there's actually a roller coaster near a little farm in my community, in Geauga County, in Ohio, in the United States. So I wrote to him, and I said, “Hey, do you know about this roller coaster?” And he said, “No.” I think he ventured over here, went on the roller coaster, put it into the coaster, there's a registry. an official registry of the roller coasters. (Laughs) So, it's big business, it's big business for some. The coaster enthusiast, right?
Amiel Handelsman 2:33
It's actually a reasonable segue into our topic because my son brings up roller coasters so consistently in any context at any time -- and we could be talking about something completely different -- that I have been, and my wife as well, at what I would call a mood of frustration around this, which is like ‘nothing's working here to shift him off of the topic.’ And, at one point, a few weeks ago, I remembered hearing something about kids and learning, particularly around writing. And if you want your kids to learn how to write, they need to write more. And if you want them to write more, it's helpful for them to write about things that they care about. So I said to myself, “How would that be relevant here, particularly given my own mood around this?” And so, I said I'll have a ‘possiblity conversation’ with Jacob, what if I'm not making a request, it's a what if, what if we were to have an agreement whereby you started doing a whole series of pieces of writing about roller coasters, and, in exchange, I would take you to the roller coaster on the farm near Scott's house, for example, and he loved the idea.
Scott Allen 3:54
(Laughs) Nice.
Amiel Handelsman 3:54
So, part of the reason why I segued that isn't just because it's customary and polite to always segue into your topic, but to point out that this discussion of the moods that we're in in our lives, it's about all of our lives. And I'd like to talk about some of the larger challenges, public and global challenges, or crises in the world. And this involves every dimension of our life because our moods are persistent emotional states that are attached to some assessment of the future, and the mood that we're in creates a particular predisposition for action. And so, we say some moods are constructive and some are destructive. When I was constantly in frustration around my son's roller coaster frenzy, that wasn't particularly constructive, but a conversational shift into a possibility conversation shifted things for us and has ever since, because anytime it comes up, rather than me thinking, “Oh God, here we go again,” I think, “Oh, we're actually talking about writing improvement.” Which is in my sphere of influence.
Scott Allen 5:08
Well, I love the example, I really do. In my household, that would be baseball. And my limitations of what I know about baseball can be very, very frustrating for my son as I ask him, “Now, what is war again? What is that statistic?” And I get the “Oh, how do you not know this yet, Dad?” But I love the kind of conversation that we're about to jump into. You and I had a dialogue about, gosh, it might have been three weeks ago, and we were just talking about some of the global shifts and contextual shifts, and I recorded an episode with Jonathan Gosling -- for listeners, please feel free to check into that episode -- and we were kind of talking about some of these larger contextual shifts, whether it's geopolitical shifts, whether it's digitization, whether it's climate change. And we had mentioned some resources in that episode that have caught my attention. But I'm excited for this discussion because moods, and I think a place where we danced around in the conversation is that it's big business, like a multibillion-dollar business to keep us in a little bit of a state of our mood; agitated, worried, maybe angry, frustrated, and maybe we start there. I know that's a little bit of a shift from where we're going to start, potentially, but let's talk about moods from that perspective, if possible.
Amiel Handelsman 6:38
Well, just you're saying that has me wanting to get online and buy something to quell the anxiety that you've just created. In the old days, it would be to go to the mall. So, you want to start with the influences in our life that pull us or infect us with particular moods, and I think that is a great place to start.
Scott Allen 7:01
Yeah, let's do that. Again, it's big business. It's big business to keep me in a state of agitation. And, I think a few years ago, some of the newspapers were struggling to figure out a model, the media companies were struggling to figure out a model of how to monetize in the digital space. And, I think, in some ways, they've landed on these business models that are very, very effective because human beings are clicking, they're clicking on these things that agitate, or frustrate, or anger or worry. And forget who it was, but they said, “Why is it called the news? It should be called ‘What's wrong?’ And I have this beautiful device to funnel to me the four things that went wrong in Cleveland, Ohio today. And it's difficult to offset that with probably the millions, and millions, and millions of things that went well. And so, it creates this state of anxiety and agitation. And, again, it's big business.
Amiel Handelsman 8:05
Well, I want to acknowledge the evidence for that assessment, the assessment that we're making of the business of news, of commercials. And then, I would also add on folks who aren't really making money, but they're trying to draw attention to big challenges in the world, also, often have an assumption that if we can show people how horrible this is, maybe they'll do something, which is a theory of change, one theory of change. And I want to talk about this at the very outset, from the perspective of that that doesn't evoke a mood of despair around this very phenomenon. And the way I want to do that is to contrast two personal experiences that I've had around the media sphere, particularly online. One of them is 2017, during a particular political event that was happening, and I don't need to get into the details of it. I was very, very engaged on Facebook, and I was fighting with everybody. And I know this because, a year ago, I noticed a podcast interview with someone that I had been fighting with. And I remember I saw his name, and I said, “Yuck.” I couldn't remember where he was on the political spectrum because part of the nature of having a nuanced political view of the world is if you're actually angry, or in a mood of resentment, you're taking on all comers. I was taking on Bernie people, Hillary people, Trump people, or they were taking on me, and I was taking the bait. So, I just want to contrast that with some of the events happening in the world now where I made a commitment to myself that, if I'm going to go online and engage, I'm going to be respectful, I'm going to attempt to bring a sense of acceptance of where people are at well, and really build something positive into that. So, that's sort of an acceptance of the brutal facts of the way that social media works. And then a commitment within my sphere of influence to do something positive. So, I just wanted to, even before laying out the -- and maybe we don't have to lay it out any further, laying out the horrors of the landscape that are all there, at the same time be able to say we have conversational, and mood options available to us.
Scott Allen 10:44
Yes. And I love the intentionality in the presence of mind of that because what's the difference between those two realities for you? Would you answer that? How do you think about those two different experiences? Essentially, what you've done is you've shifted your own mindset and approach, and what have you noticed in those two experiences?
Amiel Handelsman 11:06
Well, I notice that I feel a sense of gratitude now for the people and practices that have supported me to be able to show up differently. And I have the memory of six years ago, of just that grumpiness following me everywhere. And so, that's something that I noticed is different between those two experiences, personally. Also, I've made some choices about where to engage. So, there are one or two particular Facebook groups that are sort of not adult development, but they're kind of like that. Where the people who show up there tend to have the ability to take a wider perspective, and yet, I think we're all challenged to hold moods as an object of awareness rather than to be subject to them. The subject-object move that Bob Keegan has taught all of us, or many of us.
Scott Allen 12:06
Yeah. Well, let's move into this space of moods. I know that the conversation with Meg Wheatley, you listened to it, and you had a couple of reactions. And so, I'd love to go there and see how you're thinking about that conversation.
Amiel Handelsman 12:24
Yeah. I met Meg Wheatley at a workshop in Cape Cod she did in like 1998, or 1999. And I went to it with my dad, so I have a personal connection to her. And I remember what she was saying then, and I remember what she's saying now. And her mood has shifted as the world has shifted. But one of the things that she mentioned, even in the midst of a conversation about the challenges of the world, she said, “Don't get lost in your emotional darkness. Don't get lost in your emotional darkness.” She wasn't saying, “Don't feel a sense of agony, or anger, or despair as an emotion,” saying, “Don't get lost in it.” And what she's doing there is she's describing mood. She's saying, “Have emotions, be attentive to that emotion, not becoming a mood.” And so, that brings up this distinction that we're getting into. One analogy that I heard as I learned about this is that emotion is like the weather, which changes frequently, and mood is like the climate. And even if the overall climate is changing, the climate of Ann Arbor is different from the climate of Austin, where my brother lives; they're different. And so, this has come up a lot in conversations around climate change where I've talked about, gosh, there's a lot of folks in despair. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. And I've had friends of mine say, “I think it's really important to feel despair,” like having the experience of despair when there's something this overwhelming is healthy for the nervous system in the body. And so, the conversation I remember I had with this friend was, “Absolutely. And so, then let's make a distinction between feeling the emotion and having an onus for a month, or a year, or ten years.” So, difference between owning our emotions, or mood, or having them own us, so to speak. And that's a way to think about this. As we talk about this is immediately going to think, “Amiel, I'm in the emotional intelligence business. You're telling me I can't feel grief, or I can't feel anger?” No, feel it, in fact. And then, to what extent is it creating a predisposition for action if it's holding on to me for a long time? And a lot of the folks who know the climate work the best, or the Middle East, or the situation around black Americans and the police, there are a variety of these things, we can get in a sense of resignation or despair where there's nothing to be done here. And that's the assessment that we're making. It's a mental assessment attached with an emotion. And what I have learned to do is to notice when I'm there, and then to say, “What's going on here?” And it's often what else is possible? Or sometimes it's, “Oh, it's time for me to lift some weights, or go outside and throw the football around,” make a shift, and, or have a different conversation. So. I want to be able to… We'll go through some of these different moods, but one of the key points is… And, again, whether this is on climate change, or you could be listening. It could have to do with something going on in your company, or your consulting business, or your relationship with your clients, whatever the case is, say, “Oh, wow, look at this place I'm in, I'm making it an object of awareness.”
Scott Allen 15:47
Yeah. Let me check this really quickly and see if this is resonating for you. So I do some work in organizations right now. And I'm Gen X. So, Gen X, we were all depressed and Kurt Cobain, and latchkey kids, and unreliable, that that was Gen X. And so, I remember living through those narratives. And then, of course, we disliked Millennials for a period of time. And, of course, now the conversation is Gen Z's. And it's really interesting because I'm in organizational life, and I'm with leaders, or senior middle managers, and consistently, I hear those types of things like, “Oh Gen Z.” And it's that ‘Oh.’ It's like this long, kind of really, like, how do I say this? It's a general mood about this whole cohort of individuals. And, at times, the story in their head is, “There's nothing we can do. They all want to work from home with their dog at their feet, and that's how Gen Zs are.” It's interesting because they take off the table, even staying in the place of curiosity of, well, how do we become an employer of choice for Gen Zs? What do we maybe need to own in the fact that we aren't retaining or recruiting and retaining best-in-class individuals? What do we need to own in that? And get curious about it. And stay in a place of thinking and possibilities, versus just a rule that I now have in my head that shuts down all options. And that mood about even the conversation of Gen Zs shuts down all options for a certain faction of individuals. So, I'm constantly trying to push back on that a little bit, but that's hard for folks. So, does that, in a different example, kind of land on some of what you're speaking of?
Amiel Handelsman 17:38
Yeah, it's a great example. And there may be two or three different moods that show up for people. There could be resentment; resentment is the assessment that you've harmed me, and there's nothing you can do to make it better. So, one could have an assessment about an employee, a whole workforce, or even a whole generation. I'm kind of grateful that people aren't mad at our generation, but the flip side is we tend to get ignored and underestimated, and we have a lot of work to do. We're sort of the prime age generation to lead, and nobody's talking about us. So, anyway, I feel a responsibility to have the back of our generation, Gen Xers. We've been ignored and despised for too long. So, you and I are going to make that better here.
Scott Allen 18:20
We are all wearing flannel shirts and listening to Grunge. It was hard.
Amiel Handelsman 18:24
Right. Watching the movie ‘Singles’ over and over again.
Scott Allen 18:29
The movie Slackers.
Amiel Handelsman 18:31
Slackers. Yeah. And the aim, every mood as an aim, the aim of resentment is to punish people. So, there may be some desire amongst those folks to kind of punish Gen Z. What I also want to say about that is something that you are giving a positive example of, which is inviting a different conversation. And I want to just give a name to these because this is a sibling set of distinctions to moods, which is there are conversations for stories and assessments where we tell stories of things that have happened in the past, and we make assessments of people’s situations in organizations. There are ways to do that more skillfully and less skillfully. So, when those executives are having those conversations about Gen Z, one way is to stay in that conversation with them and do it differently, which I imagine you do. A lot of it has to do with grounding and ungrounding assessments, noticing what the standards are when you're making that assessment about the dog, staying home, and all that. And is there countervailing evidence to your assessment? So, there's ways of doing that. It's not easy, but you can do it. Then there's, “Oh, wow. All we're doing is having conversations for stories and assessments. Maybe we can have a conversation for possibility because it opens up a different energy, it shifts one’s thinking, and actually, it can lead us into an action conversation where we're making requests and offers.”
Scott Allen 19:57
Yes, because a solution exists. Now, we might not fix or solve. I might not become the employer of choice in town, but there is an opportunity to go to Snowden and Boone. It's kind of a complex problem, and we can probably run some experiments to move the needle to shift what currently is. And I think it's great leaders that stay in that place of possibility because it can be difficult to keep the group in that place. Because we want to kind of sit back, it's easy, it's simple, I don't have to change, I can kind of commiserate. And how I often phrase it is it kind of takes me off the hook. If I just say, “Huh, nothing we can do, Gen Zs,” that also psychologically takes me off the hook because there's nothing we can do. And now, seven people have agreed with me, and well, what do you do? But how do you stay in that place of possibilities, whether it's climate change, to your point, or some of these other… Because there are probably solutions that exist that could shift or move the needle, we just haven't found them yet. And that's that growth mindset, Carol Dweck, that word “yet.” We're not good enough yet to think in ways that will help shift the energy. And I think, for me, push back if you disagree; I think great leaders have to spend a large part of their time or a portion of their time in that space, staying in that space and understanding, to your point, what kind of conversations are we having? And am I being seduced into just narratives that aren't necessarily true or real?
Amiel Handelsman 21:35
Yeah. And also infected with and subject to moods that are not constructive? So, I think it's quite possible to move a group into new conversations without the awareness of moods. And this set of distinctions, for a good portion of folks, can wake them up. I've seen it happen in friendships and marriages. I saw it happen in my own marriage very early on where I was so grumpy that, at one point -- this is very personal, but going back now almost 20 years -- my wife said something to me like… And she didn't say, “I want to break up with you,” She said, “I don't know if I can have a child with you.” Now, this is coming from a woman who, on our very first date, asked me, “Do you want to have children? How many children do you want to have?” So, if she's going to make that declaration, something's happening here. And I also heard it as like, “I'm not going to stick around with you if you're in this mood.” So, she didn't use this particular language, but I knew what she was talking about. There's a variety of reasons, and I have compassion for myself as to why I was in such a bad mood. Sometimes, having people shine a mirror on the mood we're in and how it's infecting the organization. And so that to notice that, like a cold, diseases, moods are infectious. Constructive and destructive moods can be valuable, particularly when you start to look at how they affect the engagement and retention of employees. It's correlated, if not causal.
Scott Allen 23:15
Well, yes. Oftentimes, as I'm working with middle managers, I believe the work is Herculean; I mean, it is, but my friend, Jonathan Reams, as you know...
Amiel Handelsman 23:28
My friend, too.
Scott Allen 23:30
Yeah. He has a saying that it's always just caught my attention, and it keeps my mind cooking. You may have heard him say it, but “Leaders create the weather.” And I think we could also, rather than use the word weather, we could use mood. And so, to your point, am I intentional? Am I aware of how I'm feeling, honoring that, addressing that, and acknowledging that? And it's not always 70 and sunny, but then, also, to your point, and I love the distinction, I'd never thought of it this way; what is the longer-term pattern? And if the longer-term weather system is just 50 and rainy all the time, yeah, that's a hard person to live with. That's a hard person to have as a parent. That's a hard person to work under if that's the weather pattern or if that's the mood long-term. And so, that intentionality behind, okay, how am I showing up and being able to observe when I'm in this pattern of not showing up? Because, again, that work is so hard in middle management where you're trying to meet a lot of competing commitments and address a number of different priorities, competing priorities sometimes. I think I work with folks where that can be a struggle. And, of course, it can be a struggle for me as well, as a parent and as a partner. It's hard.
Amiel Handelsman 24:50
Yeah. Back to Jonathan's statement, leaders create weather. So, if we think about the weather as the emotional state of the organization today, tomorrow, for this hour, maybe this month, climate generates weather. So, if mood is climate, climate affects the weather, and it might even affect the climate of the organization in the long term. So, it's actually very compatible. Those distinctions are very compatible. And it's just, once I learn that my mood affects yours, if I care about you, and, or I might not care about you, I only might care about what you're producing for the organization -- and let's say that's all I care about, which is true for a lot of people, then I go, “Wow, I'm affecting you, what might I do differently?” And I start to take responsibility for my moods and my assessments in organizations that there's a business case for that. In the world at large, I think there's a moral and ethical case. And as representatives of a generation, again, I'm putting this in somewhat of a moral terms for the moment, in addition to business terms, I feel like our generation Gen X, we've got kids, school-aged kids, both of us, we have a responsibility to our kids, not only to do what we can to create a physical and natural world that they can live in, thrive in, also create moods that we pass down to them that allow them to navigate whatever physical and natural world they happen to see.
Scott Allen 26:29
Yes. I think you could take the word that parents create the weather; coaches create the weather. And, I think if you're in a position of authority, just insert it; teachers. I walked into the classroom, and I thought I loved political science. Then, I met Dr. Jones, and I realized that I didn't like political science anymore. But then there was the individual who I thought I hated math, and this person turned me on to it. That emotional contagion is an important piece of the conversation, for sure. But how else are you thinking about this topic, sir?
Amiel Handelsman 27:04
Sure. Well, what I'd like to do is just walk through a few other moods so people have some of the language. And I'll do it quickly, and I'll just kind of go back and forth. And maybe, if you're listening, when I'm speaking, you can go, “Oh, that sounds constructive, and that doesn't sound constructive,” so I won't lead with that. Okay. So, I mentioned resentment…
Scott Allen 27:24
Wait, are you about to quiz me?
Amiel Handelsman 27:27
There's not any quiz; it's just a little invitation. I don't know, what about a test, is that better? Is that what you're saying? You don't like to waste your time on lots of quizzes, do you want the final exam?
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 27:43
What do we got?
Amiel Handelsman 27:43
Seriously, we mentioned resentment, and that's, again, a persistent emotional state. And I think a lot of us know what it looks and feels like to feel resentful, but there's an assessment, a mental assessment that says, “You've harmed me, and there's nothing you can do to make it better.” And, or, “Whatever harm you experienced, you deserve it.” A very strong assessment in the middle of feeling. And so, when I'm in that, I want to punish other people. And let's go into guilt, which is, in some ways, almost the flip side of that. And here, the assessment is, “I've harmed you, and there's nothing I can do to make it better.” And I want to say that I've seen this mood show up around climate in the environment, which is, “Oh, look what we've done.” And I'm all in favor of that as a feeling. I think there's a more complex explanation as an assessment of how we've gotten to where we are. I don't think a lot of people have maliciously put carbon into the air. Although there may be some companies that have knowingly done that, but in terms of just the general public, I think that there's a more nuanced. And then also, after the murder of George Floyd, to just bring up a whole other conversation, I think a lot of people identified as, “We’re in a mood of guilt,” such that you would hear them, literally, apologizing to people, which has its own distortions. This is something I've written and spoken a lot about. I won't double-click into that, but I just want to note that these moods create distortions. Even something like guilt, like, “Well, I'm taking responsibility,” can create condescension, viewing the other person as happening to the agency. And then, I may not be very effective when I'm in guilt, I make mistakes. There's the mood of contentment or acceptance where I accept what cannot change. I accept what has happened. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it. That doesn't mean I'm going to be inactive and passive and bury my head in the sand; it simply means I accept what has happened. If someone close to me has died, I accept that they have died. If it's clear that we have wildfires coming into our state every so often, I accept that this happens. We lived in the Pacific Northwest for 16 years. And there was a point in time, fall of 2000, where we entered acceptance. This seems like how things are going to roll here, and that was part of the reason we moved. It led to a possibility conversation around moving. There's a mood of gratitude, which is. “Something positive has happened, and someone or something other than me is responsible.”
Scott Allen 30:16
Yes. Can I see that?
Amiel Handelsman 30:19
Yeah. And so, “Here am I, hey, I missed it,” say thanks. And just saying that, both of our faces sort of lit up. There is a mood of resignation, which has its extension into despair, which is like nothing new is possible. Here, interestingly, the aim is to feel innocent by denying responsibility. Like, “Well, that Gen Z, they're just not going to bring it.” I'm basically saying there's no buck stops here; the buck stops with Gen Z, and everything else is their responsibility.
Scott Allen 30:49
Yeah. And they take themselves off the hook, like, “Oh, there is nothing I can do, this is how it is.”
Amiel Handelsman 30:54
And for somebody, a leader who has their own theory of themselves, self-authoring, maybe, or socialized mind theory of, “I'm the kind of person who takes responsibility for things to learn.” For someone to say to me, “You know what? It sounds like, you're actually denying responsibility.” I go, “Oh, wow, that's in conflict with who I take myself to be.” Now I'm in a little bit of a breakdown, I am sort of like, “Whoa, how do I make sense of this?” That could lead to a breakthrough, or I could just keep slamming Gen Z, there's a variety of options here. I want to just mention a few more. One is resolve and ambition. They're similar. An ambition doesn't mean I'm going to be rich and famous; it means, “We can do this, I can do this.” And resolve is. “We will do this.” In some cases, “We shouldn't do this.” And I had resolved to engage in some things recently on social media. This is what I am going to do. Do I know if it's going to have any impact? I don't know. And there are people who have resolved around their child being in a school environment with a teacher that's just not a good teacher. And they're not asking themselves, “Is that going to get better or worse? They're saying, “I'm going to do this.” And the aim is to make things better. Anxiety, something bad is going to happen. Something. Just a variety of different moods around fear, but this one is sort of like, “Something that is bad is going to happen, and my aim is to protect myself and others.” I had this after September 11th, 2001; I was in a mood of anxiety for quite some time. And then, there's a bit of wonder or curiosity, which you evoked earlier, which is, “Yeah, I don't know really what's going to happen here, and I'm curious.” And my aim is open. The last thing I want to say here is resignation and despair, apart from pushing responsibility away from myself, is a denial of the facticity of uncertainty. I'm claiming to know what's going to happen, such that I feel despair about it on an ongoing basis. Whereas with curiosity, it ain't looking good, and I'm not so smart and have such a crystal ball that I know what's going to happen here. And so, in the debate that happens around climate and quote-unquote, ‘race,’ it's often like, “Well, is it despair or is it hope?” Some journalists are locked into saying, “What do you feel hopeful about?” At the end, someone gives a talk, and there are 500 people in the auditorium, and then there's a journalist there to ask questions. And they just go, “Well, could you leave our audience with something to be hopeful with.” Treats the world as comprised only of two modes: Despair and hope. And we've just shown here there are other options.
Scott Allen 33:28
So, as we begin to kind of wind down our time, take listeners through kind of how you think about the ‘now what?” So, you just kind of shared the what, and here's some different ways and emotions that we can have, which can then turn into longer persistent moods. What would be your considerations for leaders? Suggestions, tips. What do we do with that information?
Amiel Handelsman 33:55
Yeah. I won't be able to go through all of them, but for every mood, there are conversational practices that you can bring into your organization, your family, or your group. So, for resignation, I'm just going to stay with that. We talked about the possibility conversation, “What if?” We can also use something called the 15% solution, which comes out of liberating practices, I think, or something like that. And it's. Basically, you invite your team to say, “Assume that you have all the resources you have now and no more, all the responsibility you have and no more; what's your 15% of the solution here?” So it's accepting where you're at. Can you do 15%? That's a shift. Now, for guilt, you might ground your assessment that you've done this horrible thing and go, “Well, wait, what did I actually do?” And how did climate change come about? Or maybe my company's results have gone down, or my favorite employee has left, and I feel guilty. There's an assessment there. What's the evidence for it? What's the evidence against it? I can do it myself. If it was a team conversation, we could do that together. We're bringing some empirical reasoning to what, otherwise, is just a quick judgment. We can also do forgiveness. And we can also make an offer, which is if I'm feeling guilty, maybe because I've lost an important employee, I can make an offer to them, I can make an offer to the people who are their teammates who are forlorn at the loss. Which means understanding what that person's or group's interests are and going, “What can I bring and offer to them to make this better?”
Scott Allen 35:30
Yeah. I think something you said earlier is sticking out for me also is just can you bring into your consciousness what is your emotional state? And how is that impacting others? And observe that. And, to your point with the subject-object, for listeners, a very simplistic way of discussing this is sometimes we are subject to, and sometimes we can step back and observe something. So, I might just be subject to that feeling of resentment and have no idea, or I might be able to say, “I'm feeling a sense of resentment towards that group or that towards that individual; I'm going to get curious about that.” And you can almost observe or look at that emotion. And that seems to be a piece of this as well. Would you agree that being able to that metacognition, being able to be present and mindful of, okay, this is what's going on for me, and being curious about that, and how that potentially is impacting others, and even the types of conversations you're having as a leader.
Amiel Handelsman 36:34
Absolutely. I can notice my own, and I can also notice others and how they might be infecting me with their moods. Sometimes, that's actually easier from a developmental perspective, where I am in my own growth. To notice, “Wow, this other person is just furious, or they’re resigned.” That can be easier to notice at first. And then, it's a growth edge practice to bring in that term and recognize, as Robert Keegan taught us, that that person is generating their own emotiI'm not responsible for it. I don't need to mimic it, I don't need to reject it, I don't need to fix it. And I begin to pay attention to my own body and go, “I'm having my own emotional generation experience.” So, that's the transition from socialized mind to self-authoring mind, using that particular framework that a lot of your guests have disgust. But in the context of moods, it's just noticing right now, this member of my team, it could be my boss, could be a direct report, is in this place, and I can just appreciate it, and accept it and go, “And that's their thing. And maybe the best way that I can deal with them there is by accepting it, but not letting it overtake me.”
Scott Allen 37:45
What are some resources that you found helpful? Obviously, you have your podcast, which is exploring this topic, and I love that. Are there other resources that you can turn listeners on to that you have found beneficial as you've been exploring this space?
Amiel Handelsman 38:01
Yeah, that's a good question. There are a lot of things that I've drawn on, none of which are coming to mind at the moment. There's no single book, for example, that is a great resource that I would put towards this. What I would encourage listeners to do because they already have enough to do, is whatever you're reading or listening to, notice you are talking about moods without using the word. Notice, when you're reading or listening, the mood of the speaker or writer and notice what it brings you into. And I say this, Scott, because, even though I wanted… You wanted me to give you an exam; I don't want to give people homework. Everyone has enough homework to do, it's just pay attention to it with a slightly different lens. That's all.
Scott Allen 38:45
Pay attention. I love it. I absolutely love it. Because, again, in kind of where we started, it's big business to engineer emotions and moods that maybe aren't that helpful for us. Peter Diamandis, he's a futurist, says, “Look, our minds are neural nets; how are you training your neural net?” How are you training it? And that doesn't mean that you're blind and not paying any attention, but that also doesn't mean that you're kind of sucked into the things that probably aren't helping us thrive.
Amiel Handelsman 39:21
Yeah. We don't have quantitative metrics for these things, comparable to I was reading an article about someone who went to Chornobyl, that nuclear plant, I think was in Ukraine, or the former Soviet Union and they measured the water level, the toxicity, and the nuclear toxicity in the water. It was sky-high. And you're like, “Oh, I shouldn't be drinking this.” I don't think we have… And a lot of us depend on quantitative… We don't have quantitative metrics where let's say, I'm watching a Michigan football game, which I want to do. And a commercial comes on, which I typically silence, but let's say I leave the sound on, a little number that says, “90 out of 100, unhealthy. Turn it off or go silent.” That would be super helpful to have some metrics to tell us that. And I think, without those, we learn to notice our own experience what that does to us. And there's some things that just generally, there's social media that just generally do it. And there's certain things on TV and the radio that generally do it. And then we say, I have a choice here; I can switch that. And that's where we bring some agency into the equation.
Scott Allen 40:27
Yeah. Am I intentional about what I'm allowing in? Am I intentional about what I'm putting into motion? It’s such a fun conversation. You'll be back, we'll have another one. I just really, really appreciate how you're thinking about the world and how you're thinking about some of these concepts. And I think they're very, very critical when it comes to this topic of leadership. It's just a critical part of the equation because I think that weather pattern and that climate, to your point, what is the climate. Oof, sir, thank you so much.
Amiel Handelsman 41:02
Thank you. Wonderful to be here. Thanks for the great questions and being in conversation together.
Scott Allen 41:08
You bet. Be well. We'll do it again.
Amiel Handelsman 41:10
Yeah.
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