Awareness Through Discovery

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel
Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those that they lead. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and in your leadership. And hopefully you’re going to find some better practices to apply in your work directly. I’m Bill Berthel.

Jeremiah Poulsen
I’m Jeremiah Poulsen.

Bill Berthel
Hey, Jeremiah. So glad to have you here. Today we’re going to be talking about a topic I think that’s really important to both of us, this idea of awareness through discovery.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. And awareness through discovery to me means discovering the parts that might have been in the dark, the parts of my understanding that have been maybe even hidden or I’ve hidden them myself potentially, and doing the work to discover those things and then let it out in a way that helps me stay aware throughout the days, weeks of leadership, hobbying or whatever it might be. But I’m curious, as you even say that what does it mean to you?

Bill Berthel
I really like your description of that. That resonates a lot with me. There are two keywords here, awareness and discovery. The idea of discovery excites me. Right. Because there’s a, willingness or a desire to learn, maybe to step into what isn’t known as clearly. I like the way you said it might be kind of in the shadow, it might be kind of in the dark a little bit. Right?

That. Out into the light or shed some light onto that. Right. That discovery, the whole topic of awareness is something, you know, it’s near and dear to us and our mission, raising the consciousness of leaders, teams and organizations. I think consciousness is a way of describing awareness. Right. So we become more aware, more conscious of ourselves, things and others through a discovery process. I think it’s really important that we’re willing to have that kind of discovery process.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Oh, yeah. And I like that. Consciousness, the opposite is unconscious or subconscious, maybe. And we do a lot of work thinking through. Wait. I’m coming to an alertness. I’m coming to a higher level of awareness out of my unconsciousness into my consciousness. So it helps me to see things that I wouldn’t otherwise see. There’s some hard work there, though. I mean, it could be scary. If I’m unconscious of something and I choose knowingly to become conscious of it, then I’ve got to wrestle with, whoa, shoot. What’s there that I might not even know about that could wreck my normal, comfortable life?

Bill Berthel
Yeah, we’re at choice at that place, right. Where we can lean into it a little bit and learn more about it or understand it. We could possibly choose to try to ignore it. I think we do that. I’m not, guilting anybody or putting judgment on that. I’m as guilty of doing that sometimes too, like sweep it under the carpet. I hope it goes away. But we have these natural or intuitive preferences and abilities that we’re maybe more quote, unquote comfortable with than some others. Right. And I think it starts with mindset. And as we discover different mindsets in ways, mental models in which we think that ultimately, we want to behave in, we get to discover more about what are my preferences, how do I like to operate in certain situations, and a little bit of why. Probably it’s made me successful in the past or it’s worked somehow. At least I perceive it as successful. Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen
And, it’s gained things for me that I value now.

Bill Berthel
Safety’s huge. Right. So if I’m not feeling safe, I might not be able to even enter discovery. So these preferences that we have, we might go to first. We might even stay in them a little longer than the situation might be calling for to be even more effective. You know, we do a lot of work around personality, kind of personality traits, or we start putting words or descriptions or even categories to our different abilities, our different preferences, these different mindsets. We’re really starting to talk about or shape parts of our human personality. And we use lots of different models. Right. We use many different tools, but we really focus on using the DiSC instruments.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah.

Bill Berthel
Mostly when we’re doing personality work with leaders and teams and. And I know you know the DiSC intimately.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Oh yeah.

Bill Berthel
What is it about the DiSC you’d want our listeners to learn about or to know about?

Jeremiah Poulsen
First of all, like you said, and you said it well, there’s a lot of different tools out there to assess and grow awareness and discover different things about who you are and who others are. The thing I would really like people to know about DiSC is that it’s one tool in the toolbox. And it’s an incredible opportunity to dig deeper into validating and acknowledging both your personality, your priorities and those of others as well. So if you’re not familiar with the model really quick, you can look this up online. It’s a theory like gravity. It’s been trademarked by a number of different organizations. But the “D” in DiSC, it’s an acronym. The D stands for Dominant Assertive Self-Assured type of perspective. Priority on challenge action results. Fast paced decision making.

Jeremiah Poulsen
The “i” is that influencer, the enthusiastic individual. The one who is more outgoing by default. Maybe referred to as the life of the party at times. sometimes confused with. If you think of life of the party, you think of somebody who may not want to be doing the work but that’s a misnomer. Is that the right word there?

Bill Berthel
It’s not that.

Jeremiah Poulsen
It’s not that.

Bill Berthel
Its actually having fun doing the work.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah, exactly. They want to have a good time while also doing the work. Connection is important for the I. The S is the steady, safety-oriented individual who is concerned with the well-being of people involved with peace, loyalty, consistency over time. They are people-oriented folks. And then the C is the conscientious individual, the analytical. The person who is concerned about quality and the assurance that the information we’re providing is correct and we’ve had enough time to vet it before we provide it more objective in their mindset.

Bill Berthel
Completeness. kind of when you talk about quality, that kind of quality. It’s not that the other three aren’t interested in quality but the conscientiousness has them being very complete with that and very accurate and precise.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. In real important key here to discovering your own perspectives using this model is that we’re all a blending of all four of these. Right. And I know you know a lot about this and have taught it for years. We know it’s not good to stereotype somebody based on what we think they might be. It’s not for labeling, it’s more for what we’re talking about today. Discovering, becoming more aware so that you can acknowledge and validate people’s perspectives all around and your own and your own. Right. And I think if not careful we can actually use this to our own detriment rather than to our own benefit. So it’s really important to understand those cornerstone principles of the DiSC tool that it’s not meant to pigeonhole or stereotype people according to where their dot falls on the circle. It’s a tool to be used to bridge the connection gap. You can almost see in our explanation where I and C would have natural challenge conflict points between their connection. Somebody’s concerned about people getting along, outgoing, want to have fun while they’re going along and then somebody else is very concerned about the quality of the product slowing down to go faster and making sure that everything’s precise and so there’s some natural tension that can arise there.

Bill Berthel
Yeah, same with the S and the D. Share a quick story. so I’ve taken the DiSC I don’t know how many times over 20 years. 10, 12, 15 times over the last 20 years or so. And I’m always an S. I’m always in that S quadrant. Right. Sometimes a little closer to the I, sometimes a little closer to the C. But the S and the D are across from one another. They’re diametrically. I’m not going to say opposed. They’re actually diametric compliments. We look at it that way on the model. I had a real challenging relationship in the workplace. We were both part of the executive leadership team. I knew myself well as this S, you know, steadiness, stability, security. Like, I think of a lot of S words that really kind of orbit around my S like world in the DiSC And the other leader was a. I’m going to say a very strong D, probably with the strongest D I’ve ever met in my life. It could be a real go getter. Very action oriented.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Dominant.

Bill Berthel
Yeah. Very dominance, almost to intimidation, maybe. Some people would say, especially as an S, I would say some of the attributes that maybe are a little edgy or a little scary sometimes for some people. Right. It. It so dominant, real force to reckon with, kind of person.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Harder to validate from your side of the circle.

Bill Berthel
Harder to validate. And I love that you went there, because what I learned was, I couldn’t very effectively validate him from my S preferences and tendencies. When I learned to step into his D space a little bit better, I gained more respect. I actually got to learn more about this guy, and I found out how big of a heart this guy had, how much he cared about people. Right. Here I am in my little S corner, thinking I’m the one caring about the people. Yeah, he’s, like, oriented about getting something done, but everything that drove what he wanted to get done was about people. Right. But I couldn’t see it clearly until I stepped into his D space, authentically. Not as like some scuzzy tactic or something. I needed to kind of mirror some of his language. I needed to be more direct. I needed to be more action oriented than maybe on the kind of stable, steady side. Allowed us to have some connection. It allowed him to come into the S space and really talk about how much he cared about making sure we were secure, making sure that we were creating some stability for our people. It’s just that our preferred styles were getting in the way.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. And what I hear there is not that you were neglecting or boxing up and putting away your own priorities. And you’re bringing them with you and using them to help the other individual see how their dominance and self-assurance is actually benefiting the people involved. So they may be doing it for the intent of that, but the S on the team coming over and seeing things from their perspective enables them to see things differently without shelving their own priorities. Right?

Bill Berthel
That’s exactly it. And in this case, as challenging as it was, wasn’t so challenging that there wasn’t respect, there wasn’t human dignity, there wasn’t values in place. Right. That would be very difficult to overcome. That wasn’t the case. It was really just kind of personality style. It was these preferences in our behavior, even in our language or in our communication, both speaking, well, fairly fluent English, both of us. But not connecting, man. Like just not connecting. Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. yeah. There’s a real power in being able to bridge that gap. And something you said provoked a thought. And I know that we do some conversations and teaching on the idea of psychological safety.

Bill Berthel
Yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen
And what I also see happening in your story is the openness and transparency required. You were in certain ways free to speak up without fear of recrimination, which.

Bill Berthel
Is bit of fear though.

Jeremiah Poulsen
But yeah, yeah, there’s going to be fear there. And there’s a discomfort zone that’s required for growth. Absolutely. And at the same time, a sense of high positive regard for this individual who is wired differently than you, either software or hardware or whatever you want to call it. There’s this choice that you’re making to have high positive regard for that individual and bridge the gap for the sake of the larger organization or the larger team.

Bill Berthel
It is. And I want to be really clear in those moments, I was not feeling like I was purposely or intentionally being agile with this. I was stepping into, a little bit of. Like you said, we have a little bit of each of the four types in us. While the S is most strong with me, there is a little bit of D there that I can turn on or step into. I did that and then upon reflection, recognized, oh, that was something that was beneficial to connect with this guy. That was agility without me realizing it. I think that’s part of the discovery process. I think Aristotle said it. Or Socrates, like, forget which old guy in, a white toga says what. We know the quote as know thyself, but the whole quote is to know thyself is of wisdom, and I often think it’s part of the discovery process are tools like a DiSC assessment or awareness in the moment. But I think reflection is huge. Just getting to reflect on how did that interaction go? What was that discussion like, how did we behave together, which we’re going to get into. This is one part in a three-part series. This is about that awareness piece. But reflection can be a great method, of discovery.

Jeremiah Poulsen
And that reflection can come from taking an assessment, it can come from, journaling practice, it can come from even just inventorying one word that stood out to you about the day, what was provocative, what activated you in some way. And there’s a lot of different ways to get to this awareness. And I would say as we think about what that action is for us, one of the things that I thought of as your sharing the work you did with that colleague is that it started with you validating and acknowledging your own perspective. There’s this really important process that sometimes we jump over to get to the connection or to get to the recognition of somebody else. That is the initial validation of our own perspective. Maybe we’re coming from a state of mind where it’s been. I was going to say it’s been poo pooed. I don’t know if that’s the appropriate language for the podcast, but it’s been shuttered and now we need to take some time to really be with ourselves and validate that. Say, you know what, my outgoing style is something that has been somewhat diminished by the people I’ve worked with, but it’s valid and it’s good and it can be useful for many different things. And I want to use that to connect with people around the room. So in as much as we want to be agile and adapt to the other styles and mindsets around us, that begins with the foundation of understanding who you are and validating that.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely. And having multiple frameworks, pieces of language to help us understand that. Whether it be a dis assessment or a Meyer Briggs type indicator, there lots of them out there and they all offer so much value and insight. And I’ll say the flip side of that, none of them can fully define us as a human being. Right. So getting some experience or getting some, just some of the language or understanding some of those models for ourselves can be really helpful. We don’t even need that completely. I’m probably going to put us out of business saying that. I think we come with what we need. I really do, Jeremiah. I think we come what we need. I Think if we take that strategic pause to prepare, take that strategic pause while we’re with someone and take that strategic pause later to reflect, a lot surfaces for us.

Jeremiah Poulsen
All by itself.

Bill Berthel
Really.

Jeremiah Poulsen
All by itself.

Bill Berthel
Really. Yeah, really, Jeremiah. I think to do this we need to have a willingness for discovery. I think we need to be able to step into a little bit of what I don’t know. Right. Each of us as individuals have a little bit of courage to do that. Right. Cause I think it’s. Well, the unknown can be just that, I guess, unknown and a little scary. So it requires a little bit of courage. But to give ourselves’ permission to get into it and not do it perfectly every time as well. Cause that’s part of learning. I think that’s part of growth and development is. Let me run this experiment. Let’s see what happens with all the care and respect in the world. I’m not suggesting shooting from the hip here. Then reflect on it. Build on what works and change what doesn’t.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah, there’s work to do. I love what you said about this. We’ve got to be willing to step into what we don’t know. So that speaks to that curiosity mindset, the growth mindset. In addition to that, I think there’s a willingness to step into what we can’t control.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely.

Jeremiah Poulsen
There’s a willingness to step into what we can’t influence. There’s a, recognition that there are things in this world, even in me, that I may not be able to control or influence, but I can become aware of them and I can become an agency of self-assurance as I grow in my awareness and find my way and shine a little bit more light so I can go further, faster.

Bill Berthel
So for our listeners, Jeremiah, what would you recommend or suggest as a little trial for them or some call to action, something they could put into play right away in their work, in their relationships, in leadership.

Jeremiah Poulsen
I’m a big fan of self-coaching and I’m a bit biased on this, I know, because I’m a coach, but I like the idea of self-coaching. Asking yourself a reflection question once a day, wherever it works for you. Even if it’s a simple question like what’s on my mind today? What’s on my heart today? Whichever direction you want to take with that. And then write it out. And it could be just literally one word. Take the time, one minute, whatever it takes to write that out. Start there. Start there with a minute of reflection. What’s on my mind? What’s on my heart and then maybe the next step after that. If this is your beginning point, what do I want to do with this? Or where is this coming from? Right. Just some simple, clear reflection on what’s with you, what you’re carrying with you day in and day out. And I think that like we said, in and of itself will grow into higher levels of discovery and awareness so that you can keep moving forward. How about you? What would you say?

Bill Berthel
I love what you said. The self-coaching comes up for me as well in reflection. My favorite two questions I ask myself and sometimes journal, but I usually have this kind of inner dialogue around it, to be very honest with you. I usually ask myself in reflection, how could have that gone worse first? Yeah. And if I get an opportunity to do something similar, how would I nudge it better or how would I improve it? Cause I like starting with recognizing, you know, that it probably went at least mediocre. When I asked myself the question, how could have that gone worse? Y kind of right. Sizes it for me. Cause I can leave something and say, oh, that didn’t go so great or didn’t go exactly. I might beat myself up more than I deserve. And I recognize, oh, okay, yeah, I still got a great relationship there. That didn’t, you know, maybe I could have been clearer. Okay, cool. Now that just led into what would I like to do better next time and how will I be clearer? So I do love the self-coaching on reflection. I don’t want to turn this into commercial, but I think either finding a coach or getting more acclimated with some of these models, many of these self-assessments, some of them are free online like just get discovering, get out there and do some research. You know, what is the DiSC you know, what is the Meyers Briggs and what will it teach me about me? The Enneagram is out there. There’s lots of great assessments. You know, some come with a cost, a little bit of investment. Some of them are out there, a version of them, that are absolutely free. So just start doing some research and discovering. Don’t adopt all that language as a label. It’s not defining who you are completely as a human being, but it will be data points to better help understand yourself and then possibly others.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. If right now people are listening to our conversation going, I want to become more aware. I, want to discover more. Following those breadcrumbs is just in and of itself going to be a great way for them to deliver on those results. We live in a great age of technology and the availability of information. So there’s to be, I know a lot of results from the work.

Bill Berthel
Yeah. Yeah. Our podcast today, as you know, is part one of three pieces, really, around emotional intelligence and how we bring our EI, our emotional intelligence, into everything we do every day. It’s a piece of our Everyday EI offering. In our second piece, we’re going to be talking about how to turn this awareness and discovery outward. Right. More the social piece of emotional intelligence that we get to tune in to recognize others. So we start with self, then we move on to others.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. I’m looking forward. I’ve been thinking about moments where I’ve seen that tuning in to recognize from the place of discovery and awareness to how that’s changed even my approach over the years with recognizing others and getting them in positions of high performance. So I’m excited to talk about it.

Bill Berthel
Awesome. Jeremiah, thanks for this conversation.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah. Thank you for inviting me into it. It’s a joy.

Bill Berthel
Yeah. It’s a lot of fun.

Jeremiah Poulsen
Yeah.

Bill Berthel
And thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at GetEmergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you pick something up, you’re going to apply to your leadership and your work. Let us know. Let us know how that goes. Just reach out to support@getemergent.com or directly to me, bill@getemergent.com or Jeremiah, jeremiah@Getemergent.com. Thanks for listening, folks.