The Power of Realistic Optimism in Leadership

*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. I’m Bill Berthel and this is the Get Emergent podcast. Our team at Emergent has worked with leaders from all different industries at all different levels. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the 20 plus years of our business, is that leadership is a continued conversation. We’re glad you are here. Hey, Jeremiah, thanks for joining me today. Looking forward to this conversation we’re going to have.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Thanks, Bill. It’s an important topic to me.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Bill, do you think we’re overly positive in leadership?

Bill Berthel

Oh, my goodness, yes. In one word, yes. So my TED Talk, I think, as you know, I did 10 or 12 years ago, was really asking leaders to be real. And what I mean by that is not overly positive or overly negative, but to be in that place of realistic optimism. Right. So not to be. At the time, the term toxic positivity was not really circulating yet. But I think we are a little positive washing in some of our leadership work. I do, I do think so.

Jeremiah Poulsen

That’s a great point. Yeah, good job with that one. Well, this is so good.

Bill Berthel

So that’s the thing, right? That’s the thing.

Bill Berthel

So, it was just yesterday I was conducting a workshop for our Leader as Coach offering where we’re training leaders to be more coach like to develop some coaching skills and coaching methods in their leadership. And I can’t remember the exact. The overarching topic was listening, which we say is the heart of coaching. I think it’s the heart of leadership, quite honestly, is to be able to listen well, listen actively, listen deeply. But the story I want to share is that I was almost overperforming, almost overacting to make the act of listening, acknowledging and validating someone. I was practically toxically positive in my example when we were exercising it.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I’m a TED Lasso fan. I love that show. When I first started watching it, I had that sense of like, who is this guy? He’s like, just believe, believe, like his mantra as a coach of the soccer team. Yeah, and I thought, where is this going now? If you know the show, you can see how his character develops more. So it begs the question, what’s the alternative? What’s the alternative to positive or negative or good or bad?

Bill Berthel

So I think. So an alternative or a reframe that was, literally mind blowing to me. And I don’t want to sound toxically positive there or something. Dr. Bruce Schneider, the author of Energy Leadership, suggests a different dichotomy of energy. Now when we’re talking about physical energy, like in physics, the definition of energy is the capacity to do work. That’s important. The capacity to do work. And when we talk about positive and negative in physics, makes total sense. There are positive and negative charges. Chemistry, yes, yes. Makes total sense in that realm. When we’re talking about self perception and human psychology, it falls apart. It actually turns into judgment, or worse, prejudgment, which is the same as prejudice. So instead of the judgment of positive, negative, good, bad, right, wrong. When we’re talking about energy or energetic presence, Dr. Bruce Schneider suggests the dichotomy of catabolic and anabolic taken from biology, taken from metabolism. Anabolism is the cell’s ability to build, to take molecules and make more complex, useful, resourceful molecules. Build, put together, assemble. Anabolic. Not always positive, it’s just simply building, constructing, putting together.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So anabolic can be actually detrimental to the health or well being of the human in terms of metabolism, or the animal can also be detrimental towards the system or the process that’s growing out of control.

Bill Berthel

We can overbuild, we can create inflammation, we can get bloat, right?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

We can overbuild systems. Or in biology, in metabolism, we can overbuild something. Right? We can overbuild our muscle. Anabolic steroids are the building steroids, right? To.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I don’t know, I don’t know.

Bill Berthel

Depends on the goal.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I feel like the.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, well, depends on the goal, right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I would love to have the biggest muscles.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, yeah. Catabolic energies, right. Not negative, but it is a taking apart, a tearing down or a draining.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So that’s the, that’s the burning of the calorie, that’s the, the, the metabolism of the food for fuel. In metabolism terms, right. It’s breaking down both at a molecular level and systematically breaking down the object.

Bill Berthel

So it’s not negative, it’s essential. Right, right. For, for biology, it’s essential for us as, as creatures, all animals and plants, right. They need to be able to break down complex molecules into simpler molecules that the cell can use. So catabolic is sometimes thought of as negative because it’s draining, it can be thought of as conflict or resistance sometimes, but when applied in a resourceful way, it’s positive. So I used to be in human resources and some, of my colleagues lovingly would say I’m the hire and fire guy. Did not like that title. Right. Actually I loved the hire side, I did not love the fire side, but I often thought about it as like that’s the anabolic catabolic in a way, right?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

So I was crazy fortunate that the very first person I had to terminate in a leadership role turned out to be an amazing story. Now the process of letting that person go was horrible because I kind of, I kind of befriended this, this guy. He was a really nice guy. Got to work with him for a couple years. Liked him personally. His performance, even after performance improvement plans and so forth, just couldn’t, just couldn’t get it. Just couldn’t bring him there. And he knew like the writing was on the wall. But you have that, you have that event, you have that sit down conversation and the process of letting someone go. And it was emotional and it was, you know, tear filled and I did not want to do it. Right. It was draining for him to.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Right.

Bill Berthel

It was about nine months later, maybe, maybe a year, I get this call from John and didn’t expect it. Hadn’t heard from him at all and didn’t expect to. It wasn’t a close friendship, it was like a work friendship. Right, so I didn’t expect a relationship after that. And he said, hey, I want to close the loop with you. You did me the biggest favor letting me go that day. He said I was only a few credits away from finishing my master’s in education. I went back to school and I just landed my dream job as an art teacher.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Wow.

Bill Berthel

If I didn’t have that like kind of forcing function of getting thrown back out in the world, I wouldn’t have done this. And I’m in the right place now.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

And so like every time I go into a catabolic conversation, what I think is going to be a catabolic conversation and maybe draining not to positive wash it. I remind myself this might be a very necessary pivotal conversation for me and someone else.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. And it reframes the intention that you set towards the conversation. Say what needs to be broken down here? What are the things that intentionally need to be separated and pulled apart so that the pathway towards the final mission or the next mission, if you’re thinking in terms of the long game, can be accomplished In that case, with John, the separation happened so that he could build toward that thing. So it’s that catabolic state.

Bill Berthel

Yes.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Moving into an anabolic state of building up.

Bill Berthel

It’s really unknown to anyone in the situation until those things unfold.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And we so often fall into the false dichotomy of it’s either got to be good or bad.

Bill Berthel

That’s right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

It’s either got to be the best day or the worst day. And we may not, we might not even think of it that way. But when somebody asks us, hey, how was that meeting? How was the day? How was that conversation you had with John? Good, bad. So breaking that rhythm and starting to think differently about the situation.

Bill Berthel

So they’re not polar. I think that’s where you’re going. Yes, yes, they are not polar. It is a both and of energetic presence, energetic utilization.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

So it’s not just simply a positive and a negative. It’s, what’s the saying, you see things either black and white or as a grayscale. It’s more grayscale leaning than simply black and white. So again, in like the, in the physics world of the capacity to do work, it’s a little bit more black and white. Not completely right, but a little more. If we use that analogy in this sense of really managing the polarity of anabolic and catabolic or. I like to think of it as using discernment instead of judgment. It’s this beautiful, rich grayscale we get to paint in or draw in or play in.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. I think one habit that a leader could embrace is thinking about this. And I’m trying to do this more as we’re even talking about it. I’m thinking, oh, where can I do this better? Is just to simply ask in retrospect, in regular time. Instead of thinking, was that a good meeting? Was that a bad meeting? Was that a good session? Was that a bad session? Think what, what was built up there, what was intentionally broken down there?

Bill Berthel

Yes.

Jeremiah Poulsen

And resist the temptation to go to whether it was good or bad. But what was built up, what was broken down and think about it. Allow it to be the case that something was built up and did it work toward the goals of the meeting of the person of the project.

Bill Berthel

Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I’m thinking about this now as you talked about toothbrushing and habits. I’m thinking about my gym routine now and how often I don’t go there in the habit of anabolic and catabolic behavior that I practice, even personally. But it’s one, one habit that I think of. What’s one that you’d think of?

Bill Berthel

Well, you’re activating kind of a beautiful memory. In an early coaching engagement. I had, I was coaching this, this, this brilliant young man. He was, he was in finance, had kind of an engineering mind and he was very creative really, really neat young guy. He was sharing the story with me of. He had a big family. He had seven children. Seven or eight kids. He had a big family.

Jeremiah Poulsen

That’s big in today’s day.

Bill Berthel

Yes.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, yeah.

Bill Berthel

And he was sharing about his. It was like the second to the youngest at that point in time. He was about four years old. He was like, preschool kind of age. And he’s super inquisitive child. And he was telling me the story about, the conflict that was unfortunately in his home, because the. The child would find the. The screwdrivers and take apart appliances. So he had just taken apart a fairly expensive vacuum cleaner they had bought. Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I’m getting terror right now just thinking about it.

Bill Berthel

Well, so I thought, as the coach, I was doing the right thing by acknowledging him and, and, and validating. I’m like, oh, my gosh, that must have been really frustrating. He goes, no, he goes, you know how beautiful it is to see him take something apart to learn about it. And it clicked. Yeah, right. So I judged it sort of in my validation as negative, frustrating. He was viewing it as, yes, a catabolic activity. That was beautiful. So I sometimes think about, what can I take apart to learn more about in my leadership, in my hobbies? I do that.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Right.

Bill Berthel

What could I take apart? Maybe get down to fundamentals or get down to, like, elements or principles that I would then learn about it better.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I remember when I was. When I was in college, I worked in the shop for all the trucks that were the property of the college. And one day the boss came in and said, hey, you got some downtime. Why don’t you go ahead and take this engine apart? I had never touched an engine in my life.

Bill Berthel

Oh, wow.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Never touched an engine.

Bill Berthel

What an interesting experience. Right? But.

Jeremiah Poulsen

And he’s like, you got, the tools? We need this thing. Basically, it was just busy work. Just take it apart. We’re going to. So I took that thing apart. I just started taking pieces apart and throwing them into a big bin, not

Bill Berthel

even really knowing what they are.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Not knowing what they are. And I was like 20, thinking, like, I have to take this thing apart. I’m gonna throw them in a box. Well, I took it all apart, threw all the pieces in a box and threw all the larger pieces on the floor in the garage. Guy comes back the next day and he’s like, what’d you do? We don’t know what’s where. I’m like, well, you told me to take it apart.

Bill Berthel

Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So I took it apart and, in the process of taking it apart, I wasn’t thinking about how to put it back together.

Bill Berthel

Sure.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So even as I’m hearing that, I’m thinking, well, yes, we want to be people who are appreciating the breakdown process, but at the same time thinking about how we are holding the put it back together

Bill Berthel

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen

episode as well.

Bill Berthel

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So when I think of leaders embracing the catabolic and anabolic, it’s also a sense of what system served us well. How do we need to break it down to serve us better now so that we can move forward with it 100%? it’s kind of like the engines, the, you know, maintenance on the furniture at home, whatever it is. Are we willing to do the hard thing of breaking things down that have served us well so that they can serve us or our teams better in the future organization, or even if the

Bill Berthel

systems aren’t serving us well, we sometimes resist investing the energy that’s needed to either improve them, make them serve better, or make them serve more efficiently, more people, more clients, whatever that is. Because an established system is difficult to shift or change, it typically does require some catabolic energy before we can then rebuild it. William Bridges writes about this in his book Transitions really well that more industrialized Western cultures and societies like to add. They like to go to the next thing. They picture growth and development as a staircase or as a ladder. I think we’re sometimes a little guilty of that in our work, where true, transformation and transitions occur from something ending or something being taken apart and then rebuilt better.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

Right. So I think we can learn something from that idea of going through what Bridges called. He didn’t call it catabolic. He likened it to, a downward curve. And at the bottom of that curve. Right. Is kind of that place of almost like the doldrums.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. What does it call it? The Neutral Zone.

Bill Berthel

He does call it the Neutral Zone, but entering the Neutral Zone isn’t neutral. It’s usually a little painful. Or we might have some concerns, anxieties. There’s a spend of energy to either end something or take something apart.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

What if we were like the four year old with the screwdriver and being super curious, entering the Neutral Zone. We hit the Neutral Zone for a pause. A meaningful strategic pause.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

To ready ourselves to come up out of that curve for the rebuild. So more recently, I’ve actually gone through the catabolic process of retooling my shop with just the essential tools that I have. And what an amazing opportunity. I got to gift some tools to some aspiring woodworkers, to my brother, to some friends. Got to get rid of some junk.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

That’s not in my nature. I am like an add, add, add kind of guy.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Are you a hoarder, Bill?

Bill Berthel

Are you.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I see you on an episode.

Bill Berthel

My wife says I am one life crisis away from being a hoarder. And she might be right. So I hope I never have that life crisis. Yeah, but to have that exercise. Right? Silly story, silly example, but meaningful, because now I actually have a wood shop that I can do work in. I can walk around and be comfortable in. I have bench space now.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Right, right.

Bill Berthel

And I have the tools that I’m cherishing, the ones that I like. If I can say love instead of having three versions of that that I didn’t need.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, right. It’s another great example of how breaking things down intentionally helps us build up in a way that is more suitable and more efficient for the sake of our movement forward. And beautifully, as you’re breaking that down, you’re also saying, who else can I support in their hobbying, in their initiative to build them up?

Bill Berthel

You know, when I wound up with a box full of these things, I’m like, what am I going to do with these? Oh, I can do a cool thing. I can give them to someone who would better use them. Right. But I’ll tell you, that catabolic, that tearing down process, yeah, right, sizing, silly example, right, my wood shop is not easy for me, and I think I view it as negative.

Jeremiah Poulsen

So where do they go? As leaders hear this conversation? What’s the next step? If I’m leading my team and I’m hearing this and I’m going forward, what’s the call to action here?

Bill Berthel

I think it’s a big request, so it’s going to sound simple in a way, but I think it’s big because we are so conditioned to be thinking positive, negative. I think we think good, bad, very quickly. Right. Very readily, I should say we go to, I even change the semantics, but I’m still saying the same thing I say is that was that resourceful or not? It’s still kind of a positive, negative. Right. But I’m changing the semantics, but it’s really kind of coming down to a judgment of, you know, good, bad, right, wrong.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, it does take an under the surface shift of mindset very much, yeah.

Bill Berthel

So I’d invite leaders to go under the surface.

Bill Berthel

And start practicing discernment over judgment.

Bill Berthel

Jeremiah, I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. Love it. I’m grateful for it. Great. For the chance to think these things through.

Bill Berthel

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. And we hope you pick something up from this episode that you can apply, and we hope you’re looking forward to more. Thanks for being here.