In episode 61 of the Potential Leader Lab Podcast, we unlock the transformative power of generative leadership and listening to elevate your organizational potential. My expert guest is Brent Robertson of Be Generative, a firm that has gained 25 years of experience helping leaders navigate the most pivotal moments of their careers.

Our Discussion

In the 60-minute conversation, we explore the evolution of leadership into a generative act and deconstruct the significance of curiosity and listening, the two-way catalysts that shape our paths as leaders. We share practical takeaways on how leaders can use these insights to drive meaningful change.

★ Key Topics ★

0:43 - The Evolution of Generative Leadership

3:07 - Exploring Human Systems and Dynamics

6:04 - Unpacking Catalysts: Push vs. Pull

12:00 - The Art of Listening: Beyond Understanding

16:05 - The Unexplored Power of Curiosity in Leadership

26:23 - Balancing Knowledge and Mystery

31:34 - Transformative Conversations: Experiments in Leadership

41:57 - Moving from Unknown to Unknowable

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Find Perry Maughmer

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/perrymaughmer

Subscribe: perrymaughmer.com/podcast

Contact: perrymaughmer.com/contact

Find Brent Robertson

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brentrobertson

Instagram: instagram.com/be_generative

Subscribe: be-generative.com/podcast-1

Contact: be-generative.com/contact-4

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Perry Maughmer believes the world deserves better leadership; that in every human interaction there is the opportunity to either build others up or tear them down; and that leadership is the choice we make in those moments.

These beliefs led Perry to create the Potential Leader Lab. He wanted to offer those who share his beliefs the space and safety to explore transformative ideas, experiment with new behaviors, and evolve into the leaders they were meant to be and that the world needs.

This is a framework he has used again and again with his Vistage peer advisory groups and companies like Turn-Key Tunneling, Convergint, Haughn &  Associates, I Am Boundless, Ketchum & Walton, LSP Technologies, and Ahlum & Arbor.

Perry lives and works on the shores of Buckeye Lake in Ohio, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, and on the beach in Anna Maria, Florida with his amazingly creative wife Lisa. They have 2 rescue dogs and are intermittently visited by their 3 wonderful children throughout the year. Perry & Lisa are living life in crescendo and focused on exploring, experimenting, and evolving their vision of a life they have no desire to retire from.

Copyright 2026 Perry Maughmer

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Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, and I'm your host, Perry Maughmer, where we explore how to create a better world for those we care deeply about by dismantling our delusions and acting our way into a different way of being. Now today on episode 61, we are gonna have a conversation with Brent Robertson on leading as a generative act. So I can't wait to dive into this with Brent. I hope you enjoy the conversation. So Brent, why don't you take me through just in the in the in the stand from the standpoint of explore, experiment, evolve, you're kind of a a living, breathing model of that, especially with your current iteration of be generative. So can you can you kinda walk through how that's evolved for you?

Yeah. Absolutely. And that's a great way to put it, sort of this, you know, ongoing evolution. One of the things I find, fascinating is the power of a good catalyst. And, you know, a catalyst often comes in 2 forms. One form of catalyst would be the kind that pushes you around that shows up on your radar. You didn't see it coming, and it's like it it sort of shows up as, you know, I can't take this anymore and something's gotta change. And then another kind of catalyst which I would describe as a calling, which is extraordinary in the fact that a catalyst like that is something that draws us towards something versus pushing us around.

And I think that's sort of been what's been present for me over my career which is sort of this question in the background that is always sort of nudging at me, keeping me unsettled, keeping me curious, and keeping me moving toward something more. And when I say something more, I mean really like best and highest use and exploring the idea of, like, you know, what am I designed for, what am I here for, and what is the most powerful expression that I can bring into existence based on what I'm knowing and observing and the realms of opportunity in which I find myself. And so that's been sort of there in the background, which is always calling me in the spirit of, okay, where, especially as it relates to leadership and human systems, where would effort in just the right way create the greatest effect? And that really has created a journey where through various iterations of my career, which started in the creative side, I came out of school as a sculptor and as a designer. My first business was an agency focused on high end brand and digital marketing in the heyday of that time period, which I was involved with for a couple of decades. And through that journey, kept asking the question, okay, great, spending time creating these beautiful expressions of the potential of an organization, who's actually there helping them realize that potential and live into that aspiration? And so that led me down the path of really getting fascinated by the dynamics of the human condition in human systems and how is it that, you know, if we apply energy and attention, we become force multipliers inside of human systems that can bring about incredible transformative change in ways that we couldn't even imagine. And so, you know, over that period of time, I came to really pay attention to a number of things, in particular, how organizations use energy, to great effect, to little effect, to dangerous effect. And one one of the things I found to be a theme amongst the highest performing and happiest organizations is the attention and energy they had around the conversations that were happening inside of their organization. Those that paid a great deal of attention to and prioritized a thoughtful design for how they conduct those conversations, and were very inclusive and open to what they included in those conversations were also the same kinds of organizations that outperformed.

And that inquiry invited me to be working with some incredible folks, even, Perry, you included, who've made a significant mark on my work over the years. And really to notice that, okay, well what gives rise to conversations, right? If conversations are what shape our organizations, if conversations are what we talk about is what gets effort applied to it, what gets paid attention to, or what gives rise to conversations. And of course, that really led me to the insight around, well, the foundation in which conversations exist is our listening. And so if we want to have more leverage, if we wanna get more out of those conversations, the ones that shape our lives and shapes shape our organizations, what if we paid more attention to our listening? What if we, developed a more robust, thoughtful, and powerful practice of listening as a foundation for, the conversations that we have, being the quality of our listening is gonna be reflected in the quality of the conversations we have. A little bit of work toward our listening has an a logarithmic effect in the kinds of change that can take place, based on that listening. And that really is what led me to, the development of the generative listening practice, which of course, working with your groups pretty early on in that process of designing that, has led to the Be Generative Organization, which I launched in June of last year, and I've committed the rest of my professional career to, which is really providing advanced listening and leadership programming that goes beyond the traditional fair, particularly designed for the future that we're living into, not the past that we've lived through.

Okay. Awesome. So I have I've made a couple notes because I have so I have a couple of follow-up questions. And one, I wanna go all the way back to almost the first thing you said. You talked about catalyst to push and pull. So and I'm sure everybody faces this. How do we have you ever found, I guess, and and I'm thinking about my own experience because, you know, phenomenologically, that's all I can do is my own lived experience. Right? But there's a there's a discernment to figure out which one it is because sometimes something I've thought of initially as a push ended up being a pull and vice versa.

And it and and it so do you ever run into that where it's like you you it's hard to make that judgment initially or maybe revisit later where, is this pushing or pulling me?

That's a great I love that question. You know, I think it it is certainly murky because the feeling's the same. It's an unsettledness. It's a dissatisfaction. It's a sometimes I can't take it anymore. Something like that can be sort of our first sort of symptom of a catalyst being present. And and sometimes it's a combination of those things, right, where something's gotta change or we're in trouble or or there's a challenge that just showed up on our doorstep that needs to be navigated. And then what can emerge is, why is this so important to me? Why is taking action on this something I'm urgent to do? Why does this matter? That kind of question often unearths lurking in the background is an inquiry, an unexamined assumption, something else that's at work on us that if we can explore gives us access to, there's something more that I'm after.

I often describe it like this. When, like, when we work with an organization, some of the symptoms that we're looking for is the presence of a catalyst, and it and it typically shows up as either I can't take anymore, something's gotta change, or there's a possibility I have a hunch about. I'm not even I don't even have the language yet to articulate it, but there's a feeling about a potential that I really wanna explore. Like, that I'm I'm not done. There's something more out there. There's a potential I see, and I wanna get access to it. I'm not quite sure how. I don't even have the language to articulate what I'm talking about yet.

And that's often the beginning of our work is to really expose those things, and we don't often spend a lot of time having those conversations to really unearth, well, what's the nature of this catalyst? What's at work on us that has us motivated to change? And that's a fascinating thing on its own. But, yeah, the, you know, the initial sort of blunt physical, emotional response, the feeling's kinda the same. Something's unsettled in me. Well, let's unpack and discern, well, what's operating on me right now and what's having influence on me? Some of it, especially with those pull catalysts, there's something deeper going on. It may be some would describe it as a supernatural experience where, I feel called to something. And that those are hard to grapple with. And often, certainly in in the context of your traditional leadership conversation, we don't give a lot of room for those kinds of conversations where we haven't even gotten the language yet to describe what we're talking about. You know, one of my favorite Rilke quotes that comes from Letters to a Young Poet is, much to our chagrin, words are or most experiences are where words have never gone.

And so much of the things that are operating us are precognitive and presentient, and if we can just spend time sitting with those things, we can come to build a relationship with those things, and then of course with that relationship, language emerges. And of course, once things become languageable, then they can communicate, now often in the form of vision, or a dream, or whatever it may be, and once it's language, we can work with it. And that's a lot of the early work that I do with leaders is help them come to the language to adequately describe what's going on and what's at work on them, in the form of a catalyst that can be worked with, can become an aperture for change, can become a vision that others can see too.

Yeah. And I and I think that you you touch on something that's really important. Right? Language. And and, I had a, inter I had somebody on my podcast a while back, Hillary Blair, who's a Vistra speaker as well. And she used this quote, and I forget who it's a who it's who it's, who who said it originally, but, you know, words create worlds. And I think that, you know, David White, the Irish poet and SAS, talks about needing bigger language. And I think that to your point, you you hit on a really a couple of things I wanna revisit, and and one of them is implied. So you said and I love this term, sitting with it.

Right? And and that requires two things. It requires an ability to be non urgent. Right? An ability to sit and not urgently move from one thing to another. And at the root of this, and I want and I think this ties directly into listening. Right? The only way I'm gonna sit with something and the only way I'm going to listen to someone intently is if I am curious. And and to me, there's a spectrum. Curiosity is on one end, judgment's on the other end. And my favorite part of it so I tell people there are 3 things you can't do if you judge.

If you're sitting in judgment, and I don't mean sitting I don't mean the traditional sense. I mean, leaders spend a great deal of their day judging, and I think it's appropriate. We have to is it right or wrong? Is it good or bad? Is it should I you know, so I'm not saying don't judge at all. But when we when we are in judgment mode, we can't do three things that are three of the most important things, in my opinion, we do in our life, and they all begin with the letter l. And those are lead, learn, and love. And we can't do any of those things if we're judging, but in curiosity, we see all of those things. And I would think the the the fundamental piece of listening is I have to be curious, which, by the way, and I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it back to you in a second, but curiosity is heavily linked to humility for me. Right? If I have humility, then I'm naturally curious because I don't know.

Once I know, I don't listen. Yeah. And so what is your experience with curiosity being, at some point, connected to someone's ability or desire to listen?

Oh, boy. Yeah. I hold listening from a place of curiosity as a very elevated state of listening where it's an opportunity to set aside our convictions, experiences, and knowledge to remain open to possibility we couldn't see otherwise. To dig beyond the surface of the language which tends to leave us with agree or disagree with what's being discussed to remain open and curious. You know, going back to something you're talking about that sitting with, a couple of my favorite questions is what's present I'm not acknowledging? What is in the room we're not talking about? And those questions just to sit even with that question, what's present I'm not acknowledging, and being curious about inviting in various things. So oftentimes in our listening, we tend to have a myopic idea that listening has to do with our ears. Well, it certainly does, but that's a tiny narrow slice of our ability to receive. And one of the things that that I teach in generative listening is listening is a full body experience.

What would happen if you bring your full body into it and imagine your body as an instrument to receive and so that invites a possibility of including feelings, sensations, and thoughts. Often our greatest wisdom is being received by us before it even gets into our brain trying to make rational sense of it and those are you know often instinctual intuitiveness, those gut instincts, we get a feeling about something, those are incredibly rich veins of information to say, I'm noticing accompanying this thought is a feeling, that's a flag to say there may be something more to this worth exploring. And I find those are really powerful inquiries to stay curious. I was able to participate in Sherzad's positive intelligence program and he has this great little adage which is, you know, when you're struggling to stay curious, especially with someone that you have a hard time hearing, imagine that there's 10% right about their idea, get curious about what's the 10%. And then the questions will come if you stay in that curious state. But you said something else, Perry, I think that's really important to understand. I didn't understand this until later in my, career and evolution instigated by my mentor at the time where he brought to my attention that that I listen to understand. And listening to understand is, I would say, is given too high a ranking as a form of listening.

Because listening to understand means that the goal is that there's understanding and then knowing. Funny thing happens when we reach understanding and knowing is we stop listening, because now we know it, right? That's why the, you know, the brain's a very expensive organ and so it wants to label things, it wants to, you know, compact the ethereal into known language so that we can then file it away in an efficient system and that's useful. And what's also useful is keeping the desire to have to know, right, to keep the relationship between the knowledge and the mystery alive, and almost those 2 dimensions. In fact, I met someone this weekend when I was in Las Vegas conducting a workshop who really talked about, like his whole being is about, you know, remembering the magic in the world and just listening for the magic, not to understand it, just to appreciate the beauty of the mystery and the magic and the things we don't understand. And, you know, you look at in various disciplines, you know, science being a great one of them, and example by so many things, even recent discoveries we've just made about our universe and dark matter is, you know, the more we accumulate knowledge, the more questions it opens up. And it really opens up that argument. There's a great book and I can't remember the author, it was a rabbi that talked about the ultimate partnership between science and religion where science is all about taking things apart to figure out how they work and religion's about putting them back together to figure out what they mean. And I just find that duality of knowledge and experience and then mystery and curiosity, if you can have a healthy relationship with both and be able to vacillate between those domains, it's such a powerful place to come from.

You made me think of a quote when you were talk it's just the there's a quote. I I forget who said it again, but it was as a as the island of our knowledge increases, so does the shore of our ignorance.

Love it.

Right? Yeah. But so I'm gonna touch on a few things you said. I wanna I wanna go back in here. You define, which is interesting. You actually define the three components of psychological flexibility, Right? Which I believe is the root of leadership. The the root skill we have to develop. So you said, I have to sit with with again, right? I have to sit with my feeling sensations, my thoughts, my emotions. And so psychological flexibility is the ability to sit with all the be present, and I I can accept all of those things without judging them.

They're not good or bad. I can feel them. I can feel the sensations. I can process my thoughts, and I can feel my emotions, but I can still act in accordance with my values towards my goal. Right? So none of those things take me off course. I don't I don't allow those things to take me off course. I simply take in the the input and recognize how am I is my heart rate up? Am I breathing shallow? Are my palms sweaty? Do I am I flood am my cheeks flushing? Am I angry? Am I happy? You know, what am I thinking right now? And all of that's okay, but I can still have that conversation. So I think that's really a part of listening that's it's interesting that you pick that you pick up because I have to be present and not let those things take me away.

I have, there's this great book by Edgar Schein called, Humble Inquiry. And and it's so fascinating because humble inquiry is listening to somebody without the need to to know. Right? It's it's actually listening and just being like a blank page and letting them write on it. And and I I'm accessing, he said, humble inquiries, accessing your own ignorance. And I I found that so profound because I think that, when I talk about humility and then we talk about ignorance, we can't talk about that without vulnerability. And I I gotta believe that's why we resist some of this is our our insecurity around the whole thing as a and tie this back in the leadership. This this western knot this western notion that leaders know everything, they're strong, decisive, all of those things. And so we portray some of this.

Some of what gets in our way is our own I have this, you know, I have this I have this piece of paper up on my door over here, and it I typed it up 9 years ago, and it says, the first step in change is to become aware of our own bullshit. And I think that that's part of this is just acknowledging that that listening isn't a vulnerable act. But I do think at the root of it, some people believe that if I listen and don't talk, I'm somehow vulnerable. So I don't know what you think of that.

Wow. Yeah. You know, it it's one of the things I find stands in the way of a really powerful listening practice is techniques that we, you know, well I heard it's a good idea if I'm the leader I go last. I'm like well, we have to understand something about positions of authority is that to the degree in which I can work with your favor in the way that we relate to each other, great. Also it's important to know that let's say you know you're a person of authority and you've got a team, if they find that there isn't listening on your part for what it is that they really need, they're gonna game you. They'll find a way around it. And so that technique of, hey, I'm just gonna remain quiet and then I'll go last, well everyone knows you're gonna do that and they'll game the system. Every one of us, human beings are incredibly clever and we are tenacious about getting what we want and we're either gonna work with you or around you, and often in unhealthy ways to get at those things, and I think that's an important aspect of being in a position of authority, AKA potentially with a title of leadership, and getting the best of our teams is to get ourselves out of the way so that we're not being worked around, but are, you know, really holding the space where people feel able to speak, you know, their reality, to speak their vision, and and not have it met with, judgment, which, you know, we know shuts those things down pretty quickly.

And it doesn't take a lot of judgment experiences before we don't speak up again.

Yeah. We're we've we, we're pretty smart. Like, we we get that. And from a very young age, right, we're taught very there's a right or wrong answer. We're taught that we squash creativity and innovation out of people in school because we tell them they're wrong. And so we learn quickly that didn't feel good. So I if I don't know the absolute right answer, it's so funny to me. It's so funny to me, Brent.

I had a meeting with a group of, I mean, a group of leaders. And I asked a question, and I'm sure you experienced this. I asked a question, and I get mumbling answers. And heads go down, and I and I bring it up, and I'm like, look, everybody. I I was we were talking about leadership. I said, understand something. I understand the way we were all conditioned as as a youth. But if you walked into an, like a, a kindergarten classroom and the teacher asked a question, every kid in the room screaming out an answer.

They all have an answer. By 6th grade, that same class, 2 people are saying they were raising their hands up. The rest are looking down at their books. And I said, this isn't that. There's no wrong answer. And I and I do think sometimes back to vulnerability, humility, and our ability to fight the conditioning that we've been the social conditioning and educational conditioning is that we don't have to speak a right answer. We actually can just talk about things without worrying about right or wrong, but it I do see and I don't and I'd I'd really like to hear this from you. In the last couple years, it the polarization that I've sensed with people about being able to talk about anything without having a definitive side.

There's no there's no, fuzzy middle anymore where there's room for, you know, civil discourse. You know, in bigger in bigger societal stand of I wanna hear from you and I and I can I can disagree with you, but I don't have to argue with you? Like, I'm not trying to convince you of my point. I'm sharing my point of view. I want you to share yours because god forbid I might learn something. Like, maybe I learned something I didn't know before because I ask leaders all the time, like, when's the last time you changed your mind on anything? Like, if you haven't changed your mind, what does that say?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh, there's a lot in there. You know, all sort of name it as an archetype of listening that gets us in that quagmire, which is listening for fit. And that's a place where we're listening only for what fits our worldview and experience. And so we end up, when we listen that way, and it's very common, and it's actually often when I introduce that concept, people are surprised, like, oh, that's a thing, I didn't even realize That when we listen for fit, the conversation can only end up as a binary, agree or disagree. And so the preponderance of fit conversations have it be that the only conversation possible is to take a side and, listen only to find arguments that support your side, and the other is left to do the same. And we end those conversations often with we agree to disagree, which basically is a cop out to say, we lack the courage to explore a domain of conversation together and so we're just gonna take sides and call it quits.

And, I find that as a lack of courage to actually get vulnerable into, there may be something here I'm not fully understanding, grasping that I could benefit from, tell me more. Tell me more about your world experience that has it be that way. There's something more to this too which I find very dangerous that happens quite accidentally and subtly through the experience of leadership. You know, if you're in a position of authority, often you may find yourself without intentionally doing something otherwise around a lot of agreeability because people wanna please you. That experience can mislead us to believe that our worldview and experience is the worldview and experience. And we forget that everyone else's worldview and experience is as real as ours whether we like it or not. And so some of the most extraordinary forms of leadership are leaders who are eager to hear others' experiences that are so unlike their own and often hard to hear and to include those experiences in, you know, the experience of their own organization. Often kind of showing up like this, like, that is happening on my watch, I'm responsible for this organization and someone's having that experience here.

What we tend to do is be like, that's not true or they don't know what they're talking about or you know whatever it is we sort of gaslight our way out of acknowledging no somebody's actually having that experience. A more humbling position is on my watch am I okay with this And then decide I'm not okay with this, and something's gotta change. Because to know somebody's going home at night, and that's the story they're sharing of the experience of this place, is that okay with me? And I find that to be like a powerful place to really sit and entertain the possibility there may be people that have a very different worldview and experience and can see possibility I can't see because I'm blinded by my own worldview and experience. And if we can get to a place where we're able to include those things, it just simply gives us more access to more possibility and more opportunity. We tend to foreclose on those things because we're calcified in that form of listening, which is I'm I'm listening for and people show up around me with a lot of agreeability. I actually challenge my clients to actually create intentional skeptics and challengers. To say, hey, before you go and fall in love with your idea, have a team ready to beat the daylights out of it and if it still holds up, you may be on to something. And if it doesn't, well great.

At least you discovered it now and didn't invest heavily into it.

Yeah. You just described red teaming. Yeah. Like, the the military concept, and there's a book and there's a whole there's a there's a whole, a movement around it, but it's a red team. Right? It's it's red teaming, which is exactly what you said, which is here's the concept. We have a group of people who not they're not poking holes in it just for fun and not being cynical. They're actually walking it through to try to make it stronger. Like, we're trying to figure out how to make it bulletproof because it's not right now.

And I you said and so there's a there's a couple things I wanna follow-up on. You you you spoke to you know, basically, you spoke to confirmation bias. Like, we we talk to people to seek out things to confirm what we believe. And what I what I tell and you said, we either have a choice. We can we can we can be we can agree or disagree. And I I change that a little bit, and I tell people when we we have to be careful to we have a right to our opinion. We don't have a right to express that opinion as a fact. Because the greater majority of stuff we talk about is an opinion, which, by the way, is fine.

Like, you can have all the opinions you want, but most of the stuff we talk about is not fact based. It's not scientifically proven. It's just our opinion about people or things. And if I express my opinion as a fact, I'm gonna revisit your statement, I believe we leave the other person 2 choices. They can be they can agree with us or they can be wrong. Yes. And that's where we get sideways because neither one of those options is happening. Like, I don't neither one of those options is fun for me.

And we don't allow we don't allow for opinion. We don't acknowledge. Hey, I'm telling you something that is strictly my opinion. Like, all the leadership stuff that I share with people, I tell them it's it's it's descriptive, not prescriptive. Like, I'm sharing with you what my thoughts are. You can disagree and be just as right as I am. Like, there's no Nietzsche said, there is your way, there is my way. As for the right way and the wrong way or the right way or the one way, it does not exist.

And and that's and I think that leads into our need. There's a there's a tool out there. They talk there's a lot of studies done around need for cognitive closure because of our our inability to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. And I think we have to be careful that being decisive isn't a cute word and then of closure where I just wanna be done with it because I can't I can't live in the ambiguity anymore. Because that's what shuts down our listening to to for a great extent in my experience is that that that open loop. Like, I just wanna decide this is what I believe and be done with it instead of, I'm not sure. Like, I don't I'm not sure I know enough to to form an opinion at this point. Like, maybe I should talk to some more people.

So I I don't know how that plays out, you know, for you and how you've experienced that, but I think there's this this willingness to live in ambiguity in certain situations that is required and necessary, and that takes a different skill set than being a decisive leader.

Yeah. There's a there's a lot to what you're sharing. One of the things I find missing that, when I bring it out, people are like, woah, didn't see that, which is really the the 2 domains in which we operate in, particularly when we're leading an organization. One domain is the one that that because it is so prevalent, because we are so practiced at it, because it's everything that anything with a badge proven process is attached to is the field of working in the known. And when we work in the known we're working within the benchmarks of what's already been done. And that arena of effort is very scientific. It's, a place where decisiveness, clarity is present. It's comfortable.

It doesn't make it easy, but it's comfortable to work in that place. But there's another domain. When we go past the benchmark of what we've known and experienced, right, what has been set before as the precedent, then we move into the field of the unknown and unknowable. It is fundamentally the case. When we move beyond what's been known or done, it is an unknown and unknowable field and yet we can work at it. It's just a very different sensation and you know, the the say the swirl of uncertainty is so uncomfortable and we're so taught to have certainty that we don't spend enough time in it to even discover what's there, which is much more in the deeper wisdom realm of our instincts and intuition where it's precognitive. If we can spend more time and and recognize it's unknown and unknowable and anything we're gonna do there needs to be created, that's a powerful place to come from. And in in it can't there's a there's a way in which leadership is expressed there distinctly compared to management where when we're working in the field of the known, we can apply management principles to it, which is really about preserving and improving the status quo.

When we move into the unknown, it's about disrupting the status quo in favor of something better, something more. But it's gotta be invented and created. There isn't a toy box waiting for you. You need to create the toy box in which to build the solution. And there's no proof it'll work. And so when I think about leadership as an existential act of courage, that's where I find you see it in very powerful ways where leadership as a discipline present in an organization is a willingness to open up that space of the unknown and unknowable, which also has a side benefit of leveling the playing field. Nobody can know what they're talking about. We're making up everything.

So great. Everyone's ideas and thoughts matter now and there is no hierarchy anymore and that's a beautiful place. Like and it's as easy as stepping into a conversation about future. It's unknown and unknowable. We could do our best to forecast, but we all know surprise didn't turn out. Right? It's a dimension which equals a playing field because it takes off the table knowledge and experience and opens up this other domain of inventiveness and creativity, which is not a place that is necessarily encouraged nor taught in your day to day either leadership and or MBA program. They don't teach this. The whole if I were to make a change in the school system is sure we need to test for what you know, but we also need to test for how is it that you work in the unknown.

And we're not doing that. And in fact, creative programs in those places in which we exercise those muscles, they tend to be the ones that get shut down first, and what a shame. And so I find, you know, all these things that we're talking about is when we move into that other place, what are we drawing from? And often what we need to be drawing from are deeper things like our beliefs, our values, our commitments, sometimes, you know, our spiritual practices, other things that we may invite into the conversation that don't normally have permission to be in a boardroom. That's where the source is. One of the things that I often do, so there's this concept called the Adjacent Possible. The Adjacent Possible is this idea, it's a mathematical concept, but the idea of the solution is right next to you. If you simply change where you're thinking from, you can see it. And so one of the things that I do often with clients as we're endeavoring to create new possibility, and this is the the hallmark of the Be Generative company is if you want to change your reality or your future, you need to change where you're thinking, acting, and listening from first.

That's the first act. Change where you're listening from and you're gonna see things you didn't see before. So often, like right now I'm working with this really interesting organization that, helps people find employment that have significant cognitive disabilities. And we're working on creating a whole new benchmark for communication. And one of the ideas that we introduced as a new place to think from was imagine you're in the hospitality business. Hospitality being grace to a stranger. Unearned undeserved favor to a stranger. Imagine if that's the business you're in, how would we want to be experienced? How would we conduct ourselves? How would we communicate? And how would we listen? That shifted where they were thinking from completely in a way that we're able to see possibility where there wasn't before.

Not only for how can we be more effective for our clients, but how can we create a healthier environment for ourselves as often those teams are absorbing a lot of trauma and challenge from their clients that rubs off and they take it out on each other as a side effect. Right? So if we're in the hospitality business where we extend grace by default without it being earned, how would that materially change the nature of our relationships? And it was a sea change in how the team interacted with each other and the grace that they gave each other as they go about their business, which is a very challenging field and needed.

Yeah. And I and I think that you you said a a couple things here, and and one of them, I wanna go back and kind of dig a little bit. You talked about how beliefs and and values and all those things aren't you know, we don't usually welcome them in. Right? In in discussions in a boardroom. But here's the thing. Right? I think we can all agree that is it's already there. We just don't have acknowledge it. I mean, it it is what drives us.

I mean, regardless of what I I I tell people all the time if you draw an iceberg, which I'm a horrible artist, but if you draw an iceberg and you have behavior at the top and then you have the ocean, the underneath is the belief. And the problem is all we wanna do is talk about behavior without questioning the underlying belief because the belief drives the behavior. All of my behavior is driven by some belief. Like, if I do this, it's I will get x. I will get y if I do x. That's my belief. Right? And and I believe that that that's why I use the term experiment all the time. And I try to give people it is a little bit what you've what you've talked about.

It's reframing because I tell people your budget for this year, your strategy for this year, your business plan for this year are all experiments. Right? They're all set up as I believe if I do x, I will get y. That's the definition of an experiment. And so but if but if you just looked at it like an experiment and we all accepted that it is an experiment, how does that change our our behavior around what we do? Because now we're not we're we've set a plan assumes a 100% certainty. An experiment does not. And so now I'm free. Right? I'm free to iterate. I'm free to I'm free to say, you know what? That's not working.

Let's try something else. Because if it's a business plan, I'm not free to say that. And and I think that that's really important from an emotional standpoint for us. The the grace to a stranger, like, reframing that that definition of hospitality and saying, how do we how do we wanna show up here? How will we want this to be? That is a very different question than how do we scale this. Right? And and that's where we're talking the, there's a there's this Native American saying this from the longest journey you'll ever take is 18 inches from your head to your heart. Right? And and that's where it all comes from. And I think that I think that's what you've hit on is this this inclusion, and I don't and I I don't want people to go crazy when I say that word because I'm talking about in the literal sense of including these different perspectives that we can't you said it earlier. We can't access it.

Phenomenology tells us I can only access my own lived experience. And you said it earlier, and I think it's so important that we don't have to agree with. We don't have to all of the we we just have to acknowledge that other people have a different lived experience than we do and how how well how much do we wanna welcome that into us because it helps us form a different point of view around our universe. It helps us access things we have no access to. And we're not omniscient, but we can be far more we can lean that way if we include these other people with their lived experiences that vastly differ from ours, and it increases our awareness and our understanding and our likelihood of success for those and those we care deeply about. And I just can't get over how we we can't people can't see that.

I mean, it's it's so powerfully simple. Like, the idea of okay. I have my worldview and experience that has been gathered over my lifetime, and I don't have literally don't have direct access to any other one. What I do have is is indirect access through the relationship with another. The relationship with another is the vehicle in which I can get access to a worldview to experience unlike my own. But it's the condition and health of that relationship and what's available in that relationship is the only means for access. It's indirect, but there it is. And it holds, you know, comes down to just the fundamental belief is, that everyone's experiences of the world is as real as mine is whether I like it or not.

And so let's get curious about, really curious about other people's experiences and what does that suggest? You know, the the the legendary Mel Toomey who I had the pleasure of mentoring with and partnering with for many years before he passed a couple years ago, in his seminal book, Integrating Change, he introduces the concept of what if we took fact off the table? What if we acknowledge that most things don't fit into an Newtonian nice neat model? What if instead we entertained everything as an interpretation? Everything. And then the conversation is, is that interpretation relevant or not to our circumstances? Even like what's the boiling temperature of water? It depends. Depends on what elevation you're at, the density of the atmosphere, you know all these other forces at work that calibrate boiling temperature to different degrees depending on where on the universe you are even on our planet, right? It's a variable and when you're working in the unknown, if things don't fit into fact, true or false or what's fact and what's not fact, it opens up the possibility of what if everything were in interpretation and then that invites the possibility of what if we reinterpreted what we thought was fact based on the current conditions that we're in, Right? Like in any business, benchmarks, the ones that stand out, the ones that we're always shooting for came as a result of certain environmental conditions were present that allowed us to achieve that benchmark that don't exist anymore. Other ones exist too. So based on what does exist, what do we see as possible and how do we accomplish that? And so we'll tend to hold things as well those are facts if we do these things we'll achieve these numbers. No, that's an interpretation. Let's be thoughtful about what are the underlying assumptions we're not accounting for that could influence our ability to do so and then we can recalibrate what's possible. But it's always an interpretation.

My friend Barry Spiegel said it really plainly, anything is possible if we call it an experiment. And so I really love that idea. If we stay, especially when we are being experimental, when we really don't know, It's a wonderful place to say, let's treat it as an experience experiment and the goal is to learn as much as we can. Now, we may get some great outcomes, we may not. There's gonna be things we didn't account for. All of it worth celebrating because that's the point of the experiment. What did we learn and then what can we base the next iteration of that experiment to have more results more in line with what we're looking for? Let's try again. And that gets missed, you know, we hear organizations all the time, hey, we celebrate failure.

I'm like, really? Do you? Are you treating it as an experiment? Are you inviting failure? Is your intention a successful outcome or is your intention to learn? And that's where we run into trouble is no behind it lurking and no one wants to talk about it, there's an expectation. Well, if there's an expectation, then it's already tainted the experiment.

Yeah. I think that it's funny because everybody, if you ask all these companies, they're like, oh, we wanna we wanna innovate. And then you could change that and say, well, so you wanna fail. Because innovation, I mean, 90% of innovation is failure. Right? So you wanna you wanna fail. You wanna fail a lot. No. No.

We don't want that. Well, that yeah. I mean, it's it's just it's just back to your point about we don't welcome these things into the conversation, and I find it fascinating because they're already there. It's we don't wanna welcome them. It's we don't wanna acknowledge them. We don't wanna be open and transparent with somebody and say, yeah. That's why I made this decision because I believe this. Because that's uncomfortable.

Yeah. Right?

Well, those are I I mean, what's what's fun about what you're suggesting is there are the things that we know are at work on us that we're not willing to acknowledge. And then there's an infinite universe of things we don't even know because we haven't done the work to really examine the underlying assumptions that are operating us, that are animating us. That's where danger danger, right? There's all this other stuff we haven't done the work to even examine what's at work on us to know, right? Often I do an exercise where we do it's really intensive where it's very courageous and I'll just explain one dimension of it is what is it from my past I'm making present? And how is that influencing me right now? Wow, there's this thing that happened to me when I was 15 and I still have it show up even though it was an experience that happened then and it was so traumatizing that I imagine it's gonna continue to happen even though it never has. But it's still present right now because I'm making it present. What are my ideas about the future that I'm bringing into the present that I'm aware of or unaware of? And am I able to, thoughtfully using my prefrontal cortex, manage those things so that they don't get in the way of the conversation or the possibility. And that's deep work, but that's where our, it all starts with am I willing to exercise advancing my awareness of myself? And and then with that, it gives us more access to choice about our state of being as we show up in these conversations.

Yeah. And I think that that re we we go back to some basic stuff like vulnerability. Like, I I and I I love the term. I love when you said unknown and unknowable because unknown I think people, I just I can't help but remember Donald Rumsfeld with the unknown unknowns. Like, I love that little speech he gave. Right? But the, if you say unknown to somebody, it feels like, well, we can know it. But when used from unknowable, I think people get squirrelly. Right? Because that that's very it's like, well, no.

No. We can know. Well, maybe it's meant to be unknowable. There's a and you said some of this stuff earlier, like the mystical side of this. Like, there there has to be wonder and mystery and awe in our life, and and it everything doesn't need to be known. Like, I don't have to know all that stuff to be effective. In fact, I could be more effective by just recognizing it. I don't it's a mystery.

Like, I don't people ask me stuff all the time. Like, what if I do this? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I guess you'll find out. Like, you do it, and then and then if it works, you do more of it. If it doesn't, you do something else.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of the fundamental things that we believe in and put a lot of energy into are unknowable, like love. It's like the depths of that are unknowable. We have no idea. It's plumbing those depths that I think is one of the greatest aspects of your life journey. Well, how deep can I experience those things? But is it known? Could we point to it? Right? And yet it's operating at the fundamental aspect of the human condition. And there it sits in the ethereal, and yet it's operating on us every single day and we don't acknowledge it.

Yeah. I tell people often leading. I said you're not I said most people don't like this definition, but I said, and when you're in a leadership role, and I define leading as just creating a better world for those we care deeply about, is is managing other people's emotional states. Like, that's what you're doing. You're trying to positively impact the emotional states of other people because by and large, my belief is, and and and most research will play this out, people do their best work when they feel good. You know? But when when they're in a positive emotional state, the likelihood they're gonna do their best work is greater. So if that's the reality, then your job as a leader is to try to help them and keep them and put them in a positive emotional state. Yeah.

And most of us don't want that job.

So Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, Brent. I mean, we could we could go I we'll probably we'll do another episode because I think there's a lot more to go on here, but I wanna be cognizant of your time. And and, and I I wanna give you the opportunity because I I would like for you to share with everybody, you know, where can they find you? I know you're I'd listened to the teaser episode of your podcast, and so there's some stuff that that's coming up that that I want people to know about. So why don't you let us know about that stuff?

Yeah. Great. No. Thank you for that opportunity. And and I certainly if if if we were to come back together again, it would be fun to talk about what we've learned as far as how do we game the human system to favor some of the things we're talking about. And we know way more than we've ever known, which is interesting, about how this all works, that we can actually game ourselves to favor our ability to navigate that uncertainty and that unknown. So where to find me? So a couple interesting things. Launching actually, the first full episode launches next Friday, which is the generative listening podcast.

And that's gonna be, something that's coming out every 2 weeks. And you can find it on iTunes and Spotify and all those major channels. And it's a it's a deep exploration with people that are having extraordinary listening experiences, and we really get into the depths of those experiences and talk about a lot of the generative listening practices. That is a production of Be Generative. So Be Generative is the company, and so you can find more information there at bedash, so that's bedashgenerative.com. And then of course, easily findable on LinkedIn, just type in Brent Robertson, and, and you'll find me there.

Alright. Awesome. Well, I I appreciate I so appreciate you taking the time and then jumping in and kind of you know, I'm a little bit free flowing in the way we do things, but I I just wanted this to be a conversation and invite other people to listen to you and I have a conversation because if nothing else, I enjoyed it. So I guess that's, that's what I'm trying to do. So I I generally appreciate your time. I hope you stay warm given the fact that it's still pretty cold both where you and I live. And, and I wish you the best in 2025, and I and I hope that we can get back together again and talk more about this.

Perry, thank you. And and I just wanna acknowledge, my experience of you a couple of years ago had an instrumental effect. Let's say you left a dent in my universe that continues to produce incredible conversations way back from there. And so I owe you a debt of gratitude for, just the space you held and some of the concepts you introduced that have really affected my life in a deep and meaningful way. And, you know, timing is everything, and I'm I'm grateful to have time with you like this to talk about these things that don't get a lot of airtime.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I'm very thankful to have met you, and and and it will pay dividends into the future because these things will there'll be more experiments to come. Well, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Brent and I. I thought it was great. I learned a lot from him, and I hope you did too. So if you're ready to stop waiting and start doing, you're in the right place. As always, keep questioning, keep pushing, and remember, growth isn't comfort, but comfort wants you dead.

So I'll see you the next time in the Potential Leader Lab.