In this solo episode, I dive deeper into the idea of psychological safety, building on my conversation with Jason Eisner last week. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend checking it out for a foundational understanding of how a psychologically safe environment can drive team performance and innovation.
Join me as I recap key insights from my interview with Jason, highlighting the critical role of vulnerability in fostering psychological safety. We often face challenges in creating open cultures due to defensiveness and overwhelm, and I’ll share actionable strategies for overcoming these barriers.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The Power of Vulnerability: How being open about your own challenges can encourage team members to do the same.
- Improv Exercises: Learn a powerful listening drill that illustrates the importance of truly hearing others, a vital skill for leaders and team members alike.
- Practical Action Items: Get ready to implement straightforward steps to create a more psychologically safe team environment.
- Creativity Connection: Understand how these techniques not only enhance psychological safety but also unlock creativity within your team.
I'll also demonstrate an improv game called "Blind Line," which encapsulates the idea of maintaining an empty mind to foster creativity. By the end of this episode, you'll have a better grasp of how to create a culture of trust and openness in your organization.
Plus, I’ll provide details about Psych Safety Day, a virtual conference where you can learn more from experts in the field, including a keynote from Dr. Amy Edmondson, the pioneer of psychological safety research.
So, if you're ready to take the next step in building a more supportive and innovative workplace, tune in now!
Links and Resources:
- Psych Safety Day - Sign up and use code Avish15 for a discount!
- For info on working with Jason to build Psychological Safety in your workplace, visit Aristotle Performance.
- For more on Jason and to learn how to work with him one-on-one, check out his website at jasoneisner.com
Plus, get access to the "Say, 'Yes, And!' to Yourself Webinar," which gives a deep dive into how you can access and direct your creativity:
Un-Edited Transcript
Welcome to Yes And, the podcast where we explore the powerful idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but, and how you can use it in your career, your business, and your life . I'm your host, Avish Parasher, and this is yes, and . Hello, my friend, and welcome back to yes, and with Avish Parasher . This is Avish, and you are here for a solo episode where I'm going to be doing a follow-up slash deep dive into my awesome interview last week with Jason Eisner on the topic of psychological safety . If you have not listened to that episode yet, I would highly recommend you go back . It was last week's episode . Jason and I talked about a number of things, specifically psychological safety, but we also talked about, yes and and taking initiative and trying things and a lot of great stuff in there, a lot of great takeaways . So please go back and check that out . But for this episode, I'm gonna be doing a deeper dive into, 1 or 2 things from that episode . So So here's what I'm gonna talk about here today . 1st, I'm gonna do a quick recap of what Jason and I talked about in case you missed it or in case you need a refresher . Number 2, I'm gonna share a few of my thoughts specifically around how it relates to yes and and what some of the challenges that I see, individuals and organizations face when they are trying to create a greater sense of psychological safety . Then I'm gonna go into the topic of this episode, which is my solution, which I'll tell you right up front, it's not a secret, is vulnerability . Really, one of the things that is going to allow you to create a psychologically safe team environment or culture is if you and the leaders who are trying to create it are able to be a little bit vulnerable and not try to dictate and criticize and force a culture on other people . Then I'm gonna share with you an exercise from improv comedy . It's not what I'm really gonna demonstrate here, but I'll explain how to do it . Normally on these solo episodes, I like to play an improv game to demonstrate this idea . But as I was thinking about what is the best tool to convey, this willingness to listen and set aside your judgment and to be vulnerable, It's really a drill I do when I'm teaching improv or creativity, and I'm gonna share that with you . Then I'm gonna go into action items . What are, a bunch of different things you can do right away to start building a more psychologically safe culture, being more vulnerable, and using yes and . Then I'm gonna talk a little bit about creativity, because the tool I'm going to mention, the technique, the drill, is a great communication tool . It's gonna help you with psychological safety, but I often use it to teach creativity . So I'll go in a little bit about how you can use that tool to develop creativity . And then because I wanna have a little improv comedy, I will wrap up, dropping in an improv comedy game that I play in almost every presentation I do, and then give you a quick few takeaways from that, and how it relates to the idea of the the exercise I'm gonna give you, and psychological safety, and creativity . Because Jason and I actually do talk about creativity and innovation as well in our interview, and how that is an important piece of, both innovating for yourself and moving yourself forward, but also for psychological safety . Because sometimes, we need to be able to think of problems in different ways and let go of our fixed path and be creative in order to have a stronger, more trusting response to our people . Alright . So before I get into the recap of the episode with Jason, I do wanna quickly mention a quick promo here . Here . One of the main things Jason and I talked about, and the way Jason found me is Jason is running, putting on a virtual event called psych safety day . As you might guess, this is an entire day, a conference focused on psychological safety . It's all virtual, so no matter where you are in the country or world, you can join . If you want information on it, you can go to, psych safety day . If you're not sure about how to spell that, go to my website, avishparasher.com forward slash safety, and it will direct you to Sykes safety day . And you can register there . And if you use the code avish15avish15, it will give you a 15% discount on your registration, and you can use that . You can share that with people on your team or other people who might be interested in joining for this awesome event . So I'm gonna be one of the presenters . I'm doing kind of a short breakout type session on yes and and psychological safety and how they relate . There's gonna be a lot of great speakers on a lot of great topics . And the keynote speaker is doctor Amy Edmonson, who Jason and I talked about on the, interview . But basically, she is the person who sort of pioneered this field of psychological safety . She's did the initial research . She's written books . She's sort of the grand poohbah of psychological safety . So if you're really interested in this topic, this is a person you wanna listen to, and it's gonna be a great event with lots of awesome speakers . So avishparashirt.com forward slash safety and use coupon code avish15avish15@checkoutouttogeta15percentdiscount . Alright . So quick recap . As I mentioned, Jason and I spoke about psychological safety, which if you don't know and haven't listened to the episode, is basically the feeling that people have on a team that they can raise questions, concerns, give feedback, raise criticism without the fear of being punished or heavily criticized for it . If they feel that way, they have psychological safety . The other component is that people on your team feel like they're able to take risks . And that if the risk doesn't work out, that they're not gonna be berated or punished . And just to go into what Jason and I spoke about is Google did this thing called project Aristotle where they ran a study internally, and they identified what are the common traits of the highest performing teams, and the number one trait they found was psychological safety . That means if you want a high performing team, the most important thing is that everyone on that team feels psychologically safe . They all feel that they can raise questions and and concerns and feedback and that they can take risks without, a negative consequence, right, without being berated, without being criticized, without being mocked, which in some way sounds obvious because we know that if we're raising these things, if we're raising a concern or question or we're owning up to a mistake, we don't wanna be berated for it . And yet there is a common sort of feeling that people have that to be a leader, you gotta hold people's feet to the fire . You gotta let them know when they screw up, and that negative feedback is gonna improve them when in fact the research shows it doesn't . So that is a huge piece of what Jason and I talked about . You gotta go listen to the episode because he also, shares this really fascinating story about why he had to leave one of his jobs, because of a situation with a boss, a CEO who's doing something really inappropriate and how Jason had to, kinda speak up about it, go to the police about it, and talking about how that is an important component about being willing to step up, and take action in the face of adversity . And then we shifted the conversation a little bit because Jason, while now he runs the, he's the cofounder and kinda head of the Aristotle performance group, which consults with companies on psychological safety . He's had a interesting sort of backstory and journey, and he started multiple businesses and had multiple products that sell pretty well on Amazon . And we went into how he was able to do that, and this is where we tied more into yes and, though, especially if you attend psych safety day . But in general, you'll see that yes and is a critical component to building psychological safety . But this is where we really talked about yes and because he was attracted to my content because he said that, you know, this is basically how I've lived my life . Whenever I've had an idea, I just sort of say yes and to jump into it and figure out how to get it done and and put it out there and produce it, where so many other people have a good idea . And, yes, but themselves . They think about it . They're like, I don't know . I can't do that, and never get started . So those are kind of the highlight levels of what we talked about . Again, really good interview . Jason's a great guy . He's got some great content . Go listen to that episode . It was from The Week . It's the episode directly preceding this one . Now as I was reflecting back on that interview with Jason and the concept of psychological safety, which I was familiar with before I had done some writing on it . I have a YouTube video where I went deeper in this topic even before I met Jason . As I was thinking about our interview and all the great insights, you know, I thought maybe one of the things that might have been a little bit less clear, for people was why, number 1, don't we have the default response to be to create greater psychological safety ? And number 2, how can we ? How can we as leaders, whether you're a manager or executive or CEO or business owner, or maybe you work in HR and you're trying to create this culture, how can we create it ? And as great as the content was interview, I was like, maybe it wasn't as clear how people can get started . Maybe that's a question I didn't get into as much as I should have before we ran out of time . So that's what I'm gonna talk about a little bit today is in my experience and from my position, why don't people create psychologically safe cultures, and how can we ? And I think the most common barrier that leads to people not creating psychologically safe cultures, it starts with defensiveness and overwhelm . Those two things, which really fall under the subcategory of emotion . And if you go back to a solo episode I did, 2 episodes before actually, 3 episodes because I had a Halloween Halloween one in there . It was, saying yes and to emotion . It was followed up the MJ Shar interview I did . I talk a lot about emotion and emotional response, and I think the same is true here . That one of the big reasons that we respond in a way that doesn't create psychological safety is that when someone raises a question or criticism or gives us feedback, we immediately feel defensive . Right ? We get a negative emotion . We feel insecure . And out of that negative emotion, we respond in a way that is less than optimal . Right ? Someone comes and tells us we did something wrong, and we wanna defend our position . Oh, but, you know, you don't understand or yeah . But this doesn't concern you or yeah . But you misinterpreted what I was doing . And you might even be right when you defend yourself . But at the end of the day, you are reducing psychological safety . Because think about it . If you're an employee, put yourselves in the shoes of an employee . It takes a lot to to speak to power, to give feedback or criticism, or to raise a concern, like, you see something being done that is inappropriate or wrong, and you wanna raise that concern . If you are then met with a defensive boss or an emotional boss or a boss who gets upset because you are wrong or misinterpreted their vision or just don't have the whole picture, so you should shut up and do your work ? Like, are you gonna be really willing to do that again ? Are you going to wanna speak up ? Are you gonna wanna raise a concern which maybe down the road could fix a potential tragedy ? Are you going to want to offer your feedback on an idea that could potentially make it better ? Now put yourself back in the leader's role . Don't you want people to raise concerns that could lead to disaster ? Don't you want people to come to you with feedback and ideas on how to make your initiatives and the companies and teams initiatives better and more effective ? Right ? This is why we have people . This is the power of teamwork and collaboration . So when we don't control our emotional response, when we let our emotion create defensiveness in us and respond that way, we immediately hurt the psychologically safe culture . And the same thing happens with stress and overwhelm . Sometimes you're not even negative at the person . Sometimes you're not defensive . Sometimes we are just so overwhelmed, overworked, and busy, and we have so many tasks on our to do list that when someone comes to us with an issue or a problem, we just don't have time to respond to them with kindness and empathy . And so we're very short with them . And afterwards, you know, if you think about it, you might even say to yourself, oh, no . I wasn't upset at them . But from that employee's perspective, because you were short, because you were sort of dismissive, they don't feel like you supported them and listened to them . And it's gonna have the same negative consequence of being defensive, which is why I think the action item that we can use is to use yes and to be more vulnerable . And this is hard for people . Right ? Number 1, vulnerability is not often talked about as a positive corporate slash professional slash business trait . Like vulnerability, like that's for wusses . Like, we can't . There's no crying in baseball, like, we can't be vulnerable, and it's not about breaking down . Being vulnerable is simply saying, even in your own head, I don't have all the answers . I am not always right, and maybe I made a mistake . Even if I think I was a 100% right, maybe I was wrong . So instead of responding with a yeah, but to defend my position, let me start with a yes, and . Let me simply say when this employee gives me feedback, yes, and tell me more . When an employee comes to me with a concern that I think is unfounded, that I think they're being overly sensitive, instead of saying, yeah, but you're overthinking it, I say, yes, and share with me your thinking . Yes, and how do you see this impacting our operations ? Right now that is vulnerable because you're almost when we say yes, and and let people criticize or give feedback, sometimes we feel like we're giving them permission and saying they're right, and you're not . And, you know, I've I've spoken to legal groups before, and they're like, legally, we can't say yes because that's conceding . Alright . Fine . But remember, yes and is a mindset and a mentality, not a literal technique . So maybe you don't even say the exact words yes and . You just say, tell me more . I wanna be respectful of what you're thinking . Share with me your thoughts . Right now, that's hard because I've been there before . Right ? I've been there before when an employee or someone who's kind of under me, a member of my improv group at one point or a member of an association when I was a president, is giving me feedback on something that they think I did wrong . And, man, my defensive I can feel my heart start pounding, and I can feel the blood in my veins . And it's so hard, but I have really focused on as best as possible, letting that go, not responding in that moment, and just listening . Because if we want to create these situations and environments where people can give us feedback, give us information, we can't respond right away . So just be quiet, listen, and explore their ideas . And the easiest way to do that is to make the switch from but to and . If you ever hear yourself start to say the words, yes, but or just but, that's the easiest way because it's a literal thing . Stop yourself . Even if you can't change to a yes and, just stop talking, catch yourself and say, oh, let me let me stop . Please continue . Then if you are able, the second step is if you are able to start understanding when you're having a yes, but response without using the words . Because again, none of these are literal techniques, and it is quite possible to respond with a yes, but mindset without actually using the words yes, but . And as you get better, it starts first with paying attention to the verbiage, then you start realizing when you're responding in a yes, but way . And once you can reduce that, and again, first, it just starts by shutting up and listening . Then the next step is to actually dig deeper, to get curious, to use a yes and response . So instead of just saying, okay, let me be quiet . Keep going . You find something they said and ask about that . Yeah . Okay . I'm I'm hearing what you're saying, and you mentioned that you're concerned about the this new policy we've implemented, how it might be unfair . Share with me more about that . Right ? So you're picking in and digging deeper . Now you're not just being open . You're actively seeking feedback . You're trying to learn more about the other person . That is gonna really start building psychological safety in your organization and your culture, and it has to start with you as the leader . So what I'm gonna do now is share an improv drill that I have used all the time in both corporate team building and communication workshops, but also in improv comedy classes . This is not an improv game at all . And this one does require a partner, but you could probably rig it in a way where, you can do it solo . But normally what I would do is and if you are a leader, try this exercise with your team . It is eye opening when it comes to communication, and emotion, and responses, and how hard it is to pay attention to other people and not get wrapped up in our own thoughts . So here's what you do . You get 2 people, you and a partner . You assign 1 person to be an a and one person to be a b . The a's will go first, and then you get a timer . You can do it on your watch or clock, whatever . And set a timer for 1 minute, and here's the drill . A's are just going to talk for 1 minute straight . The b's are just going to listen . Now a's can talk about anything at all . If you don't know the person well, you can give basic information, talk about your job, your roles, your responsibilities . You can also talk about hobbies, things you like to do out of work, activities, exercise routines . You could talk about your interests, books, movies, TV shows, whatever . It doesn't matter . It's just for one minute you don't stop talking . B is for that one minute, you are just going to listen . You are not allowed to interrupt . You're not allowed to ask questions . You're not allowed to add and say, oh, here's what I do too . Then you let the one minute go by, and then you switch roles . Then the b's will talk for 1 minute . Again, talk about anything they want, and a's will just listen with no interrupting or asking questions or anything . And then at the end of this exercise, you debrief it, and it is amazing . Now there's a whole thing about the talker and how hard sometimes people might be to talk for 1 minute straight . But I always start the debrief with the listener . When you were the one listening, what happened ? Were you able to listen without interrupting ? And most people say yes, although some people might, even with a drill, will find themselves interrupting . But then you dig deeper and say, what happened to your mind ? Because invariably, what'll happen is that your partner will say something in their one minute, and that'll trigger a thought in your mind . And you will immediately start to formulate a response . Maybe it's something you disagree with and you wanna mention it . Maybe it's something you agree with, and you wanna be, oh, that's so true . Or maybe they mentioned something that you wanna add to, like, they mentioned the fact that, one of their hobbies is they like to go skiing . And And in your mind, you're like, oh, my god . I like to ski too . I wanna find out where they like to ski, and maybe I can share this awesome hidden ski spot that they don't know about . Right ? And now your mind is not focused on the other person, and it is off and running . And when you do that, you stop listening to the other person . Maybe half of your mind is listening, but you're not putting your attention on them . So then the follow-up debrief is you go back to the the speaker in that exercise and say, how did you feel when you were speaking ? Did you feel like the person was really listening to you, connected to you, and in the moment with you ? And they'll say, yeah . Absolutely . Because the structure of the game requires that . Because most of the time, when we are engaged in a conversation and you are listening to someone else, we as people often don't really listen . We are really just waiting for our turn to respond . Now this game or this drill really illustrates that in a basic level, then you take it up a notch . Right ? Because here, your partner is just talking about some random stuff about their life . Now imagine the same scenario where one person is talking about something emotionally charged . Like they're giving you feedback, telling you what you did wrong, telling you why maybe your idea is not as good as you think it is, or sharing with you a problem, a mistake they made, and that's stressing you out . As that emotion rises, you could imagine how much harder it is to simply stay quiet, keep your mouth shut, and just listen to the other person . And if you can bring this level of listening, where you don't talk, where you don't interrupt, and when the thought pops up in your head instead of voicing it or holding on to it until it's your turn to speak, you just let it go and refocus your attention on the other person . You will be amazed at what a better listener you become . You will be amazed at what greater rapport you have, and you will be amazed at how you are able to start building a greater psychologically safe environment . Because when the person comes to you with those things that they are afraid to talk about or it takes courage for them to bring up, and they are just met with someone who fully listens and pays attention, and then maybe takes the next level of asking questions to understand deeper, oh my goodness . The teamwork, the collaboration, the culture, the psychological safety will just go up so high just from simply letting those emotions go, letting those thoughts go, being vulnerable, not defending yourself, and just listening . So let's talk about how you can start using this right away . Right ? A few ways that maybe these were questions from this episode or maybe questions after listening to the interview with Jason about, okay, this psychological safety stuff is good . This vulnerability stuff is good . How can I start using this in my work ? So most of these are gonna be based on the assumption that you're a leader or someone who can implement some things . If not, you might have to modify them a little bit . So number 1, if you wanna create a culture of openness and trust, like, how do I do this ? How do I start creating a culture ? Number 1, encourage regular team check ins . Right ? Don't just have an open door policy where it's like, oh, come on in when you have an issue . But create check ins . And in the format of the check ins is to create this environment where people can talk . Right ? Sometimes we feel like, yeah . I'm gonna be open and vulnerable, but we don't let people know they have permission to talk . So create check ins where you get permission for people to bring up their issues and concerns, where you are not gonna get defensive, where you're not gonna respond right away . We're just gonna listen . And that's hard . Right ? Because we've all been in those forums where the leader says, oh, sure . Open door policy, anything goes, and you can tell it affects them . So have a check-in, give people permission, but really commit to responding in a positive listening yes and way . Number 2, recognize and reward vulnerability in others . When you see 2 people interacting and you can tell that one person didn't get defensive, didn't launch into why they are right, and just really built rapport with the other person, pull them aside and praise them . Right ? You wanna reward and recognize when others in your group are doing this powerfully and, correctly as well . And number 3, establish clear communication guidelines . You wanna set bound rule boundaries . Right ? Because if I give the, number 1, if I'm working with a team and I say, yeah . You can raise any question or concern, maybe I wanna raise some boundaries around how you do that . Right ? I don't wanna create an open forum where people can just start ripping each other apart . And I sort of jokingly mentioned that about Pixar in my interview with Jason, but that comes after a long time of building trust and rapport . So maybe talk about the time frame . Here's the time frame within which we're going to have this kind of conversation, or here's the language we're allowed to use . Or we're gonna start with positive communication . Whatever it is, set communication guidelines so it's not just the wild west ever communicating any way they want . So those are 3 ways you can start building a a culture of openness and trust . Number 2, again, you wanna encourage team members to voice their concerns . So you may wanna start number 1 with, anonymous feedback . You know, especially if you feel you have a culture of distrust . People might not jump right out of the gate to, to start with raising their hand and giving feedback because in the past, they've done it and been burned . So number 1, start anonymously . Let people anonymously give their feedback . Find a forum . There's online tools for doing this, tech tools . You can also just do a suggestion box or whatever . And number 2, address feedback . Right ? If people feel like they're giving feedback and then they don't hear anything back, whether it's anonymous or not, you wanna address the feedback . You wanna let people know that, okay . I heard this feedback . Even if the feedback even if the way you're addressing it is to say, we can't do anything about this right now . Yes, and at first, address it, validate it, and then give an update . Here's what we're doing about it . Here's what we're not doing about it, and make sure you don't just leave these things dangling because that's a quick way to reduce psychological safety if people feel like, oh, when I do speak up, it doesn't go anywhere anyways . And number 3, you lead from the front . So share your own personal mistakes . Right ? Own up when you make a mistake . Let people see you being vulnerable, and that's gonna lead to them being vulnerable . So those are the 3 things you can start doing to encourage your team to start voicing their concerns . Final, this kind of builds off that one a little bit . Model vulnerability and psychological safety as a leader . So number 1, practice the kind of listening I just said, right, where you're not interrupting, where you're not disagreeing, where you're not just waiting for your turn to speak . Right ? Model that type of listening for your people . Number 2, be more transparent in your decision making . Right ? And even that means you're you're making a decision where you're not sure if this is the best guess . Right ? I think people respect vulnerability in their leaders . They respect when a leader lets them know . This is my best guess . I'm not entirely sure if this is the best course of action, but we've gotten 4 different points of view . We've come down to basically 2 options here . Half the group thinks this is the best way to go . The other half thinks this is the best way to go . I'm not entirely sure . Both have valid points of view, but as a leader, I need to make a decision . So this is the one I'm choosing and this is why . If you're transparent there, it lets the people who you're disagreeing with know why . If you just come in and say, well, here's what we're doing, then the group who doesn't agree with your decision is gonna feel like, oh, well, I guess my opinion doesn't matter . So be transparent in how you are making decisions . And finally, number 3, proactively seek feedback . Right ? As a manager, as a leader, you're often gonna be in a position where you are giving feedback . Right ? Evaluations, you know, the annual review, whatever . But actively seek out the feedback yourself . Let people know you're not above it . If you wanna build a culture of vulnerability and feedback where everyone feels, a sense of trust, lead from the front . Let people give you feedback and take it like a vulnerable psychologically safe leader and see where that goes . So that is the overall idea of taking, ability using vulnerability and using yes and to build greater psychological safety . I wanna touch upon one more thing here, and that is that listening exercise is incredibly powerful because it comes to this idea . In order to listen that way, what you have to do is empty your mind . And I touched upon this a little bit, but what it means is that when your partner mentions something that triggers a thought in your head, you have to go to let that idea go and come back to just focusing on your partner and being sort of what I call an empty receptacle to your partner's ideas . If you've got an idea in your head that you wanna talk about when your partner's done, then you are not an empty mind . Right ? You are just filling your head with a conscious thought . Now, I'm not gonna go in-depth here . But when I talk about creativity, one of the two ways I say anyone can do improv comedy and anyone can be creative . The 2 techniques are 1, just to go fast, which is why I talk fast . But if you go fast, you can bypass your internal critic that blocks creativity . And number 2 is to have an empty mind . The less The more you can quiet your conscious mind, the more you can hear ideas from your subconscious, which is where the creativity comes from . Now that is a super fast way of talking about it . So I'm gonna give you a free resource . If you go to avishparasher.comforward/webinar, w e b I n a r, you can sign up to get a, access to a recording I did on how to say yes and to yourself . And in that webinar, I go in-depth into how you can access your own creativity, the exercises you can do, and this idea of saying an empty mind and being an empty pond and why it's important . So go sign up for that . Check that out, and you'll see you can be a creative genius too . Avishparasher.comforward/webinar . And the the I don't talk about this exercise in that webinar because I was really doing it for individuals . But this exercise of having an empty mind, being almost meditative in how you listen is a great way to practice having an empty mind . So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna drop in an improv game, that I play in almost every keynote and presentation I do . It's how I end almost every presentation . It's an improv game called blind line . So I'm gonna drop it in here, just as a fun thing to do . And afterwards, I can do a quick debrief of what that has to do with, the empty mind and creativity so you can take away from it . But I'm gonna start telling you my final little motivational presentation story speech here at the end . And then I'll pull out a card and read whatever sentence is written on there . And then find a way of incorporating that into the story hopefully in a way that makes sense . To begin, I would like a suggestion from the audience for what, like, the topic of this story should be . So how about, an activity or hobby ? But again, something random, like off the beaten path, something you don't hear about every day . What's a random activity or hobby ? Kite flying, curling, lumberjacking ? Dog sledding . Dog sledding . Oh my goodness . These are all very interesting . You know, I've never done lumberjacking . So I'm gonna go with lumberjacking . And let's spice it up a little bit . Let's add on a descriptive word, an adjective or adverb, but one you wouldn't necessarily associate with lumberjacking . What's a random non lumberjacking descriptive word ? Edible . Edible ? And I think someone in the back also said cheesy . They're kind of two sides of a similar coin there . Alright . Well, I'll go with edible . So I'm gonna share with you a motivational speech about the power of edible lumberjacking . Hopefully, this is a fun way to end, but also see if you can catch me applying some of the ideas I talked about in the presentation around saying yes, and, and adapting, and moving this forward, and all that . And here we go . Good morning, ladies and gentlemen . Thank you for joining me for my talk on the power of edible lumberjacking . Now, I wasn't always lumberjack . In fact, I just had a normal computer desk job . And every day, I would go to work and I would say things to myself like, say hello to my little friend . Right ? Because I only had one friend, and so every time someone come in, I was very social . I wanted them to introduce him to you . But my friend didn't like this, and eventually, he pulled me aside and said, will you stop introducing me to people ? I said, why ? And he looked and he said to me he looked at me and he said, I think we're gonna need a bigger boat . Now, I realized that, you know, I was I was working for the Navy at this time, and we were on, like, a cruiser . I'm like, we can't get a bigger boat . He says, there's no boat big enough for us to be together . I was like, what ? I thought you were my friend . He said, no, I'm not your friend . And then he said something to me that changed my life forever . He looked me dead in the eyes, and that's blank . He looked at me, and he said, you're a wizard, Harry . And I said, yes, you're right . My name's not Harry, which means we were never good friends to begin with . But I am a wizard, maybe not of magic, but of numbers . Right ? I was an accountant, and I thought, I'm gonna take my accounting numbers elsewhere . So I just walked off the boat and quit the job that day . But I didn't know where to go, and, you know, I just kinda walked into the woods to find myself . And then I heard a voice . It was like God himself looking down at me saying, the measure of a life's worth is how much the world is better off but for such life . And I said, I have done nothing of worth in my life . I've been running numbers, but I didn't know what those numbers mean . And I said, but you know what ? If I get it with my hands so I just said, you know what ? I'm gonna clear a path here . And I just started chopping down a tree . Well, it made a lot of noise, so this this man comes running out of the woods yelling at me . What are you doing ? And I say to him, so you think you can tell heaven from hell, blue skies from pain ? Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rain ? And he and he said, no . But you saying that makes me feel very comfortably numb . And I said, oh, oh, good . Good . It's very soothing . Right ? He was what he was saying was the pounding of the ax made him very relaxed . And so he fell asleep, and I realized that I was onto something . So I created a meditation clinic where people could listen to me chopping down trees, and they would relax . And people came from all over . The problem was when they woke up, they'd be very hungry and had nothing to eat . So one day, I chop down a tree, this man wakes up and says, I'm hungry, and I say to him, don't don't feed it after midnight . I was referring to him as an it, but it wasn't midnight . We we only have like 5 minutes before midnight . I didn't want him to turn into a gremlin . So I said, here, eat some tree . And he did . And it's a lot of roughage . It cleared him out . He felt very good afterwards . So this became my business model . I invite people out, I meditate them, and then they eat the trees . It's humane, it's eco friendly, it's diverse, it's everything . Now, you might be saying, what does this have to do with me ? You're never going to be a lumberjack . Well, maybe not . But you've probably got some goal, and when you think about that goal, you say to yourself, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get . And you're right, but you will never know what's in that box till you open it and eat a chocolate . Too many of you are looking at that chocolate box trying to wait to figure it out . Don't do that . So when you wake up tomorrow, instead of looking at it like a box of chocolates, say to yourself, relax, relate, release . And when you do that, you will be able to move towards your dreams . And if I can leave you with a final thought about edible lumberjacking, it is this, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn . That was an example of blind line, great improv game . Always a crowd pleaser, which quick side note, if you are planning a conference or event, you know, the motivational speaker, a high energy speaker talking about change and improv comedy, and yes, and most specifically, that would end with a high energy fun game like that, check out my website, avishparasher.com . It's it's always a hoot . It's a blast, and you get improv games like that to bring energy and fun to your event while also, giving great ideas around building a yes and culture, increasing vulnerability, better leadership communication, etcetera . Avishparshadotcom has lots of info about that . Now in that improv game where I told a story about edible lumberjacking, this ties into creativity and empty mind simply because as I'm going into that story, I and anytime I play a game like that or any improv story game, the dangerous thing that happens is the improviser will have a fixed idea in their head, like, have a completely not empty mind . They'll have this whole kind of story in mind or even just the next few sentences in mind . And when they pull that blind line card and read that sentence, which is usually a movie quote or song lyric, their thoughts gonna be, how do I incorporate this and stay on the same path I was on ? Now all I do when I play that game is I don't really have an idea . I have as empty a mind as I can . I'm saying the sentence I'm telling right now, and when I pull that card, I make my mind as empty as possible . I don't want any preconceived notions about where I want the story to go . So that when that sentence comes out, that becomes the trigger . If you watch the webinar video, you'll understand what I mean when I say that becomes the pebble in my pond, and I just say how can I direct this story in a new direction ? And that is really what separates good improvisers from bad one and frankly what separates great improvisers from good ones is so many people have an idea where they wanna go, and then they take the interruption . They take the offer . They take the creative input from the audience, from the game mechanic itself, or from a scene partner, and try to cram it into where they want it to go . That's the opposite of the empty mind . When you have this totally empty mind like you have to have in this listening, a b speaking listening game, when that card comes up, it just unleashes your creativity . You're totally empty . That becomes a trigger . It takes you in a new direction . Then you pause empty mind, read the next card . And by doing that over and over again, you tell this random funny story that pleases the audience, is very creative, and makes the audience think like you are so fast on your feet . But you're not really fast on your feet . You're just empty in your mind . And so no matter what comes at you immediately respond to it because you don't have to mentally slow down and think about how can I incorporate this into my story ? So that was blind line . It's kind of a quick thing at the end here . I wanna share with you an improv game and and tell you how you can be creative . So number 1, first thing to wrap up this episode, number 1, go back and listen to last week's interview with Jason Eisner on psychological safety . Lot of great content . Number 2, go to avishparshare.comforward/safety to sign up for psychological safety day on November 20, 2024 . Virtual conference you can attend anywhere from 11 AM to 4 PM EST . Tons of great content on psychological safety, including a keynote from doctor Amy Edmondson, sort of the pioneer and grand leader of this whole movement . Number 3, go to avishparsher.comforward/webinar, to sign up for a free webinar recording on how you can access your creativity and say yes and yourself and set bigger goals and lots of cool stuff . Number 4, if you wanna start implementing this yourself right away, start by being willing to be vulnerable . Let those emotions go . Let that defensiveness go . Practice being empty and in the moment with people even when you're stressed, even when you're overwhelmed . Take a few minutes now to connect, listen, and dig deeper will pay off huge dividends in the rapport you build, in the collaboration you build, and in the sense of psychological safety you start building in your team, your organization, your culture, everywhere . And if you have any questions on this, please reach out . Let me know . Attend psych safety day for answers on that . If you have any questions on yes and, go to my website atvishparsher.com . Contact me and let me know . So, again, thank you so much for listening . I hope you enjoyed the solo episode . I hope you go back and listen to some of the previous episodes, including the one with Jason Eisner . And if you like this episode and this podcast, number 1, subscribe on your favorite podcast app . Number 2, on that podcast app, go ahead and give us a review . Write down a few thoughts about what you like about this podcast, whether it's the interviews or the solo episodes or both . And And I know that's a lot of work, so if you don't like that, at least give us a 5 star review . That is going to really help other people find us, and I would truly appreciate it . So thank you so much for listening, and be sure to join us next week where I'm gonna be interviewing Dan Nestle, a great marketing communicator, where we're gonna be talking about marketing communication and artificial intelligence . Why it's important, why it is here and you can't ignore it, and how you can start using it right away . Thanks, and thanks for listening .